Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot

With this widely acclaimed work, Fried revised the way in which eighteenth-century French painting and criticism were viewed and understood. "A reinterpretation supported by immense learning and by a series of brilliantly perceptive readings of paintings and criticism alike. . . . An exhilarating book."-John Barrell, *London Review of Books*