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Document 1 of 1Attributing Influence: The Problem of Female Patronage in Fifteenth-Century FlorenceSolum, Stefanie. The Art Bulletin 90.1 (Mar 2008): 76-100.

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Abstract

The female monastic environment has emerged recently as a vital area of inquiry, due to thework ofjeryldene Wood, Kate Lowe, Anabel Thomas, and other scholars who havecontributed to a new understanding of the vitality of visual culture for cloistered women and ofthe specificity and particularity of images produced for the female gaze.6 While communitiesof religious women were important patrons of art and architecture, the extent to which nunsexercised choice is difficult to discern from surviving documents (a problem compounded bythe demand, most often met, for a male guardian, or mundualdus, to act on the women'sbehalf in legal transactions such as commissions) .7 In the context of the secular palace,Jacqueline Musacchio's encompassing study of the gendered material culture of childbirthnow allows us to link that decidedly female sphere of experience with a varied and dynamicrealm of object production.8 Adrian Randolph's essay on birth trays, or deschi da parto, maycome closer to articulating an argument for women's role in the production of images.9Setting his own sights on female spectatorship within the space of the birth chamber,Randolph genders the cultural constructedness of vision in order to propose an alternative toMichael Baxandall's "normative" period eye, implying that the artists of these painted salverswere responding to a set of viewing norms that governed an exclusively female sphere ofreception. _______________________________________________________________

Full Text

Among the Florentine Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale's broad holdings of fifteenth-centuryilluminated manuscripts is a small, striking codex catalogued as BNCF, Magliabechiano VII,49. Its sole text is a Lombard Vita ai San Giovanni Battista dedicated to Filippo MariaVisconti, duke of Milan between 1412 and 1447, although the embossed circles of theoriginal leather binding herald Medici patronage, and the patte, or balls, of Florence's rulingfamily reappear in a coat of arms on the manuscript's splendid frontispiece (Figs. 1-3).l Themasterful illumination of this page, composed of a historiated initial set within a swirling vine-stem frieze inhabited by playful putti and colorful birds, is clearly the work of an exceptionallyskilled artist. The manuscript is markedly luxurious; an elegant humanist script graces its fivegold-edged parchment quires. Illustrious provenance, artistic merit, and sumptuousness donot, however, make Magliabechiano VII, 49 unusual. Patrons requested a dizzying quantityof high-quality illuminated manuscripts from Florentine workshops during the second half ofthe fifteenth century, and the Medici were vigorous patrons and collectors.2 TheMagliabechiano manuscript's contents, moreover-hagiographie verse composed in the Italianvernacular-may seem unassuming in the face of the numerous classical and patristic Latin

texts put freshly to parchment during the quattrocento. On its surface this codex is exquisite,yet not extraordinary, and that it has remained unexamined by successive generations of arthistorians comes, perhaps, as little surprise.3 Far less expected is the outcome of anattentive visual engagement. The Magliabechiano manuscript provides a renewedopportunity for art historical reflection on the construction of women's roles in the productionof images during this period.Invoking the issue of female patronage of the arts in fifteenth-century Florence reveals astartling absence. Notable women patrons have not emerged from this period,4 and thisdespite the continuing torrent of literature on female patronage of the arts in RenaissanceItaly.5 Other geographic centers and, generally speaking, later periods have provedremarkably lucrative fields for this area of research. The assumption arising from this peculiarsituation-that quattrocento Florentine women were unique in their relatively insignificant rolein the generation of objects-is both inevitable and unreasonable, although formulating aconcrete basis with which to dismiss it requires more than mere intuition.Recent studies of explicitly female viewing contexts have begun to forge a connectionbetween women and image production. The female monastic environment has emergedrecently as a vital area of inquiry, due to the work ofjeryldene Wood, Kate Lowe, AnabelThomas, and other scholars who have contributed to a new understanding of the vitality ofvisual culture for cloistered women and of the specificity and particularity of images producedfor the female gaze.6 While communities of religious women were important patrons of artand architecture, the extent to which nuns exercised choice is difficult to discern fromsurviving documents (a problem compounded by the demand, most often met, for a maleguardian, or mundualdus, to act on the women's behalf in legal transactions such ascommissions) .7 In the context of the secular palace, Jacqueline Musacchio's encompassingstudy of the gendered material culture of childbirth now allows us to link that decidedlyfemale sphere of experience with a varied and dynamic realm of object production.8 AdrianRandolph's essay on birth trays, or deschi da parto, may come closer to articulating anargument for women's role in the production of images.9 Setting his own sights on femalespectatorship within the space of the birth chamber, Randolph genders the culturalconstructedness of vision in order to propose an alternative to Michael Baxandall's"normative" period eye, implying that the artists of these painted salvers were responding toa set of viewing norms that governed an exclusively female sphere of reception. Roger Crum,on the other hand, claims an overt interest in female agency and patronage per se.10 Crumrightly calls for methodological reflection on the suitability of the conventional contractual, ordocumentary, model for the study of patronage by secular women and presents the results ofhis own consideration of this problem: an original new model of women's "control" thatbypasses the issues of production altogether to focus, instead, on the potential power offemale stewardship of objects within the Renaissance palace.Despite this body of scholarship, our understanding of women's purposeful and active rolesin shaping the period's innovative and dynamic visual universe remains ill defined. A fruitfulapproach to filling this gap involves the analysis of image production, because art patronage

has emerged, in Renaissance scholarship, as a fundamental site for the mapping of creativeagency and the expression of identity. While it could be argued that the recuperation of long-neglected women belongs to a past art historical moment, I contend that this type of inquiry(as well as the very category "female patronage") retains importance in the context of theearly Italian Renaissance. The artistic accomplishment of quattrocento Florence continues toguarantee it a privileged place in the history of Western art and, indeed, in the largernarrative of the "progress" of Western culture. Art historians' continued, conventional use ofthe very term "Renaissance," a period designation long abandoned by colleagues in otherdisciplines, points to a persisting conviction that early modern Italy witnessed extraordinarychanges in the visual arts. The rapid development, in Florence, of visual idioms within anexplosively prolific culture of image production tends to fix that city and its fifteenth-centuryinhabitants at the heart of this transformation.The notions of artistic genius and stylistic progress that first gave shape to the field havediminished in importance, yet invention and individual initiative continue to be invoked asperiod touchstones, even in less traditional accounts. A. Richard Turner's recent survey ofthe Florentine Renaissance-a book that deftly replaces chronology and artistic biography witha rich thematic, contextual approach-remains committed to a new visual language forged,during the fifteenth century, by the "incomparable Florentines."11 Turner introduces hissubject by conjuring up the enduring idea of a Florence that "nurtured a constellation ofremarkable persons, many of whom left an indelible mark on the city in the form of buildingsand works of art."12 Patrons now take a natural place alongside artists in this collection ofoutstanding people, and, while this may be something of a shell game that imperceptiblyshifts the emphasis on the individual from one place to another, the notion of theRenaissance patron as a fundamental creative force behind the production of works of artnonetheless has gained momentum.13 The paucity of archival evidence documentinginstances of women's art patronage from this period serves as the basis for an assumptionthat individual Florentine women were not important commissioners-or designers orconceivers-of images, effectively putting this means of generative and expressive powerbeyond their grasp.The tendency to interpret individual works of art in light of their patrons' tastes, views, beliefs,and agendas may be giving way to an understanding of art patronage as a means ofconstructing and expressing individual and social identities, but it seems clear that bothapproaches are factors of a broader shift toward the contextualization of Renaissance art.14A comparison of the initial claim of Frederick Hartt's classic survey text first published in1969, the History of Italian Renaissance Art, with the equivalent introductory moment in JohnPaoletti and Gary Radke's more recent survey, Art in Renaissance Italy, demonstrates thisfundamental reframing of scholarly investment in the Italian Renaissance. Hartt's assertionthat "the first manifestations of an independent new style in painting and sculpture seem tohave taken place in Tuscany" no longer represents the stakes of the field; a quest for originshas been tempered by arguments for continuity, and a pan-Italian approach now mitigatesthe traditional Florentine bias.15 More important to the exploration of women's patronage in

