aspect of the spandrels and, especially, the hagiographic tympana. She gives no more than passing mention to other monuments that use spandrels tor narrative (and not allegorical) presentation. Nor does she discuss the peculiar inversion of narrative sequence in the Ursin portal, where the storv is to be read from right to left in both lower registers of the tympanum.
Ravard devotes a full 75 pages to an analysis of the sculptural styles of the facade, supporting and reinforcing the generally held view that the earlier shop came from Amiens and that the principal artist of the later shop (whom she calls the "Michael Master") came from Reims But her exacting figural descriptions are presented at the expense of a more broadly based evaluation of Bourges's place in the stylistic movements of the 13th century.
Even after a long chapter detailing the extremely close stylistic parallels between Amiens and the first Bourges shop, Bayard hesitates actually to assign the Bourges sculpture to masters from Amiens. Nor does she adequately trace the lines of parentage for this stiff style back to Paris, ca. 1210, or sufficiently spell out Bourges's role in its dissemination. She is also vague about the stylistic career of the "Judgment Archivolt Master," the lesser of the two principal sculptors of the second campaign. Following Sauerlander and others, she traces his origins to the archivolt figures of the Amiens Last Judgment portal, but does not investigate fully enough the intervening phases of his work between Amiens and Boutges. Although the man was clearly working within the conception of the second facade design, his style is more closely related to that of the first. Bayard does not deal with this vexing problem of chronology. She should have paid greater attention to the similarities she notices between this sculptor's work and both the archivolts of Reims's north transept window and the remaining figures from Charroux; these works help detail the progress of a particular style during the course of two decades, even if they cannot all he identified as the products of one hand.
Unfortunately, the study is weakest in its analysis of the two most important sculptors at Bourges: the "Michael Master" and the "Choir Screen Master." Each was intimately involved in a phase of the sequential development of a radically new sculptural style, and, for that reason, each must be seen within the wider context of other mid-century experiments. Bayard's failure to do this seriously undermines the value of her publication.
The artistic milieu out of which the "Michael Master" developed was composed of many complex forces. Bayard avoids direct confrontation with the questions raised by the artist's stylistic background, concluding simply that the man "was probably one of the minor masters working at Reims in the late 1230's or early 1240's" (p. 106). Although this may well be true, she does not attempt to isolate his hand at Reims, preferring instead to present obvious and generalized comparisons between his works and those at Reims. That the "Michael Master" is indebted to the "Joseph Master" at Reims is incontestable, but the matter cannot be left there. The work of the "Michael Master" shows greater similarities, in fact, to figures at Reims carved by sculptors who were already pasticheurs of the "Joseph Master," for example, some of the figures in the niches of the nave buttresses and in the archivolts and gables of the west facade. These works should postdate the few easily identifiable pieces from the hand of the "Joseph Master," and thus they demand that a sound relative chronology be established for the Reims figures before any dating for the "Michael Master" is put forth. Bayard avoids this central problem by simply accepting what she considers the "usual" date for the "Joseph Master" (ca. 1240), and then reasoning from it that the "Michael Master's" work began to appear "well before the middle of the 1240's" (p. 106).
This dating is by no means assured, and the problems that bedevil the chronology at Reims are perhaps even more apparent now than they were in 1968. For example, if Sauerlander is correct in moving forward the dates of the "Joseph Master" to ca. 1245-1255, then the Bourges dates will also have to be advanced. Bayard ignores these crucial issues. She does not confront the vexing problems of the origin of this style (did it first occur in the "Christ Master" figures of the Paris Last Judgment portal? and, if so, when—ca. 1220, 1230, or
1240?); nor does she account for its almost simultaneous appearance at mid-century in various centers. Unfortunately, the survey of this vastly interesting forest is almost completely obscured by a niggling attention to the trees.
Sadly, Bayard's study is particularly unsatisfactory in its evaluation of the "Choir Screen Master," whom she correctly recognizes as one of the shining talents of the century. In the surprisingly short section apportioned to this sculptor, the author hardly goes beyond description. She is able to establish, however, that the "Michael Master" and the "Choir Screen Master" worked side by side on the Bourges facade for some time. Because of this, and because of her dating of the "Michael Master," she is obliged to date the screen fragments in the mid-1240's. In my view, the author has used the evidence at hand in an overly restricted way. The complex Reims associations suggest, instead, a date of ca. 1250-55 for the "Michael Master," and such a date can also be accepted for the screen. Sauerlander is probably too late with his date of ca. 1260 for the screen; but he has advanced our knowledge in showing that the fragments' closest relative—the St.-Denis south transept portal-need not be tied to the traditional date of 1241 that Bayard accepts. This permits us to assume a later date. The most satisfactory view is that there was a specifically Parisian refinement of the new, soft style during the later 1240's and early 1250's—a phase into which St.-Denis, the Ste.-Chapelle Apostles, and the Paris north transept portal can all be comfortably fitted. It is therefore appropriate to suggest that the "Choir Screen Master" was a Parisian master who appeared at Bourges sometime in the early or mid-1250's, after the first wave of the reform movement had been spent in the capital Bayard's suggestion that "he may have come directly from the shop at St.-Denis" (p. 128) shortly after 1241 is far less convincing.
My strongest impression of this study is that the author has failed adequately to locate the various developments at Bourges within the wider stylistic boundaries of mid-13th-century France. As a result, Bourges appears far too provincial.
