Review

"Clark's analysis should prompt historians of early modern art, religion, philosophy, and science to a new apprecation of how central concerns over seeing were in all these areas. Far from being a 'historian of witchcraft' or now a 'historian of vision,' Clark is one of our preeminent historians of the rich interconnectedness of early modern intellectual culture."--Michael D. Bailey, American Historical Review

"Wonderfully subtle exploration of how, from the 15th to the 17th centuries, people developed a complex understanding of the relationship between what was seen and what was known."--P.D. Smith, The Guardian

"An impressive and authoritative contribution to the cultural history of sight...Clark's book is a powerful argument that any scholar who has an interest in images and image making, in their production and circulation, must give attention to the nature of vision itself, and to the many interlocking factors that determine its cultural construction." -- Renaissance Quarterly

About the Author

Stuart Clark was born in 1942 in Marple, Cheshire. He studied at University of Wales, Swansea and at Cambridge. He was senior lecturer in the Department of History at UW Swansea from 1995-98 and then Professor from 1998 to the present. He has been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Lilly Fellow at the National Humanities Centre, North Carolina. He was elected to the British Academy in 2000.