In Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), Millard Meiss argued that Tuscan society regarded the various calamities of the mid-trecento as divine punishment for its worldly ways, which led to a rejection of what he regarded as the human-centered, naturalistic pictorial style of early trecento art and a revival of the spiritually-centered, abstract style of the previous century. Early criticism notwithstanding (Benjamin Rowland, Jr., The Art Bulletin 34 (1952): 319–22), Meiss’s theory became the paradigm under which a generation of historians worked. However, in the 1970s, challenges to the theory mounted, beginning with Miklós Boskovits (Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del rinascimento, 1370–1400, Florence: Edam, 1975) and Cristina de Benedictis (Pittura senese, 1330–1370, Florence: Salimbeni, 1979), who questioned Meiss’s claim that a change in style occurred at mid-century. In the following decades, another line of thought emerged, one that accepted Meiss’s fundamental observation, but argued that he failed to identify correctly the forces responsible for the transformation in style and what it represented. Rather than stemming from a spiritual crisis, these scholars argued that this change resulted from one factor or another, including a reverence among the younger generation of artists for the “Golden Age” of earlier masters (Giovanni Previtali, Storia dell’arte italiana: Questioni e methodi, Turin: Einaudi, 1979), changing demographics and patterns in patronage (Henk van Os, “The Black Death and Sienese Painting: A Problem of Interpretation," Art History IV (1981): 237–49), or artistically weaker artists repeating aspects of earlier models (Hayden B. J. Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997, 164–191).

In Sienese Painting after the Black Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics, and the New Art Market, Judith B. Steinhoff accepts that such a change did take place and argues that it was due to shifting demographics that set in motion alterations in workshop organization and patronage, which stimulated a style that embraced “continuity and change.” Steinhoff rejects notions that Sienese art of the second half of the trecento is backward-turning, mannered, and artistically weaker than that of the first half of the century, and seeks to replace such characterizations with the term “pluralistic.” Steinhoff states that “a core concern of Sienese artistic culture was to achieve a dynamic balance of both tradition and change. This was particularly the case after the mid-fourteenth century, but it is also evident before then. In part because of this inherently pluralistic goal . . . the Sienese tolerated and even promoted both iconographic and stylistic pluralism” (8).

Steinhoff divides her book into five parts: trecento art history and historiography; patrons and artists: working relationships in transition; transmission and transformation of civic-religious imagery; artistic style: tradition and transformation; and conclusion.

Part 1 introduces the principal issues and provides a succinct and useful review and critical analysis of Meiss’s Black Death theory and historiography.

Part 2 aims to demonstrate how vast changes in demographics altered workshop practice, which accelerated a pre-existing trend toward pluralism in style. Steinhoff relies on statistical and documentary research by economic and social historians to argue that the Black Death reshaped the city’s population, economics, and political organizations, which affected artistic patronage and production and created a new art market:

The new market conditions not only prompted changes in artists’ working arrangements, but may have also contributed to the break with previous norms of stylistic unity that are evident in the more pluralistic works of the period. . . . If these new patrons thought about the meanings carried by specific styles at all, their own hybrid social condition may well have led them to identify more with an idiom that combined Lorenzettian naturalism with Simonesque opulence than with an art that stressed only one set of values or the other. (81)

Steinhoff concentrates on a group of closely related painters working from circa 1348 to 1363, which she regards collectively as a “compagnia,” to examine how new conditions regarding patronage and workshop practice led artists to work collaboratively on the same painting, yet to maintain an individual style, whereas in previous decades such collaboration required allegiance to a single, unified style. The members of the group include Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Niccolò di ser Sozzo, the so-called Master of the Palazzo Venezia Madonna, Lucca di Tommè, Naddo Ceccarelli, Jacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio, Bartolo di Fredi, and the northerner Giovanni da Milano. Steinhoff examines what little documentary evidence survives for workshop relationships and combines it with detailed stylistic analysis of specific works and shared use of punch tools. A central work in her argument is the St. Victor Altarpiece for the Siena Cathedral (c. 1350), a painting by Bulgarini and the Palazzo Venezia Master, which, according to Steinhoff, illustrates how both artists maintained stylistic independence within a single commission.

Part 3 considers civic and religious imagery over the course of the century to argue that it was not merely conservative and repetitive, as Meiss and others would have it, but that

art patronage by the Sienese government reflects a high level of skill in manipulating both political iconography and artistic style that belies any apparent conservatism. Rather than reviving earlier models, the government actively promoted the integration of established iconographic themes and forms with newer schemes. . . . The carefully orchestrated combination of old and new effectively shaped Sienese viewers’ responses to immediate political problems while at the same time contributing to a readily recognizable visual and ideological vocabulary. The longevity of this vocabulary demonstrates, not its conservatism, but its flexibility and vitality. (116)

As in part 1, the bulk of the analysis and argument rests on works by Bulgarini, particularly the St. Victor Altarpiece. In this case, the discussion focuses on the innovative iconography of the nativity scene as the main panel for an altarpiece. Steinhoff also considers the image of the Assumption of the Virgin by Simone Martini and how it eventually became one of the established image types in the city. Steinhoff examines how the two subjects represent parallel developments, artistic innovation as well as the formation of a tradition.

