Celina Fox

Comprehensive, enlightening (ha!) and well-conceived, this book covers the relationship between the mechanical and "fine" arts from the late middle ages to the sunset of the industrial revolution. It paints a picture of a much more unified world-view than might be seen through the lens of today's "Two Cultures" attitudes, and points out that the divergence between men of letters and manufacturers is a fairly recent occurrence. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with engravings, portraits, mechanical designs and other relevant images, which give some strength to the aesthetic arguments being made. In short, a masterwork; the only shortcoming is that the work limits itself to description and does not venture to suggest reasons for the trends it records. This is a minor failing in an academic book, and leaves the reader with the pleasant task of trying to makes sense of a few hundred years of more-or-less polite mechanical culture. Marvellous.… (altro)