But there are more timely aspects in Ricketts’s writing and the fact that he chose to contribute to the Burlington is significant, as this newly founded journal had a novel approach, for Britain, to art history. Since its first issue in March 1903, the Burlington proclaimed its interest for ancient art and the most current subjects of art historical debate: Italian and Northern European art, especially the late medieval and early Renaissance artists then known as ‘primitives’. The Burlington introduced document-