'Columbia University Libraries/Information Services'
Doi
Abstract
"One possible way of practicing art history as a history of the cultural tradition is to
establish a “chain” among the artistic phenomena, so that the last phenomenon is the
most derivate, and determined by the previous degrees influencing it (as regards forms,
themes, styles, and so on), up to the origin of the chain itself as a the Prime Mover, the
primum momentum agens. Such method has something to do (although it is not identical
with) an aetiological (causalistic – deterministic) approach based on the cause-effect
model, and it seems quite close to the genealogical “family tree” which reconstructs the
origins of a family through the different levels of kinship.
