Our selection of beautiful books for Christmas

At the museum of the invisibles

Humanity had contemplated these wonders, but they vanished. Raphael’s “Portrait of a Young Man,” looted by the Nazis? Disappeared in the debacle of 1945… The “Madonna and Child” by Giovanni Bellini? Stolen on March 1, 1993. “Clotho”, the marble of an old woman represented in all her crudeness by Camille Claudel? Not the slightest trace left. Same fate for “Woman with Closed Eyes”, by Lucian Freud, taken away after a burglary at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. Perhaps she was burned in Romania, by the mother of the climber? So many enigmas that the mischievous journalist and novelist Sophie Pujas tells us in “Disappeared Masterpieces”. The list of artistic “victims” of looting, flooding, destruction by fanatics and even plane crashes is dizzying. Sic transit gloria mundi…

Size women

Rodin, Giacometti, Maillol… The big names in sculpture, with the exception of Louise Bourgeois and Camille Claudel, are almost all masculine. An artistic invisibility that this work repairs by presenting 300 female sculptors from the 15th century to the present day. From “Jaguar preparing to pounce” by the American Anna Hyatt Huntington, to the skeletal structures of the Polish Monika Sosnowska or the works of Caterina de Julianis, who worked wax in Italy from the end of the 17th century, Lisa Le Feuvre gives to see a feminine artistic landscape which breaks with the image of a 100% virile discipline.

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Legend design

Through fashion, architecture and furniture, the Art Deco style left its mark on the beginning of the 20th century and its influence is still expressed today. From the birth of the movement, wealthy aesthetes loved Paul Iribe's chaise lounges, Eileen Gray's lacquered wood consoles, chests of drawers in wood, bronze and glass by Armand-Albert Rateau or sublime screens by Jean Dunand.

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Avant-garde creations, whose noble materials and refinement have spanned the ages. An art celebrated in the 1960s by enthusiasts named Karl Lagerfeld or Yves Saint Laurent, whose torch has been kept alive over time by savvy collectors like George and Florence Blumenthal or even Laurent Négro, who owns 1000 exceptional pieces. Rich in 500 illustrations, this album created by British specialist Alastair Duncan is a celebration of timeless elegance.

Poems and brushes

Prunus in bloom, playful kittens, mountains and rivers under the mist… Christine Kontler has brought together nearly 300 wonders of traditional Chinese painting created by the greatest artists of China's multiple dynasties, Song, Sui, Qing, Ming… A panorama illustrating a selection of 150 poems crafted over the ages. Stunning.