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Notes 277phie chrétienne d’Occident,’’ in Le Monde latin antique et la Bible, ed. Jacques Fontaine andCharles Pietri (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985), 207. Clearly this assertion has no bearing on theperiod under discussion. On the other hand, it is clear that the specific efficacy of thevisual in the early Christian era must be approached from a broader, anthropologicalperspective. Such an approach is implemented, to salutary effect, in the work of PeterBrown. See The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1978); The Cult of the Saints (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Religion and Societyin the Age of Saint Augustine (London: Faber and Faber, 1977).15. Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8.16. Apart from the remarkable work of Ernst Kitzinger and Kurt Weitzmann, it seemslikely that the as yet unpublished book by Hans Belting on the icon will do justice tothese questions, addressing from the perspective of a history of images and not one of ‘‘art.’’[Since published and translated: Hans Belting, Image and Presence: A History of the ImageBefore the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).]See also Hans Belting, Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter—Form und Funktion früherBildtafeln der Passion (Berlin: G. Mann, 1981). The most important work to date on the‘‘visual field,’’ broadly construed (encompassing everything from dreams to relics by wayof rituals and even images), has adopted the methodology of historical anthropology. Seeesp. Jacques Le Goff, L’Imaginaire médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). Michel Pastoureau,Figures et couleurs: Études sur la symbolique et la sensibilité médiévales (Paris: Le Léopard d’or,1986). J. C. Schmitt, Religione, folklore e società nell’Occidente medievale (Bari: Laterza, 1988).Schmitt, La Raison des gestes: Pour une histoire des gestes en Occident, iiie–xiiie siècle (Paris:Gallimard, 1990).17. See, for example, Albertus Magnus, Enarrationes in Evangelium Lucae 1:35 OperaOmnia, vol. 22 (A. Borgnet ed.; Paris: Vivès, 1894), 100–102; Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea(Luke), i (Turin: Marietti, 1894), 2:16. These two texts gloss the incarnation of the Word atthe moment of the Annunciation using the metaphor of an encounter between the bodyand light (even mentioning the shadow cast by its passage).18. This question and this link were earlier formulated by Robert Klein, ‘‘Thoughtson Iconography,’’ in Form and Meaning: Essays on Renaissance and Modern Art, trans. MadelineJay and Leon Wieseltier (1960; New York: Viking Press, 1979), 147–48, 155–60.19. We still lack a history of the history of art, an analysis of the discipline from theperspective of its true foundations, in Husserl’s sense of the word. Quite different questionsare addressed by books such as Germain Bazin, Histoire de l’histoire de l’art, de Vasari à nosjours (Paris: Albin Michel, 1986).20. With regard to France, I need only note that almost all large museum exhibitionsof noncontemporary art are monographic and point to the preoccupations of the ‘‘official’’periodicals of the discipline, La Revue de l’art and Histoire de l’art (the former published bythe C.N.R.S., the latter by the Institut national d’Histoire de l’Art). Some readers willprotest that there are notable exceptions—rightly, for there is no lack of scholars whoseoutlook is more skeptical and critical. But it must be conceded that they are a minority.My remarks concern the mainstream of the discipline, its tendency, as a social organism,to foster intellectual complacency. As a notable example, I cite the objections of AndréChastel to ‘‘the recent intellectualization’’ and ‘‘semiological tenor’’ of the human sciences,to which he opposed ‘‘the material and historical aspects of works [of art].’’ AndréChastel, Fables, formes, figures (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), 1:45.21. Such was the drift of the critique of ‘‘detailed knowledge,’’ under certain conditionsof physical experience, articulated early on by Gaston Bachelard in Essai sur la con-