Studio: international art (24.1902)

Reviews

proceeds to credit him with the authorship of the
exquisite Madonna and Child, with St. John, in
the Naples Museum, hitherto attributed to Filippo
Lippi; the Tobias and the three Archangels of
the Turin Gallery, which has always been accepted
as a fine Botticelli : the Madonna and Child in
the National Gallery, bought at the sale of the
Eastlake Collection and catalogued under the
name of Filippino Lippi; and with other works the
authenticity of which has not before been called in
question.

Giovanni Segantini. By L. Villari. (London :
T. Fisher Unwin.) _£\ is. net.—This monograph of
the great Italian master, who passed away two years
ago at the early age of 41, yet whose privilege it had
been to revive to some extent the great traditions of
his native land, is full of the deepest interest, not
only to the student of painting, but to all who care
to follow the life-story of a man of rare genius and
unique personality. The author, who knew his
subject intimately, has been able to give a very
vivid picture of his friend as man and artist,
bringing out forcibly the relation between Segantini
and his work by showing how the rugged, almost
archaic, simplicity of his compositions, with their
deep pathos and religious feeling, were the outcome
and reflection of his childlike character, full of
belief in the divine in nature and in his fellow
creatures. Resembling in many respects the
"earth-poet," Jean Francois Millet, whose early
struggles were not unlike his own, Segantini was
thoroughly in touch with the peasants, to whose
class he by birth belonged, and the keynote of all
his work is sadness, not, as his biographer seems
to imply, the sadness resulting from personal
experience of privation, but the deep melancholy
which springs from sympathy with the mute
suffering of those unable to give expression to the
thoughts oppressing them. As is also the case
with those of Millet, many of the best paintings of
Segantini might have been composed as illustrations
of the Bible. The beautiful Ave Maria d
Trasbordo, perhaps the most poetic of all his
compositions, of which unfortunately the repro-
duction in the biography is far from satisfactory,
is a notable example of the deep religious feeling
characteristic of its author. With this one excep-
tion the various reproductions of the work of
Segantini are fairly satisfactory, though they are
wanting, as those who have seen the paintings
will realise, in the subtle beauty of colouring which
is one of the great charms of the originals.

Segantini's early death, the result of his determi-
nation to complete his great triptych for the Paris
214

Exhibition of 1900, on the Scafberg itself, although
the season was already far advanced, threw all
Italy into mourning ; and a very pathetic interest
attaches to his last public speech, at the luncheon
given in his honour at Vintresina, which began
with the words, " I do not regret life : life is
good," and ended with the expression ot a vain
hope, " I shall visit France. That is my dream."

Era Filippo Lippi. By Edward C. Strutt.
(London : G. Bell & Sons.) 12s. 6d. net.—This
beautiful volume, with its fine illustrations, in
which the true values of the original paintings
are rendered with much skill, is one of the most
satisfactory of the art monographs lately issued
by Messrs. Bell & Sons. The method followed
by the accomplished author is diametrically
opposed to that employed by Berenson in his
recent Life of Lorenzo Lotto, yet the results
achieved are to some extent similar. Out of the
mists of tradition and the contradictions of history a
personality is evolved in whom the reader cannot
fail to believe in spite of any earlier prejudices.
Mr. Strutt, in his Preface, deprecates any desire to
" tear to pieces the delicate petals of the flowers
which blossom in the garden of Art," with a view
of dissecting and analysing their component parts.
"He holds," he says, "that the true mission of
art-criticism does not merely consist in establishing
figures and facts, dates and dimensions, for these
historical ingredients, however intrinsically precious,
are worthless unless they are boiled down in a kind
of witches' cauldron," and transmuted into an
image of the subject of the study, so lifelike that
the evoker of that image feels "his heart shoot
with the very hopes and promises of the great
artist" as he worked at the masterpieces "which
must win the veneration of all who are gifted with
the power to appreciate them."

In the merry, light-hearted, yet most gifted friar
Mr. Strutt had a subject well suited to call out all
his critical and literary skill, and the result of his
interest in the man as well as in the artist has been
the production of a narrative which will be read
from beginning to end with undiminished interest,
even by those who cannot claim to be able to
dissect a work of art into its component parts.

French Furniture and Decoration in the Eighteenth
Century. By Lady Dilke (London: G. Bell & Sons),
285. net, or large paper edition, £2 2s. net.—This
richly decorated volume from the same able hand
as the French Painters and French Architects of the
Eighteenth Century is, perhaps, even more valuable
to the student of the period under review than its
predecessors, and will probably appeal to an even