Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/90



, 4to. pp. 600. Paris, imprimerie royale, 1843.

France owes to the enlightened administration of M. Guizot (then Minister of Public Instruction) the formation in 183- of a comité (or commission) for the publication of historical monuments, on a much more liberal and extensive plan than our Record Commission. Under the term historical monuments, not only documents of history, but monuments of art and literature, were included, and it was proposed to publish gradually a complete antiquarian survey of France, with descriptions and delineations of all its monuments of antiquity. At first the whole business was trans- acted by one commission, but subsequently this commission was separated into four or five, according to the different classes of monuments it was intended to publish, purely historical, philosophical, scientific, artistical, &c. This new plan appears not to have worked well, and more recently the number of comités has been reduced to two, that of historical documents, and the Comité des Arts et Monuments. Both these comités have already issued many valuable publications, some of which we shall have other occasions to notice.

The subjects embraced by the Comité des Arts et Monuments had hitherto been less systematically studied than those of the other departments of historical research, and the comité found it necessary to publish short popular treatises on different branches of archæology in the form of instructions for the use of its numerous correspondents. These instructions, at first brief and incomplete, have by degrees grown into learned treatises, such as the profound volume on Christian iconography, which has just been completed by M. Didron, the Secretary of the Comité. This volume is itself only a portion of the subject; a second, on which M. Didron is now employed, will include the iconography of angels and devils; and there will still remain for future labours other scriptural subjects of pictorial representation, with saints, martyrs, &c.

The work now before us contains the history of the artistical representations of the Persons and attributes of the Deity during the middle ages. It is only necessary to know that it appears under the name of M. Didron, to