by Jon Lackman | 8 May 2007 | Books, Renaissance
Also in the April 2007 Burlington Magazine, Deborah Howard reviews Manfredo Tafuri’s Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects: “First published in Italian as Ricerca del Rinascimento: Principi, città, architetti (Turin, 1992), this was the last book written by Manfredo Tafuri before his untimely death in 1994. Dense and complex in its arguments, it has not so far received the attention it deserves in the English-speaking world. The lucid and thoughtful translation by Daniel Sherer will finally allow a broader constituency to reflect on its provocative and subtle propositions.” Among Tafuri’s beliefs is that “even drastic events such as the Sack of Rome need to be assessed conjunction with the longue durée of slower historical shifts, a dialogue that he prefers to the more conventional polarities of tradition and innovation.” Howard notes that although “the book challenges prevailing assumptions on every page,” its framework can seem rather old-fashioned: “It focuses on patrons drawn exclusively from the elite, most of them rulers, and on the supposed mainsprings of the Renaissance, that is Rome and Florence.” Contrast this with, for example, the just-published volume Locating Renaissance Art, edited by Carol M. Richardson, which refers to “the traditional bias towards Italian centers of production and its exclusive focus on the so-called ‘fine arts’ of painting, sculpture and architecture.” Richardson’s book is part of a series of three Renaissance art textbooks, whose writers “broaden the boundaries by considering the art of Italy alongside that produced in northern Europe or focus exclusively on the Netherlands, England, France or Crete. The so-called ‘crafts’ of printmaking, tapestry weaving and manuscript illumination are also explored.”
