Key Monuments of the History of Art by H W Janson S visual history 1068 pages

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THE SOMEWHAT immodest title of this volume should be understood less as an exact description of the contents than as an ideal aim which by its very nature can be realized only imperfectly. It may also serve to distinguish the purpose of the present book from that of other visual anthologies, especially those following the pattern of Andre Malraux's "museum without walls." Historic significance, rather than aesthetic appeal to modern sensibility, has been the determining factor in the choice of the works of art-and the photographs-here reproduced. Although the plates do not discourage the leisurely browser, they are intended primarily for a more disciplined and systematic perusal in conjunction with an introductory lecture course or with one of the numerous available one-volume surveys of the history of art. Such books do, of course, have illustrations of their own; but these are likely to be too small in size or number to provide an adequate visual documentation of the text. The lantern slides used in lecture courses are not, as a rule, subject to such limitations; on the other hand, the audience cannot study them at leisure. After remaining on the screen for a minute or two, the slides disappear and few of them are honored by a return engagement in the same course.

Key Monuments is designed to fill this gap by providing a basic stock of large, well-printed reproductions independent of (but, I trust, compatible with) any current interpretation of the history of art. Nevertheless, the selection has not been a completely impersonal, "objective" process; there is no statistical magic by which a Key Monument can be identified without fail. How, then, did I arrive at this particular choice? My starting point was a hypothetical situation: supposing that twenty leading art historians had drawn up independent lists of about i,000 works of art for a volume such as this, on which items would they be likely to agree? The great classics, obviously-monuments such as the Parthenon and its sculpture, Chartres Cathedral, the Sistine Ceiling. By tabulating these, and checking them against the judgment of friends and colleagues, I obtained a "core list" of some 30o Monuments, not all of them necessarily of the same artistic rank, owing to the accidents of preservation, but all equally indispensable to the art historian of today. A hundred years ago-even a few decades ago-this core of acknowledged classics would have looked different in a good many significant ways; it would probably have included some artists now regarded as secondary, such as Thorvaldsen, whereas El Greco and Piero della Francesca would have been absent. These gradual shifts of art historical perspective are subtly but inescapably linked with the changing taste of every period. They affect some works of art more strongly than others, yet no work of art is wholly immune to them-there is no such thing as a perennial classic. On the other hand, the dethroned favorites of yesteryear still hold some important lessons for us, however catastrophic their fall, and I have included a number of them here (e.g., the Apollo Belvedere and the LaocoGroup) because of their tremendous impact on the taste of our forefathers.

But the agreed-upon classics do not, by themselves, constitute the history of art. As peak achievements, they are comparatively few and far between. Were we to disregard the intervening territory we should lose all sense of continuity. In these areas the historian is faced with a vastly greater number of works to choose from, and his preferences will depend on which route he takes in moving from one peak to the next. Thus the chances of agreement among the experts are correspondingly smaller, but since the individual monument does not carry quite the same burden of singularity, it is often possible to substitute one example for another of a similar kind without too painful an adjustment. About one half of my Key Monuments fall into this category. Here I have had to rely on my own judgment to a large extent, yet without a sense of departing very far from what others would have chosen in my stead.

There is still a third group of Monuments, smaller than either of those mentioned above, where the current state of scholarship did not afford me as much guidance as I needed. Some fields of our discipline are less well mapped than others, nor can I claim to read all the maps equally well. In any event, there are a number of plates (perhaps between too and 15o) whose inclusion is in the nature of a minority report. I can only hope that they will not be felt to upset the general balance of emphasis within the volume.

Those especially interested in drawing, the graphic arts, and the applied arts (or decorative arts, or arts of design, whichever term they prefer) may be disappointed to find them largely omitted from these pages. Here I can only plead that I had to make a virtue of necessity. An attempt to illustrate the development of furniture, textiles, and ceramics-to mention only three branches of this vastly ramified subject-along with that of architecture, sculpture, and painting in a book limited to i,000 plates, would have done less than minimal justice to any of them, and the result could have been no more than an arbitrary sampling. I thus had to impose severe limitations on my choice, based not on criteria of technique or function (which can be irrelevant and misleading) but on the individual significance and creative originality of the borderline cases.

Among the many individuals and institutions whose expert advice has aided me in selecting the Monuments and in obtaining the photographs reproduced here, I should like to thank especially the following: the late Alfred Salmony; Alfred H. Barr, Jr.; Peter H. von Blanckenhagen; Gordon Ekholm; Enriqueta Frankfort; Alison Frantz; Robert Goldwater; Rene d'Harnoncourt; John Pope-Hennessy; Henry-Russell Hitchcock; Pal Kelemen ; Clarence Kennedy; Richard Krautheimer; Peter Murray; George E. Mylonas; Ernest Nash; Mutsumi Okada; Robert T. Paine, Jr.; Laurence Sickman; Alexander Soper; Paul Underwood; the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes, University of London; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the German Archeological Institutes in Rome, Athens, and Berlin-Dahlem; the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; and the Zentralinstitut far Kunstgeschichte, Munich. To them, as well as to those whose generosity is acknowledged in the captions of the plates, must go a major share of the credit for whatever good qualities this book has to offer. The shortcomings rest on my own shoulders.

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