Daniel Halpern has gathered together essays by over forty distinguished writers who discuss artists, works, or genres of visual art that have profoundly inspired or disturbed them. Now available in paperback, this volume covers a broad spectrum of world art history, ranging from Italian Renaissance painting to the abstract modern art of the twentieth century. Here one finds Ford Madox Ford writing on Holbein, Sartre on Tintoretto, Genet on Rembrandt, Proust on Chardin, Elizabeth Bishop on Gregorio Valdes, Randall Jarrell on abstract expressionism, and many other stimulating combinations. Each selection is accompanied by a full-page reproduction of the artist's work.