Answenng back
Sir: While we much appreciate Cecil Gould 's notice of Dress in Italian Painting 1460-1500 by Elizabeth Birbari in this week's Spectator (May 3) we feel we ought to reply to the strictures in his last paragraph. As usual, the decision to do the picture in the way we did, was dictated to us by economics. We 'would be the first to agree that ideally text should be integrated with illustrations but this either means printing the entire book on art paper or doing it by offset litho. The former is very expensive and so is the latter, given the limited size of the printing. Also detail is often sacrificed in litho reproduction. As it is the book is priced at £6 which for 150 pages is high even these days. He speaks of the 'unfortunate reader': alas we have to think of the 'unfortunate buyer.'
He complains of smallness and smudginess. Again, if we had been able to commission special photographs of the details required, we could have avoided this. But think of the cost. As it was, we were very much in the hands of the photographic libraries and the museums. If the originals they produced were not of the clearest, there was little we could do. There comes a point too, when enlarging details from photographs of complete paintings, where you sacrifice definition to size.
Lastly, the horizontal Madonna. We did actually do this knowingly, for layout reasons, and anyway is it such a crime? It is there to make a point about dress, not to illustrate the painting qua painting.
He says 'When will publishers learn ...' More in sorrow than anger one is tempted to reply 'when will reviewers stop and take thought before condemning publishers for not achieving the highest standards?'
Roger Hudson John Murray, 50 Albemarle Street, London -WI
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