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the variety of reasons and goals that gave birth to this fascinating series of 
frescoes.

johnny l. bertolio, University of Toronto

Quinlan-McGrath, Mary. 
Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xi, 284 + 26 ill. ISBN 978-0-
226-92284-3 (hardcover) $35.

Mary Quinlan-McGrath, professor of art history, succinctly states in the ope-
ning pages that her book interrogates “why the learned believed in astrology 
and how art participated within its practices” (7). Over the next several hun-
dred pages, she ambitiously attempts to investigate the importance of astrology 
as it pertains to astronomy and theology. Quinlan-McGrath structures her text 
around four basic points derived from Plato’s Timaeus: the study of heavens as 
it relates to the work of a “single creator”; how the creator gave humans alone 
a share of the divine intelligence to allow them to see and understand cosmic 
patterns; the idea of vision as “the threshold for the study of the heavens,” the 
latter capable of being rendered in the visual arts; and a consideration of how 
the study of the heavens related to spiritual and intellectual pursuits. Such a 
structuring allows Quinlan-McGrath to trace a clear and logical evolution of 
thought relating to the corollaries among theology, astronomy, and astrology, 
which she derives from the treatises of Plato, Vitruvius, Plotinus, St. Augustine, 
Marsilio Ficino, Ptolemy, Roger Bacon, Alberti, and al-Kindi.

To explore these themes, Influences is divided into eight chapters, each 
of which examines topics related to the history of astronomy and astrology, 
followed by tangential discussions of their effects on urbanism, their relevancy 
to Renaissance treatises, particularly Ficino’s, and three painted Roman vaults: 
the Sala della Cosmografia (Palazzo Farnese, Rome), the astrological vault at 
the villa of Agostino Chigi (Rome), and the astrological vault of the Sala dei 
Pontefici (Vatican, Rome). Of these chapters, the last is the only one dedicated 
to art historical analyses. Despite the diversity of the chapters, each is divided 
into sections that outline the nuances among specific terms and their usages 



196 bo ok reviews

from ancient to Renaissance times. Although at times repetitive, the systematic 
approach allows the author to illustrate how even the most devout Christian 
intellectuals turned to astrology to inform their religious and political futures, 
even to the point of changing the date of their births or arguing for a differ-
ent founding date of important Italian urban centres to correspond with more 
favourable horoscopes and astrological readings. 

Despite the merits of Quinlan-McGrath’s Influences, I would be remiss 
if I did not express my concerns about its structure and presentation. First, I 
found the scattered inclusion and references to Arabic astronomical and philo-
sophical writers somewhat superficial, especially given the author’s propensity 
to sound their accolades. Although Arabic intellectual practices were highly 
influential upon early modern engineers, scientists, artists, and the like, as the 
author rightly notes, their sporadic inclusion within Influences seems forced 
at times. This suggests a struggle for inclusivity and simultaneously highlights 
the restrictions of the topic. Indeed, Quinlan-McGrath is unable to explore the 
rational and religious significances of astronomy in Arabic traditions with the 
same legibility that emerges from her detailed examination of Italian culture. 
Nevertheless, the connections drawn are logical and highlight the known influ-
ences of Arabic writers despite the lack of cultural context.

Second, despite the book’s catalogue designation (Fine Arts) and title, 
and the art historical value of the author’s other published works, art was 
substantially lacking within Influences. The text could just as easily have stood 
alone—and probably should have—in the category of historical inquiry, with-
out attempting art historical analysis. As a point of fact, approximately fifteen 
percent of the text is devoted to artistic works that at the outset were presented 
as being central to the book’s argument. Discussions of the painted Roman 
vaults are isolated to the final twenty pages of the book’s last chapter. Although 
much information about these wonderfully complex painted ceilings can be 
gleaned from canonical art historical surveys of Italian Renaissance art and 
architecture, the presentation of the visual content seems rushed and com-
pressed. Quinlan-McGrath’s formal descriptions and interpretive analyses of 
these paintings would have benefitted immensely from the inclusion of several 
drawings of the vaults. At the centre of book, among the “plates,” the small co-
lour reproductions are crisp; however, schematics of the paintings would offer 
much needed clarity to those not trained in Italian Renaissance visual culture. 
Similar issues abound in references to the numerous other black-and-white 



comptes rendus 197

reproductions throughout the whole of the text, as little descriptive content is 
provided. In other words, a more sophisticated weaving of visual descriptors 
with the book’s wonderful textual analyses would have benefitted the reader. 

Aside from my concerns over the presentation of the book’s visual data, 
the book is wonderful in its originality and the author’s willingness to take on 
the tedious task of highlighting the subtlety of meaning in Italian Renaissance 
culture. For those interested in the nuances and complexities that existed among 
astronomy, astrology, and theology, Mary Quinlan-McGrath’s Influences is a 
must read, with text rich in content and data. 

c. cody barteet, The University of Western Ontario

Strier, Richard. 
The Unrepentant Renaissance: From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 304. ISBN 978-0-226-
77751-1 (hardcover) $45.

Richard Strier’s timely study proclaims itself as “a return to Burckhardt” and 
an alternative to the dour and repressed picture of the Renaissance proposed 
by Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicism, and its more recent inheritor, the 
“new humoralism” of Michael Schoenfeldt. Treating an impressive range of 
poets, playwrights, philosophers, and theologians from the fourteenth to the 
seventeenth century—including Petrarch, Luther, Ignatius, Erasmus, More, 
Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Montaigne, Descartes, and Milton—Strier ar-
gues that the authors he analyzes oppose (or do not accept as unassailable) the 
“Christian-Stoic-Platonic synthesis that produced the ‘official’ and, one might 
wrongly think, unquestioned values of the period” (2). In this sense, they are 
unabashedly “unrepentant.” The chapters consider texts that reject the values 
and virtues of, in order, reason and the moderation of anger, the inferiority 
of the physical to the spiritual, ordinary decency and morality, the denial of 
materialism and worldliness, and the need for humility (1). Taking up where 
Burckhardt’s Italian Renaissance individualism left off, Strier contends that the 
Reformation and Counter-Reformation contributed to the elevation of the or-
dinary layperson, and made possible expressions of “self-assertion, perversity,