Enduring Creation is a startlingly original book. The representation of pain is among the most pervasive in Western art, yet one that has been almost entirely shunned by critics and historians. Nigel Spivey investigates the theme in a perceptive and eloquent exposition that ranges from the Christian martyrs to Munch’s seminal The Scream and the horrors of the Holocaust.

Enduring Creation triggers and explores in depth a host of complicated questions surrounding the motivations of artists and the psychology of our response. Can pain be beautiful? Do we always pity suffering?

The result is a brilliantly innovative work of cultural history, and one of those rare books that makes the past come alive by creating a persistent sense that it is of pressing relevance today.

Nigel Spivey is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge, where he has also been a Fellow of Emmanuel College since 1992.