David G. Franklin. Painting in Renaissance Florence 1500-1550.

London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. vi + 274 pp. + 80 color and 140 b/w pls. index, illus, bibl. $55. ISBN: 0-300-08399-8.

This book poses provocative questions as it offers a new way of understanding Florentine painting. Among them are: what is Florentine about Florentine art; and can the term "High Renaissance" be applied to Florentine art? In answering, Dr. Franklin has limited his focus to painting, arguing that since Wolfflin, architectural concepts of balance and symmetry "infiltrated" and warped stylistic analysis of "painting, while the study of sculpture is still too inchoate to be considered" (3). Franklin's study starts in 1500, a choice based on comments by Giovio and Vasari, as well as formal observations. A consequence of choosing this year is the omission of Leonardo's influential early Florentine works, especially his portrait of Ginevra de' Benci and the Benois Madonna. Leonardo is underrepresented and no mention is made of works he seems to have carried around with him, such as the Louvre Virgin and Child with St. Anne. Instead, the author emphasizes the influence of Leonardo's career: his itinerancy, inability to finish projects, and writings, which led to the romanticization of unattainable theoretical ambitions and so-called eccentric behavior. The book concludes at 1550 with the watershed publication of the first edition of Vasari's Lives.

Franklin considers the High Renaissance to be a "term of style" (1) and therefore uses formal analysis to craft his argument, eschewing historical, patronage, or theoretical analyses. As the author examines the work of twelve painters, Perugino, Leonardo, Hero di Cosimo, Michelangelo, Fra Bartolomeo, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio, Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo, Salviati, and Vasari, he observes a dichotomy of style between innovative and conservative painters. Fra Bartolomeo, whose work is dry and boring, should be properly identified with High Renaissance classicism, which Franklin describes as a "local form of entrenched conservatism" (2) and blames on repetitive workshop practices--although it is not clear how these workshop practices differ from the transmission of motifs, compositions, and patronage via the workshop, which remained a staple of artistic life beyond the sixteenth century. Ridolfo Ghirlandaio also falls into the conservative category, yet the chapter on Ridolfo is refreshingly sympathetic to the "retroactive" style of this painter (108), and presents a much more detailed review of the painter's life and patronage than that provided for some of the other artists.

The non-Florentine Perugino symbolizes the staleness of Quattrocento painting, specifically because he recycled models and compositions, did not paint convincing nudes, and his figures evinced a certain timidity. In contrast, Leonardo and Michelangelo were lauded, in part as a sort of"civic panegyric" (15), but also because they toppled Perugino's old-fashioned manner. Franklin defines the new Florentine Renaissance style they embodied, with its basis in drawing and the human form, as one of an "obsessiveness with inventiveness in all of its aspects" (39), and sees Michelangelo, in particular, as having pursued perfection "with an almost debilitating integrity" (79). Since Michelangelo's non-Florentine works, including the Sistine Chapel and all sculptures, are excluded from consideration, so is their impact, with the result that Michelangelo's oeuvre does appear to be "restrictive at its core" (79).

Only a few artists were able to assimilate the lessons of Leonardo and Michelangelo, among them Rosso Fiorentino and Pontormo, with Pontormo as the last exponent of the Florentine Renaissance. Franklin concludes by identifying a more ornamental, narrative, and superficial style gleaned from the work of Raphael in Rome. This new, cosmopolitan style was assumed by Salviati and Vasari, who wished to challenge the inherently Florentine style.

In contrast to traditional narratives Franciabigio is envisioned as more inventive than Sarto, although a more representative selection of images for Sarto might have undermined this argument. In addition, most readers will wonder why a chapter is devoted to Ridolfo but none to Bronzino. The illustrations are not always calibrated to the material, so that some works described in detail are not illustrated, or comments are made about the color of black-and-white photographs. The author says of a Franciabigio portrait that its "sculptural smoothness looks directly forward to Bronzino and Allori portraits," when the accompanying illustration clearly shows loose brushwork (166). With its interweaving of major and minor artists (see interjections on painters such as Giovanni Larciani, Bugiardini, Bachiacca, Foschi, etc.), purely formal approach, elaborate prose, and ambition, Painting in Renaissance Florence calls to mind a more inclusive, consistent, and eloquent survey, S. J. Freedberg's Painting in Italy (1971).

ELIZABETH PILLIOD

Princeton, New Jersey