Art in the Late Middle Ages
English Art, 1307-1461. By Joan Evans. (Oxford University Press. 30s.)
THE appearance of the first volume of the Oxford English Art is 3 notable event. No comprehensive account of all the arts throughout English history has ever been attempted, though excellent mono- graphs on individual arts in particular periods abound. The attempt to stand above the trees and see the wood as a whole is now being made, under the editorship of the President of Magdalen, who ha; the distinction rare in this country, of possessing an acquaintance with the whole field of English art equal to his competence as a pure historian. The work is to follow the pattern of the Oxford History ; each writer, that is, will be responsible for a period in all its aspects, and there are to be eleven volumes, usually covering a little less or something more than a century. The first volume to be published is the fifth in the series and covers a period of great complexity, rapid development and magnifi- cent achievement, in which very many of the mediaeval buildings still in existence became in main outline, both without and within, what they have since remained. Church architecture passed swiftly from the severe geometrical style, through the exuberant varieties of Decorated, to some of the most daring and accomplished example of Perpendicular. Meanwhile domestic architecture in castle, manor- house, monastery and college was making its first appearance as an autonomous art-form, while in all the smaller arts of decoration there was the greatest variety and richness of attainment. Only large-scale freestone figure sculpture and manuscript illumination showed something of a decline. To present this plenty and open the series no fitter choice could have been made than that of Dr. Joan Evans, who has joined w 3 wide erudition a remarkable fecundity of talent, and this book, on a period less familiar to her pen than others, has the distinction that one would expect. It is a work of learning and scholarship as welt as of discernment, and it sets in all these respects a very high standard for its successors to maintain_ It is wholly free from
prejudices and whimsies of every sort, and the rare personal judge- ments and general observations are of a kind to cause the reader to regret their rarity.
The book is densely packed and at once more inclusive and less orderly than the table of contents would suggest ; its value for reference will be correspondingly great. The account of the growth of chantrics and colleges (once granted its relevance to a history of art) is admirable ; and, in another vein, the early chapters, perhaps the most reflective and stimulating in the volume, show how in all the arts the characteristic motifs were changing during the century. The pages in which Dr. Evans revives the mediaeval term of " babwyneries " for the grotesques of illumination and carving are particularly vivid. Yet, closely packed as the chapters are, room has not been found for everything. Stalls and canopy-work, an important and peculiarly English craft, are not treated at all ; rood-screens and font-covers are only mentioned in catalogue form, while even the art of stained glass—a notable example of an art in which the technical and aesthetic developments can be followed very closely— is never surveyed as a whole.
Controversies are entirely, almost studiously, avoided. The name of Yevele, when called, awakes no echo, and the Pauline claims to the earliest Perpendicular work are dismissed in a toneless sentence. The reconditioning of Gloucester quire is neither praised nor blamed, and when we put the book down we cannot be sure if Dr. Evans feels that the new style was the crown or the deformation of the Gothic ideal. Indeed, if there is any feeling of regret, it is at the absence of aesthetic criticism throughout. Mediaeval art-history in this country began among the antiquaries and professional architects, and only within the last few decades have the canons of a wider criticism been applied. One could have wished that Dr. Evans had used her great learning to implement a sustained review of every art over the whole period. When all is said, no monuments of architecture or decoration in this country evoke more spontaneous and widespread interest and admiration than do the great mediaeval cathedrals and churches. Should the historian of art, then, not analyse for us the aesthetic effect at which their creators aimed, and which they attained ? Can he not indicate the means taken to produce it, and point to the alternative victories and defeats of technical skill and artistic genius and bold virtuosity ? The historian of Greek art, of Baroque art, of Impressionist art does this. Yet here there is little of the illumina- tion of high criticism. Dr. Evans's approach is nearer to that of the antiquary ; sometimes, indeed, and especially in the later chapters, she becomes the social historian rather than the historian of art.
The illustrations, as might be expected, add greatly to the beauty and value of the book. Roughly one hundred in number, they are excellently chosen, with direct relevance to the text, not merely as pictures (though by some mischance many references in the text are to the wrong plate), and several are of less familiar buildings such as Thornton, Tattershall, Edington and Ockwell. Woodwork, however, is poorly represented. The photographs are all " straight " ; the only attempt to use the camera to interpret, in the manner suggested by the editor in his preface, is seen in the frontispiece.
DAVID KNOWLES.
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