Italian Altarpieces 1250-1550: Function and Design.

In 1438 Domenico Veneziano wrote to Piero de' Medici in the hope of securing a Florentine commission. The painter knew that an altarpiece was needed for the convent of San Marco and that the Medici were its benefactors. Scholars are familiar with this letter as it establishes the beginning of Domenico's Florentine period. Beyond biography, this letter also illuminates Domenico's awareness of the intersecting requirements of place, patron, and painter in altarpiece production. This intersection has not always been observed in modern discussions, even though the word "altarpiece" itself refers to the physical, functional, and societal context for the work of art as cult object. Often scholars have addressed questions of attribution and style in the reconstruction of an artist's oeuvre. Valuable though these questions are, the language of their answers has often replaced the functional designation "altarpiece" with the more problematic terms "masterpiece" or "work of art."

A new overture to the altarpiece per se was taken in 1990 with the publication of The Altarpiece in the Renaissance. Edited by Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp, this volume took a broad, European perspective that placed the altarpiece, more than the artist, at the center of attention. That work is now joined by another collection of essays edited by Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi on Italian altarpieces. These essays originated in a symposium of 1988 at Villa I Tatti in Florence. Since that conference was attended by only a fraction of scholars interested in the altarpiece, this publication is a welcome addition to the subject's bibliography.

The book has been expertly edited and is accompanied by a thorough bibliography, a comprehensive index, and the generous inclusion of 151 black and white photographs. This photographic abundance, an average of eighteen images per essay, is impressive in our age of high reproduction costs. It is also indicative of the authors', editors', and publisher's commitment to enhance the reader's contextualization of each image discussed.

The volume begins with Julian Gardner's discussion of church legislation and usage pertaining to altarpieces, particularly in the thirteenth century. This is followed by two contributions that treat altarpieces and religious orders: Joanna Cannon examines Sienese polyptychs and the Dominicans, while Gaudenz Freuler illuminates the role that altarpieces played in promoting the cult of San Bernardino. Max Seidel investigates formal and iconographic inflections of a Sienese altarpiece commissioned by German artisans resident in the city, while Peter Humfrey focuses on the arrival of the Renaissance pala in Venice and Alessandro Nova shifts the focus back from form to function with a discussion of the hangings, curtains, and shutters that accompanied sixteenth-century Lombard altarpieces. Patricia Rubin's essay subsequently examines artists' increasing control over altarpiece design, an evolution which caused tension on the eve of the Counter-Reformation. As Rubin's contribution prepares the reader for the transition of the altarpiece from cult object to objet d'art, Michelangelo Muraro reminds us of the corollary, sixteenth-century persistence of extensive workshop practices connected with altarpiece production in the Veneto.

These essays are preceded by Henk van Os's introduction. Less a synopsis of the volume's contents than a rumination on altarpiece scholarship, the introduction is best read and mentioned last as a stimulus to additional thought. The author ranges from celebrating Ulrich Middeldorf's recognition of the importance of Sienese guidebooks for contextual investigations to a comparison of modern altarpiece studies with the Arts and Crafts concern for the Gesamtkunstwerk. Most importantly, he asks "What sort of art history is produced by these detailed studies?" (1). Van Os nicely forces no answer and I, at once co-conspirator and coward, join him in passing the question along.

ROGER J. CRUM University of Dayton