Studio: international art (53.1911)

Reviews and Notices

havc_ r>een_.trained under Prof. Lanteri, whose signal
merits as a teacher and worker are eloquently voiced
by the eminent French sculptor, M. Rodin, in a
letter printed at the beginning of this volume.
The work as a whole is a development of notes
used by the professor in his classes at the Royal
College, and the exposition is throughout so clear
and precise that the student can follow it with ease.
The final volume is devoted mainly to animal
modelling, and especially to a minute and detailed
study of the horse, which occupies about half the
book, while the lion and the bull are also dealt
with separately. The process of casting in plaster
is explained and exemplified by numerous illustra-
tions from photographs, and the work concludes
with some cogent remarks on the importance of
prolonged study.

Storia del? Arte Italiano. By A. Venturi.
Vol. VII.,Part I. (Milan: Ulrico Hcepli.) 28 lire.
—Amongst the remarkable group of Italian critics
who of late years have with almost pathetic zeal
devoted their attention to the study of the work of
their great fellow-countrymen in the land where
the decadence of aestheticism has been so rapid and
so melancholy, none take higher rank than Signor
Adolfo Venturi. The first six volumes of his truly
monumental " Storia dell' Arte Italiano " bring the
history of painting in Italy down to the beginning
and of sculpture down to the end of the fifteenth
century. The first part of the seventh just issued
deals exclusively with the earlier of the Quattro-
cento painters. It begins with the immediate
precursors of Fra Angelico, to whom a larger space
is devoted than to any other artist, and ends with
an eloquent tribute to the universal genius of
Leonardo da Vinci, for whom, as for the saintly friar
of San Marco, the writer evidently has a most pro-
found admiration. The new volume is marked, as
are all its predecessors, by its matured and balanced
judgments, and a special feature of it is the
attention given to certain minor painters such as
the members of the Zavattari family and the so-
called "Maestro del Bambino Vispo," who aided
to some extent in bringing about the revolution
that culminated in the sixteenth century. An
excellent and copious series of black-and-white
reproductions of typical frescoes, easel pictures,
miniatures, &c.—some of which, by the way, are
wrongly named, notably the fresco called the
Madonna col Bambino, which should be St. Anne
teaching the Blessed Virgin to read—affords the
reader an opportunity of noting the peculiarities,
affinities and divergencies of style described in the
text, and exhaustive lists of paintings, drawings, &c,

give added value to a publication that when
completed will be one of the most trustworthy
and up-to-date art monographs of the twentieth
century.

The English Staircase. By Walter H. Godfrey.
(London : B. T. Batsford.) i8j. net.—This his-
torical account of the characteristic types of
English staircases is a welcome addition to the
literature of architecture. The author traces the
development of the staircase from the mediaeval
period when the straight flight of stone steps and
the winding or newel stairs were practically the
only types in vogue, through the Elizabethan
period, when the first real development of
domestic architecture took place and the joiner
ousted the mason in the construction of the stair-
case, the Jacobean with its arcaded balustrades,
the Stuart, with its continuous carved balustrade,
the later Renaissance, which saw the introduc-
tion of the twisted or spiral baluster, to the
Georgian period, when the ideal took the shape of
one continuous curve from floor to floor. All
these stages are exemplified in the numerous text
illustrations and in the excellent series of sixty-
three collotype plates after photographs by Mr.
Horace Dan, which give this volume a high value
as a work of reference.

Lives of the British Sculptors. By E. Beresford
Chancellor, M.A., F.R.H.S. (London: Chapman
& Hall.) 12s. 6d. net.—An authoritative history of
British sculpture has long been wanted and Mr.
Chancellor's volume is certainly a step in the right
direction, but for some reason very inadequately
explained it comes to an end with Chantrey, that
is to say, on the very eve of the revival of English
plastic art. The men who have raised that art to
the high position it now occupies, the Westmacotts,
Foley, Gibson, Wyatt, Milnes, and above all Alfred
Stevens, whose beautiful creations are worthy to
rank even with those of some of the great Italian
masters, are only mentioned casually in the Preface
and more than half the volume is devoted to the
consideration of the work of foreigners. But for
this strange incompleteness the book is well worthy
of the attention of the student, giving a very clear
account of the development of decorative and
independent sculpture in England from mediaeval
times until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Certain historical dissertations, it is true, notably
that on the relations between George Villiers, Duke
of Buckingham, and Charles I. when Prince of
Wales, needlessly break the continuity of the narra-
tive, which is, however, so far as it goes, full of well-
digested information.

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