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Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura: Meaning and Invention. By Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier. (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Pp. xiv, 267, 12 color plates, 31 figs. $75.00.)
Anyone who writes a book on the meaning of the most famous works of Renaissance art and especially of the Roman works which were executed for a pope should know a lot of medieval and Renaissance theology and philosophy in order to appreciate and to explain the full content of the frescoes done by Raphael or by Michelangelo.The new book on the Stanza delta Segnatura presents as its fundamental thesis a repetition of that of the article of Monsignor Kiinzle and affirms that the principal man who gave advice to Raphael was the papal librarian Fedro Inghirami.
The book is divided into twelve chapters. The first reaffirms the meaning and function of the Stanza as the library of Julius II. The second deals with the problem of identifying the designer of the program. The third presents the person of the papal librarian. The fourth gives a good explanation of the composition of the ceiling decoration and of the...