This is not just a painting: an inquiry into art, domination, magic and the sacred

Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece.

Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price.

He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvas to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes - with its distinctive institutions and experts - that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world.