Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy. (Reviews).

Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins, eds., Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy

(Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 54.) Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001. xxiii + 339 pp. $50 (cl), $35 (pbk). ISBN: 0-943549-78-7 (cl), 0-943549-88-4 (pbk).

In fourteen substantial essays Reiss, Wilkins, and their collaborators offer rich new evidence for the activity of secular women in the production and reception of Italian Renaissance art, calling into serious question traditional stereotypes of female patronage and reconceptualizing art patronage itself. In studies ranging from Trecento Padua to late sixteenth-century Rome -- with major stops in Florence, Siena, and the northern Italian courts -- the authors enunciate a new approach to the study of female secular patrons. Not content simply to add to the increasingly impressive repertoire of female initiatives in art patronage, the authors seek to understand the social and economic circumstances in which women lived and worked, their familial and social networks, and the patronage strategies they adopted. In doing so the authors dare to venture into thoughtful and productive speculation about what may lie between the lines in male-dominated documentation and how we may negotiate the many silences about women 's roles in commissioning works of art. As Wilkins boldly states in the Introduction, "Anonymity ... should never be an excuse that prevents us from asking questions about women and patronage" (12).

Neither can we assume that all or perhaps even most wives and widows dutifully followed their husbands' every instruction. Several shaped the subject matter of altarpieces to express their own devotions and concerns (including one example of a common law wife, Anna di Michele Videmon Cini from Dinkelsbuhl, who engaged in a bit of autobiographical referencing when she chose Christ and the Adulteress as the subject for an altar in Santo Spirito in Florence). Others changed the destination of funerary bequests to institutions with which they, rather than their husbands, had strong ties.

These studies also underscore the importance of understanding artistic patronage as a familial and collaborative process rather than as a single, individualistic act. As Roger Crum so clearly points out (38), knowing who writes the check is rarely as revelatory as knowing who needs, wants, or uses what is being purchased. Numerous other studies in this volume document how husbands and wives worked together or at times even competed with one another in their creative endeavors. Studies in this volume show that Federico II Gonzaga worked doggedly to keep up with and distinguish himself from his illustrious wife, Isabella d'Este. Similarly, female patronage of architecture, long thought to have been societally unacceptable or even impossible, is revealed to be the province of a woman like Caterina Piccolomini, who as the sister of Pope Pius II, could contribute to the family's status in Siena. The formidable Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici, despised in her own day but the subject of an intelligent essay here, was so intent on promoting the career of her son Lorenzo that she necessarily turned to the great public art of architecture. At the same time, other wealthy Roman widows followed the example of ancient and Early Christian matrons to build and rebuild large churches and pious institutions in Rome. Carolyn Valone correctly notes that art historians have failed to notice this substantial architectural patronage in part because the style of these structures -- simple, unpretentious, reform minded -- falls outside our usual preoccupation with progressive style.

While all the studies in this volume are firmly grounded in new and extensive archival research, a number of the essays are bound to engender controversy among archivally oriented scholars. In particular, Margerie Ochs' argument that Vittoria Colonna actively used her friends and acquaintances to commission Titian's Pitti Mary Magdalene, rather than receiving it as an unsolicited gift, will certainly strike some conservative readers as questionable. Can it really be the case that the artist was told that the work was intended for one person (the Marchese del Vasto) when it was actually desired by another (Vittoria Colonna)? Thanks to Ochs' fine reading of the painting itself and of the circumstances under which women were expected to use agents and middlemen to acquire works of art, I believe that the answer is "yes." Similarly, as Benjamin Kohl asserts, while Fina Buzzacarini's last will and testament in Padua explicitly gave her husband control over the final design and decoration of her burial place, perso nal statements in her will and an abundance of female imagery and female portraits in the chapel frescoes strongly suggest that she, not he, held the upper hand.

Written documents, all the essays in this volume assert, need to be approached cautiously and skeptically. Thinking about what is portrayed and to whom it might be addressed is crucial, especially when it comes to understanding the role women played in the complex maneuvers and maneuvering that led to the commissioning and use of works of art.