Art Theorists of the Italian Renaissance: A Collection of Art and Architectural Treatises inItalian, Latin, and English. by Deborah Howard; Amanda LillieReview by: Julia DeLanceyThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 97-98Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2544400 .

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Book Reviews 97

Art Theorists of the Italian Renaissance: A Collection ofArt and Architectural Treatises in Italian, Latin, and English. Edited by Deborah Howard and Amanda Lillie. London: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd. CD-ROM. Q3,950 for the full database.

This CD-ROM provides invaluable possibilities for anyone interested in using art or architectural theories in their research.With payment of the substantial purchase price come two discs of installation software, an extensive user manual, a quick reference guide, and the CD-ROM itself. Both written and on-screen instructions on the installation of the CD- ROM and software make the setup clear and relatively rapid. The version reviewed was in Windows; it is unclear whether a version for Macintosh also exists or will exist.

Once installed, the CD-ROM provides treatises on a wide variety of art and architectural subjects produced in Italy between 1470 and 1775.Texts by authors such as Alberti, Baldi- nucci, Bellori, Borghini, Castiglione, Dolce, Leonardo, Lomazzo, Palladio,Varchi, and Vasari appear, and in the case of many of these authors, more than one title has been included. Release 2 will include further texts by these authors as well as works by Boccaccio, Cellini, Condivi, Ghiberti, Manetti, Serlio,Vignola,Vitruvius, and others. All are published in their original language; ten of these texts also appear in English translation. For English transla- tions, the editors have preferred versions from the period when available. For example, in the case ofVasari, his On Technique, as well as both the 1550 and 1568 versions of the Vite degli Artisti ... appear, together with English translations from the sixteenth century. The CD- ROM includes both the Latin and Italian versions of Alberti's On Painting; in addition to these better-known works, the editors also present a selection of rarer works such as Mar- cantonio Michiel's Notizia d'opere di disegno nella prima meta' del secolo XVI. When viewed on screen, the entire text appears in a modern screen font (apparently Palatino) in its entirety along with any accompanying images from the original version-a total of 4,000 images illustrate the package. Although the text is not reproduced in facsimile format, each folio number of the original text is clearly marked as are section headings.

While all of these texts would be easily available from a library or one's own bookshelf, the searching capabilities provided by the CD-ROM make using the text in this form much easier and more readily productive. The CD-ROM allows a variety of types of interaction with the texts.The simplest type of reading might begin with the table of contents for a par- ticular text, and continue with the reading of a particular chapter.The table of contents may also be expanded and collapsed to reveal various levels of information from simply each author's name, to the subheadings of each chapter of a selected text. Each level has an icon which may be selected to move to that particular heading within the text itself.This type of reading, while possible with the CD-ROM, presents few advantages and many disadvantages over a conventional book, both of which will be explored below.

In addition to being readable as straight text, all of the treatises are searchable in database style according to keyword as well as by title, author, genre, language, and date -that is, a keyword may be used to expand or limit the search using those categories listed above. For example, one could search for all appearances of the word color or colore in all the texts, or look for instances of those words only in texts by Vasari which discuss painting in Italian before 1555.A search asking for all appearances of the word colore relating to painting in texts dating between 1472 and 1600 produced 439 hits or matches. Boolean operators apply for all searches. The program setup also allows browsing through listings of major categories such as genre or keyword to see how many hits might be possible. Once a hit is made, or a connection between the search term and a passage of text, it is then possible to view each

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98 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXIX / 1 (1998)

text in three ways: brief summary format which shows author, treatise title, and number of matches; full summary which shows the previous information as well as in what section of the treatise the hit appears; and finally context which shows the actual sentence in which the hit appears.These make the decision of whether or not to view a particular hit much easier. The layout of the program encourages easy movement between texts; however, the interac- tion between texts frequently becomes too easy, and it is very easy to lose the point of origin amid patchwork quilts of many different open windows.

Once relevant text has been found it may be read on-screen, copied to another location on the computer, or printed out; all of these operations may be performed very easily.The user's manual includes an extract from the license agreement which limits use of printed extracts for "private study and research, inclusion in internally circulated essays and papers, or inclusion in materials for class/course work." The use of the data for publication is for- bidden.

Information beyond the text is also available. Notes from the original versions always appear and occasional contemporary editorial comments have been included where relevant. Additionally, illustrations may be accessed directly from the text; a small icon appears which may then be used to select the image for further interaction. It is possible to pan view around a figure, to zoom in or out from a particular illustration, or to resize it to fit the window. When seen at a relatively small scale the images provide important accompanying material with the text; however, the zoom and resize features do not improve the image quality. When seen at large scale, the fact that the image has been gridded into pixels to be process- able by the computer becomes overly apparent and not helpful to understanding the nuances of the picture. The images therefore provide reference help but are not of great use for research purposes.

Having all of these treatises in so many versions in such close proximity makes the task of research much easier.The search facilities make finding relevant passages in texts much easier and much more direct than finding the same information through an indexing system in a printed book. However, for many interacting with lovely engravings on a computer screen rather than in the book itself may eliminate some of the joy.The cost of the CD-ROM (not exorbitant when compared with how much it would cost to buy each of these editions in 1997) indicates that the editors have in mind not the private scholar but libraries as a target audience. For a library the purchase of such a CD-ROM may well make available versions of texts which are out-of-print, as well as decrease maintenance costs for rare or easily dam- aged older editions. It is important to remember that CD-ROMs such as this provide a tool and only that; relevant passages in the text may be found with ease, and lists of hits for par- ticular words virtually create themselves. However the onus still falls on the shoulders of the user not to rely on the statistics to do all the work, but to make something lively, relevant, and important out of the information which this very useful and time-saving tool generates. Julia DeLancey ................... Truman State University

Acts of the Dean and Chapter ofWestminster, 1543-1609.Vol. 1:The First Col- legiate Church 1543-1556. Edited by C. S. Knighton.Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997.lvi + 111 pp. 2 maps. $63.00.

This is the first of two volumes in an ambitious new project, the Westminster Abbey Record Series. Launching the series with the publication of the earliestWestminster Chapter Act Book 1543-1609 is a very promising beginning. This first volume contains a lengthy general introduction along with the actual Chapter text down to 1556. The rest of the Chapter Act Book and an index are forthcoming in volume 2.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.156 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 11:06:31 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions