Art of War

The history of mankind has always gone hand in hand with the history of war. War has elevated empires to blinding heights only to bring them crashing down again. It has immortalised brilliant individuals but traumatised entire generations of people. For better or worse, war has helped shape civilisation and society as we know it today. Only recently, in the last century, has man’s perspective on war changed fundamentally. No longer a glorious undertaking, it has become the impersonation of the worst that humanity has to offer. Nowhere is this drastic change more visible than in war-inspired art. The art of war has come a long way, from the boasting of Ramesses II about his victory at Kadesh in the reliefs of Abu Simbel to Picasso’s famous anti-war painting Guernica. This book will trace and illustrate this development with fascinating artwork from two millennia of art history along with textual accounts of battle, written by contemporary and early modern scholars, compiled by Victoria Charles. Additionally, the book features excerpts from a well-known treatise written by the greatest military thinker of mankind: Sun Tzu.