The text presented here, Francesco Bocchi's Le Bellezze della
città di Fiorenza (The Beauties of the City of Florence),
originally published in 1591, is one of the most remarkable of
Renaissance writings on art and thus an especially valuable
document of the culture within which and for which Renaissance art
was made. It is not exactly the first guidebook, nor is it entirely
an art guidebook in the modern sense of the word, but it marks an
important step in the history of guidebook literature, perhaps the
definitive step in the formation of the modern genre. It seeks to
direct people's attention to outstanding objects, but also to offer
instruction in how to look, what to think, and what to say.
Scholars find it useful for purely archaeological reasons, as a
record of numerous minor works of art and their locations, for
instance, but its deepest source of interest is the lively
discursive engagement with art to which it attests, and the
passionate and eloquent way in which it makes the case that such
engagement is a matter of the greatest urgency and importance. For
this reason, the book has much to offer the non-specialist - anyone
who visits Florence and gives any thought at all to what it means
to look at art - and the desire to reach this kind of reader has
been the real motivation behind the preparation of this
translation.
Enough of the city remains as Bocchi saw it to permit the book
still to be used as a guide, held in the hand as one walks from
place to place and read before the objects described. The notes and
illustrations provided here are designed to facilitate that
process. What Bocchi emphasises and what he ignores will sometimes
surprise the modern reader, and what he says about individual works
may occasionally prompt bewilderment or disagreement. His values
and habits of thought are close enough to ours to seem familiar yet
are not exactly our own; his way of looking, of thinking, and of
speaking are foreign enough to remind us of the distance that
separates us from the Renaissance, of the singularity of historical
moments and individual points of view. In reading Bocchi, one
begins to understand something of how his contemporaries thought
about what they saw; one learns to see the works differently and,
as a result, to develop a sharper sense of the presuppositions we
bring to our encounters with art, to see our own way of looking and
thinking more objectively. This translation is thus an invitation
to enter into a dialogue with history; its deeper purpose is to
stimulate modern visitors to Florence to objectify their own
processes of looking, thinking, and speaking, and in so doing to
develop a new degree of self-consciousness, a new, historical
perspective on themselves.
Thomas Frangenberg’s main research interests concern
European Art and Architecture (1500-1770), Italian Art Theory
1400-1800, the history of linear perspective and its relation to
the theory of optics. He teaches at the University of
Leicester.
Robert Williamsis a
specialist in Italian sixteenth-century aesthetic theory. He is
Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.