The work of the French cultural critic Louis Marin (1931-1992) is of importance to scholars concerned with issues of representation. This text, first published in France in 1977, presents Marin's theories about the aims of painting in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. A meditation on the work of Poussin and Caravaggio and on their milieux, the book explores a number of notions implied by theories of painting and offers insight into the aims and effects of visual representaion.