Roman Baroque Painting; A List of the Principal Painters and their Works in and aroundRome by Ellis WaterhouseReview by: F. J. B. WATSONJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 125, No. 5246 (JANUARY 1977), pp. 100-101Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41372448 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 13:28

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 support@jstor.org.

.

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.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.156 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:28:25 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS

feeling of light and air, of wide-open spaces, like a day at the seaside. Particularly ingenious was the use of different levels to overcome the con- fined feeling that so restricted and crowded a site might otherwise have conveyed. The South Bank site also gave architects and designers the chance to indulge in some of the ideas that had perforce been bottled up during the war years. Nothing very revolutionary emerged ; one could detect influences from abroad, or from the en- lightened pre-war patronage at home, such as that of Frank Pick of London Transport or Jack Beddington of Shell, or even the influence of small avant garde pie-war groups, like the Mars group of Welles Coates and his partners. To all this the public took very kindly (too kindly, some may think), as they also did to the use of new materials dictated by the prevailing shortages, like the steel chairs by Ernest Race, which, though really examples of micro-engineering, retained enough of the English tradition to prove readily acceptable.

Some of the less conspicuous aspects of the

JANUARY 1977

Festival seem specially interesting to-day. For instance the Lansbury estate in Poplar, intended to interest the public in Town Planning. Though the traditional style of building was not retained, the traditional pattern of London, as a series of linked villages, was. It was this characteristic feature of London which so impressed the Danish architect, S teen Eiler Rasmussen, who, as early as 1936, was distressed to see that it was rapidly being lost through 'improvements'. Alas, that this miniature revival should so quickly have been lost once again.

When all is said and done the Festival of Britain was a 'happening' for a great many people, providing emotional release from the anxieties of the war and the austerities of its aftermath, with encouragement to look forward to the future. This is well brought out by James Gardner in his contribution to the book, and by the interview in the recent BBC 2 Television programme.

(The exhibition is on view until 8th April 1977.) ENID MARX

NOTES ON BOOKS

Roman Baroque Painting; A List of the Principal Painters and their Works in and around Rome By Ellis Waterhouse London , Phaidon , 1976. £15.95 I can still recall the eagerness amounting almost to greed with which, in April and May 1937, I lapped up the three Cantor Lectures on Italian Baroque Painting given by the author of this book (Journal ^ Vol. LXXXV, pp. 989 if., 10 17 ff). I had made my first visit of any length to Rome in the previous summer and had gaped with ill- informed enthusiasm at the ceilings of the Gesù, S. Ignazio and the Palazzo Barberini as well as at the often impenetrably dark altarpieces in many of the city's seventeenth-century churches. To- day when baroque art provides the subject matter of so many monographs and PhD dis- sertations, it is difficult for a young art historian to have the slightest conception of how little attention was paid to the subject thirty-five years ago. For the traveller returning from Rome there was nothing on the subject to study beyond Voss's Die Malerei des Barok in Rome - difficult reading if one's German was not very fluent - and the early biographical compilations of seventeenth-century writers like Bellori, Passeri and others on whom indeed Sir Ellis (then plain Mr.) Waterhouse himself had leaned heavily when writing the original edition of the book. Nothing could better illustrate the pioneering character of Roman Baroque Painting than a comparison of the bibliography of the 1937 edition with the revised one here ; still more with the much longer bibliography of the author's

IOO

later Italian Baroque Painting (Phaidon, 1962), where the large number of post-war monographs far outweighs the list of source books. In 1937 there were only three twentieth-century books available for inclusion.

The book itself appeared in the same year as the Cantor lectures mentioned above, issued in a very limited number of copies (and, as Sir Ellis now reveals, largely at his own expense), as an 'extra' volume of the Papers of the British School at Rome of which its author was then Librarian. The book has become exceedingly rare. University libraries, the Preface informs us, have lost 'a quite surprising' number of copies by theft. Writing this review in Washington, I note that there is no copy in the Library of Congress nor in the library of the National Gallery and there are probably no more than a couple of copies in the entire United States. Yet it is an exceedingly important work for the study of its subject and the Phaidon Press is to be congratulated on making it available again.

Berenson's 'Lists' had been published in their definitive (more or less) form by the Oxford Press a few years before Waterhouse's book came out and were at the height of their influence on art-historians, but they ended well before the seventeenth century. It was doubtless their example which determined Sir Ellis to cast his pioneering work in the form of a series of lists of paintings under artists' names which form more than two-thirds of the book. These are preceded by a comparatively short survey of the back- ground of Roman painting in the period between the Sack of 1527 (a watershed in the city's history) and the beginning of the seventeenth

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.156 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:28:25 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

JANUARY I977

century, which includes a particularly brilliant account of Annibale Carracci whose pupils form a bridge between Mannerism and the Baroque. The rest of the introductory essay is divided into sections dealing with the reigns of the various Popes from Urban VIII to Clement X, a sensible arrangement, for these men and their families provided the principal sources of patronage during the period. Of these, the most important was the reign of Urban VIII, not merely because it was the longest but on account of the en- lightened support of the Jesuit order by the Pope and his nephew Cardinal Antonio Barberini.

The Lists, bald as they are and including the works of a number of quite minor artists, like Beinaschi or Cerrini, are really a sort of spiritual Odyssey of the author's youthful exploration of Rome. With the support of the former Director of the British School he seems to have got into the most obscure places, palaces at Oriolo Romano, Sambucci and Valmontone, as well as rooms very difficult of access in the Vatican like the Sala della Contessa Matilda. Only the private chapel of the Pope seems to have evaded him, and he records a Romanelli Nativity as 'reported as still existing' there. It was probably a wise decision to have made the minimum of changes to the text of the essay, particularly in view of his later Italian Baroque Painting , where the empha- sis is rather different. As Sir Ellis writes ťit is not discreditable to be unwilling to tinker excessively with youthful works'. By retaining, more or less, the small format of the original, the book is an ideal companion when exploring Rome and the adjacent towns, a pursuit made the easier by the excellent topographical index. Although the price seems considerable for so small a book, the reader has the satisfaction of knowing that he is getting far more for his money than he would from any of the equally costly coffee-table books which pour from the presses to-day in such profusion that Waterhouse has devoted a special section of the bibliography to what he calls these Cumbersome and maddening' works.

F. J. B. WATSON

The Painter's Craft An Introduction to Artists' Methods and Materials By Ralph Mayer London , Nelson , 1976. £3.95 This book gives an admirable description of the manifold processes involved in the craft side of painting, as distinct from the purely artistic, and is intended not only for the student but also for the professional artist. The lucidity of the author's style is remarkable and the bold, clear type used throughout the book is in itself an invitation to read on, while the photographs accompanying the text are exceptionally clear and detailed.

At the present time when there are signs of a renewed interest in the Crafts, it is heartening to find in this eminently practical volume a

notes on books

message for painters reminding them that they themselves must be craftsmen before they are artists, if their work is to have any lasting value. Indeed, Mayer's description of day-to-day studio practice will bring hope and encourage- ment to those who have found their so-called art education totally devoid of the basic prin- ciples of the painter's craft.

After some illuminating preparatory remarks in the Introduction, on the value of basing modern techniques on traditional practice, there are sections devoted to the question of suitable colours for the artist's palette and of the actual mixing and grinding of mediums with pigments. Then on page 50 we come to what is perhaps the most important chapter of all - the one on Grounds. This subject, as the author himself points out, has till now received little attention in the training of the modern painter, and Mayer goes on rightly to state : ťThe permanance or durability of a painting, its optical or visual effect all depend ... on the nature of the ground.'

The matter of choosing both linen and canvas and the work of stretching these on a frame are admirably and minutely explained, and it is only when it comes to his description of the preparation of a traditional gesso ground that Mayer, rather surprisingly, underestimates the difficulties encountered by students in this most tricky of all processes involved in an artist's work. His statement 'Gesso and its application are simple and perfect results are easy to obtain' is somewhat misleading, for although admittedly the making of these grounds is not in itself complicated, yet perfect results are seldom obtainable without rigorous training and con- stant practice. Another rather puzzling fact is that the making and use of parchment size - an essential ingredient in both gesso grosso and gesso sottile - are barely touched upon, and this in spite of the fact that, in his chapter on Tempera Painting, Mayer exhibits great know- ledge of early practice and a quite unusual familiarity with Cennini's teaching. His precise instructions supported by photographs on separating the white from the yolk of egg before mixing it with the pigment should be most valuable to the uninitiated. When describing the actual mixing of powder pigment with the yolk, however, Mayer departs somewhat from traditional practice, in that he advocates dipping the brush in pure water from time to time, instead of first diluting the mixture sufficiently with water in the paint-pot, without any further addition of water as the work proceeds.

With regard to the manufacture of pastels, Mayer gives (in Chapter 8) information which is interesting and helpful on a subject seldom dealt with in detail.

In this comprehensive work, Ralph Mayer is doubtless addressing himself mainly to his own countrymen in the USA, but he will also find an interested public on this side of the Atlantic,

101

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.156 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:28:25 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions