Looking at pictures can be a delightful, exciting or moving experience, but some pictures – and these are often the most rewarding – require some explanation before they can be fully understood. Delving into the origins, designs and themes of over 100 pictures from different periods and places, this book illuminates the art of looking at – and talking about – pictures. Woodford shows how you can read a picture by examining the formal and stylistic devices used by an artist, and explores popular themes and subject matters, and the relationship of pictures to the societies that produced them. The book is supplemented by a glossary of key terms, ranging from art movements and technical terms to religious and classical terminology, to give readers all the information they need at their fingertips.

Table of Contents

Introduction • 1. Ways of Looking at Pictures • 2. Land and Sea • 3. Portraits • 4. Everyday Things • 5. History and Mythology • 6. The Christian World • 7. Creating Patterns on Flat Surfaces • 8. Tradition • 9. Design and Organization • 10. The Depiction of Space • 11. Formal Analysis • 12. Hidden Meanings • 13. Quality