A beautifully illustrated and refreshingly unpretentious introduction to art history, Michael Levey's classic 1962 book displays a depth of thought and technique that makes you annoyed at the charlatans who populate the creative world today. It is reliably astute in charting the arc of Western painting from Giotto to Cézanne, introducing and discussing along the way an honour roll of potent artists, including da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bosch, Botticelli, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio, Turner, Monet, Gauguin and van Gogh, as well as some lesser lights whose work is instructive in Levey's narrative. There are some notable omissions in the paintings selected (the part on da Vinci doesn't discuss the Mona Lisa, van Gogh's doesn't discuss Starry Night, or The Astronomer for Vermeer, etc.) but the book is, as its subtitle says, a concise history rather than an encyclopaedia.

With Levey's guidance, the reader begins to see the development of Western artistic expression over hundreds of years, and can appreciate the use and importance of certain techniques, such as the always-revolutionary use of light, even in seemingly-benign landscapes and still lifes. You begin to understand the wealth and intricacy of the art form – and again, despair at the current state of the medium. You develop an ability to differentiate between masters and regular painters, and it makes you want to reclaim that much-abused word 'masterpiece' for the things that really deserve it. In our post-modern, relativistic (and anti-Western/anti-Christian) times, appreciation of this sort of thing helps you acquire something approaching taste, or at least an awareness of objective standards. As an interested novice who has always wanted to explore this kind of art but has been wary of the pseuds, I could scarcely have conceived of anything more suitable than Levey's book. ( )

Wonderful, beautifully illustrated, fun to read introduction to painting. Couple it with A Concise History of Modern Art (another in Thames and Hudson's World of Art series) and you've got everything you need to begin your exploration into the world of visual art. If you're looking for an overview, this is the one. ( )

549 plates in full color