BOTTICELLI
IT would be hard to find words to describe the magnificence of these volumes. Perhaps the price will seem more eloquent than words can be. Still, the price is thoroughly justified ;- it is rarely we see volumes which would so well adorn a library or so wholly delight anyone who took them from the shelves. Mr. Yashiro has given us a work which, in virtue of the illustrations and of his own criticism, will remain the standard work upon his subject for decades. There is only one objection possible, an objection against the too great' fullness of the work. Very usefully Mr. Yashiro gives us full plate illustrations of detail as well as of the complete paintings. But Botticelli's detail is not unfailingly of interest, and these_ illustrations often repeat technical methods that we have seen already or that we could trace without difficulty in the reproduction of the complete painting. Perhaps this will sound like a complaint against the excellence of the full- reproductions ; and anyhow no one is likely to be offended because he gets more thah he needs.
It is doubly interesting, of course, to have the judgment of a Japanese expert upon Botticelli ; for at first consideration it would seem that Botticelli, because of his purity and delicacy of form, has something in common with the Japanese painters. His figures, too, are generally quiet and trancelike in their expressions. But Botticelli was of the Renaissance, a friend of Savonarola ; and the quiet and trancelike expressions are rather deceptive. In the most seeming-simple of his paintings there is a subdued turbulence and nostalgia— what has been described as " a sad dreaminess." We can well believe what Vasari reports of the last decade of his life, when the support and vigour of Savonarola had been taken from him. " Being whimsical and eccentric, he busied himself with comments upon Dante, illustrating the Inferno and executing printa over which he wasted much time. Neglecting his proper occupation he did not work, and thus caused infinite disorder in his affairs.!' Those illustrations to the Inferno are reproduced by Mr. Yashiro, together with tome imitations of Botticelli to show us that he was really inimitable. They are powerful and gruesome, and they serve to prove again that the painter who is typical to us of youth and spring and freshness yet brought to his art an enriching quality of sombre thought. In all, there are two hundred and ninety-one plates, which acquaint us with more variety in Botticelli than we had expected.
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