Abstract
This essay first appeared in the original German exactly 40 years ago as the chapter on "Kunstliteratur" in the venerable Atlantisbuch der Kunst: eine Enzyklopädie der bildenden Künste [Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1952], pp. 665-679. It remains our most succinct historical survey of the "literature of art", and while the author modestly regards it as "prehistoric", informed students know it rather as a classic. The present translation, produced for the use of new students at the Institute of Fine Arts, has been revised by Professor Gombrich and appears here with his generous consent. No attempt has been made to bring the story - which ends with Andre Malraux at midcentury - up to the present; but, at the author's request, a selective list of sources available in English translation has been substituted for the summary bibliography that accompanied the original version of this essay. (From the note by Max Marmor)
