This book is a richly illustrated surrogate for actually visiting a monument that, since 1585, has occupied the heart of Vatican City yet has been off-limits for ordinary citizens, then and now. Who knew that the square tower rising at the terminus of the northern flank of the Belvedere Courtyard contained a well-thought-out program of frescoes covering the walls of the seven rooms of this triple-story papal retreat? With this handsome publication, we can take a virtual tour and file through the rooms to admire a sequence of epic narratives and monumental landscapes that celebrate the signal achievement of its builder: Pope Gregory XIII’s calendar reform. Perhaps the most stunning revelation in this book is the high quality of the landscapes by the Antwerp painter Matthijs Bril, who during his brief career in Rome created a new synthetic landscape, blending in his works the tradition of the ancient Roman landscape, the draftsman’s interest in Roman landmarks, and the sweeping visual dynamic of Pieter Bruegel’s panoramic views. Indeed, the landscapes in Gregory’s Tower of the Winds spell the moment in which amply painted prospects codify an iconography of retreat and revalidate otium as an integral part of the ecclesiastical lifestyle.

Courtright’s monograph on the Tower of the Winds consists of a seven-chapter narrative and a catalogue. The first relates the tower and its pictorial program to the ideology of the papacy as a corrective force in an imperfect world. The leading vision is of Peter’s successor wresting the Church from the tempest of heresies and making Rome once more the resplendent facsimile of a heavenly residence. The second painstakingly records the pictorial program in each of the seven rooms. Ten color plates and 214 black-and-white figures ensure that not a single detail escapes our attention as we wind our way from the Room of the Old Testament Patriarchs, past the Allegories of the Winds in the Meridian Room, to the topographical and imaginary landscapes on the second story and the religious landscapes on the top floor.

Key figures in this unusual project were the pope, his architect Ottaviano Mascarino, and his trusted advisor, Egnatio Danti, the learned Dominican who was the author of a treatise on the winds entitled Anemographia (1581). The text of this fascinating document, chronicling the natural history of the winds, is reproduced in Latin and English at the end of the book. The execution of the pictorial program was entrusted to Nicolò Circignani, a painter from Tuscany,  who relied on efficient teamwork to carry out a large number of Vatican projects. Finally, there is Bril, who according to Courtright was responsible for all the landscapes in this remarkable cycle.

The main section of the book addresses the question of how the tower and its program certify the significance of Gregory’s calendar reform. Part 1 sets the stage by revealing the ideology of the Vatican as what the author calls the “epicenter of reform” (25) and by an analysis of the tower as a monument to Gregory’s dominance over nature and time and his ambition to unify Christendom through calendrical reform. The seven chapters of part 2 focus on the monument itself. Chapter 3 identifies the tower as a signifier in an iconography of retreat and rule that culminates in the epiphanic reappearance of the pontiff in the ceremonial loggia that looks out over the Belvedere Courtyard and, indeed, a good part of Rome. Chapter 4 focuses on the paintings of Circignani (called “il Pomarancio”) in the Meridian Room, which lies behind this loggia. Here, the theme of the taming of the winds as symbolic of reestablishing order is elaborated in a narrative sequence that includes two fictive tapestries depicting Christ Stilling the Storm on the Lake of Tiberias on the south wall and Paul’s Shipwreck at Malta on the west wall. The two scenes are separated from each other by the apocalyptic scene of Angels Stilling the Four Winds and Sealing the Foreheads of the 144,000. The ceiling opens up to a heavenly view of not just the canonical winds, but also the twenty-eight breezes that blow from their assigned points on the compass. This harmonious scheme matches Danti’s catalogue of the winds in his learned treatise. Quadri riportati with the Allegories of the Seasons complete the theme of a well-ordered universe in which the storms of conflict submit to Divine Providence.

Six smaller rooms are covered with radiant religious landscapes containing the stories of the Patriarchs, the Apostles, Tobias, and Old Testament women. Courtright offers ample evidence that “Matteo fiamengho” (Bril) was responsible for the landscape settings of these religious scenes. She further speculates that Gregory, by hiring a northern landscape specialist, endorsed landscape as a valid component in creating a comprehensive pictorial program. She also touches on landscape as a humble genre that partakes in what she calls devotional inversion. What is at stake is the vocational paradox, in which the inner humility of God’s servants justifies the outward splendor of ecclesiastical office. The remainder of chapter 5 treats the theory of landscape as a meditative device for plotting a course toward liberation from conflicting emotions and the restoration of faith.

Chapter 6 returns us to Rome. Two rooms on the upper floor of the tower are filled with topographical views of the Eternal City alternating with imaginary views all’antica of coastal cities, ruined sanctuaries, and distant rivers. Transforming the walls into the illusion of a colonnaded porch, the painter used graceful herms to frame panoramic views that mirror the 360-degree view that is the joy of looking at the world from a great height. These vedute prompt a discussion of the role of landscape in the advocacy of a replenishing otium as the antidote to the depleting duties of negotium. Even within Rome itself a network of itineraries invites the faithful to sanctify the Eternal City by making spiritual journeys. The chapter ends with the Christian villa as the place where one pursues the humanist ideal of a life of contemplation that discovers in the beauty of the natural world the proofs of a divinely instituted order. In her conclusion, the author reaffirms that the tower and its decorations embody the aspirations of Catholic reform to reestablish the untarnished values of the primitive Church (renovatio) by taming the winds of heresy and setting the clocks of the universe to a single calendar (innovatio). Gregory’s vision of a coherent sanctified universe anticipated the absolutism of Europe’s courts and contributed to a discourse of retreat and epiphany that would become the foundation of the self-representation of secular and ecclesiastical rule.

By and large, this book looks at Gregory’s ambitions through the lens of religious triumphalism and the fierce discourse of Catholic apologetics. It leaves little room for Christian philosophy and the Christian pursuit of spiritual perfection. There are no entries in the index of this book for stoicism, neostoicism, or Christian neostoicism. Yet the latter constitutes the Christian philosophy of Saint Philip Neri, the leading spiritual pedagogue of post-Tridentine Rome. The tower is a fundamentally stoic concept. Traditionally, it stands for the loftiest part of the soul. Within the stoic discourse of tranquillitas as the desired state of the soul, the Vatican tower is a reminder to the world that even the supreme pontiff is a humble servant of God who must leave Peter’s throne, climb the winding stair, imitate the spiritual combat of biblical figures, and liberate his soul before enjoying in his serene wisdom the unimpeded view of a perfected world. The citadel of philosophy recurs as a motif in many of Bril’s landscapes, setting new standards for the depiction of sunlit structures that from their promontories and hilltops project a detached calm above the storms of the world. What is not stressed enough is the fact that Matthijs Bril in the Tower of the Winds created landscapes that were the perfect complements to Neri’s Christian neostoicism. It is noteworthy that Neri’s most influential pupil, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, sponsored Matthijs’s brother, Paul, to reproduce in the small format of easel paintings the monumental landscapes of his gifted brother. Gregory’s patronage of Matthijs Bril, it turns out, constitutes an important chapter in the history of the classical landscape as an expression of the stoic imagination.

But these considerations do not detract from Courtright’s magnificent achievement in establishing for the Gregorian frescoes a rigorously reconstructed interpretative community whose reception of the papal frescoes in the Vatican tower helps modern viewers to appreciate with greater clarity their cultural and artistic impact. This superbly organized book will prove to be an indispensable resource for further study of landscape as an important philosophical and spiritual genre.