Artists and warfare in the Renaissance (review)

Reviews 131 how detaded analysis of the original architectural plans cast new light on the structure of the Ufe to be lived in the buildings. Stained glass (Hilary Wayment), sculpture (Lindley) and music (Roger Bowers) all contributed to the image Wolsey sought to create both of himself and of the kingdom. As PhiUippa GlanviUe shows, the use of goldsmiths' work exemplifies the association of wealth, magnificence and patronage and the use of plate as the gift is elucidated. This admirably illustrated collection is a major contribution to our understanding of the man and the age he lived in. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Hale, J. R., Artists and warfare in the Renaissance, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1990; cloth; pp. ix, 278; 345 iUustrations; R.R.P. ? As John Hale notes in his Introduction, from the mid fifteenth to the mid sixteenth century, the Art of War underwent important changes and the visual arts acquired an unprecedented command over description and expressiveness. Yet the connection between art and war in the Renaissance has never been fully explored. Thus Hale adopts the role of matchmaker. In his wide-ranging discussion of the representation of military life, Hale's aim is not merely to 'iUustrate' changes in the nature of warfare but also to suggest how the pictorial imagination of the Renaissance responded to the outstanding visual and emotional aspects of warfare. Hale treats the visual response to war under a number of headings: the figure of the common soldier, representation of battles and sieges, soldiers in religious art, and the visual terminology for the expression of attitudes to war and peace. The central theme of Hale's study is the discrepancies between visual images of military life in two zones of Renaissance Europe: Switzerland-Germany and Italy; discrepancies which are most glaringly obvious in the admission to, and representation of, the common soldier in art. Whereas German art of the later fifteenth and early sixteenth century abounds in images of the common soktier, he makes but rare appearances in Italian art. Hale devotes the two central chapters of the book to exploring this contrast between northern and southern art All aspects of soldiering life were depicted by German painters and engravers in an art that amounted to social commentary. This art also included images of women and Hale argues that there was far more interest in representing the sexual aspects of the soldier's life in German art than in Italian. In Italian art sexual diversion and bodily display tendedtobe removed from the everyday world and placed in the mythological land of the classical gods, heroes, nymphs, and satyrs. Indeed the contexts where soldiers tended to appear in Italian Renaissance 132 Reviews art were the mythological, chivalrous, religious, and historical. In the north the word 'soldier' in the cultural context signified the Landsknecht. In Italy the association was more likely to be the Roman legionary. Hale examines the possible social, emotional, aesthetic, and market factors behind the differences. This leads him into the area of comparative cultural history. It is in cultural differences that he finds the most promisingterrainof explanation. There was far more theorising about art in Italy, and far many more established rules of decorum about what subjects were acceptable and how they should be presented. In Italy, by the end of thefifteenthcentury, an aesthetic had developed that stressed the selective refinement of raw nature by the exercise of the intellect. Humanism built a wall between artists and the military world of the present and widened the gap between art and life. Hale's central theme is a fascinating issue and it stems from an enormous and daunting exploration of visual images in all mediums. The arguments are accompanied by copious illustration so that the book is itself a visual feast. Yet strangely enough, this study from a very gifted communicater whose wit and literary style have long delighted students of the Renaissance weighs somewhat heavily. There are just too many examples, the analysis is just too dense. Roslyn Pesman Cooper Department of History University of Sydney Hutton, Ronald, The British Republic 1649-1660 (British history in perspective), Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1990; paper; pp...