Scholarly essays examine how people lived, from poor tenant farmers to their whist-playing landlords

Stefan Guzy has scoured archives from the Holy Roman Empire and believes he has traced back the ownership of the mysterious cipher book

The artist returned from his trip to America in the 1960s “the personification of self-aware modernity”

Our roundup of the latest art publications

An extract from a biography of the US collector and museum founder looks at how her modest taste was transformed by her inheritance and why her husband was not pleased by a revealing painting

The Art Newspaper’s books editor Jacqueline Riding selects spring and summer publications to look out for, from the Surrealism of Leonora Carrington to 100 years of Black figuration

Gregor Weber's biography "Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light and Reflection" also supports the controversial view that Vermeer used a camera obscura

New book is first English translation of artist’s album From Childhood to 1943 and a previously unpublished autobiographical text

The artist, who is now in her 90s and voluntarily living in a psychiatric hospital, has a major retrospective under way in Hong Kong

Two recently published, richly illustrated books contain a wealth of movie ephemera including photographs, concept designs, postcards and scripts

In her work, the artist strived to “find our place on the surface of our planet”

Struggling for Christmas gifts? Take a look at the publications we enjoyed over the past year—from an exploration of art and motherhood to an interrogation of the culture wars

Our roundup of the latest art publications

The British artist gives us an insight into the work behind his latest publication, which brings together more than 200 recent drawings

From a fifth-century influx of refugees to the arrival of “grazing dinosaur” cruise ships

This except from Taschen's new book The Gourmand’s Egg: A Collection of Stories and Recipes shows how artists including Judy Chicago and Sarah Lucas have used egg imagery

Since the passage of the country’s repressive Decree 349, the state has gone to great lengths to silence critical voices—but artists refuse to be silenced

The story of the "Léonard de Vinci. Le Salvator Mundi" publication that was withdrawn from sale

The books spans his entire oeuvre, from swimming pool paintings made soon after leaving university to his recent Jamaican hotel series

"Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Woman Who Made Vincent Famous" is an altogether apt biography for the dutiful and determined woman

Different methods of protecting heritage during times of war are explored with mixed success in this challenging read

The work of the portrait painter is reviewed within the context of her peers

All you ever wanted to know about Matisse, from a definitive two-volume biography to the writings of the artist himself—selected by the curator Dorthe Aagesen

The curator has brought together the work of 50 artists from across the continent for his new book African Art Now

A new book brings together letters and postcards that the artist sent his lovers, friends and fellow artists

The definitive biography is now published in English—with a fresh explanation as to why the Sunflowers came to London

This ambitious and approachable study charts the cultural significance of these spaces, from Ancient Greece to today

All you ever wanted to know about King Tut, from CT scans and DNA studies to the perfect book for “any little pharaohs that you might know”—selected by the biographer and journalist Garry Shaw

A new publication unpicks how becoming a parent can detrimentally affect an artist’s career and suggests ways the art world can do better

A brisk but dense guide to the complex rules surrounding the removal of art from public and private spaces