“Painting as a Way of Life is at once a major transformative study of Poussin and other seventeenth-century French artists, and a vital book for art and intellectual historians. Neer rejects the retrojection of divisions between theory and practice, philosophy and artisanship onto seventeenth-century French painters, showing instead how to look at the interrelationship of painting as both practice and philosophy.”

Matthew L. Jones, Princeton University

“Neer proposes a startling new way of looking at and understanding Poussin and seventeenth-century French painting more broadly, centering on an understanding of painting as practical wisdom rather than theory. Interrogating a key period associated with the rise of absolutism and the emergence of the academies in France, Neer challenges conventional notions of regularization and theorization that have been used to define classical French art. Rich and intellectually compelling, Painting as a Way of Life is marked by quality of its scholarship and its innovative methodology that bridges the domains of seventeenth-century French art, history, philosophy, and literature.”

Dalia Judovitz, Emory University