[In the following review, Beale praises the text and presentation of Clark's Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance.]

This scholarly study [Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance] provides another valuable insight. Always clear and to the point, Sir Kenneth, former director of the National Gallery, London, and an authority on the Italian Renaissance, shows us that Rembrandt had access to Italian Renaissance sources that scholars in the field have tended to overlook. It would be hard to imagine a more felicitous combination of illustration and text. Throughout, the visual fact asserts itself along with the well-chosen phrase—and one has the feeling that Sir Kenneth's ardor for scholarship and for Rembrandt's art has not prevented him from combining both in an attractive form. Except for a so-so frontispiece in color, the illustrations are in black-and-white; and while the binding of the book is an ordinary red cloth we are treated inside to good printing on varnished paper. This is not the usual ‘picture book’ of art. It is decisively designed to introduce an unfamiliar aspect of art and it expands with great finesse upon the process of artistic assimilation in the mind of the artist.