The Brancacci Chapel: Form, Function and Setting: Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 6, 2003 (review)

Any new book on a work of art as celebrated as the Brancacci Chapel mural painting cycle, especially one that proposes to advance new interpretations rather than reprise old ones, will surely prompt the question whether such a project can be sustained. Even if no new archival evidence directly relating to the commission for the paintings has been unearthed, or new technical information about their materials and technique revealed through scientific studies, the answer in this case is an emphatic 'yes'. For the wealth of historical evidence brought to bear on the discussion of the social, political, and ecclesiastical contexts of the commission provides more plausible and complete answers to the questions that have long faced students of the Chapel.

The editor, Nicholas Eckstein, is Cassamarca Senior Lecturer in Italian History at The University of Sydney, and has previously written on the predominantly working-class neighbourhood surrounding the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in which the Brancacci Chapel is found, just south of the Arno River in Florence. In 2003, he brought together an international panel of Renaissance scholars for a conference on the topic of the Chapel, held at the Villa I Tatti near Florence. In his introduction, Eckstein explains that he consciously chose to balance the number of contributions by historians and art historians in order to compare the kinds of conclusions they made. Another pertinent fact about the contributors is that of the nine whose papers are published, four are of Australian origin. This reflects the now recognised specialisation, even if recent by European standards, of Australian scholars in the fields of Florentine Renaissance history and art history.

Eckstein begins the discussion by connecting the scenes in the mural paintings of Peter's miraculous healings and almsgiving, to the social context of the neighbourhood surrounding the church, and in particular to the charitable work undertaken by its leading citizens, some of whom were also supporters of the church and its related activities. Notably, the Brancacci family had long been active in the Confraternity of Sant'Agnese, one of the more prominent providers of charity in the quarter, which distributed bread to the needy at Easter and Christmas. The Confraternity met in the church, and, perhaps significantly, its altarpiece of the Virgin and Child (called the Madonna del Popolo) was installed in the Brancacci Chapel in the second half of the fifteenth century.

The idea of patrons wishing to allude to their charitable acts in artworks is, of course, not new. Rogier van der Weyden's monumental altarpiece for the Baune Hospital depicts the patron, Chancellor Rolin, in the context of the Last Judgment. This is precisely the moment when he might have hoped Christ would recognise and reward his charitable foundation of the Hospital whose chapel the painting adorns. This magisterial vision of Heaven and Hell contrasts starkly with the familiar mise en scène in the Brancacci Chapel paintings.

Eckstein's argument that the Carmelites favoured an association of the humble neighbourhood of their church with biblical and hagiographic narratives in order to promote the authority of their order locally, is taken up by Megan Holmes (discussing in part the visual arts), Nerida Newbigin (looking at sacred theatre), and Peter Howard (focusing on a Carmelite liturgical text). The Carmelites traced the history of their order to the time of Christ, and Saint Peter, in particular, was said to have been a witness to their early activities in the Holy Land, and they to his. Thus, in celebrating this Apostle, they were reminding their audience of the antiquity of their order, and so its authority. This helps to account for the dedication of the cycle to Saint Peter, as...