Volume 28, Number 10 · June 11, 1981
Fallen Idols
By H.W. Janson
Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900
by Francis Haskell, by Nicholas Penny
Yale University Press, 376, 180 illustrations pp., $45.00
Scholarly books, whatever their merit, tend to be of two kinds: most of them are devoted to subjects that have been dealt with before, while only a few break new intellectual ground. The present volume, astonishingly enough in view of its title, is of the latter sort. The authors, one suspects, must have tried to find a more precise title. They can hardly be blamed if it has eluded them, for the phenomenon they are concerned with does not lend itself to labeling. In fact, they had to go to considerable lengths telling the reader, in the introduction, what their book is not: it is not an attempt to 'study the history of attitudes to ancient art,' which would be tantamount to 'the history of European culture as a whole.' Nor does it embrace the lure, between 1500 and 1900, of classical sculpture in general; for good and sufficient reasons, the authors exclude small-scale works (coins, gems, cameos) and all but a few reliefs.
Review, 2399 words
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