Le grottesche della "Volta Pinta" in Assisi.

Most studies of Assisi have focused on the thirteenth century, the era of the comune and Saint Francis, leaving its later history largely unexplored. Genovesi's investigation of frescoes painted in an arcade of the Palazzo del Governatore in 1556 seeks to redress this imbalance. His purpose is to identify the authors and explicate the content of the enigmatic pictorial program, and to suggest "the nature of the message that the printings of the Volta Pinta seem to direct toward the city"(6).

Genovesi contends that the grotteschi refer directly to the political concerns of Marcello Tuti, the papal governor of Assisi who commissioned them, and indirectly to the interests of the Accademia del Monte, a group of local humanists. His essentially iconographical approach presents a history of the vault and its painter (Raffaellino del Colie?), an explanation o fgrotteschi as a genre, and a close reading of the paintings. Two points are essential to his overall argument: first, that laws meant to control prostitution at the site offer a social basis for the moral content of the frescoes; and second, that a now-lost portrait of the Latin poet Propertius (whose birth in Assisi was much debated) links the ensemble to the Accademia del Monte.

As visual precedents for the Volta Pinta, Genovesi cites Raphael's loggia for Cardinal Bibbiena and Enea Vico's engravings in the Leviores et extemporaneae picturae quas grotteschas vulgo vocant. From a survey of cinquecento writings on grotteschi (Barbaro, Vasari, Ligorio, and Lomazzo, among others), he concludes that the historical nature and "restricted language" of the genre could only be appreciated by a limited, erudite circle. In Assisi, such an elite group would comprise Tuti and the Accademia del Monte.

Most of the book is devoted to describing and interpreting the pictorial program. Moving right to left from the entrance, Genovesi treats the ten fields of the pergolato separately and then as a facing pair, interpreting them according to a scheme of "contiguity and sequence" and "similarity and complementarity" (32-33). In the first field, the myth of Daedalus and Icarus cautions the spectator to maintain moderation, and the adjacent Fall of Phaeton warns against recklessness; the images thus censure those who transgress the laws of God and nature. The "pure" grotteschi of the remaining fields prove more difficult to explicate. Drawing on Vico's engravings, Alciati's emblemata, Petrarch's Trionfi, and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Genovesi explains the fantastic collection of musicians, satyrs, buffoons, nudes, birds, and animals as contrasting allusions to ethical versus immoral conduct which constitute a code of behavior under the guidance of Tuti, whose emblem (the knotted stick) appears repeatedly.

Genovesi's precise iconographical reading of the complex imagery of the Volta Pinta is insightful, although at times his interpretations seem contrived; moreover, his subthemes - that the warnings about immoral behavior refer to prostitution and that allusions to Propertius extol the Accademia del Monte - remain conjectural. His conclusion that the Volta Pinta becomes a sort of "manifesto," whereby Tuti and the cultivated class of Assisi enunciate their objectives of good government and caution those who would challenge its leadership, would be more persuasive had he clarified the social and political situation in mid-sixteenth-century Assisi. A related issue is the audience for the paintings: if the program is as political and the imagery as sophisticated as Genovesi claims, for whom was it intended? The location of the Volta Pinta at the civic center of Assisi warrants greater consideration, and its function as a market raises questions about the reception of its imagery among those frequenting the site (a photograph or plan of the Piazza del Comunale would have been helpful). Be that as it may, Genovesi's book belongs to the venerable tradition of Italian regional histories that focus attention on often ignored centers. One hopes this study will not only spark interest in the secular monuments of Assisi, but also prompt search into other overlooked towns of early modern Italy.

JERYLDENE M. WOOD University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign