Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come

Preeminent art historian T. J. Clark explores how painters since the Middle Ages have portrayed the divine on earth.

In this latest work, now available in paperback, respected art historian T.J. Clark sets out to investigate the different ways painters have depicted the dream of God’s kingdom come: heaven descended to earth.

Clark goes back to the late Middle Ages and Renaissance—to Giotto in Padua; Pieter Bruegel facing the horrors of religious war; Nicolas Poussin painting the Sacraments; a...