Spencer Harold (Ed.). Readings in Art History: Volume II: The Renaissance to the Present

Charles Scrinber's Sons, 1969. — 420 p.The aim of this anthology is to assemble a convenient and useful
collection of modern writings on the history of Western art.
As a supplement to the texts usually assigned in introductory
courses in art history, this anthology should prove at least a partial
answer to the familiar problem of providing multiple copies of supplementary
readings on library reserve shelves. But, apart from its
use in surveys of Western art, this anthology will offer a valuable
set of readings to any student of Western civilization or of the creativeness
of man.
Although each selection stands alone on the merits of its content,
the reader will soon discover that patterns tend to develop throughout
the anthology and at some level link themes from a number
of selections into a logical relationship across time and space. This
volume opens, for example, with selections by Erwin Panofsky and
John White. Panofsky distinguishes between early fifteenth-century
art in the Lowlands and in Italy while at the same time emphasizing
the commitment of each of these regional arts to the transcription
of the visible world. The selection by John White carries the distinction
between the Lowlands and Italy even further by discussing in
detail the development of linear perspective in Italy, thus dramatizing
the differences between the empirical approach in the north and
the theoretical predilections of the Italian artists. Since the representation
of space as a three-dimensional continuum, as developed
both in Italy and the Lowlands, was to be an underlying assumption
for Western art from these Renaissance beginnings to the twentieth
century, the theme of these opening selections will be evoked again.
To cite but a few of many instances, a variation on the opening
themes is developed in Friedlaender's discussion of Caravaggio
where the real and spiritual worlds are seen to be dramatically joined
in the striking illusionism of that artist's religious paintings; and,
much later, in Novotny's paper on the reaction to Impressionism (as
well as in Greenberg's article on Cezanne) the denouement of this
centuries-old commitment to illusionistic transcription is finally
reached.