The importance of the late eighteenth century in the genesis of modern art emerges in these four essays on various aspects of the art and architecture of a neglected period. Written by the author of , the essays take a “Cubist view” of these crucial decades of transition, a view “that constantly shifts its vantage point and moves freely from one nation and one medium to another.” Such diverse matters as the emotional and stylistic flexibility of Neoclassicism, the emergence of Historicism, the rapport between politics and the new moralizing art, and the search for a radical formal purity are considered. Many works of art previously unpublished, and sometimes even unphotographed, make their first appearance here.