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Cosmè Tura’s (c. 1430–1495) paintings stand out for their unusual and often surprisingly bizarre treatment of surface, texture, detail, and above all the freneticism of Tura’s line. Yet, as Stephen Campbell argues in his new study, previous attempts to explain Tura’s idiosyncratic manner have relied on cultural paradigms that have long been the foundation of historical accounts of early modern Italy, but have little relevance for the specific settings within which Tura painted. Because of his close association with the Este, Ferrara’s ruling dynasty, Tura has generally been discussed as a dependent of the Este court. But as the book’s title suggests, Campbell seeks to resituate Tura’s artistic production within the broader context of fifteenth-century Ferrara, which was itself marked by the competing interests of the Este court, the Church, the comune, the mercantile and professional classes, the popolo, and a thriving enclave of Italian Jews. Campbell further points out that the Este’s claims to power often brought them into conflict with the Papacy, which, through its representatives in the secular clergy, was Ferrara’s ancient overlord. Tura’s paintings are interpreted, therefore, as ideologically charged objects existing in a social and political environment fragmented by competing agendas. Campbell’s goal is simply stated: to examine why Tura might have adopted such an unconventional painting style and to discuss its relevance for the disparate patrons and audiences of Tura’s pictures; to historicize, in effect, the curiosity that Tura’s work seems to generate.

Rather than a chronologically organized monograph of Tura’s life and work, Campbell’s study operates as a collection of essays connected by common concerns—the ways in which Tura’s painting served as a vehicle for fashioning identity, the relation of his pictures to their fifteenth-century audiences, and the intersection between modes of poetic and pictorial representation in the culture of Ferrarese humanism. Individual chapters are beautifully illustrated by color prints of Tura’s work, a tremendously important feature of a book which scrutinizes the relationship between a painting’s style and its meaning. Because of the themes it considers and the methodological approaches that inform its scholarly apparatus, Campbell’s book makes important contributions not just to the specialist literature on Tura, but to scholarship on fifteenth-century art and culture in general. Many of Campbell’s arguments have wide ranging implications for questions of style, spectatorship, and the status of pictorial representation in fifteenth-century Italy.

One of the primary themes that informs Campbell’s study is his consideration of the relationship between pictorial style and questions of identity. Campbell draws upon Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of ‘self-fashioning’ to examine how Tura presented himself through his paintings, consciously cultivating a pictorial style that responded to the expectations of specific [End Page 1209] audiences. The book’s first chapter is therefore devoted to understanding Tura’s style not as the manifestation of gothicizing or eccentric tendencies, but as a calculated response by a socially ambitious artist to the institutional framework of the Este court, where literary professionals debated the social status of painters and the relative importance of the arts in general. Campbell argues that Tura’s reliance on a style grounded in the virtuoso flourish of a calligraphic line served as a strategy of self-presentation in an environment where writing and book production were highly valued. By framing his discussion of Tura’s style within the paragone between writing and painting then being discussed at the Este court, Campbell makes a convincing case that Tura’s ‘calligraphic style’ should be seen as a device through which the painter positioned himself as a kind of scriptor, consciously drawing upon the status of writing and laying claim to an authorial persona in his painting. This chapter is central to Campbell’s subsequent account of Tura’s work because it establishes painting as a vehicle through which identity, social or otherwise, is...