Does the language we use about paintings affect our visual perception? How did neoclassical Latin shape the way we think about painting today? To find answers to these questions, the outstanding British art critic Michael Baxandall analyzes the works of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Villani, Vittorino da Feltre, Guarino da Verona, Biondo, Valla, Leon Battista Alberti and other significant representatives of Italian high culture of the 14th–15th centuries. Describing the mutual influence of linguistic traditions and visual experience, the author examines how, between 1350 and 1450, humanists developed the most important ways of commenting on painting, and especially dwells on their discovery of the idea of composition. Michael Baxandall (1933–2008) – art historian, emeritus professor at the University of California at Berkeley, taught at the Warburg Institute.