Quattrocentro Adriatico: Fifteenth-Century Art of the Adriatic Rim.

Charles Dempsey, ed. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. 230 pp. + illus. $50. ISBN: 88-779-052-0.

This book brings together twelve well-informed scholars under the leadership of Professor Dempsey on a subject too little known: the artistic development of the Venetian territories of the eastern Adriatic and their relationships with major centers of the upper Italian peninsula. That the subject has hitherto been little studied in the United States can be seen from the small number of references to American art historians in this fully annotated collection, and the presence of only one such scholar, the veteran researcher Ann Markham Schulz. The remaining art historians are Croatian, Slovenian, German, or Italian, writing in well-edited English or Italian.

From the strictly historical point of view, however, readers will appreciate the excellent account of how Venice maintained sovereignty over Dalmatia during the late medieval and Renaissance periods written by Professor Reinhold Mueller of Johns Hopkins. Kruno Prijatelj, a leading expert on Dalmatian painting, however, disappoints as he presents little more than a listing of artists working on the east coast, culminating with the wonderful Giorgio Schiavone. As to the field of architecture, Josko Belamaric writes an interesting essay on the villa tradition in the vicinity of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), though the actual examples are sparse; while Janez Hofler reports on the presence in the same area of Florentine workmen, such as Maso di Bartolommeo, Michele di Giovanni, and on the elusive role played by Michelozzo during a short and not altogether successful mid-century stay.

The major and most intriguing discussion centers around sculpture and sculptural problems in this region, famed for its stone and stone workers. Besides such Florentine-trained masters drawn to the area as Niccolo di Giovanni and Agostino di Duccio we find, of course, the widely traveled native son Giovanni Dalmata. Editor Dempsey regrets (8), as will most readers, the absence of Francesco Laurana, one of the supreme talents to emerge from the Dalmatian shores during the period. But the work of Niccolo di Giovanni, whose authorship of the Orsini chapel in the Cathedral of Trau (Trogir) is painstakingly documented by Samo Stefanac, attests to the local appetite for largely Donatellesque taste by the third quarter of the Quattrocento (a point also stressed by Andrea De Marchi's article). The Orsini chapel is the most fully illustrated and discussed example in the book and in many respects the quality is high, but, to one familiar with the interrelation of sculpture and architecture or the questions of architectural proportioning in nearly contemporary Florentine examples, the chapel exhibits a certain absence of artistic sensitivity.

For scholars interested in revisiting one of the most celebrated and fascinating of all Quattrocento sculptural ensembles, the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini, there is an intriguing in-depth study of the much admired Chapel of the Planets by Stanko Kokole. After reviewing the usual Valturio reference, Kokole, with unusual mastery, explores a wide range of literary source material from Macrobius to Petrarch and Boccaccio-related writings, testing them against the iconographical peculiarities of seven (of the eighteen) reliefs. Ultimately, he comes to a common-sense conclusion that their uniqueness derives from formal as well as programmatic considerations. What is truly needed from the point of view of art is a rigorous stylistic analysis of the entire Tempio, for surely no one artist (if indeed the campaign was led by Agostino di Duccio) would account for the many subtle disparities of carving that occur throughout the undertaking.

The book is, on the whole, well printed, but some of the illustrations are in such a reduced scale that not even the most myopic of readers would be in a position to form an independent evaluation. That being said, this volume is especially welcome in pointing the way eastwards in the history of the spread of the Florentine Renaissance. The book provides important basic information (relatively rare in the English literature) and raises issues that should stimulate new interest in the Adriatic area at a time when its physical heritage has come under such barbaric attack.

ROBERT J. H. JANSON-LA PALME Washington College