The study of the visual arts through the examination of primary and secondary sources is the focus of Tomaso Montinari’s anthology of excerpted documents relating to art of the Baroque period in Western Europe. This ambitious volume, part of a series titled Le fonti per la storia dell’arte, includes 627 selections that date from 1600 to 1750. The anthology is divided into four parts that are further subdivided by individual themes. A concise introduction serves as a guide to the excerpted sources: it does not aim to break new ground with research, nor does it fully analyze and contextualize the sources. Instead it places the sources in thematic, chronological, and geographic context. The documents, ranging from poetry and literature to contracts, artist biographies, treatises, trial records, and inventories, comprise the majority of the volume. Although the title does not specify a geographic location of the art and writings included in the book, the author cautions that the volume’s focus is primarily on Italian art and Italian writings.

Part 1, “L’arte,” opens with an exploration into the purpose of seventeenth-century art based on the poetry and literature of seventeenth-century writers. The variety of selections in this longest section of the anthology includes prescriptive writings concerning the proper usage of techniques such as perspective, line, color, shadow, gesture, and costume. Debates around the hierarchy of imagery and media include passages by Peter Paul Rubens on “cowardly” portraiture (217). Later passages consider the relative merit of the visual arts produced in different time periods. Alessandro Tassoni declares his seventeenth-century contemporaries to be superior to the visual artists of antiquity, and Annibale Carracci expresses his displeasure with mannerist art.

The documents included in part 2, “L’artista,” explore the Baroque artist’s training, development, and interactions with contemporary society. Questions of the artistic academy are explored through Ludovico Carracci’s letter to Galeazzo Paleotti in which he celebrates his cousins’ Bolognese academy; and a rare eyewitness account by Paul Fréart de Chantelou reports on Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s official visit with members of the French academy. Montanari includes an interesting contrast between the sublime and noble identity of the artist in Tommaso Campanella’s philosophical treatise Città del Sole and Salvatore Rosa’s less idyllic rendering of the reality of an artist’s life. Part 3, “Il potere,” explores the relationship between art and patron. Letters from the Florentine sculptor Michelangelo Naccherino, written to Cosimo II in 1616, reveal the artist’s impoverished state in Naples and his efforts to obtain employment from the grand duke with descriptions of potential commissions. A letter written to Gian Lorenzo Bernini from Charles I of England demonstrates the fame and prestige very few Baroque artists were able to achieve. Selections relating to physical manifestations of power, such as cities, churches, palazzi, gardens, and fountains conclude this section.

The excerpts in part 4, “Il Pubblico,” survey the reactions of an increasingly international audience to the visual arts in the Baroque period. Authors like André Félibien and Giovan Pietro Bellori instruct the viewer how to effectively look at a painting, and Giulio Mancini examines the question of who has the right to judge a painting. Passages from travelers’ memoirs, diaries, and guidebooks disclose how the writers embraced and critiqued sites, objects, and experiences new to them. Collection practices; the art market, particularly in Italy; restoration campaigns; print culture; the origins of Baroque ekphrasis, seen especially in Giovan Battista Agucchi’s lengthy description of Annibale Carracci’s “Sleeping Venus”; and selections concerning the historiography of artistic practices complete the volume.

Through the comprehensive inclusions to the anthology the reader is reminded of the complexity and breadth of Baroque culture in Western Europe. This anthology serves as an invaluable and convenient sourcebook for research of the Baroque period, particularly of Italian visual arts. A useful index facilitates locating individual sources inside the volume, and clearly stated publication information allows the reader to easily return to the original sources of the excerpts.