[A reviewers respectful, if somewhat critical, look at a new book
on the Italian Renaissance that seeks to contextualize that movement
within the broader sweep of history and within the social conflicts of
its time.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

A DARKER VIEW OF THE RENAISSANCE  
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John T. Scott
August 6, 2020
Los Angeles Review of Books
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_ A reviewer's respectful, if somewhat critical, look at a new book
on the Italian Renaissance that seeks to contextualize that movement
within the broader sweep of history and within the social conflicts of
its time. _

, Oxford University Press

 

_The Beauty and the Terror
The Italian Renaissance and the Rise of the West_
Catherine Fletcher
Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780190908492

AS CATHERINE FLETCHER NOTES at the outset of her new book, _The Beauty
and the Terror: The Italian Renaissance and the Rise of the West_,
millions of tourists flock to Florence every year to gaze at the
architecture and art of the Renaissance jewel box. They photograph the
Duomo topped by Brunelleschi’s dome, wait in long lines to see
Michelangelo’s _David_, fight their way across the Ponte Vecchio,
and savor gelato. Such is the “beauty” of the title. Yet there is
also “terror” shadowing these beauties, which Fletcher aims to
bring to light in order to provide a richer account of the Italian
Renaissance. In her introductory chapter, she highlights three
examples: the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s _Mona Lisa_ was married
to a slave trader; one possible model for Titian’s _Venus of
Urbino_, a famous Venetian courtesan, was gang-raped; and the
Florentine Republic symbolized by Michelangelo’s _David_ came to an
end in 1530 with the sack of the city and ensuing slaughter of
thousands. The beauty _and_ the terror.

In addition to informing admirers of the artistic and other familiar
achievements of the Italian Renaissance of the often
less-than-beautiful political and social context in which they were
produced, Fletcher wants to contextualize the history of Italy during
the period within larger trends across Europe and indeed the world, as
indicated in her book’s subtitle. The Italian Renaissance has
frequently been characterized — or caricatured — as the birthplace
of modern Western civilization, or rather the rebirth (renaissance) of
this civilization with the rediscovery of classical learning and art.
In this interpretation, Italy is the source of the literary, artistic,
and scientific movements that then spread throughout Europe and
ultimately across “the West.” While she recounts the achievements
of the Italian Renaissance and their influence, Fletcher puts as much
emphasis on how the larger European and international context shaped
the political, social, religious, economic, artistic, and intellectual
currents in Italy during the period.

Fletcher’s introduction — titled simply “1492” — provides a
good illustration of her goal. That year witnessed three events that
would have greater ramifications than those who lived through them
could have appreciated. First, there was the death of Lorenzo “The
Magnificent,” the head of the Medici family that effectively ruled
Florence for the previous 60 years and an important patron of learning
and art. In retrospect, Lorenzo’s death destabilized not only
Florentine politics, for just two years later his heir would flee the
city and the republic would be restored, but also the delicate balance
of power in the Italian peninsula, opening the door for foreign armies
to invade Italy and make it the battleground of Europe for the next 40
years.

The second event of 1492 was the final reconquest of Spain with the
fall of Granada and the expulsion of the Moors, followed in short
order by the flight of the Jews. Apart from the dislocations caused by
the event itself, the unification of Spain under Ferdinand and
Isabella was representative of the formation of what would become the
modern state in Spain, France, and elsewhere, a development that made
Italy vulnerable to invasion and plunder, with its own unification
having to wait nearly four more centuries. The third event was the
discovery of the New World in October of that year, by a Genoese
captain sponsored by their most Catholic majesties of Spain, to be
followed a few years later by, among others, a Florentine merchant and
navigator who lent his name to these newly discovered lands: Amerigo
Vespucci. Soldiers, priests, and other adventurers followed, seeking
the gold that soon flooded Europe, leaving behind smallpox while
bringing back such unknown items as tomatoes and corn, without which
Italian cuisine would be unrecognizable today.

In short, as Fletcher shows in this chapter, the direction of
influence between Italy and Europe (and the world) ran in both
directions. Fletcher persuasively illustrates that understanding the
Italian Renaissance requires understanding the larger context of the
early modern world, and vice versa.

Beginning in 1492, with some glances backward to consequential
incidents such as the 1453 fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman
Turks, Fletcher ends her account with the defeat of the Ottomans by
the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Her reasons for
choosing this end date are unclear. But it has the effect of extending
the usual treatment of the “High Renaissance” beyond the customary
terminus point of the end of the Italian Wars with the sack of Rome in
1527 or the fall of the Florentine Republic in 1530. In terms of art,
this makes some sense, lengthening the account through the first part
of the “Late Renaissance” period. After all, Michelangelo would
live for another 30 years after the fall of Florence (whose
fortifications he oversaw), spending most of the rest of his life in
Rome executing such projects as painting _The Last Judgment_ in the
Sistine Chapel and overseeing the building of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The dating choice makes less obvious sense otherwise. As Fletcher
herself notes, the later period saw a decline in Italy’s fortunes
as, paradoxically, the relative peace that succeeded the Italian Wars
also effectively sidelined the peninsula politically and militarily.

