Intended for both the lay reader and the scholar, the text traces the discipline and its major figures from ancient Greece to the 20th century and is, of necessity, as much a history of art itself as it … An authoritative history of art history from its medieval origins to its modern predicaments In this wide-ranging and authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. From prehistoric depictions of woolly mammoths to contemporary abstraction, artists have addressed their time and place in history and have expressed universal human truths for tens of thousands of years. This well-known German overview, in its first English translation, provides much of the needed support. The history of art is immense, the earliest cave paintings pre-date writing by almost … We understand the history of humanity through art.