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H2: Jakub Koguciuk reviews Jonathan J.G. Alexander’s The Painted Book in
BIBLIO: Jonathan J.G. Alexander. The Painted Book in Renaissance Italy. New
before it could bear any fruit. Erwin Panofsky, the founding figure of American
academic art history, claimed that books painted by hand “begun to commit suicide”
Despite this death by history of styles, illuminated manuscripts were produced beyond
the middle ages. Some are objects of remarkable splendor. To take an extreme
example, here is Giulio Clovio, the only illuminator featured in Giorgio Vasari’s
Lives, illustrating Biblical episodes for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s Book of Hours:
Figure 1. Giulio Clovio, Adoriation of the Shepherds and the Fall of Man:
Opening of the Farnese Book of Hours, 1546. The Pierpont Morgan Library and
The opening respects the standard format of the page by differentiating between the
main pictorial field – a scene evoked in perspectival recession – and the margin, the
lovingly evokes the sacred scenes, and lets his fantasy run wild in the various statues
and reliefs filling the margin. The spirit of Michelangelo is alive here, in the
exaggerated definition of musculature and the twisted poses of the figures. Each body
is heroic and could not be otherwise in the artistic scene after Michelangelo
culminated the Vasarian history of art. The pages seem to pack the visual impact of
the Sistine Ceiling into a more personal format. They preserve some of the grandeur
of the Chapel, with its basic organization of space and pictorial effects, on a scale that
For Panofsky, objects such as this one attempted to reconcile too much. A book needs
turning into something else. It is as if painting on such a scale cannot belong to our
vision of the Renaissance. We associate the discovery of perspective and the rise of
styles aiming at naturalism, whatever it may mean, with large-scale paintings, perhaps
on a frescoed wall. If the achievement of the Italian Renaissance pictorial vision spans
roughly from the walls of Masaccio to Michelangelo’s ceiling, then indeed it is hard
intellectual illusion. Theorists ranging from Alberti to Leonardo claimed that painting
was a form of thinking, and therefore its value should be disassociated with the
simulations of various objects: some marginal images look at statues in niches, others
like cameo reliefs. Rather than relegating art to the status of notional designs, Clovio
about these strange objects. Clovio is derivative, but he overwhelms with inventive
energy. Surrendering to the impact of this image, the viewer finds immense richness
in its exhilaration.
Jonathan J.G. Alexander’s The Painted Book in Renaissance Italy attempts to re-
formulate the narrative neglecting such images by providing the first general view on
the subject of “the painted book” in Renaissance Italy for the English-speaking
reader. The title is consciously inclusive, as the book aims to include manuscripts as
well as printed material. The study is the fruit of a life of patient scholarship.
Alexander wrote many articles on single manuscripts and particular problems in the
Painted Page, the 1995 exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York that brought
together many of the most remarkable Italian books in one display for the first time. It
is hard to imagine a better guide to this material. Through his career, Alexander
witnessed the incremental progress of knowledge on this period, and he has the depth
The book is organized by regional schools in two large sections for the fifteenth and
and patrons, Alexander discusses the evolution of scholarship on the various Italian
regions. These provide convenient points of entry for the interested student, but these
might have been expanded into full bibliographic essays, perhaps at the end of the
volume. Even as they are, Alexander’s comments are great guides to scholarship on
scholarly attention.
Dividing manuscripts into periods and regional schools means that key figures of the
book appear and re-appear. Many artists worked in both centuries and travelled
extensively throughout Italy. Bartolomeo Sanvito, the scribe and perhaps illuminator
who made humanist script into a pan-Italian phenomenon, began his career in Padua,
but made most of his precious manuscripts in Rome. Girolamo da Cremona, an artist
who also travelled south, is as important for manuscript illumination in the Veneto as
he is for Siena. Clovio was born in Croatia as Juraj Julije Klović, but worked in
Venice, Rome, Florence and Parma. This permeability extends to patrons: Matthias
Corvinus, the Hungarian king who seemed to have engaged in diplomacy through
The impression that regional divisions do not suffice is not a criticism towards
Alexander, but rather evidence that this artistic landscape was extremely dynamic.
The last five chapters of the book cut across regional lines by addressing critical
books, patronage, text and image issues, the relationship between illumination and
other visual arts, and finally the context beyond Italy. Any of these sections could
elsewhere, Alexander is careful and patient, often admitting that problems require
further work. In certain sections, this reserve is even excessive. For example, it would
evidence for this apart from stylistic affinities. However, Alexander’s speculation
would be more valuable than most. Given that so much work that remains to be done,
some of these final sections can only gloss through major questions. The international
the five thematic chapters – illustrates the challenges of work in this field. From the
first attempts to categorize Italian art, surviving works have been divided according to
their place of origin. The nineteenth century gave us the “Florentine school” and the
“Venetian school” along with a handful of others. This fits with a long-standing
campanilismo in Italian culture, ranging from Vasari’s preference for his Florentine
compatriots to the current regionalist policies of the Lega Nord. This intellectual
collections. In large museums, Venetian paintings are hung separately from Florentine
and Roman ones. This preeminence of regions mostly makes sense. Art-making in
Renaissance Italy depended on local networks of painters and patrons. Many cities
training and production. Artistic success often depended on familiarity with local
On the other hand, it is sometimes hard to say whether regional styles constitute parts
words, we do not know whether for Leonardo da Vinci being a Florentine artist meant
producing works with a precise set of stylistic traits. It also seems that some “schools”
were simply more local and distinctive than others. Sienese artists up to the sixteenth
century made paintings continuously re-engaging their local tradition beginning with
Duccio and the Lorenzetti. Rome should surely be considered apart from this system.
The wealth of the papal court attracted artists from many parts of Italy, and something
like a local style of art did not appear until the Baroque period.
All of this is not properly Alexander’s subject, although questions on regions as
intellectual criteria are suggested by the structure of the book, at once foundational
and revisionist. The first chapters build up a survey region by region, guiding the
reader through Italy in smaller units. The later part attempts to present a view on
larger processes, at once integral to and invisible in the sections on particular places.
Along with the wealth of insight and information, to provoke such considerations is
Alexander’s position would have a selection of previous surveys to rely on. The basic
information about what happened where in Italian Renaissance art has been presented
many times already. Hence, many books about better-known media can afford to be
more critical from the get-go. Alexander does not have this luxury, and finds himself
in a position of constructing many partial narratives at the same time. What could
This rich study has a handbook quality that will reward many readings and repeated
variety of collected material and synthetic breath. A reader who is not an expert in
manuscripts, artists and patrons, many of who are still unfamiliar figures. In these
moments, I found myself looking at the images, which must be among the most
scholarly generosity and gift of synthesis will undoubtedly push the field forward.