History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past

by Francis Haskell

In this engrossing book, an eminent art historian surveys the ways that historians have made use of visual sources-sculptures, paintings, coins, and other relics-in their attempts to understand and visualize the past. Francis Haskell examines the specific objects that were used and discusses a wide range of historians-from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to later writers such as Michelet, Burckhardt, and Huizinga who made inferences from the visual arts to indicate the whole mentality of an age.

Genres: Art, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Art History, Theory

568 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Francis James Herbert Haskell was an English art historian, whose writings placed emphasis on the social history of art.

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

c1995 (19) I have certainly been on a good run of non-fiction books. This book is fascinating and the part about the depiction of the Bayeux Tapestry was particularly interesting. Illustrations were sometimes a little small to be able to see clearly what the author was on about but that, I am sure, was purely down to having the soft cover version of the book. "Censors are usually ultra-sensitive and not often intelligent, but the various officials who pointed to heresy and subversion in this apparently innocuous history of sculpture could be sharp enough."

[Ivana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved it! Very interesting!