Between 1500 and 1900, Berger argued, a specific way of seeing dominated European visual culture. Oil painting was not merely an artistic practice but a way of seeing the world as something to be possessed. The specificity of oil paint — its capacity to render surfaces with tactile precision — made it the ideal instrument for depicting the tangible, the ownable, the things that could be held, displayed, and admired as evidence of the owner's wealth and taste. The still life, the portrait of property, the painting of the estate viewed from the drawing room window — these were not incidental genres. They were the medium's defining uses, and the medium's technical virtuosity served them with exceptional fidelity.
Consider the still life. A table laden with food: the pewter gleam of a plate, the waxy translucence of a grape, the moist interior of a sliced lemon, the feathered breast of