Written and edited by an international team of established art historians, this unique survey with its fresh approach to an absorbing and muchloved subject, enables the regular museum and gallery visitor to understand familiar paintings on new and deeper levels.

How did landscape painting develop from being the backdrop to religious painting to become the exclusive focus of magnificent works by Turner and Monet? How have artists across the centuries approached the issue of catching a likeness in portraiture? Why do certain motifs such as flowers or skulls recur in still life painting?Such questions can be hard to answer in a conventional, chronological, treatment of art history.Understanding Paintings--the first book of its kind--takes a new approach, discussing each type, or genre, of painting in turn. In doing so itstresses the enormous breadth of Western art, with chapters on religious painting, myth and allegory,the nude, history painting, portraiture, landscape,genre (or everyday life painting), still life, and abstract painting.Each chapter begins with an introduction providing an overview of that type of painting.The following pages then explore different subjects or themes that have absorbed artists over the centuries--from self-portraits to the female nude, and from society's vices to spiritual visions.These clear and approachable discussions allow you both to discover the multiple meanings of individual images and to identify the important currents that run through each genre, in order to build up a more complete understanding of the history of painting.The accompanying pictures show many of the most important examples of Western art. Drawn together here in new and often surprising combinations, they reveal intriguing parallels across countries and periods of time, and offer new insights into the development ofpainting's many traditions.Written and edited by an international team of established art historians, this unique survey with its fresh approach to an absorbing and muchloved subject, enables the regular museum and gallery visitor to understand familiar paintings on new and deeper levels.

Introduction

Tiineline

Religious Painting

Introduction

Sites and functions

Sacred spaces

The altarpiece

Private devotions

Creation aml Fall

Angels and devils

Heroes and heroines

Prefiguration

Images of Mary

hnages of Christ

The life of Mary

The childhood of Christ

Fishing for souls

The Passion

The body of Christ

Triumph over death

Images of saints

Martyrdom

Miracles

Solitude

Christianity and the antique

Christendom divided

Alternative visions

The Last Judgement

Myth and Allegory

Introduction

Search for the Classical past

The gods of Olympus

The loves of Jupiter

The painter's bible

Demigods and heroes

The uses of myth

Mythical beasts and

monsters

Norse and Arthurian myth

Women and myth

Freud and mythology

ReinteI10reting Classical myth

Modern mythology

Painting a message

A darker message

Political allegory

The Nude

Introduction

Gods and goddesses

The human form

The modern male nude

The modern female nude

History Painting

Introduction

The Classical past

Other histories

Scenes of virtue

Painting for the public

Contemporary heroes

History in the making

Painting as protest

Portraiture

Introduction

The origins of portraiture

Catching a likeness

Exploring poses

Expression

The use of setting

Self-portraiture

Double portraits

Group portraits

Ruler portraits

Swagger portraits

Intimate images

Abstract portraits

The passage of time

Landscape

Introduction

God in nature

Topography

The Golden Age

Heroic landscapes

Townscapes

Seascapes

The transient world

Weather

The seasons

Times of the day

and night

Wildness

Apocalyptic

landscapes

Genre

Introduction

The poor

Virtue

Vice

Food and drink

Leisure

Rural lil

Urban life

Travel and the exotic

Music

Animal painting

Sporting painting

Still Life

Introduction

The independent

still life

Creating an illusion

Flower painting

Reminders of death

Symbolism and allegory

A least for the eyes

A new perspective

Abstract Painting

Introduction

Shattering the image

The invention of

abstraction

Neo-Plasticism

Abstract Expressionism

Minimalism

Op Art

New directions

Materials and techniques

Medieval and Renaissance

painting

Early oil painting

Modern painting

Glossary

List of paintings

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments