Each chapter in this publication is dedicated to one painting from Berlin's Gemäldegalerie collection of European paintings from the thirteenth to eighteenth century. In the breadth of an idiosyncratic selection, painting, as it discovers itself, becomes a medium for the formulation of modern subjectivity. Each painting in focus, enfolds its own making and artistic concerns as they reflect ours, today. What are the paradoxes within which art is made by women? How does the primordial drive to destroy works of art affect contemporary art discourse? Where did the Modern struggle of painting against the picture begin? Why does the Wild Man from early German Renaissance still haunt us? And why it doesn't matter whether Johannes Vermeer used an optical device for his paintings or not.
