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This article aims at studying how to use the arts as historical evidence, by analyzing the documentary series <Simon Schama's Power of Art> and summarizing the contents of his same title book. <Power of Art> deals with the works and lives of eight great artists in the history of western art; Michaelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio(1571 1610), Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 1680), Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn(1606 1669), Jacques Louis David(1748 1825), Joseph Mallord William Turner(1775 1851), Vincent Van Gogh(1853 1890), Pablo Picasso(1881 1973), Mark Rothko (1903 1970). By analyzing the documentary series and summarizing Schama's book, I try to find the insights and impact of these artists on the societies in which they lived and worked. Their themes, according to Schama's narrative, were not matters of aesthetics but rather of salvation, freedom, mortality, transgression, the state of the world, the state of our souls . And the findings through these tries can be involved in the category of cultural history of images.

Schama, art, power of art, cultural history of images, BBC, documentary