Verdens Kunst-Historie Aschehoug

Promotional poster for Verdens Kunst-Historie (“World Art History”), the six-volume Norwegian art history series published by Aschehoug between the mid-1930s and early 1950s. The striking design reproduces a detail from the famous Profile Portrait of a Young Lady, long attributed to Antonio del Pollaiuolo, though the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin now credits the work to his brother, Piero del Pollaiuolo (1443–1496). This portrait remains one of the most celebrated examples of female portraiture from the early Italian Renaissance.

The Verdens Kunst-Historie series was edited by leading Norwegian art historians including Einar Lexow, Henrik Grevenor, Anders Bugge, and Ragna Thiis Stang. The richly illustrated set presented the development of global art history, spanning antiquity, Christian and Renaissance art, the Baroque and Classicism, Romanticism and modernity, as well as non-European traditions.

The poster combines Renaissance elegance with modern graphic clarity, linking the authority of the Aschehoug series to the timeless beauty of one of Renaissance art’s most iconic images.

Condition: Good. Light folds and minor wear along edges, small creases consistent with age.