Imagining Childhood

The images of children that abound in Western art do not simply mirror reality; they are imaginative constructs, representing childhood as a special stage of human life, or emblematic of the human condition itself. In a compelling book ranging widely across time, national boundaries, and genres from ancient Egyptian amulets to Picassos Guernica, Erika Langmuir demonstrates that no historic period has a monopoly on the discovery of childhood. Famous pictures by great artists, as well as barely known anonymous artefacts, illustrate not only Western societys perennially ambivalent attitudes to children, but also the many and varied functions that works of art have played throughout its history.