Rosso in Italy.

In this handsomely produced book David Franklin meticulously details Rosso's career from the artist's early training to his trip to Venice and subsequent departure for France in 1530. Each of the major works receives essentially monographic treatment. Very fine color plates illustrate all of the major works in detail, supporting Franklin's perceptive analysis of Rosso's style. Franklin's work presents a thorough contextualization of the artist's paintings, with extensive evidence on their patronage and sites, thus giving the reader far more than a history of Rosso's life and work. Given the previous publications of Eugene Carroll on Rosso's drawings and prints, Franklin does not consider this material separately in his text, but amply presents it in relationship to the paintings and to Rosso's career developments.

It is not clear, however, why Franklin divorces Rosso's Italian career from his work in France after 1530. Despite Sylvie Beguin's defining work on Fontainebleau, Rosso's career provides a critical opportunity to investigate both the continuities and the changes in the Italian style as it was imported to France by Francis I. One of the curiosities of scholarship in our field is that modern national boundaries have served to circumscribe scholarly research as well as political territory. The deracination of the School of Fontainebleau is but one example, but one which might have been addressed in this book. Franklin's forceful description of the patterns of Rosso's career in Italy will leave readers wishing he had continued his analysis of Rosso's work beyond 1530 and given the artist's first efforts in France the same close attention he gave to Rosso's early work in Rome.

Compared to the rest of the book, Franklin's chapter on Rosso's portraits seems somewhat thin in terms of context and comparison, especially in light of the author's own call for expanded attention to Rosso's portraiture in an article published in 1989. The problems of Rosso's portraiture are admittedly daunting, especially since none of his subjects have been identified. Franklin's refining of the corpus of Rosso's portraits by removing the Berlin-Dahlem painting on the basis of style is helpful, as are his discussions of the newly restored painting in Liverpool and the attributed Portrait of a Man Holding a Letter, dated to 1518, now hidden in a private collection. But the evolution of the portrait in the second decade of the sixteenth century in Florence surely must be tied to the changed social conditions after 1512, about which Franklin says little. Moreover, given the fully developed mannerist stylistic vocabulary in religious painting of the time, Rosso's portraits seem remarkably straightforward and direct, suggesting an uneven implementation of mannerism depending on subject.

Franklin peppers provocative comments throughout the text that one can only hope he will take up at a later date. His comment that the term High Renaissance needs reassessment (7) is but one example; his attendant comments on the style of Fra Bartolommeo help open the discussion. His later reference to the compositional freedom of Old Testament subjects in domestic painting (110) also warrants expanded consideration, particularly in light of changing social and family structures in Florence.

Franklin has included important appendices of documents relative to Rosso's Italian career. Each appendix coincides with the material for a chapter of the book, thus organizing the documentary evidence essentially by commission. It would have been helpful to have had indication with the documents of their previous publication(s), despite footnote references in the main body of the text. Franklin also includes a useful chronology of secure dates for Rosso's activity in Italy as well as an expansive select bibliography. All told this is an impressive first book.

JOHN T. PAOLETTI Wesleyan University