Beyond the insufficiencies of the monograph itself, there is an obvious weakness in the conception of the Garland series as a whole. Is it really worthwhile to publish unrevised dissertations in this format when they can just as easily (and more cheaply) be obtained on microfilm or in Xeroxed microfilm copies? The typescript is unpleasant to read and the photographs are reproduced in uniformly poor quality. Further, there is a vast difference between a book and a dissertation. Bayard's study clearly points out the distinction.
STEPHEN GARDNER
Columbia Utneijity
jan BlA-tOSTOCKI, The Art of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1976. Pp. 134; 351 black-and-white ills., 5 color pis. $25
This survey by the distinguished Polish scholar Jan Biatostocki, which was presented as the Wrightsman Lectures of 1972, is an important introduction to a previously neglected area. Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia lie off the beaten track of most English and Amer.can art historians, which runs from Rome through Florence, Venice, and Paris to the Low Countries. Political and linguistic difficulties also seem to have discouraged work in the field, the Slavic languages are hard to master and Magyar must daunt all but the bravest linguist. Although Eastern European scholars have, to be sure, made excellent individual contributions to the study of the art of their own countries, heretofore there has existed no general survey of the Renaissance in the East. Only the Swedish histotian August Hahr's Stwfcr i nndisk renassanskonst of 1913 and 1915 had treated the region as a whole, and then with an eye more to the Renaissance in Scandinavia.
The avowed purpose of Biatostocki's work is to draw "a coherent image of the main trends and achievements of the east European Renaissance considered as a whole." But it was the lecture format, as
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Biatostocki explains in his preface, that led him to arrange the material according to function. He begins with an introduction on 'Humanism and Early Patronage" and ends with a conclusion on "Classicism, Mannerism, and Vernacular." But the bulk of the book is organized by the notion that the principal tasks of artists and architects were "to create and adorn the temporary residence (the castle); the permanent resident (the tomb and chapel); and to create the social residence (the town)."
After a few introductory remarks, Biatostocki's opening chapter considers the work of Italian architects in Russia. The mention of Russia here is the only one in the book, which defines Eastern Europe as the area covered by the Czech, Polish-Lithuanian, and Hungarian kingdoms ot the 16th and 17th centuries. The work of the "three waves" of Italian architects who were employed in 15th-century Russia is here included because their activity abroad was early. (Biatostocki's account may now be supplemented by the papers given at a conference on Aristotele Fioravanti and other Italian architects in Russia, and published in Arte lambarda in 1976.)
Biatostocki quickly shifts to the real center of his interest: the importation of new styles under the aegis of the Hungarian and Polish courrs to the area that was to be unified into the Empire of the Jagello dynasty around 1500. He suggests that Hungary had been prepared for the reception of the Renaissance in the late 15th century by the previous work there of artists like Masolino and by a lively humanist intellectual culture, which also was to be found in Poland. From this pound came the first great flowering of the Renaissance in the East, »ith the patronage of illuminators and sculptors by Matthias Corvinus and the execution of the first Renaissance tombs in Poland. Significantly, many of the monuments are directly connected with Tuscanv; Florentine sculptors were active in Buda and in Cracow, and readers of Vasari will already know that works by Verrochio were sent to Hungary.
Biafostocki's second chapter recounts the development of Early-Renaissance castle architecture in Eastern Europe. Here Matthias Corvinus's buildings at Buda and Visegrád are again of prime importance. (In order to complete the account of Corvinian patronage, one should now consult the third volume of Jolan Balogh's A múvésiet Mátyás király udvarában, which because of publishing difficulties was printed in Graz in 1975 as Die An/imge der Renaissance in Ungarn: Matthias Corvinus und die Kunst.) The discussion continues with Benedikt Ried's transformation of the Hradčany Castle in Prague during the reign of Vladislav II, the architecture and decoration of Wawel Castle in Cracow, and the reconstruction of the castle in Brzeg (Brieg) in Silesia. Brzeg felt the impact of the stylistic innovations at Wawel, and also served as an important point de depart for the Parr family and thus for the advent of Lombard masons in Central and Northern Europe.
After a brief mention of the decoration of the Smíšek Chapel in Kutná Hora in Bohemia, the next chapter presents the remarkable series of centrally planned chapels in Eastern Europe. First of these is the chapel built in the red marble of the region for Cardinal Tamas Bakócz, in the Cathedral of Esztergom, the primatial See of Hungary. This beautiful work, executed by Tuscans, is very close to Florentine types of only slightly earlier date. Then, after describing the Lazoi Chapel in Alba Julia in Transylvania (now Rumania) and the-taski Chapel in Gniezno, Poland, Biatostocki discusses at length the architecture, symbolism, and decoration of the Sigismund Chapel in Wawel Cathedral. The Sigismund Chapel is undoubtedly a beautiful and significant monument, one that in George Kubler's terminology, later invoked by Bialostocki, may be considered a "prime object" which "provoked replications" all over Poland; in Bia+ostocki's account the chapel becomes a key work for the whole interpretation of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe. Biatostocki accordingly also gives a fairly detailed interpretation of the symbolism of the chapel, a
subject of repeated interest to him.1 (It is a pity that the legends of the map of centrally planned chapels at the end of the chapter, taken from tozinski's Grobowe Kaplice Kupatowe w Polsce, have not been translated into English.)
In chap. 4 Biatostocki considers the development of the Renaissance tomb in Eastern Europe. He discusses the early stone slabs found in Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland, the "humanist epitaph" represented by Veit Stoss's monument for Callimachus and the Sauer Tomb in Wroctaw (Breslau), and the variety of gisant, lectern, tomb slab, and standing figure types occurring in Poland and Silesia. In contradiction to Erwin Panofsky's description in Tomb Sculpture, Biatostocki emphasizes the popularity of the "statue accoudée" type in Poland. He also lays stress on the spread of the double-tomb type, said to be inspired, like the centralized chapel, by a solution found in the Sigismund Chapel.
