The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600 by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin (review)

to a history of music by Renee Cox, to an analysis of ancient and modern myths about mothers and daughters by Ellen Handler Spitz. This volume corrects a surprising lacuna in the journal's history since these articles represent its first articles published from a feminist perspective.Joseph Margolis argues that his philosophy is compatible with the feminist position. He argues for a position ofopen-ended inquiry (which allows for many interpretations of a work of art) balanced by a minimal tie to narrative continuity of the history of interpretations of works. One suspects, given the current battles over academic curricula and the opposition to 'political correctness ', that the traditional aesthetic will not incorporate the feminist agenda in such a graceful fashion. And where does Leonardo stand institutionally ? The facts are: 40% of Leonardo's co-editors are women, as are 33% of the editorial advisors but only 2% of the honorary editors. In 1990,17% of the manuscript reviewers were women. During the last 3 years at Leonardo, 15% of the manuscripts received and 19% of the articles published were written by women authors. 60% of Leonardo/ISAST staff are women. None of the decisions leading to acceptance of a manuscript are carried out with any explicit gender bias; however, once accepted we consciously give priority to women authors, as well as to manuscripts that come from outside of the United States. For a recent article ofinterest, which discusses computers and computer art within a feminist perspective , see Sally Pryor, 'Thinking of Myself as a Computer, in Leonardo 24, No.5, 585-590 (1991). 100 DETAILS FROM PICTURES IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY LONDON by Kenneth Clark. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, U. K., 1990. 109 pp. iIIus. Paper, $19.94; Trade, $34.95. ISBN: 0-674-63863-8; 0-674-63862-X. Reviewed I7yJ. William Shank, San Francisco Museum ofModern Art, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94102, U.S.A. Art lovers will delight in this reissue, which was originally written in 1938 while Kenneth Clark was director of 104 Current Literature the National Gallery. Presented for the first time in faithful full-eolor reproduction , the randomly chosen details from 71 of the Gallery's bestloved paintings are arranged in pairs oficonographic similarity. Some ofthe comparisons are obvious, as in the case of a Hogarth cat and a Piero di Cosimo dog, and others are inspired, e.g. the contrast of a Pollaiuolo Saint Sebastian and the arrow-wounded deer in the Master of St. Giles's Saint Giles and the Hind. Clark's highly readable comments are typical of the style that endeared him years ago to a wide audience of art connoisseurs and amateurs alike. If his choices of illustration are not always immediately obvious, the author's straightforward and clear prose will draw in the reader. Who could resist the small Crivelli child who "looks round the corner of a balcony and sees through 'Campiri's' window a beautiful toy town, brighter than anything she could have found in Italian painting of the time ... " ? Black-and-white thumbnail illustrations are provided in an index to provide context for the details. THE PLACE OF NARRATIVE: MURAL DECORATION IN ITALIAN CHURCHES, 431-1600 by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, U.S.A., 1990. 406 pp., iIIus. ISBN: 0-22646956 -5. Reviewed I7y David Carrier,Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, U.S.A. Like many masterpieces, Lavin's book builds upon a simple idea. Now that computers make the systematic study of the ordering of narrative images possible, what can be learned from such data? Although the details of her fully documented account are a bit complex, the general thesis is brilliantly straightforward. As she explains in a lucid, although brief, afterward, in 1982 she discovered that it was possible to do a computer analysis of these visual narratives. Traditional art historians had discussed the order of the scenes in Piero della Francesco's cycle of the True Cross in San Francesco, Arezzo, Italy. What they had not presented, however, was a systematic comparative analysis relating that work to the some 230 narrative cycles Lavin has researched...