Early Medieval Architecture
Roger Stalley
I like these Oxford History of Art volumes, but mostly I think on account of the pictures. As with the others in the series that I’ve read, Roger Stalley’s account of European architecture from the Edict of Milan to around 1200 is dryly written, avoids chronology, and doesn’t go into the lives of the artists (who were mostly anonymous anyway), focusing instead on the cultural and economic context and technical developments. To be fair, this is a difficult subject to pin down, with an especially fuzzy periodization, but I still felt the lack of a big picture and a sense of what essential points were being made.
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