40 C O N T E X T 9 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5 typography, architecture and other matters than any other comparable theme in modern times. Quinlan cites a figure of 70,000 monuments in the UK alone, of which the majority must be connected to listed or scheduled buildings and/or stand within conservation areas. Many memorials are listed in their own right, or ought to be. The figure of 70,000 seems conservative, remembering also cemeteries and churchyards with their numerous headstones, as well as the huge number of stained-glass windows, inscribed tablets and other works of art within church walls bearing the names of the war dead. The book takes up the story with the Napoleonic wars and brings us through to the present day. These have been the years of imperial powers and nation states waging frequent and ever bigger wars, often with scope for the killing of civilians.Wars in the remoter past appear gallant and modest by comparison with killing on the modern scale. In the past, it was victory and conquest that were celebrated in stone and bronze. Trends since about 1920, however, are for the memorials to focus not on actual victory but on the suffering and deaths that are represented as the price of freedom. Generals and their armies may still be in evidence but civilians, including children and even animals, are also now depicted on war memorials. Quinlan’s research evidently relied on the numerous websites that now exist round the world. He includes foreign or Commonwealth monuments on British soil, and the many UK and Allied monuments that are found in France, Belgium and elsewhere. Among the many compelling themes is that of the destruction of the enemy’s former monuments in the wake of conquest, a practice adopted from time to time by both German and British armies. Conservationists, however, will not overlook the references to preservation, cleaning (twice a month in the case of the Whitehall Cenotaph) and refurbishment. An inscription on the Imperial War Graves Commission’s Bayeux Monument, designed by Philip Hepworth (1955), reads: ‘We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land.’ The entries on Bayeux and other Normandy monuments are typical of the thoroughness of Quinlan’s methods. Finally, the book and its index make valuable contributions to the history of architecture and sculpture from Nash, Flaxman andWestmacott up to the present. It contains 54 pages of biography of male and female practitioners. Philip Jackson, we learn, has been responsible not only for the Gurkha Monument (1997) but also for monuments toWallenberg (London’s Great West End Synagogue, also 1997) and to anti-war protestors (Struggle for Peace and Freedom, Manchester Peace Garden, 1986). GrahamTite, conservation officer, Sevenoaks District Council The book marked the 40th anniversary exhibition in the Centre for Palladian Studies at the Palazzo Barbaran de Porto, Vicenza, but was distributed in the UK only last year. As is customary these days, major essays accompany catalogues of exhibitions, and these are of significant interest. The exhibits are also extremely thoroughly documented, many as miniature essays in themselves. The literature on Palladio is vast but infrequently covers his effect on northern European architectural thinking. Here the contributors concentrate on key figures and moments, tracing changes in the way Palladio’s manuscript and completed buildings were perceived. They follow the movement of patrons’ architectural drawings and books that led to increasingly close study of his sources in, for example, Renaissance editions of Vitruvius and Roman antiquities. Quattro Libri, published in 1570, was clearly written and concise, with text and illustrations interacting closely. This provided other architects and their patrons with easy access to the architecture of antiquity and the first principles that could be applied to modern civic and residential buildings (particularly to new, more comfortable town and country houses then in demand). This was conquest by appreciation, not by imposition, to the point where it could be argued that Palladio became naturalised in England. Howard Burns’ introductory essay examines the foundation of this new architecture of the north (of Europe), although the real history of a new style for the region would be distorted if written exclusively in terms of a series of national chapters. Jorgen Bracker examines the circulation of Palladianism in Germany; Christof Thoenes writes a fascinating piece entitled ‘Encounter in Vicenza: glances at Palladio in Goethe’s Italian Journey’; while Konrad Ottenbeym contributes ‘Classicism in the Northern Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century’. Interesting though these are (for a domestic readership), Christy Anderson’s ‘Palladio in England: the dominance of the classical in a foreign land’ and ‘Travellers in Search of Palladio’ by Kurt W Foster (primarily focusing on the Grand Tour) will be of particular interest. The book is in large format and well illustrated, and with a very extensive bibliography. Bob Kindred OBE Fellow travellers Palladio and Northern Europe: books, travellers, architects Beltramini, Burns, Foster, Oechslin and Thoenes, Skira Press, Milan, 1999 (English edition 2004), paperback, 240x280mm, 298pp, 257 b&w and 22 colour illustrations, ISBN 88 8118 524 5, £24.95 Why did a man who worked in one region, possibly always and only speaking in the local dialect, not only have a decisive influence on new architecture between the 17th and 18th centuries but also be important for 18th and 19th century classicism and neo-classicism, and for Le Corbusier and the modern movement? A mighty influence through both his architecture and his writings, that man was the great Vicentine, Andrea Palladio. This book was first published in Italy in 1999 to celebrate one of the main constitutive elements of European cultural identity, imitated throughout predominantly protestant northern Europe, and valued as much for ethical and civil values as for artistic ones.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=