Masaccio's Trinity

Masaccio's Trinity, edited by Rona Goffen, 138 pages

In the early 15th century, the artist Tommaso Guidi, better known as Masaccio, painted a fresco of the Trinity represented as the Throne of Mercy, flanked by the Blessed Virgin, St John the Apostle, and a pair of donors.  The fresco was covered up by renovations in the late 16th century, but was uncovered in the 19th, at which time it was detached from the wall and moved to another location in the church of Santa Maria Novella.  20th century renovations uncovered another part of the fresco in the original location, and the whole was reunited with considerable difficulty.  Even as damaged as it is, Masaccio's Trinity remains a striking work of art, remarkable for its use of perspective and fictive architecture.

The present book was published in 1998 as part of the Masterpieces of Western Painting series.  Predictably, perhaps unavoidably, the quality of the included essays are uneven, but all of them contain at least some interest.  The highlight is the essay "Time and the Timeless in Quattrocento Painting" by French poet Yves Bonnefoy. 

Brunelleschi's Dome

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King, 167 pages

At the end of the 13th century, the Florentines decided that they required a new cathedral, as much to celebrate the city's growing prosperity as to replace the crumbling Santa Reparata.  An ambitious plan was approved, but progress was slow, and it was not until the beginning of the 15th century that preparations began for the construction of what would be the largest masonry dome ever constructed.  Filippo Brunelleschi's innovative proposal for the dome construction was ultimately selected over several more conventional plans, including one by Lorenzo Ghiberti.  The dome was completed sixteen years later and remains an iconic symbol of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The story of this construction, through two decades of war, plague, and civil strife, is the subject of Ross King's book.  It is a promising subject indeed - a great construction project during one of the most colorful and fertile periods in human history, a contest of human ingenuity and the feuding wills of great artists and their patrons.  Unfortunately, King's book is deadly dull.  Working with incomplete historical and biographical records, he constructs his own account of events, asserting that a figure "must have" done this, or "seems to have" done that.  He plays equally fast and loose with history (at one point he flatly declares that the technique of perspective was "lost", then shortly thereafter says it was abandoned as "dishonest") and even basic facts (he asserts that other than Brunelleschi, the "only other person interred inside the cathedral was St Zenobius", which seems to be simply untrue).  Worse than all this, he seems to regard only the technical challenges of construction to be worth writing about, resulting in a book that contains nothing of beauty, nothing of poetry, and precious little of mind or spirit.

Mornings in Florence

Mornings in Florence, Being Simple Studies of Christian Art for English Travellers by John Ruskin, 115 pages

Mornings in Florence takes the form of a guidebook, wherein the reader is instructed how to profitably spend six successive mornings in Florence examining the art and architecture of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.  It is a book written in open contempt for the guidebooks of Ruskin's day, and it is undoubted that he would have been no more impressed by Mr Steves in our day than he was by Mr Murray in his own.  Moving back and forth between Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, and the Duomo, the purpose here is less to tell the reader what he should see as how he should see.  And this is a gift that extends to much more than the appreciation of Cimabue and Giotto and Botticelli, great as they are: "Easy or not, it is all the sight required of you in this world - to see things, and men, and yourself - as they are."

Ruskin is able to see things as they are, not because of his excellent education or refined sensibility or even because he was an incredible snob, but because he was not a materialist, not even unconsciously.  Whatever the truths or errors of his personal metaphysics, Ruskin was able to hear that "higher wisdom, governing by her presence, all earthly conduct, and by her teaching, all earthly art, Florence tells you, she obtained only by prayer."

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.

Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico: San Marco, Florence by William Hood, 123 pages

William Hood remarks that Bl Fra Angelico enjoyed an advantage rare among Renaissance artists - as a Dominican friar, he worked exclusively for the Order and therefore never had to worry about finding new commissions.  His frescoes for the cloister of San Marco have an advantage as well, remaining in their original context despite the transition of the building from convent to museum, a process completed by the departure of the last friars in 2014.  In addition to detailing the techniques employed, Hood carefully explicates the relationships of the frescoes to one another, to the daily life of the convent, to contemporary movements within the Order of Preachers, and to the political realities of Renaissance Florence, considerably enlarging the reader's understanding of the painter's radiant work.

La Vita Nuova

La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri, translated by David R Slavitt, 144 pages

La Vita Nuova ("The New Life") is a collection of 31 sonnets written by Dante between the ages of 18 and 30, with prose introductions and explications by the poet.  The result is the story of how, at the age of 9, Dante's life began anew with his first sight of Beatrice, and how that love lasted throughout her life, and even stretched beyond death, into the eternal.

Slavitt translates the whole in a plain style, taking considerable liberties with the text.  The danger of a translation that aims to be "relatable", especially of a work distant in time and place, is that it will destroy what makes the work worth reading in the first place.  Slavitt clips Dante's wings and brings him down to earth.  The mutilated poet is easier to approach, but less interesting when reached.

Stones of Florence

The Stones of Florence by Mary McCarthy, 119 pages

Florence.  The home of Dante and Giotto, Donatello and Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico and Leonardo, Boccacio and Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo.  The city where Savonarola preached and the first opera was performed.  The center of European culture for two hundred years.

Novelist and cultural commentator Mary McCarthy wrote The Stones of Florence in the mid-'50s.  She attempts to capture the spirit of the city, of the ways it remained the same and the ways it changed down through its history, from its Roman origins to its Italian present, with an understandable emphasis on its Renaissance golden age.  Although very different from The Stones of Venice, the author justifies her Ruskinian title with the book's central reflection, that "a terrible mistake was committed here, at some point between Giotto and Michelangelo, a mistake that had to do with power and megalomania or gigantism of the human ego."

The 1959 edition is lavishly illustrated, with a full page photograph facing nearly every page of text (it is my understanding that later editions did not include these photos).

The Medici Boy

The Medici Boy by John L’Heureux     328 pages

John L’Heureux’s novel about one of the world’s greatest artists who ever lived, Donatello, is a deeply complex and fascinating portrayal of life in Renaissance Italy. L’Heureux, who did much of the research for this story in Florence, takes readers on a fascinating trip to the 15^th century.

Most of the story takes place at Donatello’s bottega (workshop) and is narrated by Luca Mattei, the sculptor’s devoted assistant. Ultimately, the book is about art and sex, specifically homosexuality, and the undulating tides of both passions.

Luca, born illegitimately, discovers women and his artistic talent before he turns seventeen. Three years later, Donatello hires him as an apprentice. He goes on to become the workshop’s accountant.

Donatello’s work involves recreating Bibical scenes and saints in wood, marble, and bronze. His talent earns him favors from the most powerful man in Florence, Cosimo de’Medici. It’s Medici who commissions Donatello to create a five-foot statue of David, the giant killer. But it’s Donatello's obsession with a street urchin, 16 year-old Agnolo, who becomes his primary model, and part time rent boy, that I found the most fascinating.

Supposedly in his 30s at this time, Donatello is at his artistic peak. He has many commissions and a stable of artists working under him. As Angolo comes and goes throughout the story, the bottega is sometimes chaotic and sometimes calm.

But, although homosexuality was common in Florence during this time, I was shocked to the degree in which men were penalized for this behavior. Sodomy was against the law and had a varying degree of fines ranging from a cascading series of monetary charges to hanging to death by fire.

The novel is very well written and completely absorbed me. Not a fast read, but a plot that ebbed and flowed, much like Donatello’s passions. On the book jacket, there is mention of a murder, so on first glance, I thought this was to be a murder mystery. Instead, the book is more literary/historical fiction. The murder doesn’t occur until very late in the novel---which is why I give TheMedici Boy four out of five stars.