Paris: City of Art Book

Originally published in French in 2000 by Editions Mengès (with the title L'Art de Paris), this massive volume (10.75x12.5") provides the history of art and architecture in the city of Paris from Roman times to the present. The text gives the reader a thorough grounding in the development of art and architecture, aesthetic ideas, the impact of patronage, the lives and careers of significant artists and architects, and related issues in history and politics, in the city of Paris. Most dazzling are the book's many color plates, which are generous in size (many spread over two pages) and copious. A list of short artist's biographies is included. Pérouse de Montclos is a French art historian with a specialization in the French Renaissance and Baroque. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The New York Times

Weighing a hefty 11 pounds, this surpassingly rich visual and intellectual feast is the luxury book bargain of the season. With a tone at once magisterial and personal, learned but accessible, the historian and curator Jean-Marie Perouse de Montclos (well served by a sympathetic squadron of translators) conducts a stately promenade through the 23 centuries since a Celtic people called the Parisii settled on the Seine's Ile de la Cite. Though the work's subtitle leads one to believe that its subject is painting and sculpture, which are indeed fully represented, its primary theme is the architecture of the City of Light, and rarely has it shone more brightly on the printed page. — Martin Filler