The Art and Architecture of Russia by George Heard HamiltonReview by: Cyril MangoThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Dec., 1955), pp. 293-294Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3047623 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

INDIA, PAINTINGS FROM AJANTA CAVES, introduction

by Mandanjeet Singh, Greenwich, Conn., New York

Graphic Society (UNESCo World Art Series), 1954. Pp. II; 32 pls. $15.oo.

The group of Buddhist cave temples at Ajanta is, among other things, the main repository of early Indian painting. Consequently, Ajanta has tremendous

importance for art historical as well as aesthetic rea- sons. Contemporaneous paintings at Bagh, a few hundred miles to the northwest, have been all but obliterated in recent decades, while the few sixth or seventh century murals at Sittanavasal, near Pudukot- tai in the deep south, have been seriously damaged within the last twenty years. A few fragments of paint- ings at Ellora and at Badami in the Deccan are pitia- ble remnants of a former glory. One must go to

Sigiriya in Ceylon to find another important, if some- what less varied, complex of Indian paintings of the same period, and even these are heavily restored.

The present volume on Ajanta is the first of the UNESCO World Art Series "devoted to the rare art

masterpieces of the world." The New York Graphic Society will publish the entire series. The initial work, a huge, handsome book measuring thirteen by nearly nineteen inches, was printed in Italy. It consists of 32 large color plates, a brief introduction, and three half- tone illustrations, two of exterior views of the caves and one of an interior. Thus the volume is primarily a picture book and as such serves as a splendid introduc- tion to Indian painting of the fifth and sixth centuries. The color, when checked with memory, appears to be excellent and superior to any other reproductions of

Ajanta yet made. The selection of pictures in a book of this sort is always open to debate, and I, for one, would have liked a few illustrations with more com-

prehensive views of larger areas and some examples of the earlier paintings which date as far back as the second century B.C. But as a selected group of color

plates intended, as stated, to acquaint a large public with "an art which holds a supreme position in Asian art history," this book admirably fulfills its purpose.

For the art historian this volume brings into sharp focus the great need for substantial monographs on Indian antiquities. Ajanta has fared better than most sites in India in terms of interest and publication. Yet no comprehensive study of these temples has yet ap- peared. Even G. Yazdani's four-volume work1 on Ajanta is concerned primarily with the paintings, spe- cifically with subject matter, and only incidentally with questions of dating. The architecture and sculptures of the temples are almost completely ignored. Further- more, no attempt is made to place any one of these arts in its cultural milieu. This is not meant as a criticism of Yazdani, but as a commentary on the amount of work that still remains to be done before we can arrive at a real understanding of Ajanta's

position in the history of art. The present situation is much as if Chartres were known to us only by splendid publications of the stained glass windows with little or no reference to the architecture, the sculpture, or even to the times of the cathedral.

For the study of many important sites there are only sundry, often inaccurate, pamphlets and guidebooks. The different series of Memoirs published by the vari- ous branches of the Archaeological Survey of India contain much valuable information, but, at best, these volumes provide only basic source materials. What are some of the great monuments to be studied? There

are, for example, the sculptural caves of Badami in the

Deccan, the many temples at nearby Aihole and Pat-

tadakal, the nearly thirty temples of Bhubaneswar in

Orissa, and the equally extensive Khajuraho group in Central India. These are the better known sites. There are hundreds of other individual temples and

temple compounds all over India. Some, like the two

standing temples of Kodumbalur, perhaps the most beautiful of all early Chola monuments in South India, are unknown to most scholars in India as well as in the West. There is, also to mention one other site, the Hindu stone city of Vijayanagar (nine square miles of ruins near Hampi), which was described as one of the most magnificent cities of the world by Portuguese travelers of the sixteenth century.

The UNESCO volume on Ajanta surely will bring the undisputed beauty of at least one phase of Indian art to a large public. Perhaps it will even arouse some scholars to take a new look at the old arts of India.

J. LE ROY DAVIDSON

University of Georgia

I. G. Yazdani, Ajanta, London, 4 parts, I (1930), II (I933), III (1946), IV (1954)-

GEORGE HEARD HAMILTON: The Art and Architec- ture of Russia (The Pelican History of Art), Balti-

more, Penguin Books, 1954- Pp. 320, I80 pIs. $8.50.

It is to the credit of the Pelican History of Art to have included in its series a comprehensive survey of Russian art, a subject which too often is considered as peripheral and exotic. The book under review is a

scholarly and, on the whole, well-documented piece of work. The author has taken advantage of research in the Russian language and he is not, perhaps, to be blamed if his information is not always completely up- to-date. The study of Russian art has progressed con-

siderably since I. E. Grabar's classic work (19o8- 1915), and it is to be regretted that Professor Hamil- ton has been unable to use the new History of Rus- sian Art, published by the Academy of Sciences of the

USSR, of which the first two volumes (1953 and 1954) are now available in this country. Another drawback for which the author cannot be held responsible is that

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294 THE ART BULLETIN

he has not seen and lived with the monuments he is discussing, which unavoidably lends a derivative character to his book.

