The Renaissance in Europe

Books and Catalogues in Brief DEFACED: THE VISUAL CULTURE OF VIOLENCE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES valentin groebner (trans pamela selwyn) Zone Books 2004 d16.95 $26.00 199 pp. 24 mono illus isbn 1-890951-37-4 UK and US dist. The MIT Press I n Defaced, Valentin Groebner explores a quite specific type of late medieval violence, one which was primarily directed against the human body and which had a symbolic function in relation to the underlying social and political conflicts of the time. His main focus is on the cities of southern Germany, German-speaking Switzerland and northern Italy, but the theoretical implications of Groebner’s work are sufficiently developed to be of more general interest. His approach is that of a kind of pragmatics of the sign, pragmatics being the area of linguistics that deals with the meaning and use of language within its social context and that has had a very fruitful relationship with disciplines outside linguistics, above all philosophy, sociology and anthropology. The text of Defaced is broadly divided into two parts: an inner section of four chapters (chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5), in which the historical material is discussed, and an outer section of three chapters (Introduction, first chapter and Afterword), which are more theoretical. While Groebner’s historical practice has clearly benefited from his theoretical investigations, his powers of abstract exposition are not actually that good, so one really has to turn to the inner four chapters of the book to understand his ideas fully. Here, four separate but linked aspects of violence are explored in close relation to the power struggles that existed within and between late medieval cities: (1) the use of signs, either by municipal authorities to control urban space or by unruly nobles or conspirators from without to challenge that control, (2) the cutting off of adulterous women’s noses to restore private, ultimately male, honour, (3) the connection between the image of the suffering Christ in religious visual art and drama and the religious overtones of municipal executions, and (4) verbal descriptions and images of atrocities in battle. 56 The Art Book In a way that is rather redolent of speech act theory, Groebner binds together in the same concept of the sign the violent gesture, the mark left by that gesture and the act of depiction of the violent gesture and/or its mark. Such signs were ambivalent, partly because there is a genuine ambivalence within the Western, if not perhaps human, psyche about the relationship between violence and power, but also because in a late medieval context the same signs were used by both sides in a conflict, which meant that the power to use them and the meanings they conveyed became sites of conflict in themselves. Groebner uses his impressive mastery of primary sources and secondary material – the book has a very useful set of footnotes – to create subtle micro-lectures of individual signs in specific political or social contexts, while simultaneously making a fascinating contribution to a more general pragmatics of the late medieval sign. It is a pity that the theoretical chapters are not better written. Nevertheless, Defaced is still essential reading for anyone interested in the complexities of late medieval society, politics, religion and culture. guy callan Diaballein (Teatro della Ricerca), Umbria, Italy SURREALIST ART AND THOUGHT IN THE 1930s: ART, POLITICS AND THE PSYCHE steven harris Cambridge University Press 2004 d60.00 $90.00 328 pp. 35 mono illus isbn 0-521-82387-0 I t would be difficult to dispute the admission by Steven Harris that an impressive accumulation of scholarly work on Surrealism already lies on the table, but we might also follow him further in acknowledging the full complexity of the original project that his book seeks to confront. His specific volume 12 issue 1 february 2005 r bpl/aah Cover image for Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s by Steven Harris. Jacqueline Lamba and Andre¤ Breton,Le petit mimetique, 1936. Assemblage, Private Collection. r Succession Andre¤ Breton/ADAGP (Paris)/SODRAC (Montreal) 2002. r Estate ofJacqueline Lamba/ADGAP (Paris)/SODRAC (Montreal) 2002. historical period might be more accurately, if less neatly, limited to 1936, the date of the Ratton Gallery’s Surrealist Object show, which receives considered attention from Harris. After this date, he argues, the Surrealists had to recognise that their radical priority, that of securing revolutionary action rather than simply producing works of art, could no longer be convincingly sustained. In methodological terms, Harris claims to hold ‘a running dialogue’ with those critics associated with the journal, October, notably, Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster and Denis Hollier, who have undertaken to review Surrealism through what he sees as an unduly psychoanalytic perspective that pays too little regard to the historical formation governing the work of the movement. Harris also seeks to affirm the importance that Breton attached to the writing of Hegel. Not only was his position fundamental to understanding Marxist dialectics, but the Hegelian concept of the work of art provided Breton with a model – Books and Catalogues in Brief in opposition to Kantian aesthetics – for valuing the spiritual over the material and the poetic over the prosaic, values embodied in the art of the Romantic era. The disputations between the Communist Party and the Surrealists on the nature of revolutionary cultural practice, and what was soon to be exposed as a fundamentally unbridgeable divide over the issue of Socialist Realism, is familiar to most readers in this area but Harris’ account is distinguishable by its wide range of reference and its attention to historical detail. Throughout this battle of ideas, the Surrealists held strenuously to their founding position, invoking the rallying-cry of Lautréamont, ‘Poetry must be made by all, not by one’. Tristan Tzara went so far as to maintain that poetry was not simply a question of employing a formal vehicle, the content of which could be equally well conveyed in some other form, but that poetry constituted a different and fundamental mode of thinking: ‘poetry-activity of the mind’. Given Harris’ objectives for the book, his means of exposition draw largely on a concerted engagement with textual sources but there are also rewarding intervals of more visually based analysis, for example when discussing imagery by Man Ray and objets by Claude Cahun. One interesting intervention in the Communist Party/Surrealist debate on revolutionary cultural policy is offered by Cahun. She points out that the manual workers were far better fitted than the intellectuals to appreciate the material and adaptive qualities of the invented surrealist object – if only, that is, they were not so diverted from such poetics by the Party ideologues. Another chapter looks at Dal’s multiple image paintings of the 1930s and sets up their conceptual implication as oppositional to the poem-objects of Breton and Lamba, reading this encounter as representing diametrical positions on the question of the priority of the visual or the verbal in the originating processes of spontaneous thought. Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s is inescapably ‘the book of the thesis’, including its 70 pages of densely informational notes. While it is unlikely to ignite fires of disputation, it presents a detailed and dependable account of the concepts, contradictions and attempted resolutions of this moment of intense cultural debate through a coherent narrative and with a clarity of language that will render it a valuable guide to students and a stimulating companion to the specialist. robert radford University of East Anglia THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE margaret l king Laurence King Publishing 2003 d14.95/ $55 384 pp. 40 col/64 mono illus; 5 line illustrations; 5 col/5 mono maps. isbn 1-85669-374-0 US McGraw Hill isbn 0-072836261 T he author who is willing to tackle an overview of the ‘Renaissance’ is a brave man or woman indeed, yet this lavishly produced study on The Renaissance in Europe by Margaret L King is bound to become a regular on reading lists on the period. At d14.95, this is an affordable text and, most importantly, the scholarship underpinning this deceptively populistlooking book is sound, and a credit to King’s ability to synthesise a vast amount of material in such a way that it becomes not only accessible, but also intellectually stimulating. This is in many ways quite a challenging book, as King openly wears her convictions about what constitutes the ‘Renaissance’ on her sleeve. She defines the Renaissance as a ‘phase in Western history of [. . .] tremendous importance’ and she considers the period in terms of a ‘cultural renewal’ with all its concomitant problems. Her Renaissance is a complex cultural movement, and amongst the issues examined are commerce, papal and imperial ambitions, artistic patronage, scientific discovery, aristocratic and popular violence, legal precedents, peasant migrations, famine, plague, invasion and other social factors. These topics are explored in 11 chronologically arranged chapters which take the reader ‘From Roman Republic to Secondo Popolo (c 500 BCE – 1300 CE)’ to ‘The Renaissance and New Worlds (c 1500–c 1700)’. Thematic chapters on such issues as domestic and public life, Humanism and structures of power are woven into the chronological chapters and, in addition, are themselves punctuated through a great many maps, timelines and boxes that highlight eminent figures, places or developments and are richly illustrated. Each chapter is also given its own bibliography that lists both primary and secondary sources as well as a list of Web links. King’s most remarkable volume 12 issue 1 achievement is her sensitive integration of recent methodological and historical approaches to the Renaissance into her text, and she is thus able to introduce her reader to material on gender, power, authority, performance, amongst others, that challenges traditional perceptions of the Renaissance as ‘the discovery of man’. gabriele neher University of Nottingham CONFRONTING IDENTITIES IN GERMAN ART: MYTHS, REACTIONS, REFLECTIONS reinhold heller (ed.) University of Chicago Press 2003 d19.50 $27.50 180 pp. 20 col/80 mono illus isbn 0-935573364 I dentity is without a doubt one of the most important topics in contemporary history. Whether applied to concepts of the nation, race, or gender; whether using objects of cultural production, political events, or personal histories with which to construct a picture of the past, investigations into the meaning and construction of identity have proliferated in all branches of history but nowhere as extensively as in studies of Germany. This is not surprising given Germany’s unusual history. Moreover, many of the iterations of the famous ‘German Question’ addressed national identity in one way or another, asking what constituted German identity at various moments in its history, positing a continuing crisis of identity for the nation that did not unify politically until 1871, failed to establish a successful democracy until after 1945, and instigated two of the worst international military conflicts in human memory. (The sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf framed his important study Democracy in Germany as a series of new versions of the classic German Question.) The drive towards unification, which began over a century before 1871, was largely driven by identity politics: Germanspeaking people began to feel that they ought to be joined together in some sort of political structure rather than a cultural one – a Staatsnation versus a Kulturnation. The nineteenth-century debate centred on the composition of a potential German nation: Klein Deutschland or Gross Deutschland (Small Germany or Large Germany). The latter described the unification of the Austrian and Prussian kingdoms with all the other German- february 2005 r bpl/aah The Art Book 57 Books and Catalogues in Brief speaking lands while the former model excluded Austria. Reinhold Heller’s edited volume, Confronting Identities in German