Painted Glories

Painted Glories: The Brancacci Chapel in Renaissance Florence by Nicholas A Eckstein, 208 pages

The frescoes painted by Masolino and Masaccio in the Brancacci chapel of Florence's Santa Maria del Carmine have been drawing admirers since they were painted in the early fifteenth century, although, as Nicholas Eckstein relates, their intended influence was not merely aesthetic, but simultaneously devotional, memorial, and didactic, shaped in both their conception and reception by a continually changing social and religious context.  Most notably, Eckstein contends, the chapel was transformed after Florence's defeat of a Milanese army in 1440, a victory that was attributed to the intercession of Sts Peter and Paul and the Florentine Carmelite Bl Andrea Corsini.

Little documentation of the creation of the Brancacci chapel has survived down to the present, leaving a number of intriguing mysteries which Eckstein attempts to solve with a combination of careful deduction and informed speculation.  The result is a vibrant portrait of Florence in the midst of the Renaissance.  If there is a major flaw to the book, it is that the focus sometimes seems lost, so that the art begins to disappear behind the history.