Rendez-Vous with Art

This unique, richly illustrated book confronts the elusive questions: how, and why, do we look at art? Beginning with an enigmatic fragment of yellow jasper - all that is left of the face of an Egyptian woman who lived 3,500 years ago - Philippe de Montebello, longest-serving director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and art critic Martin Gayford met and talked on two continents and in six countries in art galleries, churches and museums. Whether they were in the Louvre or the Prado, the Mauritshuis or the Pitti, they reveal the pleasures - and some of the pitfalls - of truly looking at works of art. This is neither a work of art history nor of criticism - though it touches on both. The result is highly unusual and very personal: a book about what it feels like to experience pictures and sculptures.