ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA.t PROFESSOR MARQUAND has added two more volumes
to his work which covers the activities of the della Robbia family, their pupils and their followers. All the five volumes are carried out on the same plan—that is, little artistic criticism, much docu- mentary and genealogical information, and best of all great numbers of excellent illustrations, admirably produced and each accompanied with a description of the work, and all well-arranged and full of information ; so that from these books we can revel in lovely things.
Florence lavished artistic gifts of the highest order upon the world ; she gave forth things which stimulated men's minds, overpowered their souls, or, as in the case of Luca and Andrea della Robbie, gave them visions of loveliness and charm unknown before. It was the peculiar gift of these two great men, uncle and nephew, that they could, like Mozart, use beauty to the extreme limit without passing into prettiness. Likewise, they could be natural without being materialistic, and the beautiful
• Small Country Houses of To-Day (Volume One). By Sir Lawrence Weaver. London : Couniey Life. [25e.] University Press, Oxford University Pram ($16.1 17B. ed. net.
women and children are never mere copies from life but are always creations, as all fine works of art should be. But the beauty of the work is not confined to the figures ; every part shows creative design of the highest order. Take, for instance, the shields with the armorial bearings of guilds or families : to study these is to realize what a great designer can do with given forms. What could be more beautiful than the shield of the Guerra family upheld by the two winged children ? Here one does not know which to admire more—the lovely curves of the shield or the way in which the bodies of the children are brought into harmony with them. What could be more original than the Guasconi Stemma ? Above, a wreath encircling the coat of arms; below, a rectangular scroll with an inscription ; the two held together and made one by the smiling boy's face, described by Professor Marquand as "a putto of unusual beauty." But Andrea could sympathize with women as well as children, as he shows in his long series of Madonnas, beautiful alike in their faces and their hands ; and he could model old men too, as seen in the gracious figures of St. Francis and St. Dominic greeting each other.
The art which Luca began and Andrea continued made use of a style of architectural decoration which flourished in Italy for a short time at the close of the quatrocento. Nominally, it was classic and was derived from Roman decoration ; really, it was an original style which flourished for a generation or so and then disappeared. Of all styles of ornament it is, perhaps, the most beautiful ; more symmetrical than Gothic, more imaginative than Greek, and with far greater delicacy than the Roman ; it could intertwine itself with the forms of women and children, making them the natural culminations of its wreaths of flowers and fruits. Finely wrought mouldings and fancifully worked pilasters join on the works to the buildings they decorate, making a rare combination of human shapes, fruits, flowers and archi- tectural forms, never again to be equalled. But, after all, it is the human beauty which remains as the supreme endowment of these works. Luca was more simple and grander as we see him in the Fouls Adoration, the Innocenti Madonna, or the boys of the Stemma of the Silk Merchants, while Andrea fascinates us with the Innocents or the Madonna of the Architects. Both these men possessed the secret of touching human beauty, and to such an extent that to many their sculpture is of greater value than that of the Greeks. We cannot leave this last of Professor Marquand's series of five volumes without expressing the hope that he will do for some others of the Florentine sculptors what he has done for the della Robbia family.
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