“... startling to someone used to – say – Marxist criticism, or to the work of art historians like Michael Baxandall and Frances Yates. The emphases and conclusions differ – as they do between the essayists here – but the principle of balancing evidence intrinsic to the painting against material that lies outside the frame to make a critical account ...”

“... A great many other art historians – from Aby Warburg and his teacher, Hubert Janitschek, down to Michael Baxandall – have drawn glosses on painters’ methods and intentions from Alberti’s text. Kemp questions the plausibility of such arguments. The evidence of the surviving manuscripts shows that only the Latin text attained any substantial ...”

“... strategy has to deliver; while two treatments of Caravaggio, by Andrew Graham-Dixon and by Michael Fried, come at that painter’s place in history from wildly disparate angles. Spear, Sohm and their five coauthors investigate five 17th-century urban art worlds. Those of Florence and Venice are so downbeat they would be the despair of most ...”