This text forms part of the Blackwell Anthologies in Art History, of which collections on Asian art, Early Modernism, and European and American Architecture and Design have already been published. Two titles in the series exploring art in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries are forthcoming; hopefully, an addition on the fourteenth century is also in the works. Cole’s book compiles classic and recent essays on sixteenth-century art and architecture, touching upon issues in painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, and theoretical writings. Some chapters have been translated specifically for this project. The volume compiles twenty-three essays grouped under six rubrics, each of which forms a theme that concerned sixteenth-century Italian artists: Pagan Mysteries, Nature and Artifice, Figures and Bodies, The Artist, Reformations, and Theory and Practice.

Each of the six subdivisions is ushered by its own introduction (for which gray paper, rather than white, is used, helping the reader locate each segment and its docent essay). Cole’s guiding hand is perceived at each ingress as he provides brief synopses of the chapters and the reasons for their importance, something that will be highly useful to the beginning student toward whom the book is aimed. Cole also demonstrates in these pages that some of our most basic suppositions about the period can be misconceptions. This is evident, for instance, in the segment “Nature and Artifice.”

Among the most familiar, if fugitive, ways of characterizing the art of the Italian Renaissance is in terms of its “naturalism.” . . . When we think, though, about what naturalism could have meant before the scientific revolution, or even about what, in the Renaissance, constituted “nature”—we are still, after all, in a world with four elements, where the cosmos centered on the Earth and where “spirits” played an active part in most natural operations—it becomes clear that the very notion of pre-modern naturalistic painting requires examination. (91)

The main strength of this anthology is its collection of brilliant essays that challenge traditional assumptions and yield fresh insights and understandings of the era, which is Cole’s primary objective. An example is Christof Thoenes’s “St. Peter’s as Ruins,” which considers some of the vedute drawings of the site by Maerten van Heemskerck. His images, created as demolition of the old and construction of the new building occurred simultaneously, show the structures almost melding into one, and convincingly suggest that his contemporaries drew no clear distinction between ancient and modern ruins as we would do today. Another excellent paper is Charles Dempsey’s “The Carracci and the Devout Style in Emilia,” which examines regional aesthetic concerns of the period. Whereas Michelangelo’s maniera moderna was quickly becoming canonical throughout Italy, in Bologna the Carracci sought to modernize the local sentimental and affective maniera devota, which some considered more truly pious at the time. Leo Steinberg’s classic article “Michelangelo’s Florentine Pietà: The Missing Leg” will be important for new readers; it ponders likely reasons for the artist’s destruction of Christ’s left leg in the sculpture, finding that the “slung leg” motif increasingly came to be seen in his time as a vulgar symbol of sexual union. Another timeless essay is “Leonardo’s Color and Chiaroscuro” by John Shearman, which investigates the painter’s revolutionary departure from the traditional method of modeling (adding white to pigments to create tints), and discloses how Leonardo’s alternative approach achieved an unprecedented unification of the elements of the canvas by means of light. Shearman also demonstrates how this technological innovation found theoretical exposition in the pages of Leonardo’s notebooks. Pamela M. Jones’s magnificent chapter, “Landscapes and Still Lifes,” is excerpted from her book on the Milanese Archbishop Federico Borromeo. An important reformer of the Church and a resident of Rome from 1586 to 1601, Borromeo probably commissioned Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit of ca. 1598. Although this and other paintings of the period have no overt Christian motifs, Jones demonstrates through Borromeo’s own writings the meditative value humble subjects could have for clerics.

