Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age: The Aesthetics of Evidence 9004227024, 9789004227026

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Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age

International Studies in the History of Rhetoric Editors

Laurent Pernot, Executive Editor, Strasbourg, France Craig Kallendorf, College Station, U.S.A. Advisory Board Bé Breij, Nijmegen, Netherlands Rudong Chen, Beijing, China Manfred Kraus, Tübingen, Germany Gabriella Moretti, Trento, Italy Luisa Angelica Puig Llano, Mexico City, Mexico Christine Sutherland, Calgary, Canada

Volume 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/rhet

Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age The Aesthetics of Evidence

By

Heinrich F. Plett

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plett, Heinrich F.  Enargeia in classical antiquity and the early modern age : the aesthetics of evidence / by Heinrich F. Plett.   pages. cm. — (International studies in the history of rhetoric, ISSN 1875-1148 ; volume 4) Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-22702-6 (hardback : alk. paper) —  ISBN 978-90-04-23118-4 (e-book) 1. Art and literature. 2. Ut pictura poesis (Aesthetics) 3. Greek literature—Influence. 4. Latin literature—Influence. 5. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Title. II. Series: International studies in the history of rhetoric ; v. 4. PN53.P537 2012 700.1—dc23 2012016830

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface. ISSN 1875-1148 ISBN 978 90 04 22702 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 23118 4 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, ­electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior ­written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Foreword ............................................................................................................ Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... List of Illustrations ...........................................................................................

vii ix xi

Introduction ......................................................................................................

1

Prologue ..............................................................................................................

5

I Classical Sources and Their Humanist Reception .....................

7

II Enargeia in Humanist Writings and Its Theoretical Foundation .............................................................................................

23

III Shakespeare and Enargeia (A) .........................................................

29

IV Ekphraseis of Places and Pictures ...................................................

37

V Enargetic Representations of Persons ...........................................

51

VI The Poetics of Ekphrasis and Enargeia .........................................

57

VII Enargeia in Teichoscopy and Messenger’s Report .....................

61

VIII Shakespeare and Enargeia (B) .........................................................

65

IX Enargeia in Operatic Libretti ............................................................

69

X Enargeia in Mnemonics and Meditation ......................................

79

XI Enargeia and the Visual Arts ............................................................

85

XII Ut Pictura Poesis ..................................................................................

89

vi

contents

XIII Enargeia and Perspective .................................................................. 119 XIV Shakespeare and Enargeia (C) ......................................................... 125 XV

Enargeia in Theory and Practice of the Visual and Verbal Arts .................................................................................... 135

XVI The Enargeia of Music in Theory and Practice .......................... 183 Epilogue .............................................................................................................. 195 Bibliography: ‘Enargeia’ and Related Terms ............................................ 199 Indices ................................................................................................................. 217 Index of Names ............................................................................................ 219 Index of Subjects ......................................................................................... 227

Foreword The present study had its origin in an invitation from Beate Hintzen, president of German Neo-Latin Society (Deutsche Neulateinische Gesellschaft [DNG]), to deliver the keynote address at their annual conference on February 5, 2009 at the University of Bonn. That lecture, titled “Evidentia: Zur Rhetorik der Präsenz in den Artes der Frühen Neuzeit” (Evidentia: On the Rhetoric of Presence in the Artes of the Early Modern Age) later grew into a larger work, which took into account many more theoretical sources, and not only of Neo-Latin provenance. Since the original sources date back to Classical Antiquity, primarily to Greek and Roman rhetoric, it was an obvious step to discuss these theoretical roots as well, and to provide illustrations from ancient classics. The result is a more extensive treatment of the topic, but not an exhaustive one; the intention is rather to stimulate and invite further studies to fill the lacunae that are undoubtedly present. Most likely these cannot be completely eliminated, for the historical sciences, to which rhetoric belongs, depend on the inventiones of future generations of erudite researchers—and to this contingency they owe their permanent dynamics. No attempt will be made here to identify such desiderata in the spatiotemporal continuum of present-day scholarship. That is the heuristic and hemeneutic task of individual sensitive readers, regardless of their country of origin, their language, and the age into which they are born. The study at hand is thus conceived as a goad to the conversation which the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer considered a basic principle of hermeneutics: Es gibt keinen Redner und keine Redekunst, wenn nicht Verständigung und Einverständnis die menschlichen Beziehungen trüge—es gäbe keine hermeneutische Aufgabe, wenn das Einverständnis derer, die “ein Gespräch sind”, nicht gestört wäre und die Verständigung nicht gesucht werden müsste. There would be no orators and no rhetoric, if mutual understanding and agreement did not form the basis of human relations—there would be no hermeneutic task if the agreement of those who “are conversing” were not disrupted and understanding would have to be sought.

