Review

Author(s): A. E. Popham
Review by: A. E. Popham
Source: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 71, No. 417 (Dec., 1937), pp. 293-294
Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/867237
Accessed: 24-03-2015 10:27 UTC

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The Literature
of Art
Guelder seems to give signs of new influences, in which
according to Professor Byvanck the Lower Rhine is an
extremely important factor. In these MSS. there is
a greater tendency to model rather than draw figures
and more realism is noticeable. In connexion with this
early Guelder school it is surprising to find that the
author makes no mention of the important heraldic MS.
of the herald of the Duke of Guelder, now in the
Bibliotheque Royale at Brussels. Even if the artist,
and he was a great master, was not a native of Guelder,
he must have had some influence there. Certain of
his characteristics are found also in the early Utrecht
MSS., Plate VIII.
By far the largest portion of this book deals with
MSS. illuminated at, or in the neighbourhood of,
Utrecht. An important centre seems to have been the
Charterhouse there, and it is with this monastery that
Byvanck classes a number of finely decorated books.
The most important of these are the illuminated Bibles
at The Hague and Brussels (Plates XXI-XXV), and
he rightly remarks that there is a considerable amount
of French influence in them, particularly from the iconographical aspect. This French influence is not, however, confined to this group alone, but can certainly
be seen in the miniature of the Baptism of Christ in the
Breviary of Mary of Guelder of I415, now in Berlin
(Plate XVI, fig. 35). Another important group of
MSS., also from Utrecht, is centred round the missal
of Zweder van Culemborg, bishop of Utrecht, I425,
now in the library of the Seminary at Bressanone (Plates
XXXIV and XXXV). The artist of this book is probably the greatest Dutch illuminator. His style seems
to take the best from the French and Rhenish traditions,
yet it remains distinctive. Byvanck sees in him the
influence of the Van Eycks, and this may well be so.
A Bible in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge has
certainly some miniatures in his hand, though they are
earlier than the great missal. Other artists worked on
the Cambridge Bible, and some of them are very
French in style, recalling the Burgundy Breviary in the
British Museum.
The last master of any note at Utrecht was the
"Master of the Hours of Catharine of Cleves," of about
I440. His early work is closely related to the Master of
Zweder van Culemborg of whom he was undoubtedly
a follower. In his later works he seems to have received
much influence from Germany, possibly from Cologne
or Westphalia. His colour remained, however, French
in inspiration. Besides Utrecht, Delft and Guelder were
important centres in about the middle of the fifteenth
century, though the Guelder MSS. are rather earlier
than the Delft ones. Both were apparently inspired
by religious houses, and are on the whole more provincial in style than the Utrecht books. They seem
also to have absorbed less French and more Rhenish
influences.
The plates are numerous and fairly good, though in
some cases inadequate for stylistic comparisons. An
index of figures giving references to the plates on which
they can be found would have been invaluable. As it
is, the reader will hop from plate to plate in what, in
the reviewer's case, has been quite a long search for the
required figure. Surely on p. 35, line 19, " Fig. 6 a 63 "
should read " 6 et 63." Figure 62 is certainly by
the "Master of the Brussels Passion" and not the
"Master

of Nicholas

Brouwer."

F. WORMALD.

Hieronymus Bosch. By Charles de Tolnay. 129 pp. + 128 pl.

Basel and Leipzig (Holbein-Verlag). C4 ; Swiss Frs. 80.

