Volume 28, Number 5 · April 2, 1981
Collaborators
By H.W. Janson
Donatello and Michelozzo: An Artistic Partnership and Its Patrons in the Early Renaissance Philadelphia)
by R. W. Lightbown
Harvey Miller Publishers, London (U.S. distributor: Heyden & Son Ltd.,, 2 volumes, 452, 145 illustrations pp., $90.00
There is no acknowledged rank order among the several arts that are the art historian's domain. This equality, nevertheless, is belied in practice, if not in theory, at least by those—a clear majority within the profession—dealing with post-medieval art. Take any group of them chosen at random: seven out of ten are likely to be historians of painting, two of architecture, and one of sculpture. The most astonishing thing about this maldistribution of interest and manpower is not that it exists but that it should be accepted as a matter of course to such an extent that hardly anybody even talks about it. The primacy of painting can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth, it was firmly established. Wöfflin's Principles of Art History, now fortunately forgotten but for many years a beginner's bible in the field, is symptomatic: of a total of 113 illustrations, 94 are devoted to painting and the graphic arts, 12 to architecture, and 7 to sculpture; and the text is similarly proportioned.
Review, 2934 words
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