quattrocento Italy is the compelling, and very different, claim with which Paoletti and Radkeopen their book: "Art mattered in the Renaissance"-an assertion that immediately focusesreaders' attention on the innate power of Renaissance art in its original moment andcontext.16 This stronger art historical commitment to the power of images for Renaissancepeople begs the question, however, of just how art "mattered" to women. Art historians haveprovided some answers to this question by turning more frequently to social history and thedomestic environment and by considering the ways in which women might have beenaffected by prescriptive images-portraits that immortalized female virtues, for example, ornarrative panels painted on a cassone (a large storage chest) that engaged gender rolesgoverning marriage and, in turn, sustained the patriarchal order it supported.17 If we acceptthe notion of an inherently potent visual culture even generally speaking, it is also necessarythat we explore as fully as possible women's share as agents in shaping that culture and, inthe process, structuring their own identities as creators and viewers.18In moving toward the substantiation of such a role, it is useful to consider the Magliabechianomanuscript's illuminated frontispiece, in good Baxandallian fashion, as a deposit of theconnection between artist and patron-the product of a unique human relationship thatoperated according to cultural expectations.19 Yet positioning a woman on the patron's sideof this equation presents some difficulties that need to be addressed. Because the "norms"that we have come to know (and not only by way of Baxandall) imply a male client, positing afemale one makes the basic irretrievability of the specific, and nuanced, mechanics ofcommunication between artists and patrons during this period stand out in sharper relief.20Moreover, because Renaissance women had limited authority when it came to legal andfinancial transactions, they may not have been the paying clients for objects intended forthem or that they themselves had requested. This situation puts the very definition of"patronage" under some pressure, calling for an expanded sense of the term to includeinstances in which a woman's ideas or directives had a fundamental influence on the genesisof a work despite the fact that it was paid for by someone else. Because we have no preciseterminology to accommodate these distinctions, and because male patronage is commonlyelided with personal influence on an object even in the absence of documentary evidence forthe commission, I have chosen to use the term in its broader sense. It should beemphasized, however, that neither historical distance nor the limitations imposed by thearchival record prevent physical objects from illuminating fundamental contours of the originalrelationships that produced them. In the case of the Magliabechiano manuscript, a closestudy of the illuminated frontispiece reveals the identity of both parties, while also pointing toa reciprocal and collaborative flow between them that offers a model for female viewersshaping the things they wanted to see.The Patron and Her ManuscriptThe Magliabechiano manuscript's original owner is readily identifiable by the heraldic disksupported by putti at the base of its frontispiece (Fig. 3). Here, the Medici arms are triplyencircled by a gold band, a lush green garland, and the family emblem of the diamond ring,most commonly associated with Piero di Cosimo de' Medici (1416-1469). Piero was certainly

a conspicuous bibliophile; he collected and commissioned lavish volumes in such quantitythat his personal library was among the most significant manuscript collections in Europe atthat time.21 When it was produced about 1455, the Magliabechiano codex's modest size andvernacular, hagiographie content would have rendered it a rarity among Piero's manyluxurious manuscripts, although the author of its text was Francesco Filelfo, the renownedhumanist still working in the service of the Milanese duke.22 In addition, as Francis Ames-Lewis has pointed out, Piero employed a strict system of classification among his books,organizing them according to category by tinted leather bindings; the Magliabechianomanuscript retains its original binding in brown, which was not a color used in thisorganizational arrangement.23 That the codex did not belong to Piero's collection isconfirmed by two successive inventories of his library taken in 1456 and 1464, neither ofwhich makes mention of it.24 The strongest confirmation that this book never belonged toPiero comes from the impaled coat of arms, set within the diamond ring on the frontispiece,that combines the Medici palle with the rampant lion of the Tornabuoni, the family of Piero'swife, Lucrezia (1427-1482). Significantly, not a single one of the manuscripts identified asbelonging to Piero's collection displays Tornabuoni family heraldry. And the heraldic disk ofthe Magliabechiano codex joins the Medici and Tornabuoni arms palewise (by a vertical line),assigning Lucrezia's natal arms to the privileged, right-hand side traditionally reserved forthose of the husband. This heraldic configuration would have been a logical marker ofindividual, personal ownership, coming from a woman quite accustomed to identifying herselfas "the wife of Piero de' Medici."25Born into the established and powerful Tornabuoni family in 1427, Lucrezia entered theMedici household at the time of her marriage in 1444.26 This period saw the de facto controlof the Florentine Republic pass through three successive generations of Medici men, fromLucrezia's father-inlaw, Cosimo il Vecchio (1389-1464), to her husband, Piero, and on to hereldest son, Lorenzo (1449-1492). This political triad also engendered the family's mythic arthistorical stature; their extensive and often highly calculated patronage has become averitable subfield of Italian Renaissance art history.27 For her part, Lucrezia was aremarkably influential woman-a forceful power broker and executor of personal and familyinterests, a vigorous philanthropist, and an accomplished writer. And she lived the whole ofher adult life at the Florentine epicenter of secular, family-based art patronage. More likelythan any other woman-and, perhaps, many men-to have influenced the vital, blossomingvisual culture of this art historically critical moment, Lucrezia Tornabuoni is an obvioussubject of the investigation of female art patronage in quattrocento Florence. Remarkably,though, even Lucrezia has never materialized fully as a patron, despite a host of cluesfloating in the historical ether and a long art historical tradition connecting her to Medicicommissions.The devotional subjects of Lucrezia's literary production, which obviously carried substantialpersonal significance for her, also had a prominent visual life in the later fifteenth century. Astriking abundance of images, mainly of domestic provenance, feature the same subjects asher poetry-the Nativity and Death of Christ; Saint John the Baptist; Tobias and the Archangel

Raphael; and the biblical heroines Judith, Susannah, and Esther. Some of these works wererelatively public images that can be tied to a specifically Medici context: the fresco cycledepicting Susannah and the Elders painted in the late 1450s for the Milanese branch of thefamily bank, for example, or Donatello's bronze Judith and Holofernes group known to haveresided at the Medici Palace from at least 1464.28 Most compelling is a cluster ofcommissions involving Saint John the Baptist that, taken together, suggest that Lucreziaplayed an active role in promoting the representation and guiding the iconography of thatparticular saint. Specifically, art historians of different generations have linked Lucrezia withthe altarpiece Filippo Lippi painted during the late 1450s for the chapel of the new MediciPalace on the Via Larga, an Adoration of the Child that features Saint John the Baptist (Fig.4).29Heinrich Brockhaus first proposed the connection between Lucrezia and Lippi's altarpiece forthe Medici Palace in 1902, and several decades later both Marilyn Lavin and Frederick Harttmade confident claims for Lucrezia as Lippi's patron.30 Hartt's classic Renaissance surveyincluded this "information" from its first edition (with Paoletti and Radke later following suit),but, rather remarkably, art historians never substantiated or developed these claims by Lavinand Hartt. All subsequent focused studies of the altarpiece and the domestic chapel in whichit originally formed the visual and liturgical focus, in fact, have ignored or rejected Lucrezia'spossible role.31 So even while the Lucrezia hypothesis is presented as fact in the mostwidely read introductory textbooks on Renaissance art, she remains absent in recent, seriousscholarship on Lippi's picture-work that dates from precisely the years in which the study ofgender gained a solid hold in the field of Renaissance art history.Curiously, historians, rather than art historians, have taken on the task of seriouslyinvestigating Lucrezia's reputation as an important patron, but the issue of written evidencehas proved a major stumbling block. Kate Lowe's investigation of archival material relevant toseveral scholarly rumors of Lucrezia's patronage of objects, for example, yielded a "pattern"of her absence from the extant documents.32 These disappointing findings led the author tobe circumspect in her conclusions regarding Lucrezia's individual role, and even her part ininstances of joint commissions with her husband, as a patron of objects. Medici historianFrancis W. Kent, who mined a broader range of documents related to Lucrezia in the courseof his study of her son, Lorenzo, offered a more general reevaluation of her addition to thecalculus of Medici politics and power and took a more optimistic stance regarding the issue ofart patronage.33 Combining disparate archival traces, Kent fashioned a compelling portrait ofa sharp and determined woman, powerful in the realm of social and political patronage andprobably involved in the patronage of art as well, despite the absence of documentary proofto this effect. In fact, Kent is confident that evidence will eventually surface: "I am convinced,"he states, "that future research will show Lucrezia herself to have been a patron of religiousart and foundations."34 Despite their divergent conclusions, both Lowe and Kent remainmethodologically committed to written documentation, leaving little alternative but to wait forsuch evidence to be found, someday, in the Florentine archives.

Some such evidence, to be sure, has already surfaced. Documents show that Lucreziacontributed at least two silver ex-votos to the church of SS. Annunziata, furnished richvestments for the veneration of a favorite local saint, and commissioned liturgical items,including osculatories and an illuminated missal.35 According to the fifteenth-centuryFlorentine friar and spiritual adviser to patrician women Giovanni Dominici, "things that relateto divine praise and legitimate ecclesiastical ornaments" were precisely the sort of objectsthat women ought to commission.36 It may be, then, that firm documents exist for Lucrezia'spatronage in precisely the limited arena identified by Dominici because it was considered anappropriate one for women's independent patronage. Unfortunately, to limit focus onLucrezia's commissioning of such objects tends to negate the possibility that she had a handin other types of commissions and to relegate her activity to a sphere of material culture thatimpinges little on the broader art historical narrative. Lucrezia's commandeering of a majorstructural and architectural renovation of the mineral baths at Bagno a Morba near Volterramight speak more to this point, yet documents probably exist for her operations as a patronon a grand scale in this instance because she was a widow at the time, and thus enjoyed agreater degree of legal independence.37 It makes sense to assume, along with Kent, thatthere is more to the story of Lucrezia's patronage than the archive has revealed.In her recent study of Medici women, the historian Natalie Tomas appropriately questions thewisdom of relying on the historical record to form conclusions about female patronage duringthis period, noting that it is "dangerous to assume that the lack of documentation forLucrezia's patronage activities during Piero's lifetime means that she was not active in thisarea."38 Citing Lavin's original connection of Lippi's painting to Lucrezia's devotion to SaintJohn, Tomas concludes that Lucrezia "could well have provided the creative impulse" for thealtarpiece. Faced with the absence of the kind of clinching evidence that Lowe could notuncover but that Kent hopefully anticipates finding, art historians would do well to join Tomasin questioning the extent we wish to privilege the written record. But we can also go a stepfurther by bringing images to bear on the archival void. By turning to visual evidence as anequally valid form of documentation, I mean to assert Lucrezia's influence on the visual artsas an irrefutable fact while also suggesting an object-based model by which our owndiscipline might begin to mitigate the problem of female patronage (and perhaps femaleagency more broadly) in the written history of fifteenth-century Florence.The Magliabechiano manuscript is precisely the right sort of object, because it can besimultaneously distanced from Piero and connected with Lucrezia. When subjected to acareful visual analysis, the Florentine codex delivers a surprising wealth of informationregarding her centrality to the genesis of the work. While no evidence survives that identifiesLucrezia as the paying client for this particular manuscript, the archival record preservesdocumentation of Lucrezia engaging in a comparable act of patronage. A letter of 1476 toLucrezia from Benedetto da Cepparello, referring in some detail to a missal in progress inVenice for Lucrezia, demonstrates that she was an involved and discriminating patron ofilluminated manuscripts.39 Cepparello's letter makes it clear that Lucrezia was supplying thescribe, Ser Giovanni, with the parchment quires for the manuscript, as well as paying for his

labor and that of the illuminator, a certain Hieronimo. Cepparello writes that "you wereadvised in a previous letter that Ser Giovanni has begun the work to finish the missal,"informing Lucrezia that the scribe "had already written a quire, and was well-disposed to doanything [she] pleased."40 Cepparello's letter affords a glimpse of Lucrezia closelysupervising her missal's progress, quire by quire, as it neared completion, and conveys asense of her authority to reject a product that did not suit her in return for the refund of herinvestment.41 The case of this missal is useful in the context of the Magliabechianomanuscript because it presents a documentary basis from which to posit Lucrezia as its"official" patron. The letter is suggestive but not conclusive, and thus similar to other archivalhints of her patronage that fail to serve as irrefutable proof. A serious study of the visualrecord, however, yields much more. Most important, it makes possible an attribution of thehand that illuminated her manuscript-a fundamental step toward attributing her own "hand" inthe finished product.The codex's Lombard text notwithstanding, both the format and style of its frontispiece areunmistakably Florentine (Fig. 2). The illumination frames the manuscript's first page of textwith a rectangular border composed of a curling white plant form, known as blanchi girari,rendered from the negative space of the blank parchment. Artists in the orbit of Cosimo de'Medici developed the bianchi girari border, and because of the unprecedented taste forhumanist manuscripts the Florentine ruler seems to have nurtured in his two sons, Piero andGiovanni, this type reached its height in both quality and popularity at midcentury.42 TheVita's frontispiece-a scrolling vine stem inhabited by figures and animals and following arectangular gold-leaf frame around the page-is a modestly sized but particularly high-qualityexample of this type. Piero, during his most intense period of book collecting in the 145Os,favored an artist called Francesco d'Antonio del Chierico (ca. 1433-1484) over all othermanuscript illuminators working in Florence at that time, commissioning from him numerousvolumes, including the most costly and precious in his library.43 Francesco d'Antonio, whomatriculated in the guild of San Paolo in 1452, soon established his own shop and securedcommissions from several illustrious patrons, including Alfonso V (king of Aragn and Sicily)and Federico di Montefeltro (duke of Urbino and the renowned condottiere and patron ofPiero della Francesca) .44 Visual evidence demonstrates that the Magliabechianofrontispiece is indeed the autograph work of Francesco d'Antonio and places Lucrezia inthese prestigious ranks.Among the finest examples of Francesco d'Antonio's firmly attributed work from the mid-1450s is the sumptuously decorated frontispiece of Saint Jerome's Epistulae (Fig. 5).45 Thiswork illustrates the key facets of the artist's unique approach to the standard bianchi girariborder and provides a documented basis for comparison with Lucrezia's contemporary Vita.While scholars of manuscript illumination tend to privilege historiated initials whencharacterizing an artist's oeuvre, Francesco d'Antonio's unique approach to the whole of thedecorated page warrants focus, instead, on the vinestem frieze. Intricate and proliferouswithout becoming tangled, stylized, or overly symmetrical, Francesco d'Antonio's vine stemsseem to follow a natural process of growth as they fill the border and encircle the text. On this

particular frontispiece, two thick, white stems originate in the lower margin, growing out ofand away from a multicolored floral base. These twin shoots each split apart and thencontinue their busily scrolling course until the entire border surges with twisting, vegetativeform. The vines themselves combine robust form with curvilinear grace, giving an impressionof ever-shooting, generative growth. Because of the organic logic to which they adhere,Francesco d'Antonio's curling vine stems render the decorative border as a perfectlybalanced living organism.The stability of this vine stem, given the energy of its inhabitants, who further activate theborder with a living, breathing, and often rollicking presence, is a compositionalaccomplishment. Another key characteristic that sets Francesco d'Antonio's frontispieceillumination apart from that of his contemporaries is, in fact, the vivacity and playfulness ofthe figures. In the Epistulae frontispiece, putti leap, crouch, and turn in space while fighting,riding animals, playing music, and chasing butterflies. Birds perch, twist, and stretch towardtheir human and animal counterparts. Human figures and animals involve themselves indynamic, and often humorous, exchanges: two putti spar with snails, for example (at upperright), while a bird nips another cherubic boy in the rear (above left). And the creaturesinhabiting this vine stem exist in a symbiotic relation with it, reinforcing the sense of balanceinherent in the plant itself. Rather than appearing mounted to the border, as though existingon a separate two-dimensional plane, these little figures read as integrated with the greater,living, composition. Moreover, Francesco d'Antonio expertly integrated the poses and actionsof all his living beings into the overall composition of the vine-stem frieze. Not only do theyreact to, and support themselves on, the stem and its gold-leaf frame, but they also respondto the flow of the stem and the contours of the border in a way that respects and enhancesthe organic integrity of the frieze as a whole.Careful observation of the putti in the Epistulae frontispiece reveals Francesco d'Antonio'sskillful articulation of the human form, a mastery of the brush that sets this artist apart fromhis contemporaries. He renders flesh and muscle structure with a delicate sfumato, preferringsubtle brushstrokes and lightly tinted washes of color to crisply defined line. The resultingfigures are vibrantly individualized, never ponderous or schematically rendered. Francescod'Antonio's treatment of the birds and animals further reinforces one's sense of this artist'sinterest in the natural world while revealing his skill as a colorist and master of composition.Despite their naturalistic qualities, these birds are fantastically colored in hues that echothose of the border's background, a choice that minimizes the visual distinction between thetwo planes of depth. Even the potentially mechanical application of these conventionalbackground colors confirms Francesco d'Antonio's sensitivity to color and composition; hisprecise and subtle variation of the tiny fields of pink, green, and blue creates an overallimpression of a truly multicolored field that grounds, and surrounds, the scrolling vine stem.Again, we see a sensitivity to the relation between part and whole that characterizesFrancesco d'Antonio's manuscript production. His work, as exemplified by the Epistulae, canbe distinguished not only by the facility with which he renders form and figure and his subtlesense of color and composition but also by his tendency to marshal these skills in the service

of his conception of the vine-stem border as a vital and organic form.A comparison of this frontispiece with the work of two prominent Florentine illuminators alsopatronized by the Medici during the 1450s-Ricciardo di Nanni and Filippo di Matteo Torelli46-demonstrates the uniqueness of Francesco d'Antonio's approach to the standard, high-endilluminated frontispiece of that moment. A luxurious edition of Pliny's Natural History,47 amanuscript to which Francesco d'Antonio and Ricciardo di Nanni each contributed, nicelyhighlights key differences between these two artists' work. Among the small but tour-de-forcefigures Francesco d'Antonio included on this manuscript's title page is an active horn-blowingcherub (Fig. 6) whose vibrant form is rendered with a wonderfully quick line, the curves andcreases of his chubby body expertly modeled in pink and green-brown washes and with thesubtlest of hatch marks. One notes that throughout the remainder of this manuscript,illuminated by Ricciardo di Nanni, the figures lack this subdety of wash and facility of line;they are shaded in discernible vertical fields of light to dark, the emphasis placed on thedefinition of the chest and shoulders and on the visible musculature (Figs. 7, 8). Ricciardoseems, moreover, more interested in creating sheer visual excitement than he is inpresenting the vine stem as an organic form; a multitude of large figures, animals, and birdsburst from the twisting, doubled, gold-leaf frame, spanning and blocking the whole borderand preventing any sense of growth or generation.48Similarly, an examination of Filippo di Matteo Torelli's illumination of a luxurious Medici-commissioned edition of the works of John Cassian49 affirms Francesco d'Antonio's uniquestyle. On folio 46 verso (Fig. 9), the vine stem originates on the lower border with four thinshoots that twist away and curl chaotically back. And while Francesco d'Antonio's vine stemtypically continues around the various illuminated medallions, Torelli treats these medallionsas impasses, forcing the stem to stop and restart several times. There is, in other words, nosingle growing form. The overall effect highlights surface pattern and decoration rather thanpresenting a living, organic entity. In the same way, the putti are less subtly rendered andmore schematic in their physiology than those of Francesco d'Antonio, and their interactionwith the border, as well as its animals and birds, is less fluid and responsive.The above description of Francesco d'Antonio's work makes evident the premium the artistplaced on vivacity within the standard blanchi girari frontispiece; individual figures andcreatures inhabiting his decorative friezes surge with life, and he takes care that the vinestems do the same. The other major artists working in this genre of humanist manuscriptillumination, despite the visual vibrancy of their work, do not share what seems to beFrancesco d'Antonio's overriding priority: preserving the organic integrity of the vinestemform. Given this clear distinction, a close examination of the frontispiece of theMagliabechiano Vita (Fig. 2)-the characteristics of its individual components and the logic ofits composition as a whole-allows a confident attribution of the illumination to the hand ofFrancesco d'Antonio del Chierico.The lively and humorous inhabitants of the Vita's vine stem are perhaps the mostimmediately recognizable signs of the artist's style. The eight playful putti within the border(four others act as supporting figures on the bas de page) are fully active. One dashes,

smiling, to the left; another plays a musical instrument; a third, joined by a curious bird, peeksover the illuminated initial as though observing the actions of the child Baptist within. Twoothers ride atop a donkey, chased by a bodiless bird, who, growing before the viewer's eyesout of the scrolling stem, pierces the border's outer edge with his beak and nips the animal inthe rear end. Still more playful putti commune spontaneously with the various birds. Each ofthese motifs-putti dashing, making music, riding animals, and responding to the other livingbeings in the vine stem-can be seen repeatedly throughout Francesco d'Antonio's oeuvre.Significantly, the delicate rendering of these little figures marks them as products of his ownhand, rather than of a shop assistant. Swift passes of a soft brown ink just a touch darkerthan that of the vine stem-lines quickly sketched, but that nevertheless manage to conveygreat detail-delineate their forms. Contours of musculature and flesh are modeled with themost delicate of washes, moving from a muted brown with touches of green, to suggestdefinition, to a translucent peachy pink that subtly blushes the flesh and increases itsplasticity. All of the expertly detailed birds also correspond to Francesco d'Antonio's uniquetype.50 Colored exclusively in pink, green, and blue, this fantasy species typical of his workis physically characterized by slim necks, teardrop wings, and a long tail fanning out slightlyat the end. These birds do not compromise the structure, or flow, of the vine stem theyinhabit; rather, their long bodies supply several strong lines that cut at different angles acrossthe border and its gold-leaf frame, providing occasional breaks from the regularity of itsrectangular shape. Their coloration, identical to that of the background, prevents the birdsfrom interrupting the vine stem's flowing form or compromising the border's uniformlymulticolored field. Adhering to Francesco d'Antonio's organic logic, the birds respect theintegrity of the living border while subtly serving the composition.Despite all the action and visual pull of the inhabitants of Francesco's border, then, the artistgoes to lengths to preserve the integrity of the vine stem, supporting its natural growth up thepage. And the swirling bianchi girari of the Magliabechiano Vita are typical of Francescod'Antonio's frontispieces. They have a clear source in the lower border, where two thickshoots generate the remainder of the scrolling forms that fill the decorative frame. While thestem surges with movement, its course is one of logical growth that can be followed from itsorigin to any given point. It is a vibrant but rational plant-full of an energy that pushes thebounds of order, but that never falls into chaos. Also characteristic of Francesco d'Antonio'swork is the natural diminution from the thicker, more robust sections of stem to the thinnestwisps, a tendency that enhances the impression of growth. This logic continues even in thearea outside the decorative frame, where Francesco d'Antonio employs the same fluid,impressionistic line he used to create the putti, here in the service of the proliferating vinestem. While embellishing the gold-leaf disks adorning the page's edge with flourishes of inkwas a common practice, Francesco d'Antonio used this standard ink work to organicallyintegrate the border with those items extraneous to it. Not limiting himself to the customarygold disks, he unleashed sprouting flowers and leaves, animals, and even putti from thetext's decorated frame. These elements, while external to the border, seem to have sprungdirectly from it as excess products of the vine stem's continuous growth, borne into the void

of blank parchment by Francesco d'Antonio's spontaneously calligraphic line.These external details are anything but extraneous when it comes to the issue of attribution,because they reveal the master's hand controlling the whole of the decorationdown to itsmost peripheral details. So while it is revealing that Lucrezia employed such a skilled andprominent artist in the Magliabechiano frontispiece, the presence of his hand even in themargins elevates the commission to another level altogether. Just how rare such a situationmight have been is indicated by the fact that as early as the mid-1450s members ofFrancesco d'Antonio's shop were placed in charge of major commissions, including anexceptionally luxurious three-volume Livy, the so-called Deche del Re, executed for KingAlfonso V about 1455.51I offer this argument based on stylistic attribution, quality, and the trace of the master's handwith purpose and methodological self-awareness. In pursuing the origins of theMagliabechiano frontispiece, the identity of the painter, his status as exceptionally skilled andhighly sought-after among elite patrons, and the fact that this relatively modest frontispiecefor an obscure vernacular poem happens to be his "autograph" work are each vital bits ofevidence. They allow one to position Lucrezia as the force behind a particularly "high-level"commission and to recognize that her frontispiece trumped even the illuminated pages ofKing Alfonso's Livy in terms of the personal attention Francesco d'Antonio lavished on it.While such knowledge is hardly relevant in the context of male patronage, acknowledgingthat women, too, could operate in the orbit of "great artists," and that they desired works of acertain "quality," is important in the context of an initial study of female patronage, as therecovery of female agency still retains currency in this specific scholarly field. However-andprecisely because of its difficulty of access-the act of recuperation is not enough. Ifdiscovering the smoking guns that would identify women patrons of specific objects isaccepted as an archival impossibility, it is crucial to consider different means by which wemight begin to see this notably elusive historical picture with better clarity.The Patron's ShareIt is clear that Francesco d'Antonio found, in the commission for the Magliabechiano Vita, aspace for creative experimentation and development of his conception of the illuminatedfrontispiece. The artist, in treating the conventional vinestem design as a vital, living formrather than a schematic abstraction, ironically pushed the standard decorative border of themidcentury humanist manuscript to its limits. Those limits are keenly felt in the frontispiece ofthe Magliabechiano Vita; the pulsing organic form seems to generate elements that can nolonger be contained by the frame. Both flowers and figures spill out from the border onto thepage's edge and into the bounded, internal space usually reserved for the text-aforeshadowing of the eventual breakdown of the bianchigirari type in Francesco d'Antonio'swork. By 1461, in fact, the artist abandoned the curling white vine stems for a wholly newkind of border decoration, exemplified by a two-volume Plutarch commissioned by Piero de'Medici, that would occupy Francesco d'Antonio during the mature period of his career andeventually spell the end of the vine-stem border's popularity.52 The frontispiece illuminationof these two manuscripts (Fig. 10) is marked by the absence of a strict format; the artist has

replaced the traditional vine-stem border with an airy and delicate frieze whose backgroundis nothing but the blank parchment. His new decorative frames incorporate countless putti,animals, flowers, and gold disks, yet these elements no longer exist as separate from thevegetation. Rather, they merge into it, becoming the very fabric of the frieze. With this work,Francesco d'Antonio achieves the living, organic whole he seems to have been pushingtoward in his earlier explorations with the vine-stem border.With the hindsight afforded by the Medici Plutarch, the elements external to the border of theMagliabechiano Vita can be understood as an early investigation, on the part of the artist, ofthe ways in which disparate motifs might be incorporated into a vegetative structure andallowed to work within that structure as living transmitters of its generative growth.Particularly telling is the passage flanking the text body to the right (Fig. 11). Here, the vinestem within the frame seems to have issued several curling wisps of ink. To the left, theselines grow into the stem of a blue flower, which, in turn, sprouts a golden disk. Above theflower, the lines become supports for a little winged putto, who holds onto yet more curvinglines as though they were stems. These lines, in turn, generate more gold disks. A butterflyfeeding on the blue flower continues this series of forms downward, linking it with furtherclusters of gold disks below, again placed on "stems" of ink line so that they appear to havesprung, alive, from the border. In this passage Francesco d'Antonio works outside thestandard box of the frame both vertically and horizontally in order to incorporate newelements within a growing, evolving structure.The "offshoot" passage of the vine-stem border reveals Francesco d'Antonio in the processof elaborating an innovative and influential new style for the illuminated frontispiece. Not onlyis this glimpse of an important creative moment further evidence for the argument thatFrancesco d'Antonio was responsible for the whole of the frontispiece, but it also begins toprovide information about the nature of the working relationship between the artist and hispatron. It is clear that Francesco d'Antonio found, in this project specifically, an openopportunity to develop his conception of the decorative border from which he could movetoward his complete transformation of the established blanchi girari frame seen first in theMedici Plutarch.The relationship between artist and patron comes into sharper focus with an examination ofthe Magliabechiano Vita's historiated initial. For if we can see, from the vine-stem border, thatFrancesco d'Antonio creatively nudged boundaries while working at Lucrezia's behest, aclose look at the illuminated initial discloses that his inventiveness was connected quitedirectly to her personal interests and expectations. The real subject of the MagliabechianoVita's illumination is, after all, Saint John the Baptist-an especial preoccupation in Lucrezia'sspiritual life, as documented by her own writing.53Saint John appears in the Magliabechiano frontispiece initial as a haloed and hair-shirtedyoung boy walking down a rocky path that forms the bank of a blue stream (Fig. 12). By themid-fifteenth century, the child Baptist's purposeful lateral stride through a natural setting wasa well-established visual convention for invoking his precocious passage into the wilderness-the Lucan account of the young saint's renunciation of the mundane for a life of penitence in

preparation for the coming of Christ.54 The decision to make this moment the visualcompanion to the Magliabechiano manuscript's hagiographie poem, though, was hardlypredictable; the accompanying text takes no interest in recounting the saint's childhood storyand contains no precise narrative correlate to the scene chosen for its illuminated initial.55The image's Florentine provenance throws the peculiarity of the selection of this scene intofurther relief. While depictions of the Baptist's youthful retreat into the wilderness were notuncommon in Florence, they had always been restricted to public narrative cycles of thesaint's life.56 Isolating a single moment of Saint John's story in the context of a private,devotional manuscript that did not contain a correlate text, in other words, must have beenthe product of a highly specific and personal request.It is in the initial, in fact, that the Magliabechiano manuscript seems to most reflect theinterests of Lucrezia Tornabuoni. When it came to Saint John the Baptist, Lucrezia was oneof the most powerful original voices in later-fifteenthcentury Florence: Saint John appears inher laudi, or poems of praise, and she also penned her own Vita di San Giovanni Battista, averse narrative of 159 stanzas dedicated exclusively to his life and death. But it should beemphasized that the connection between Lucrezia's devotional interests and Francescod'Antonio's representation ought not be reduced to a straightforward directive about subjectmatter, however innovative.The central subject of the Magliabechiano Vita's illumination is more complicated than itmight appear at first glance, and the artist's nuanced and powerful manipulation of narrativecan be accounted for only in the context of a complex level of understanding of theproclivities and expectations of his viewing audience. The image reads as Saint Johnentering the desert, and this is precisely what the early-twentiethcentury art historian Paolod'Ancona saw when he wrote his brief catalog description of the manuscript, the onlyinstance when the frontispiece appeared in print.57 To assign Francesco d'Antonio's imageto a single "scene," though, is to inappropriately truncate its potential for meaning. The artistsurely intended to evoke the moment of Saint John's departure for the wilderness, butFrancesco d'Antonio also expanded the narrative-and theological-possibilities of the child inmotion. The Baptist, who strides purposefully to the left, points emphatically at another boywaiting just outside the vertical boundary created by the initial. The second child, easilyidentifiable as Christ by the cross he carries and his cruciform halo, beckons John withoutstretched arms, his left hand turned palm up in a gesture, it would seem, of welcome. Innot confining the action of this scene to the space of the initial, Francesco d'Antoniosucceeded in denoting an additional narrative moment: the two boys' apocryphal childhoodencounter during the holy family's return to Judea, through the desert, after seven years inEgypt.58Christ's propitious meeting with John, understood as a product of both geographiccoincidence and divine inspiration, had entered the Baptist's Florentine hagiographie traditionby way of yet another anonymous Vita di San Giovanni Battista.59 This text, dating from theearly fourteenth century but wildly popular through the fifteenth, constitutes a treasure troveof narrative detail that more than made up for what the Gospels had left out of their accounts

of the saint's childhood. The boys' encounter, according to this text, is an instance of John'syouthful recognition of Christ as savior-a sort of out-of-the-womb adaptation of the Visitationin which John runs toward Jesus, throws himself on the ground, and kisses his feet. WhileChrist, in this version of John's biography, receives his cousin with kisses and warmembraces, he reveals the fundamental purpose of the meeting with the blessing "peace bewith you, preparer of my way."60 Christ's purpose is to provide John with a completeforeknowledge of the Passion, including an understanding of his fundamental role as Christ'sprecursor and baptizer. Francesco d'Antonio incorporates these two ideas in the image, too.The rocky path can be understood as a reference to John's charge to prepare the way for thecoming Messiah, and the visible strip of running stream at the base of the compositionalludes to the waters of Christ's Baptism (in the trecento Vita, the setting for the reunion is, infact, the bank of the River Jordan).The historiated initial of the Magliabechiano frontispiece relies on the trecento Life for thenarrative of the boys' reunion, then, but the image also reflects the specific purpose given, inthat text, for their meeting: to underscore the Baptist's prophetic connection to Christ's fate asthe savior of humankind. Francesco d'Antonio makes this link by connecting the figure of theBaptist visually and thematically to the space of the vine-stem border outside the initial. Theyoung Baptist, toting a cross and clutching a banderole bearing the first letters of his weightypronouncement, "behold the lamb of God," makes the significance of his leftward movementexplicit.61 The crisp gold-leaf boundary of the initial P separates the Baptist from Christ, yetFrancesco d'Antonio renders this divider a powerfully charged zone between theiroutstretched hands, in which the boys' individual gestures unite to form a single diagonal thatbecomes an extension of the Baptist's stride. Rather than using the initial to delineate thescene within, Francesco d'Antonio transforms it into a powerful threshold, and Saint Johnapproaches its edge with every intention of crossing over-an eventuality the artist conveysbeautifully by rendering the two boys as mirror images of each other in stance, gesture, andthe positioning of their matching crosses. The Christ Child welcomes the young saint fromthe terrestrial sphere bound by the initial into a sort of paradise represented by the lush vine-stem border bustling with putti and birds. A painted goldfinch (distinct among the many birdsin the illuminated border for its naturalistic coloration), conspicuously perched above theinitial separating these two realms, adds a premonitory note to the scene. A traditionalsymbol of Christ's Passion, the goldfinch infuses the boys' meeting with the promise of theiradult fates; John's martyrdom, a before-the-fact imitatio Christi that reverses the natural flowof time, will seal his destined role as the precursor of Christ. The two crosses, echoing eachother on either side of the border, reference not simply Christ's Crucifixion but also John'sforeknowledge of the Passion and participation in it by way of his own martyrdom.Ultimately, Saint John's leftward movement evokes far more than a single narrative momentin the life of the Baptist. Francesco d'Antonio exploited the conventional format of the bianchigirari frontispiece in order to create an inventive and powerful visual meditation on theBaptist's ascetic retreat as it related to his central theological role as precursor, which in turninvoked the great drama of human salvation. Francesco d'Antonio's initial is a diminutive

composition with expansive meaning, and his achievement depended on his working outside,or beyond, the conventions of both his subject matter and format. There was no Florentineprecedent for presenting a single image of the child Baptist as a complex embodiment ofdiverse narrative moments and essential theological tenets. And conventionally, the space ofthe historiated initial was a tightly bound one occupied by straightforward portraits orvignettes. So again we see Francesco pushing through boundaries in the context of his workfor Lucrezia. In this instance, however, the results are intimately tied to her own knowledgeand spiritual concerns.As noted, Lucrezia expressed her devotion to Saint John the Baptist in her writing. Amongthe several sacred narratives of biblical figures she penned, her verse life of the saint,considered her most inspired and original work,62 is the most revealing of a personalconnection between author and protagonist. Lucrezia speaks of her reverence for the Baptistdirectly in the poem, claiming to have taken on the project of writing it "out of devotion to thegracious and worthy saint," and, in an early stanza addressing her possible detractors, shefurther describes that devotion as both fervent and unremitting:I realize that this enterprise is too weightyfor one who knows nothing about making poetry,and that I will be correctedby those who do understand.But I hope they will use discretion,seeing how my mind burns-as I have saidwith constant devotion for him,and not for anything else; thus love makes me bold.63This image of a constant preoccupation with a sacred object of desire, a mind "burning" withthe sort of focused, exclusive spiritual passion one usually associates with late medievalmystical traditions, presents a rare window into the personal devotional psychology of a laywriter from this period. Indeed, Lucrezia is most likely aligning herself with just such traditionsin this stanza-as indicated by her description of the poem as a "vision"-and in so doing shemakes a subtle claim for spiritual authority that cleverly subverts her rather obligatorystatement of poetic humility.Such authority is certainly borne out by the remainder of the poem, in which Lucrezia wieldsher comprehensive knowledge of the Baptist's scriptural and apocryphal traditions in order toconstruct her own, original version of this chapter of sacred history. Significantly, the sametrecento text that shaped Francesco d'Antonio's historiated initial of the young saint is acentral source for her own poem. It would be misleading to suggest that Lucrezia (orFrancesco d'Antonio, for that matter) had an exclusive interest in, or claim to, the trecentoVita. This popular text was the main source for Florentines' knowledge of their patron saint'schildhood, and it had already been used by artists to guide or inflect their representations ofSaint John, particularly in the context of his childhood.64 It would be equally mistaken,though, to conceive of the trecento Vita as a culturally untethered narrative, on the one hand,or as a simple artist's sourcebook, on the other. This text was widely known but precisely