M. de Tolnay's name is a guarantee of wide learning,

not confined to the literature of art, an imaginative
approach to his subject and a critical and discerning
eye, qualities which contribute to make the present work
a most valuable one. The book consists of a comparatively short essay, in which M. de Tolnay analyses
Bosch's works with a view to arriving at an estimate
of "his spiritual aspirations and determining his
historical position in the evolution of the soul by
revealing what his mission was." Bosch is a satirist, a
counterpart of Brant or Murner or Kaiserspenz, but
superior to them in that there is a positive side to his
satire in the revelation of the beauty of things. M. de
Tolnay holds that writers on Bosch have concentrated
on one of two aspects of his art to the neglect of his
creative personality; they have regarded him as a
precursor of modern realism and measured his progress
in relation to this or they have related his production
entirely to literary tradition. The essay is reinforced by
copious critical notes and there follows an Appendix
with reprints or translations of the most important
literary sources up to Baldinucci in 168I, a catalogue
raisonneof the paintings and of the drawings, 128 good
half-tone plates illustrating all the pictures and drawings
which M. de Tolnay allows to be by Bosch as well as
some copies, many with details.
M. de Tolnay has two significant contributions
towards the solution of the mystery of the provenance
of Bosch's art: one that the composition of the
Adorationof the Kings in the Johnson collection at
Philadelphia correspondswith that of a Dutch miniature
of 1438 in a MS. in the Meermanno-Westreenianum
Museum at The Hague (repeated in a drawing in the
in
Berlin Print Room); and secondly that the Crucifixion
the Franchomme collection (firstexhibited at Rotterdam
last year) has some relation to a fresco of the subject
in the Cathedral of Bois-le-duc dated 1444. The
former seems the more important and shows how
Bosch's art, in so far as it is derivative, harks back to
the first half of the fifteenth century. As to the fresco
which M. de Tolnay suggests might be by Laurens
van Aken, presumed to be Jerome's father, I cannot
but feel doubts, before the reproduction which he gives
of it, of its really dating from I444. It is strongly
reminiscent of the engravings of the Master E. S. Can
it not be a case of a commemorative painting of a later
date ? Besides, the connexion with the Franchomme
picture does not seem to me very close. The latter
is as near, for instance, to the engraved crucifixion by the
Master F. V. B.
A new and valuable part of M. de Tolnay's book is
his chronological arrangement in which he differs at
many points from Dr. von Baldass. For example, he
places the SevenDeadly Sins of the Escorial in the first
of the three periods into which he divides Bosch's activity
and the Madrid Epiphanyat the very end. Though in
the absence of any single dated or precisely dateable
work the chronology must always remain somewhat
uncertain, I find M. de Tolnay's arrangement convincing. There are a number of workshitherto generally
accepted which M. de Tolnay rejects including the
Epiphanyin the Metropolitan Museum and the series of
Temptations of St. Anthony in the Drey and Gutmann
collections and in the Deutsches Museum at Berlin.

293

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The Literature
of Art
The catalogue of drawings includes the sheet at
Oxford on the other hand which to me (and to others)
seems to have all the characteristics of a copy. The
exclusion of the British Museum drawing and of the two
grisaille drawings corresponding with the pictures of the
Death of the Miser and the Jef des Fous now appears to
me justified. Dr. von Baldass has recently pointed out
Kiinste,N.F. II [I937], p. 22) that a shell(Graphische
fish creature on one of the Berlin sheets (illustrated here,
pl. io6, bottom left) corresponds with an animal in one
of the round biblical scenes in the Koenigs collection
(illustrated here, pl. 26, top). This is the only instance
where an original drawing corresponds to any part of a
picture and is consequently important.
Students abroad should be warned that Diirer's
Christdisputingwith theDoctorsfrom the Barberini Palace
is not, as stated (p. 71, Note 147) in the National
A. E. POPHAM
Gallery.
Der Tondo. Ursprung, Bedeutung und Geschichte des
Italienischen Rundbildes in Relief und Malerei. By
Moritz Hauptmann. 317 pp. + xxxii pl.
(Vittorio Klostermann). RM. I8.50.