- Chap. 5 is devoted to the att and architecture of the Eastern European town. First there is "urban patronage in the field of painting," by which Biatostocki means the Codex of Balthazar Beham in Cracow, the work there of Hans Süss von Kulmbach, Hans Dürer, and Georg Pencz, and that of Master M.S. in Upper Hungary (Slovakia). Next comes a brief description of the development of intarsia decoration in Slovakia and Hungary, followed by a detailed survey of parapets in towns and castles. Biatostocki calls decorated parapet-cresting of buildings the "most specific feature of the east European area"; parapets are described as merging the "Gothic tradition of gables with the Renaissance feeling for horizontal accents and the Renaissance repertoire of decorative forms." The Poznan town hall is singled out as the first Renaissance town hall with an arcaded loggia in Northern Europe. The chapter ends with the development of ideal towns in Eastern Europe; chief of these is the remarkable city of Zamošč, which was erected from 1578 by the Polish chancellor Jan Zamoyski and which, though changed, is still standing in its basic form.
Biatostocki's last chapter deals first with the new developments in Bohemian art that came about with the advent of the Habsburgs. He discusses the so-called Belvedere Villa, the supposedly Mannerist Villa Hvězda (Star) on White Mountain outside Prague, and the organ loft in Prague Cathedral. The Castles of Kačerov and Nelahozeves, built for the royal secretary, Florian Griespech von Griesbach (whose name is misspelled as Griespach), are discussed along with the Castle of Kostelec nad Černými Lesy and the "brilliant" sequence of castles with arcaded courtyards in Bohemia and Moravia. Biatostocki links the Polish buildings of the Florentine Santi Gucci with these structures because of their supposedly Mannerist decorative traits. After mentioning the "northern Mannerism" of Gdansk (Danzig), Biatostocki concludes with a discussion of the problem of a "vernacular" as opposed to a Mannerist style in Eastern Europe. Here he extends to Bohemia and, indeed, to the whole Eastern European area a distinction he had introduced in discussions of Polish art,2 seeking to identify the specifically Eastern European characteristics of the Renaissance in Poland and Bohemia.
Biatostocki's text is accompanied by an extensive bibliography and body of illustrations. The bibliography is excellent, and can well serve as a basic guide to further study. The illustrations, on the other hand, are not all of the highest quality; many seem poorly printed or taken from inferior photographs. As photographic material is often hard to obtain from Eastern Europe and reproductions are often very poor, it is unfortunate that Biabstocki's publishers did not seize the opportunity to present a corpus of good illustrations. (Excellent reproductions, which complement Biatostocki's at least in part, can now be found in Helena and Stefan Kozakiewicz's The Renaissance in Poland, Warsaw, 1976.)
Biatostocki himself admits that a first attempt "to arrange the art-historical facts in this geographical area conceived as a unit," such
1 See especially "Sea-Thiasos in Renaissance Sepulchral Art," in Essays in Honour of Sir Anthem) Blum, London, 1967, 69-74.
; In a number of versions culminating in the essay "Mannerism and
'Vernacular' in Polish Art," in Walter FriedlandeT jum 90. Geburtstag Eine Festgabe seiner europäischer Schüler Freunde und Verehrer, Berlin, 1965. 47-57
>íS this survey, "runs the risk of overstressing some features and understressing others" (p. 1). In his preface he specifically apologizes that the art of his own country, Poland, may have received a "more detailed and more competent" presentation. Indeed, the importance Bialostocki gives to Polish art seems out of proportion to the whole picture of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe. Whereas, for example, Santi Guccis buildings in Poland, remarkable enough but few in number, receive two pages of treatment, the entire extensive development of arcaded castle architecture in Bohemia and Moravia gets less than a paragraph, and even that paragraph involves discussion ot Polish buildings. The development of castle architecture in southern Bohemia, including such important examples as Telč, Český Krumlov, and the villa in Kratochvíle, is not mentioned at all. Whereas almost a whole chapter is devoted mainly to Polish tomb sculpture, the history of Renaissance sculpture in Bohemia and Moravia is treated very briefly. The stuccoed ornament of the Lublin school is also mentioned, but, except for a fleeting reference to the decoration of the Hvězda villa, Biatostocki altogether ignores Bohemian and Moravian stucco decoration. He fails to mention, for instance, the interior of the Castle of Bučovice, which is a major omission because the stuccoed decoration of its Císařský Pokoj (Imperial Room) is of European quality, able to stand comparison with other works of its genre and time. Biatostocki's consideration of painting is necessarily conditioned by the indifferent quality of indigenous 15th- and 16th-century work. Yet, here again, although he does mention works like the Beham Codex, the oeuvre of Master M. S., and the paintings of the Smíšek Chapel (to all of which his own definition of Renaissance style can be applied only with difficulty), he does not mention the painted mural decoration of Bohemian castles like Castolovice, Kratochvíle, Bechyně, Český Krumlov, and Rožmberk, and he passes quickly over the painted epitaphs of Bohemia and Silesia.
A different problem is one of definition. Biatostocki's conception of "eastern Europe" as a unity of countries created around 1500 by the Jagellonian Empire will obviously lead to different emphases than one that focuses on Central Europe around 1600 as the area unit by the Habsburg Empire. His notion makes sense for the earlier period when cultural and political influences do connect Cracow with Buda and Prague. But it creates a misleading emphasis on the supposed disunity of the area around 1600 (p. 88); of course Polish and C:ech artistic cultures were then separated, because by that time C:ech fortunes were for better or worse tied up with the Habsburgs, and hence with what is now Austria. Furthermore, this definition leads Biatostocki to a very questionable line of interpretation.
