The Byzantine eye: studies in art and patronage (review)

178 Reviews then told he wished to emulate it and did so (p. 171). Moreover, Jones's use of Palladio's ideas based on R o m e is scarcely evidence of a 'CathoUc' tendency in his own designs. And, if Jones used a 'Roman' double-cube design for Somerset House's Catholic chapel, he also used it for the strenuously Protestant Earl of Pembroke at WUton. Perhaps courtiers were more interested in other facets of the entertainments than their possible religious significance? The highly speculative nature of the book is emphasised by the constant, irritating repetition of phrases such as, 'may have', 'would have', 'it seems to me'. But they are also a comment on it. There is some interesting material along the way but not an argument which can convince. Alison W a U Exeter CoUege Oxford SHORT NOTICES Cormack, R., The Byzantine eye: studies in art and patronage, London, Variorum, 1989; cloth; pp. xii, 348; 64 plates; R. R. P. £40. For most publications in the Variorum Reprints Collected Studies series, the anthologies bring together a thematic sample of an author's work. Robin Cormack's The Byzantine eye is different as it represents virtually the entire corpus of the author's articles published in the past two decades. Robin Cormack entered art history as a graduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London in 1962 and completed there in 1968 his doctoral dissertation entitled Monumental painting and mosaic in Thessaloniki in the ninth century. He has remained at the Courtauld Institute as their specialist in Byzantine art from where he has exercised an enormous amount of influence on a whole generation of art historians working in the Byzantine field. The articles assembled in this volume of collected studies illustrate a fundamental shift in the author's methodological approach. The earliest studies on the monuments of Thessaloniki, Cappadocia and art of the iconoclast period are examples of a direct positivist approach to traditional art history with a focus on style, chronology and the attempt to reconcile provincial and metropolitan stylistic trends. The last three studies attempt a broader perspective in cultural history than the largely empirical approach preoccupied with connoisseurship, provenance and chronology. This change in attitude is also apparent in the valuable additional notes and comments appendaged to the studies, which not only update the bibUography and enter into polemics with later writers but also suggest alternative methodologies which could have been employed. Reviews 179 Robin Cormack's Byzantine eye is a valuable collection of studies drawn from relatively obscure sources. These studies also herald a new direction in Byzantine art history. A. D. Grishin Department of Art History Australian National University Davis, R. H. C, A history of medieval Europe from Constantine to St. Louis, 2nd ed., London, Longman, 1988; paperback; pp. xv, 408; 5 plates, 9 maps; R. R. P. AUS$29.95. The covers of this paperback state that it is a 'Second Edition ... the first fullscale revision of the text since its initial appearance in 1957', in which 'Professor Davis has added important new postscripts to all those chapters which he would now tackle differendy were he writing the book from scratch'. In fact two of the postscripts to chapters in the book are virtually unchanged appendices to the 1970 edition. This leavesfivenew postscripts among seventeen chapters. Otherwise the text of the book is Uttle changed, although references and reading tists have been updated. This is a pity, because a second edition offered an opportunity to fiU in gaps. Most notably, one suspects that this is a history of medieval Europe defined as excluding the British Isles, which enter only infrequently in general or comparative contexts. Spain and eastern Europe don't receive much attention either. A worldwide audience for a textbook such as this deserves better. Also, there is not one sentence reflecting new perspectives on w o m e n in history, even though, within the minimalist policy of change governing the edition, the postscript on demography would have provided a suitable context. In the absence of Longman's long-awaited book on the early Middle Ages, this clear and sensible book will have to...