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concisely and clearly articulate the unifying theme as the investigation of the center-periphery paradigm, established by Enrico Castelnuovo and Carlo Ginzburg in 1979, in interpreting the art of Emilia and the Marche in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. With essays that illuminate art in these peripheral areas of the Italian peninsula and present its intrinsic value, the book contributes to the body of literature that has challenged the traditional definition of Renaissance art as the humanistic innovations of Florentine and Roman artists, to which Giorgio Vasari's Vite (1550, 1568) gave rise. Together the eight essays cover a broad spectrum of artistic productionmanuscripts, frescoes, altarpieces, private devotional paintings, sculptural programs, and mixed-media ensembles-and artists both renowned-Leonardo da Vinci tops the list-and little-known. In discussing the illuminated poem De gentilium deorum imaginibus by the marchigiano humanist Ludovico Lazzarelli, Stanko Kokole reinterprets the term formae used by contemporary authors in reference to ancient gods. Samo Štefanac considers artistic exchanges between cities on the Adriatic's two coasts, elucidating the interdependence of Dalmatia and the Italian peninsula, while emphasizing the high quality of the Dalmatian artists' work. Jean Campbell probes the source of the fresco cycle in the Camera d'Oro at the castle of Torrechiara (Parma) commissioned by Count Pier Maria Rossi. Arguing that the iconographical method of pinpointing a single literary source is too narrow, Campbell follows an iconological approach to envision a deeper meaning encompassing types of spaces-interior-exterior, physical-psychological-and the realization of knowledge. Three authors turn to Parma from 1500 to 1550, portraying an active intellectual and artistic hub that challenges its peripheral status. Letizia Arcangeli explains the evolving political situation in which the squads led by dominant families gave way to greater centralization, as Parma's center shifted from Milan to Rome. To Canon Bartolomeo Montini's multimedia funerary chapel in the Cathedral (1505-10), Alessandra Talignani assigns the designation of the first thoroughly all'antica monument in the city, which served as a reference point for the next generation of patrons and artists. By connecting Correggio's Ecce Homo for the sophisticated Bartolomeo Prati to the coeval writings of Erasmus, Giancarla Periti argues for Parma's centrality in the contemporary discourse on Christianity as well as artistic innovation. In the final two essays, Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel explores Immaculate Conception imagery in the "periphery of the periphery" (215), the small towns of Emilia and the Marche, and Maria Grazia Albertini Ottolenghi argues that Alessandro Sforza, lord of Pesaro, was on the cutting edge of mid-fifteenth-century artistic taste.

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No contemporary viewer educated in Western art history would mistake for an authentic Raphael the painting of the seated Madonna holding the Christ Child, with the young John the Baptist, which now resides in the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College (fig. 1).Although competently painted in a naturalistic style with soft modeling, believable foreshortening, lively expressions, and effective coloristic effects, the painting lacks the insistently tangible figures, confident brushstrokes, and saturated palette of a Raphael painting. Yet, in 1866 this eighteenth-century painting by either Giambettino Cignaroli (1706-70) or his half-brother, Giuseppe Cignaroli (1727-96), was sold as an authentic Raphael to the New York businessman John Hunter and then to the wealthy Bostonian Peter Chardon Brooks. In the twentieth century, after its attribution to Raphael was deemed untenable, the Brooks family donated it to a local priest, who presumably gifted it to Boston College, a Jesuit Catholic university. Documentation in the McMullen Museum's curatorial file led to the archival work that uncovered the traces of this fragmented and complex history. Fig. 1, Giuseppe or Giambettino Cignaroli, Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, mid-to late eighteenth century. Oil on canvas mounted on board, framed. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill. Photo by Christopher Soldt, Boston College Media Technology Services, courtesy McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College. [larger image]In Igor Kopytoff's 1986 essay "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process," the anthropologist applies the concepts of human biography to objects and asks analogous questions: Where was the item made? Who made it? What is its career? What are the "ages" or periods of its life? How does the object's function change in relation to these biographical ages? What happens when an object is no longer useful? Kopytoff's goal in using this biographical approach is to study commodities and the process of commoditization. A commodity is a thing that can be exchanged for an equal value, and (in the West) its key characteristic is salability. During the life cycle of an object, however, culture can intervene and interrupt its value as a commodity through the process of