With "The Language of Painting," a guide is presented that opens up approaches to works of painting for both students and art enthusiasts. It makes the rules of visual language clear and comprehensible for both the observer and the creator. Most of these rules can also be applied to photography and drawing. Thus, the book is equally suitable for classroom work as well as for independent engagement with images, making it a valuable resource beyond school. A picture is worth a thousand words – the wholeness of our visual perception makes this possible. However, visual language operates similarly to verbal language, following describable rules: before one can listen with deep understanding and achieve an intuitively good verbal expression, one must learn letters, words, and grammar.