This questionable line is graphically illustrated by the map appearing in fig. xiv, which purports to represent southeastern Europe after the battle of Mohács and the Turkish occupation of Buda. It outlines Bohemia and Hungary separately (p. 73), and places the "Habsburg Empire" apart from them, and in an undefined area to the west. But if the legend is meant to refer to the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation," it is incorrect, because the latter was never a dynastic empire. And if it is meant to refer to those domains ruled by the Habsburg dynasty itself after 1526, it is equally incorrect, because these areas included Hungary, Bohemia, and Silesia (which was then one of the Bohemian Crown lands). Despite Biatostocki's expressed recognition (p. 74) that the advent of the Habsburgs represented a new period in Bohemian art, the labelling of this map is symptomatic
of his tendency to downplay the importance of the Habsburgs, and in effect to read them out of what he calls "east Europe."
An example of this tendency is his assessment of the Belvedere in Prague (p. 74): ". . . with its outspoken Classicism [it] was and remained something foreign to the artistic landscape of that area, and no imitation of it is known. Compared with the tremendous influence exercised by the Wawel castle and the royal sepulchral chapel in Cracow, this complete lack of resonance from the Prague royal villa must be interpreted as a symptom of the radical separation of the first Habsburg monarch and his court from Bohemian society." This is a large conclusion to be drawn from limited evidence; in part it seems the result of an overemphasis on the role of formal determinants (the "outspoken classicism" of the Belvedere; a questionable description in any case) that runs throughout the book. If instead we consider the function of the Belvedere versus that of the Sigismund Chapel, we might obtain a better reason why it lacked imitators in Bohemia. The Belvedere was built as part of a larger palace-garden complex. It is, as its name implies, a structure from whose loggia a fine view could be gained; it was probably also used as a place of repose within the gatden. Its use as the center of a tournament held in 1558 in Prague further demonstrates its role in court entertainments.1 These features are of course related to those of similar casinos in Italy. Elsewhere in Central Europe the Prague Belvedere, both in its function and form, did in fact spawn a number of imitations. For example, the Lusthaus in Dresden, designed by Giovanni Maria Nosseni and begun in 1589, is a fairly close copy.4 In Bohemia itself, however, there existed in the 16th century no other dynastic residence with a garden complex sufficiently ample and so situated as to invite construction of a belvedere. The question of function rather than the supposed "cultural isolation" of the Habsburgs would thus seem to account for the relative lack of imitations.
Biatostocki argues similarly that other architecture connected with the court circle of Ferdinand I, namely the Castles of Kačerov and Nelahozeves built for his secretary Griesbach, were "unique in the Bohemian area": "Having been built for a foreigner, a dignitary of the Habsburgs, they found few imitators" (p. 77). Biatostocki's separation of the style of these castles from that of other buildings in Bohemia seems artificial, because various other Bohemian castles, and even certain types of Moravian arcades, may be considered quite as distinctive in style.5 More important are the similarities between Nelahozeves and other Bohemian buildings:6 Biatostocki himself points to features like the lunette cornice, the rustication, and the opening of the courtyard on one side. A comparison of Nelahozeves with Náměšťes nad Oslavou in Moravia would add to the parallels the use of escutcheons framed with ornament. The arcades of Nelahozeves and of Kostelec nad Černými Lesy, built for Ferdinand I, in fact had great resonance in Bohemia and Moravia.
In a similar vein, Biatostocki deliberately excludes from his account what he calls the "international gtoup of Mannerist artists brought together by the strange patron Rudolph II." He believes their art to have been "completely toteign to the long local tradition" (p. 87). But why should a group of Italian, German, and Netherlandish artists working for a Habsburg emperor in Prague be called international when a similar group of Italians and Germans working for a Jagellonian king in Cracow is not? The old notion that the painters and sculptors brought together by Rudolph were foreign to the Czech tradition can no longer be accepted. The way in which some
5 Sources for the tournament of 1558 are M. Cuthaenis and J. Campanus, Brevis et Succmcta Descriptio Pompae in Humnem Ferdinandi Primi. . . . Prague, 1558, also reprinted along with a Czech translation by Daniel Adam of Veleslavín in J. Teige, ed., Základ) starého místopisu Erajslcítw, Prague, 1910, I, 73ff; and L. Matthioli, Le sole nni pompě, i superbi, et gloriosi apparan, e trion/i, i fuochi   . fatti alia venuta dell Ferdinandu primo, Prague, 1559.
4 For this building see Walter Machowsky, Giovanni Maria Nosseni und die Renaissance in Sachsen, Berlin, 1904, 79ff., and Walter Bachmann, "Nossenis Lusthaus auf der Jungfernbastei in Dresden," Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte, LVII, 1936, 1-29.
5 Ivan Muchka, "Stylové Otázky v české architektuře kolem roku 1600," Diplomní Práce, Universita Karlova, Prague, 1969, 63ff., for example, makes distinctions among Moravian arcades; he also offers an interesting critique of Biatostocki's notion of "vernacular" style, which he suggests leads to giving up (resignace) the critical comparison of style (n. 57).
6 Structural parallels are pointed out by Jatmila Krčálová, "Několik poznámek ke knize Evy Samánkové Architektura české renesance," LWní, X, 1962 , 76.
