Rome is the first volume from the Cambridge Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance series published by Cambridge University Press, with texts on Venice, Florence, Naples, and the courts of Northern Italy soon to follow.  Marcia Hall, who edited the book and who teaches at Temple University, is also the general editor of the series.  Rome is organized chronologically around the patronage of the popes who reigned from 1300 to 1600, with chapters written by Hall herself, Ingrid Rowland, Meredith J. Gill, Clare Robertson, and Steven Ostrow.   In the preface, Hall calls the book revisionist, but a more apt qualification would be reductionist as many important points are omitted and discussions on each commission are painfully brief or in some cases non-existent.  Clearly, the book is meant as a survey to be used for teaching at the undergraduate level.  The exorbitant (and frankly unjustified) price charged by the publisher also points to the fact that the book is intended as a textbook rather than a research tool for the specialist.  Under the circumstances, one would expect a book of the highest quality, yet some of the illustrations are too dark while others are out of focus (for example, Fig. 58).  Also, readers would have benefited from the inclusion of at the least one map of Rome which would have proved useful for authors’ discussions on urban planning. 

In the Cultural Introduction of Renaissance Rome by Rowland, the focus is on Rome having been built up by celibate men (i.e., pope and clergy) who, inspired by the poet Lucan’s statement Roma caput mundi, set out to restore the city to its former glory, certainly a correct statement.  However, the contributions of women (which Rowland mentions only in one paragraph, centering primarily on high class prostitutes) is ignored, even though noble women expressed their piety by commissioning sacred art and nuns patronized art as a focus of their devotion.  Indeed, much has been written about the patronage of women, and yet little of it is included in Hall’s book.  Further, while Rowland’s introduction speaks of the visual rhetoric used to convince the viewer of Christian truth, the impact of antiquity on art, the establishment of the Vatican Library as a repository for ancient manuscripts and foundation stone of Rome’s rebirth, and other such important topics, it says nothing about the social structure of Rome, the subject of clientilismo so central to the history of Roman patronage, or the international character of Rome resulting from immigration from all corners of Italy and abroad by individuals who hoped to make their fortune through papal patronage, which also impacted the production of art.  Also missing is a discussion on the role of banking and the monopoly on the tolls and salt and alum mines or the integration of the old, impoverished nobility and the nouveaux riches through marriage alliances and business partnerships, elements that gave the city its character, distinguished it from other Italian regions, and determined the character of art production, collecting, and patronage in the region.

Of the chapters, Robertson’s is the most problematic.  Titled Phoenix Romanus:  Rome 1534-1565, it centers on the artistic activities during the reigns of Paul III, Julius III, and Paul IV.  In essence a long list of the works commissioned during these decades, Robertson’s chapter lacks critical assessment.  Her discussion on St. Peter’s when Peruzzi, Sangallo, and Michelangelo worked on the building is reduced to one paragraph that mainly glosses over the history of the commission, saying next to nothing about the designs produced by each master.  Again, only a few sentences are devoted to Paul III’s tomb, the Cappella Paolina, Sala Regia, Farnese Hours, Porta Pia, and other important commissions.  Robertson also omits factual material.  One case is related to the construction of a casino in the Vatican gardens for Paul IV begun in 1558 but left incomplete “for lack of funding and because of the political disgrace of the Carafa [the pope’s] family” (224).  What this “political disgrace” was is left unexplained.  Of the chapters, Ostrow’s (The Counter-Reformation and the End of the Century) is the most palatable as, instead of attempting to provide an encyclopedic inventory of every work produced during the period assigned to him (the pontificates of Pius V and Clement VIII) as the other contributors have done, he deals only with a select group of monuments and discusses each thoroughly, measuring them against the socio-political and religious atmosphere that permeated the city during the Counter-Reformation era.   Ostrow’s goal, as he explains at the beginning of his chapter, was to elucidate the fact that artistic production during the last third of the sixteenth century centered on the sacred art that helped define the values of the Counter-Reformation, and this he has accomplished.   

Rome works well as an introduction to the art created in the papal city during the Renaissance, but does little to advance scholarship on the subject. 

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