Chrysler Museum of Art: 40 European Works Before 1800 is the second volume of the small-format softcover illustrated handbook series with the Chrysler following the publication of the first volume Chrysler Museum of Art: 40 Works.

The Chrysler Museum of Art’s extensive collection of European art includes objects from across the European continent in a broad range of media. This guide offers a glimpse into the collection through forty key works created before 1800 in the museum’s galleries. With a foreword by Mia Laufer, the Irene Leache Curator of European Art, and entries by Chrysler Museum of Art staff, the book features insights into Spanish lusterware, English portraiture, Ottoman textiles, and more. There are includes paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, and Guercino; sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Francesco Bertos, works by Thomas Gainsborough and Angelika Kauffmann, an inlayed brass Mamluk candlestick, and an eighteenth-century Brazilian sculpture of Saint Benedict of Palermo.

The Museum is focused on filling gaps within its holdings, such as work by women and artists of colour, as well as objects that speak to global artistic exchange throughout these centuries.

Edited by Mia Laufer, there are contributions by Virginia Apperson, Mark A. Castro, Caroline Culp, Mary Catherine Langston, Mia Laufer, Carolyn Swan Needell, and Erik H. Neil.