baroque art and architecture in central europeby eberhard hempel

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BAROQUE ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL EUROPE by Eberhard Hempel Review by: F. J. B. WATSON Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 113, No. 5111 (OCTOBER 1965), pp. 925-926 Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41369549 . Accessed: 25/06/2014 08:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.127.150 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 08:48:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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BAROQUE ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL EUROPE by Eberhard HempelReview by: F. J. B. WATSONJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 113, No. 5111 (OCTOBER 1965), pp. 925-926Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41369549 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 08:48

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Royal Society of Arts.

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This content downloaded from 188.72.127.150 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 08:48:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

OCTOBER 1965 CORRESPONDENCE

landscaping of major scenic roads. The President promises 'new records in Conserva- tion in America' . . . 'the beauty of our land is a national resource. Its preservation is linked to the inner prosperity of the human spirit.'

Can this great public effort in the U.S.A. find its own counterpart here in Britain? The forthcoming Conference on 'The Countryside in 1970', to be held at the Society's House in November, will bring a splendid opportunity for focusing public discussion. Can it also give the necessary impetus to act? The Conference already enjoys Royal patronage. Its findings will call for strong and urgent support at all levels, from politicians, the public and the Press.

National beauty, with the individuality of our land and towns, is as precious here as anywhere in the world. The answer to environmental chaos is not only to plant trees: it is to plan deeply, and with insight and skill. But planners can do nothing without a committed public will and imagination.

NOTES ON BOOKS

baroque art and architecture in central europe. By Eberhard Hempel. The Pelican History of Art. Harmondsworth , Penguin , 1965. 5 guineas net.

Herr Baedeker's guides provide an excellent barometer of public taste in architecture. The 1900 handbook to Austria spares only eight lines for the monastery of Melk, merely recommending the traveller to examine the library for its '30,000 volumes, valuable incunabula and MSS.', whilst glancing in passing at the fourteenth- century Melker Kreuz and the picture gallery. Apart from this, attention is drawn only to the commanding site; there is no word about the architecture of Prandtauer's masterpiece. In the 1939 edition, however, the description of the Abbey fills more than a page, the building rating two stars and the church an additional one. When the next edition appears it would not be surprising to find that this has been amplified further, for Melk, like many of the baroque monuments of Central Europe, has become as much a place of pilgrimage to the average Cook's tourist as, say, Notre Dame at Paris or the cathedral at Florence, and perhaps visited with greater enjoyment than either.

Even in Germany, interest in baroque art hardly goes back beyond the beginning of the century. Apart from source books contemporary with the monuments they describe, Professor Hempel's extensive bibliography includes only one study written before 1900. The majority of the works he mentions date from after the 1914-18 war. In England, with its strong traditional love of gothic and sturdy prejudices against anything smacking of the Counter Reformation, such neglect is more understandable. It is scarcely surprising that no single work in the English language finds a place in the bibliography, though a few picture books and guides, admittedly of secondary importance, have appeared during recent years.

Henceforth, however, the English enthusiast can no longer claim that he is neglected. Professor Hempel's book is the most comprehensive treatment of the subject within the covers of a single volume in any language. It deals not only with the architecture, painting and sculpture of Germany and Austria but with the far less explored territories of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Switzerland. Lucid and eminently readable, the book opens with a short outline of the historical background and thereafter treats the art of each country separately in chronological divisions from the beginnings in the early seventeenth century down to the final dethronement of the rococo by neo-classicism late in the eighteenth century, considerably later than in France, England or Italy.

The northern baroque owes its origin to the penetration of late Italian renaissance art into central Europe after the disastrous religious dissensions of the Reformation. This is a subject on which Professor Hempel, as the author of the standard work on

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS OCTOBER 1 965

Borromini, is particularly well equipped to write. His analysis, for instance, of the importance of Guarini for an understanding of Christof Dientzenhofer's work in Prague, or the rôle of the Roman baroque in the formation of Fischer von Erlach or Hildebrandt, is exceptionally illuminating. The rococo, on the other hand, developing more than half a century later, derived almost entirely from French sources, not only in Prussia under the francophile Frederick the Great but also in Bavaria, where the Elector Max Emmanuel, an ally of Louis XIV, spent nearly a decade of exile in Paris after the overthrow of the French at Blenheim. On his return he sent a number of Bavarian artists to be trained in the French capital. As a result Munich possesses to-day in Cuvilliées' Reiche Zimmer and theatre in the Residenz and that miniature masterpiece, the Amalienburg, some of the finest examples of French-style rococo interior decoration to survive, for in its native land all but a handful of the best interiors have been destroyed.

Architecture was unquestionably the mistress art in central Europe throughout the period. It bulks largest in this book. In painting no outstanding master appeared, and even the best like Rottmayr, Maulbertsch or J. B. Zimmermann possessed no more than secondary talents. Contemporaries were perfectly well aware of this, for when Tiepolo came to Würzburg in 1750 he was paid 30,000 florins for his two great frescoes, whilst Zick and Seidl (representative enough native artists) received a mere 1,000 florins for all the remaining frescoes of the vast archiépiscopal palace. With sculpture, however, it was entirely different. The author remarks that 'the Central European artist could express himself most perfectly in sculpture', and a glance at the illustrations is sufficient to confirm the truth of the statement. Ignaz Günter, Straub, and Aegid Quirin Asam, to name Bavarian sculptors only, had few equals and no superiors anywhere in eighteenth-century Europe before the rise of neo-classicism.

The absence of any attempt to deal with the decorative arts has often been criticized as a weakness of the Pelican History of Art. Professor Hempel, almost alone amongst the contributors, has contrived to embrace them in his scheme. They are essential for an understanding of the rococo. Porcelain figures are amongst the highest achievements of the period in Germany; Bustelli at Nymphenberg and Kändler at Meissen were sculptors of very great distinction even though they worked in miniature. The Viennese ivory carvers were perhaps the last great exponents of this essentially medieval tech- nique. The author even finds space to write about the curious bejewelled toys with which Dinglinger beguiled Augustus the Strong. They are amongst the most permanent memories carried away by the visitor to Dresden. Altogether the book is one of the most interesting (and best illustrated) in the entire Pelican series. The translation is, on the whole, satisfactory.

F. J. B. WATSON

THE ART OF CEZANNE. By Kurt Badt. London , Faber , 1965. 505 net It is unfortunate that this philosophical and very didactic disquisition on Cézanne

should be disfigured by the publisher's 'blurb', whose opening sentence, to quote no further, is demonstrably poppycock. Dr. Badt, we hear, 'was prompted to write this book both out of exasperation at the contradictory, and frequently nonsensical, statements made about Cézanne in the voluminous literature on him, and because there was no serious study that attempted to explain why he painted as he did.' Out of the international company of eminent intelligences that have elucidated facets of Cézanne 's genius to successive generations, settling simply for English critics, one may name just D. H. Lawrence and Roger Fry. Their interpretations differed according to their aesthetic experience, naturally - Fry basing his doctrine on Cézanne 's structural unity and plastic rhythms, while Lawrence especially perceived the fluctuations in his painting corresponding to the flux of nature. Anyone who has stood in long contemplation of a Montaigne Sainte-Victoire would concede that each

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