Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660–1760 by Clare Haynes (review)

92 about ‘‘a Spiritual Mechanism operating upon the Passions.’’ Mr. Starkie’s work ends with an elaborate map of the controversy in all its branches and a fifty-page Bibliography. Anne Barbeau Gardiner John Jay College, CUNY CLARE HAYNES. Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660– 1760. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Pp. xi ⫹ 185. $99.95. At the heart of this study is an interesting paradox: ‘‘In eighteenth-century England . . . the works of art that were most prized were Roman Catholic in subject matter and provenance.’’ Ms. Haynes begins unraveling this paradox by exploring the discomfort of the Anglican Church over questions of religious representation, and its solution in the via media, as it was for so many theological questions. Involved in this compromise were issues of national pride, class status, private and public patronage , and, of course, the continuing ebbs and flows of anti-Catholic agitation; as Ms. Haynes frankly concludes: ‘‘The Reformation involved a negation of Catholicism —Protestantism was inescapably anti-Catholic.’’ The problem then for the British was how to appreciate Catholic (and Italian) art without compromising the belief that Britain was the best country, Anglicanism the best religion , and British connoisseurs, the best artistic judges in the world. It was no easy task. One event in which the paradox played itself out was the Grand Tour, upon which the best and the brightest (or, at least, the wealthiest) embarked to study Italian Catholic art as a means of shaping their social and artistic sensibilities . Insofar as there was a general acceptance that the arts reflected the ‘‘virtue and superiority’’ of great nations, one first had to establish that, despite appearances to the contrary, only Protestantism, because of its licensing of independent judgment, could produce truly taste-full minds. With this principle firmly fixed by such travel writers as Addison and Edward Wright, and such art critics as Jonathan Richardson, the English observer learned to separate aesthetic from theological considerations , and religious images and subjects from superstitious ones. Although Ms. Haynes never draws the analogy, it does seem apropos to suggest the similar situation in literature, where Protestant readers admire Dante, Catholic readers admire Milton, and secular readers, setting aside the superstitions of both, can appreciate the creative imaginings of Christian belief. Raphael was the great stumbling block for Protestant art observers, most especially because ‘‘by the 1720s, the Raphael Cartoons had become almost iconic images to the English, considered close to perfect work by a near perfect artist.’’ Moreover, sets of tapestries based on them had been part of the royal collection since 1540, and by the eighteenth century, copies were everywhere in Britain, along with engravings, paintings , and ephemera: ‘‘the conspicuous presence of the Cartoons was . . . unprecedented .’’ Ms. Haynes is better at setting forth the situation than explaining its negotiation, and she bogs down in the overly rigid division between Protestantism as promoting independent thinking versus monolithic Roman Catholicism —the varieties of Catholic belief in Europe during the period were certainly as broad as Protestant sects, and the rules of belonging to either 93 Church were as strenuously enforced by the conservative end of the spectrum as they were loosened at the other end. She is on more solid ground with her understanding of Anglicanism; having digested the solid work of Gerald R. Cragg, Gordon Rupp, John Spurr, and others, she is fully aware of the importance of the Church in English life during the century her study covers, and astute in noting that Anglican debates on subjects ranging from innate ideas to Raphael’s religion cannot be separated by ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ church attitudes . Raphael’s cartoon, ‘‘Christ’s Charge to St. Peter,’’ for example, would be problematic for the entire spectrum of Protestantism, and all could unite in accepting Richard Blackmore’s wonderfully evasive couplet ‘‘resolving’’ the issue : ‘‘But do not ask what Raphael’s notions were, / His judgement might, his pencil cannot err.’’ In her next chapter, Ms. Haynes turns to English collectors of Italian art and their various justifying arguments. Her sources are Charles Lamotte’s An Essay upon Poetry and Painting (1730), and Horace Walpole’s comments on his father ’s collection (1747), and her conclusion is rather obvious...