What’s Bred in the Bone, by Robertson Davies (Viking, 436 pp., $17.95)
If you were to presume, as this elegant, melodious novel does, that the modern painter could perfectly (and radiantly) assimilate some antique style —in theme, technique, paraphernalia, in spiritual outlook even—then you engage also a most unmanageable question: i.e., is this Raphael or van Eyck of 1986 mere splendid hoax or powerful art? Francis Cornish, the protagonist here, has done just that. Critics judge his work, painted with magisterial élan, to be both Gothic in extraction and magnificent. Cornish doesn’t disabuse them. The matter is crucial to all awareness of art and deserves regard.
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