Art History in the Age of Bellori: Scholarship and Cultural Politics in Seventeenth-Century Rome.

Janis C. Bell and Thomas C. Willette, eds. Art History in the Age of Bellori: Scholarship and Cultural Politics in Seventeenth-Century Rome.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xvi + 396 pp. index. illus. bibl. $90. ISBN: 0-521-78248-1.

In his classic study of the literature of art, Julius von Schlosser aptly called Giovan Pietro Bellori (1613-96) "the most important historiographer of art not only of Rome, but of all Italy, even of Europe, in the seventeenth century." Indeed, in addition to his well-known Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni of 1672, in the course of his long career Bellori authored, coauthored, and edited more than twenty-five volumes, ranging in subject matter from ancient numismatics, gems, oil lamps, and relief sculpture to the frescoes of Raphael and Annibale Carracci; served Queen Christina as her antiquarian, librarian, and custodian of medals; and was named Superintendent of Antiquities by Pope Clement X. It is not surprising, therefore, that Bellori continues to be the subject of serious scholarly attention, as evidenced by the major exhibition in Rome and the accompanying two-volume catalogue, L'Idea del Bello: Viaggio per Roma nel Seicento con Giovan Pietro Bellori (E. Borea and C. Gasparri, eds. [2000]), the critical edition and translation of Bellori's Lives forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, and Bell and Willette's new volume of essays.

This rewarding book is an outgrowth of a conference, held at the American Academy in Rome in 1996, to honor the third centenary of Bellori's death. Its eleven essays, eight of which were presented at the conference, offer eloquent testimony both to the richness of Bellori as a subject and to the wide-ranging nature of recent scholarship devoted to him. The contributions, from American, German, and Italian scholars, paint a complex, multi-layered picture of Bellori's activities as biographer, theorist, antiquarian, and iconographer.

The volume begins with an exhaustive (even exhausting) introduction by Janis Bell, which provides an extensive overview of Bellori's career, a consideration of his posthumous reputation, and a survey of Bellori scholarship, with particular emphasis on recent studies which, according to Bell, have been "instrumental in shifting discussion away from the problem of Bellori's sources and originality and toward the broader issue of his relationship to seventeenth-century culture and thought" (37). And it is this wider perspective, as the subtitle of the book suggests, that frames the essays that follow, which are divided into two sections: "Bellori and the Republic of Letters in Seventeenth-Century Rome" and "Bellori's Lives: History, Criticism, Theory."

The first group of essays emphasizes Bellori's activities as an antiquarian. Giovanna Perini and Louis Marchesano address Bellori's scholarly and literary "method," the former in relation to that of his mentor, Francesco Angeloni, the latter within the context of later seventeenth-century antiquarian scholarship in Italy. Ingo Herklotz offers a detailed study of one of Bellori's major antiquarian publications, the Colonna Traiana of 1672; Eugene Dwyer uses Bellori's Veterum illustrium ... imagines of 1685 to explore the subject of Bellori as an iconographer (i.e., a historian of portraiture); and Hetty E. Joyce demonstrates the reciprocity between Bellori's work as an antiquarian, particularly his study of ancient frescoes, and his modern art criticism focusing on Annibale Carracci. In one of the liveliest and most wide-ranging essays in the volume, Tomaso Montanari discusses Bellori's service to Christina of Sweden, illuminating, inter alia, his various relations within the cultural milieu of Christina's Roman court, his role in conceiving and overseeing the twin Pantheon monuments to Raphael and Annibale Carracci, and his contributions to the queen's "storia metallica" project.

All of the essays in the second section of the book deal with aspects of Bellori's Lives. Claire Pace and Janis Bell offer a fairly traditional iconographic analysis, not all of it convincing, of the allegorical engravings that introduce each of the twelve vite. Bellori's innovative descriptive method in the Lives is examined by Martina Hansmann, while his interest in colore is interpreted by Janis Bell as fully in keeping with his classicizing standards. In an essay notable for its subtle literary analysis, Anthony Colantuono explores Bellori's use of the word scherzo, drawing parallels to its usage in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetics. And Thomas Willette probes the origins and significance of the 1728 edition of the Lives, in which a vita of Luca Giordano, written by Bernardo De Dominici, was added to Bellori's canon.

This is, it must be said, a book primarily for specialists who will be able to appreciate the individual microstudies within the larger context of Bellori scholarship. The majority of the contributions are, as the above precis suggest, relatively narrow in their focus, and readers interested in a wider perspective on Bellori would be wise to read this volume in conjunction with L'Idea del Bello, with its more broadly conceived essays. One also regrets the absence of contributions by certain scholars who have been leading the way in Bellori studies (among them Donatella Sparti, Evelina Borea, and Elizabeth Cropper) and the lack of a broader methodological range among the essays (critical theoretical approaches are notably missing). These criticisms aside, the essays in the volume are on the whole substantial and carefully researched, and the sum of their parts make a considerable contribution to our understanding of the intersections among Bellori's myriad activities, his political alliances and patronage networks, and his unique role within the cultural-political world of seventeenth-century Europe.

STEVEN F. OSTROW

University of California, Riverside