Otto Pächt Book order

This is the English version of Otto Pacht's classic text on art history. His approach to art history is shaped by his conviction that visual art, like music, can express ideas in its own medium that no other can. He aims to sharpen the reader's perceptions by recreating the social and cultural context in which an object was made, clarifying unfamiliar notions of space and time or significant gestures and symbols which are no longer recognizable. Pacht explores the major thinkers from Riegl, Wolfflin and Croce to Panofsky and Gombrich, but the emphasis always returns to the activity of looking, and Pacht manages to show the student and general reader alike how to practice art history in their own encounters with works of art.

The companion volume to his work on the brothers Van Eyck and their circle is a magisterial study of the ne generation of artists: Rogier van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, Aelbert van Ouwater, Dieric Bouts, Justus van Gent, Hugo van der Goes, Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Hans Memling and Gerard David

An introduction to one of the most significant art-forms of the Middle Ages.

"In this volume, the great medieval scholar Otto Pacht is concerned with one of the key problems in the history of western art: the comet-like appearance of a new kind of painting in Northern Europe at the end of the 14th century and the first half of the 15th century. The leading artists of this phenomenon were the Master of Flemalle and the Brothers Van Eyck, and the most outstanding work produced was the famous Ghent Altarpiece; it has puzzled scholars to this day. It is a topic that occupied Pacht throughout his long career, and the present book is based on a series of lectures given at the University of Vienna in the 1960s and early 70s." "In this first English translation of the acclaimed German edition, Pacht examines the work of Jan and Hubert Van Eyck and their contemporaries in the context of a changing intellectual world - the transition from medieval thought to a perception that recognizes and embraces all facets of visible reality." "The illustrations, in colour and monochrome, cover not only the major work of the Brothers Van Eyck and the Master of Flemalle, but also many comparative works. A special attraction is the folding plate, in colour, of the entire Ghent Altarpiece."--Jacket