The EconomistMarch 28th 2020 Books & arts 812 mind as a physical depiction when you see
them in real life, had little impact when
viewed remotely.
Besides depth and texture, there are as-
pects of gallery-hopping that a website is
unlikely to replicate. One is serendipity—
the sense of wandering between artworks
and encountering the unexpected. Anoth-
er is sociability. Art is a communion be-
tween artist and viewer, but galleries and
fairs are also places to swap opinions and
share enthusiasms.
There are ways to compensate for these
inevitable deficiencies. As they shut their
physical doors, some of the world’s finest
galleries and museums are offering whizzy
interactive visits, 360-degree videos and
walk-around tours of their collections, all
without queues and high ticket prices. One
of the best is laid on by the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam; its tour allows visitors to view
its Vermeers and Rembrandts, including
the magnificent “Night Watch”, far more
closely than would normally be possible.
Another standout offering is from the Mu-
seu de Arte de São Paulo, which has an even
broader collection. On its virtual platform,
its paintings, spanning 700 years, appear
to be hanging in an open-plan space, seem-
ingly suspended on glass panels, or “crystal
easels” as the museum calls them, ideal for
close-up inspection.
But such wizardry may be beyond most
galleries and artists. For Art Basel, Tracey
Emin, a British artist at White Cube, exhib-
ited a heartfelt demand spelled out in icy-
blue neon: “Move me” (pictured on previ-
ous page). At a distance, that is hard. 7F
or mostpeople, the phrase “High Re-
naissance” conjures up thoughts of Ra-
phael putting the final touches to the blush
of a pensive Madonna; of Michelangelo
chipping gingerly at the flawed marble
from which he would create his peerless
David; of Leonardo da Vinci sketching his
latest visionary design for a flying mach-
ine. Few reflect, or perhaps even know, that
this golden age of creativity was also one of
near-continuous warfare in Italy.
The period between 1494, when Charles
VIII of France marched across the Alps to
press his claim to the Kingdom of Naples,
and the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559
saw hundreds of thousands of people die in
Italy: massacred in battle, starved to death
and killed by diseases during sieges, or
butchered—often after rape or torture—
when the besieged surrendered. Among
cities sacked in the so-called Italian Wars
were Naples, Brescia, Prato, Pavia and, in
perhaps the most frenzied orgy of carnage
and looting, Rome in 1527.
Nor was warfare the only source of tur-
bulence. It was in this period that Euro-
peans, including many Italians, began to
explore the Americas, and in which they
came into mounting conflict with the
growing power of the Ottomans in and
around the Mediterranean. It was also dur-
ing these years that the papacy in Rome
saw Western Christianity rent in two by the
Protestant Reformation.
In her new book, Catherine Fletcher’s
aim is to give readers a more nuanced and
wide-ranging picture of a singularly tu-
multuous period in Italian history. The
breadth of her reading is remarkable andshe uses it to bring alive a huge range of
subjects—from ordnance to pornography,
and from the remuneration of cardinals to
attitudes in Italy towards Jews and Mus-
lims. She is perhaps at her best when teas-
ing out the contributions by women,
whether to painting, poetry or politics—or,indeed, warfare. During the siege of Siena,
from 1553 to 1555, repairs and improve-
ments to the walls were entrusted to the
city’s women, divided into three groups,
each led by a woman.
Had this book been written 50 years ago,
it would probably have been drily entitled
“Italy 1492-1571”; 20 years ago, it might have
been called something grandiose like “The
World of the High Renaissance”. To tempt
contemporary readers, often exposed to
history via sensationalising television doc-
umentaries, the actual title is “The Beauty
and the Terror”. That risks disappointing
many who buy Ms Fletcher’s admirable
work, for there is not that much of either in
it. She devotes just one chapter to those ar-
tistic geniuses and does not dwell on the
gore. For example, she barely mentions the
atrocities committed during the Sack of
Rome; in line with modern academic opin-
ion, she resists the temptation to demonise
the notorious Borgia dynasty in general,
and Lucrezia (probably its most infamous
scion) in particular.
More frustratingly, she fails to explore
the juxtaposition of the concepts in her ti-
tle. She recounts the well-known stories of
the involvement of da Vinci and Michelan-
gelo in military technology and architec-
ture, yet stops short of looking at what in-
fluence that had on their art. Michelangelo
must have seen appalling suffering near
the end of the siege of Florence. Did it affect
him? And how can da Vinci’s apparent pac-
ifism be squared with his enthusiasm for
designing war machines and fortifica-
tions? The reader comes to the end of Ms
Fletcher’s book more fully aware that the
beauty and terror co-existed, but still none
the wiser as to how they interacted. 7Italian historyCivilisation and barbarism
The Beauty and the Terror.By Catherine
Fletcher. Oxford University Press; 384 pages;
$29.95. Bodley Head; £20A glorious age of art and discovery was also a time of bloodshed and horrorViolence and beauty in Michelangelo’s Leda