Art in Detail examines 100 iconic paintings from the Western canon and spotlights the finer points a quick glance will almost certainly fail to reveal. These include subtle internal details, such as hidden symbols and artistic tricks employed by the painter to achieve particular effects. In addition, Susie Hodge writes intelligently about external influences on the artist - everything from the socioeconomic context in which he or she flourished, to smaller local difficulties, such as the level of air pollution at the time the painting was created. And she treats each of her subjects not only, to quote Matthew Arnold, 'as in itself it really is', but also as part of a tradition that links the oldest painting to the most recent, as artists pass a metaphorical baton down through the ages.
