Patterns of Culture

This book is an inquiry into the historical understanding of pictures – something sought not only by art historians but by anyone who looks at a picture in the knowledge that it is old or comes out of a culture different from his own. Michael Baxandall begins by developing a scheme for the explanation of concrete historical objects in general, taking as an example how we think about a complex artifact such as a bridge, the Forth Bridge in Scotland. He then shows how this scheme is adapted to the explanation – or inferential criticism – of pictures.