The Crimson Bookshelf

THE title of Mr. Laurie's book is singularly appropriate. As an "account of the history of painting, from the point of view of the painter as craftsman, telling what materials he used and how he used them," the book sheds light on the material basis of art, which is seldom illuminated in the schools. Formal education in art, as currently merchanted by the professor, leaves one with the impression that art is an etherial spirit abiding in the empyrean, far from the vulgarities of matter. Mr. Laurie is professor of Chemistry to the Royal Academy of Arts, so it is his especial duty to remind the artist and his public of the limits beyond which painting cannot pass: canvas and pigment, for example. Such a reminder is helpful also for the amateur, who will find much to hold his interest even in the first part of Mr. Laurie's book, which deals with the kind of pigments and media accessible to the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, and to the Middle Ages and ourselves. There is a chapter on fresco painting--just now, with the astonishing revival of that genre, Mr. Laurie's remarks, like the late Gardner Hale's brochure, ought to be useful to earnest Americans, eager to appreciate both the Mexicana and our native products.

It is the latter part of Mr. Laurie's book that is really engrossing. There he deals with the scientific aids--the microscope, X-rays, ultra-violet light--in the attribution of authorship and in the detection of forgeries. Error and fraud are bogeys not always easy to exorcise, and even genuine doubt is disturbing, as Mr. Laurie shows in his discussion of "La Belle Ferronniere," by Leonardo da Vinci. There were two contenders for genuineness, one in the Louvre (the more familiar) and the other in the Hahn collection. A trial took place in New York, but the jury disagreed. Mr. Laurie's own deposition, offered now, after a microscopic examination of both, is that the Louvre picture is unquestionably authentic, while the Hahn, which is also old, is the copy.

Photomicrographs will show up the imitation every time, when a modern work is faked by a forger using the same kind of pigments as the original painter employed. There are even more dodges conceived by the wily to defraud collectors, but Mr. Laurie shows how science defeats them -- even the ancient dodge of mutilation, in order to give the impression of age. He is a good raconteur, obviously full of the delights connected with his profession, and he tells many an interesting story about forgers like Icilio Federigo Ioni of Sienna, who fumed when an expert refused to look at a genuine picture which Ioni brought him--such had Ioni's reputation become. In a rage Ioni shouted: "When I bring him forgeries he buys them as genuine, and when I bring him genuine pictures he calls them forgeries." Mr. Laurie comments dryly: "My sympathies in this case are with Ioni. To have broken his record by offering a genuine picture, to have followed the thorny path of honesty instead of the easy road to forgery, and then to be turned down, was quite intolerable.