grounded in fifteenth-century Florence, within the rich devotional culture embodied andtransmitted by personally owned manuscripts.65The experience of reading the trecento Vita in quattrocento Florence was shaped by itsreaders' belief that its story influenced the health (salute, synonymous with salvation) of theirsouls. Chonsiglio di Michele di Cerchi made explicit notation of this conviction in his fifteenth-century manuscript copy of the text, stating that it was intended not only "to give a goodexample" but also to grant "consolation to the souls that will read it."66 Chonsiglio's codexcontained only the trecento Vita, but such self-sufficient versions were the exception ratherthan the rule. Many manuscripts brought other hagiographie material together with the storyof the Baptist,67 which more often than not formed part of a varied body of devotional textsthat made up an individual codex. Chosen according to the spiritual needs and tastes of theindividual manuscript owner, this material ran the gamut from gospels, sermons, doctrinalexposition, prayers, and hymns of praise to prophecies, pilgrimage accounts, and Dante'sverse.68 Cherucio di Pagolo Cheruci finished copying his own version of the trecento Vita in1454, having chosen a confessional text, a sacred poem on the Crucifixion, an exposition ofthe Pater Noster, and the lives of three other saints to accompany that of the Baptist.69Cherucio's notations within the manuscript give a sense of his belief in the prayerlike natureand salvific potential of hagiographie texts like the trecento Vita. "The legend of Saint Johnthe Baptist," he noted before penning his personal copy, "as those who read it will see, isvery beautiful and devout, and is to inspire great devotion."70 In his entry before the Life ofSaint Francis, Cherucio was more explicit about the effects of reading saints' stories: "herebegins the legend of Saint Francis, which is very devout and beautiful," he wrote, "throughHis love, God will have grace on him who reads it with devotion."71 Chonsiglio di Michele diCerchi, too, understood the trecento Vita as devotional material in and of itself, referring to itas the "meditations of the blessed John the Baptist."72 Similarly, Cherucio refers to thelegend of Saint Brendan as "a beautiful and devout prayer" and is quite clear on its purpose:"whichever person says this prayer for themselves or for their soul, or rather for the soul oftheir mother or father or friend, your sins will be pardoned; you will be saved from thepunishments of hell."73 As part of the varied tissue of devotional material assisting themanuscript reader's chances for salvation, hagiographie narratives like the trecento Vita werenot merely exempla for the devout to follow but spiritually potent texts whose salvific efficacybegan with their reading.74Lucrezia's poetic production, by which she made herself a vehicle for the transmission ofthese kinds of narratives, depended on an extreme level of absorption and participation in thedevotional culture in which they were written and read. The overtly intertextual nature of theact of rewriting sacred history-a practice based on alluding to, appropriating, and recastingdiverse strands of scriptural and apocryphal tradition-required its authors to be embeddedwithin its institutions of knowledge and related conventions of spiritual practice. Lucrezia'sconnection to the Baptist's hagiographie tradition can be understood, then, in terms of thevast learning (or reading) required for the production of her work, but this engagement shouldbe seen, in itself, as an active form of piety. So while an awareness of Saint John's story was

not her exclusive province, neither was Lucrezia an average reader of hagiographie texts.75As one might expect, the imagery of the frontispiece of her personal manuscript reflects this.The complexity and originality of Francesco d'Antonio's visual fashioning of Lucrezia'sfavorite saint can be seen as a response to a patron whose rich hagiographie knowledge,and the act of exercising it through the writing of poetry, was central to her spiritualpractice.76It is fitting to consider Lucrezia's patronage of the Magliabechiano manuscript, in terms of thetext it contains, in this context. She obviously had an interest in acquiring more of theBaptist's life than even the Florentine tradition had to offer (and Filelfo's poem added arelatively prestigious strand to the fabric of her knowledge), but possessing this text alsoopened up new opportunities for the devotional act of reading that was fundamental to herown spiritual practice and that of many during this period, including-and especiallywomen.The centrality of reading to Lucrezia's religious life comes into sharp focus in hercorrespondence with Florence's preeminent spiritual authority at midcentury, AntoninusPierozzi, the Dominican friar and future saint who served as the city's archibishop from 1446until his death in 1459.77 Antoninus was the confessor of Lucrezia's sister, Dianora, forwhom he wrote a spiritual manual, a laywoman's version of a monastic "rule" known as theOpera a ben vivere. Lucrezia knew this work and requested a more rigorous version of it forherself; Antoninus complied, penning a new version of the text in his own hand.78Antoninus's most pointed advice to Lucrezia regards her devotional engagement with sacredtexts-more specifically, the act of reading as a springboard for contemplative prayer. As alaywoman with family obligations, Lucrezia should not, advised Antoninus, saddle herselfwith the consuming undertaking of the recitation of the entire Divine Office, as would berequired in a monastic context. Instead, she ought to focus on "holy and devout reading" as aspiritual practice effective in maintaining an elevated state of mind-a crucial weapon in theperennial battle against worldliness, which, as Antoninus himself noted, was a particularlychallenging fight for Lucrezia as a member of the worldly Medici family.79Antoninus reinforced the linked practices of reading and mental prayer, "lezione e orazionementale," as Lucrezia's most effective means of resisting the pull of this world. The childBaptist, whose narrative turned on a dramatic act of renunciation, was a perfect role model-orcontemplative object-for these elevated pursuits. It is interesting in this regard that theLombard poem of the Magliabechiano manuscript, while it does not approach Saint John'schildhood by way of the detailed apocryphal narrative so beloved by the Florentines, focuseson the child saint, more abstractly, as a figure of abstinence and abnegation. Saint John'srejection, in this text, of specifically aristocratic pleasures-horses and hounds, falcons andhawks, brocade and embroidered finery, and luxurious food and drink-must have resonatedwithin the princely Visconti context in which it was produced, and these courtly tastes wouldhave struck a similarly powerful chord in the heart of Medicean Florence.80 The paintedBaptist of the Magliabechiano manuscript is, in fact, a perfect exemplar for the spiritual lifeAntoninus advocated in Lucrezia's Opera a ben vivere, by training his thoughts completelytoward God, and "always keeping his heart oriented to heaven,"81 the hair-shirted young

ascetic retains his elevated focus and steadfast rejection of the material world.It is in its evocation of this larger theme of the child Baptist's ascetic path, rather than in aprecise correlation with narrative moment, that Francesco d'Antonio's illuminationcorresponds to the text it illustrates. The boy's leftward stride powerfully invokes hisrepudiation of the world, and while John's entry into the wilderness is obviously not the wholestory told by the picture, his act of departure frames the scene's temporally expansivepossibilities. It is, after all, his desire to connect with God that propels John into the harshdesert as a young boy; his departure is the product of his decision to prepare, penitentially,for such an encounter by turning away from the world. Francesco d'Antonio's depiction of theChrist Child, welcoming and mirroring the Baptist from the paradisiacal space beyond theboundary of the initial, brings the heavenly and earthly realms within close range of eachother. Significantly, however, the connection remains incomplete: the two children areeternally suspended in the moment just before their encounter. This choice makes thethreshold between the earthly and heavenly worlds-or the exposed possibility of the twomerging together-the real subject of the frontispiece illumination. The viewer is left with thejob of completing the circuitry, or, more precisely, she is invited to contemplate the means bywhich an encounter not simply between Christ and the Baptist, but also between heaven andearth, or even between life and death, could be granted. The little putto and his birdcompanion peering over the right border of the initial seem to thematize this active role of theviewer, and they underscore the dramatic association between the Baptist and the largervinestem border into which he strides. Integrating the illuminated initial visually andsymbolically into an overall decorative scheme falls completely in line with Francescod'Antonio's vision of an organic and wholly integral frontispiece, while an image of Saint Johnthe Baptist that functioned as an open container for meditative prayer would have been rightin line with Lucrezia's expectations.82 The relation between the creative goals of the artistand the devotional expectations of the patron is, in this case, one of remarkablesynchronicity.The visual evidence of the Magliabechiano frontispiece reveals that working on Lucrezia'smanuscript produced an environment that fostered Francesco d'Antonio's originality andinvention, and the imagery he produced, in turn, tapped into Lucrezia's highly specificknowledge and devotional concerns. Both parties were thus served by the relationship on apractical level, but this marked mutual benefit can also be situated in the context of identity.The commission gave Francesco d'Antonio the scope to demonstrate a combination ofmastery, individuality, and innovative originality that resonated with the period's evolvingcultural definition of "artist." For Lucrezia the situation was more complex; while themanuscript helped fuel her broad self-fashioning as an exceptionally devout and superliteratewoman, it also had important implications for her identity as an art patron-a category that, asJill Burke has recently argued, was itself in the process of formation in Florence duringprecisely this moment.83Burke approaches the notion of "art patronage" carefully as a historically and culturallyspecific term that should be employed only in instances that resemble the contemporary

