The problem was sacred message . How do you make a congregation feel the pain of Christ? Solution: Gold backgrounds and symbolic gestures, not realistic anatomy.
Modern art history rejects this "great man" theory. Today, we ask: Who paid for the art? What about the women artists (Artemisia Gentileschi gets a passing mention; Hilma af Klint none)? Gombrich tells the story of genius . Modern scholarship tells the story of context . Given these flaws, why does every university library still have a dog-eared copy? la historia del arte gombrich
Gombrich was honest about his limitations. He argued he lacked the linguistic and cultural authority to write the story of Chinese or Persian art. While later editions added a final chapter on "Looking at the Art of Other Civilizations," the book remains overwhelmingly Eurocentric. The problem was sacred message