The Great Age of Fresco: Giotto to Pontormo with an Introduction
by Millard Meiss Metropolitan Museum of Art, 230 pp., $4.00
(paper) Birnam Wood has come to Dunsinane. What was rooted in
Florence, what was bound to the walls of churches and town
halls, has been freed by newly refined techniques…. Professor
Millard Meiss’s dramatic opening words of the Introduction to
this catalogue reflect the sense of wonder and surprise which
all visitors to this unprecedented exhibition must have
experienced in New York and are now experiencing in London.
These words may also betray something of the suppressed anxiety
that underlies our wonder. Shakespeare does not tell us what
happened to the cut-off branches of Birnam Wood after they had
served their purpose. It is a relief to be told that after this
extraordinary transplant operation at least most of the frescoes
here exhibited will be returned to “the architectural fabric to
which they so intimately belong.” Unfortunately this desirable
solution is not always feasible