social system of patronage, in which relationships between patrons and clients werepredicated on the assumed virtue of both parties and sustained by their mutual gain. Thesekinds of relationships, and not those based on business transactions alone, were, accordingto Burke, fundamental to the idealized definition of the "art patron" that emerged, inevitably,alongside that of the "artist." Within the framework of the category "art patron" as fifteenth-century Florentines were coming to know it, according to Burke, mutually beneficialrelationships between artists and patrons were both central and theorized within a frameworkof friendship, or amicizia, that tended to obliterate the inevitable imbalance of social status.84In the case of the relationship between Francesco d'Antonio and Lucrezia, this leveling effectwould have operated on the plane of gender as well. In Burke's account, it was the ennoblingpossibility of a "meeting of minds" cutting across social hierarchies that could transform acommercial transaction into something that Renaissance people would have understood asart patronage. Burke cites a powerful example in her discussion of the double portrait ofFilippino Lippi and his friend and patron Piero del Pugliese, but she notes that such instancesof "true" patronage relationships were probably the exception rather than the rule. If this isthe case, the reciprocal relationship that produced the Magliabechiano manuscript was bothrare and potent in its ability to accommodate Lucrezia's self-identification as a patron of art.But how does one transcend the impossibility of reconstructing the nuances, or even thebasic mechanics, of this reciprocally beneficial relationship? Even the 1476 letter fromBenedetto da Cepparello does not convey the slightest hint of what Lucrezia might haverequested, in the first place, from the scribe or the illuminator of the missal shecommissioned, or which of her concerns might have shaped the manuscript as it progressedtoward completion. And in the case of the Magliabechiano codex, we have no way ofknowing how Lucrezia's specific directives, desires, or proclivities were communicated toFrancesco d'Antonio, or whether she was the one who ultimately paid him for his work. Theirretrievability of such details is not simply regrettable; in this instance, it becomes aproductive absence that forces a conceptualization of female patronage that does notprivilege our knowledge of the precise circumstances that brought works of art into being.The Magliabechiano manuscript is a concrete deposit of a relationship between an artist anda Florentine woman-a connection that produced experimental, exploratory, and, ultimately,quite innovative results. Might we not allow, then, the visual traces left by artists respondingto women's expectations to constitute a framework for studying their productive, and evencreative, contributions to the visual arts, especially given that such a model is conspicuouslymissing from this period's historiography?85The particular tenor of the imagery that resulted from Francesco d'Antonio's visual answer toLucrezia's expectations is an important point on which to dwell when considering such amodel. The artist pulled out all the creative stops to fashion for Lucrezia an image thatresonated in the highly specific area of contemplative piety, which was a realm over whichone can readily imagine her presiding in the context of her own family. Yet it does notnecessarily follow that the manuscript was exclusively "for" her. If other members of theMedici household read its text and reflected on Francesco d'Antonio's imagery, then they

might have shared in the spiritual currency they offered and hoped to reap its rewards. EvenLucrezia's personal acts of devotion that her manuscript may have inspired need to be seenin a collective spirit, for the redemption she sought was not simply her own but that of herwhole family. There is ample evidence that Lucrezia lived a religious life much in the serviceof others, a fact that she articulates in her own poetry; her purpose in writing a poem on theBaptist was, in her words, "so that my and others' devotion may grow!" seen in this light,Lucrezia emerges as a woman cut from the same cloth as her male relatives, whosepatronage often had a corporate dimension, whether in the mechanics of the commissionitself or in the message of the finished product.86 Lowe and Tomas have both discussed thejoint patronage of Lucrezia and Piero,87 and, given the family's proclivity for jointcommissions, one might even speculate that Lucrezia's husband, Piero, played a role insecuring the text or hiring the artist, but this possibility of shared agency hardly diminishesher individual contribution to the finished product; it simply suggests that she operated muchlike the other members of her familywho, it could be added, have long been consideredamong the greatest patrons of Western art.While Lucrezia's patronage of the Lombard Vita made perfect sense given her extremedevotion to the Baptist, its highly visible dedication to the deceased father-in-law of thecurrent Milanese duke and Medici ally, Francesco I Sforza, meant that the codex resonatedbeyond the individual, or even spiritual level. An allusion to Medici political allegiances in thismanuscript is not as out of place as it might seem, given Lucrezia's role in furthering thereputation and ambitions of her family. Recent scholarship on Lucrezia has brought much tolight concerning the effect of two other forms of family-based patronage-intercession andreligious charity-on her family's power.88Lucrezia's bustling activity as an arbiter of influence between Medici men and diverse"clients" is evidenced by numerous letters soliciting favors of all sorts. Patrizia Salvadori, themodern editor of Lucrezia's correspondence, refers to Lucrezia's intercessory role as her"personal contribution" to an aggressive, expansionist Medici family politics. Similarly, Tomasinterprets Lucrezia's "clientage" as an asset to Medici power within the city's informal politicalnetworks, or sottogoverno-an unofficial realm that was a particularly conducive space for theoperation of the indirect power that was available to Medici women.89 Lucrezia's charity alsobuilt her family's reputation and power base, as Salvador! asserts:as the fame of the benefactress spread by way of the words of a nun or farm manager, sowidened the circle of requests, and again the name Medici appeared in new streets, differentpiazzas, thus expanding, if not a chain of allegiance to the family-which certainly could nothave constructed itself on such fragile bases-then at least a recognition of a continuallyaffirmed power.90Kent pushes such analyses further, arguing for Lucrezia's importance as a "symbol of piety,charity, and reconciliation who played a significant part in her son's maintenance andstrengthening of his and their family's pre-eminence in Florence."91Despite her remarkable activity in the public sphere, Lucrezia's gender frustrated any officialrole, or direct participation, in it. Tomas's study, in fact, underscores these limitations as they

affected all Medici women, whose worldly influence was always mediated by theirrelationships with the family men, and whose activities were generally circumscribed byculturally constructed gender roles. Moving back to the Magliabechiano manuscript, onemight note that the Milanese allegiance forged on its frontispiece cannot speak to any directauthority on Lucrezia's part. The image rendered within the initial, however, can do just that.The codex was, after all, primarily a devotional work that only tangentially inhabited the publicrealm of political power, and it is in this more private, domestic, and religious sphere thatLucreziaor, for that matter, any woman-might have been expected to wield a less mediatedsort of authority. Antoninus said nothing less when writing to Lucrezia about her spiritual lifein the context of the precarious mortal environment created by her family:In your house you are not comforted by the others with prayers and other good words, as weare, that would allow you to maintain a devout mind, but rather, in your situation, it is thecomplete opposite since, if by your hard labor you do acquire some devotion, you'llnecessarily lose it, either completely or in part, because of the many things heard in yourhouse from the entire family-hateful, dishonest, criminal, and worldly words-and because ofthe fact that generally each person speaks according to their own particular loyalties. Thus,my daughter, if you do not toil all on your own-stealing away time for devout reading andmental prayer-to defend yourself and keep your mind devout and quiet, I believe that you willbe helped neither by your husband nor by the others in your house the way we religious are;rather, I fully believe the opposite, that the great devotion that you obtain with reading andprayer, or the comfort you have when you visit the holy monasteries, you will losecompletely.92The archbishop saw Lucrezia as the member of the Medici family most able to practice thecontemplative brand of spirituality he understood as crucial to divine redemption. Her specialstatus in this regard could even be inferred as a factor of her gender; as a woman she did notinhabit the worldly realm of power, politics, and deceit, although it necessarily (and,according to the archbishop, unfortunately) impinged on her inner world of "great devotion." IfLucrezia took Antoninus's advice and made "devout reading and mental prayer" her personaldefense, then the Magliabechiano manuscript can also be seen as a weapon she helped toforge for that battle. Can we not assume that other womenLucrezia's lesser-known and well-documented contemporaries-would have done the same? Could it not be the case that muchdomestic religious imagery from this period was conceived and executed according to thedevotional desires and expectations of pious women? Such a hypothesis might frustrate thedefinition of artistic patronage to the point of rupture, but perhaps this is precisely what isnecessary for art historians to open a new chapter in the history of the relation betweenwomen and visual culture on the level of creation, production, and-significantly-innovation.Beyond the ManuscriptAssigning the Magliabechiano Vita to a particular moment in Francesco d'Antonio's career-following his mastery of the bianchi girari frieze and preceding his development of the newborder type represented by the Medici Plutarch-also provides it with a solid terminus antequern. As Ames-Lewis has pointed out, the first datable example of Francesco d'Antonio's