Art: Myths, Reactions, Reflections addresses many of the identity questions raised in Germany from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. Better, it is part of the current trend without being fashionable. Written as a catalogue for a retrospective exhibit of twentieth-century German art at the David and Alfred Smart Museum on the University of Chicago campus between 3 October, 2002 and 5 January, 2003, the book is much more than an exhibition catalogue; it is an important contribution to the serious literature examining German identity in the last century. Heller’s contributing authors use art works as the evidentiary basis for their analyses of several periods between 1800 and 1945. But Confronting Identities does not only ask the conventional questions about German identity, especially national identity: it posits a series of unusual questions, from those about the nature of individual German identity at several points in recent history, to the characteristics of artistic identity, from questions on the conflicting pressures on Germans exerted by societal, political and other external forces, to those on the difference between co-existing identities. Perhaps the most significant question raised by each essay, and the book overall, is ‘What is German in German art?’ – a question equally important to artists working in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors use the salient political events between 1800 and 1945 to structure the narrative. Thus, the chapters are organised around the nineteenth century, late Wilhelmine period, First World War, Weimar Republic, and Third Reich. Each essay is thoughtful and well written and is a valuable part of the whole. Further, the essays introduce a wide variety of important German artists, some of whom are well known outside Germany, but many who are not. Equally important, the book does not present a simplistic view of the relationship between art works and the larger culture, but situates the two in a dialectical relationship to one another, underlining the complex and multiple exchanges between art and the environment in which it is created. By and large, the editor has avoided a typical problem with edited volumes, for these essays hold together quite well with only a couple of lapses, instances in which the theme of identity seems to recede a bit too 58 The Art Book much into the background. The book would also benefit from a concluding chapter that ties the five essays together. Finally, the book succeeds in rising far above the level of exhibition catalogue to make a real scholarly contribution to the literature on German identity and artistic production and deserves a place with other recent publications addressing these subjects. deborah asher barnstone School of Architecture, Washington State University BOTERO: WOMEN fernando botero, introductory essay by carlos fuentes Rizzoli 2003 d55.00 224 pp. 150 col/15 mono illus isbn 0-8478-2555-8 T his is the first book dedicated entirely to Botero’s delight, not just in the female form, but in women for themselves. The more one examines the voluptuous figures, some naked, some undressing, some gussied up to the nines, the more one ceases to think of them as ‘fat ladies’. These are women of character, ironic, rebellious or long-suffering, called into being not by the artist’s direct confrontation with a model but by his interweaving of tradition, experience and invention. The introductory essay by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes takes the quiet, down-to-earth statements of Botero and makes them fly. He flips them into the air where they do backward somersaults, swooping and gesticulating with a Latin American exuberance that is enchanting but at times baffling. I was so caught up by the baroqueness of his language that I stopped relating it to anything outside itself. This is the danger of giving a writer of the quality of Fuentes more than a paragraph or two. He cannot not create a separate universe, parallel to the one he is meant to be casting light on and in some sense overshadowing it, if anything can be said to overshadow the monumental figures (‘manifestations of space’) that populate Botero’s canvases. As they gaze into middle distance, their small unblinking eyes and pursed lips in apparent contradiction to their swelling hips and sensuous bodies, these women draw their inspiration from both Botero’s native Columbia and his extensive knowledge of and love for the work of past artists. volume 12 issue 1 february 2005 r bpl/aah The excellent illustrations, which cannot unfortunately do justice to the scale of the originals (the gently self-parodying endpapers, photographs of Botero in his studio, serve to remind us of the size of his canvases), are interspersed with comments by the artist. For once I found the questions that rose in my mind being answered: his indebtedness to the art of the past (‘One must saturate oneself with everything because what emerges in the end is one’s own self’), the importance of women (‘If women are often my subjects it’s because they have been one of the main subjects of painting for centuries’), the influence of his upbringing in Medellin (‘When you come from my background you can’t be spoiled by beauty, because you’ve never really seen it’), the lack of interest in individualising his people (‘My figures do not possess human dimensions. I believe in the prototype’). Form (‘exultation of volume’) may be of primary importance, but Botero admits that a picture is only completed the moment the colour is resolved, and this book glows with the soft, delicate harmonies for which he has become renowned. To mention just one example, the huge (6500  4500 ) 1979 pastel, simply entitled Woman F black hair, pale orange cushion, dark brown background and pearly flesh – is delicious! Drawings are also well represented, including four new ones reproduced on translucent vellum, a luxurious touch in a luxurious production. In these pictures of women, it is often the stillness of the peripheral items, such as the cut oranges, the perfectly balanced pear, the slice of melon, which catches and holds the eye. Botero has looked hard and absorbed the lessons of Cotán, Zurbarán, Meléndez, and knows how to exalt humble things. I’m looking forward to ‘Botero: Still Lifes’. sarah drury Freelance writer MASTERPIECES OF THE VATICAN enrico bruschini Edizioni Musei Vaticani/Scala Publishers 2004 d14.95 $24.95 160 pp. 122 col illus isbn 1-85759-270-0 T his picture guide to the Vatican Museums includes edited highlights of what is probably the most impressive collection of classical and Italian Books and Catalogues in Brief Renaissance art works in the world. Selecting just one hundred objects must have been an almost impossible task when the choice includes Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Caravaggio. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings almost squeeze out everything else, though a single tapestry, a Roman mosaic, two Greek vases, and some of the most famous classical marble statues – Laocoön, the Apollo Belvedere and the Belvedere torso – are allowed a place. There is very little about the architecture of the Vatican complex, although Bramante’s spiral staircase and the octagonal sculpture courtyard are included among the masterpieces, and many of the frescoes are explained in terms of the functions of the rooms they decorate. Other areas normally closed to the public, including Raphael’s Loggia and Michelangelo’s Pauline Chapel, are also included as tantalising glimpses behind closed doors. The tour of the Vatican palaces ends with a brief guide to St Peter’s, focusing on work by Michelangelo and Bernini. This guide book does not set out to achieve any new insights, although there is the odd interesting ‘aside’ added in italics in the text (for example, the proposition that the octagonal room of the Golden House of Nero was the model for Cosimo Rosselli’s space in the Last Supper in the Sistine Chapel). The texts that accompany each work tend to be descriptive, though they often include useful information on provenance, technique or restoration, a particularly interesting angle given the amount of work that has been done to the Vatican collections in recent years. Some of the entries are somewhat dependent on tradition while others are a little less than accurate – the inscription under Melozzo da Forli’s library fresco does not record the appointment of Platina as Librarian but Sixtus IV’s patronage of it. The book does what it claims – it is a guide to the most significant works in the Vatican palaces given in the order they are encountered on a visit, and a picture book to be browsed through at home. The high quality of the illustrations, most of them of newly restored masterpieces, is particularly useful. This is one of the first books – and the most reasonably priced – in which so many of them are brought together, following the initial spate of costly books about the restorations. carol m richardson The Open University FACE TO FACE BRITISH SELF-PORTRAITS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY philip vann Sansom & Company 2004 d45 (H) d29.95 (P) 312 pp. 220 col/25 mono illus isbn 01904537-08-1 (h) 1-904537-11-1 (p) T his is an exceptionally fine production even in large paperback format, and anybody interested in British twentieth-century painting really should own it. General writing on British portraiture is an area so impoverished by its wretchedness or non-existence that it usually defeats students seeking enlightenment. The intelligence and excellence of Philip Vann’s combination of text and image represents excellent value for money, and it offers a secure basis for meaningful and fascinating research in the future, from the bottom up. At the heart of Face to Face is the unusual (and I will bet almost unknown) collection of self-portraits by British artists assembled between the later 1950s until the mid-1960s by the late Ruth Borchard, none of which cost more than 21 guineas: quite a feat in itself. Vann discusses over 100 of these works in considerable detail, and, in his catalogue notes, allows Borchard’s association with the artists from whom she sought work to develop, with real warmth, from quoted correspondence. Each guest appearance has greater substance than merely a walk-on part, no matter the cards dealt to them by posterity. And there is more. Borchard’s hot one hundred would always be of enormous interest, but with- volume 12 issue 1 out a decent context these artefacts would lack substance. Vann provides a fine supporting survey of British portraiture since 1900, against and within which Borchard’s collection, and her qualities as a patron and collector in a post-war world, emerge in unusual and highly human relief. Little expense has been spared in the reproduction of British portraits familiar and less well known, ranging from the august to the almostthumbnail, on canvas or letterhead, accompanied by useful catalogue entries from which further research may follow if desired. The hitherto-unusual appearance of all of this material between two covers is a substantial landmark, which should be duly applauded. julian freeman Sussex Downs College GRASPING THE WORLD. THE IDEA OF THE MUSEUM donald preziosi and claire farago (eds) Ashgate 2004 d35.00 $59.95 (P) 804 pp. 68 mono illus isbn 0-7546-0835-2 (p) T his substantial anthology comprises more than 40 texts intended to stimulate debate around the question that the editors Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago pose in the title of their general introduction: ‘What are museums for?’ As they acknowledge themselves, readers British Museum Shop r Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewawdowska, 1988 february 2005 r bpl/aah The Art Book 59 Books and catalogues in brief already familiar with the other collections of essays and articles which have appeared over the last few years might indeed be asking ‘Why yet another book about museums now?’, and their introduction goes on to argue a range of reasons why this particular volume has been compiled. The anthology is organised around six section headings, each section starting with its own introductory essay, which serves to throw up further relevant questions as well as providing a framework for the texts themselves. These sections range, more or less chronologically, over the history of the museum as institution and the body of critical and theoretical approaches that have arisen to frame its study. As the editors point out: Inseparable from a critical understanding of museums are the crises of and challenges to European self-knowledge resulting from a halfmillennium-long global expansion of experience through conquest and commerce. Their sections therefore start the examination of this ‘half-millennium’ with ‘Creating historical effects’ and ‘Instituting evidence’.These range over wide issues such as the narration of fact and fiction, the nature and collection of museum objects, and ‘strategies of time’ [Michel de Certeau, ‘Psychoanalysis and its history’], as well as detailed studies of specific museums and types of collections, for example Giuseppe Olmi’s essay ‘Science-honour-metaphor: Italian cabinets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’. The debate is then opened up to issues of particular contemporary concern, with ethical as well as historical ramifications, as is clearly indicated in the titles of the remaining four sections: ‘Building shared imaginaries/Effacing otherness’, ‘Observing subjects/Disciplining practice’, ‘Secularizing rituals’ and finally ‘Inclusions and exclusions: Representing adequately’. Texts selected for these include many which may already be familiar to the reader, having appeared in other collections, such as Tony Bennett’s ‘The exhibitionary complex’, Craig Clunas’ ‘China in Britain: The imperial collections’ and the work of Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach. Many of the texts will be much less well known, however, and a number have also been specially written for this volume. These, often more recent, essays include Sandra Esslinger’s ‘Performing identity: The museal framing of Nazi ideology’ and Ruth B Phillips, ‘Where is ‘‘Africa’’? Re-viewing art and artifact in the age of globalization’, both dating from 60 The Art Book 2002, and giving a clear indication of the wide scope of the material anthologised here. If there is an omission to be lamented, it is not any particular text, but the lack of a general index, without which the use of this comprehensive volume may well prove limited. The scope of this project is truly impressive, as indicated above, and results, as Preziosi and Farago indicate in their extensive acknowledgements, from the editors’ own teaching as well as participation in many international conferences, debates and symposia. As such, it is aimed at both academics and students, who will be able to follow the editors’ guiding essays to navigate this key area of art historical and cultural studies. veronica davies The Open University PAINTERS OF REALITY. THE LEGACY OF LEONARDO AND CARAVAGGIO IN LOMBARDY andrea bayer (ed.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Yale University Press 2004 d40.00/$60.00 320 pp. 135 col/50 mono illus isbn 0-300-10275-5 P ainters of Reality accompanies an exhibition jointly organised by the Associazione Promozione Iniziative Culturali di Cremona and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and held in Cremona (Museo Civico ‘Ala Ponzone’) and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2004. The evocative title of the exhibition, ‘Painters of Reality’, recalls an exhibition staged over 50 years ago at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, which was curated by Roberto Longhi. In one way or another, each of the essays of the catalogue pays tribute to Longhi’s scholarship, putting in sharp relief the naturalistic strand in Lombard art, which culminated so spectacularly in Caravaggio’s Roman altarpieces at the turn of the sixteenth century. The thread bringing all the various essays in this collection together is that of naturalism; in particular, the thesis advanced is that of the seminal influence of Leonardo da Vinci on the development of Lombard art. Following his move to Milan in 1482, Leonardo’s adherence to the mantra of naturalism in his art inspired generations of Lombard artists. An interest in natur- volume 12 issue 1 february 2005 r bpl/aah alism meant that the maniera, which was such a feature of Roman and courtly art of the sixteenth century, never gained much of a foothold in Lombardy, where the development of painting pursued an alternative course with the emphasis heavily on subject matter and the observation of natural phenomena. Caravaggio and the Bolognese artist Carracci are presented as the greatest exponents of Lombard art, with both artists ultimately transcending the naturalism of Lombard art when confronted with the latest artistic developments in Rome. While a consideration of an ‘evolution’ of painting in the broadly defined region of Lombardy is one of the themes underpinning the essays in this catalogue, the various contributors also examine more particular local variations on the theme of naturalism, which includes a long-overdue engagement with Brescia, Bergamo and Cremona as major centres of artistic production during the Renaissance. Contributions to this lavishly illustrated catalogue range from a critical historiography of the theme of ‘naturalism’ by Bayer, to an investigation into the significance of ‘Caravaggio and Lombardy: A critical account of the artist’s formation’ by Mina Gregori. A particularly fascinating contribution to the catalogue is made by Linda Wolk-Simon who, in her essay on ‘Naturalism in Lombard drawing from Leonardo to Cerano’ engages with the under-studied field of Lombard drawing which she sees as characterised by ‘an abiding interest in ordinary themes culled from everyday life rather than from the lofty reaches of history, mythology, or theology’; Lombard draughtsmen were also, as a rule, less prolific than their Florentine counterparts. The placing of Sofonisba Anguissola of Cremona at the mid-point of the ‘Leonardo-Caravaggio continuum’ assigns a seminal role to Anguissola in the transmission of visual elements in Lombardy and emphasises the key role of Cremona as an artistic centre, a subject examined more closely by Giulio Bora. Andrea Bayer