After thinking about Italian fifteenth-century sculpture for more than five decades, what I most want to do is to get inside the heads of sculptors as they listened to patrons and as their vision evolved. I want to better understand their daily lives and the movements of their hands as they manipulated their media, minute by minute. This book of twenty essays brought me closer to this admittedly unattainable goal.
The editors set out to create a volume that would treat Italian fifteenth-century sculpture “comprehensively,” encompassing “works created throughout the peninsula, key materials, and practice” (ix). The essays fulfill the latter expectations while simultaneously demonstrating that the range of Italian fifteenth-century sculpture is so great and the creativity of its patrons and practitioners so impressive that no single volume could be comprehensive. Bloch and Zolli's introduction hints at the inexhaustible variety of sculpture produced during this period.
The emphasis on materials and process brought me closer to my goal with, for example, essays by Yvonne Elet on stucco, Lauren Jacobi on bronze techniques, Catherine Kupiec on della Robbia glazes, Lorenzo Buonanno on “Sculptural Audacity.” In addition to fulfilling patrons’ needs and acquiring tools and materials, sculptors must also have worried about unmaking. Studying the precious remains of antiquity reminded sculptors of the fragility of all sculptural media and the cruelty of history. Ghiberti wrote poignantly of the German artist Gusmin's dismay when he “saw his work unmade [disfare]” (136). The potential of damage must always have been in the back of sculptors’ minds; Megan Holmes documents examples of damage and the cultural forces behind it.
How sculpture was experienced requires reconstructing the physical, spiritual, and personal experience of sculpture in the civic/urban sphere, in churches, and at home. Seeing naturalistic figures of local saints seated in front of Duccio's Maestà must have been both startling and a poignant reminder of Siena's “civic sacred history” (Ashley Elston, 120). Peter Bell discusses the experience of sculpture-in-the-round, while David Drogin explores different approaches to narrative and spatial illusion in relief sculpture. Changing light is crucial to the experience of sculpture, as is explored by Morgan Ng at the Cardinal of Portugal Chapel and by Catherine Kupiec for della Robbia. Amy Bloch reveals the role water played in the symbolic, visual, and civic experience of Quercia's Fonte Gaia. Frank Fehrenbach and Una D'Elia examine the effect and meaning of color and lack of color.
Written sources help us understand the motivations of patrons and artists and reveal the attitudes contemporaries brought to the experience of sculpture. Robert Glass cites antique and contemporary ideas about decorum to explain the style of Filarete's doors for St. Peter's, supported by the sculptor's sensitivity to the significance of this commission. Peter Bell reveals that the revival of sculpture-in-the-round was “accompanied by a new conceptual framework on the part of patrons and sculptors and a new theoretical grounding for the arts undertaken by contemporary writers” (102). Lorenzo Buonanno demonstrates how the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili helps us understand attitudes toward sculpture in contemporary Venice. Catherine Kupiec cites texts that connect Luca della Robbia's use of white to ideals of transcendence and purity.
During the course of the fifteenth century in Italy, sculpture played an increasingly important role in the experience of both public and private spaces. Joost Keizer demonstrates that ancient and contemporary sculptures were recognized as carriers of accurate historical information and that sculpture as a medium embodied concepts of truthfulness. New commissions demonstrated patrons’ willingness to support projects that, during the course of the century, become larger and more impressive, drawing on sculptors’ creativity and versatility. The excitement of fifteenth-century artists, patrons, and observers for sculpture is palpable in these essays.
When Megan Holmes defined her personal approach—“I pay particular attention to material and formal considerations, to period terminology and related discourses, and to critical cultural developments” (135)—she encapsulated the broad principles that make this group of essays so impressive and inspiring. My thanks to all, including Cambridge University Press for the splendid presentation. I feel closer to my sculptors than ever before.
