Sir Joseph Archer Crowe was an English consular official and art critic, whose volumes of the History of Painting in Italy, co-written with the Italian critic Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (1819–1897), stand at the beginning of disciplined modern art history writing in English. With Cavalcaselle (an Italian writer and art critic), he produced several historical works on art of classic importance, notably Early Flemish Painters (London, 1857) and A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century (London, 1864-1871, 5 vols.).