Since the 1970s, with the publication of Marcia Hall's groundbreaking studies on the renovations to Florentine churches in the late sixteenth century, art historians have been aware of the drastically different interiors of Renaissance churches from both their appearances today to that of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when massive architectural screens, or tramezzi, mediated access both visual and physical between the nave and choir. Joanne Allen's densely packed Transforming the Church Interior in Renaissance Florence is the first comprehensive examination of the phenomena from the late medieval period, when such screens were often first erected, to the late Seicento, when those same screens, as well as choir stalls and structures, were dismantled or moved. Considering the Renaissance church interior from architectural and liturgical, but also political, social, and gender perspectives, Allen not only offers a full assessment of the changes made to such interiors but also delves more deeply into the particular motivations behind these reconstructions. While the text's title situates the inquiry firmly within Florence, Allen gives broader scope through examples of similar or contrasting spaces throughout Italy as well as Northern Europe.
Chapter 1 overviews the overall interior arrangement of Renaissance churches, reconstructing the form of choir precincts and screens throughout the Italian peninsula. Particular attention is paid to the functions of such structures, as well as to how they articulated and controlled visibility and access. Chapters 2 and 3 then probe such arrangements in Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Allen notes the diversity of materiality and design, as well as the uses of choir stalls, spaces, and tramezzi in both prominent and smaller Florentine churches. Allen emphasizes the oft-noted role Giorgio Vasari and Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici played in the later sixteenth-century renovations, but her analysis is noteworthy for stressing the multivalent motivations behind such actions from liturgical, acoustic, theological, political, and patronal concerns.
Chapters 4–7 are concentrated studies, organized by primary religious community and audience, of the interiors of specific Florentine churches: mendicant and monastic, male and female, clerical and lay. These chapters each move chronologically on the differing interior schemes of these spaces, and reconstruct, as well as possible from thorough assessment of archival sources, the layout, furnishings, and architectural structures. Allen especially notes the effect that choirs and screens had on the viewing and comprehension of sacred art within these churches, and these chapters are lavishly illustrated with high-quality images, often taken by the author herself. The study concludes with a broader assessment of the changes wrought to Florentine churches in the Counter-Reformation. While this final chapter is perhaps the least original of the text, as scholars have long understood the changes that the Council of Trent brought to church design, the grounding of the analysis in Florence specifically allows Allen to weave together the motivations of artist-architect (Vasari), political authority (Grand Duke Cosimo), and religious leaders (Florentine Archbishop Antonio Altoviti and Cardinal Carlo Borromeo).
The study's very richness and density is perhaps its only flaw; the countless examples often distract from and bury Allen's overarching narrative and important insights, and give the text a plodding pace. The actual materiality and iconography of choirs and screens is stated but not deeply analyzed in terms of sacred comprehension, effect, and use. I longed, for example, for Allen to reflect on the actual experience of a clergyman sitting in one of the elaborate intarsia choir stalls from a haptic, auditory, and visual perspective (and to dive into the potential meanings behind many stalls’ carefully carved vegetal, floral, and musical motifs), and to consider more fully the liturgical and spiritual rupture, whether welcomed or not, that the removal of screens would have had on different groups of devotees.
Nonetheless, Allen's achievement in synthesizing and elucidating such a variety of church interior history will prove transformative itself for any scholar of Renaissance sacred art, architecture, and liturgy, providing ample room for new investigations into the beholding of Renaissance works of art; the multisensory engagement of Renaissance worshippers and devotees, both clerical and lay; and the connections among theological, political, and social ideals within sacred spaces.
