An angelic stunner, Lizzie Siddal one-time shop girl, celebrated artists’ model and opium addict graces many 19th-century masterworks by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais and other pre-Raphaelite painters. In Lizzie Siddal: The Face of the Pre-Raphaelites, writer and scholar Lucinda Hawksley (Charles Dickens’ great-great-great granddaughter) provides a compassionate portrait of this muse who was also a talented artist and poet in her own right.

Red-haired, temperamental Siddal was not a typical Victorian beauty, but her face and manner nevertheless lifted her from poverty to become London’s society darling. Model, mistress and then wife of Rossetti, she was mentored by him and earned the artistic patronage of John Ruskin. Siddal is most famous, however, for her appearances in the paintings (portrayed both as Ophelia and Beatrice) of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a 19th-century society set up by seven idealistic young men who were passionate about art [and] depressed about the current, very conventional state of the art world. Fine research gives Hawksley’s portrait vital tension as she examines Rossetti’s milieu, revealing unrest beneath the carefree, bohemian surfaces of the pre-Raphaelites’ lives. Exploring the difficult existence of the world’s first supermodel,’ she captures her subject’s erotic, erratic and haunting essence. Despite all the acclaim, happiness eluded Siddal and she died of a drug overdose at 32.

A well-known epigram says that revenge is a dish best served cold. This is evident in the elaborate schemes of Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren, as revealed in Frank Wynne’s I Was Vermeer. A journalist and translator, Wynne blends reportorial skill with a love of irony to tell van Meegeren’s life story, the saga of a frustrated, paranoid and drug-addicted 20th-century artist who was born to be a painter; unfortunately, he was fifty years too late. Van Meegeren wanted desperately to be an artist. Though his autocratic father routinely destroyed his sketchbooks, he pursued his dream via secret tutelage by a school friend’s artist father. By the time he departed to study architecture in Delft, he was well-schooled in the methods of the Dutch Masters. Van Meegeren neglected his studies to practice painting in the manner of Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer his especial muse. Finding little critical acclaim for his old-style paintings amid the contemporary tide of artistic innovation, the forger was born: He vowed revenge, made millions and fooled the art world establishment (as well as the Nazis) by creating exquisite fake Vermeers, many of which ended up in Europe’s most hallowed art museums.

Set in tumultuous times, I Was Vermeer has the makings of a noir thriller, and Wynne attempts to plot and pace it as such. The action, however, loses suspenseful momentum as he develops sub-themes of how ego-driven art criticism fosters forgery, and minutely discusses the forger’s craft (including van Meegeren’s reproduction of the craquelure, or age lines, in his most famous Vermeer forgery, The Supper at Emmaus ). Crime thriller or forgery primer, this intriguing read also proves another epigram: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Chip Kidd occupies a unique niche in the literary world. For the past two decades he has produced book jackets at Alfred A. Knopf, winning wide acclaim for his eye-catching artwork and ingenious designs. His uncanny ability to capture the essence of a book in a single image is showcased in Chip Kidd Book One Work: 1986-2006 , a glossy new volume that offers a wonderful overview of his career. Kidd has provided the finishing touches for all kinds of volumes, and many of his jacket images the pristine white boxer shorts on the front of David Sedaris’ Naked, for instance, or the silvery mane that makes the cover of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses so memorable will be familiar to book buyers. Suggestive and impressionistic, each jacket conjures up immediate associations for the reader, symbolizing and summarizing the book, complementing its contents.

How does Kidd do it? In Book One, he reveals all, discussing his work habits, influences and inspirations. A host of notable contributors Elmore Leonard, Haruki Murakami and David Sedaris, to name a few share their thoughts on Kidd and his significance in the publishing world. The volume also spotlights Kidd’s work in the field of graphic novels, focusing on his projects for DC Comics, including Batman Collected and Batman Animated. With an introduction by John Updike and photographs by Geoff Spear, Book One is a treasure from cover to cover for art lovers and bibliophiles alike. Julie Hale keeps her old copies of The New Yorker in Austin, Texas.

In the heart of New York City stands iconic Rockefeller Center, a haven of commerce and industry, art, history and ice skating. Center archivist and author Christine Roussel’s gorgeous The Art of Rockefeller Center is an orderly catalogue of the Center’s history, art and artists. This oversized volume is lavished with exquisite attention to detail; the book’s design and typography, writing and photography are employed in shining homage to the artifice and artistry within and without the Center’s venerable walls. Rockefeller Center emerged during the Depression from the idealistic vision of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Where there were once grimy tenements, the Center rose as a cohesive melding of art, architecture and American ideals. Before construction could begin, Rockefeller spent two years planning a “modern, self-contained urban center” that would be “a mecca for lovers of art.” Together with an art advisory group (including his wife, Abby Aldrich, and son, Nelson), he identified art sites, standards, themes and artists, allocating $1 million to fund the enterprise in 1931. Artists commissioned included Gaston Lachaise, Lee Lawrie, Paul Manship and Diego Rivera (although his finished artwork, considered fascist, was destroyed). Each chapter of The Art of Rockefeller Center explicates the history and art of a single building of the complex, interpreting its art deco and art moderne treasures in exceptionally lucid prose and pristine photography. Especially interesting are explanations of the artistic processes used in creating public art and stories of the artists. The book also includes many historic photos, an index of artists and a color-coded map of the Rockefeller Center for reference.

Artist Henri Matisse once observed that creativity requires courage. That insight is proved true in noted biographer Jeffrey Meyers’ refreshing quadruple portrait, Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt. With an acute eye, Meyers offers us an unusual glimpse into these four artists’ intertwined lives and tumultuous careers in 19th-century Paris. Both Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, the two leading lights of the controversial Impressionist movement, cultivated close ties with two gifted women painters: Manet, with Berthe Morisot; Degas with American-born Mary Cassatt. These relationships, Meyers writes, inspired and influenced each other’s work; they shared models, patrons, dealers, and vital information on how to conduct the business of art. In a courageous departure from the norm of art criticism, Meyers’ Quartet employs his own fresh look at the art . . . [describing] exactly what I see . . . within the context of the artist’s life and time, what’s happening in the paintings, and what they mean. Though this might be an ingenuous approach one that risks a banality of language in the attempt to interpret the elusive nuances of brushstrokes and subject matter Meyers’ focus works nicely, reinforced as it is by his revelations about each artist’s life, and their thematic and relational influences upon one another.

One of the most recognizable paintings on the planet, Grant Wood’s American Gothic has elicited considerable shares of angst, intrigue and amusement over the years. Cultural historian Steven Biel minutely examines Wood’s iconic double portrait in a lively new book, American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting. Biel’s insightful, humorous and well-researched discussion touches on the lives of the artist and his sister, the genesis of Gothic and society’s responses to this enigmatic work of art.

Wood, a self-styled bohemian who lived briefly in Paris before returning to his Iowan roots, painted American Gothic in 1930, creating an indelible image born in controversy. The artist posed his couple, a Cedar Rapids dentist and Wood’s own sister, Nan, separately for the portrait, which he intended would portray a farmer and his wife standing solemnly in front of their rural home.

Biel’s narrative reveals a quixotic portrait of 20th-century America, as reflected in the social and critical interpretations of American Gothic, from iconoclasm and satire in the 1930s, to reverential iconic status in the war-torn 1940s; then, to the slings of the 1950s postmodernists and the camp hilarity of parody in the 1960s. It is remarkable, as Biel’s painting shows, how the truest meaning in a work of art is found, indeed, in the eye of the beholder.