Introduction -- Paintings on walls : means and ends in the history of fresco painting -- Paintings for altars : their evolution, ancestry and progeny -- Images as luxury objects : supply and demand in the evolution of the international gothic style -- Pictures for the home -- Sculpture for outdoors -- The dream of reason : symbols of the French revolution -- Magic, myth and metaphor : reflections on pictorial satire -- Pleasures of boredom : four centuries of doodles -- Pictorial instructions -- Styles of art and styles of life -- What art tells us.