• The book also covers textiles, ceramics, furniture and jewelry.

At the Prado in Spain, little cigarette-machine-like vendors dispensing thin books dot its numerous galleries. For a few Euros, little volumes in your language of choice pop out for an instant primer on the artist or period you’re touring. I fed my coins into the Velazquez vendor, largely to get a little souvenir image of his stunning portrait of the Infante Don Carlos (a life-changing painting, I promise).

The wee Velazquez book I still have, and it reminded me of the Denver Art Museum’s Companion to Spanish Colonial Art, a recently published guide to the DAM’s distinguished collection, housed on the north building’s fourth floor. Though more of a proper book — in line with its other recent publication, the fantastic Kress Collection catalogue by Angelica Daneo — this is a great beginner’s guide to all art Spanish Colonial.

... Which you can’t help but to love. On the one hand, it’s punchy, colorful and oh-so-dramatic. Yet those traits don’t relegate it to the telenovela of art history. Because there’s the other side, this artwork is the product of continental Spanish Conquest: Turquoise-green quetzal feathers mingling with the Baroque austerity of Spain, New World silver molded into Old World religions. Thousands of years of isolated histories clashing in a cultural supernova.

Art mirroring such a colossus is no easy feat to adequately explain, yet the author Donna Pierce does a great job for newbies. Aficionados will likely get less out of it, although I was pleased to find a great article at the end about Garden Party folding screens, products of cultural pollination from China and Japan. According to the book, the DAM possesses the only screen held in a museum in the U.S. There are about a dozen others known to exist, and they’re all in private collections. That means you can visit the real thing, just one hour from here.

Buy it here.

It’s funny how people have a “type.” Especially when the type is weirdly obvious and/or specific. (I’m thinking Ron Swanson’s Tammys from Parks and Recreation.)

Artists have types, too, naturally. Peter Paul Rubens was into portly women, Michelangelo was into muscular men, and the English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a thing for women with strong jaws, prominent features and heavy-lidded eyes.

That’s a topical way to get into Rossetti, but his art is so much more than striking women. Rossetti was a Victorian-era painter, poet, translator and co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (a school of thought related to art and literature). He was a high-profile figure during his own day, and even if his name isn't all that well-known now, his art is fairly popular.

Artwork like Rossetti’s is made for romantics. Not only because his main subject is beautiful women. His settings are flowery, medieval in landscape and style (think of the chivalrous stripe), and his themes vary from woman as idol to woman as devil.

These are simplifications, of course, but if you ever wanted to know more about this artist, look no further than Rossetti: Painter and Poet by J.B. Bullen. Even if Rossetti isn’t your immediate cup of tea, this book is no less fascinating. For one, Rossetti led an interesting, scandalous life, replete with passionate love affairs, fame and infamy, and drug addiction.

From Bullen’s website:

Bullen’s premise is that Rossetti was a courageous pioneer in the late-nineteenth-century world of evasion and repression. He dared to explore the hidden recesses of the mind and to claim that the libido was a driving force in human life. Both Rossetti’s art and his poetry were castigated for their "fleshliness" but Bullen maintains that in his painting and in his poetry Rossetti’s focus on the erotic life was a way of asserting the centrality of the sexual drive.

And one can easily trace his developments — and affairs — in his works. His passion for Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal, the woman who would later become his wife, burned hotly in the beginnings of their courtship, but waned as she took ill and his interests strayed. After her death by suicide, Rossetti painted her again, one result being “Beata Beatrix,” one of his best-known works, which portrays Lizzie in an allegory of death laced with a sense of mythical eroticism.

• "Beata Beatrix"

Other lovers, Fannie Cornforth and Jane Morris, held similar symbolic roles. Cornforth, the subject of the subversively lascivious “Bocca Baciata,” which graces the cover of the book, was his paragon of physical desire. The more severe Morris was an ideal of beauty.

Before relying more heavily on symbolism, Rossetti’s work was largely informed by such epics as Dante’s Divine Comedy and Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. His portrayals of doomed lovers like Paolo and Francesca, and Lancelot and Guinevere are particularly intriguing for their glorious consummation in hell and guilty stolen moments, respectively.

Painter and Poet was published Oct. 11 and is available here.

Earlier this year, we covered the Denver Art Museum's show Cities of Splendor: A Journey Through Renaissance Italy, which was comprised largely of items from the museum's Kress Collection, a gift of 37 works from mid-14th century to mid-17th century Renaissance works.

In July, a catalog of the DAM's Kress Collection was published, written by Cities curator Angelica Daneo. Though the topic could be potentially quite dry, given its focus, it's truly a lovely and lively read, breaking down each painting or sculpture from the subject matter to the work's provenance.

• Art nerds rejoice.

Though it's true that enough versions of a Madonna and Child become tedious, Daneo assuages any boredom by pointing out the differences between, say, a Flemish Madonna and Child versus an Italian one. Or regale the reader with a tale about the artist's life. On an anecdotal note, I found that Daneo answered nearly every question I had in her write-ups, even touching on something so insignificant as a small, strange shape in a carving.

Yet this book is far from exhausting, despite how much research went into it. It's very manageable, both in size and length.

And whether or not it was intentional, I thought Daneo saved the best for last, with "Portrait of Don Diego Félix de Esquivel y Aldama" by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, one of the great Spanish artists.

• Denver Art Museum
• Murillo's "Don Diego"

"As his style progressed he gradually abandoned the severe Spanish style of composition and successfully experimented with richer tones and more elaborate settings," Daneo writes. She also includes this quote from Edmondo de Amicis:

"Now let us speak of Murillo in our gentlest tones. Velasquez is in art an eagle; Murillo an angel. One admires Velasquez and adores Murillo. By his canvases we know him as if he had lived among us. He was handsome, good, and virtuous ... He combines the truth of Velasquez, the vigor of Ribera, the harmonious transparency of Titian, and the brilliant vivacity of Rubens."

Buy the book here. And you can also browse the entire Kress Collection, complete with super high resolution images of the works here.

I'm not an expert as to what makes a good art book. Good writing, a thoughtful array of images and a top-notch print job usually do it for me. So keep that in mind as you read below.

The University of New Mexico Press sent us a copy of Elevated Perspective: The Paintings of Joellyn Duesberry, a gorgeous book printed in conjunction with the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center's Duesberry exhibit by the same name. It's a beautiful volume, from the striking black-and-yellow cover, to the exquisitely printed images inside. It even includes a fold out to Duesberry's large-scale "Maine Bog Triptych."

The book's writing is similarly superb, with essays and interviews from FAC museum director Blake Milteer, NYC art critic and writer Karen Wilkin (whose articles in the Wall Street Journal are something to lust for) and even Duesberry herself, who shares deeply personal and articulate passages about her experiences and art career.

Here, Duesberry talks about the characteristic lack of horizons in her works:

"In 1969, I got rid of clouds and sky for the first time. I didn't want anything extraterrestrial to think about. I wanted to look down at the ground, understand it, comprehend it, join it, and merge with it in some way. And the way to that was to steal it, honestly, by painting.

"I love compressed space as a concept as well as a compositional element."

Elevated Perspective is available locally at Luma at the FAC, or online. The FAC's Duesberry show is on display only until Sept. 11. Two of Duesberry' large graveyard paintings will serve as backdrops for the FAC's 9/11 memorial play Lovers Leapt.