The twenty-one essays in this volume began life as papers for a symposium held at the University of Lausanne in 2013, the last formal event associated with a Swiss research project devoted to the visual, spatial, and literary cultures of Lombardy between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The collection blends specialized and broader, comparative studies by well-known scholars, thirteen of whom write in Italian, six in English, and two in French. In the first and most generalizing of the essays, Malcolm Vale asks whether late medieval European courts shared a common set of assumptions and beliefs. He concludes that aristocratic codes of behavior, the continuing popularity of Arthurian legends, and the cosmopolitanism created by dynastic marriages created courts that were at once a melting pot of divergent influences and sites of a surprising degree of cultural cohesiveness. Vale’s notion that the courts of Europe were bound together by a mortar of complementary differences is in some ways applicable to the volume itself. There is a variety of approaches and degrees of direct engagement with the larger themes, but the book’s exploration of identity, both individual and collective, and of the use of cultural patronage as a tool to promote political legitimacy and social consensus will provide sufficient thematic glue for most readers.

As the title suggests, there are several contributions that explore contexts beyond Lombardy and, in one case, outside the chronological focus of the other essays. Bridgitte Bedos-Rezak, for example, traces the emergence in France during the central Middle Ages of engraved seals, which permitted the authority of individuals and communities to be proclaimed, even in the absence of empirical presence. Julian Gardner analyzes the art patronage of cardinals in Avignon during the first half of the fourteenth century, and Nicolas Bock the funerary monuments of the Neapolitan nobility in the fifteenth century. These essays fit well with Piero Majocchi’s examination of the funeral rites of the Visconti lords and Marco Folin’s comparative study of burial practices among Italy’s ruling dynasties. Both Majocchi and Folin note the increasing tendency for princely rulers to create isolated and splendid burial monuments in the tradition of Northern monarchs, striving, by doing so, to create an impression of the uninterrupted dominance and unrivaled social distinction of their families.

Jean-Claude Maire Vigeur analyzes the efforts by Italy’s lords to demonstrate the superiority of their rule over republican government through grand schemes of urban renewal, while Andrea Gamberini focuses on Gian Galeazzo Sforza’s attempt to present his regime as antityrannical and himself as the virtuous agent who represented the end of civic discord and revolt. Paolo Viti’s theme is the fierce ideological struggle between Milan and Florence promulgated by the humanist invectives of Antonio Loschi and Coluccio Salutati. As Jorg Busch points out in his well-crafted essay, some regional identities were surprisingly resilient, even surviving the transition from communal to lordly rule. Using Milanese chronicles, he traces the longevity of the refusal by the inhabitants of Lombardy to acknowledge the Germanic tribes known as the Longobards as their ancestors, perceiving them as oppressors and invaders. They preferred to trace their origins to Subres, a descendant of Noah. This founding myth was cannily exploited by rulers of various ideological persuasions over many centuries.

Excellent specialist studies, such as Andrea Comboni’s essay on the humanist Paride Ceresara, Maria Caraci Vela’s analysis of polyphonic music under the Visconti, and Marco Limongelli’s essay on the poets Marchionne Arrighi and Braccio Bracci, all constitute valuable new additions to knowledge, as do Richard Scofield’s and Roberta Martinis’s contributions on Bramante. Stephen Campbell’s essay focuses on painting in Milan after the departure of Leonardo da Vinci, while Santina Novelli and Denise Zaru analyze neglected late medieval fresco cycles in Ferrara and Milan. This large and rich smorgasbord of essays has much to interest scholars of the late medieval and early modern centuries, and particularly those who work on the seignorial regimes of Northern Italy.