Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence: 1300-1450.

The exhibition of Florentine painting and illumination at the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed on February 26, 1995, but the eponymous book produced in conjunction with it will serve generations of scholars and students to come. The topic of the book covers manuscript illumination in Florence in the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, but also included are numerous panel paintings, a few drawings, one image painted on glass (verre eglomise), and one set of embroidered textiles. Three essays precede the catalogue of works. The first, by Laurence Kanter, curator of the Lehman collection at the Metropolitan Museum, lucidly summarizes the development of illumination in Florence in this period. There follows a most useful primer in liturgical and devotional manuscript usage and codicology by Barbara Drake Boehm, associate curator of medieval art at the Metropolitan. The third essay, by Carl Brandon Strehlke, curator of the Johnson collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, presents Mr. Strehlke's recent research on the career of Fra Angelico. The catalogue contains 99 entries, each comprised of a detailed description of the work, historical and critical discussion as needed, provenance, and bibliography, on works by such artists as Pacino di Bonaguida, the Master of the St. George Codex, Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci, Don Simone Camaldolese, Lorenzo Monaco, Fra Angelico, and Zanobi Strozzi, among others. Interspersed in the catalogue section are separate short essays introducing some of the artists or, where appropriate, presenting an overview of a whole manuscript or group of manuscripts.

For the nonspecialist, the book thus provides quick but learned overviews of manuscript painting in Florence from 1300 to 1450, manuscript use and codicology, the careers of individual artists, and the history - for example - of the superb set of choir books made for Santa Maria degli Angeli. For the specialist, there is a trove of information and scholarship of the highest quality, including an excellent bibliography and carefully considered new attributions and datings, too numerous to be detailed here. All readers will appreciate the many large, clear illustrations.

Painting in manuscripts requires specialized techniques and design skills such as working on a small scale and placing figure compositions effectively in relation to odd and varied borders - skills which artists such as the Master of the St. George Codex and Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci used to produce masterful works in this medium. It is true, however, that manuscript illuminations are not the Florentines' greatest legacy to the history of art, and the contribution of this exhibition and book lies not so much in revealing hitherto unappreciated artistic gems as in integrating manuscript illuminations into the Florentine corpus. For example, when Gaudenz Freuler discusses the Lehman Crucifixion panel, he uses comparisons with Gherarducci's illuminations, not just with other panel paintings, to argue for attribution of the panel to that artist.

Unfortunately, the scope of this book is confusing, with the title itself so broad as to give little guidance. The book seems to be about manuscript illumination, with works in other media included when comparison is elucidating; however, numerous works are not discussed in relation to illumination (for example, the embroideries and many of the panel paintings by Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico), and the extensive analysis of Angelico in the introductory essay and in the catalogue seems as if it should have been published in separate form elsewhere. The actual scope of the book might be described, roughly, as works in various media by the major manuscript painters of Florence, 1300-1450.

Although the organization is fairly standard for a catalogue, much of the valuable information packed into the book is buried in a section shown in the table of contents as "Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450" (44-362). Even to know what artists and works are covered, including discovering the excellent essays on individual artists and groups of manuscripts, one must scan those 318 pages. As often happens when a book is produced in conjunction with a scholarly exhibition, the resulting publication loses much of its usefulness as a reference work by following strictly a catalogue format.

Florentine manuscript painting has rarely received such visibility and serious study as in this volume and its parent exhibition. The contents, if not always of easiest access, provide a wealth of information and insight and begin to redress an imbalance in which a significant resource for understanding early Renaissance painting - manuscript illumination - has been undervalued.

ELMA B. SANDERS Independent scholar