Die Galleria delle Carte Geografiche im Vatikan: Eine ikonologische Betrachtung des Gewolbeprogramms. - book reviews

Any future scholar working on the Gallery of Geographical Maps will gratefully depend on these two monographs. I also look forward to more volumes in the series Mirabilia Italiae; with less haste and more editorial supervision, they would be a spectacular contribution to the study of overlooked monuments of Italy. May the series flourish.

NICOLA COURTRIGHT Department of Fine Arts Amherst College Amherst, Mass. 01002

1. A selection includes the in-depth analysis of the maps by Roberto Almagia, Le pitture murali della Galleria delle Carte Geografiche, Monumenta cartographica vaticana, III, Vatican City, 1952; Juergen Schulz's discussion of Renaissance map rooms, "Maps as Metaphors: Mural Map Cycles of the Italian Renaissance," in Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays, ed. David Woodward, Chicago/London, 1987, 97-122; and Iris Cheney's thoughtful article on the vault, "The Galleria delle Carte Geografiche at the Vatican and the Roman Church's View of the History of Christianity," Renaissance Papers, 1990, 21-37.

2. The second in the series is Antonio Paolucci, ed., The Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence, Modena, 1994.

3. Indeed, a good case could be made that it was Urban VIII's change of subject that necessitated the repainting of the entire central scene in the vault. Unlike Romanelli's work, all other restorations in the gallery had retained the style of the Gregorian scenes, and Urban VIII favored the theme of "Feed My Sheep" in his other projects; see Nicola Courtright, "Feed My Sheep," in Drawings by Gianlorenzo Bernini from the Museum der bildenden Kunste, Leipzig, by Irving Lavin et al., Princeton, N.J., 1981, 78-85.

4. A stimulating new book that demonstrates the kind of thought and rhetoric developed in Gregorian Rome that helped to shape the image of the papacy is by Frederick J. McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome, Princeton, N.J., 1995.

5. For example, the author of the entry on the map of the Marches notes first (p. 339) that it is unlikely that the map was restored by Holste, then later suggests (p. 340) that it "underwent substantial revision" by Urban VIII's restorer.

6. Nicola Courtright, Gregory XIII's Tower of the Winds in the Vatican (Ph.D. diss., New York University), Ann Arbor, Mich., 1990; and "The Vatican Tower of the Winds and the Architectural Legacy of the Counter Reformation," in IL 60: Essays Honoring Irving Lavin on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Marilyn A. Lavin, Italica Press, New York, 1990, 117-31.

7. Jack Freiberg, "In the Sign of the Cross: The Image of Constantine in the Art of Counter-Reformation Rome," in Piero della Francesca and His Legacy, ed. Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Studies in the History of Art, 48, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Symposium Papers XXVIII, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1995, 67-87; and for the later papacy of Clement VIII, idem, The Lateran in 1600: Christian Concord in Counter-Reformation Rome, Cambridge, 1995. Freiberg points out that following the dedication of a major room in the Vatican Palace to Constantine during Leo X's and Clement VII's pontificates, the Sala di Costantino, there was a hiatus in Constantinian associations with the papacy.