THE LIKENESS OF THOMAS MORE by Stanley MorisonReview by: ALLAN GWYNNE-JONESJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 112, No. 5094 (MAY 1964), pp. 461-462Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41369371 .

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MAY 1964 NOTES ON BOOKS

traditions, this still might happen.' Here as elsewhere, he is to say the least not hopeful about modern art - yet he goes on : 'But if we do not want to kill these arts with kindness, we must help the artist to find a valid theory of articulation that does justice not only to the expressive character of his elements, but also to the mystery of ordered forms.' None better than Professor Gombrich has demonstrated such theory in the body of the art of the past ; one wishes only that he would stretch, in splendid rashness though it might be, in the attempt to trace its potentiality in the teeming art of to-day : into practical constructive criticism of paint still wet.

In contrast, Professor Fishman's book may seem somewhat pedestrian. But the juxtaposition with Gombrich is perhaps unfair; The Interpretation of Art , five long essays on the art-criticism of Ruskin, Pater, Bell, Fry and Sir Herbert Read, though it reads a little too like the notes of a professor sorting his material for the class, does provide a useful summary of its subjects' Anglo-Saxon critical attitudes.

DAVID PIPER

the likeness of thomas more. By Stanley Morison. London , Burns and Oates , 1963. 50 s net

lnis remarkable book will interest a great diversity 01 readers and ior widely differing reasons. There is no propaganda. Mr. Morison simply regards More as one of the greatest of Englishmen, and assumes that none will dispute or deny his distinction - tempered as it was with gaiety, kindliness and wit - in a variety of often opposed and seldom combined fields, or that he faced his death not only with nobility of spirit but with an undimmed sense of style.

The task Mr. Morison has set himself, and has accomplished with great thorough- ness and commendable concision, is to try to trace how his image was originally projected visually and to what its continuing vitality is due.

That so great a man should have had the good fortune to be painted by an equally great man is sufficiently remarkable. Holbein was recommended to More by Erasmus, who had sent More a double portrait of himself and Gilles, in the form of a diptych by Matsys. More not only recognized with enthusiasm the great merits of this work but was fully aware how much posterity's estimate of even the most distinguished of men depends on the genius of others. 'Let me confess', he wrote to Erasmus, 'I cannot suppress one passion for future fame, which tickles my vanity, whenever I recall that I shall be remembered by posterity in letters, in books, and now in pictures, as the friend of Erasmus.'

More welcomed Holbein and set him to work, and that Holbein both drew and painted More is not in doubt. It is the subsequent fate of some of these works which is less certain. There is no dispute as to the authenticity of the two drawings at Windsor. Few would disagree with Mr. Morison that the second drawing (despite a defect to which he draws attention) is the finer or that, as far as we can judge, Holbein's painting (or paintings) were based on it, or that of the surviving paintings the one in the Frick collection is much the finest.

But here the difficulties begin: if we look at these two drawings, can we really say that, judged by themselves and purely as drawings, either is among Holbein's finest? I must say I think not. The far more intense characterization in the Frick picture is very obvious, and the modifications shown there are very great - how much we should like to know their genesis : was it by supplementary drawings which have disappeared, or by using these Windsor drawings merely as a base and working directly from life on the painting? We can only guess.

There is a further and deeper problem: if it is conceded that, fine as it is, the Frick painting is not, considered from an aesthetic point of view, among Holbein's

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS MAY 1 964

greatest portraits, why, in spite of crude copies, and its later degradation for propa- ganda purposes in many mediums, has the image of More created by Holbein con- tinued to have such a persistent hold on the imagination? That this is inevitable when a great artist paints a great man is too simple an answer ; nor is it always true. I think rather it may be that sometimes Nature arranges the features - the 'geometry' - of a head in such a way that after it has been grasped and set down by a great artist it can express character in terms sufficiently simple for all to understand. This image will only, I think, be accepted in the first place if it possessed also the additional 'edge' and subtlety of an uncompromising reality, but once the image has been stamped on men's minds the bare proportions of what I have called the geometry will suffice, the 'fame' of the subject allowing men to read into it what in a crude or degraded version has been left out.

More was fortunate, also, in that the clear cut image that Holbein's emphatic linear feeling was able to project was better fitted for survival and more 'copy-proof' than would have been the tonal expression of a Titian or Velasquez, and doubly fortunate that the essence of his character was expressible in this idiom. This matching of painter and sitter has led to an unique permanence. For this we must all be grateful, while avoiding the error - which More would be the last to countenance - of thinking that continuousness of fame and greatness of spirit are synonymous, or that the greater earthly permanence of a mountain is a clearer expression of the heavenly will than a wild flower or a butterfly.

ALLAN GWYNNE- J ONES

A history of English craft bookbinding technique. By Bernard C. Middleton. Foreword by Howard M. Nixon. London , Hafner Publishing Company , 1963. 70 s net

This book is not only the first of its kind, 'the first attempt to chart the history of English bookbinding in all its technical aspects' (Howard M. Nixon), but also a standard work which will provide both a permanent source of reference and a prototype for future historians in this and in other countries. Its 300 pages of well organized, exhaustive and concisely written text matter, with clear and accurate line-drawings, will be of the greatest value to all who are in any way concerned with the care and preservation of old bindings, whether they be librarians, collectors or binders.

During the last eighty years or so, the literature of bookbinding has grown to vast proportions. Most of it has been concerned with the description of great collections, the evolution of the styles of bookbinding decoration, the identification of binders' work, and descriptions of current binding practice. Only during the past thirty years have a few individuals begun seriously to investigate early binding techniques. Since the Second World War the early medieval period has been most studied, principally by Mr. Graham Pollard and Mr. Roger Powell. Mr. Middleton, a professional book-restorer, and one of our finest craftsmen, summarizes their work and continues through the later periods, analyzing methods of construction and giving, where possible, the approximate dates when various techniques and materials were introduced.

The book has fifteen chapters. The first fourteen deal with important binding operations, in the order in which each occurs in practice, and their development is followed down the ages. The fifteenth covers the history of binding equipment. This method was adopted in order to avoid too much repetition, but it inevitably makes it difficult for those not very familiar with the craft to relate the information when a binding of any particular period is considered in its entirety. The author has therefore provided at the end of his book a long summary of the craft's evolution in chronological sequence.

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