Review Author(s): J. B. Owens Review by: J. B. Owens Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), pp. 321-323 Published by: Sixteenth Century Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2540684 Accessed: 07-06-2016 17:50 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms
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Book Reviews 321
Arquitectura, economlia e iglesia en el siglo XVI (Murcia y su entorno). Cristina Gutierrez-Cortines Corral. Madrid: Xarait Ediciones for the Colegio Oficial de Aparejadores y Arquitectos Tecnicos de Murcia and the Consejeria de Cultura y Educacion de la Comunidad Autonoma de Murcia, 1987. 181 pp. Illustrations, tables, bibliography. Ptas. 1,000. Renacimiento y arquitectura religiosa en la antigua Diocesis de Cartagena (Reyno de Murcia, Gobernacion de Orihuela y Sierra del
Segura). Cristina Gutierrez-Cortines Corral. Murcia: Consejeria de Cultura y Educacion de la Comunidad Autonoma, Colegio Oficial de Aparejadores y Arquitectos Tecnicos, Galeria-Libreria-Yerba, Departamento de Historia del Arte de la Universidad, Cajamurcia, 1987. 553 pp. 334 photographs, insert of the floor plan of the Cathedral of Murcia, bibliography. Ptas. 6,000. With the simultaneous publication of these two books, Cristina GutierrezCortines Corral has gone beyond what is usually expected of art historians. She has produced work of major importance not only for those interested in the religious architecture of the sixteenth century but also for those who study the period's economic, institutional, and religious history. Murcia, capital of the autonomous region of the same name in southeastern Spain, has become a center for the study of the late medieval and early modern periods. The author was able to learn research techniques from colleagues concerned with the development of agriculture, with the
nature of elite families, with institutions and the exercise of power, with education and literature, as well as with the visual arts; thus she has viewed her documentary sources and the region's impressive architectural monuments in a broad context. In order to present the results of over a dozen years of intensive labor, she has written two quite different books which effectively complement each other. Both deal with the old Diocese of Cartagena, with its see in Murcia, which constituted an important unit of architectural activity despite the establishment of a separate bishopric (that of Orihuela) in 1564 for the northern part. As each of these books has a different purpose, they are organized differently. Arquitectura, economia e iglesia centers on the initiation and financing of construction
projects. Here Gutikrrez-Cortines shows why particular projects were begun, who made the crucial decisions, what degree of influence patrons had on the design and execution of the buildings, and what relationships existed between economic developments and construction. She concludes that the ecclesiastical system, even within
a single diocese, was so rich in complexity and variations that simplified explanations would impair understanding. Within this large territory, there were significant administrative divisions, and since her research has revealed that the varying power of the bishop and his cathedral chapter was central to how decisions were made and resources used, GutierrezCortines has organized her discussion of these matters into chapters focusing on different jurisdictions: the cathedral itself, the parishes in the Kingdom of Castile whose financial and spiritual administration fell directly to the cathedral canons, the parishes in the Kingdom of Valencia, the parishes in the lands of the Military Order of Santiago, and the religious orders.
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322 The Sixteenth CenturyJournal XX no. 2, 1989
She is able to show that there existed significant differences in the degree of both outside and lay intervention in decisions about construction and financial management and that these variations had an impact on building. Throughout the diocese the laity evinced both a desire to participate in shaping the environment of community worship and a lack of appreciation for the benefits of the separation of clerical and lay responsibilities. Where laymen of the local elite could intervene, as in Orihuela
where they had direct control over church finances through the parishjuntas, building projects often proceeded more rapidly and smoothly towards completion, which guaranteed greater stylistic unity. The lay knights of Santiago and their municipal councils, exercising royal jurisdiction, often played an even more independent role since the monarch, as the order's head, had direct control over both temporal and spiritual matters. Although the timing and circumstances varied, throughout the diocese there was
a progressive reduction of lay intervention in parish life which helped slow construction. To some extent such activity was reduced as part of the Catholic Reform, particularly after the Council of Trent. Within the lands of Santiago, local involvement was also cut by the centralizing tendencies of Philip II as head of the order. Lacking a say in parish administration, laymen turned more attention to monastic
communities that encouraged their cooperation in construction plans. Although their artistic significance would only become apparent in the following century, confraternities were also becoming an increasingly important vehicle for lay involvement
in shaping society's devotional life. Thus, Gutikrrez-Cortines presents Renaissance architecture as a component of a view of spiritual life which had undergone a transformation by the late sixteenth century under the impact of changing ideas of both ecclesiastical and secular leadership in which Trent played an important role.