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local epitaph painters sei2ed upon models provided by the court artists, who themselves also painted epitaphs, in itself makes clear that the latter were not perceived as aliens. Significantly, prevailing opinion in present-day Czechoslovakia also disagrees with Biatostocki's thesis; the new display of the National Gallery in Prague includes the Rudolphine masters in its exhibition of Czech art. Biatostocki's omission of the Prague school is regrettable not only because Prague was a major European cultural center during Rudolph's reign, but also because the work of the court artists was important for the further development of the arts, not only in Bohemia, but also elsewhere in Central Europe. There is, moreover, certainly a continuity within the traditions of architectute and intarsia, traditions discussed elsewhere in Biatostocki's book. An important article by Jarmila Krčálová has recently dispelled the myths about Rudolph II's patronage of architecture and has demonsttated the extent of his interest in building.7 Several of the architects, like Pietro Ferrabosco and Ulrich Aostalli (Avostalis), who figure in Biatostocki's book, were actually imperial architects who during Rudolph's reign received their chief employment from the court. Examples of the Renaissance tradition of inlay include the doors to the Bohemian Court Chancellery and ReichJw/srat chambers in the imperial palace on the Hradčany, and the furniture of the ReicWw/srat and Landtafelnsaal.
Biatostocki's conception of Eastern Europe generally underrates connections with present-day Germany and Austria. For example, he neglects the role of artists, architects, and artisans from Saxony, whose importance for Bohemia is noted by Eva Samánková8 and whose significance for Silesia is also evident, particularly in sculpture. Likewise he presents a misleading account of the architectural motifs of the parapet and gable, which he considers indigenous eastern, and particularly Polish, features. He explains parapet cresting, furthermore, as an "ingenious solution to one of the most fundamental aesthetic problems for architects," namely "to find a way of avoiding vertically." This solution is said to have been discovered in Silesia and Poland, whence it spread to Bohemia, Moravia, and northern Hungary. Although Biatostocki partially accepts the thesis that specific motifs of the Silesian parapet type originated in Italy, he also says they "could have been developed from the Gothic tradition by northern architects" (p. 68).
The supposedly Eastern European character of the parapet and the genesis of the attica form in Poland do not hold up to closer examination. Mieczyslaw Zlat has pointed to a host of buildings with features similar to the "Polish" attica in Germany and Austria, rejecting W. Husarski's thesis of its indigenous origin, a thesis to which Biatostocki here returns. Zlat's list can be lengthened, and it seems to support arguments for the European popularity of the attica form and against its primarily Polish character.9 In addition, the gable parapet that Biatostocki says characterizes Bohemia and Moravia is much in evidence in Germany, as at Wittenberg (now Wittenberg/ Lutherstadt) and Landshut; the gables of the Týn School of 1562 in Prague, for example, should be compared with those of the Melancthon House of 1536 in Wittenberg. Moreover, gables and
parapets seem just as much characteristic of the so-called "Weser Renaissance" as of Eastern European structures.
It is not at all clear either that areas like Slovakia (Upper Hungary) derived forms from Poland. The reconstruction of 1581 with arcades and parapet of the Town Hall in Bratislava (Poszony, Pressburg), a city then the seat of the Hungarian Estates and the place of coronation of the kings of Hungary, was directed by Bartholomäus von Wolfsthal, who presumably came from Lower Austria. Significantly, 16th-century German sources use the label "Welsche Giebel," and it is only a few modern Hungarian historians who have called forms found in Upper Hungary "Polish."10 Influences went back and forth within Central Europe, but the ultimate source of the attica seems Italian. Consequently, though the problem cannor yet be fully solved, Zlat does seem to have been right in suggesting that parapet motifs originated in Italy, whence they spread all over the area north of the Alps, taking hold in Poland, but that they were not created there or elsewhere in the east.
The thesis that the parapet was an ingenious solution to an esthetic problem is also debatable. Biatostocki states that a specific type of parapet was prescribed in Pardubice in 1538, but mentions that it was a bad fire in that year that had caused the town to be rebuilt. In fact, brick parapets and gables seem to have been a safety measure and they appear on many of the buildings erected after the fires of the 1540s and 1550's at Prague, Pelhrimov, Tele, Trebon, and Jihlava." The chronicler Schickfuss, describing the Silesian town of Troppau (now Opava in Czechoslovakia) in 1624, explicitly remarks: "Die Privathäuser sind fast alle in Stein sauber und hoch aufgeführt, und oben sind sie mehrenteils mit Altanen also gemacht, dass ihnen die Feuerbrünste nicht sonderlich schaden können, welches dann zumal der Stadt ein schönes Aussehen macht."12
The difficulties inherent in Biatostocki's account of parapets and gables in turn affect his stimulating discussion of the "vernacular" style. Some phenomena, such as the stucco decorations of the Lublin School or those of the houses in Kazimierz Dolny, which Biatostocki identifies as examples of a Polish vernacular trend, do seem quite distinctive. Yet Biatostocki's attempt to define a particularly Czech vernacular trend manifesrs the limitations of this approach. Following Samänkovä, Biatostocki describes the characteristics of the Bohemian vernacular as "large and complicated gables," forms "often used in an asymmetrical grouping," and "painterly sgraffito decoration." These features are of course found elsewhere in Europe. As previously noted, large and complicated gables are found throughout Germany, and asymmetrical grouping of forms is equally typical of the "Weser Renaissance," as examplified by the Castle at Stadthagen. Sgraffito decoration can be found on 16th-century houses throughout Austria. The sgraffito decoration preserved in neighboring Lower Austria is especially close to that of Bohemia in regard to the kind of buildings decorated, the forms of decoration, and the figural and ornamental motifs found.13
Biatostocki's effort to characterize the art of Bohemia and Poland in its own right, as distinct from Mannerism, an overworked concept
l "Poznámky k rudolfínské architektuře." Umění, XXIII, 1975, 499-525. * In her Architektura české renesance, Prague, 1961, Samánková gives numerous examples of the work of Saxons in Bohemia and specifically emphasizes the mediating role of Saxony in the importation of the Renaissance into Bohemia (p. 25).
' "Attyka renesansowa na Šl§sku," Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, XVII, 1955, 48-79 Biatostocki mentions Bernburg, Bückeburg, Halle, and Stein, but Zlat's list of sites is more extensive, also including Bautzen, Stadthagen, Wi smar, Basedow, Telle, Salzburg, Wasserburg, Passau, Toblach, Trent, Krems, and Dürnstein.
The Castle in Stettin (Sczecin), begun by Duke Barnim XI in 1538, also had an attica on its south facade, and the Charterhouse Gottesgnade of ca. 1560 in Oderburg likewise had merlon cresting: see Hugo Lemcke, Die Bau-und Kunst- denkmäier des Regierungsbezirkes Stettin, Stettin, 1909, IV, 17, and ig. I.
A model of Munich made by Jakob Sandtner in 1572 now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum shows similar structures, also visible in old
prints of the city; see A. Von Reitzenstein, Altbaierische Städte, Munich, 1963, 157-160:11, and Otto Aufleger and Karl Trautman, Alt-München in Bild und Wort, Munich, 1897, fig. 40. The list of examples could be lengthened.
10 For the mention of German sources see Eyvind Unnerbäck, Welsche Ciefcel, Ein italienisches Renaissancemotiv und seine Verbreitung in Mittel- und Nordeuropa, Stockholm, 1971, 1.
" Samánková, Architektura ceskí renesance, 56-57, and Antonin Balšánek, Stitv a motivy atuWé v České renaissance (1902), 2nd ed., Prague, 1929, 10, mention fires as a cause of the development of gables.
" Quoted in Hans Lutsch, Verzeichnis der K'unstdenkmäler der Provin; Schlesien, iv, Der RegieTungs-Bezirk Oppeln, Breslau, 1894, 158.
" Peter Weninger, "Zur Sgraffitomalerei in Österreich," in Rupert Feuchtmuller, ed., Renaissance in Österreich, Geschichte, Wissenscha/t, Kunst, Vienna, 1974, 260-69.
168     THE ART BULLETIN
that he himself has so perceptively evaluated, clearly provided one impetus for the formulation of his own particular approach. Against the notion of a period or international style, Btatostocki sets instead that ot a regional style, or, as he calls it, a "provincial transformation." The question of regional or national style has long provoked art-historical discussion, but Biatostocki's method of seeking such a style in the use of particular motifs is not particularly successful. Nor is Goldschmidt's concept of "disintegration of form" (p. 85) useful. It might have been more fruitful to have sought the influence of local traditions as a positive force. In an earlier essay, Biatostocki himself suggested that Slavonic or Oriental influences may have affected the forms of Zamosč, Lublin, and Kazimierz Dolny, and it would have been interesting to have pursued this hypothesis.
There is, furthermore, a deeper historical and ideological background to Biatostocki's approach, as he has made clear in a more recent essay.14 For Poland the period of the Renaissance is a "golden age of culture," one in which the Polish kingdom also attained its greatest geographical extension and political power. Poland then soon slipped from cultural and political prominence, and it was later often to be occupied and divided, most recently during World War II. Along with the trends of German nationalism of the 1930's and 40s that proved so disastrous for Poland came an approach in scholarship that Biatostocki has termed "German scholarly [naukovje] imperialism."15 Polish scholars in the immediate post-War years responded to this attitude with emotional and defensive stridency. Biatostocki is certainly free of this mood, and no outspoken nationalist himself; and yet his consciously expressed desire to avoid putting too much emphasis on the role of Germans and thus perhaps leaning toward German nationalism leads him to reject the concept of Central Europe as an area extending from Holland to Russia. It also seems no accident that his book should choose to emphasize monuments like Wawel Castle and the Sigismund Chapel that are the relics of the "golden age" of the Jagellonian Empire.
