Answer:I have a confession to make: I rarely walk into a museum or gallery without finding my eyes drifting down to the title of a painting – often before even looking at the painting itself.

Though I feel guilty about this habit, I suspect that I have a lot of company in my fellow museumgoers, who probably also share my sense that there is something illicit about the practice.

But why did pictures acquire titles in the first place, and what accounts for my twinge of guilt when I turn to them? My new book, Picture Titles: How and Why Western Paintings Acquired Their Names, is partly an attempt to answer these questions.

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