Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Some light tanning due to age. Year 1931. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> It will be remarked by anyone who has the patience to read these four Essays that in their range of subject they have but little contact with the accepted or famous names of their period: Bernini and Borromini are not examined and they play no more part in these pages than do Venice and Rome. These Essays are indeed bound by a geographical chain in the sense that it is only the most southern countries of Europe and their far-away dependencies that are roped off for a stage. The perilous boards are trod by Churri- guerra by Solimena by Sanfelice and their like and there is hardly a fresco noted or a building described which has not become blackened by the smoke of adverse criticism for our elderly critics were bred to hate these manifestations just as many people born in Dickens’ day still deny the humour and the force from which they themselves date. One of my objects has been to dispel these smoke-clouds in the belief that there has been no age in history that is not worth examination and that in the particular period I have chosen there are many qualities to be praised of which there is a total lack in our generation for self-confidence and fluency are surely two qualities which no one could deny even to Luca Giordano. It has also been my intention to establish a definite short circuit by extolling practically the only kind of art that is not yet tarnished with a too extravagant admiration thus completing the round and leaving our own generation free to follow out their own ideas. (SP)