Cole’s choice and grouping of essays are effective and thought-provoking. This is evident, for instance, in the fourth section, entitled “The Artist.” In the introduction to this subdivision, Cole remarks upon the novelty of the artist as celebrity, beginning with individuals such as Michelangelo and Raphael, as art came to be recognized as a product of the imagination, which sparked a new sense of this intellectual creator. The essays here explore the changing shape of three practitioners: architect, printmaker, and goldsmith. Catherine Wilkinson’s “The New Professionalism in the Renaissance” examines the vicissitudes of the architectural profession in the period. Whereas around 1450, Leon Battista Alberti contemplated the architect as a consummate designer capable of planning anything—from farmhouses, to palaces, to complete cities—he said little about training or practice. Over a century later, Philibert Delorme (1510–1570) wrote more concretely about the gentleman architect and his role in the rapidly changing social structure, proposing a self-governing vocation with accepted standards of training and clearly defined responsibilities and privileges. Michael Bury’s “On Some Engravings by Giorgio Ghisi Commonly Called ‘Reproductive’” challenges the notion that this type of imagery was judged as mechanical rather than creative in the period. In “The Historian and the Technique: On the Role of Goldsmithery in Vasari’s Lives,” Marco Collareta examines the cause of the Aretine author’s surprising hostility toward this profession, particularly since it launched the careers of so many Renaissance artists. Collareta discovers that Vasari perceived this not as a formative skill that inspired disegno, but as a traditional artisanal practice that mainly engendered decoration.

Throughout the text, editor and essayists explore fundamental questions that challenge established notions of art in the sixteenth century. In “Raphael’s Tomb,” Tilmann Buddensieg convincingly determines the artist’s original goals in commissioning the restoration of an ancient tabernacle in the Roman Pantheon as his final resting place. Further, he reveals how profoundly misunderstood Raphael’s aims have been in the modern era, addressing the sepulcher’s pernicious restoration of 1911 and the role of the Madonna del Sasso in its niche. Alina Payne demonstrates in “Reclining Bodies: Figural Ornament in Renaissance Architecture” that architectural treatises of the period frequently recommend the use of classicizing figural decoration in buildings. Writers, however, never formulated an explicit theory of ornamentation: the raison d’être, proportions, and symbolism of these additions, and their ideal interaction with columns, pilasters, and pediments, remains elusive. In “Raphael, Angelo Colocci, and the Genesis of the Architectural Orders,” Ingrid D. Rowland studies the importance of antiquarian projects of the cinquecento—including the translation of Vitruvius to the vernacular—in the development of Renaissance artistic theory. She also explains the interconnectedness of projects such as Raphael’s assignment to create an archeological reconstruction of ancient Rome, his role as chief architect of St. Peter’s Basilica, and his Fire in the Borgo fresco at the Vatican.

Instructors will find several practical methods of using Cole’s book. It can serve as a supplement to a survey text on Italian Renaissance art in an introductory level course, where specific issues and problems can be explored more profoundly. The volume can be read, and its chapters discussed and contrasted more successfully, I believe, in a seminar setting, where more mature readers will appreciate its complexities more entirely and where it can be read alone or with additional essays. Further, although the papers in this book are grouped thematically and the seminar student will find great insights into the period by reading them in tandem, they need not be consumed sequentially. For example, the first and last articles in the text—those by Buddensieg and Rowland—coincidentally converge upon issues of Raphael’s antiquarianism and entrepreneurial spirit, which can certainly serve as a springboard for class discussion or student research. Similarly, the contributions by Wilkinson, Rowland, and Payne could be scrutinized jointly in regards to their arguments on architectural theory. Other parallelisms, congruences, and divergences among the essays can be considered in term papers. Outside the classroom, an informed lay reader will also enjoy the volume. A minor caveat is that the number of illustrations in the text has been reduced to a bare minimum, no doubt to keep production and consumer costs down. Even though purchasers will appreciate the savings, they will often need to resort to other texts or the internet to view some of the works of art discussed (several of which are obscure) and to fully understand the issues addressed.

There is little to complain about in this anthology. I wish, however, that a place could have been found somewhere in the book for the discussion of women artists of the period. The importance of Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Properzia de’ Rossi makes their omission puzzling, particularly after their recovery from near oblivion by feminist scholars in the past few decades. It seems to this reader that at least one of the many existing studies on these or other female artists (or issues regarding Renaissance women and art) that challenge the status quo could have found a meaningful place in the pages of this volume. With that said, however, I highly recommend this book.