Art Patronage, Family, and Gender in Renaissance Florence: The Tornabuoni by Maria DePrano (review)

This beautifully illustrated book examines the extraordinary body of art work commissioned by male members of the patrician Tornabuoni family in late fifteenth-century Florence. The objects that they intended for domestic and religious spaces were impressive in both number and form, ranging from portraits, medals, and panel paintings to frescoes, intarsia work, and stained glass. Marking this collective patronal oeuvre was a fascination with portraiture, a passion for classical learning, a concern with salvation, and "a dedication to celebrating and remembering their female relatives" (204). By gathering the artistic commissions of three generations of Tornabuoni men into a comprehensive study, the author attempts to advance Renaissance patronage studies beyond the Medici, who have dominated Florentine inquiries of this type, and to highlight familial works of art honoring women. The latter of these two claims is more significant: Art patronage by affluent Italian families abounded, whereas works celebrating women of the family are relatively rare. The book highlights eight art works that memorialized Tornabuoni female relations—wives, sisters, and daughters—within a larger corpus of commissions.

The chronological organization of material across nine chapters demonstrates how members of each generation built on the precedents established by their forebears. DePrano begins her analysis with the patronal activities of Giovanni Tornabuoni (1428–1497), the family patriarch, a wealthy banker with close ties to the city's leading families. Among his principal commissions was a now-lost funerary chapel and tomb for his wife Francesca Pitti (d. 1477). DePrano argues that her death may have inspired Giovanni to memorialize other family members through portraits executed in different media: for instance, the painted portrait by Domenico Ghirlandaio purportedly honoring his older sister Lucrezia Tornabuoni, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington; a pair of classicizing medals depicting his daughter Lodovica and son Lorenzo; and the extravaganza of family portraits populating the walls of the Tornabuoni chapel in Santa Maria Novella.

Giovanni's son followed suit by commissioning art works that marked important moments in his marital life cycle. Lorenzo celebrated the virtues of Giovanna degli Albizzi, his new bride, by having two medals depicting her likeness struck in 1486. He also ordered panel paintings depicting Renaissance ideals of female beauty and fertility for their private rooms, and commissioned an exquisite commemorative portrait when Giovanna died two years later. Similarly, Lorenzo paid homage to his second wife Ginevra Gianfigliazzi by engaging Sandro Botticelli to create fresco portraits of the couple at the Tornabuoni villa in 1491. Both of Lorenzo's sons continued the family tradition of art patronage, although with them it seems to have acquired a greater religious bent.

Throughout the volume, DePrano situates diverse classes of objects in relation to classical art and literature, as well as Renaissance humanism and contemporary social practice, skillfully putting visual and textual evidence in conversation with each other. DePrano offers substantive visual analyses of individual works, deftly analyzing the literary motifs and symbolism underpinning their imagery. DePrano's handling of conjugal relationships and gender constructs, however, remains less satisfying. Because the analysis sidesteps tensions within gendered representations and household dynamics, as well as issues of women's structural vulnerability, it tends to reinforce rather than challenge prescriptive views of Renaissance family life.

One question that looms large is why the Tornabuoni—unlike other Florentine patrician families comparable in wealth, reputation, and sense of corporate identity—took such a strong interest in celebrating their female kin. Why did these men adopt seemingly distinctive strategies for representing the family, especially compared to the Medici? Some additional informed hypotheses about the family's motivations and objectives would have been welcome.