Emblematic Paintings from Sweden's Age of Greatness: Nils Bielke and the Neo-Stoic Galleryat Skokloster by Simon McKeownReview by: Thomas HerronThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 778-779Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479019 .

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778 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIX/3 (2008)

to Durham's chantries, Harvey notes that chantries did not develop in Durham with any sig nificant degree of frequency until the late fourteenth century. To highlight the impact of her findings, she compares this to the city of York, where numerous chantry foundations are recorded for the early fourteenth century. More such comparisons would have drawn atten tion to those aspects of late medieval Durham that were unique in nature. In addition, these additions would add value to Harvey's book for those interested in other late medieval cities who may only be looking for general trends in cities of comparable size.

Aside from these three minor observations, this excellent book illumines well late medieval Durham and stands as a good example to all scholars of how to conduct highly localized research. Harvey's book reminds us that lay religious life in a late medieval city was varied and vibrant, and her work on Durham is a welcome addition alongside the works of Eamon Duffy and Katherine French, who have reached similar conclusions for other English cities and dioceses. Though too specialized and costly for classroom use, this book will obviously be of great interest to anyone interested in the religious life of laypeople in the later Middle Ages. Scholars of monasticism can also benefit from Harvey's work as they seek to look outside the cloister to see how the common people exercised their own Chris tian faith apart from a powerful local monastery.

Emblematic Paintings from Swedenes Age of Greatness: Nils Bielke and the Neo-Stoic Gallery at Skokloster. Simon McKeown. Imago Figurata Studies 6. Turnhout, Bel gium: Brepols, 2006. xvi + 280 pp. 72 b+w ill. $96.00. ISBN 978-2-503-52364-4.

REVIEWED BY: Thomas Herron, East Carolina University

This fine book continues the handsomely bound and ambitious Imago Figurata series of studies and editions of emblem books; twelve volumes in the series appeared between 1999 and 2006, focusing mostly on the emblem culture (religious and secular) of the Euro pean continent. McKeown examines a little-known series of paintings from a stable on a country estate, Salsta, in east-central Sweden (the paintings were moved long ago to impos ing and eclectic Skokloster Castle, also near Stockholm). The subjects of these paintings are-uniquely-copied from book to canvas. The emblem book in question is La Doctrine des Moeurs (1646) by Marin Le Roy, Sieur de Gomberville, itself an adaption of the Emblemata Horatiana (Q. Horati Flacci Emblemata) (1607) of the Leiden humanist Otto Vaenius.

In the second portion of his book, roughly half its length ("Plates, Texts and Commen taries' 105-226), McKeown presents the eighteen derivative paintings alongside their orig inals from Gomberville, providing his own thematic order, analyzing details, and commenting on variations; also included are the contemporary English translations (1721) by Thomas Mannington Gibbs of Gomberville's commentaries on these emblems (Gibbs's translation of the preface is included in the book's appendices). The first portion of the book (1-104, including many fine figures) offers lucid analysis of the emblem tradition and Vae nius's place in it; the historic interrelation of emblematics ("a hybrid form") and painting; the origin of the Skokloster paintings (from the stable building at Salsta); a potted history of their aristocratic patron, the great Swedish field marshal and provincial governor general (of Estonia and Pomerania) Nils Turesson Bielke (1644-1716); analysis of Bielke's profound interest in classical (particularly stoic) learning, libraries, and emblematics (the book includes a checklist of Bielke's emblem books at Skokloster in its appendices, alongside additional mottoes from his estates); and-most fascinating and skillful-a "re-imagining"

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Book Reviews 779

of Bielke's "stoic gallery" at Salsta, built in 1710 during his disgrace, retirement, and rustica tion from court. McKeown argues that Bielke designed his library/gallery/stable (including these paintings) as a chivalric recreation of the Stoa Poikile of ancient Athens, whose famous paintings taught virtue and wisdom. The same Stoa served explicitly as a model for Gomberville's printed "gallery" of emblems, as presented to the young Louis XIV of France. McKeown's wide-ranging detective work does Swedish and European cultural studies a tre mendous service by recreating Salsta's greatly damaged stable building and the literary and cultural world surrounding it that motivated its creation.

This book is as much a tribute to the man as the place, however, since Bielke's great experience and learning ranged from the court of Louis XIV to the Turkish wars to the Swedish courtly culture and intellectual pretensions of the Storgoticists (Gothic nationalists, including Swedish authors Olaus Magnus and Olaf Rudbeck) and the imperial ambitions of the Swedish Stormaktstiden-the "Age of Greatness" energized by Gustavus Adolphus and his imperial legacy. McKeown claims that one regional peculiarity of cultural life in Sweden was the vital importance of the patron as a driving force (ii). McKeown also surmises how autobiographical components of Bielke's life crept into the paintings' subject matter: in par ticular, how Bielke's commonplace stoic philosophy was reinforced by his country's and his life's surprising rollercoaster of events in the latter half of the seventeenth century, a philos ophy encapsulated in the morals of many of the paintings. McKeown's reader will finish this book with a deep appreciation not only of the paintings but also of the life, times, art, and architecture of Stormaktstidens Sweden, including the treacherous aristocratic culture that helped make Stockholm and its watery environs into such a stunningly beautiful landscape of Baroque architecture.

This is not to say that the paintings at Skokloster are beautiful to look at-far from it and a few of the clunkier ones are harshly and rightly criticized on aesthetic grounds by McKeown. Nonetheless, they have great intellectual interest, as he makes clear. The paint ings would, moreover, benefit from color reproductions instead of black and white. One of the plates, no. 13, is marred by the reflection of the camera flash, and plate 12 is confused in the text with plate 9 (73, 113). A centaur is strangely labeled a "Minotaur" (74-75, 145). One wonders if more scientific analysis of plaster traces could not prove that the paintings come from the stable walls at Salsta (to further seal shut McKeown's strong case). The paintings may also tell us more than McKeown lets on; some of the figures seem more weary than their models in Gomberville, including the soldier-figure in plate 13: Curae Inevitabiles, who has traveled far (note the inn in the background and riderless horse) and who grips his gun like a pilgrim's staff. Is this a figure for Bielke himself, having returned from the wars to find his estate far less industrious than he had hoped it would be?

Festina Lente: McKeown's analysis ties many cultural threads into a strongly coherent and learned whole. The book successfully draws the reader further into the puzzle of these curious paintings and so creates another Stoa, in literary form, for the admiring reader to wander through and learn greatly from.

The Censorship and Fortuna of Platina's Lives of the Popes in the Sixteenth Century. Stefan Bauer. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. xvii + 390 pp. 70.00. ISBN 978-2-503-51814-5.

REVIEWED BY: Donald J. Kagay, Albany State University

In this beautifully produced volume, Stefan Bauer meticulously traces the troubled life and greatest intellectual achievement of the late Renaissance figure Bartolomeo Platina

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