While lay influence was often important in the initiation and prosecution of major building projects, the principal aesthetic influence was that of the artists. Here the cathedral canons played a decisive role since the chapter, on behalf of bishops who were, usually absent, named a maestro mayor to oversee construction. Since the
chapter controlled a high percentage of the diocese's revenues and a significant number of artistic projects, the canons could attract and keep prestigious architects in the region. Even where the chapter's authority was not sufficient to assure that a
particular artist would be responsible for a work's design and realization, the desire of others involved in such decisions to use the best known architects meant that the
same individuals were responsible for most of the projects in the diocese. Thus, while the bishop's officials were often unable to influence construction of many of the sixteenth-century religious buildings, they did ensure the predominance of the classical style through their willingness and ability to maintain in the region over long periods of time architects committed to and familiar with Renaissance aesthetic ideas. In her Renacimiento y arquitectura religiosa, Gutikrrez-Cortines underlines the tremendous influence of the maestros mayores. This beautiful book is a systematic catalog of the remaining architectural monuments of the period. Rather than organize her descriptions and excellent illustrations on the basis of the jurisdictional differences which shaped the text of the first book, her chapters here are built around the types of buildings which were constructed. She deals first with the extensive Renaissance artistic program of the cathedral, then with four significant projects of the period (the parish churches of Santa Maria of Chinchilla, Santiago in Jumilla, and Santiago
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Book Reviews 323
in Orihuela and the collegiate church of San Patricio in Lorca), with six churches designed with columns and three naves, ten single-nave churches, and eight churches with wooden ceilings. The troubled history of religious orders in Spain has left little monastic architecture to study. However, the author does provide excellent discussions of the Dominican college in Orihuela and of the early Jesuit college in Murcia which must play an important part in any debate over the existence and development of a distinctly Jesuit style of architecture.
Since she opens her account with detailed discussions of the seven most prominent architects, it is possible to trace the influence of the prestigious across the range
of building projects in the diocese. While the details of developments in style and technique are beyond the scope of this review, Gutierrez-Cortines's treatment is outstanding for its balance and clarity and could well serve as a model for others studying the religious architecture of sixteenth-century Catholic Europe and America.
J. B. Owens Idaho State University
Supplementum Festivum. Studies in Honor of Paul Kristeller. James Hankin, John Monfasani, Frederick Purnell, Jr., eds., Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 49. Binghamton, New York: M.R.T.S. Press, 1987. xv + 630 pp. $50.00. This is the fifth Festschrift for Professor Kristeller - three for his seventieth and now two for his eightieth birthday. While few contributors to this volume have as
yet reached the status of those to Itinerarium Italicum (1975), it is a testimony to Kristeller's position as a teacher and model that the essays here assembled are mostly by students trained since 1975. They are of a high caliber and not a few make useful contributions to the field. Chronologically presented, the twenty two articles range from the early twelfth century through the seventeenth, but most deal with Italian humanism, of which nine deal with Plato and Neo-Platonism. Four of these deal with Ficino. Here the study on a MS translation of Plato's Republic and its translators by James Hankins serves as a good example of generally specialized and narrowly focused work that can be of interest even to the teacher of Western civilization courses. Among the remaining there is an inventive essay by the much missed John F. D'Amico on small town art patronage apropos the Maffei monument in Volterra and an enlightening one by Constantin Fasolt on the seventeenth century German historian Conring, apparently one overlooked by Niebuhr when he censured postRenaissance historiography. For Conring does advocate the critical use of sources and appears to be a forerunner of Ranke. It is often a shortcoming of occasional essays that attention to a wider context - of space and/or time - is sacrificed. In this case, Conring is probably less isolated a scholar as now appears. For example, E. H. Waterbolk has highlighted parallel positions in North Netherlandish historians whose ambiance then included the northwestern German states, modern borders and languages being sometimes negligible in the Weltburgertum of seventeenth- century scholarship. Only a few of the essays fall into the category of explication de texte and nearly all of the contributors returned to the - often archival - sources.
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