The general histories and survey materials have proliferated over the last 20 years and many excellent sources are available. Most of the recent survey texts address gender and race issues not addressed in earlier surveys. Many are context sensitive. This genre represents a brief sample of familiar works and makes no attempt to be comprehensive.

Gardner's Art Through the Ages, a popular art history survey text.

Janson, H.W. History of Art, New York: Abrams, 1989.

Stockstad, Marilyn. Art History, New York: H.N. Abrams, 1999.

Hartt, Frederick. Art History

Murray, Peter and Linda. Art of the Renaissance, 1963.

Rosenblum, Robert and H.W. Janson.  Nineteenth Century Art: Painting and Sculpture, New York: Abrams, 1984

Rosenblum, Robert. Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Abrams, 1961

Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972 [WCU, ASU]

_____________. Patterns of Intention: On the historical explanation of pictures, 1987.

Francis Frascina, et al. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The early twentieth-century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993

Sir Banister Fletcher's a history of architecture -- See Fletcher, Banister, Sir, 1866-1953. History of architecture