From research into a Roman broadsheet of 1555 Anne Dillon of Cavendish College, Cambridge, has produced an intriguing study of the intersection of Marian English propaganda, Tridentine Nicodemism, and late Italian Renaissance printing and art. The work consists of six scenes of English Carthusians undergoing grisly tortures and deaths at York and London (though the depicted settings are Roman) between 1535 and 1537. They suffered for having refused to accept Henry's headship of the Church of England. Beneath is text that describes each image and specifies the dates of the martyrdoms being depicted. Step by step, through nineteen compact chapters, Dillon unpacks the history and meaning of the images, moving between descriptive and interpretive modes. Along the way Dillon provides useful and well-constructed discussions on topics that underlay her analysis, such as the technology and business of printing broadsides, the presence and nature of Protestantism and other “heretical” undercurrents in mid-century Rome, and the state of anatomical illustration. The inclusion of 82 illustrations, including 28 in color, makes her points and conclusions come alive.

The creation of the work occurred in the context of Mary Tudor's marriage to Spain's Philip II in July 1554 and the Catholic/Counter Reformation initiative to re-Catholicize England. The impetus came from Cardinal Juan Álvarez. The Spanish creator of the images, Gaspar Becerra, was a student of Daniele da Volterra, himself a pupil of Michelangelo. The book's title stems from this last connection, since Dillon finds in the broadsheet formal similarities to figures in Michelangelo's decoration of the Vatican's Capella Paolina and other Michelangelesque studies to which Becerra may have had access as Daniele's student. She even goes so far as to speculate that Michelangelo himself may have prepared studies for the broadsheet. Here the reader is reminded of Dan Brown's treatment of Leonardo. Dillon connects Michelangelo to the reform-minded English Cardinal Reginald Pole through their common Roman noble friend Vittoria Colonna. All three were Nicodemites, Dillon develops, believers in the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone who had to keep their beliefs hidden after their condemnation by the Council of Trent in 1547. The broadsheet, like the Capella itself, she claims, is a “Trojan horse” for sola fide dissent by Michelangelo and other Nicodemite spirituali. Her encapsulation of this thesis refers to the inclusion of similar figures in both artistic works as “a signal, a code” and the broadsheet a “breathtaking act of subversion” (135).

Dillon's is a bold thesis and in developing it she presents much that is of value to the student of the period. That her case for her thesis is circumstantial is clear to her as well as her reader. “May have” and “might” often hold her case together. “It would not be unreasonable to presume” (263); “seems to have served” (264); “the evidence of their involvement is very strong” (223); “I would argue that” (271); “It is possible” and “It is not unreasonable to argue” (272) represent the rhetorical level of conviction that ties much of the evidence and argument together. Near the book's end Dillon seems to back away from her thesis in stating that the broadsheet was “a Spanish document . . . not only Spanish but the Cardinal's [Álvarez's] own in every detail . . . . It was a Spanish broadsheet for a Spanish king” (288–289). As Álvarez was the Inquisitor of Rome one might think he would recognize such doctrinal “subversion” in the Capella and his broadsheet; but then, one supposes, he had no reason to suspect Michelangelo or Pole of heretical leanings. And what of Becerra? Dillon presents no evidence that he was a sola fideist making conscious choices to include subversive imagery. If he did so unwittingly was it really a subversive “act?” I cannot say that I am convinced, but I did find the journey fascinating.

Unhappily the text has a few minor flaws that grated along the way. “Hapsburg” and “Habsburg” (284) appear in the same paragraph and otherwise seem random in their appearance. Dillon refers to “a garden setting in the Apollo Belvedere” (150n5). In her discussion of anatomical knowledge, Dillon refers to “physician academics who were clerics and so forbidden by the church to spill blood” (199) prior to Andreas Vesalius's innovative methods. University “academics” had long been secularized in Italy and “surgery” had long been part of Italian medical curricula by the 1540s. Indeed, Vesalius's chair at Padua was that of “surgery and anatomy,” as Dillon points out.

Apart from her focus on the broadsheet Dillon makes an interesting contribution in her discussion of what she sees as the influence of some of Reginald Pole's writings on Michelangelo's decoration of the Vatican's Capella Paolina. She derives from the messages of three of his contemporary works the conclusions that the Apostle Paul was co-equal in shaping the early church with Peter; that justification by faith alone was at the heart of Paul's teaching; and that this should be at the heart of the reform movement that was underway when the frescoes were begun in 1542. Her linkage of these conclusions to the chapel's walls through the mind and hand of Michelangelo seems tenuous rather than compelling, but the attempt is nonetheless creative, insightful, and plausible, as is her full argument.