Michelangelo: Paintings, Sculptures, Archi- tecture. By Ludwig Goldscheider. (Phaidon Press.
42s.)
LIKE Mr. Goldscheider's recent Michelangelo Drawings this book—Michelangelo's every- thing else—is something between Phaidon's well-known picture books and its mono- graphs by recognised authorities. There are disadvantages in this form of compromise. The excellent plates which comprise by far the greater part of the present book will, it is true, be equally valuable to scholar and public. The text, however, mainly catalogue notes and a not very complete bibliography, is too brief and too scrappy to meet the requirements of serious students: few, for example, will be satisfied by undiscussed pronouncements such as, "not [attributed] by Wolfflin, Berenson, A. Venturi, Popp, Antal, Baumgart, Tolnay, and the author of the present book." Nor will uninitiated readers, to whom this string of learned names may well sound like a display of lifemanship, be greatly helped when they find no introductory essay and a more or less complete condemnation of all books on Michelangelo written in English--the ade- quate translations of the source material of Condivi and Francisco de Hollanda are nowhere mentioned. There is as much need for popular art .books of good Phaidon quality as-for more advanced studies. But, except for the illustrations, the two cannot be effectively combined. Some years ago, when the subject was Rembrandt's drawings, the same publishers evolved a formula consisting of two separate books, one with a specialist text, the other of plates and a general introduction. Had this been re- peated there might have been no occasion now for grumbling at what is, after all, a useful and well produced publication.
A. McL. Y.
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