Early Christian Iconography and a School of Ivory Carvers in
Provence. By E. Baldwin Smith. (Princeton University Press : and H. Milford. 25s. net.)—This valuable essay is designed to intro- duce order into the study of early Christian monuments—sculptured sarcophagi, mosaics, ivories, miniatures, and so on—and to arrange them in schools not according to style but according to the treat- ment of the subjects. The author, who is an assistant of Professor Marquand, has taken each leading motive, such as the Annunciation or the Nativity, and classified the versions of it, with numerous illustrations to help his argument. For example, the Nativity repre- sentations of Western origin include the Adoration, whereas the Eastern representations usually, but not always, omit the Adoration. The method seems to us sound, and it is worked out with great care. The famous chair of lVfaximianus at Ravenna is definitely assigned to Alexandria, as its panels are similar to unquestionable Coptic works, while the style is Greek. In the second part of the essay a group of interesting ivories, which have no counterpart elsewhere, is assigned to Provence, where Rome and the East intermingled from the fifth to the eighth century under the influence of Syrian traders.
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