Studio: international art (8.1896)

Reviews of Recent Publications

as a hash of other people's opinions. Two profiles,
the Pier di Cosimo at Chantilly, and the school
picture at Frankfort—are the first " Botticellis"
mentioned, and in this fashion the list of undis-
criminating misattributions goes on. (We trace
here the influence of the unfortunate Dr. Ulmann,
whose volume was severely reviewed in The
Studio in August, 1894.) When we come to
look for the appreciation of the artist's genius, we
are put off with meaningless cliches such as " poet
and painter, now lyric, now dramatic .... trans-
formed by the magic of his fancy every theme he
made his own .... impressed by the beauty and
interest of the present .... the product is indi-
vidual, all his own .... the poetic instinct in the
spectator goes out to find the kindred element in

the painter....." Finally, after some rather less

commonplace remarks about Botticelli's love of
representing motion and the breeze, we are cast
high and dry on the arid sands of science by the
astounding statement that " the present popularity
of Botticelli may be accounted for by the applica-
tion of the historical method to art criticism, by
the fact that art has for the public an educational,
and not merely an epicurean value." Heaven save
us from such " education " as unintelligent com-
pilation affords !

When Mr. Stearns, writing almost as one who
has never travelled, describes Raphael's Disputa
as being the ceiling of the Stanza, his cartoons as
still at Hampton Court, the Pitti Three Fates,
which he mistakes for a Michel Angelo as hanging
in the Tribuna of the Uffisi, side by side with the
Medusa, which he mistakes for a Leonardo ; when,
out of his five illustrations, the "Leonardo" is a
forgery, the " Raphael" a Sebastian del Piombo,
and the " Correggio " a mere reproduction from an
engraving; when misstatements, misattributions,
and inaccuracies greet us on almost every page, we
are tempted to wonder in what manner he spent
those " many years of study and experience" which
went, as he informs us, to the making of his book.
The truth is Mr. Stearns belongs to that antiquated
race of art amateurs who recognise a "genuine"
picture by feeling a thrill, " something like an elec-
tric shock," he eloquently describes it; who, when
they travel, take no notes and buy no photographs or
guide-books; who have never heard of connoisseur-
ship save as a bye-word, nor of scholarship in any
form ; but who try to make up for ignorance by
sentiment, and for carelessness by enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, Mr. Steam's enthusiasm is almost
always misplaced, and his sentiment foolish. The
trail of the American " parlor " garnished with the

engraving of the Madonna della Sedia, of which he
speaks so affectionately, is over it all, and the only
Muse who presides at his outpourings is the
American young lady of the lower middle class,
who sits in that parlour. One or two illustrations
must suffice. In the essay on Michel Angelo he
says : " A certain young lady once purchased a
copy of Correggio's Jo, had it framed, and it hung
in her room for years without the import of the
picture being discovered by her. Now the purity
of Michel Angelo, as I feel it through his works,
seems to me a fair match for the innocence of
that girl, who was something over 20." Again,
of the same unfortunate picture, this time apropos
of Correggio's genius, he writes : " It is much in
Ids favour that she is greatly admired by her own
sex. A great many photographs of her are sold to
ladies; very few to men." But the gem of apprecia-
tion in this line occurs on p. 311, where we read :
"A young lady of Boston, just returned from
Europe, considers the ' Marriage of Bacchus and
Ariadne ' the greatest of all pictures ; this is much
in its favour." It may be ! But we do not count
it in Mr. Stearns' favour that he should so obviously
derive his own criticisms from the diary of the
provincial miss on her first trip " abroad." How-
ever, when he speaks in the first person, the
doctrine is not any more edifying. His shrinking
from the nude—"We moderns do not appre-
ciate sculpture because we are not in the habit of
seeing naked figures;" his horror at Raphael's
shameless Apollo, whom he describes as a " fearful
apparition " among the elegantly costumed Muses;
his bold remark (let no one accuse him of prudery!)
that " so far as art is concerned, people should
either have their clothes properly on or properly
off"; his distaste for monsters—"I confess that
no picture which contains a dragon or a large
snake is altogether pleasant to me;" his serious
argument about what he calls " Raphael's dubious
practice in using bakers' daughters as models of
the Holy Virgin ;" his illuminating criticism of
Michel Angelo's sibyls, " their head-dresses could
not be surpassed for elegance and good taste, so
much so that it seems as if they must have been
arranged by a woman rather than painted by a
man " ; all these, and more, sound to us like un-
acknowledged quotations from some young lady of
Boston, or elsewhere. From the young lady's
commonplace book also come such sententious
scraps of wisdom as : " Time is like an ocean on
which we float for a while, and then disappear in
it;" " The pyramid typifies the solidity of the
family structure ; " and who but a young lady, or

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