develops the theme of the significance of Brescia and Bergamo as significant artistic centres in the sixteenth century, with Enrico De Pascale looking at the impact of the Council of Trent’s decrees on images on developments in Bergamo and Brescia in the following century. Finally, Martin Kemp contributes an essay on the particular nature of Leonardo’s draughtsmanship, which is Books and Catalogues in Brief particularly concerned with the question of ‘hypernaturalism’ in da Vinci’s work. Taken together, what emerge as key themes of this exhibition are not only an emphasis on ‘reality’ as one of the hallmarks of Lombard painting but also a pronounced emphasis on the autonomy of Lombardy as an artistic region. Given the complexity of the region’s political fortunes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with towns such as Bergamo and Brescia under Venetian rule while Cremona and Milan served quite different overlords, some exploration of politics as an influential factor in the shaping of artistic style might have produced some interesting discussion. The great merit of this exhibition though, undoubtedly, is the prominence afforded to painters from significant local schools of painting: painters such as Moretto, or his gifted pupil, the portraitist Moroni, who are, at their best, superb artists whose critical fortunes were significantly greater in the nineteenth-century and whose reputations had suffered an undeserved decline in the twentieth century. Above all, this exhibition celebrates the diversity of Lombard painting, something that is beautifully captured in the richness of the illustrations. gabriele neher University of Nottingham RAPHAEL IN EARLY MODERN SOURCES VOL. XXX/XXXI john shearman Yale University Press, 2004 (2 vols, published in cooperation with the Römische Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana-Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome) d 80.00 $125.00 1744 pp. 32 mono illus isbn 0-300-09918-5 I n more ways than one, the late John Shearman’s hefty two-volume collection of Raphael in Early Modern Sources is an extraordinary achievement. What Shearman has collated is the very latest in scholarship on the documentary basis of Raphael studies. Following the lead of Vincenzo Golzio’s seminal 1936 study of Raffaello nei documenti, nelle testimonianze dei contemporanei e nella letteratura del suo secolo, Shearman here brings together well over 1000 documents spanning 1483–1602. The documents themselves, many published for the first time, many re-transcribed by Shearman in the course of decades of work on this project, are contextualised in discussion, given extensive bibliographies of their use and thus made as accessible to the scholars as they could be. In fact, accessibility and ease of use are two of the main characteristics of this hefty twovolume set. Unwieldy as a reference work of over 1700 pages may seem, the chronological arrangement of the documents facilitates the use of the resource, as do the indexes. Volume 2 contains three indexes, one a ‘master’ index, which is supplemented by an index of works by Raphael and an Index of Manuscript Sources. Some of the most (in)famous documents discussed are also illustrated, and finally, there is a bibliography that runs to 100 pages. Shearman also provides a concordance between Golzio and his own undertaking, again facilitating use of his study by scholars. Given the scale of the undertaking, frameworks of reference are carefully delineated. The author defines his criteria for the inclusion of a document as ‘inclusive’, and states his interest as ‘not only in how Raphael’s works came about, but also in their subsequent history, whether completion, reception or use’. This means that Shearman not only includes documents he considers autograph, but also documents that, for convenience’s sake, have been classed as ‘forgeries’. In addition, these so-called ‘forgeries’ are afforded a similarly expansive treatment as the documents considered as autograph, as many of the ‘forgeries’ sport as rich a critical history as some of the autograph sources. As Shearman himself states, forgeries, whether deliberately misleading or instances of wishful misinterpretation, are often as informative about scholarly preoccupation at a particular time as are the uses the ‘real’ documents are put to. As such, the bibliographies appended to each of the main sources discussed are more than a list of citations. Rather, the bibliographies of forgeries and autograph documents alike chart a series of critical preoccupations with the work of Raphael over the past half-millennium. Shearman’s last work is simply indispensable to any volume 12 issue 1 scholar interested in Raphael, interested in the history of documents, or interested in aspects of the Renaissance. gabriele neher University of Nottingham DRAWING RELATIONSHIPS IN NORTHERN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART. PATRONAGE AND THEORIES OF INVENTION giancarla periti (ed.), introduction by charles dempsey Ashgate 2004 d55.00 $99.95 252 pp. 44 mono illus isbn 0-7546-0658-9 T his study, skilfully edited by Giancarla Periti, brings together eight essays originally presented at a one-day Jacket illustration for Drawing Relationships in Northern Italian Renaissance Art, edited by Giancarla Periti. Girolamo Raomanino,Christ before Caiaphas (detail) 1519. Fresco. Cremona Cathedral. Photo r CuriaVescovile di Cremona/ Petro Diotti, Cremona february 2005 r bpl/aah The Art Book 61 Books and Catalogues in Brief conference held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome in July 2000, and adds an introduction by Charles Dempsey. As is emphasised in the preface and introduction, the focus of the conference and of the papers here presented is on the Emilia Romagna and Lombardy regions of Italy, regions that fared badly in Vasari’s seminal Lives. One of the problems immediately identified by the author of the Introduction, Charles Dempsey, is the futility of suggesting that the case studies here assembled attempt a clarification of the ‘character’ of the art of the region, as such an agenda surely never existed. What the book