What an exhiliarating and strange feeling to read the first review of one's first book. 'Tis done. A Mrs. Carla Lord of Kean University (USA) read my book on the grotesques and published a review of it in the Renaissance Quartely that's just come out, which I'd like to share with you (excerpts). There is room for improvement, were I to take on the grotesques again ... .
... It is difficult to know what readership was intended for Kommerell’s short guide to grottesche. Perhaps it is meant for monolingual undergraduates, since there is little else available in English that is recent, except for another, more comprehensive, book issued in 2008, replete with 242 color plates: Alessandra Zamperini, Ornament and the Grotesque: Fantastical Decoration from Antiquity to Art Nouveau. For his study Kommerell has depended on some fine scholarly sources. He has also found guidance from the dean of grottesche studies, Nicole Dacos. Kommerell presents some unusual new material from buildings recently restored, along with a bit of etymology and some potted history. Kommerell tells us that the first use in writing of the term grottesche is in the contract of 1502 for the Piccolomini Library in the cathedral of Siena, which ‘‘many scholars have cited’’ (15). He neither specifies the scholars nor the citations. ... . The excavation of the Domus Aurea in Rome inspired an explosion of enthusiasm, copying, and variations of grottesche themes in the Renaissance, which built on an existing fascination for classical antiquities (among his chronological errors, Kommerell places Cyriacus of Ancona, an early recorder of antiquities active in the first half of the fifteenth century, in the fourteenth century).
Grotesques were everywhere in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: in the center or the margins of walls and vaults, painted, or in relief on pilasters. Kommerell has indicated the main motifs used in Renaissance grottesche ... . Citing Paul Barolsky (‘‘As in Ovid, so in Renaissance Art,’’ Renaissance Quarterly 51.2 [1998], 469) Kommerell suggests that Ovid was everywhere in the Renaissance, but that thesis is difficult to substantiate. Dorothea Scholl offers more thorough coverage of Ovid as a source in her habilitation thesis on grotesques (Mu¨nster, 2004). Kommerell analyzes the intentions of patrons: to be in step with or ahead of fashion, erudite and/or politically assertive in their juxtaposition of heraldry with decorative patterns. He also discusses the role of grottesche in churches: their placement and themes. Among the less familiar sites that Kommerell illustrates and describes are the grotesques of the cathedral at Spoleto; the Palazzo Vitelli (now the city art gallery in Citta` di Castello); the painted vault, once a market place in Assisi; and the Casa Zuccari in Florence.
From the introduction onward Kommerell’s ebullient style may strike some readers as refreshing and others as irritating. Often he interrupts an argument to note the arbitrary closure of a museum or library when he visited it. If this book is intended for the monolingual student, Kommerell might in a revised edition translate suc phrases as ‘‘Fuga in Egitto’’ (n. 246), which has a perfectly good English equivalent, along with ‘‘parete’’ and ‘‘pomeriggio.’’ Or for a more systematic study of grottesche, the multilingual student can read Dacos’s classic La de´couverte de la Domus Aurea and her subsequent books on the Vatican logge (1977) and on Giovanni da Udine (1987) in Italian.