In a short survey like this one, the main problem is what to omit. The author has chosen to limit himself to the period from the Christianization of Russia to the fall of the Empire, and within this time span to the

major arts of architecture, painting and sculpture. The art of pagan Russia, except for the Greek objects found in the Black Sea region, is certainly of little artistic interest, although, to some extent, it helps to place later developments in their context. More noticeable, in a field where ornament holds such a predominant place, is the omission of the minor arts. But even

among the subjects covered, there are important gaps. The most serious, perhaps, is the exclusion of the illuminated manuscripts, some of which, like the Ostro- mirov Gospels (1056-1057) with their curious imita- tion of enamel effects, the Codex Gertrudensis (I078- 1087), Svyatoslav's Izbornik (1073), the Mstislav Gospels (1103-1117), the Yuriev Gospels (II20- I 128) and others, are deservedly famous, and fill out our knowledge of early Russian painting. Domestic and civic architecture are not sufficiently emphasized, although it may have been worth pointing out, for instance, the grandiose layout of Yaroslav's Kiev, and later that of Vladimir. Something more could have been said about the palace of Bogoliubovo, with its remarkable stone bridge connecting the princely resi- dence with the church, while the fifteenth century palace of Prince Dmitri at Uglich also deserved to be included. The account of Kievan painting is rather thin, while for the northern school one misses the church of St. George at Staraya Ladoga (ca. i i8O) which, after the destruction of Spas-Nereditsa, is the most important surviving monument of Novgorodian painting of the pre-Mongol period, as well as the Spaso- Mirojski monastery at Pskov (middle of the twelfth

century) with its particularly rich iconographic cycle. There are, besides, many inaccuracies in matters of

detail. Here are a few examples taken from the mediaeval period, which is probably of most interest to art historians. The mosaics at St. Michael's at Kiev need not be later than I Io8: Lazarev dates them to the end of the eleventh century. The Pantocrator of St. Sophia, Kiev, is surrounded, not supported, by four archangels. Which is the "early tenth-century church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople"? The earliest piece of Russian painting, that strangely archaic fragment of fresco from the Desyatinnaya church de- picting the two eyes (not just the right eye) and nose of an unknown saint, is hardly "typical of Byzantine art of the second Golden Age." It is highly unlikely that the original Desyatinnaya, which we know to have been built by Greek masters, was a basilica. In its enlarged form it had twenty-five "tops." If the "per- ambulatory" is considered a later addition, the primary kernel is quite typical of the mid-Byzantine cross-in- square plan. The comparison with the five-aisled Nea Ekklesia (which, incidentally, was not dedicated to the Virgin) is therefore more applicable to the enlarged Desyatinnaya or to St. Sophia, rather than to Vladimir's

first masonry church. The princely church of St. Nicholas built by Mstislav (II I13) had five domes, not one. It is not certain that the outer gallery of St. Sophia at Novgorod is a later addition. Its lower story may have been part of the original building. In the main dome of the same church are pictures of

prophets, not apostles, and the Pantocrator, now de-

stroyed, was of the sixteenth century, not of the twelfth century. The fresco of SS. Constantine and Helena is now believed to be of the eleventh, not of the twelfth century. The church of the Annunciation at

Novgorod (I 179) is original to only half its height, so that its gable roof is of no significance. The Ascension in the dome of Spas-Nereditsa may be due to provincial rather than Constantinopolitan influence, but it can

hardly be described as a departure from the mid-

Byzantine scheme. It is not certain that the frescoes at Volotovo were made in 1363, since that year may refer to the earlier stratum of painting discovered in the sanctuary. The presence of direct Western influence at Volotovo is not as obvious today as it was to Ainalov. Are the figure sculptures of St. Dmitri's church at Vladimir really inspired by frescoes? Mschatta is cer-

tainly not of the fifth century. Although minor inaccuracies, of which the above

are a sampling, detract somewhat from the authority of Professor Hamilton's book, it is, on the whole, sound and well written, and, what is more important, it places Russian art in a truer perspective than modern Soviet authors are apt to do, in spite of their undeniably richer information. Free from every kind of partisan- ship, Professor Hamilton is especially successful in pre- senting the development of local Russian tradition with- in the wider context of European art, so that even such

seemingly unattractive topics as Muscovite church archi- tecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are treated with clarity and understanding.

CYRIL MANGO

Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University

HANNS SWARZENSKI, Monuments of Romanesque Art, The Art of Church Treasures in North-Western Europe, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1954. Pp. 102; 238 pls. $25.00.

Dramatic exploitation of reproductions has become a signature of M. Malraux, least inhibited exponent of drastic enlargement of details, startling manipulations of scale and juxtapositions. In the expressiveness and cogency with which selected views, details and com- parisons are presented, Dr. Swarzenski's book recalls something of this effective visual form in comparison with which our ordinary art books suffer from academic pallor. But there similarities cease, for their differences in method and purpose are fundamental; it is, rather, in underlining a point of contrast that the French author comes to mind. M. Malraux's illustrations are imbedded into an overwhelming verbal apparatus. The reproductions become puppets and Les Voix du silence

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