The difficulties of writing about the methodology of the history of art are many: fear of being obvious, obscure, or doctrinaire; reticence in raising fundamental issues when established ways seem perfectly acceptable within the academy; a confusing tendency to borrow without reflection from fields such as anthropology or literature in which debates on intellectual procedures and interpretations are livelier; and the absence of a collectively accepted statement of what the history of the visual arts is supposed to be. Yet there is little doubt that, at nearly all levels—in undergraduate courses, meetings of contemporary artists, or august academic gatherings—the field of art history is seething with questions and concerns about its aims and its ways. What follows is neither a profession of faith nor a confession of sins, even if there are in it elements of both, but rather a tentative meditation on one issue, that of the intellectual and conceptual unity of a field of study, with the hope of stimulating f...