excels in, instead, is offering a celebration of a number of case studies that demonstrate just how diverse art practices were in the region under discussion, with the range of styles, approaches to subject matter and ‘type’ of patrons represented. Of the eight essays that form the main body of this collection, one paper (Kokole) deals with Rimini’s Tempio Malatestiano, a much-neglected monument since Stokes’ Stones of Rimini. Kokole here offers a close reading of some iconographical aspects of the Tomb of the Ancestors based on a contemporary poet’s work. Another essay, on Amico Aspertini and the Confraternità del Buon Ges (Marzia Faietti) looks at Bologna, a third study looks at Parma (Mary Vaccaro on Parmigianino’s Camerino for Paoloa Gonzaga). The other essays deal, in turn, with Carpi (Alessandra Sarchi on Alberto Pio da Carpi) and Cesena (Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel on Girolamo Genga’s altarpiece for S. Agostino), and one study, by Carolyn Smyth, considers Pordenone’s ‘Passion’ frescoes for Cremona Cathedral. Finally, an eighth essay (Giovanna Perini) offers a historiographical overview over Emilian Seicento art literature and complements the seven essays that provide case studies of specific works, some of which were commissioned by lay patrons, some were collaborative works, some commissioned by a single prince, and some driven by female patrons. The variety of the works thus presented and examined is encouraging yet, at the same time, there is a feeling of the collection spreading itself too thinly, and of trying to cover too many possibilities. What these essays seem to achieve, taken together, is a multi-faceted celebration of the art of a region that ultimately challenged the hegemony of Roman, Tuscan and even Venetian painting in the sixteenth century. One of the themes that 62 The Art Book emerges from the book is almost an alternative tradition to the isolated ‘artist-genius’, and one that shows instead artists working imaginatively to a close brief given to them by their patron(s). This book suffers from all the usual problems that a collection of edited conference papers is subject to, yet where this volume stands out is that the eight papers work together in such a way that the volume as a whole is stronger than the sum of its constituent parts. The essays collected are generally of high standard, and the individual papers raise and respond to each other in a fairly dynamic way. The issue of geography, of what it is that makes northern Italian Renaissance art seem to stand apart, here seems less relevant than the questions the book raises about the relationship between artist and patron, and developments in both secular and sacred art. And finally, any book that offers an investigation into the areas neglected by Vasari, and thus often written out of the canon, is of value to the scholar, especially if it comes as handsomely packaged as this one. gabriele neher University of Nottingham THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IMAGERY OF INSPIRATION: METAPHORS OF SEX, SLEEP, AND DREAMS maria ruvoldt Cambridge University Press 2004 d55.00 $85.00 244 pp. 72 mono illus isbn 0-521-82160-6 T he Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, by Maria Ruvoldt, is a subtle and absorbing book. In part, it draws on an older tradition of iconographic studies in art history, but its sophisticated critical readings are clearly informed by more recent theoretical work in semiotics and gender studies. Ruvoldt initially explores the Renaissance, mainly neo-Platonic, discourse concerning creativity, which linked it with melancholy and inspiration in the form of divine furore. She is particularly interested in the metaphors and/or signs connected with these aspects of creativity in the philosophy, literature and visual art of the period. Sleep, dreaming, pregnancy and female beauty as a stimulus to male desire were associated with inspiration and waking, and the male role in procreation volume 12 issue 1 february 2005 r bpl/aah with the creative act itself. There is the potential for ambiguity in these metaphors and/or signs, as they are related to either melancholy or male erotic desire, both of which can, in neo-Platonic terms, lead the soul downwards as well as up. They can also be combined in different ways: binary opposition, as in dreamingwaking or female-male, or be overdetermined, as Ruvoldt argues is the case for the sleeping female nude, a well known and still slightly problematic theme in sixteenth century Venetian and Venetianrelated art. In general, the complex interaction between discourse, metaphor and sign is rather skilfully handled: indeed, one is sometimes reminded of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ work on myth. Although it contains extended passages on philosophy (Ficino in particular) and literature (Boccaccio, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Michelangelo’s poetry), the main focus of the book is on the visual arts, with a number of different media and artists being given sustained treatment. Ruvoldt deals with humanist medals, prints, paintings and drawings, and works by Sperandio, Agostino Veneziano, Jacopo de’Barbari, Lotto, Cariani, Giulio Campagnola, Marcantonio Raimondi and Michelangelo are considered in depth, while other works by and/or ideas from artists such as Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Leonardo and Dürer are alluded to as part of a more general context. A major theme of Ruvoldt’s book is how Renaissance artists came to appropriate a discourse of creativity that was originally meant to apply to philosophers, poets and religious figures. Of course, this was part of the general shift in the social and intellectual status of the visual artist during the Renaissance, but as Ruvoldt points out, dreams are inherently visual, which means that the visual arts were particularly suitable for the superimposition of three different levels of dream: 1) dream as process for visual inspiration of artist, 2) dream as subject of visual redaction of artist’s dream, and 3) dream as seen and experienced by the viewer for him or her to interpret. This