To understand paintings made by Chinese or Japanese artists or by European artists of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, it is in a way just as necessary to know the conventions and the points of view which governed their execution, as it is to know Chinese and Italian in order to understand books written in these languages. It is the object of this volume to make the various kinds of drawing and painting intelligible by explaining the conventions and limitations on which they are based. The last chapter deals with the general points of view involved in the “modernistic” art of our own day.