Books by Hans Belting

Proposes an anthropological theory for interpreting human picture making. Refusing to reduce images to their material embodiment yet acknowledging the importance of the historical media in which images are manifested, this book presents a challenging and provocative account of what pictures are and how they function.

The theory of perspective, which allowed Florentine artists to depict the world from a spectator's point of view, originated in Baghdad with an eleventh-century mathematician. Using the metaphor of the mutual gaze, Belting narrates the encounter between science and art, Arab Baghdad and Renaissance Florence, that revolutionized Western culture.

Now available in a new edition, this book explores Hieronymus Bosch's masterpiece Garden of Earthly Delights.