In part 4, Steinhoff builds on the issue of artistic pluralism introduced in part 2, focusing first on Bulgarini’s pre-plague Lucca Polyptych and his Palazzo Pubblico triptych. She argues that Bulgarini’s early, pre-plague style reflects a combination of influences from the Lorenzetti, Martini, and Duccio. She cites the façade frescoes for the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala by the Lorenzetti and Martini as well as the Saint Victor Altarpiece as examples of the Sienese appreciation for plurality of style within a single project. She then turns to his major post-plague panel paintings for the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. She concludes that

. . . Bulgarini’s altarpieces for the Ospedale offered a synthesis of Lorenzettian and Siomnesque pictorial motifs and concepts. . . . Pluralism within a single ensemble was already involved in the Ospedale’s choice of brothers [sic] Simone and the Lorenzetti to paint the frescoes on the church façade in 1335. Furthermore, over the course of the fourteenth century, the synthesis of Siena’s major painting traditions had evolved into a political as well as an artistic language that signaled and reinforced the status of Siena’s most prominent institutions. (208)

Steinhoff’s book is among the most thorough responses to Meiss’s Black Death theory as it applies to Sienese painting. While two aspects of her argument are well known—that the plague disrupted patronage and workshop practice appears in van Os, and that the style combines aspects of tradition and innovation can be found in several studies and summarized in Diana Norman’s Siena, Florence and Padua: Art, Society and Religion, 1280–1400 (vol. 1, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, 177–195)—her analysis of them and their role in shaping what she describes as artistic plurality is new. Steinhoff’s close inspection of individual panels and penetrating analysis of the issues related to style is impressive. In particular, Steinhoff’s analysis of the works of Bulgarini and the circle of artists within the “compagnia” deepens our understanding of this important post-plague group.

The strength of Sienese Painting after the Black Death also points to its weaknesses. Because much of the discussion concentrates on Bulgarini and his circle, it is not clear if we are looking at a broad trend in a major artistic center or simply the way in which this closely working group of artists managed to operate irrespective of the Black Death. The problem is complicated by the fact that Bulgarini worked in one medium, panel painting, and thus represents only one dimension of Sienese painting. Moreover, much of Steinhoff’s analysis focuses on the central panels of altarpieces, the St. Victor Altarpiece in particular, and largely omits predella scenes. Thus, the book focuses on a narrow aspect of one dimension of painting in the city. Given the scope of the book and the closely related nature of the pictorial arts during the trecento, an approach to the media that includes extensive discussion of manuscript, panel, and fresco painting, as well as references to related pictorial arts such as relief carving—as Meiss did so effectively with the work of Orcagna—would be more persuasive. And, like Frederick Antal (Florentine Painting and Its Social Background, London: Kegan Paul, 1947) and Meiss, Steinhoff bases her thesis on a broad characterization of the taste of the gente nuova, the class of newly wealthy who were enriched by redistribution of post-plague resources and emerged as the new art patrons, certain that whatever their tastes, they “must have influenced the style or imagery of the works they purchased” (105). As the earlier attempts have shown, constructing an argument on a characterization of the taste of an entire class of patrons without ample first-person documentation is problematic. This question of patronage raises the core issue of the Black Death problem, which is where to locate the agent of artistic change—in the artists’ studios, among patrons, or in the broader cultural context? While Meiss rooted it deeply in the cultural context with an emphasis on patrons, Steinhoff, attempts to place it both among the patrons and the artists, with the condition that both patronage and workshop practice can be influenced by specific historic events. However, since so little documentation regarding such matters survives, it is unlikely that a definitive answer to the question will be found.

Editorial miscues are rare, save for the color plate section, which could have been eliminated at no expense to the book. The overall quality of color reproductions is poor, and most of the images are out of focus. The captions for plates IV and V are incorrect, and the central image of plate V is inverted left to right.

Sienese Painting after the Black Death fleshes out a hypothesis that has been circulating among trecento scholars into a full-fledged argument. It represents an important contribution to one of the more vexing problems in trecento scholarship and directs much-needed attention to a circle of painters who are overshadowed by artists of the first half of the century. While it lacks the dramatic allure of Meiss’s Hegelian approach and the frank simplicity of Maginnis’s artist-centered claim that Sienese mid-century painters lacked the invention and imagination of their predecessors (a view I happen to share), Steinhoff presents an intricate thesis that concentrates on the relationship between artist and patron and its effect on painting style at a time when their respective communities were experiencing considerable upheaval. With Steinhoff’s book, scholars now have a more fully argued case for the most recent theory regarding trecento painting style in the mid-trecento.