Since antiquity, architecture and the pictorial arts (paintings, photography, graphic arts) have not been rigidly separated. In the Classical tradition the education of the architect and artist has always stressed a relationship between the arts; modern scholarship has too often treated them as separate disciplines. Published in two volumes, The Built Surface offers a series of essays in which the authors reverse this trend and examine cases where architecture informs the themes and physical space of pictures, or pictorial concerns inform the design and construction of the built environment. The exchanges between architecture and pictures explored by these authors are found to be in all cases significantly expressive of their respective social, political, and intellectual histories.