Momentary Substances

Nicholas Penny

  • Patterns of Intention by Michael Baxandall
    Yale, 148 pp, £12.50, September 1985, ISBN 0 300 03465 2
  • The Enigma of Piero by Carlo Ginzburg, translated by Martin Ryle and Kate Soper
    Verso, 164 pp, £12.95, November 1985, ISBN 0 86091 116 0

In the middle of his new book Michael Baxandall wonders whether the ‘complex Newtonian-Lockean sense of how we see’, which he has just expertly expounded, provides any ‘purchase’ on Chardin’s painting, A Lady Taking Tea, to which ‘our primary explanatory duty is due.’ It is bracing to discover that we have this duty but I am puzzled by what exactly needs explanation.

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