Content provided in partnership with
Die Galleria delle Carte Geografiche im Vatikan: Eine ikonologische Betrachtung des Gewolbeprogramms. - book reviews
Art Bulletin, The, March, 1997 by Nicola Courtright
Although Settis writes that the Mirabilia Italiae series was intended in part to attract the nonspecialist (and who else could afford it?), this book is clearly ambitious in its scholarly alms as well, and it is worth considering from this perspective. The bilingual text volume contains a collection of eight wide-ranging essays by noted Italian scholars. The first, by Antonio Pinelli, "The 'bellissimo spasseggio' of Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni" (pp. 9-71), treats the political and religious themes of Gregory's papacy and his building program in Rome and the Vatican and offers a detailed chronology of the gallery's building and decorative campaign. Lucio Gambi's "Egnazio Danti and the Gallery of Maps" (pp. 83-96) is a biographical account of the Dominican mathematician, geographer, and papal cosmographer to whom the maps were entrusted, and to whom the program as a whole has been attributed. Marica Milanesi, in "The Historical Background to the Cycle in the Gallery of Maps" (pp. 97-123), goes further than the title of her essay suggests, for in addition to analyzing the maps within the context of earlier palace decoration, she considers their unique cartographical character and purpose in the gallery and debates the program's larger meaning as well as the identity of its author (Danti with the assistance of the Church historian Caesar Baronius). Another essay by Pinelli, "Above the Earth, the Heavens; Geography, History and Theology: The Iconography of the Vault" (pp. 125-54), offers a detailed new analysis of the decoration of the ceiling and, like Milanesi, discusses who might have been responsible for the program. "The Gallery of Maps and the Wider World" by Paola Sereno (pp. 155-67) uses published documents and contemporary accounts to examine the largely negative critical fortune of the gallery. The frequent and, for someone trying to reconstruct the original program, troublesome restorations and reworkings of the gallery are chronicled by Claudio Franzoni (pp. 169-74). A particular bonus is the brief piece by Rolando Ferri, in "A 'Walk through Italy': The Anonymous Ambulatio gregoriana" (pp. 73-81), that transcribes, analyzes, and translates a Latin poem written in Gregory's lifetime that lauds the gallery. The culmination of the text volume is an extensive catalogue (modestly and, for an English-speaking audience, misleadingly designated "Notes") that, over the course of 327 pages, provides 445 entries for all of the maps, their inscriptions, and accompanying city plans, 236 for the images on the vault, and 106 for the antique amphorae and herms that were placed in the passageway beginning in 1816. The authors of the essays wrote the lion's share of these entries: Gambi, Milanesi, and Sereno presented most of the material on the maps, and Pinelli wrote all of those on the vault. These entries more often than not contribute something new to the vast body of little-studied imagery in the gallery.
- Most Popular Articles in Arts
- Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism
- Free-standing cardboard sculpture
- What makes a successful business person? Business people who are tops in ...
- Take advantage of local advertising: TV, newspaper or magazines? If your ...
- Tino Sehgal at the ICA
- More »
Schutte in turn proposes a new author for the program (the head of the Vatican Library, Cardinal Sirleto, in consultation with the humanist Fulvio Orsini), briefly treats the historical tradition of map rooms and the gallery's place in it, and for the greater part of the book gives a section-by-section description and analysis of the scenes and figures in the vault, many previously unidentified, and their overarching themes. The serious attention lavished on this heretofore slighted monument is enough to satisfy any specialist in the field.
