"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 takes a new approach, discussing each type, or genre, of painting in turn. In doing so it stresses 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 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."--BOOK JACKET.