ENGLISH MEDIEVAL SCULPTURE
By Arthur Gardner
Of all kinds of art books, that which gets least credit in proportion to labour involved is the class in which Mr. Arthur Gardner's Handbook to English Medieval Sculpture (Cambridge University Press, Ms.) belongs. For, to the.making of a good handbook go infinite patience in the collecting of material, great discretion in the sorting or it, and perfect elat.ity of method in the final disposition. while, na the other hand, the book offers no opportunity 1nr 1 he impressive display of ingenious but ill-founded theory with which less austere publications can so easily be pulled up. In these difficult eonditions Mr. Gardner has produced a work which admirably fulfils its purpose. The book is based on Illediczyll Figure Sculpture in kuglotol, nuw Ill of Hsint, in-Which: the author collaborated with. the late Professor E. S. Prior, but it has Java in many. ways altered and brought up to date. As it stands it provides' an astonishing amount of material for its very moderate price. The illustrations are not all large but I hey are nearly five hundred in number, and, as they are brilliantly printed, they provide an ideal anthology. The .text is strictly practical r it establishes chronology and gives what description is necessary to the -complete understanding of the plat es.• might almost be complained that the stylistic analyses arc too economical, but this is nearly a virtue in 'a linildbook of this kind. Of the production it might he said that a larger format would have avoided the too great breaking-up of 111(1 text by the illustrations which often occupy all but 'three lineS of the page. There is a slightly indiscriminate use of inverted commas below 11w plates, and plate '447 is'wrongly labelled 446. We should ourselves have preferred the cloth cover plain.
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