Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy

Abstract

The purpose of this concise and tightly written book is to show "how the style of pictures is a proper material of social history."Mr. Baxandall's argument is this.Believing that the symbolic structures used by a society at any given moment are reflected in all the modes of expression that appear in that society, Mr. Baxandall is concerned to show how our understanding of painting-which in the Renaissance was an obviously import- ant expressive language-can be enriched by reference to material derived from other areas of activity.And it is a highly rewarding investigation.He begins with an account of the forms of patronage recorded in the fifteenth century, these being, in his words, the customer's participation in the creation of the work of art.And he concludes with an interpretation of the critical terms to be found in three some- what different late fifteenth-century texts on art-the Trattato di pittura (1 509) of Francesco Lancilotti, the Cronaca rimata (after 1482) of Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, and, most importantly, those parts of the Comento . . .sopra la cojnedia di