new, "post-vine stem" style is a lavish Breviary, also executed for the Medici family, whichwas near completion in 1461.93 Thus, the illumination of the Magliabechiano Vita,transitional yet still an example of the artist's earlier style, must date from before that year.Visual evidence linking this codex to Alfonso's Livy, mentioned above, indicates a date closerto 1455.Attributing this frontispiece to Francesco's hand and dating it with this degree of precision areboth factors that permit a reconsideration of Lucrezia Tornabuoni's role as a patron. On themost basic level, the Magliabechiano Vita is important as a concrete and prestigiouscommission, of an autograph work, from one of the most skilled, innovative, and sought-afterilluminators working in Florence. Equally important, the Magliabechiano codex affords aglimpse of Lucrezia operating in a collaborative and influential situation of artistic patronage.It is also revealing that Lucrezia requested the codex not as a widow (a legal state thatconferred greater independence) but as a young married woman approaching thirty years ofage and on the cusp of becoming the lady of the grandest private residence in the city-thenew Medici Palace, which was reaching completion precisely during the mid-1450s.94 Thesingle work of art that scholars have most suggestively connected with Lucrezia wasconceived precisely during these years.Filippo Lippi's Adoration of the Child (Fig. 4), the altarpiece for the chapel of the new MediciPalace, belongs to a group of highly innovative works that situate the Virgin adoring theChrist Child in a penitential wilderness setting that offered their viewers a virtual pilgrimage ofsorts by transporting them from mundane reality to a devotional space of ascetically chargedcontemplation. The novelty of the Medici painting was its inclusion of the Baptist; in fact, thiswas the very first Florentine painting to include the child Saint John in an image of the Virginand Child, making it the original inspiration for countless images and the source of one of themost influential iconographic invendons of religious art in the Italian Renaissance. Lippi'spanel has been associated with Lucrezia for over a century precisely because it seems toreflect her veneration for the saint,95 although, as has been mentioned, the lack of firmdocumentary evidence connecting her to the commission has allowed recent scholarship toignore or reject the possibility of her role in its creation.96 The Magliabechiano manuscriptputs the hypothesis that Lucrezia influenced Lippi's painting firmly back on the table, and notmerely because it documents her activity as a patron of imagery of Saint John the Baptistduring the 1450s. Before this moment in Florence, the representation of the saint as a childwas limited to narrative cycles that visually recounted his life in public spaces such as theBaptistery of S. Giovanni or the church of S. Croce; the choice to depict the young saintoutside this standard narrative framework and in a private context such as the Medici Chapelwas highly unusual.97 It is hardly conceivable that the extraordinary iconography of thefamily altarpiece would also appear as the pictorial subject of Lucrezia's manuscript by merecoincidence-especially given that each of the other artworks known to have originallydisplayed the impaled Medici-Tornabuoni coat of arms also depict the young saint.98Another illuminated codex, this one a manuscript of Lucrezia's poetry, features her armscombined with those of her husband and depicts the child Baptist, together with Christ, on

the illuminated frontispiece (Figs. 13, 14).99 An even more telling example, in light ofLucrezia's connection with the Medici Palace Adoration, is Filippo Lippi's so-called CamaldoliAdoration. In 1463 Piero and Lucrezia commissioned the construction of a hermit's cell withrequisite altar and altarpiece, dedicated to the Baptist, at Camaldoli, the sacred hermitage ofthe Camaldolese Order located in eastern Tuscany. Giorgio Vasari recalled the originallocation and (female) Medici patronage of the panel, which was commissioned, he thought,by the wife of Cosimo de' Medici "to put at the hermitage of Camaldoli, in a hermit's cell forhis personal devotions, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist."100 Vasari's designation ofCosimo's wife as the painting's patron, was, however, off by a generation.101 It wasCosimo's son Piero who officially made the gift to Camaldoli, and the altarpiece was originallyadorned with Medici and Tornabuoni coats of arms, surely to signal Lucrezia's involvement inthe commission.102 Vasari's notoriously weak command of the fifteenth-century Medicifamily tree is apparent here; it was actually Piero's wife, rather than Cosimo's, who wastraditionally associated with the painting.103 The importance of Vasari's account lies not inits error but in its implicit assumption that Lippi's patron was a Medici wife-a tradition thatVasari, who himself worked at Camaldoli while the altarpiece was still in situ, would havebeen in a particularly good position to absorb.Vasari referred to Lippi's Camaldoli altarpiece as "a panel with the same Nativity of Christand Saint John the Baptist" that the artist had depicted in the Medici Palace Adoration.Indeed, so close are the two altarpieces in form and content that the Camaldoli Adorationmust be understood as a rendition of the earlier painting. Both panels depict a rocky, woodedwilderness and a similar cast of characters: the Virgin, kneeling in adoration of the ChristChild, the child Baptist, a contemplative monastic saint, and the Holy Spirit descending fromabove as a dove (in the later painting released by a pair of disembodied hands intended as amystical stand-in for God the Father).The final image known to have originally displayed both Medici and Tornabuoni coats of armsis the Castello Nativity, named for its provenance in the Villa Medici at Castello andattributable to artists from Lippi's shop.104 The painting retains its original Gothicizing framewith two coats of arms adorning its base. Although these stemmi have, over the centuries,been rendered illegible, an inventory of the villa taken in 1638 identifies the original patrons,recording "a panel painting two and one-half braccia tall by one and two-thirds braccia [wide],with adornments and a carved, gilded pediment, on which is painted a Nativity with Our Lordwith the Madonna who adores Him, a choir of angels in the sky, [and] the arms of the Mediciand the Tornabuoni at the bottom."105 It is difficult to dismiss as coincidence that thispainting, too, derives from the Medici Palace Adoration (in the disposition of both Virgin andChild, the bust of God the Father crowning the panel and releasing the Holy Spirit toward theChild below, and the position of the child Baptist just to the Virgin's right). Unlike itspredecessor, however, the Castello painting is a proper Nativity, complete with stable, ox,and ass-details perhaps borrowed from Filippo Lippi's earlier altarpiece for S. Vincenzod'Annalena, the convent founded by the city's most important living female spiritual rolemodel, Annalena Malatesta (1426-1490).106 Lippi had never included the child Baptist in a

Nativity scene, though, and such an original addition on the part of the Castello artist,considering the derivative quality of the panel as a whole, must reflect a specific request ofthe patron.Thus, each image bearing (or known to have borne) the combined arms of the Medici andTornabuoni families features the child Baptist. This strong common denominator suggestsLucrezia's influence on both panel paintings-the Camaldoli Adoration and the CastelloNativity-and also shores up the theory that Lucrezia played a role in determining theiconography of the Medici Palace Adoration. The dating of Magliabechiano VII, 49 to amoment in Francesco d'Antonio's career proximate to Filippo Lippi's execution of the Medicialtarpiece becomes, in this regard, a crucial piece of evidence. The date of Lippi's panel isnot documented but can be placed between the completion of the Medici Palace in about1457 and the beginning of Benozzo Gozzoli's fresco decoration of the chapel in the summerof 1459.107 Thus, the child Baptist illuminating the frontispiece initial of Francescod'Antonio's manuscript, a codex commissioned by Lucrezia Tornabuoni, may well predateLippi's altarpiece.Regardless of whether Lucrezia's manuscript preceded or succeeded Filippo Lippi's MediciPalace Adoration, its attribution satisfies the burden of proof now necessary to connectLucrezia with the painting. Married women in fifteenth-century Florence rarely acted-legallyand on paper-on their own behalf. Given the close association between the city's patriarchalstructure and the limitations of its archival legacy, it is only logical (if regrettable) thatLucrezia would not be firmly tied by traditional documentary evidence to any of the Medicifamily's major commissions. Original documents regarding the patronage of the family'spalace altarpiece do not exist, and if they did, it is highly improbable that they would recordLucrezia's actions over, or even in addition to, those of her husband or father-in-law. It isimportant to note that this patriarchal logic, which translated fluidly into the historicalconstruction of the heroic Renaissance individual, has diminished the contributions of men aswell as women. Fifteenthcentury commentators referred to the chapel of the Medici Palaceas "Cosimo's Chapel," despite its multiple connections with his son Piero.108 This model ofprivileging the family patriarch, already in place during the quattrocento, continues in modernart historical scholarship that links the chapel exclusively with Cosimo, arguably the family'smost significant political figure.109 For it is clear that Piero had great influence on, andintimate contact with, the chapel. To begin with, he was charged with overseeing BenozzoGozzoli's fresco decoration, and, once the imagery was complete, Piero was in the bestplace to enjoy it: his personal quarters in the palace communicated directly with thechapel.110 Paoletti's research on the corporate nature of Medici patronage is instrumental toremember here, as is Melissa Bullard's compelling argument that historians should resist thetop-down model of the Renaissance "megapatron," or the "big man" approach, which, sheargues, "does not significantly enlarge our understanding of the complexities of Quattrocentosociety."111 Making good on Bullard's advice to view Medici patronage "from the bottom orthe side" might allow Lucrezia (whose spiritual influence within the space of the family chapelmay well have been the most distinct and powerful) to take her rightful place in our historical

account, along the way enriching our understanding of the family's goals in commissioningart.The visual testimony of Magliabechiano VII, 49 makes it the long-awaited document ofLucrezia Tornabuoni's individual role as an art patron. The manuscript also renders concretesome of the "tantalizing clues," to use Kent's words, of Lucrezia's influence on Medicicommissions, particularly those surrounding the family's domestic altarpiece, a painting witha far-reaching legacy. Lippi's image was reproduced with a frequency unusual for the period,and if positioned at the cusp of the new wave of devotional imagery figuring the child Baptist,its influence emerges as nothing short of tremendous.112 The case of