A bound volume of diverse studies does not necessarily constitute a book derived from a coherent idea. This thought arises when reading With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434-1530. Even though the editors, Eckart Marchand and Alison Wright, introduce the publication with an intellectual framework, they fail to unify the articles within that framework. The alleged theme of the book is art patronage in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Tuscany, dominated by the Medici family. The studies that follow, however, address this theme only inconsistently. They are analyses of diverse Italian topics (not even Tuscan is correct, given the preponderance of examples outside of Tuscany in the article by Michelle O’Malley) from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It becomes clear that the theme came as an afterthought. As the editors mention in the introduction, the papers had been presented at a study day held at the Warburg Institute, to allow a group of colleagues to read and discuss their research. The individual articles collected in the volume are, therefore, best read as autonomous studies.

In her article on villa chapels, Amanda Lillie analyzes the mixture of secular and sacred spaces in the semiprivate sphere of the villa. While domestic chapels in urban palaces were a rarity in fifteenth-century Florence, they were regularly part of the contemporary villa complex, in part due to the difficult accessibility of churches in the countryside. The paper includes a helpful categorization of the various degrees of integration of religious spaces into villa complexes, ranging from a villa located beside an existing ecclesiastical institution, to a private chapel integrated into the residential apartments on the upper floor of the building. The study provides the basis for further investigation into the phenomenon of domestic chapels. Notably absent is any discussion of their origins. The integration of chapels into communal palaces, such as the Bargello or the Palazzo Vecchio, constitutes a significant precedent for the Medici Palace in particular, and the regular construction of chapels into rural castle complexes of feudal lords, such as at Poppi, antedate villa chapels by centuries.

The studies by Alison Wright on Pollaiuolo’s Dancing Nudes in the Lanfredini Villa at Arcetri, and by Ruth Rubinstein on Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sculptures of Apollo and Marsyas represent solid, though historiographically familiar iconographic studies. This is particularly notable in Rubinstein’s study, which does not offer really new insights on the topic. The three ancient works representing the myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the collection of Lorenzo il Magnifico, as well as their interpretations, are all well published, and Rubinstein’s contribution amounts to a recount of the critical literature. The final discussion—Lorenzo’s purported reconciliation of the Bacchic aulos and the lyre of Apollo—is based on fragmentary and circumstantial evidence. That Lorenzo sought to balance the sacred and profane through his reference to Apollo and Marsyas remains to be proved.

Wright probes beyond iconography to discuss the selection of the theme by the patrons of the mural, the Lanfredini family, who followed the artistic taste of the Medici family. Her interpretation of the dancing nudes is refreshingly direct, without any overloaded Neoplatonic interpretations: a dance performance alla moresca, exalted into a classicized version by presenting the figures as nudes, to please the viewer, which makes it appropriate for the primary functions of a countryside estate, that of rest from the city and of pleasure.

Eckart Marchand’s study, entitled “The representation of citizens in religious fresco cycles in Tuscany,” is problematic. The title promises to be all-encompassing, yet the author examines merely five scenes from four fresco cycles, located in San Gimignano and in Florence. The focus is on Domenico Ghirlandaio’s work, with Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes in S. Agostino in San Gimignano taken as a comparison. We are not informed why the author chose the specific frescoes, nor the particular time-frame, dating 1464 to 1490. The selection appears arbitrary, and any results are based on a nonrepresentative stock of material. The conclusions themselves are drawn from hypotheses, and yet the language presents the findings as if they were facts, such as: “it is obvious,” or “it would be logical” (116). Indeed, after analyzing two fresco cycles, the author talks about a “pattern” (118) and general tendencies (119), and the editors (one of whom is the author of the article) about a “typology” (13). Such generalizations require a larger body of material than presented in the study. The final conclusion is as old as portrait studies, namely that portraits in fresco cycles reflect and construct the social identity of the individuals portrayed.

The topic of the study by Kate Lowe is fascinating. The author investigates the degree to which nuns were able to choose the appearance of a work of art in their communities, whether related to the style or subject matter of the painting. The study, however, does not live up fully to its aspirations. When Lowe analyzes, for example, the determining factors of choice, she mentions the restriction preventing women from acting on their behalf in legal matters, such as the drafting of contracts. However, she does not document how such a restriction would affect the nuns’ choices. Lowe proceeds to present a list of paintings commissioned for twelve convents in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in Florence. She states that the list makes “no claim they be representative” (134), adding that this would be the subject of a book (150). If the list is not representative, the conclusions can hardly be. The reader has no choice but to wait for the book.

The studies by Marchand and Lowe, based as they are on a slim selection of material, stand in contrast to the work of Michelle O’Malley, which derives from an exhaustive survey of over 200 contracts from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. The essay represents excellent research into the stipulated use of the painter’s own hand in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century contracts. O’Malley demonstrates that the “sua mano” clause secured the direct involvement of masters who were high in demand for the most important or difficult parts of a project. At the same time, the “sua mano” stipulations were intended to circumscribe the artists’ interventions, as patrons were not always willing or able to pay the higher fee for the completion of an entire work by the master. The study sheds light on workshop organizations: painters were hardly ever solely responsible for a work of art. Rather, they collaborated with their associates on a commission. This points to a difficulty in our own usage of the term “workshop” in attributions, to indicate a painting of lesser quality. The stipulation of contracts shows furthermore that painters and patrons were equally involved in the decision-making process, with both parties being well aware of the market value of the artists. As O’Malley points out herself, the study of the demand for art and its effect on production needs further investigation, and promises novel ways of thinking about the business of art.

With the exception of O’Malley’s work, the articles share more a fixation than a unified theme. They are based on the teleological assumption, as much Vasarian as Hegelian, that art culminated in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence under Medici rule and patronage. The editors as much as admit to this tendency, apologizing for the Florentine and Medicean focus of the book on Renaissance studies, wishing “not to defend the validity of a Florence-based history” (2). However, they do little to question such an assumption. The very fact that Medicean Florence is used as a synonym for fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Florence, as in the title of Lowe’s study, shows the inability of the authors to liberate themselves from the standard Renaissance teleology. The title of the book, With and Without the Medici, suggests an attempt to move beyond such an approach. The introduction and articles reveal, however, that the opposite is the case—the Medici are present even when absent—remaining the exclusive point of reference in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence.

The time-frame given in the subtitle, 1434-1530, is also questionable. Do these dates, indicating the return of Cosimo il Vecchio and the establishment of the duchy, represent the period of the Florentine Renaissance, or the “golden age of the Medici” (145)? It is, in fact, an arbitrary time-set, not reflecting the dates of works of art chosen by the authors, and excluding the role of tradition in artistic creation and production. Such an exclusion of the recent past can be noted, for instance, in Lillie’s work, where one seeks in vain any reference to precedents of domestic chapels before the fifteenth century. Lowe correctly states that the subject matter of a foundress of an order is unusual, but she then continues that the “only real” Tuscan precedent of Francesco Botticini’s altarpiece of this subject is Neri di Bicci’s lost altarpiece for S. Agostino in Prato. There is, however, an altarpiece of the 1320s-1330s, attributed to the Pistoian Master of 1336, that shows S. Irene with her companions at table impersonating the Last Supper (see Brendan Cassidy, “A Byzantine Saint in Tuscany: A Proposal for the Solution of a Trecento Enigma,” Arte Cristiana 83, 1995: 243-256). Such historical myopia misrepresents the work of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century architects, sculptors and painters, as the autochthonous invention of artistic ideas rather than production rooted in and responding to tradition. It shows again how much art historians are historiographically behind their colleague historians, who long ago abandoned the myth of the Florentine Renaissance.