Reference materials can provide basic background information on your topic and help you identify keywords for further searching; for example, the names of important artists or art theorists, materials, or events. Some also contain topical essays that can be excellent introductions to a particular subject or time period.
Many reference resources provide bibliographies at the end of each entry or volume, which will point you to additional books, exhibit catalogs, and journal articles worth exploring.
Oxford Art Online
This database provides access to the full contents of The Grove Dictionary of Art and The Oxford Companion to Western Art, two highly-regarded multi-volume reference resources in the fine arts. View over 3000 thumbnail art images, conduct keyword searches, or browse the database by geographic area, time period, or art form. This source is particularly useful for researching the biography of an artist.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms
The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
Based on the Oxford dictionary of art, this is a searchable database of Western art from ancient Greece to the present day. Also contains entries on periods and movements, including the Classical period, the Renaissance, Impressionism, the Ash-can School, and Cubism, as well as techniques and styles such as encaustic painting, encarnado, lithography, cabinet painting, and blot drawi
A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Europe, 1450-1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
The Oxford Companion to Architecture
The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture by 
The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and ArchitectureReference books in print are shelved by call number behind the Reference Desk on the Main Level of the library or downstairs in Lower Level Reference. They may not be checked out, but scanners and photocopiers are available on the lower level of the Library.
Arts & humanities through the eras
Profiling milestones and movements in the arts, literature, music and religion from a specific period, each volume in this five-volume set helps students and researchers understand the various disciplines of the humanities in relation to each other, as well as to history and culture. An overview of the period and a chronology of major world events begin each volume. Nine chapters follow, covering the major branches of the humanities: architecture and design, dance, fashion, literature, music, philosophy, religion, theater and visual arts. Chapters begin with a chronology of major events within the discipline followed by articles covering the movements, schools of thought and masterworks that characterize the discipline during the era and biographical profiles of pioneers, masters and other prominent figures in the field. Chapters end with significant primary documents from the period.
A documentary history of art
The theory and practice of art underwent a number of fascinating changes between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, changes which are clearly revealed in this unique collection of letters, journals, essays, and other writings by the artists and their contemporaries. In the poems of Michelangelo, the Dialogues of Carducho, or the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, one discovers the stylistic and philosophical concerns of the artist, while the record of Veronese's trial before the Holy Tribunal, the diary of Bernini's journey in France, the letters of Rubens and Poussin or biographical sketches of Rembrandt and Watteau reveal not only the personalities but also the conditions of the times.
Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Architecture by
Features major architects, firms, and professional issues; buildings, styles, and sites; the architecture of cities and countries; critics and historians; construction, materials, and planning topics; schools, movements, and stylistic and theoretical terms. Entries include well-selected bibliographies and illustrations.
The lives of the modern painters, sculptors and architects
This is the first complete translation of the biographies of fifteen artists, including Annibale Carracci, Carvaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Poussin, written by the seventeenth-century antiquarian Giovan Pietro Bellori. Originally conceived as a continuation of Vasari's famous Lives, it is a fundamental source for seventeenth-century Italian art and artistic theory, providing detailed descriptions of extant and lost works of art, while casting light on the cultural politics of contemporary Rome and the relations between Rome and France. The importance of Bellori's Lives lies in the scrupulous documentation of artists, many of whom he knew personally; the author's detailed descriptions of their works; and his exposition of the classicist theory of art in the introductory lecture, the Idea. This volume contains the twelve Lives published in the original edition of 1672 and three Lives (Guido Reni, Andrea Sacchi, and Carlo Maratti) that survive in manuscript form and that were published for the first time in 1942.
The Yale dictionary of art and artists
This reference work deals with all aspects of Western art from 1300 to the present day. It provides information on painters, sculptors, and graphic artists, technical processes, terminology, theory, schools, movements, patrons and collecting, and much more.