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Review Of The Cabinet Of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting And The Studiolo Of Isabella D'Este. By Stephen J. Campbell, Andrea Bolland

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Isabella d'Este's activities as an art collector and patron are richly documented and have received a correspondingly large amount of art historical attention in the modern era. Yet Isabella--and the studiolo she had created and decorated in the Mantuan Palazzo Ducale--have gotten mixed reviews in this scholarship; the former has historically emerged as difficult, irrational, and acquisitive rather than discerning, while the paintings done for the latter by Andrea Mantegna, Perugino, Lorenzo Costa, and Correggio between 1497 and 1530 are often treated as curiosities-stilted in style and didactic in subject-within the larger scope of the artists' careers. The paintings have …