complex layering is explored with immense subtlety in the last three chapters of Ruvoldt’s book, two of the chapters dealing with images that actually depict dreams: the socalled Sogno di Raffaello by Marcantonio Raimondi and the Sogno by Michelangelo. The other chapter deals impressively with the dynamics of erotic response and Books and Catalogues in Brief sublimation in the sleeping female nude. Dreams as inspiration and subject matter in an artist’s work imply a certain abdication of fully conscious intentionality, something which opens out the interpretation of the work to a much more creative and multi-layered viewer response. Ruvoldt is aware of this, and her readings often remind one of Roland Barthes’ ‘distinction between the scriptible and the lisible’. (See R Barthes, S/Z, Paris, Seuil, 1970, pp. 9–20.) The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration would seem to be Maria Ruvoldt’s first book: its excellence can only make one look forward to her second. guy callan Diaballein (Teatro della Ricerca), Umbria, Italy PHILIP II OF SPAIN: PATRON OF THE ARTS rosemarie mulcahy Four Courts Press 2004 d60.00 $65.00 h65.00 350 pp. 16 col/141 mono illus isbn 1-85182-773-023 W hen first I started my research into Spanish art (in 1972) I was told that no one studied Spain. On asking for the reason I was told that a whole generation (or more) of scholars would not study Spain because of the fascist dictatorship there. Whilst this might tell us something about English academic mores of the 1970s and earlier, it does also help to explain why this book has been such a long time coming. The publishers proudly assert that it is the first book on its subject to have been published in English and indeed it is. However, the title is slightly misleading. One expects to be reading a magisterial monograph on all aspects of Philip II’s art patronage, which would take us through his activities in chronological order. Instead, it is something of a miscellany made up of a number of essays that are quite capable of autonomous existence beyond the pages of this book (and most were essays in Spanish periodicals). However, Rosemarie Mulcahy is fully aware of this. In her introduction she describes each essay as ‘complete in itself ’. She then goes on to say that they ‘are intended cumulatively to construct an image of the artistic world of Philip II’. So is it about Philip II himself as a patron of the arts or not? Is this the hand of an editor wishing to maximise sales by making the connection with Philip II; a king still controversial in English-speaking circles as the Spider King of the Escorial weaving his cunning plots to unseat Good Queen Bess and those jolly chaps in tights and doublets? Yet there is revision in the air, as Henry Kamen’s ground-stirring work Philip of Spain (1997) demonstrated with its humanisation of the ebony arachnid despot. Thus another book, the first of its type no less, which deals with another side of Philip might well appeal to the book-reading public anxious to know the truth in the wake of Kamen’s work. Publishing logic it may be but not the best compliment to Mulcahy’s book (although I would recommend Kamen’s book). This is not to say that Mulcahy’s book does not stand on its own: it certainly does but, like many a first-born, it’s a bit wobbly on its pins in places. The book is divided into five sections, three of which consist of a single entry (numbers 1, 3 and 5) and the other two (numbers 2 and 4) have three entries each. The somewhat piecemeal nature of the work, referred to above, does lead to a certain amount of repetition, which is rather tiresome. Thus dates and chronologies are often repeated within pages of each other as one essay ends and the next begins. Nonetheless, each chapter/essay is never less than interesting, sometimes most illuminating, and in one particular case an obvious labour of love. The first section, which is entitled ‘Philip II of Spain, patron of the arts’, can only act as an introduction to such an enormous subject, as it is barely 48 pages in length. Not unexpectedly, the greater part of it concerns the Escorial, so that volume 12 issue 1 other areas get rather short shrift. Thus El Greco takes his place as one of the many artists who were drawn to the Escorial but the reasons why he did not receive lasting patronage from the king are very quickly glossed over and the reader is left with little conception of the complexity of the issues involved. Section 2, ‘Religious art and its functions’, is fascinating for its insights into the private and public worlds of art, but was Philip really being a patron when he accepted Francesco I de’ Medici’s gift of Cellini’s Crucified Christ? Once again El Greco seems to merit an aside but no follow up. When discussing Allori’s replica of the Annunziata, which Dona Maria de Aragon had requested for the convent of La Encarnacion, Mulcahy points out that this ‘religious work was aesthetically very different from the paintings by El Greco that were commissioned later by her executors’. The book really comes into its own in the long section devoted to Juan Fernandez de Navarrete, el Mudo. It is this artist who first awakened the author’s interest in Spanish painting and she writes of the artist with clear-sightedness but also with much sympathy. Her observations on how el Mudo painted hands, gestures, and faces are most perceptive and sensitive. Here is a section crying out to become a book in its own right, definitive and a pleasure to read. The last section is an invigorating discussion of court portraiture but, once again, there is a cavil as it refers to the courts of Philip II and Philip III, which seem a little out of place here. The illustrations are functional and clear, but how the book would have been improved if there had also been colour plates of the High Altar of the Escorial. At the end of the introduction Dame Rosemarie writes ‘These essays represent twenty-five years of work-inprogress’. I look forward with keen anticipation to the fruit of the next twenty-five years. ian charnock St George’s, Ascot and Guildford High School february 2005 r bpl/aah The Art Book 63