Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries.

"This book is not a straightforward history of portrait-painting in Renaissance Europe," Lorne Campbell disclaims in his preface. While we may wonder if such a history of the genre is at all feasible, "straightforward" seems precisely the appropriate adjective for Renaissance Portraits. Campbell's announced agenda is twofold. First, he seeks to raise "some very basic questions" about portraiture: what kinds were made, by whom and for whom, why were they made and how, how were they used? Second, bearing the oltremontano standard, he sets out to do battle with what he perceives as Italian critical hegemony, as represented by Vasari and his modern followers; against such presumed prejudice, Campbell seeks to defend the status of portraiture as "a serious intellectual pursuit" and to exalt the achievement of Northern European artists. These two concerns, essentially defensive strategies, determine the shape and tone of the book.

Hoping, as he writes, "to set the study of portraiture on a more rational basis," Campbell rejects what he considers the "subjective and unsupported statements" of other writers "which relate to their personal reactions and apprehensions of the sitters and have little to do with analyses of the paintings themselves." He wants "to show that it is possible, by examining the portraits very carefully and by paying close attention to the practicalities of portraiture, to make reasoned deductions about the painters' intentions and to describe and explain those small distortions by which, instinctively or consciously, they individualized, idealized and characterized their sitters." This confident naturalistic positivism is based upon a rather naively formulated assumption: "that great artists do not make mistakes in drawing" (x).

Himself the son of a professional portrait painter, Campbell intends to demonstrate the secrets of his father's art. But his analyses seem to proceed from the strangely unempirical assumption that the human face is absolutely symmetrical. Thus, when an artist differentiates a sitter's two eyes or nostrils or varies the curvature of the lips to either side of the mouth this is taken to be a deliberate distortion of reality. In such presumed departures from objective reality Campbell finds both the mechanics of characterization and a key to the artist's style. The portrait painter, on this account, imposes his own "ideals of beauty" upon the sitter. An exception, it would seem, is provided by that "model of accuracy" (15), Jan van Eyck, who, according to Campbell, "faithfully recorded" (16) the natural appearance of his subjects. It is ironic that an author so intent upon defending northern European genius should so unwittingly diminish the achievement of its most inventive Renaissance master.

Although the chapter and section titles promise a thorough consideration of portrait types and functions, the actual discussion of important topics such as the parapet or the portrait cover remains very thin. Campbell's commentary on Van Eyck's so-called Tymotheos, surely one of the most challenging effigies of the entire Renaissance, is typical: "It is not certain whether Van Eyck intended his portrait to look like those ancient Roman tombstones which it resembles in general composition; why the parapet should be damaged and cracked; whether the inscription 'LEAL SOVVENIR' should be taken as an indication that the portrait is posthumous; or why the three inscriptions should differ in style of lettering and means of application. It should also be pointed out that the sitter appears to be bald and that the point of his nose and his nostrils are malformed" (71). Avoiding all interpretive responsibility, descending to the trivial, lacking any sense of critical proportion, this passage epitomizes the essential weakness of Campbell's project.

Although he does quote Durer's observation on the function of painting--that it "preserves the likenesses of men after their deaths"--Campbell fails to locate this commonplace or to explore its fuller resonance. A century earlier it had been articulated by Leon Battista Alberti, who, evoking Cicero (De amicitia, vii, 23), compared painting to friendship, which makes absent men present. This affective dimension, central to the formal structures and social functions of portraiture, to its humanity, is missing in Campbell's rather mechanical account.

Renaissance Portraits does offer a handsomely illustrated survey of the genre, and its deliberate emphasis upon northern European images does provide a certain balance to the available literature. The ambition of its visual coverage, however, is not matched by its bibliography, which is seriously deficient and particularly in regard to the more recent literature on some rather famous portraits--including, e.g., Giorgione's Laura and Raphael's Baldassare Castiglione. For whatever it may lack in sophisticated analysis or interpretation this study offers some compensation in its anecdotal richness. If he has not written a history of portraiture, straightforward or otherwise, Campbell has put together a kind of chronicle, a compendium of documentary details that substitute for historical or thematic narrative. Where Campbell can tell a story regarding sitter or commission, his captions are full; where such information is lacking, he is satisfied with comments like "on grounds of style and costume, the portrait is attributed to ... and dated around...."

In his final chapter, "Italy and 'the North,'" Campbell presents the peroration of the second tenet of his thesis. Here he offers a critical defense of Antonis Mor as a major painter of portraits. But, however worthy, this is accomplished through awkward and gratuitously invidious comparisons with Titian, as though an adequate appreciation of the one could only be achieved through the relative denigration of the other. Tilting at the windmills of Vasari and his modern followers (read, especially, John Pope-Hennessy), Campbell confirms the general tone of his study. Apologetic, defensive, and critically parochial, Renaissance Portraits is, finally, lacking in that sense of humanity one might think essential for a proper study of the topic.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY