Studio: international art (46.1909)

Reviews and Notices

sculptors of the past should have been compara-
tively neglected. Few probably outside of Holland
know much of one of her greatest exponents of
plastic art, Rombout Verhulst, whose best work
recalls that of some of the most distinguished
masters of the Renaissance. For this reason the
finely illustrated work of the accomplished Dutch
critic, M. Van Notten, that has been well translated
into French by Mme. Wijk, will be a revelation to
many, so well does it bring out the genius of its
subject and so conclusively does it prove the
importance of the school to which he belonged.
The actual narrative of the life of the sculptor is
full of interest, and its author comments on the fact
that though the influence exercised by Verhulst on
his contemporaries and successors can be very
distinctly recognised, there is but little to indicate
to whom he himself owed his inspiration. Passing
lightly over the sculptor’s ’prentice years at Malines
and Amsterdam, he dwells at considerable length
on those during which, at Leyden and the Hague,
Verhulst reached the culminating point of his glory
and produced the series of magnificent monumen-
tal sculptures, beginning with the Mausoleum at
Katwijk-Binnen and ending with that at Stedum,
many of which are not only masterpieces of design
and execution, but poems in stone. No less suc-
cessful were his portrait busts and his bas-reliefs of
secular subjects such as that on the facade of the
Corn Exchange at Amsterdam, which is a kind of
apotheosis of labour, and the equally appropriate
composition on the outside of the hospital for the
plague-stricken at Leyden. The concluding chap-
ters of Van Notten’s book are somewhat melancholy
reading, dwelling as they do on the master’s declining
powers, but even his latest productions bear the
unmistakable impress of genius.

A Complete Guide to Heraldry. By A. C. Fox-
Davies. (Edinburgh: T. C. & E. C. Jack.)

io.y. 6d. net. Heraldry for Amateurs. By J. S.
Milbourne. (London: L. Upcott Gill.) 39. 6d.
net.—The word “complete” accurately describes
the scope of Mr. Fox-Davies’s comprehensive guide
to the law and practice of heraldry, for although it
professes to be based on his larger work, “ The Art
of Heraldry,” a seven-guinea book now nearly out
of print, the subject is as exhaustively treated as
anyone outside the Heralds’ College could wish.
The intricacies of the subject, mystifying to most
of those who have not made a special study of it,
are explained with admirable lucidity. The interest
as well as the utility of the work is considerably
enhanced by the coloured plates and multitudinous
designs which Mr. Graham Johnston, Herald

336

Painter to the Lyon Court, has executed expressly
for it. Mr. Milbourne’s volume makes no pretence
to the exhaustive treatment devoted by Mr. Fox-
Davies to the subject; he merely calls it “ a
handbook for beginners,” but it has several good
points, one of which is a serviceable dictionary of
heraldic terms occupying exactly one-half of the 224
pages of letterpress. The explanations throughout
are commendably explicit, and the book is printed
in good, clear type.

Beautiful Flowers and How to Grow Them.
Vol. I. By Horace J. Wright and Walter P.
Wright. (London : T. C. & E. C. Jack.) 10s. 6d.
net.— The demand for books dealing with the
arrangement of the garden and the cultivation of
flowers seems to increase, judging by the large
number which have been issued during the last
twelve months. The first of the two volumes which
Messrs. Jack are publishing bears comparison with
most of the works on the subject which have
hitherto appeared. Messrs. Wrights’ letterpress
will be found of considerable assistance to ama-
teurs, while the illustrations in colours (of which
there are to be fifty in each volume) have been
carefully selected and well reproduced. Those
after drawings by Miss Fortescue Brickdale, Mr.
Hugh Norris, Mr. Francis James, and Mr. Fairfax
Muckley are particularly successful. No lover of
“ beautiful flowers ” should be without this work.

A New History of Painting in Italy. By J. A.
Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle. Edited by
Edward Hutton. (London : J. M. Dent.) Vol. I.,
20.L net.—That Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s History
should still rank as a classic nearly fifty years after
publication is proof of its sterling worth, and the
editor of the latest edition, of which the first
volume only has so far appeared, has done well to
retain intact the original text, though he has wisely
replaced the old line drawings by reproductions
from photographs of famous mosaics and frescoes.
He has, however, brought the book thoroughly
into line with recent research by copious notes
embodying the results of the latest modern criticism.
He tells, for instance, the chequered story of the
recently discovered frescoes in S. Maria Antiqua
and of the newly excavated subterranean church
of S. Clemente, both in Rome, and describes the
wall-paintings by Pietro Cavallini in S. Cecilia, in
Trastevere, that were unknown to Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, and might he thinks have modified
their judgment on that great artist, and in his
opinion disprove Vasari’s assertion that he was an
assistant of Giotto. The problem offered by the
frescoes attributed to Cimabue, in the Upper