The Cubists by Paul Waldo Schwartz (Thames & Hudson 1971)

This book is part of the Thames & Hudson History of Art Series and is really well written and constructed, every painting that is pictured is carefully referred to in the text with easy marginal notes making navigation very easy.  The text is well written if a little heavy going, and my only complaint would be that more of the images were not in colour which was of such fundamental importance for the works of the Cubists, but then you can now look them up online. 

Power of Art by Simon Schama

A great introduction to looking at paintings, this book is a companion to a BBC tv series (which I haven't seen) but stands on its own as an introduction to monumental works of art by Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko.

I'd always shied away from Caravaggio but was able to admit to myself my fear of his sheer power and sensuality and to enjoy it. I learned about the beauty of Bernini's sculpture and renewed my acquaintance with Van Gogh's delicious and disturbing viscerality and Picasso's timeless denunciation: Guernica.

My only concern is that Schama does at times appear to equate extremity of personality with extremity of vision, as if you cannot be an amazing painter without having a disturbing personal life, and I don't think this is necessarily correct