The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior, 1400–1700: Objects, Spaces, Domesticities ed. by Erin J. Campbell, Stephanie R. Miller, and Elizabeth Carroll Consavari (review)

Recent interest in the material culture of Renaissance and early modern Italy has greatly enriched our understanding of the everyday home lives of mainly elite Italians. This volume explores the notion that the Italian domestic interior was a space to be lived in, and the objects within it were not static or inanimate but had important social functions that reflected contemporary social processes and attitudes.

The chapters all emphasise that the domestic interior was a dynamic space with objects, space, and uses of various rooms changing according to season or as circumstances necessitated. This dynamism is reflected in the first chapter that opens Part I on domesticities. Catherine Fletcher’s discussion of the Casali family’s patrician’s palace in Bologna and their villa in Montevecchio shows that rooms could have various uses, such as a ground floor study that also contained a bed. The family home in the city contained items for use in business, but the villa, which was a place of leisure, instead, included playing cards and musical instruments. Susan Naletzyty considers the mobility of domestic objects by discussing Pietro Bembo’s display of personal objects from his home in Padua in a borrowed house in Rome, as well as the display of objects in his own home and garden that housed guests in his absence. In Adelina Modesti’s contribution, the comings and goings (via/vai) of the house of renowned seventeenth-century Bolognese artist, Elizabetta Sirani, emphasise that household and workshop co-existed as a space where, simultaneously, important patrons were entertained, young artists were trained, Elizabetta painted, and the domestic work of the house carried on.

Part II discusses ‘people, spaces and objects’, with examples from Florence, Venice, and Bologna. The bringing up of children in the Florentine palace is the subject of Stephanie R. Miller’s essay. An especial interest in children in fifteenth-century Florence – a consequence of their increasing survival in the decades after plague had decimated their numbers in the late fourteenth century – is illustrated in the number of sculptures of children, toys, and other objects that have been recorded in household inventories. A discussion by Margaret Morse of the Venetian portego (portico) and its uses follows. The portego was the place in the Venetian palazzo where guests were entertained, religious pictures displayed, and it was the area most open to the outside world. Erin J. Campbell’s study of the seventeenth-century Bolognese interior indicates that guests entertained in these houses could find themselves in rooms that were effectively art galleries for family portraits.

The spaces of sociability are the subject of Part III. Maria del Prano outlines how in Florence, the downstairs room near the vestibule was sparsely furnished but had multiple uses: as a bedroom for the household head in the summer, a room in which to entertain guests, a space to hang family portraits, and a space for recreation, games, music, and convivial conversation. The function of the Venetian portego as a household proto-art gallery and its social function both to display the public status of the family and as a stimulus to a topic of learned conversation is discussed next, in Elizabeth Carroll Consavari’s essay. Kate McIver’s very interesting article on the layout and social functions of kitchens provides a perspective on the domestic interior hitherto little studied.

The last two chapters in this section are the only ones dealing with courts. Allyson Burgess Williams provides a vivid account of the living quarters of Lucrezia Borgia who, unlike her more famous sister-in-law, Isabella d’Este, chose to decorate her quarters with gorgeous (and perishable) tapestries rather than paintings and sculptures. Diane Webb concludes this section by outlining the rituals and splendour of the Montefeltro Court...