The book is relentlessly and consistently “Eurocentric” and precritical, and its narrative provides what sense there is in the enormous doorstop North American world art history textbooks. Story of Art remains the best succinct telling of the European march of naturalism, from its fitful beginnings in Egypt and archaic Greek art to its problematic partial eclipse in modernism. Its companion, Little History of the World, is little read by art historians: it’s an old-fashioned chronicle of kings and wars, entirely unlike its companion.
Top photo: Gombrich’s Story of Art was, as he often insisted, written for children: yet it remains the world’s best-selling introduction to art for adults.
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