The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and its Cultural Representation in Sixteenth Century Italy.

The reader who plunges into this book looking for an account of landscape formations around the Palladian villa is in for a surprise. The term, "Palladian landscape," as defined by Cosgrove, refers rather to "the social signification" of all the urban and rural changes in sixteenth-century Veneto. Landscape, therefore, is not just a place, but a metaphor, too. Cosgrove, a geographer, draws on the methods of cultural geographers such as David Lowenthal in the formulation of a notion of place and his approach is multidisciplinary: from geology to the history of painting. The first three chapters consider Palladio's contribution to the cityscape, while the remaining six deal with the planning and organization of the great estates of the Veneto. Some of these are the work of Palladio, of course, but in order to fill out his concept of "landscape," Cosgrove discusses the contributions of Giorgione, Veronese, and the maps of Cristoforo Sorte and other cartographers. The life and work of Palladio, therefore, form a leitmotif rather than being the subject of the book.

Still, Cosgrove's interests in the actual landscape are at the heart of the book, and he describes the development of it as a new home for the Venetian aristocracy - not only the development of techniques for draining the land, but the habitations and social habits of the aristocracy. He has fascinating information about the way they lived, most notably concerning a feud between the Godi and Piovene families whose quarrels led to the clandestine murder of a member of the Piovene family by Orazio Godi, then resident in the villa at Lugo, in 1577 (125-28). The restrained architecture of Palladio veiled behavior worthy of the old tower societies of the medieval cities. These are, in my opinion, the strongest sections of the book.

Technological developments also contributed to the actual landscape, and its discussion takes up three important chapters. For Cosgrove, Venetian technology is utopian in nature. The division of the lands from the waters requires hydrology; hydrology requires map-making; map-making, of course, depends on geometry; and geometry is that most sacred of Renaissance sciences. Thus Cosgrove, links Venetian territorial conquest and technical advancement to the larger issues of Renaissance philosophy and cosmography. This kind of Wittkower-influenced syllogism seems false. While it is true that the various cartographers worked with geometry, it would be wrong to assume, for example, that geometers really had access to the "Euclidean ecstasy," to echo Cosgrove's chapter title. I cannot agree that "mechanics" were "on an intellectual par" with humanists like Barbaro or Alberti (211). Tafuri, for example, has described the links between technical skill, architecture, and political philosophy in ways that seem ultimately more convincing. (See Manfredo Tafuri, Venezia e il Rinascimento [Turin, 1985].)

Finally, this is a difficult book to read. Experts in the Renaissance will find, along with some marvelous material, particularly the new information harvested in the archival vineyards of Venice and Vicenza, a large dose of fairly conventional Renaissance philosophy and urban history. And although a lengthy comment on the author's ponderous writing style, the tight typography, partially legible illustrations, and casual proofreading, seems out of place (on p. 250, line 25, substitute "sacred" for "scared"), the reader should be prepared for a book that, despite its other virtues, is fundamentally below standard in terms of production values.

Nicholas Adams VASSAR COLLEGE