Moreover, the motifs that Bia/ostocki isolates as regional or vernacular characteristics have defined the terms of the national debate in art history since the 19th century. In Bohemia the Motivkunde that served an earlier nationalistic scholarship singled out sgraffito decoration and gables as marks of an indigenous Czech Renaissance style. A historicizing architecture developed as a parallel to this trend, with the result that Prague now has perhaps as many Renaissance revival buildings from the 19th century as actual Renaissance examples from the 16th. The work of the nationalist architect Antonín Ballánek on gables and parapets, written at the turn of the century, clearly illuminates the relationship of these tendencies. Balšánek defines gables and sgraffito decoration as signs of a national Czech Renaissance, although he expresses his desire to seek a modern Bohemian style independent of Vienna.16 In Poland a similar nationalist tendency has led to a stream of Renaissance revival buildings, one of the most recent and surely the most remarkable of which is the Stalinist Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw with its reminiscences of the attica of the Cracow Cloth Hall.17
Biatostocki's approach therefore often calls to mind a situation in European scholarship described by Panofsky in his essay "Three Decades of Art History in the United States": ". . . European scholars either unconsciously yielded to, or consciously struggled against, deep-rooted emotions which were traditionally attached to such questions as whether the cubiform capital was invented in Germany, France, or Italy . . . and the discussion of such questions tended to be confined to areas and periods on which attention had been focused for generations or at least decades."18 Despite some positive results, Biatostocki's discussion of regional and national
characteristics seems grounded in the presuppositions created by earlier debates, and may have precluded more fruitful lines of inquiry. On the one hand, Biatostocki has undoubtedly redressed some of the imbalance that previous Germanic scholarship created. In contradicting H. G. Franz's assertion that Moravian castles constitute a Deutsche Sonderrenai.ssance, for instance, Biatostocki quite rightly points out that buildings with arcaded courtyards were built by Italian architects for Bohemian and Moravian patrons (p. 101, n. 22). On the other hand, he does not consistently take the broad view. Many of the patrons Biatostocki identifies as prominent representatives of the Czech nobility also had close connections with the Habsburg court; their buildings were often designed by imperial architects and cannot be taken to reflect a "national" taste. The first Renaissance reconstruction of the castle in Pardubice was started by Vojtech z Pernštejna, who held the hereditary office of the highest Bohemian chamber (nejvy'ssfho českého komoří); extensive construction was subsequently undertaken by the imperial architects Ulrich and G. B. Aostalli for the Czech Court Chamber itself after it bought the castle as an imperial residence. Litomyšl was also designed by the Aostalli for Vratislav z Pernštejna, who spent his career chiefly at the imperial court in Vienna, where he was a counsellor; he undertook diplomatic missions for the Habsburgs and was eventually granted the Order of the Golden Fleece. The Renaissance courtyard of Jindřichův Hradec was not started by the Pernštejn, as Biatostocki has it, but by Adam II z Hradce, who was Lord High Chancellor (nejvyslí kancléř) of Bohemia and who also served as a diplomat for the Habsburgs. Although the Renaissance gateway of Moravská Tfebova was built for Ladislav z Boskovic, who belonged to the circle of Matthias Corvinus, Bučovice was constructed after designs by the imperial architect Pietro Ferrabosco for Jan Sembera z Boskovic, Lord High Steward and Counsellor of the Emperor Rudolph II. The Imperial Room in Bučovice includes a figure of Charles V in its manifestly imperial decoration; in fact the whole decorative program may have been inspired by the Neugebaude, a Habsburg residence that Jan Sembera possibly saw on a visit he made to Vienna.19 Although the builders of Náměšť nad Oslavou and Rosice and of Velké^fnot \?lké) Losiny, respectively Jan ze Zerotina the Elder and Jan ze Zerotina the Younger, seem exceptions in that they held only local, though important, offices in Moravia, the builder of Horšovský Týn (a castle that is supposedly typical of the Czech Renaissance) was a man closely connected with the Habsburg court, Jan z Lobkovic. Lobkovic was Burggrave of the Prague castle; the "Lobkovic-Svarcenberk" (perhaps better known as Schwarzenberg) Palace near the imperial castle on the Hradčany was built as his residence in the capital.The Berka of Duba and Lipé, builders of Moravský Krumlov, would also have been connected with the court through their possession of the hereditary office of Lord High Marshall of the Kingdom. The patron of Opočno, Vilem Trčka, also had at least some dealings with the Habsburgs, as he had been one of the participants in a legation that had welcomed Maximilian II. Finally, the Early_ Renaissance arcade in the courtyard of the Castle of Kostelec nad Černými Lesy was built for the Emperor Ferdinand I, not for the Smiřice, who added only the outbuildings and chapel to the complex. These facts speak against the supposed isolation of the Habsburg monarchs and point instead to their role in providing a model to be imitated. The introduction of the arcaded courtyard by the Bohemian and Moravian aristocracy does not seem to have been a national movement, but seems to have followed examples set by the Emperor and his secretary Griesbach. To use Biatostocki's language, as in Hungary and Poland the Renaissance style came to Bohemia as a royal fancy.
Biatostocki's difficulties with definitions and with the question of
14 "Renesans Polski a renesans europejski," in Renesans, Sztuka i Ideologta, Warsaw, 1976, 179-193.
" ibid , 179. Biatostocki's own definition of east Europe and the reasons for it are explained ibid., 186.
" See particularly the remarks in the preface to Stity a motivy atlikovi for a statement of Balsinek's aims.
17 Tadeusz S. Ja roszewski and Andrej Rottermund, "'Renesans polski' w architekturze XIX i XX w.," in Renesans, Sztuka i Ideobgia, 613-638.
In Meaning in the Visual Arts, Garden City, 1955, 328.
19 Jarmila Krčálová, Centrální stavby české renesance, Prague, 1974, 48.
BOOK REVIEWS 169
national or regional style point to the unique advantage that Americans studying the art of Eastern Europe can enjoy. As Panofsky suggested, the need to search for national inventions and distinctions fades when one looks from this side of the Atlantic. Whether something is German, Czech, or Polish does not seem to be a pressing question, and other issues can come into focus. Biatostocki has provided a useful guide into a rich area of artistic creation. It would be a shame it Americans, unencumbered by the problematical baggage that has weighed down earlier local scholars and that the recent rebirth of nationalism in Europe may make hard to remove, did not venture into the field.
THOMAS DACOSTA KAUFMANN
Princeton University
STANISLAUS VON MOOS, Turm und Bollwerk: Beiträge zu einer politischen Ikonographie der italienischen Renaissancearchitektur, Zurich and Freiburg i/B, Atlantis Verlag, 1974. Pp. 354; 179 ills., 13 text figs.
