NEW YORK — Hugh Honour, a self-taught art historian who produced indispensable works on Neo-Classicism and romanticism and who, with John Fleming, wrote the monumental survey “The Visual Arts: A History,’’ one of the first to pay serious attention to non-Western art, died May 19 at his home in Tofori, Italy. He was 88.

Mr. Honour moved to Italy in the mid-1950s to be with Fleming, and the two men, who were partners until Fleming’s death in 2001, entered into a highly productive writing and editing relationship. They oversaw a series, “Style and Civilization,’’ exploring significant periods in art history, each with its own brief volume.

Michael Levey’s “Early Renaissance’’ was the first nonliterary work to win the Hawthornden Prize when it was published in 1967, and several other books in the series quickly became standard works.

With Fleming, Mr. Honour went on to edit two more series for Penguin in the same format: “Architect and Society’’ and “Art in Context.’’