An enjoyable read. I especially liked the amount of fun historical and art facts! I am excited to read Clayton Schuster's next book. I even got my friend to read this one and she also loved it!

Great for those who love art history and those who create or patron them. A nice book to see the not so interactions/ relationships. For those doing projects on artists or a time period, this can be very helpful. A nice introduction to the relationships picked for this book.

We like to imagine the art world as a peaceful and happy ambient, but as artists are actually persons living in a real world they are not immune to negative emotions as jealosity, anger, revenge. They must confront the fact that others might be more successful in creating art or selling it, might be more famous or popular. The competitions may be contaminated by jealosity, hostility and could provoke also violent actions. This dark side of the art world is analyzed in this volume, in the first part observing the transformation of the figure of the artist and the motives of the competition, while in the second part less or more known stories of important figures of the art history are told in a entertaining way.

The first chapter eases us into the theme of the book explaining what the term artist meant throughout time and how artists were perceived changed, which I found really useful because it made the rest of the book a lot easier to understand.
After that, every chapter was about a feud between two parts throughout history. I liked that the book was well organized and there was a ton of research not only obvious when reading but also at the end of the book with a huge bibliography and references. The author is able to make the book funny and hundred-year-old grudges sound interesting and current, even the title makes us think about current feuds.
I would have loved if this book had some kind of illustrations though. A book about artists, their art and the hidden histories in it without any kind of images no matter how well written leaves a lot to be desired.
The part I liked the less was that the author started every chapter as if he was writing a work of fiction, taking liberties about what the artists though and felt, progressed unto all the facts and then finished the chapter by treating the entire thing as an example of a literary device in a fairy tale. He makes it very clear that what he is telling us are stories with a lot of liberties taken where there was no way of knowing what truly happened.
Most of the book is about European artists and with the exception of maybe two, they are all men and the author is very aware of that, inviting others to tell the stories of other artists on who he could not find so much information instead of saying that these are the best out of everyone.
Thank you to NetGalley and Schiffer Publishing for this ARC.

An engaging, well researched and well written book.
I was fascinated by the stories told and discovered a lot of interesting facts.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.