Ricci, Alessandro, and Carlotta Bilardi. Cartografia, arte e potere tra Riforma e Controriforma. Il Palazzo Farnese a Caprarola

This book is a study of sixteenth-century maps that places them within the broader debate on the power of images in Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious writings.The authors selected the Farnese Palace at Caprarola as their case study because its main audience hall, the Sala della Cosmografia, is decorated with marvellous mural maps representing the four continents, the world, and the sky.For the authors, the room, the decoration of which was commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, is "the apotheosis not only of geography as a response to the Reformation from the point of view of sublime aesthetic, but also a place that condenses the [patron's] aspirations to the papal throne" (89).(All quotations have been translated from the Italian by this reviewer.)Ricci and Bilardi's book is divided into seven chapters and introduced by an essay by Giorgio Mangani, an expert in early modern cartography and its relations to religious debates.In the first half of the book, the authors provide an excursus on the role of images in the early modern period in order to place the Sala della Cosmografia in its broadest historical, cultural, and religious context.Chapter 1, "Arte e cartografia nella modernità, " discusses the power of maps as images that provide "political certainty" (19) to the rulers of emerging nations and delight to visitors of princely palaces.In chapter 2, "Arte e cartografia della Riforma, " the authors review Protestant ideas on images, embracing Gerhard Ritter's argument that the Reformation favoured a more "secular" form of art, Sveltana Alper's distinction between southern narrative art and northern descriptive art, and Hans Belting's view that art became modern when it became less sacred.The works by these influential scholars have inspired many studies over the decades, but their arguments have been considerably revised in later works since plenty of secular and descriptive art was produced in sixteenthcentury Catholic countries, as well as sacred art that opened up to modernity.But the authors argue that "even though the Reformation was against the very concept of sacred images, nonetheless it gave enormous impulse to modern art and cartography, which were understood only as useful and aesthetic

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