Before the Renaissance and Reformation, holy images were treated not as "art" but as objects of veneration which possessed the tangible presence of the Holy. In this book, Hans Belting traces the long history of the sacral image and its changing role in European culture. It looks at the beliefs, superstitions, hopes, and fears that come into play as people handle and respond to sacred images, and presents a compelling interpretation of the place of the image in Western history.

In early modern Europe, the visual image began to move, not only as it traveled across great distances but also due to the introduction of innovative visual formats that produced animation within the image itself. This book traces the arduous journeys of visual images through evidence of their use and reproduction along missionary routes from Europe to India, Japan, China, Brazil and Chile. It argues that missionary world travel was crucial to the early modern re-animation of the image through devices such as the reflection of the mirror, the multiple registers of vision of the anthropomorphic image, the imaginative and disorienting possibilities of the utopic image, and even the reconstitution of the sacred image with memories of the relation of travel to life and death. Within the journeys traced in the book, the visual image forged new connections between different locations and across different cultures, accumulating increasingly entangled histories. Even more intriguingly, these images frequently returned to Europe, changed but still recognisable, there to be used again with an awareness of their earlier travels.

《图像学研究--文艺复兴时期艺术的人文主题》(主编冯俊)是《上海三联人文经典书库》之一，书中包括了皮耶罗两组绘画中的人类早期历史、盲目的丘比特、时间老人、佛罗伦萨与意大利北部的新柏拉图主义运动、新柏拉图主义运动与米开朗琪罗等内容。
本书适合从事相关研究工作的人员参考阅读。