Cathedrale Engloutie
Stones of Rimini. By Adrian Stokes. (Faber. 12s. 6d.) MR. STOKES' new volume is a sequel to his previous work The Quattro Cento, though it is at the same time completely self- contained. In the earlier book the emphasis was mainly on architeeture ; the present volume deals almost entirely with sculpture, and Mr. Stokes has pursued his intention of suggest- ing a new set of values by which the art of the Italian Renais- sance may be judged by hanging his general theories on a single peg, namely Agostino di Duccio, the creator of the sculpture in the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini.
But in order to explain the peculiar beauty of this sculpture Mr. Stokes finds it necessary to wander far from the narrow precincts of the Tempio, from the limits of the fifteenth cen- tury, and, indeed, from the field of the arts altogether. At one moment we contemplate the whole Mediterranean basin, its climate, formation and civilization ; at another we probe questions of geological structure ; at another we dive headlong into mediaeval astrology—a rather stormy sea ; at many others we are led pleasantly through the meadows of pure fantasy. There are times when we think that Mr. Stokes must have forgotten that he is writing about a small building on the coast of the Adriatic—as, for instance, when we read of Mexican methods of human sacrifice—but a page or two later it appears that almost all passages lead to Rimini and that it was really essential to know about the Tialocs in order to understand Agostino.
Within the first few pages Mr. Stokes states his fundamental proposition : " If we would understand a visual art, we our- selves must cherish some fantasy of the material that stimu- lated the artist, and ourselves feel some emotional reason why his imagination chose, when choice was not altogether impelled by practical, technical and social considerations, to employ one material rather than another." In this particular case the material which Agostino chose was marble, a substance about which Mr. Stokes certainly cherishes fantasies. Indeed he may be said to have a passion for it, and there is an emotional throb in his voice when he speaks even of a block of it well worn by constant rubbing, let alone a piece vivified into sculpture. Moreover, Agostino's reliefs " refleet, and even concentrate, the common -Mediterranean fantasies of stone and water," and so we are led from Agostino, as the type of certain ter_• dencies in the Italian Renaissance, to the background against which he must be seen, namely Mediterranean civilization regarded as a product of certain scientific elements of climate and :geology, all intimately connected with water and lime- atone, the characteristic substance of which the Mediterranean basin is built up and of which marble is the most refined form.
Next Mr. Stokes returns to Agostino and shows that his reliefs represent the perfection of the treatment which marble demands for itself. In so doing he goes through again and greatly elaborates the distinction between carving and modelling, of which he has spoken elsewhere. This is perhaps the most difficult passage in the book, but the difficulty is mainly inherent in the subject, The distinctions to be drawn are of the nicest, but Mr. Stokes has worked them out to the bitter end in a style and terminology which have become greatly clarified since he wrote his earlier volume. Consider- able light is thrown on the whole matter by a brilliant com- parison between two bas-reliefs, one by Agostino di Duccio, the other by Donatello, which hang near together in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In this context Mr. Stokes analyses the peculiar use to which Agostino puts perspective in his reliefs, and his curious method of flattening rounded forms so that they still make sense when seen from the side and not only when seen from in front. The last chapters of the book are devoted to a rough description of the sculptures of the Tempio and to an attempted explanation of the hidden meanings of many of them. It is' on this occasion that Mr. Stokes strays into the maze of astrology occasionally, in the opinion of the present writer, wandering bemused along its- darker paths. But this whole matter may become clearer when a more thorough historical background is presented in one of the many later volumes promised. In conclusion it should be said that the book is handsomely produced, though not with quite the splendour of its elder brother ; that there are forty-eight plates (in collotype, alas.!), with many enchanting details from the Tempio reliefs ; and that there are a few minor errors of which I note the following : p. 93, the date of the Pompeian eruption of Vesuvius given as 49 instead of 79, and on p. 79 our instead of are in a quotation from a translation of
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