Annotated Mona Lisa, The

by Carol Strickland
“The Annotated Mona Lisa” takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks to a world of dynamic design, succinct page-length essays, and instructive sidebars. These graphic devices heighten the reader’s ability to retain an impressive amount of information, even through a cursory reading. A brief runthrough of the book’s captions and sidebars provides a mini crash course in art history. Incorporating more than 300 illustrations (one-third in colour), “The Annotated Mona Lisa” draws on the very elements of art-composition, movement, balance, colour, and design- to achieve a visual and textual approach to the subject that no ordinary textbook could approximate. From Stonehenge to the Guggenheim, from Holbein to Warhol, the language of art is clarified through five sections.
This is the book used with the Tree of Life highschool Art Appreciation course. Ages 12 and up.