Current Literature
THE LIFE OF CHRIST By Edward Hutton Volume VIII of the series Life and Art in Photograph is entitled The Life of Christ in the Old Italian Masters (Chatto and Windus, 5s.), and is edited, with foreword, by Mr. Edward Hutton. There is nothing fundamentally new in the idea of compiling a pictorial life of Christ by putting together well-known paintings, but in this case it has been carried out with singular felicity and in a manner suited to the general taste of today. A hundred years ago such a book would have been made up of the works of Raphael and the Seicente painters ; forty years ago it would have been dominated by the Quattroeento ; in the present book the paintings range from the sixth-century mosaics in S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna to works by Tiepolo, and no century obviously dominates. It was a particularly happy idea to include examples of eleventh-century paintings in the frescoes from S. Angelo in Forrnis and Tuscan crucifixes. -In many subjects the choice .of examples must have been embarrassing ; in others, like the Last Supper or the Resur- rection, a particular example automatically imposed itself ; in yet others it must have been quite difficult to find even a single good specimen, though Domenico Feti seems to have 'rendered a great service in illustrating so many of the more obscure parables. Every reader will of course resent that Nuch and such of his favourites have been left out, but in general' satisfaction will be given. The size and quality of the reproductions are, as in the other numbers of this series, admirable.
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