The Folio Society Book of the 100 Greatest Portraits

This illustrated survey presents one hundred Western portraits in chronological order, from a mid-fourteenth-century king to Magritte's 1937 painting of a man whose face is hidden by a hovering apple. Each opening pairs a colour plate with a short essay on the sitter, the painter, and the occasion of the likeness. Contributors are curators and historians writing on single pictures. The selection runs through court, civic, and private images and stops short of postwar work. There is no continuous narrative. The book is a gallery of argued choices with commentary, not a history of portraiture in chapters and not a picture album without text.

Quarter bound in brown buckram with a paper cover printed in colo0ur with a portrait. Gilt endleaves. Brown slipcase.