Italienische Fruhrenaissance und nordeuropaisches Spamittelalter: Kunst der fruhen Neuzit im europaischen Zusammenhang.

In October 1991 the Gerda Henkel-Stiftung in Dusseldorf sponsored an international symposium around the issue of artistic interchange between Italy and northern Europe during the Quattrocento. As Joachim Poeschke notes in his introduction, the theme is by no means original, as scholars since the days of Jacob Burckhardt and Aby Warburg have investigated its different manifestations. The resulting symposium publication, nevertheless, is quite stimulating since the thirteen essays focus on different aspects of the impact of northern European art upon Italian masters especially prior to 1450. Poeschke intentionally broadened the debate by including several papers on media other than painting; even when the bold claims of some authors outreach the presented evidence, the questions raised are thought-provoking and the general quality of the essays is high.

In the first essay Gunter Schweikhart charts the rise of self-portraiture. He observes that dependent or non-autonomous likenesses often appear within a religious composition as in Dirk Bouts' Last Supper Altarpiece in Louvain and Sandro Botticelli's appearance among the crowd in his Adoration of the Magi in Florence (Uffizi). Such portraits can function as signatures or as a means for identifying with a name saint or occupational patron like St. Luke. Autonomous self-portraits range from simple study sketches to elaborate representations of the artist alone or with his wife. However, the worth of this essay with its useful categorization is diminished by a lack of explanatory analysis. Is a common fascination with pictorial naturalism, mentioned briefly without further comment, the sole explanation for the parallel development of self-portraits on both sides of the Alps?

In another essay, Jurgen Wiener explores the diverse application of flamboyant architectural elements in Italy. He begins by noting the conceptual distinctions between the German term "Masswerk' and the Italian "traforo." Both meant tracery but the former stressed the massing or unified character of the wall and the latter accented a passing through the wall. Thus similar features are often incorporated differently into the building. Italy's lack of continuity in its use of flamboyant elements stems partially from its political divisions. Churches in the north, such as Milan cathedral and S. Petronio in Bologna, reveal strong influences from the Holy Roman Empire even though the features are often applied in combination with non-gothic elements. Spanish flamboyant art provided most of the models used in southern Italy and Sicily.

Elsewhere in the volume, Irving Lavin looks at the advent of the Renaissance portrait medal. He argues that Pisanello's medal of John VIII Paleologus of 1438-39 was inspired by the medallions of Constantine and Heraclius that were created for John, Duke of Berry, in 1402. While others have made this comparison before, Lavin stresses the formal and iconographic borrowings as well as the existence of a second, now lost, version of the medal with a reverse showing the union of Latin and Greek churches.

Poeschke and Johannes Roll cite northern European precedents for some Quattrocento tombs. The free-standing tomb, argues Poeschke, is a northern invention that, with a few earlier exceptions, entered Italy only after 1400. He notes the reliance of Jacopo della Quercia's Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in Lucca cathedral upon such earlier Franco-Flemish monuments as Claus Sluter's Tomb of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy formerly in the Chartreuse de Champmol in Dijon. Here, however, Jacopo has replaced the traditional mourners on the sides with angels holding garlands. Perhaps more debatable is his claim that both single and double gisant tombs, such as Donatello's Tomb of Pope Martin V in Rome, are French inspired. Regardless of the origins of certain designs, the Italian examples quickly evolved in a wholly independent and often more brilliant manner. Roll claims, perhaps too confidently, that the motif of the kneeling donor rendered in the same scale as the accompanying saint, as exemplified by the Tomb of Nikolaus von Kues in Rome (S. Pietro in Vincoli), must have German and Netherlandish roots.

Several of the other authors address the Italian response to Netherlandish painting. Artur Rosenauer ("Van Eyck und Italien") points out the avid collecting of Flemish pictures by Italian princes and merchants, a practice that led to the direct borrowings of Jan's St. Jerome motif by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Donatello. This is a particularly stimulating article even if some of his claims for Eyckian influences upon Andrea del Castagno's halos and Piero della Francesca's portrait landscapes are farfetched. Similarly, Rogier van der Weyden studied Fra Angelico's paintings, but it is unlikely he ever had access to the monks' cells in San Marco in Florence. Jurg Meyer zur Capellen discusses Netherlandish elements in Venice before Antonello da Messina by focusing upon Jacopo Bellini's Paris sketch-book. Francis Ames-Lewis bravely attempts to define those characteristics of Netherlandish painting that so appealed to Italian and specifically Paduan collectors and artists during the period 143555. He looks at Mantegna's affinity for the art of both Rogier van der Weyden and Donatello as well as some northern characteristics in the paintings of Filippo Lippi in the mid-1430s. Far less probing is Michael Rohlmann's study of the citation of Flemish landscape motifs in Florentine Quattrocento painting though it does include a serviceable list of Florentine quotations after five paintings by van Eyck, van der Weyden, and Memling.

The remaining articles are more diverse in scope. Monika Dachs identifies French characteristics in Michelino da Besozzo's Coronation of the Virgin. Wolfger Bulst contributes an excellent examination of the Olympic Contest between Hercules and the Amazons, a mid-fifteenth century Flemish tapestry owned by the Este Court in Ferrara. Karl Moseneder explores the reasons why the young Michelangelo copied Martin Schongauer's Temptation of St. Anthony. After reviewing the past scholarly suggestions, he plausibly concludes that the dynamics of a complex group in motion appealed to the Florentine sculptor as he was designing works such as the Battle of the Centaurs in Florence. The final essay by Liana Castelfranchi Vegas revisits a damaged fresco of Christ before Pilate in the monastery at Chiaravelle near Milan. She correctly rejects the assertion made in 1990 by Germano Muiazzani that the picture was done in the 1490s by Hieronymus Bosch. Far more plausibly she presents a case for a northern European or northern-inspired painter active in the 1430s.

This attractively produced symposium volume makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of the artistic dialogue between northern Europe and Renaissance Italy.

JEFFREY CHIPPS SMITH University of Texas, Austin