The Rule, the Bible, and the Council: The Library of the Benedictine Abbey at Praglia by Diana Gisolfi and Staale Sindling-Larsen

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS555 pacifism, on the growing tendency to define religious identity largely in terms of such externals as doctrine and public behavior. In this respect, Hôpital resembles not so much Cardinal Richelieu, as KLm suggests, but rather Michel de Marillac. Like Marillac, Hôpital proposed a different course for France than the one historically taken. It was perhaps only symbolically fitting that the last year ofthe Chancellor's life witnessed the horrors ofthe St. Bartholomew's Day massacres , a paroxysm of violence that, as Denis Crouzet has recently argued, destroyed the forlorn hope to forge a sense of brotherhood based on the kind of humanistic understanding of justice and piety so cherished by Hôpital. Michael Wolfe Pennsylvania State University—Altoona College The Rule, the Bible, and the Council:The Library ofthe BenedictineAbbey at Praglia. By Diana Gisolfi and Staale Sindling-Larsen. [College Art Association Monograph of the Fine Arts, Volume LV] (Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1998. Pp. xiii, 201;ills. 73 [4 in col.]. $55.00.) The subject ofthis monograph is the cycle oftwenty-four paintings created ca. 1570 (according to the author's reasoning) by Battista Zelotti (ca. 1526-1578) for the earlier sixteenth-century library room at Sta. Maria di Praglia near Padua. The Renaissance monastic complex there was the result of the Benedictine reform movement begun by Ludovico Barbo (1381-1443), the abbot of Sta. Giustina at Padua. Before they can turn their attention to the paintings, however , the authors must reconstruct the architecture and furnishings of the original room—compromised in the eighteenth century—and reassemble the complete cycle, including the wall paintings now in the refectory, all of which they achieve by means of their examination of the existing space, their reinterpretation of the documents, and the magic of the computer. The result restores to historical knowledge a characteristic Cinquecento library with two rows of reading benches, paintings alternating with openings along the walls, and a geometrically framed painted ceiling. Had the authors set out to do nothing else, this would be a welcome study, as the inventory is short indeed of well-understood Renaissance monastic library rooms.Judging by their bibliography, only a little has been added since my own student survey of a third of a century ago. It is the program of Zelotti's work, however, that is the center of the authors' interest. The paintings represent allegories and scenes from the Old and New Testaments, but they find the program doctrinal rather than narrative. Their exploration of the intellectual, spiritual, and institutional context in which Zelotti worked reveals sources that are stated succinctly in their title: the program relies upon the Rule of St. Benedict, the Benedictine "tradition ofbooks," and Benedictine reform movements within the Church that stem from before and during the Council ofTrent. The theme 556book reviews of the cycle, they suggest, was inspired by the wish to reaffirm sacramental and monastic traditions in the period following the Council. They can find no narrow library iconography here. While their introduction claims without qualification that Zelotti's paintings at Praglia (including those in the church itself) "constitute an important achievement, comparable in size and complexity to that of Paolo Veronese at San Sebastiano in Venice," they are more modest and more cautious about their interpretation of the library program itself. They present a working hypothesis, they say. "Right" or not, their discussion will further the study of Renaissance library rooms and library cycles. That is not to state that this book is without its faults. Although one might say that their larger argument seems reasonable and will further discussion, there are any number of vague or questionable statements that give one pause. In general the authors were ill-served by their copy editor, who allowed some awkward moments to get by (as in"there occurred an activation of" [p. 24]), but I would guess that they are responsible for others. In their eagerness to connect the library paintings to the Benedictine "tradition of books," for example, they "point out that most manuscripts and early printed codices were illustrated"(p. 26). That's a characteristically art-historical distortion: students of the history of the book know better. James...