The History of World Sculpture by Bazin, Germain
The History of World Sculpture
A Formidable and Monumental Encyclopedic Survey of Three-Dimensional Masterworks from Antiquity to the Late Twentieth Century
A Formidable and Monumental Encyclopedic Survey of Three-Dimensional Masterworks from Antiquity to the Late Twentieth Century
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: The History of World Sculpture
- Author: Germain Bazin
- Translator: Madeline Jay
- Publisher: Chartwell Books Inc., Secaucus, New Jersey
- Publication Date: 1976
- ISBN-13: 9780890090893 (ISBN-10: 0890090890)
- Edition Details: First Chartwell Edition.
- Binding: Original publisher's premium oversized cloth boards with bold gilt-stamped typography to the spine; complete with original illustrated dust jacket.
- Physical Format: Oversized Coffee-Table Folio (4to), 459 pages. Masterfully augmented with an unparalleled collection of over 1,000 full-colour photographic plates documenting sculptural history across epochs. Dimensions: Approx. 34 x 24 cm. Weight: Approx. 3.0 kg.
- Language: English (Translated from the original French)
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+) / Near Fine
- Exterior / Boards: The original large-format cloth boards are structurally sound, straight, and flat, retaining exceptionally square and clean corner points. The spine panel is uncreased, tight, and completely undamaged.
- Interior: The substantial text block is robustly bound, clean, and tight. Internal pages and the vast gallery of high-gloss full-colour illustrations remain crisp, pristine, and bright white, entirely free of foxing, reader annotations, highlights, or dog-ears.
- Provenance: Pristine collector's state; entirely free of previous owner signatures, institutional stamps, or dealer pencil marks.
- Protection: Kept pristine and safely enclosed within a custom archival-grade protective cellophane sleeve.
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The Dust Jacket: Very Good Plus (VG+) / Near Fine
- Condition: Clean, complete, and unclipped, beautifully preserving the vivid jacket artwork. Displays only very limited, microscopic signs of minor handling and trace storage friction at the extreme edge tips, entirely consistent with careful archival shelf housing. Free of major chips, fading, or edge tears.
Synopsis & Historical Value
Published by Chartwell Books in 1976, The History of World Sculpture is an ambitious and celebrated achievement in art historical documentation. Under the guiding genius of the legendary art historian Germain Bazin, this volume addresses the formidable task of synthesising the development of world sculpture into a singular, cohesive narrative continuity. The book spans an extensive evolutionary arc—tracing three-dimensional art as practiced from prehistoric cultures, through the Near East, classical Greece, Rome, the Far East, the Renaissance, and Mannerism, up to the explosive developments of the late 20th century. [1, 2, 3]
What sets this reference work apart is Bazin's pioneering choice to illustrate over 1,000 masterpieces entirely in full colour. This visual framework heightens the subtle play of forms and allows stone, wood, and bronze to reveal their authentic tones and historical patinas before the observer's eye. Supported by highly precise scholarship, rigorous historical annotations, and comprehensive captions, this beautiful, cellar-protected volume stands as an indispensable reference work for global collectors of fine art and classical museum monographs.
Author Profile: Germain Bazin
Germain Bazin (1901–1990) was an internationally distinguished French art historian, academic, and author who served as the long-time Chief Curator of Paintings at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Educated at the Sorbonne, Bazin was a towering figure in 20th-century museology and scholarship, authoring numerous definitive texts on Baroque art, classical sculpture, and the history of European master collections. His narrative capability was widely praised for combining deep, archival precision with an accessible prose style that opened up complex aesthetic histories to audiences worldwide.
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