Giovanni Bellini. Edited by Philip Hendy and Ludwig Globschiber. (Phaidon
Press. 25s.) THE issue by the Phaidon Press of a volume devoted to Giovanni Bellini is a matter for congratulation. The greatest Italian nature- poet and one of the supreme painters of the quattrocento, Bellini reveals a capacity for development unique among the artists of the fifteenth century. With Piero della Francesca or with Botticelli the artist's late style is implicit in his early work. With Bellini, on the other hand, we witness a veritable transformation of the painter's personality. In so far as it fails to do justice to this miracle, con- gratulation at the appearance of the present book is tempered by regret that advantage has not been taken of a golden opportunity. Photographically the book is somewhat below the level expected of the Phaidon Press, and is distinguished by an exasperating trick of reproducing whole paintingson half plates opposite whole-plate detail photographs ; this practice destroys all sense of scale, and gives the book a rather spotty effect, which is exacerbated by the lack of any rational sequence in the illustrations. A prefatory note explains that the present volume will ultimately be accompanied by a second containing catalogue raisonne and further illustrations, and in these circumstances it would clearly be premature to complain, as we might otherwise do, of the editors arbitrary choice of plates. The fact that a number of the paintings illustrated are almost cer- tainly not by Bellini is no doubt due to the conviction of the editors that ultimately a picture's authorship must depend largely upon whether it adds to the painter's oeuvre or takes away from it," perhaps the strangest heresy ever to have been advanced by the director of a public gallery.
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