Biography, Historiography, and Modes of Philosophizing: The Tradition of Collective Biography in Early Modern Europe. Patrick Baker. ed. The Renaissance Society of America Texts and Studies Series 7. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xiv + 412 pp. $149.
the main focus of Roberta Anderson’s description of Noël de Caron’s audiences with James VI/I. Labeling galleries and gardens as marginal spaces betrays Anderson’s lack of engagement with recent work on both diplomatic ceremonial and politicized space in early modern palaces that would see such areas as performing particular (and not necessarily marginal) functions within the spatial language of Renaissance politics. The place of visual culture within diplomatic representation is discussed by Ladan Niayesh, who argues that the sartorial politics and self-staging on display in portraits of Robert Sherley were designed to heighten his claims to represent Shah Abbas and promote the mercantile-military alliance at the heart of his embassy. Diplomatic self-presentation recurs as a theme in Dominique Goy-Blanquet’s examination of the “editorial diplomacy” (50) of sometime diplomat and author Jean Hotman’s collection of letters and prose by himself and his family members (Opuscules françoises des Hotmans), which she proposes was a “textual instrument of appeasement” (52). Meanwhile, Diego Pirillo’s illuminating study of a very different family affair adds to our understanding of those diplomatic actors below the level of ambassadors. He ably illustrates that the Ragazzoni family served as important intermediaries between England and Venice in the absence of resident ambassadors. Overall, like many edited collections, this volume is a mixed bag. Some of the essays are important and enlightening, but others disappoint. Some will not convince all readers fully but may well spark productive disagreement. Although the volume is published in an interdisciplinary series the authors are, on the whole, more conversant with developments in literary studies of diplomacy than with the growing number of excellent historical studies of early modern diplomatic practice. This is a shame, as the theme of the volume holds much potential to bring the two approaches together, and greater engagement with the recent historical scholarship would have considerably enhanced the quality of several contributions to the volume.