Twenty-three art masterpieces for your children to pore over. This book carries on the theme of the author's first book (Masterpieces up close, also published by Princeton Architectural Press) with a painting on each spread and ten or twelve numbered circular sections from the art surrounding the picture. All the paintings are full of detail so it's not easy to find each circle's location, the ideal format to encourage children to look and look.
I thought the selection of art was interesting, not just western paintings but a thoughtful collection including an Egyptian papyrus, from around 1300 BC, a fifteenth century Arabic manuscript and an Aztec one from the sixteenth, a painting from Japan and right up to Jackson Pollock's 1952 'Convergence'. Ten pages after the paintings give some interesting historical background about culture, painting techniques of the period and various art 'isms'.
Give up trying to find circle ten in David Tenier's 'Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his gallery in Brussels' (a wonderful work showing a room in a gallery with at least thirty other paintings) the author cleverly provides the answer in two spreads at the back of the book. This has a small version of each piece of art on a flap, lift it up and the painting is repeated with numbers identifying the position of each circle. There's even more because the underside of the flap has a brief biography of each artist.
With two hundred pieces of paintings to find I think this is a fascinating way to introduce centuries of art to young minds and they'll enjoy the colorful way all the material is presented throughout the book.
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