Studio: international art (65.1915)

Reviews and Notices

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

Ex Libris engraved on Wood. Twenty plates,
preceded by a study by Count Dr. L. A. Rati Opizzoni
on “ The Movement of Wood-Engraving in Modern
Italy.” Preface by Ettore Cozzani. (Turin:
Edizioni d’Arte, E. Celanza.)—The process of
wood-engraving in Italy of to-day, although the art
was practised under the influence of the Renaissance
with minute attention and success, is of compara-
tively recent growth, and owes very much to the
initiative and personal influence of the painter
Adolfo de Karolis. He it was who seems to have
given the first impulse in Italy to this modern
school of wood-engraving; and though his work
was free in its treatment of material—and as such
was possibly criticised by Professor Camille Monnet
when he said of these Italian wood-engravers in
his “ Considerations sur la Xylogravure en Italie” :

“ Ils gravent sur n’importe quelle essence de bois,
sur n’importe quelle surface peu plane ou mal polie:
ils se servent de n’importe quels utils de menuisier
ou d’horloger ”—there can be no doubt of its
originality and creative force. The illustrated
cover of D’Annunzio’s “ Francesca da Rimini,”
published by Treves at Milan in 1903, confirms
this statement. De Karolis also worked for the
“ Hermes,” a periodical which was founded in the
year following and had a very brief career.
Then followed a period of stagnation, but in 1912,
under the vigorous initiation of Ettore Cozzani
and the architect Franco Oliva, there appeared in
Spezia the . “ Eroica, a Collection of Poetry”;
and this impulse was continued under the same two
indefatigable workers for their craft in the Inter-
national Xylographic Exhibition held, soon after-
wards, at Levanto. Among the twenty plates in
the present work we note especially one by De
Karolis (vii.), and another by Carlo Sensani (ii.)
which seem aptly to illustrate this artist’s views of
treatment. “Wood-engraving,” he writes, “is in
itself an art simple and complete, in which excess
of clever technicalities is useless and often dangerous.
With the wood alone the finest effect can be ob-
tained ; wood-engraving is beautiful in so far as it
feels the wood, and it is necessary to keep in view
the sentiment of the material itself.” Of the five
plates by Emilie Mantelli, a student of the Florence
Academy, two (Nino Oxilia and Grace Latimer
Jones) evince some of the best qualities of this
craft; and commendable also is the colour plate
by Riccardo Fantoni from three separate blocks.
But there are some notable omissions; there is
nothing by Professor Monnet or Gino Barbieri,

and from both De Karolis and Sensani there is
but one plate each. The work is a record, though
not a complete one, of an interesting movement
in graphic art.

Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish
Artists preserved in the Department of Pritits and
Drazvings in the British Museum. By Arthur M.
Hind, M.A. Vol. I. Drawings by Rembrandt and
his School. (Printed by order of the Trustees.)

12.r. net. This volume, as we learn from an intro-
ductory note by Mr. Campbell Dodgson, the
Keeper of the Print Room at the British Museum,
is the first of a series projected to form a complete
catalogue of the Dutch and Flemish drawings under
his charge—a very extensive collection, originating
in the Hans Sloane bequest more than a century
and a half ago, and reinforced at intervals by
very important bequests and purchases, the chief
sources within the past century being the Payne
Knight Bequest (1824), Sheepshanks Collection
(1836), the Malcolm Collection (1895), and the
Salting Bequest (1910). In this first volume,
embracing the drawings of Rembrandt and his
School, every page of the catalogue bears witness
to painstaking research and discrimination. Mr.
Hind has devoted years to an intimate study of
the etchings and drawings of the great Dutch
Master and his numerous disciples and imitators,
and the knowledge gained in this way and by
consultation of other eminent authorities, such as
Hofstede de Groot, has enabled him to sort out
the material with a high degree of definiteness as
to authorship where that is ascertainable. The
series of plates appended to the Catalogue comprises
reproductions in half-tone of about a hundred
and sixty of the drawings ; they make no pretence
to being facsimile, but they will be of use to the
student and connoisseur as showing the salient
characteristics of the draughtsmanship of the
artists dealt with.

French Sculpture of the Thirteenth Century is the
title of a portfolio published by Mr. Lee Warner
for the Medici Society (js. 6d. net) and containing
seventy-eight examples of masterpieces of mediaeval
art illustrating the works at Reims, and showing
their place in the history of sculpture. Mr. Arthur
Gardner furnishes an introduction and notes on the
illustrations, which, besides sixteen examples from
the Cathedral of Reims, where, as he remarks, the
most perfect development of mediaeval art was to
be seen, include a representative selection from
Chartres, Amiens, Rouen, Auxerre, Le Mans, Paris,
Bourges, Soissons and other cathedrals.