Emilia e Marche nel Rinascimento: L'Identità Visiva della 'Periferia'

In the introduction to this volume, which developed from a conference at the Università di Macerata, Pier Luigi De Vecchi and Giancarla Periti concisely and clearly articulate the unifying theme as the investigation of the center-periphery paradigm, established by Enrico Castelnuovo and Carlo Ginzburg in 1979, in interpreting the art of Emilia and the Marche in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. With essays that illuminate art in these peripheral areas of the Italian peninsula and present its intrinsic value, the book contributes to the body of literature that has challenged the traditional definition of Renaissance art as the humanistic innovations of Florentine and Roman artists, to which Giorgio Vasari's Vite (1550, 1568) gave rise.

Together the eight essays cover a broad spectrum of artistic production — manuscripts, frescoes, altarpieces, private devotional paintings, sculptural programs, and mixed-media ensembles — and artists both renowned — Leonardo da Vinci tops the list — and little-known. In discussing the illuminated poem De gentilium deorum imaginibus by the marchigiano humanist Ludovico Lazzarelli, Stanko Kokole reinterprets the term formae used by contemporary authors in reference to ancient gods. Samo Štefanac considers artistic exchanges between cities on the Adriatic's two coasts, elucidating the interdependence of Dalmatia and the Italian peninsula, while emphasizing the high quality of the Dalmatian artists' work. Jean Campbell probes the source of the fresco cycle in the Camera d'Oro at the castle of Torrechiara (Parma) commissioned by Count Pier Maria Rossi. Arguing that the iconographical method of pinpointing a single literary source is too narrow, Campbell follows an iconological approach to envision a deeper meaning encompassing types of spaces — interior-exterior, physical-psychological — and the realization of knowledge.

Three authors turn to Parma from 1500 to 1550, portraying an active intellectual and artistic hub that challenges its peripheral status. Letizia Arcangeli explains the evolving political situation in which the squads led by dominant families gave way to greater centralization, as Parma's center shifted from Milan to Rome. To Canon Bartolomeo Montini's multimedia funerary chapel in the Cathedral (1505–10), Alessandra Talignani assigns the designation of the first thoroughly all'antica monument in the city, which served as a reference point for the next generation of patrons and artists. By connecting Correggio's Ecce Homo for the sophisticated Bartolomeo Prati to the coeval writings of Erasmus, Giancarla Periti argues for Parma's centrality in the contemporary discourse on Christianity as well as artistic innovation.

In the final two essays, Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel explores Immaculate Conception imagery in the "periphery of the periphery" (215), the small towns of Emilia and the Marche, and Maria Grazia Albertini Ottolenghi argues that Alessandro Sforza, lord of Pesaro, was on the cutting edge of mid-fifteenth-century artistic taste.

Some contributions stand out for provoking us to question what contemporaries understood as center and how the quality of peripheral could, in fact, engender artistic opportunity. These interpretations convincingly suggest a fractious and decentralized Italian peninsula that did not universally acknowledge Florence and Rome's predominance, contrary to what Vasari would have us believe. Štefanac demonstrated that patrons and artists in the Marche did not privilege Florence when making artistic decisions. For instance, although the Dalmatian sculptor Giorgio di Sebenico acknowledged Donatello and Ghiberti's innovations, he especially assimilated the style of the Venetian Buon brothers in whose workshop he trained. As a result, he produced high-quality sculptural programs that rivaled contemporary artistic production in Florence. Venetian art was also critical to Parma's first humanist monument. Although Talignani argues that Montini's interest in humanism and the modern style must have come from his Roman tenure, his funerary monument relies heavily on Venice, while evoking central Italian predecessors. Periti's vivid portrayal of early-sixteenth-century Parma convincingly discredits the notion that the city was a "peripheral refuge" (195) dependent upon intellectuals and artists in other centers. Expanding upon Castelnuovo and Ginzburg's idea of the periphery as a place where alternative developments can happen, Kroegel's argument is compelling; being peripheral was an advantage in the case of altarpieces of the Immaculate Conception, a hotly debated issue in the Renaissance Church. Immaculists were able to express their belief more freely in outlying areas where their opponents exerted less control. The situation fostered innovation, as provincial artists were called upon to invent a new iconography for this ethereal concept, reversing the conceived relationship between center and periphery.