In Raphael Petrucci, who died early in 1917, the world has lost one of the
ablest and most devoted students and interpreters of the art of the Far
East. He was only forty-five years of age, in the prime of his powers,
brimming with energy and full of enterprises that promised richly. Though
he did not die in the field, he was none the less a victim of the war. He
had exhausted himself by his labours with the Belgian ambulances at La
Panne, for Belgium was his adopted country. He had a house in Brussels,
filled with a collection of Chinese and Japanese art, and a little cottage
near the coast just over the borders of Holland. He came of the great and
ancient Sienese family of the Petrucci, but his mother was French and he
spent much of his earlier life in Paris, before settling in Brussels and
marrying one of the daughters of the painter Verwee. He had also spent
some time in Russia. In Brussels he was attached to the Institut Solvay.
He was a man of science, a student of and writer on sociology and biology.
He lectured on art and had a knowledge of the art of the world which few
men in Europe rivalled. He wrote a philosophic novel, _La Porte de l'Amour
et de la Mort_, which has run through several editions. He published a
book on Michelangelo's poetry. At the same time he was a scientific
engineer. When war broke out Petrucci was on his way home from Italy,
where he had been engaged, I believe, on some large engineering project
and he only got out of Switzerland into France by the last train which
left Basle. He came to England for a time, looking after a number of
Belgian refugees, including some very distinguished artists. At the end of
1914 he was engaged by the India office to do some valuable work in London
on the collection of Chinese and Tibetan paintings brought back from
Tun-huang by Sir Aurel Stein. He then worked at La Panne for the Belgian
army hospital (he had had a medical training in his youth), went to
Provence for a rest, fell ill and died in Paris after an operation.
Raphael Petrucci was a man who seemed to reincarnate the boundless
curiosity and the various ability of the men of the Italian Renaissance.
But for some years before his death he had concentrated his powers chiefly
on the study of Oriental art, of the Chinese language, and of Buddhist
iconography. His most important work in this line is _La Philosophie de la
Nature dans l'Art d'Extreme Orient_, a sumptuously printed folio published
by Laurens in Paris, with illustrations by the _Kokka_ Company, and
written with as much charm as insight. Petrucci's knowledge of Chinese
gave him an authority in interpreting Chinese art which writers on the
subject have rarely combined with so much understanding of art in
general, though as a connoisseur he was sometimes over-sanguine. His
translation from a classic of Chinese art-criticism, originally published
in a learned magazine, has lately appeared in book form. With his friend,
Professor Chavannes, whose death, also in the prime of life, we have had
to deplore still more recently, Petrucci edited the first volume of the
splendid series _Ars Asiatica_. The present work, intended for the general
reader and lover of art, illustrates his gift for luminous condensation
and the happy treatment of a large theme.
A man of winning manners, a most generous and loyal friend, Petrucci wore
his manifold learning lightly; with immense energy and force of character,
he was simple and warm-hearted and interested in the small things as well
as the great things of life.