Distinguished art historian Michael Baxandall here discusses the historical understanding of works of art: how we can discover the intentions of an artist living in a different time and culture and to what extent we can test and evaluate a historical interpretation of a picture. Analyzing in detail paintings by Picasso, Chardin, and Piero della Francesca, Baxandall shows how this inferential criticism sharpens our legitimate satisfaction in the art works themselves.
“This book deserves to be read with as much serious attention by philosophers as by art historians. Both sorts of reader will get much delight from it.”—Andrea Harrison, Times Literary Supplement
“An exemplary inquiry.”—Svetlana Alpers, New Republic
“This book is so conspicuously intelligent, and its exercises in criticism so involving, that it is a great pleasure to read.”—Mary Sirridge, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
“Baxandall’s arguments will attract art historians far more than the arguments put forth in most books on aesthetics.”—Nicholas Penny, London Review of Books
“[Baxandall] develops unusually detailed social histories of the development of particular artworks, giving special attention to problems of historical explanation.”—Chandra Mukerji, American Journal of Sociology