Reviews

This edition truly unites the rich collections still dispersed among the Prussian capital's many museums. Eisler, the Robert Lehman professor of Fine Arts at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, loves these works and brings to his discussion of over 700 paintings an extraordinary knowledge of their history and place in the larger history of art. His breezy style entwines historical context with observations on artistic development, and an occasional provocative glibness: Botticelli is called "painter to the parvenu"; d'Oggiono's Christ "suggests an aspiring bearded lady"; Biedermeier is described as "more a state of mind than a style"; "no Westerner ever got more mileage out of a single brushstroke" than Hals. Berlin's collections, gained through astute political and trading maneuvers, place the city among today's richest centers of Western Art, despite great losses in WWII. Acquisitions from the Renaissance to today include premier examples from every major European epoch and, as such, the book can serve as a great teaching museum. The added bonus is Berlin's extensive German collections, which will help introduce Americans to works of painters that are increasingly coming into their own now that the reunification of Germany makes exhibitions of their work practicable: painters like Chodowiecki and Spitzweg, Friedrich and the romantics; lesser-known "Germanic impressionists" like Menzel, Liebl, Truebner, the influential Berlin Secession and Expressionism. This is not all-inclusive. Dix and Kollwitz, to cite two examples, are absent save for their names. Notwithstanding, this volume is worth its formidable weight and price for the text and the fabulous reproductions. (Dec.)