Alison Cole's Virtue and Magnificence is an efficient survey of fifteenth-century patronage of the visual arts at the courts of Naples, Milan, Ferrara, Urbino, and Mantua. This is not a scholarly work--it presents what is known rather than new information or theories (and it is not annotated). But it is carefully organized to demonstrate the complementary nature of the qualities named in its title--the virt·, or special talent, of the artist and princely magnificentia. Most importantly, however, Cole clarifies the motives behind such patronage and its role in the system of relations among states--from Italian city-states to the Holy Roman Empire. She demonstrates how, along with military, dynastic, and diplomatic connections and the sharing of humanist learning, patronage of the arts served to place the rulers of small states on a level approximating that of higher-ranking rulers of more substantial states. In her account the problems of the artist take second place to the motivations of the patrons, for whom sponsorship of the arts was only one of a number of means of legitimation and display of power.
From a twentieth-century vantage point it sometimes seems that the most important story in accounts of fifteenth-century Italian patronage is the emergence of the independent artist. Cole gives this aspect of the topic due emphasis, culminating with the example of Mantegna and comparing the careers of court artists and those of High Renaissance painters, especially Titian, who achieved much greater independence of action. But this emphasis, as Cole makes clear, is part of the story of the disappearance of the type of intensive patronage of the arts found at the courts she describes.
Cole establishes princely patronage as a systematic effort on the part of various courts to put forward or reinforce claims to legitimacy or prominence that were somewhat questionable. She contrasts the differences in the cases of the five ...