International studio (48.1913)

Reviews and Notices

from the so-called “ classic school ” founded by
David on antique sculpture. But we might at this
stage point out that the failure of that “classicism,”
to attain anything equivalent in beauty to the
classic works of the antique, was more than
anything else due to the method which the author
proceeds to recommend to his readers of going to
nature via the convention of a school instead of
direct, as the Greeks themselves did, for inspira-
tion. Mr. Cox proceeds to attack the naturalistic
tendency in modern
art, but appreciates
that the classic spirit
has more in common
with it than with
modern emotionalism
and individualism ;
and to learn a thing
rather than to merely
copy it, he points out,
is the only way to be
able to distinguish the
essential from the acci-
dental. There follows,
accompanied by thirty-
two illustrations, an
analysis of famous
paintings from the
author’s point of view.
He eloquently ex¬
presses the sympathy
which a certain type
of mind has with
whatever is scholastic
and traditional, but he
does seem to us rather
to lose sight of the fact
that, after all, there is
a great deal in the say¬
ing that the classicists
themselves are dead
romanticists, and that
there is an eager spirit seeking expression to which
expression would be denied along the lines which
he would set down.
The Sacred Shrine. ByYRjoHiRN. (London:
Macmillan and Co.) 14J. net.—The author of
this treatise, every page of which gives evidence of
extensive study and erudition, occupies the Chair
of ./Esthetic and Modern Literature at the Uni-
versity of Finland, Helsingfors, and has already
made a notable contribution to the literature of
art in his work dealing with “The Origins of Art.”
The subject of his present inquiry is, to use his own
84

words, “ that state of mind which, unaltered in its
main features through the ages, has lain at the
foundation of the aesthetic life of believing
Catholics,” i.e. Roman Catholics. “ Looked at
from the point of view of an outsider,” he truly
remarks, “ the manifestations of Catholic Art
appear in many cases meaningless and uninterest-
ing ; but the confusion becomes order, and the
seemingly unimportant becomes interesting, if one
makes oneself familiar with the world-philosophy
which lies at the basis
of the aesthetic pro-
duction.” He goes on
to point out that “ on
the ground of the
magical features in its
ritual the Roman re-
ligion has often, espe-
cially in Protestant
polemic, been repre-
sented as a material-
istic heathendom; but
in doing so the fact has
been overlooked that
the material and the
visible comprises only
one side of a Catholic
ceremony ” ; the doc-
trine of a mystic union
between the visible and
the invisible is what
gives the Catholic
cult its characteristic
quality, “and it is by
reason of the same
doctrine that Catholic
art is more aesthetic
than Protestant art,
and more religious
than heathen art.”
The author, in his ex-
position, adopts a two-
fold division : first he devotes a series of chapters to
the Mass ritual and the furniture and instruments
associated with it—the altar and its appurtenances,
the reliquary, the Holy of Holies, the monstrance
and the tabernacle; while the rest of the book, or
more than 300 out of nearly 500 pages, is con-
cerned with the manifold aspects of the Cult of
the Madonna. The forms of art with which the
chapters on the Mass ritual are concerned are
architectural, decorative, and dramatic; in those
on the Madonna Cult the aesthetic subjects
primarily treated are sculpture, painting, and



TABLET IN BLYTHBURGH CHURCH, SUFFOLK, TO THE
MEMORY OF ERNEST CROFTS, R.A., SUBSCRIBED FOR
BY PAST AND PRESENT STUDENTS OF THE ROYAL
ACADEMY. BY ALLAN G. WYON, SCULPTOR, AND
BASIL OLIVER, A.R.I.B.A., ARCHITECT.
(See London Art School Notes, p. 84)