{"product_id":"the-art-of-describing-svetlana-alpers-9780226015132","title":"The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century","description":"\"The art historian after Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich is not only participating in an activity of great intellectual excitement; he is raising and exploring issues which lie very much at the centre of psychology, of the sciences and of history itself. Svetlana Alpers's study of 17th-century Dutch painting is a splendid example of this excitement and of the centrality of art history among current disciples. Professor Alpers puts forward a vividly argued thesis. There is, she says, a truly fundamental dichotomy between the art of the Italian Renaissance and that of the Dutch masters. . . . Italian art is the primary expression of a 'textual culture, ' this is to say of a culture which seeks emblematic, allegorical or philosophical meanings in a serious painting. Alberti, Vasari and the many other theoreticians of the Italian Renaissance teach us to 'read' a painting, and to read it in depth so as to elicit and construe its several levels of signification. The world of Dutch art, by the contrast, arises from and enacts a truly 'visual culture.' It serves and energises a system of values in which meaning is not 'read' but 'seen, ' in which new knowledge is visually recorded.\"--George Steiner, \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"There is no doubt that thanks to Alpers's highly original book the study of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century will be thoroughly reformed and rejuvenated. . . . She herself has the verve, the knowledge, and the sensitivity to make us see familiar sights in a new light.\"--E. H. Gombrich, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Svetlana Alpers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0226015130\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226015132\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/15\/1984\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 302\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.60lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 10.06h x 7.06w x 0.69d","brand":"Svetlana Alpers","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46571408294143,"sku":"9780226015132","price":44.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_82c4d4d8-4144-48d6-9970-d9ade4efeaf8.jpg?v=1738808150","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-art-of-describing-svetlana-alpers-9780226015132","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}