Some subjects call for night: it appears in Nativity Scenes, in many paintings from the late Middle Ages, it accompanies Constantine’s dream. Caravaggio’s creation marked the advent of another nocturnal genre that flourished in Rome, and spread to Lorraine, the Netherlands and Spain. The aesthetics and symbolism of night in the 17th century, the paintings of the Lorraine school, the relationships between the visual arts and new religious and scientific knowledge, and the study of works by Caravaggio and La Tour are just a few of the themes touched on in this book.