In this wide-ranging study, Peter Paret discusses forty-seven paintings and prints as complex documents of war in Europe since the Renaissance, of society's efforts to come to terms with the reality of war, and of the artist's use of war as a metaphor for the human condition.

The images include works by such major artists as Uccello, Gericault, and Dix as well as academic history paintings and popular prints. By setting each in its historical environment and analyzing it from the perspective of the wars of its time, the author illuminates the place of war in Western consciousness and expands our understanding of works that are too often approached with little concern for the reality they depict or symbolically transform.

The book traces major themes of war in art as they appear, fade, and reappear over five centuries. Perhaps the most significant of these recurring themes is that of the common soldier and his counterpart, the civilian who gets in the way of war. Over the course of the nineteenth century, these two - the common soldier and the civilian victim - replaced the prince and the glorified commander as central figures in the interpretation of war in Western art.