ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book reviews answers to the question of what happens when a viewer looks at a representational painting. It focuses on the vocabulary of visual perception to explore the relationship between the materiality of the surface and the depicted subject. The book examines the educational implications and advantages of cross-curricular work. It explores the eighteenth century and considers another aspect of the cross-overs between verbal and visual arts. The book discusses the superordinate image of the Christ child and its relationship to three oppositional pairs of representations in art and literature: the polite/impolite child; the innocent/sinful child; and the authentic/sanitised child. It shows how attitudes to Nature developed during the nineteenth century in W. Wordsworth and Constable and how both poet and painter related experiential knowledge of the natural world to education.
