As the readers of this beautifully produced book will learn, the Arch of Titus is anything but uncomplicated. Most travelers to Rome who encounter the arch on their visits to the Roman Forum make a number of assumptions about it, all of which turn out to be wrong. Despite being called the Arch of Titus, it wasn’t built by that emperor, but by his younger brother, Domitian, shortly after Titus’ premature death in 81 A.D. The most famous sculpture on the arch is a panel on the inner portion that shows Roman soldiers carrying the spoils of the empire’s successful …

Tucked in the corner of an unassuming monastic church, the Brancacci Chapel helped give birth to a style of painting that held sway for centuries. The shabby exterior of the monastic church of S. Maria del Carmine in Florence looks so unpromising that visitors might be tempted to walk right past it. But if they do, they’ll miss one of the city’s greatest treasures: the spot where Renaissance painting was born. Inside, in the right transept, is a chapel endowed in the mid-1300s by a family of wealthy silk merchants named Brancacci. It was dedicated to St. Peter, the name-saint …