Kaufmann acknowledges as one of his central aims to introduce Franz Anton Maulbertsch to art historians outside Central Europe, who are, he says, not yet sufficiently aware of his outstanding achievements. A good idea, he thinks, to make him palatable to newcomers is to disperse the aura of 'strangeness' surrounding him - "The present book", he says, "aims to make the apparently strange seem familiar." To me, this seems all wrong - who, e.g., would try to proselytize for Goya by playing down the sheer extravagance of his imagaination and trying, so to speak, to domesticate him? And do believe me, Maulbertsch, in his most visionary moments is in his own peculiar way not far behind Goya, and thus the very thing to do to make his claims to the pantheon of art history truly convincing would be to celebrate Maulbertsch's strangeness and exuberant fancy.

Kaufmann, sadly, has for most of the time a quite different aganda. He focuses on the way Maulbertsch was influenced by enlightenment, the rise of neo-classicism and all the concomitant theories; that is, he 'familiarizes' him by linking him to certain intellectual debates of his times. But unfortunately these were influences that on the whole forced Maulbertsch to rein in his more imaginative sallies und in many cases - especially in large-scale fresco painting - diluted his artistic capabilities. How a great painter of the 2nd half of the 18th century, trained in the school of late baroque extravaganza, tried to come to terms with the emerging ideas of clarity, sobriety and dignity, makes of course a fascinating story, but as the focus of a beginner's guide to Maulbertsch is does not seem particularly suitable. Art historians conversant with the wider horizons of Central European painting might even point out that some of Maulbertsch's colleagues achieved better results when trying to strike a compromise between Baroque training and the neo-classicist demands of the day. The merits of later Maulbertsch have always been a point of some controversy; his dazzling virtuosity in the early stages of his career has never been seriously doubted by anyone looking into his oeuvre.

To what extent Maulbertsch got involved in late 18th century debates is, by the way, a terrain well trodden over in German language Maulbertsch scholarship. Perhaps it is not surprising that so many scholars have set their hearts on it and that Mr Kaufmann has been eager to join their rank: You can fill quite a lot of pages by going lovingly over all those contemporary theories, programmes and reviews that make up the 'discourse' sourrounding late Maulbertsch (or should I rather say the 'discursive haze'?), whereas it is much harder to untangle the various threads that have gone into creating the unique stylistic bravura of Maulbertsch in his heyday.

Still, you might fo course argue that it is good thing to bring Maulbertsch to the notice of the English speaking world at all; and after all there are lots of illustrations (covering all stages of Maulbertsch's career), some of which might indeed make the reader fall in love with Maulbertsch's strangeness in spite of Mr Kaufmann's attempt to tame and civilize him. Regrettably, quite a few of the pictures are of such staggeringly poor quality that it is hard to understand how they could possibly be compatible with the standards to be expected from a unviersity press; pictures that look as if they had been printed in some East European backwater town of the 1960s.