Frankfort-on-Main

This work merits a special place among recent

publications on Italian art. Ever since Jacob Burckhardt
assumed the lead by pointing out what a wealth of
research lay in the peculiar problems surrounding the
design of circular format, endless voices have taken up
the refrain; but nowhere yet has such systematic
enquiry been instituted into the laws and special conditions governing the composition of the tondo as here.
The chief sources recognized as the basis of the tondo
are the medallion, which boasts a long history since
classic days, and the gloria, already known in preChristian times. In both cases their history is traceable
through written records. In common parlance the
word tondo is used to denote only the Italian circular
design of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Brunelleschi supplied the pre-requisite for this when he
derived the circular format from the architectural link.
Further evolution occurred towards the middle of the
fifteenth century when the form was detached from its
wall surroundings to become an independent unit.
The word tondo stands for the complete achievement
of this independence in the shape of a format specifically
Florentine in character, which also explains why it
underwent such active development at Florence but did
not exist at Venice ; while Venice consistently employed
the angular form, Florence nearly always preferred the
tondo.
The question of a definite formula in composing a
tondo is a far more difficult one to elucidate. The
composition was not always harmonized to the shape of
the space that it had to fill; often-and this applies
to the early days of the plastic and painted tondo in
particular, to the time, let us say, from Domenico
Veneziano to Fra Filippo Lippi-the effect was obtained
by a contrast between composition and format. The
author insufficiently stresses this point. Later, the two
methods, the harmonizing and the contrasting, went
hand in hand. There were varying degrees of composition, of course, between these two poles: thus
Raphael's Madonna della Sedia comes, just as does
Michelangelo's Holy Familyin the Uffizi Gallery, within
the sphere of the tondo.
The author has done a useful work by giving, in the
second part of his volume, an account of all the artists
who have produced tondi. Most useful, too, are the

reproductions of tondi by various masters. The lack

A. SCHARF
of an index, however, is badly felt.

French Painting and the Nineteenth Century. By James Laver.

With notes on artists and pictures by Michael Sevier and a
Postscript by Alfred Flechtheim. viii + 120 pp. + 141 ill.,
ii in colour. (Batsford.) 2is.

The literature of French nineteenth-century painting

is already vast, and only a new approach could adequately justify the appearance of another general survey.
The publishers' claim that Mr. Laver has regarded
" painting not as existing in an aestheticvacuum, but as
subject to all the political, economic, social, scientific
and other influences of its age " gave one hopes that
here was a volume satisfying such requirements. But
Mr. Laver's discursive essays rarely attempt more than
the vaguest of suggestions of such influences, and do not
in fact utilize the valuable published work of Drs.
Friedlander and Antal (amongst others) in this direction.
It is not on such claims that this book can justify itself.
The categories under which the material is dealt
with: "Republican Virtue," "The Escape in Time
and Space," " The Escape from the Town,"
." Realism,"
and " The Triumph of Science," are evidently no more
than rough and ready implements, and in practice lead
to a serious over-simplificationof the issues, and to misfits
such as the discussion of Renoir under the heading of
Realism. And nowhere is any distinction drawn between
the standpoints of present-day critical appreciation, and
historical interpretative study. The advantage of the
consideration of painting in relation to the whole
historical dynamics of its period is that more can be
understood of the development and significance of
painting itself; whereas it is doubtful whether Mr.
Laver's essays present a more intelligible continuity than
the strictly aesthetic treatment of, for example, Mr.
Clive Bell.
There is a noticeable lack of accord between the main
text and the choice of illustrations, for which the late
Mr. Alfred Flechtheim was responsible. The plates
are well reproduced and include some interesting and
unfamiliar material, drawn to a large extent from
pictures exhibited at the recent Anglo-French Art and
Travel Society's Exhibition at the New Burlington
Galleries.
Mr. Michael Sevier's notes on the artists and the
illustrations are quite admirable in themselves, but it
is difficult to see what is gained by this disjointed method
of presentation, unless it is the pleasant readability of
Mr. Laver's text, thus relieved of the burden of facts.
Mr. Alfred Flechtheim's postscript is an essay in praise
of the grand siecle, and a brief history of the gradual
growth of public appreciation, largely through the
instrumentality of collectors and connoisseurs such as
von Tschudi, Nemes, and critics such as Meier-Graefe.
A. C. SEWTER

Catalan Art, from the Ninth to the Fifteenth

36 pp. + ccxxiii pl. (Heinemann.) 42s.

Centuries.

Here at last we find gathered together and arranged

in suitable groups the principal Catalan masterpieces
of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries in architecture,
sculpture, painting and metalwork. From this extraordinary diversity of works, all of which are attractive
and some of them impressive, those belonging to the
romanesque period stand out very distinctly. To their
strong provincial flavour-they come from the most
modest foundations, for the more sumptuous buildings
have long since disappeared-there is added a further

294

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