The ranking of artists across the ages and the continents is an exercise fraught with capriciousness and whim. Taste in art is so subjective, after all, and there is no single set of standards by which to measure artistic talent. Ask a roomful of art historians or critics to name the greatest artists of all time, and you will get dozens of very different answers. The fickle ebb and flow of the critical fortunes of individual artists contributes to the difficulty of the task, as do nationalistic and gender-based biases.

One approach to this thorny, ultimately unanswerable question might be to measure the volume of published material on individual artists in the form of exhibition catalogues and scholarly monographs. Yet even this seemingly objective standard has built-in drawbacks, particularly with regard to the museum-publication category. The vagaries of curatorial discretion and opportunity inevitably influence the number of exhibitions that are mounted on a given artist. Johannes Vermeer, who languished in obscurity for two centuries after his death, is now universally acclaimed for a surviving oeuvre that consists of fewer than three dozen paintings; because so many of those precious canvases are rarely allowed to travel, monographic exhibitions on the artist are few and far between, and in that respect he cannot possibly compete with a prolific figure like Andy Warhol, who employed a "factory" to augment his own prodigious output and whose works have been widely dispersed. 

Those caveats aside, there is interesting data to be gleaned from a tallying of exhibition catalogues and books on individual artists, which can shed light on recent trends in publishing, changing tastes among the public and the scholarly community, and the magnitude and availability of an artist's production. By virtue of its sheer size and the meticulously "curated" nature of its selections, the Worldwide Books database of catalogues and books published over the past several decades is eminently suited to provide such insights. Although our offerings are drawn largely from important publishers and exhibition venues in North America and Western Europe, our reach is truly global.

What follows is list of the ten artists who have the greatest number of publications focused on their work in the Worldwide database as of January, 2015. The list is limited to practitioners of the fine arts, although the database includes thousands of titles on architecture and design as well; both Frank Lloyd Wright (191 titles) and Le Corbusier (142) would rank in the top 10 if architects were included. (The totals cited for each artist are raw numbers drawn from our website, which for the benefit of our library clients separately lists dual hardcover/paperbound editions of trade monographs and occasional reprints of previously listed books and catalogues.)

1. Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973). Pablo stands head-and-shoulders above his rivals in the Worldwide database, like an Everest in the Alps. The 411 titles that we have carried on his work include 326 museum publications, among them a staggering 109 Basic (Plan 1) Selections, which make up the top tier of our exhibition catalogue program. A title keyword search for "Picasso" on the Advanced Search page of our website yields an additional 170 titles (mainly catalogues of group shows) that include his name but are not focused on his work.
2. Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987). Andy was a man of few words, but his work spoke volumes. Worldwide has carried 206 titles on the King of Pop, including 118 museum publications and 26 Basic Selections. 
3. Rembrandt (Dutch, 1606-1669). The premier figure of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt is widely considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art. Among the 203 titles on him in the Worldwide database are 125 museum publications and 35 Basic Selections.
4. Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519). Extraordinarily accomplished in a broad range of artistic and scientific fields, Leonardo may be the most diversely talented person in history. Worldwide has carried 163 titles on the artist, including 79 museum publications and 19 Basic Selections.
5. Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954). A brilliant colorist and draftsman, Matisse stands alongside Picasso and Duchamp as a seminal figure of the early 20th-century avant garde. Our database's 154 titles on him include 39 Basic Selections.
6. Paul Klee (Swiss/German, 1879-1940). A somewhat surprising entry in the top 10, Klee's innovative oeuvre is widely celebrated. Worldwide's 145 titles on the painter include 32 Basic Selections.
7. Michelangelo (Italian, 1475-1564). An accomplished poet, architect and engineer as well a celebrated painter and one of the greatest sculptors of his or any other time, Michelangelo was, along with his contemporary Leonardo, the archetypal Renaissance man, and he remains a towering figure in Western art. Worldwide has listed 144 titles on him, including 42 Basic Selections.
8. Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890). Vincent's career as a painter lasted just ten years, but what a decade! The 139 titles on him in our database include 30 Basic Selections. 
9. J.M.W. Turner (British, 1775-1851). One of the great masters of the British school of watercolor landscape painting, Turner was an important precursor of both Impressionism and abstraction. Worldwide has carried 136 titles on him, including 27 Basic Selections.
10. Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983). Miró is closely associated with Surrealism, but his work exerted a considerable influence on such later movements as Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. Worldwide has listed 135 titles on the artist, of which 30 are Basic Selections. 

There are at least 16 other artists with 90 or more titles in our database, among them several who would undoubtedly be included on many "top-10 lists" (Cézanne was "my one and only master...the father of us all," according to Picasso, but he barely cracks the top 25 on our list). Here are the rest of the top 25:

11. Auguste Rodin (117 titles) 12. Claude Monet (116) 13. Marc Chagall (113) 14. Joseph Beuys (113) 15. Salvador Dalí (105) 16. Peter Paul Rubens (105) 17. Marcel Duchamp (104) 18. Edvard Munch (103) 19. Albrecht Dürer (97) 20.Gerhard Richter (97) 21. Henry Moore (95) 22. Caravaggio (95) 23. Edgar Degas (95) 24. Raphael (95) 25. Paul Cézanne (91) 

Just outside the top 25 are Francisco de Goya (90), Wassily Kandinsky (86), Francis Bacon (78) and Georgia O'Keeffe (76), the highest ranking woman on the list (with Gerhard Richter being the only male artist ahead of her who is still alive).