This article is about the academic discipline of art history. For an overview of the history of art worldwide, see History of art. For other uses, see Art history (disambiguation). Venus de Milo, at the Louvre . Art history is the study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts; that is genre, design, format, and style. [1] The study includes painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, furniture, and other decorative objects. [2] As a term, art history (its product being history of art) encompasses several methods of studying the visual arts; in common usage referring to works of art and architecture. Aspects of the discipline overlap. As the art historian Ernst Gombrich once observed, "the field of art history [is] much like Caesar's Gaul, divided in three parts inhabited by three different, though not necessarily hostile tribes: (i) the connoisseurs, (ii) the critics, and (iii) the academic art historians". [3] As a discipline, art hist...