Painterly Enlightenment

In 1995 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann published an illuminating (and lavishly illustrated) study of the art and culture of Central Europe entitled Court, Cloister and City (rev. ante, cxiii [1998], 996–7). Among the lesser known artists he disinterred on that occasion was Franz Anton Maulbertsch, to whom he returns in this short but closely argued book. It started out as the Rand Lectures at the University of North Carolina, which helps to explain the agreeably discursive tone of the enterprise. Some large claims are made for his subject, whom he describes as a ‘great master’, responsible for ‘many luminously beautiful paintings’. Although he can cite in his support no less a figure than Oskar Kokoschka, the evidence provided by the thirty-six colour plates and fifty-two black-and-white figures is less than overwhelming. Part of the problem may be the variable quality of the former, which ranges from excellent to muddy. De

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