The brevity and informal nature of these essays, first published in German in 1992, should not obscure their density, just as the length and extremely formal nature of Belting’s Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art should not obscure the clarity of its essential argument. That dichotomy—dense, “formless” evocation versus brief, “rational” argument—will be familiar to Belting, since it is one of the manifestations of the “troublesome” relationship between German and Italian art. The question of the national characteristics of art is important but treacherous, perhaps especially in Germany’s case. Are we to side with Heinrich Wölfflin, who said in 1936 that “the highest principles of art do not coincide with the merely national” (p. 53)? Or is it necessary, finally, to come to terms with what constitutes a nation’s art, despite the fact that modernism “had always seen itself as an international phenomenon” (p. 59)? Especially after two world wars, it has seemed risky for German art historians to take up the centuries-old discussion of the nature of German art. “Occidental” art, European art, or international modernism or postmodernism, have seemed safer—they have, in effect, been refuges from the difficult question of specifically...