Altichiero: An Artist and His Patrons in the Italian Trecento.

John Richards, Altichiero: An Artist and His Patrons in the Italian Trecento Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xxiv + 66 pls. + 265 pp. ISBN: 0-521-35649-0.

Historians of late medieval art have patiently waited for a new approach to the life and work of Altichiero. Perhaps the most gifted Northern Italian painter of the Trecento, surprisingly little is known of this mysterious artist, due both to a paucity of documentation pertaining to his movements and to the fate of his earliest works in Verona, most of which are in ruinous condition. John Richards's book on the art of Altichiero -- the first monographic treatment of the artist since 1966 -- and the network of patronage from which he benefited is a useful, although certainly not flawless, attempt to increase our understanding of the painter's career.

Richards begins his study in chapter 1 by grappling with three complex problems. He begins his book with a description of the arcane nature of Trecento domestic and foreign policy in the Veneto, moves to a survey of the rather uninspiring history of Northern Italian painting before the Black Death, and ends with a highly speculative discussion of Altichiero's artistic pedigree. These brief outlines are much too cursory for those with no previous exposure to the cultural intricacies of Northern Italian culture and political infighting, and many readers will be lost from the start.

This difficult opening is followed by a reconstruction of lost paintings in the Sala Grande of the Veronese Palace of the Podesta and in the Cavalli Chapel in the church of Sant'Anastasia. Through no fault of his own, Richards can only offer broad speculations about form and content, as the Sala Grande frescoes are known to us only through Quarrrocento copies and murky Cinquecento descriptions penned by biased critics. Richards should be applauded for suggesting that the remaining pictorial fragments should be dated around 1365 based on references to the Crusade of that year, but he tries too hard to connect Altichiero to a small but influential group of Humanists working in the Veneto at the time. Richards's efforts to link forms and messages found on ancient coins to drawings thought to be copies of Altichiero's works are too forced, a problem he acknowledges later in his text (175).

The author, however, stands on firmer ground when discussing relationships between artists and clients, clearly his main interest. Biographical sketches of the Consigliere della Scala, members of the Scaligeri family, and Giacomo Cavalli are thoughtfully crafted, and as a result his chapter on Altichiero's frescoes in the Chapel of San Giacomo makes for good reading. His discussion of its patron, Bonifacio Lupi, sets the stage for the iconographic layout of the exquisite cycle in Sant'Antonio, which in turn allows him to examine these frescoes with a palpable sense of certitude. Richards's successes continue in chapter 6, dedicated to the decorative program in the Oratory of San Giorgio, where he connects images in this Paduan structure both to Raimondino Lupi, the original lay patron, and to the aforementioned Bonifacio Lupi, executor of Raimondino's estate. To the former are attributed the selection of saints and scenes, while the latter is given credit for selecting Altichiero as artist. These sections exp and our understanding of both Altichiero's artistic interests and the networks of patronage with which he was involved, as well as the critical values placed on artists by the Paduan elite who clearly had a say in the way images were produced by artists in their employ.

The book ends with a fairly standard catalogue of Altichiero's known paintings. Here Richards stands on firm ground, as the artist's limited surviving oeuvre leaves him with a fairly simple task. The most pressing problem here is distinguishing the hand of Altichiero from that of Avanzo in San Giorgio, and Richards's diagnosis is compelling -- despite the fact that he seems to have written his analysis long before the recent restoration of the chapel was completed.

While most will appreciate Richards's insistence on the importance of the artist's links with the Carrara alliance, some readers will be bothered by his almost obsessive attempt to connect Altichiero with humanists in and around Padua, a point which, however probable, is overemphasized throughout the book to the point of redundancy. Others will skip over turgid summaries of long-forgotten scholarly debates placed squarely in the body of Richards's text, rather than in the footnotes where they belong. Still others will be frustrated by a pedantic and awkward writing style, which causes discussions of patronage, artistic intent, and iconography to be presented in a thickly structured -- and sometimes fractured -- syntax. Many, finally, will be bothered the abundance of poor reproductions here. Both color plates and black and white figures are almost uniformly out of focus, calling to mind low-quality JPEGs downloaded and printed at high speed, while some photographs fail to illustrate points presented in the te xt. Most of these problems could, and should, have been addressed by Cambridge University Press long before galley proofs had been completed.

While this unconventional study contains nuggets of important information and kernels of valuable ideas concerning relationships between artists and patrons, its dense presentation will leave some wishing for a more streamlined and visually appealing package. Specialists in late trecento Northern Italian painting will learn much from Richards's work and will celebrate its arrival, but the broader population of student and academic readers may fail to respond with equal excitement.