Excerpt from The Epochs of Painting: A Biographical and Critical Essay, on Painting and Painters, of All Times and Many Places I speak of the various Epochs of Painting, but I do not pretend to number them. Every variation of taste or practice in the art world constitutes a new Epoch, and many are those experienced in the history of art, in all countries, whether caused by material discoveries or the vagaries of fashion. There have been Epochs of all kinds - heroic, hierarchic, historic, mythologic, ecclesiastic, pietistic, ascetic, philosophic, histrionic, ethic, epic, lyric, satiric. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.