In this visually stunning and much anticipated book, acclaimed art historian Joseph Koerner casts the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel in a completely new light, revealing how the painting of everyday life was born from what seems its polar opposite: the depiction of an enemy hell-bent on destroying us.

Supreme virtuoso of the bizarre, diabolic, and outlandish, Bosch embodies the phantasmagorical force of painting, while Bruegel, through his true-to-life landscapes and frank depictions of peasants, is the artistic avatar of the familiar and ordinary. But despite their...

Caspar David Friedrich (1774 1840) is heralded as the greatest painter of the Romantic movement in Germany, and Europe s first truly modern artist. His mysterious and melancholy landscapes, often peopled with lonely wanderers, are experiments in a radically subjective artistic perspective one in which, as Freidrich wrote, the painter depicts not what he sees before him, but what he sees within him. This vulnerability of the individual when confronted with nature became one of the key tenets of the Romantic aesthetic.

Now available in a compact, accessible format, this beautifully...