Cosimo de'Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre. (Reviews).

Dale Kent, Cosimo de'Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre.

New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. xiv + 148 b/w illus. + 40 pls. + 538pp. $49.95. ISBN 0-300-08128-6.

Between the early 1420s and his death in 1464, the great Florentine banker and patron Cosimo de' Medici commissioned a wealth of art and architecture that glorified God, the city and himself. His support of building projects, interior decorations and altarpieces, collections of gems, manuscripts, and other objects all'antica has been credited as one of the driving forces behind the artistic revolution of the early Renaissance. In this ambitious study, Dale Kent places the many assorted pieces of Cosimo's commissions -- what she calls "the patron's oeuvre" -- in dialogue with each other, and situates them in their cultural matrix. The extraordinary scope of this undertaking is buttressed by the author's deep familiarity with contemporary sources, by her understanding of the intricate workings of fifteenth-century patronage networks and political processes, and by the rich play of historical voices that enliven the text.

Kent's main objective is to demonstrate that "it is the body of interests and ideas Cosimo shared with other Florentines, not their differences" (xi) that best explains his artistic patronage and identity. Foremost among these concerns, according to Kent, were Cosimo's civic and religious impulses, not the political considerations that figure so prominently in scholarly interpretations of his patronage. This viewpoint proves, in the final analysis, to be both puzzling and problematic, as is the theoretical stance proclaimed throughout the book. The slippery slopes of postmodernism aside, the book represents an odd retreat from the interdisciplinary infusion marking recent Renaissance studies and a deliberate return to the empiricism of earlier decades.

The first eight of fifteen chapters develop, in considerable depth, the cultural coordinates Cosimo supposedly shared with other patrons and viewers. Kent's examination of this shared culture, which blended civic, Christian, and classical notions, moves ably from literary, performative and visual expressions to religious and social ones. She ranges impressively over a large body of didactic literature, popular poetry, vernacular scrapbooks, confraternal processions and plays, as well as images and objects. Some of these discussions offer original, insightful analyses of little known texts; others rehearse established studies. However, the weak organizational scaffolding makes for a series of disjointed discussions, to which Cosimo's projects are only thinly attached. Kent also glosses over the often ambiguous, contested meanings of texts, images, and performances acknowledged by contemporaries.

The most troubling aspect of the proposal that Cosimo communicated in what was essentially a popular idiom is its failure to take into account glaring differentials in social and political power. In attempting to demonstrate how a common culture informed Cosimo's artistic patronage and its reception, Kent blurs important distinctions between the availability, appeal and use of different objects to different social constituencies and consumers. 'Without denying Cosimo's desire to expiate his sins like other Florentines, the devotional expression implicit in constructing a magnificent private chapel or remodeling whole churches and monasteries, can hardly be equated in form, style, scale, use or effect with the pious gestures of artisans who purchased cheap, mass-produced plaster statues of the Virgin. Even among other wealthy patricians, Cosimo's commissions were exceptional in their choice of materials, scale, and placement. Cosimo was no more the first among equals in his artistic patronage than he was in ci vic affairs: he was the richest man in Florence, whose unique position and tightening controls over communal elections led to considerable grumbling, covert street action, and ultimately to two failed coups against him and his son. Questions of power -- economic, social, and political -- are pushed to the background in favor of an overarching claim for piety. The result both diminishes the complexity of Cosimo's motivations, and denies the realities of social conflict and competition endemic in Florentine life.

Similar achievements and shortcomings mark the next seven chapters, which treat Cosimo's specific commissions in greater detail. Once again Kent brings a wealth of knowledge to bear on her discussions of the Medici palace and chapel, the family tombs at San Lorenzo, and renovations at San Marco. By showing how these disparate projects formed an ensemble bound by related interests, Kent sheds light on the breadth and coherence of Cosimo's activities, while illuminating particular choices of artist, style, and institution. She documents the fruitful partnerships between Cosimo, Donatello, and Michelozzo, arguing to good effect that the lively exchange between patrons and artists, and between artists themselves, helped shape the patron's decisions.

Yet the issue of power looms even larger in these chapters. Kent emphasizes the "civic" nature of Cosimo's artistic patronage, which he supposedly used as a means to glorify the state in keeping with the city's conservative traditions. She portrays Cosimo as a proud citizen eager to honor the republic, not as a shrewd politician whose patronage formed part of a conscious strategy to augment his power.

A major bone of contention is whether Cosimo's patronage was in some sense "princely," a view she takes great pains to refute. There are several problems here. First, framing the question as a dichotomy -- civic as opposed to princely -- fails to capture the tremendous stylistic interplay and artistic exchange that characterized the first half of the Quattrocento. Artists like Donatello worked for guilds, popes, cardinals, and monasteries, as well as private patrons, just as Italian princes and corporations sought the services of many different artists. Second, any resolution to this question necessarily turns on the definition of terms. By narrowly equating "princely" with royal, seigneurial, or even authoritarian rule, Kent not only forecloses the case; she also discounts the powerful imperial associations of materials, styles, and symbols Cosimo used repeatedly in his artistic commissions. As she herself argues, imagemaking was reflexive and associative: it put into play symbolic meanings that reflected on its patrons, including those that linked Cosimo with an imperial Roman past. Kent's tone in these discussions is often polemical, chiding individual scholars and exaggerating their viewpoints. Surely she is right to stress that not all Medici patronage need be read through a finely calculated political lens. Conversely, taking Cosimo's religious and civic motivations seriously should hardly cause us to dismiss the complex power relations in which he dominated. Scholars will find much to debate in this provocative, important book as they take issue with its method, evidence, and conclusions.