Albion's Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550-1660.

Lucy Gent, ed. Albion's Classicim: the Visual Arts in Britain, 1550-1660. (Studies in British Art, 2.) New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. 200 b/w illus. + viii + 470 pp. $65. ISBN: 0-300-06381-4.

Albion's Classicism is the second volume in a series published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Yale Center for British Art. It evolved out of a 1993 conference at the Warburg Institute that brought together British and American scholars from a variety of disciplines. In sixteen essays based on conference papers, plus an introduction and afterward, these scholars examine classical clements in particular works of art, the written and visual sources available to British artists and patrons, and local conditions and requirements that determined how classical forms and ideas were used. Individual contributors include: art and architecture historians Ellen Chirelstein, Susan Foister, Alice Friedman, Paula Henderson, Deborah Howard, Maurice Howard, and Gloria Kury; English professors Michael Bath, Catherine Belsey, Lucy Gent, Thomas Greene, Lisa Jardine, and Sasha Roberts; and social historians Margaret Aston and Sir Keith Thomas.

No single methodology or critical stance links the essays, and no common definition of classicism or attitude toward classical style emerges from them. Conventional iconographical analyses stand side by side with postmodern critical studies. There is general agreement that classicism involves hierarchical organization, but individual opinions about that organization differ. Some contributors regard classical style as an essentially neutral system often associated historically with social elites. Others view it as the embodiment of privilege.

The most innovative and valuable aspect of the book is its emphasis on what the British brought to British classicism. By focusing on "processes of adaptation," in one contributor's phrase, the authors of Albion's Classicism seek to validate British Renaissance art and to counter inappropriate comparison with Italian works (349). Traditional scholarship, it is argued, relies too heavily on hindsight in assessing Renaissance art. That "pure" Renaissance/classical style discussed in survey books is largely the creation of scholars, imposed on a past that would not have accepted its authority. Even within Italy the Renaissance was multi-centered, diverse, and experimental; and no blame should be attached to an artist or architect for failing to see which experiments would turn out to be decisive. Netherlandish and French sources vied with Italian ones for the British artist's or patron's approval, and local conditions and requirements had enormous influence on aesthetic choices in Britain as elsewhere.

The allure of classical style had to be weighed against a whole array of personal and group beliefs and practices. The Gothic was associated with social structures and a national identity that few wished to abandon. A desire for continuity resulted in the elision of medieval and classical motifs even in contexts where classical allusion conferred prestige. That same striving for legitimacy and status which led a gentleman (especially a newcomer) to put classical decoration on the entrance to his country house could lead him to put a coat of arms and other heraldic references there as well.

Traditional ways of seeing as well as traditional attitudes affected the ways in which classical motifs were used. British viewers were accustomed to read across the surfaces of buildings and pictures. This habit explains the taste for walls and entrances encrusted with decoration and the attention given to the gallery where social elites gathered in bad weather. The fixed perspective and the emphasis on underlying structure required in Florentine art did not immediately appeal to the British.

The Reformation, of course, also helped to mold British interpretations of classicism, although there was no uniform Protestant classical style or iconography. Protestants, especially Puritans, were naturally less attached to the Gothic in religious architecture; and Protestant fears of paganism and idolatry restricted use of mythological and overly self-aggrandizing references in portraits, except in court circles.

Variety of response matched richness of source material in the British Renaissance; and the authors of Albion's Classicism have performed an important service in rescuing the complexity of that period and that place.

JUDITH M. AKEHURST Minneapolis, Minnesota