List of plates -- List of figures -- Introduction -- 1. Antiquity and the Middle Ages -- The shield of Achilles -- Imitation and knowledge -- Beauty -- Rhetoric -- Word and world -- 2. The early modern period -- Craftsmen and theorists -- Humanism -- The academic system -- 3. The Enlightenment -- The eighteenth century -- Radical idealism -- 4. The nineteenth century -- The crisis of the academy -- Impressionism -- Absolute art exists at last? -- Ruskin and the aesthetes -- 5. The early twentieth century -- Beyond nature -- Beyond reason -- American modern -- 6. Postmodernism -- The critique of culture -- The phenomenology of signs -- Future present -- Sources and suggestions for further reading -- Index