Product Review

Sarah Stever presents the major works of art in Siena, Florence, and Venice from 1300-1600. Through a comparative approach focusing on style and identity, she shows how painting, sculpture, and architecture express the different ideals of the cities: Siena’s aristocratic elegance, Florence’s lucid classicism, and Venice’s cosmopolitan opulence.

Using primary source writings, Stever creates a lively narrative that describes the character and personality of citizens and artists, their distinctive virtues and vices, as well as their rivalries. Their strong urban sense of identity defines styles and ideas of decorum, gender, and beauty—a sense of identity that remains in their descendants.

The look of the cities today comes largely from the period 1300-1600, and so the book is a useful and informative introduction. Stories and images bring to life the style, identity, and urbanity of the men and women of Siena, Florence, and Venice in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.