In 2004, Irving Lavin gave the six lectures that make up this book. They were delivered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, an annual series established in 1949, as Mellon himself said, "to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship." Lavin's lectures as delivered, however, were only the first step in expressing his...