Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art in and out of History

Typically, art history is an enterprise of recovery-of searching out the provenance, the original intentions, the physical setting, and historical conditions behind a work of art. The essays in Compelling Visuality address some of the "other" questions that are less frequently asked-and, in doing so, show how much is to be learned and gained by going beyond the traditional approaches of art history.

In particular, the contributors take up the commonly unexplored question of what is actually present in a work of art-what we see, touch, and experience when confronted with Renaissance or Baroque works that have survived the vicissitudes of time.