Antonio Pinelli (ed.), Roma del Rinascimento (Rome-Bari: Laterza,
2001), xl + 459pp, 81 black and white and colour illustrations + unnumbered figures in the text, ISBN 88-420-6423-8
This is the third volume of the six volume Storia di Roma dall’ antichità a oggi , published by Laterza, and covers the period from the early fifteenth century, beginning with the pontificate of Martin V, to the early seventeenth century. There are ten contributors, including the editor,
Antonio Pinelli. He is an art historian, and the book is focused on cultural history, with his own introduction and six of the nine essays dealing largely or wholly with this.
The exceptions are chapters by Anna Esposito on the topography and people of Rome, Luciano Palermo on the economy, and Stefano
Andretta on ‘Le istituzioni e l’esercizio del potere’. This last chapter exemplifies the major failing of this book – that several of the authors are not expert in the field they are called on to cover. Andretta’s field of expertise is the foreign relations of seventeenth-century Venice; his chapter on the institutions of Rome gives no indication of any direct knowledge of the subject, or of any primary research done on it by the author.
It is hard to fathom the criteria on which the editor chose some of his contributors – other than the fact that three of them are connected with the University of Pisa, where he teaches, and a fourth is at the Scuola
Normale of Pisa; two of these are research students. Given the number of scholars in Italy, let alone elsewhere, studying Renaissance Rome, surely it would have been possible to find expert contributors for all the themes treated here. Firmer editorial guidance for contributors would also have been desirable, to produce a more consistent approach and reduce the repetitions and overlapping that occur. As it stands, this collection is a mixed bag of the good, the indifferent and the inadequate.
Among the better contributions are a clear and useful short summary account of Roman libraries and colleges by Giuseppe
Lombardi, and a discussion of urbanism by Maria Letizia Gualandi (not apparently a Renaissance specialist but she uses her appreciation of the structure of the city of Rome derived from her work as a classical archaeologist to good effect). Claudio Franzoni’s chapter on uses to which the antiquities of ancient Rome were put – their imitation, study, re-use, and destruction – and the significance of the collections formed by
Roman families and cardinals, is particularly interesting.
The chapter on the visual arts, by Vincenzo Farinella, is less successful. Structured as a series of discussions of individual artists and works, it presupposes too much detailed knowledge and has too little connecting material to work as a survey or an introduction to the subject.
1

Perhaps the least satisfactory chapter, unfortunately, is that on the places, symbols and spectacles of power by Chiara Savettieri, but the fault does not lie with her. A doctoral student should not have been burdened with the essay on this important subject, lying outside her own field of research.
There are over one hundred illustrations and plans in this book, many of them ranging beyond the familiar images of Renaissance Rome.
With no list of illustrations, or indications where in the book they are to be found, however, tracking them down to follow up a reference by a contributor is not as easy as it might be. There are three sketch plans of the layout of the principal streets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but these are little help to anyone without a fairly detailed knowledge of the topography of the city; anyone without that knowledge will find some discussions hard to follow.
This is not an introduction to Renaissance Rome for the non-expert; and while some contributions provide a guide to recent research, others do not. The merits of some individual contributions make it worth consulting, but readers may share this reviewer’s sense of frustration of a missed opportunity.
Christine Shaw University of Warwick
2