Gold, Silver and Bronze: Metal Sculpture of the Roman Baroque.

Jennifer Montagu. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1990. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Bollingen Series 35, 39. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. 267 illus. + 12 pls. + xvii + 262 pp. $59.50. ISBN: 0-691-02736-6.

This rewarding and handsomely produced book derives from the Andrew W. Mellon lectures, which internationally-recognized specialist Jennifer Montagu presented in the spring of 1991 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. As Montagu indicates, her introduction and series of six essays are not intended to be a general history of Roman baroque metal sculpture, but an analysis of specific, generally small, works in bronze, silver, and occasionally gold. Because studies of Roman baroque sculpture usually concentrate on large marble and bronze statues, tombs, or portrait busts, smaller works in bronze, silver, or gold are often neglected. Small works in precious metals rarely survived since they were often later melted down, and must be studied from drawings and documents. Montagu's primary focus on the activity in the workshops is intended to illuminate the complex relationships among the artists who produced the drawings, the models and the molds; those who cast and finished the works; and the patrons who sought the brilliant opulence of gold and silver, often for the church. Newly published archival documents supplement Montagu's thorough examinations of the Roman baroque metalworks presented, all of which usefully complement her groundbreaking previous book Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989).

The underlying message throughout Montagu's Mellon essays, and one that is often neglected in Renaissance studies, is that the study of the so-called "minor arts" of the Roman silversmith, bronze-caster, or gilder cannot be divorced from a substantial understanding of the "major arts" of the Roman sculptor and designer who conceived the architectural ensemble.

Using new documents and nearly 300 illustrations of drawings and selected works by master sculptors (Bernini, Algardi, etc.) and leading metalworkers, Montagu introduces commissions from numerous discerning patrons such as the Barberini, Sannesi, Corsini, and Pallavicini-Rospigliosi. Unlike Florence, there was not a Roman baroque school of sculptors of small bronzes nor was there a sophisticated community of collectors in Rome as in Florence. Beginning in chapter two with the magnificent late sixteenth-century tabernacles of Sta Maria Maggiore and S. Luigi dei Francesi, Montagu cleverly opens the door for us to the little-known but talented Jacob Cobaert and a new world of the small Roman baroque bronze, by examining the fascinating transformations that occur to these works in Roman churches through use, thefts, restorations, and regilding campaigns.

In the following chapter, Montagu explores later seventeenth-century Roman gilt bronze tabernacles, including Bernini's tabernacle for St. Peter's and others he influenced. By analyzing a period lawsuit, she explores the complicated creative process between the sculptors, the bronze founders, the silversmiths, the guilds, and the experts who evaluated the work. In her chapter on Roman medals, Montagu examines drawings in relation to her select papal medals by the Hamerani family, convincingly identifying cases where the designer is also the executant.

In Chapters five and six, Montagu analyzes the extant plaster casts (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) for the extraordinary series of fifty-eight large silver platters, or plates that were annually made in Rome between 1680-1737 and commissioned by the Pallavicini as gifts to the grand-dukes of Tuscany. Montagu skillfully analyzes the range of invention and experimentation with design, iconography, and technique over several generations of different Roman silversmiths. She then discusses the two most important Roman families of metal-workers, the Giardini and the Giardoni, and interprets their relationships with architects and sculptors, especially G.B. Maini.

Montagu concludes her book with a discussion of the significance of foreign, especially Portuguese, patronage in Rome. In 1642, King John V of Portugal spared no expense for his sumptuous chapel (built entirely in Rome between 1642-50, then shipped to Lisbon and installed in the Church of St. Roch), for which later complete sets of virtuoso silver and silver-gilt altar furniture also were made and survive. Her detailed analyses of this ensemble and the superb later silver and silver-gilt reliquaries, mass-cards, monumental torcheres, and other furnishings made in Rome (1744-49) for the chapel demonstrate that these masterpieces of silver, which partly recall the genius of Bernini's earlier designs, justly serve as the culmination of a 150-year Roman tradition incontrovertibly linking the major and minor arts.

The appendices present documents on foundry problems and techniques of casting various works, and summarize information on the tabernacle Jacopo del Duca made after Michelangelo's designs. The high quality of the twelve color plates causes one to wish that more of the sometimes uneven black and white illustrations could instead have been in color. All in all, however, Montagu rewards us with another publication of the highest achievement.

ALAN PHIPPS DARR The Detroit Institute of Arts