The publisher of The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance describes it as “a landmark survey and analysis of Italian Renaissance architecture by an internationally renowned expert in the field.” The claims are true: the author is a scholar and teacher of respected and possibly unchallenged authority in the field. But the impressive tome is perhaps more a landmark in the sense of being the last monument in a tradition than wholly a volume for the future. Christoph Luitpold Frommel writes from a formidable vantage point, Rome, where he has spent decades in meticulous and groundbreaking research, documented in his vast personal bibliography. He channels into the volume a lifetime of in-depth studies of Italian Renaissance architecture, and presents an account that is stunning in its amassment of fact and fact-based interpretations and proposed solutions. As a personal feat of stringent scholarship and learning, the book is launched as the definitive work on Italian Renaissance architecture between 1418 and 1580. But for all its valuable collection and combination of facts and insights, it seems that it would have achieved a more impactful influence if it had to a greater extent brought into play the innovations and necessary changes occurring in ongoing research into the architecture of Early Modern Italy as situated within its larger cultural arena.

The volume provides a much-awaited bridge between continental and European or Europe-based research on the inner principles and particular dynamics producing the variegated forms of Italian Renaissance edifices. Where scholars previously mostly worked within separate traditions, Frommel’s broad and informed knowledge of the different traditions succeeds in combining their results and foci. Frommel’s work is impressive, stunning, overwhelming, yes, but also non-definitive, limited, and technical in the sense of being less than open to the evidence of the exchanges between architecture and other arts and artists working alongside architects in Early Modern Italy. This avoidance is deliberate. For Frommel does not mince his words; his is a full-frontal attack on the architectural historians who have focused on historical and cultural contexts in their approaches, which, as he writes in the preface, have “tended to push the works themselves into the background” (9). Rather than excusing his traditional and formalistic approach, he goes toe to toe with what he evidently sees as an unhelpful part of recent architectural research and writing on architecture.

The embeddedness of architecture as a major activity and physical presence within other contemporary material and social processes inevitably makes readers expect this condition to be reflected in Frommel’s approach. Yet he never allows social and material processes to outline the larger picture and offer explanations of “how” and “why.” In focusing on the recurrences of abstract forms and structures, Frommel’s narrative expresses his exceptional vision and knowledge, but at the same time does so in a somewhat limiting and insufficiently open way. According to Frommel, “architecture does not narrate,” but he recognizes that it has “a content that extends beyond mere form and function” (9). However, his concept of content seems to relate predominantly to a closed system or typology of forms and less to socio-political and cultural contexts, aspects that would have substantially increased the book’s appeal and relevance to contingent fields of study. Unfortunately, there is little description of how buildings were shaped by or engaged with the sister arts, and the playfulness of architecture as a result of such intellectual engagement undeservedly fades into the background.

The volume is organized chronologically in two parts: the first, entitled “The Fifteenth Century,” contains eight chapters; the second, “The Sixteenh Century,” contains seven. The headings (e.g., “Bramante and Lombardy,” “Bramante and his School,” “Michelangelo [1475–1564],” and “Andrea Palladio [1508–80]”) show that Frommel follows the traditional pattern of “great names,” but not without having geographical areas covered too, as in “The Venetian Early Renaissance,” “Architecture in Northern Italy,” or the odd period (“Late Renaissance”). These partition seem sound and are to some extent unavoidable.

Within this broad framework circa thirty-five architects are given particular attention, constituting a generally sound and comprehensive selection ranging from Filippo Brunelleschi to Andrea Palladio. The same goes for the projects discussed, though one wonders what caused Frommel to include the St Egidio project at Cellere and omit the sanctuary at Bolsena and the architects working under Medicean patronage in such an important site. This perhaps reflects a tendency seen in many architectural surveys to pick the highlights and avoid smaller centers or cities that have now come to be deemed insignifcant and secondary, but which in their time gave an impetus to later developments.

Whereas Bramante receives ample and satisfying treatment in two interchapters, Frommel does not comprehensively discuss the impact of Alberti on contemporary and later architects, assessing lines of influence and debt, even though this is slippery terrain. He instead chooses to supply brief passages on Alberti’s reach, broadening his influence considerably. This is commendable, but the information would have benefitted from a somewhat fuller treatment and in relation to links made in the chapter on Alberti and his contemporaries (31–46). It would perhaps be natural therefore to see “the magnificent portal with its pediment entablature supported by volutes” (31) at Palazzo Vitelleschi, Corneto–Tarquinia (1436–39), in connection with his other experiments with Roman architecture, e.g., the Triumphal Arch of Alfonso at Castel Nuovo, Naples (1453–58). When Frommel establishes connections, they are usually done in a thoughtful and interesting manner, but on rare occasions contradictions arise. The Humanist scribe and geometrician, Francesco del Borgo (San Sepolcro), is elevated to the august role of possibly being Alberti’s “only direct pupil” (46), whereas Bernardo Rosselino emerges both as an independent architect and a builder of Alberti-initiated projects at Pienza or in Rome. How Francesco and Rosselino’s roles fitted in and differed from those of Luca Fancelli, Andrea Mantegna, and Luciano Laurana only further archival research can tell.

The case of Laurana at Urbino is also puzzling: Why did the Duke dismiss Laurana in 1473? Surely not because his architectural solutions were more functional than Alberti’s ideal designs (46), but rather as an indirect result of Alberti’s death. When the latter, who also had emphasized function and utility in buildings, was no longer accessible for consultation, nobody could guide and correct Laurana and be a sufficiently learned advisor to the Duke. Why should Alberti’s keen eye on “functions, technical standards, [and] financial resources,” recognized by Frommel (46), have been less at Urbino?

Given the fact that architecture is a three-dimensional material phenomenon dependent on effects of light and shadow, and is the site of ornamentum, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance is likely to be a disappointing volume to potential buyers due to its “grey” character (compare, for instance, the illustrations in Mark Wilson-Jones’s Principles of Roman Architecture [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000]). When considering the banquets of visual delight offered by Early Modern Italian buildings, be it on their facades or in their lavishly decorated interiors, one is surprised by the publisher’s choice of exclusively black-and-white illustrations (photographs, drawings, and design), which stands in stark contrast to the bright and inviting cover. Black-and-white photographs may perhaps mistakingly be thought of as more “scientific,” or “serious,” but then they should at least be of high quality. Many of the photographs are old and thereby render recently restored or cleaned buildings in a dirty and dilapidated state, a policy that hardly concords with Frommel’s declared didactic aims. Vehicles and people appearing in front of or next to buildings divert attention, creating almost comic effects that cannot have been the intention. I would like to suggest that in the second edition a great many photographs be substituted by more recent ones and be acompanied by a small selection of full-color photographs of buildings and original drawings. The tome’s current “greyness” does an injustice both to the topic and the author’s truly herculean labor.