Art Firsts: The Story of Art in 30 Pioneering Works

Telegraph culture editor Trend debuts with an engrossing survey of paintings from the past 700 years that helped to redefine “what art was for and how to make it” by showcasing a new technique, trend, or idea. Antonello da Messina’s 1470 Portrait of a Young Man featured the first smile in a portrait—uncontroversial to the modern viewer, Trend notes, but unheard-of in the 15th century, when portraits depicted kings or noblemen who projected authority through “uniformly serious” gazes. The first jealous lover showed up in Diego Velázquez’s 1630 Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan, in which the sun god informs Vulcan of his wife’s infidelity. In the 1540s, Titian deviated from the typical “smooth, polished” painting style by using visible brushstrokes “to draw our attention to the hand of the artist,” while Pablo Picasso’s 1907 Les Demoiselles D’Avignon was the first to render “distorted” bodies, helping to pave the way for cubism. Trend expertly situates each artistic breakthrough within its sociocultural moment and includes a well-balanced mix of the famous (The Birth of Venus) and the obscure (Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game), even though he admits that the selection is constrained by its Eurocentric focus. This is perfect for the art history–curious who want to learn more without hitting the museum. Photos. (June)