As an overview of Italian Renaissance history in the continental and
international context from 1492 to 1571, Fletcher’s book is largely
successful. The 26 chapters are generally thematic, most being devoted
to political or military events in Italy across the period, giving the
book a coherence dictated by chronology. Other chapters, interspersed
within this framework, take up such subjects as literary or artistic
figures and movements, the discovery of the New World, women’s role
in society, the Reformation, the Index of Prohibited Books, and the
Inquisition. Fletcher’s coverage of political, military, social,
intellectual, and artistic issues is impressive, and she generally
does an admirable job tying together these diverse subjects. The sheer
number of people and events she covers is sometimes dizzying. Such
coverage has a few drawbacks, however. Fletcher seems to want to tell
a good story when she has one, and while I enjoyed many of the
anecdotes she relates, sometimes they felt forcibly inserted into the
narrative. There is also considerable repetition, and while it is
useful to be reminded who someone is upon their most recent
appearance, I did not need to be told over and over that Lucrezia
Borgia and Isabella d’Este were sisters-in-law or reminded four
times that Francesco Maria della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, murdered
Cardinal Alidosi. At any rate, as someone fairly well versed in this
history, I did not have difficulty keeping up with all the people,
places, and events, but I did wonder how someone less familiar with
the subject would fare.

Fletcher’s more substantive aim of exhibiting the “terror” lying
behind the “beauty” of the Italian Renaissance is in my view less
successful. First of all, although awestruck tourists might marvel at
the beauty of Italy’s art and architecture without much sense of the
blood and suffering that accompanied it (unless, of course, they
watched Showtime’s series _The Borgias_, in which case they would
have a sensationalized view), no scholar of the period would be
surprised. In this regard, Fletcher is jousting with something of a
strawman, or at least a largely mid-19th-century gossamer version of
the Renaissance. Moreover, to recur to the three examples she gives of
terror lurking behind beauty in her introductory chapter, I am not
clear on how my view of the Italian Renaissance should be affected.
The first example is the alleged fact that the subject of the _Mona
Lisa_, Lisa Gherardini, was married to a slave trader. When we finally
get to the story, we learn that he was a merchant involved at some
small remove from the transatlantic trade, and that he had several
enslaved people baptized in Florence, which does look suspicious. More
surprisingly, given Fletcher’s initial statement and the marketing
materials for the book, we are informed that he was “very likely”
a slave trader. This is not the smoking gun we had been promised.
(Incidentally, I believe Mona Lisa was Lorenzo del Giocondo’s third
wife, not his second.)

The second example Fletcher gives is that a potential model for
Titian’s _Venus of Urbino_, the courtesan Angela Zaffetta, was
gang-raped by 31 men (a ritual punishment for courtesans). This time
Fletcher only claims the woman is a “possible” model for the
painting, but while I learned more about the poor treatment of
courtesans, I do not know how my view of the painting itself, much
less Renaissance art, should be affected by this possibility. The
third example is the fact that the Florentine Republic came to an end
in 1530 with “a sack of ‘unheard-of cruelty.’” Yet that is not
what happened. Florence surrendered after a year-long siege, and while
the protracted fighting throughout the Florentine territories cost
perhaps 10,000 lives, the surrender of the city itself was remarkably
bloodless. The usual suspects among the republican leadership were
rounded up — a few were executed, some tortured, others exiled ­—
but otherwise it was a miraculously mild transition of power for the
time. Indeed, perplexingly, Fletcher’s account of the events within
her larger narrative is consistent with these facts. Her description
in the introductory chapter sounds more like the 1527 sack of Rome.

Finally, I caught a disturbing number of errors or omissions, and
although I would not call any of them consequential for Fletcher’s
larger aims, they did begin to undermine my faith in the details of
her story. I restrict my attention to Machiavelli, since that is a
subject I know something about. Writing of the French invasion of 1494
and the flight of the Medici from Florence, Fletcher characterizes
Machiavelli as among the opponents of the Medici at that time. We have
no evidence for such a claim, however, especially since the first
extant letter we have from Machiavelli is from 1498 and also because
we also know that his relationship with the family over time was
rather more complicated. Later, Fletcher states that Machiavelli was
released from prison due to influential friends, but his release was
actually due to a general amnesty granted with the election of
Giovanni de Medici as Pope Leo X. She also relays the often repeated
but now discredited idea that Machiavelli was exiled from Florence
during this same period. In fact, Machiavelli was in something of a
“reverse exile” for he was ordered not to _leave_ Florence and its
territories for one year. Having been relieved of his official
positions, he was only prohibited from entering his former workplace,
the Palazzo della Signoria, and during this “exile” Machiavelli
frequented the city and was even asked a number of times to return to
the Palazzo to help wrap up unfinished business. Finally, Fletcher
states that Michelangelo worked with Machiavelli on a 1503 plan to
divert the Arno during Florence’s long siege of Pisa, whereas it was
Leonardo da Vinci who did so. There are numerous readily available
sources she could have consulted on this episode; the source she does
cite in fact makes the same mistake with regard to Michelangelo, and
itself cites as a source a mid-19th-century book (as Fletcher notes).
Oddly enough, this book has nothing to say about the episode at all,
in part because it occurred five years after the subject of the
biography, Savonarola, had died. In turn, in her bibliography Fletcher
mistakenly cites as the source a different book by the same author —
a biography of Machiavelli. This is more promising, for Pasquale
Villari does discuss the plan to divert the Arno — but with no
reference to Leonardo, much less to Michelangelo.

These are the mistakes I caught only with regard to Machiavelli, but I
fear there are more lurking in the volume. Even if they are not
themselves particularly consequential, such errors are unfortunate and
unnecessary, marring what would otherwise be an interesting and
informative book.

¤

_John T. Scott is professor and chair of Political Science at the
University of California, Davis. He is the author of _The Routledge
Guidebook to Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” _His most recent book
is _Rousseau’s Reader_._
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