Paul Robert Walker: The Feud That Sparked The Renaissance: How Brunelleschi And Ghiberti Changed The Art World

Sometimes it takes a little animosity to fuel the creative fires, and in The Feud That Sparked The Renaissance, Paul Robert Walker argues that sometimes those fires can become an inferno. At the turn of the 15th century, a competition took place to determine an artist for the doors of Florence's baptistery. The winner, Lorenzo Ghiberti, went on to create a masterpiece. One of the runners-up would later create one of his own, literally overshadowing his rival's: the cupola of the adjacent cathedral, the engineering marvel atop Santa Maria del Fiore that defines the Florentine landscape. The competition makes for a neat, accurate miniaturization of the early Renaissance. A renaissance man in every sense, Filippo Brunelleschi displayed the influence of the classic techniques then being rediscovered—his entry hints at the linear perspective he would later pioneer. Ghiberti's, meanwhile, tethers the revolution at hand to the immediate gothic past. In the decades to follow, there would be forced collaborations and probable backbiting; unfortunately, much of it is a matter of conjecture, a problem Walker's book doesn't solve. At one point, Walker says it would have been fascinating to be a gnat accompanying the men on a journey, a banal suggestion that only emphasizes how little the book has served that purpose. An author of many historical books for young readers, Walker does an admirable job of boiling the facts down, but the adult-aimed Feud offers little insight, original research, or lively argument. As a Renaissance-art primer, it succeeds relatively well: It would be difficult to botch a book about a period that begins in plague, ends in artistic marvels, and sandwiches colorful characters and bizarre military tactics in between. But this ground has been covered elsewhere, frequently and better, and for the bulk of its slim length, Walker's book fails to live up to its lively title.