Paolo Veronese fra artisti e letterati.

This book seeks to place Veronese's art in the context of the culture of his time. The author uses examples from contemporary literature, philosophy, music, and art, but most particularly from religious thinkers such as Daniele Barbaro, Matteo Giberti, and Gasparo Contarini as a setting for evocative descriptions of a chronologically arranged selection of Paolo Veronese's paintings. The layout and printing are handsome.

Gnocchi's effort is a sustained antidote to the view of Reynolds and some later writers, which characterized Veronese's art as "decorative," non-intellectual and incapable of religious depth. It refers to specific iconographical studies such as those of Philip Fehl and Staale Sinding-Larsen that articulate the religious content of Veronese's work, and recent Italian scholarship such as that of Gigliola Fragnito concerning the thinking of Catholic reformers before and during Trent.

The author's method is one of free association from ecclesiastic or philosophic reference or poetic phrase to painted expression. He sees key works of Veronese's maturity as expressing the same idealization found in Platonic thinking of the time. He evokes parallels between poetry or prose written about media other than painting and the color and form of Veronese's completed canvases, emphasizing the sophisticated formal characteristics of Veronese's painting. For example, Daniele Barbaro's essay on eloquence is referred to in the following: "ma non solo purita e semplicita anche l'eleganza contribuisce alia chiarezza della retorica del Barbaro, dell'animo e della pittura di Paolo, <come un sole che ogni oscurita>, eventualmente provocata da grandezza e magnificenza, <e leva e disgombra >, e cosi chiarisce suoi quadri ammettendovi figure piu complesse di quelle < diritte > previste dalla < purita >, per esse il discorso retorico e figurativo diviene vario ed interessante" (33).

This reviewer would have preferred a more focused exploration of explicit connections between Veronese and the intellectuals of his time. Gnocchi states contemporaneity or refers to known patronage by learned men, but does not confront such issues as the likelihood of the patron's responsibility for content. What we know of Veronese through his few letters, contracts, archival notices, and early sources does not tell us that he read or did not read the essays of Barbaro, the sermons of Contarini, or Platonic writings. Yet Barbaro's designing of the iconographical program for the Doges Palace ceilings of 155354 and his presumed programming of the sophisticated content of the Villa Maser decorations, offer opportunities for more specific study. It is in this area of the relationship of programmer and painter and thus the possible effect of content upon form that a basis may exist for the connections that Gnocchi makes.

Since matters of attribution and date are not the focus of this study, the author might have confined himself to the most secure examples. He includes some works of disputed attribution or date, and gives short footnotes, but without full references or articulated reasons for his choices. The bibliography is rich in some areas but quite selective, with many relevant English and German titles on Veronese missing. Gnocchi sometimes ignores facts in favor of romanticizing his material - as in assuming that the later religious works relate to prolonged meditation on death, when we know that Paolo was just sixty when a sudden fever cut his life short at the height of his career.

At the beginning of his book Gnocchi notes the scarcity of documentary notices on Veronese, but continues: "Noi vorremmo ritrovare l' uomo, con la sua pittura, nel rapporto con i suoi committenti e sopratutto con i suoi probabili amici intellettuali [my emphasis], e quindi con le possibilita culturali del suo tempo che potevano infuenzarlo e dare alla sun opera significati che, altrimenti, ci fuggono." He adds that he will confront the culture with Veronese's art "movendoci con grande liberta," and "se qualcosa abbiamo compreso, saranno ipotesi o intuizioni, non certo raggiungimenti definitivi, essendo la nostra disciplina ancora mobile e del tutto aperto" (8). Following this poetic method, the author succeeds in alerting his reader to the manifold intellectual currents of Veronese's time and place, and positioning the artist in the heady context of renewal, reform, and the idealism and controversy that accompanied them in the Veneto of the mid- to late-sixteenth century.

DIANA GISOLFI Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY