Value

Paul Nash
Nocturnal Landscape
1938
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Giovanni Battista Naldini
Figure Studies
before 1591
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jean-Marc Nattier
Venus withholding Cupid's Bow
ca. 1745
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Eglon van der Neer
The Nursery Visit
1664
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Cesare Nebbia
Women and Child with Harvest
ca. 1590
drawing
(study for fresco)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jost de Negker
Capture of Belgrade by the Turks
1522
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress
(broadside)
Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg

Niccolò Nelli
Emperor Claudius
ca. 1550-70
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Ole Jørgen Ness
Portrait
1998
oil on canvas
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

Ben Nicholson
Feb 18, 54 (Azure)
1954
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Dirk Hidde Nijland
Harbor Head at Vlissingen
1927
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Georg Netzband
Demons at the Grave
(illustration to Faust)
1949
woodcut
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

Werner Neuhaus
Happiness and Envy
ca. 1925
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Niccolò di Segna
St Catherine of Alexandria
ca. 1340
 tempera on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Domenico Nicolini of Venice
1579
woodcut and letterpress
(angel with laurel wreath)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

attributed to Nicoletto da Modena
The Spinario
(after antique sculpture)
ca. 1500-1510
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Axel Nilsson
Amaryllis and Woman
1940
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

In defining a work of art as a "man-made object demanding to be experienced aesthetically" we encounter for the first time a basic difference between the humanities and natural science.  The scientist, dealing as he does with natural phenomena, can at once proceed to analyze them.  The humanist, dealing as he does with human actions and creations, has to engage in a mental process of a synthetic and subjective character: he has mentally to re-enact the actions and to re-create the creations.  It is in fact by this process that the real objects of the humanities come into being.  For it is obvious that historians of philosophy or sculpture are concerned with books and statues not in so far as those books and statues exist materially, but in so far as they have a meaning.  And it is equally obvious that this meaning can only be apprehended by re-producing, and thereby, quite literally, "realizing" the thoughts that are expressed in the books and the artistic conceptions that manifest themselves in the statues.

Thus the art historian subjects his "material" to a rational archaeological analysis at times as meticulously exact, comprehensive and involved as any physical or astronomical research.  But he constitutes his "material" by means of an intuitive aesthetic re-creation,* including the perception and appraisal of "quality," just as any "ordinary" person does when he or she looks at a picture or listens to a symphony.

*However, when speaking of "re-creation" it is important to emphasize the prefix "re."  Works of art are both manifestations of artistic "intentions" and natural objects, sometimes difficult to isolate from their physical surroundings and always subject to the physical processes of aging.  Thus, in experiencing a work of art aesthetically we perform two entirely different acts which, however, psychologically merge with each other into one Erlebnis: we build up our aesthetic object both be re-creating the work of art according to the "intention" of its maker, and by freely creating a set of aesthetic values comparable to those with which we endow a tree or a sunset.  When abandoning ourselves to the impression of the weathered sculptures at Chartres, we cannot help enjoying their lovely mellowness and patina as an aesthetic value; but this value, which implies both the sensual pleasure in a peculiar play of light and color and the more sentimental delight in "age" and "genuineness," has nothing to do with the objective, or artistic, value with which the sculptures were invested by their makers.  From the point of view of the Gothic stone carvers the processes of aging were not merely irrelevant but positively undesirable: they tried to protect their statues by a coat of color which, had it been preserved in its original freshness, would probably spoil a good deal of our aesthetic enjoyment.  

– Erwin Panofsky, from The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (1940)