The theme of this book, which originated in a doctoral thesis submitted at Zurich in 1967, is the survival of medieval fortress motives in secular architecture of the Italian Renaissance. As the subtitle announces, the work is conceived as a contribution to the "political iconography" of this architecture. It is based on the premise that the tower and bastion, having become obsolete in their military function, survived so to speak as architectural gestures, expressing political power. Another, more comprehensive theme, which at times coincides with this topic and at times, it seems to me, conflicts wi th it directly, is the relationship between "fine" and "utilitarian" architecture in the Italian Renaissance. Von Moos is inclined to deny any distinction between the two. By including in his discussion the military and political "daily reality," he means to do away with the restrictive conception of art that informed earlier scholarship and to establish a new basis for the evaluation of Italian Renaissance architecture as a whole.
Von Moos's work (which grew out of his typographical studies of Filarete's castle designs)1 was prompted by the observation that military architecture was a major part of the life and work of almost all the great Renaissance architects, even though art-historical handbooks always treat it as an afterthought. The study of these "suppressed" works led the author to the conviction that they embody esthetic values no less than works of "high" art. From here it was only a short step to the notion that the two areas should be combined into one and that their common vocabulaty of forms should be regarded as part of a "complex aesthetic apparatus for the representation of political power," which is indeed how Von Moos conceives of Italian Renaissance architecture as a whole.
The usual method followed nowadays to prove such a thesis is to analyze one or more monuments that demonstrate the relevant characteristics in exemplary fashion, and to proceed from there to more general considerations. Von Moos has opted for a different method: he traces the occurrence of towers and other fortress motives through the whole history of Italian secular architecture, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century. The first chapter deals with the "antecedents" in medieval architecture: tower houses, family towers, communal palaces, north Italian seigneurial castles, and papal and imperial fortresses. Chapters Two and Three are devoted to the typology of the urban palace and rural villa in the Renaissance. The author's field of view is sufficiently large to include, in the case of the urban palace, north Italian and even French castles, clock towers and campamli, the Vatican palace and Roman cardinals' palaces, and judicial and administrative buildings. In the case of the rural villa, the discussion takes in castle- and fortress-like structures such as
Du Kaiulli)pvariatumen des FiLirete, Zurich, 1971.
Poggio Reale, Ancy-le-Franc, Caprarola, and the Forte di Belvedere in Florence, besides the villas proper of Tuscany, Latium, and Venetia. Chapter Four concerns the history and theory of military architecture in the 15th and 16th centuries. Two short final chapters explicitly formulate the basic theses of the book; they are entitled, respectively, "The Problem of Distinguishing between Architecture and Utilitarian Construction," and "The Relationship between Politics and Architecture."
Typological studies as comprehensive as those published in the early 20th century by German and Austrian scholars like Swoboda, Patzak, and Rose are rarely written today. It is a regrettable development that seems to signal a withering of the ability of scholars to synthesize large areas in a manner accessible also to the non-specialist: a legitimate and necessary task in our field, which nowadays we undertake only when compelled to do so. In this respect, Von Moos is most delightfully unmodern. Turm und BolWrk belongs to that now rare species of book which one does not have to "study" but can actually read with as much enjoyment as scholarly profit. Above a solid foundation of footnotes (thanks be to the publisher that they were placed where they belong: at the bottom of the page!) stands a text full of wit and charm, yet still lucid and concise. The language is free of technical jargon as well as pseudo-Marxist dialectics, to which the subject could easily have led. Finally, the author leaves the historical material its own individuality (his greatest virtue, as I see it). The reader primarily interested in theoretical interpretation may find it difficult at times to take Von Moos at his word, but he can be sure that even the object which fails to fit into his system will receive its due. One example of this is the way Von Moos deals with the tiresome issue of the definition of the villa and its differentiation from the country estate, castle, and palace. He handles the question with deliberate untidyness (p. 103, and passim), preferring to accept conceptual obscurities rather than separate that which belongs together. The happy result of this tactic is a chapter amazingly rich in its many facets, capturing the great diversity of the subject without becoming lost in irrelevancies (a chapter "like a shepherd driving his flock into the gate," which is how Jacob Burckhardt wanted such subjects dealt with). It is indicative of the author's genuine talent as a historian that the two more theoretical chapters at the end of the book are weaker in this respect. Formulated abstractly, his theses suddenly require modifying additions and restrictions; the doubts planted in one's mind by the material in the book now come to the fore; and the ideas lose in conciseness without gaining in historical validity. When at the end we try to draw a sum in the matter of "political iconography," the result is pretty skimpy. Readers accustomed to beginning a book at its end should be warned that the real value of the study does not lie here.
A common explanation for todays want of great syntheses is the burgeoning secondary literature, which no single scholar is able to master. Those who nevertheless attempt such a task risk being accused of superficiality; every specialist will be able to show that the authors erudition was incomplete. Von Moos consciously chose to risk such accusations (warnings were not lacking, as a passage in the preface shows) and, considering the result, I think one can only congratulate him. The treasure of individual facts that he has gathered together and considered critically is enormous, and one hardly ever gets the impression that his knowledge is not up-to-date. Frequently new facts are imparted or fresh insights result from the juxtaposition of facts long familiar by themselves (e.g., from local antiquarian studies and related disciplines). In the chapter on palaces, I noted as especially informative the sections on the Roman quattrocento (p. 69ff.), office and courtroom buildings (p. 83ff.), and papal architecture in Bologna (p. 89ff,). In the chapter on villas 1 learned a great deal from the description of castle-villas of the 16th century (p. 13Iff.) and the discussion of the basis villae problem (p. 142f. >. On the other hand, I found the treatment of palace architecture after 1500 to be on the whole somewhat disappointing. Von Moos limits himself to the special case of the judicial palace, on the assumption that the typology of the residential palace is completely dominated by the Florentine tradition, which is of no relevance for the approach of this book. But this is not the case. Accentuated corners that echo the tower motive can also be found in