IN WAR PEOPLE get killed and things get damaged and destroyed. [...] A particular element in many of these conflicts is the deliberate destruction of cultural property belonging to the victims of war. This is often regarded as a consequence rather than a symptom of war, but it is a symptom that military theorists have argued is bad practice for over two thousand years: allow the heritage of your enemy to be destroyed, or worse, allow your own army to destroy it, and you create the first reason for the next conflict. Yet the specific targeting of the tangible evidence of communities – churches, mosques, cemeteries and other significant buildings – has increasingly become a significant aspect of much warfare.
AS WELL AS providing a feast for the eyes, the best exhibitions break new ground and challenge the visitor. Adriaen van de Velde: Dutch Master of Landscape, seen by this reviewer at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (closed 25th September), and currently on view at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (to 15th January 2017), does all three with admirable aplomb. The curators, Bart Cornelis and Marijn Schapelhouman, who also wrote the excellent catalogue, succeed in casting new light on the career and work of a somewhat forgotten master.1
WHEN EDWARD MORRIS, who died on 29th May, retired in 1999 after more than thirty years at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, he was the doyen of regional gallery curators, widely admired for his rigorous professionalism and deeply appreciated for his kindness to colleagues.
PAOLA BAROCCHI died on 25th May 2016 in Florence in the house near Ponte S. Trinita in which she was born on 2nd April 1927. A pupil of Mario Salmi, she graduated in 1949 with a dissertation on Rosso Fiorentino, who at that time was a neglected artist. Published as a book the following year, it criticised the concept of Mannerism and the classification of Rosso as a Mannerist. Barocchi’s distaste for labels, accepted classifications and a priori categories, as noticed by Frederick Hartt in his review (Art Bulletin, March 1952), was a distinctive feature of her intellectual approach, which, coupled with her indefatigable industry, led to innovative work in art criticism.