This work investigates the intersection between the development of Italian Renaissance painting and the evolving rhetorical theories of contemporary humanist scholars. Michael Baxandall, a distinguished art historian, examines how the intellectual framework of 14th and 15th-century humanists provided the vocabulary and conceptual tools necessary for critics to describe and understand the innovation of pictorial composition. By analyzing the writings of figures such as Petrarch and Alberti, the author argues that the shift in artistic style was mirrored and facilitated by a shift in linguistic and philosophical observation.

Experts regard this text as a foundational study in the social history of art, noting its precise integration of philology and art history. Readers frequently highlight the academic density of the prose, which requires a strong background in both classical rhetoric and Renaissance art history to fully appreciate.