Page 63 - Studio International - March 1968

authors anthologized. Not only is the whole selection
Supplement spring 1968 of texts extraordinarily banal but there is a tendency to
slip steadily into the nineteenth century. With the
exception of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu no prose is
quoted from before 1750-not even from sources as
key as Breval. Amid the illustrations, Watteau and
Turner seem scarcely relevant, while the appearance
New and recent art books unfortunately symbolic of the book's failure to achieve
of Nash's Brighton Pavilion is literally eccentric. It is
the right note that it should have taken for illustration
one of the few Batoni portraits that shows the sitter
without any grand tour reminiscence.
Easily the most useful thing we get is a very terse
dose of fact from Professor Haskel I; much-needed
physic aftertrying to swallow down Anthony Burgess's
rambling, semi-facetious essay in which he treats the
Longhena (the absence from text and plates of reader as the travelling eldest son of a rich family in
Extensive view S. Maria della Salute is scarcely credible), most the Midlands during the eighteenth century-a
English baroque architecture, and the last great
device of paralysing ineffectiveness. Somehow, the
Baroque sculptor, Pigalle. A deeper trouble is the references to Hemingway in Venice and modern
author's tendency to accept, indeed to foster, the charter flights come more patly than suggestions that
The Age of Baroque by Michael Kitson. 176 pages, supposition that there existed disparate, parallel without the Grand Tour there would be no Adel phi (a
illustrated throughout in colour and monochrome. stylistic phenomena to be assigned chapters under somewhat unfortunate phrase, since the Adelphi no
Paul Hamlyn, 30s. the headings 'Baroque', 'Classicism' and 'Realism'. longer exists) and 'perhaps none of the influence of
The Age of the Grand Tour by Anthony Burgess and What might have been foreseen in constructing these Palladio'. May lnigo Jones forgive Mr Burgess;
Francis Haskell. 136 pages, illustrated in colour and false tramlines is the collision which compels Mr nobody else can. 'But Italy', writes Mr Burgess, 'has
monochrome. Paul Elek, 8 gns. Kitson to write of Rembrandt's Bathsheba that it is 'at always been vinous, laughing, drenched in colour
once a Baroque, a Classical and a Realistic picture'. and song.' Even should this tatty, travel-poster
Buried under some irrelevancies in one case, some At that point he might have reflected that before 1800 vocabulary be excused as descriptive of Italy seen
tushery in the other, lie the germs of good ideas at the all Western art was 'realistic'. The Baroque attempted through English eyes, it is exactly the Italy not seen
bottom of both these books. Mr Kitson's is the more a more urgent, even earthy, definition of realism, to by English eighteenth-century travellers. Their re­
modest-in all senses-the more useful and sensible make art impact with fresh effect after the artificiality actions to Italy are apparent in books like Sharp's
volume. But it is not quite what its title leads one to and insipidity of late mannerist styles. In conven­ famous Letters from Italy which provoked Baretti to a
expect. Far from being a much-needed examination tional simpliste art-history Bernini stands for the patriotic reply. But it would be pointless to extend
of the stylistic concept 'Baroque', it turns out to be a 'Baroque'. But his portrait busts reveal his grasp on into any realm of serious knowledge or scholarship a
rather hasty survey of all the arts in all European 'Realism', and his personal preference among painters discussion of this leaden effort which so signally fails
countries over more than one and a half centuries was for such 'Classical' figures as Annibale Carracci to prompt any emotion in the reader beyond faint
from 1600; space h�s therefore to be found not only and Poussin. Art is very much more complex than wonder at why the author bothered to write it. Even
for David and Ledoux, and Goya, but for porcelain, art history; more scrutiny and less acceptance must Keats is found dragged in wrongly, to illustrate the
furniture, rococo mirrors and even an occasional soup characterize art historians. No wonder most artists romantic death-wish lure of Rome. The poet himself
tureen. The result is, as might be expected from its despise them. wrote: 'In the hope of entirely re-establishing my
author, conscientious and scholarly. Some of the Whatever the shortcomings of Mr Kitson's book, its health, I shall leave England for Italy .•. .'
plate juxtapositions (e.g. of mode/Ii by Preti and solid virtues (including its reasonable price) are seen Michael Levey
Tiepolo) are neatly chosen and highly effective; and the more vividly against the inflated format and high
altogether the plates are attractive in appearance. cost of The Age of the Grand Tour. It was an admir­ The Age of Baroque, published by Paul Hamlyn, is
Yet the overall effect remains, not surprisingly, in• able idea to illustrate in words and plates this quite one of ten volumes in a new series, 'Landmarks of
conclusive. The Age of Baroque, which so strangely definite phenomenon-so richly documented at the the World's Art', published at 30s and illustrated in
includes neo-classicism and stoops to waste a plate on time. Given such richness, it is hard to see what colour. Norbert Lynton's The Modern World is due to
a Van Goyen landscape, has completely omitted Stendhal, no grand tourist, is doing among the appear in this series this spring.

155