The making of pictures has a history going back perhaps 100,000 years to an African shell used as a paint palette. Two-thirds of it is irrevocably lost, since the earliest images known to us are from about 40,000 years ago. But what a 40,000 years, explored here by David Hockney and Martin Gayford.

How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway? Discover the glittering Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century USA, and the artist who really invented the Readymade. Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of post-War artists in Latin America, and the women artists defining...

Selected from a collection that comprises 3000 paintings, 12,500 drawings and engravings, and 300 sculptures, this title showcases such outstanding works as Bellini's 'The Madonna and Child', Rembrandt's 'A Man in Armour', and Botticelli's 'The Annunciation'.