26 MARCH 1965, Page 29

Full Colour

THIS might be described as an edition for the literate of a coffee-table book. There are a number of essays by English-speaking Renais- sance scholars of what may be called the Test Match class, loosely attached to a review of the whole period, and without the flood of glossy illustrations supplied in the original Horizon book for those who do not read. Nevertheless, to one reader at least this is a more satisfactory production than it appears. The heavily illustrated book, if looked at for more than five minutes, tends to pall and to depress, while the essays, buried among the plates, seem to lose their intel- lectual quality. Here they have their full weight as individual contributions breaking up a long commentary, which in its turn gains by the variety and refreshment given by a change of manner.

The Renaissance can be, and has been, seen from innumerable viewpoints and interpreted in countless ways. It was indeed a myriad-minded period. Dr. Plumb begins on a somewhat rumbus- tious note, emphasising the pulsating life, the colour, the blood and the hate, and occasionally throughout the book such phrases as 'the rampages of the flesh' and 'luminous sins' and such adjectives as 'fabulous,' dramatic' and `dulcet' suggest the screen or the commentator rather than a printed page that has to compete with Kenneth Clark, not to mention Ruskin, Walter Pater and J. A. Symonds. In all fairness, however,• these flaws are superficial. There is perhaps a slightly strident note at times—and so there was in Renaissance society---but Dr. Plumb is a scholar and an historian who can write as well as think, and not only has he done his home- work on the period but he reveals, also, a wide knowledge of Italy and its art. The overriding picture is of a tumultuous, prodigal and in many ways savage society which nevertheless produced (and could appreciate) a vast and unique display of objects of beauty, reflecting and interpreting a new outlook on life; and perhaps this is the nearest we can get to a global view of the Italian Renaissance.

Whether or no the other essays were written before Dr. Plumb's narrative, they fit into it very well. In particular. Ralph Roederer's Lorenzo de' Medici, Professor Trevor-Roper's Francesco Foscari and Denis Mack Smith's Federigo da Montefeltro add a new dimension to the general account, while Sir Kenneth Clark's Michelangelo is, as might be expected, a calm and intellectually satisfying presentation. The Marchesa Origo is not fully at ease with Pius 11, though he was a native of her unforgettable Val d'Orcia, and Garrett Mattingly cannot replace Professor Butterfield as the interpreter of Machiavelli. The half-tone illustrations, many unfamiliar and all apposite, do exactly what is needed to translate the words into an resthetic experience.

DAVID KNOWLES.