viii

foreword

This remark from Gadamer’s “Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Ideological Criticism” (1971) articulates, in a nutshell, the essence of humanities research. We add here only the following: The impetus for this method derives from rhetoric, with its tradition that reaches back more than three thousand years.

Acknowledgements This book would not have come about without the help of many people. I am especially grateful to Myra Scholz (Amstelveen) and Beate Hintzen (Bonn) for their translating skills, to Shadi Bartsch (Chicago), Sophie Conte (Reims), and Thomas Schirren (Salzburg) for providing relevant sources or research literature, and above all to Renate Plett for her repeated critical reviewing of the entire text—its final shape owes a great deal to her many useful suggestions. Finally I am indebted to German and foreign libraries for generously making texts and illustrations available that proved indispensable for the present treatise. In the twenty-first century these are—as a matter of course—supplemented by such information as is accessible by way of the Internet. H.F.P.

List of Illustrations a. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, title-page (From: Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Gedanken ueber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755). Reprint of the edition Berlin 1855: Nendeln / Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprints, 1968 ................................. b. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, illustration of the title-page (From: Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Gedanken ueber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755). Reprint of the edition Berlin 1855: Nendeln / Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprints, 1968 ................................. 1. Sandro Botticelli: La Calumnia di Apelle (Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Institut of the University of Graz, Austria) .............................................................................................. 2. Albrecht Dürer: Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (From: Albrecht Dürer 1471 / 1971: Ausstellung des Germanischen Nationalmuseums Nürnberg 21. Mai bis 1. August 1971. München: Prestel, 31971 [exhibition catalogue]) .............................. 3. Hans Holbein: Stultitia (From: Erasmus von Rotterdam, Das Lob der Torheit. Mit Holbeinischen Randzeichnungen herausgegeben von Emil Major. Basel: Birkhäuser, 31944) ............................................................. 4. Johann Adolph Hasse (1707–1762) (From Booklet accompanying audio-CD of I Pellegrini al Sepolcro di Nostro Signore [Veritas 7243 5 45320 2 /1998]) ........... 5. Leonardo da Vinci: Self-portrait (Courtesy of Biblioteca Reale, Torino) ................................................ 6. Edmund Spenser: The “Februarie” eclogue (From: The Poems of Edmund Spenser. Ed. J.C. Smith & E. de Selincourt. London: OUP, 1912, rpt. 1960) ........................................... 7. Nicolas Poussin: Self-portrait (From: Christopher Wright, Poussin, Gemälde: Krisches Werkverzeichnis. Landshut, Arcos, 1989) ............................................. 8. Nicolas Poussin: The Judgement of Solomon (1649) (From: Christopher Wright, Poussin, Gemälde: Kritisches Werkverzeichnis. Landshut, Arcos, 1989) .............................................

3

4

15

24

53 83 103 144 157 159

xii

list of illustrations

9. Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim altar: St. John pointing to the crucified Christ (From: Michael Schubert, Der Isenheimer Altar: Geschichte— Deutung—Hintergründe. Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 2007) .................. 10. Raphael: Madonna da Foligno (1512) (From: Raffaels Sixtinische Madonna. Literarische Zeugnisse aus zwei Jahrhunderten. Gesammelt und erläutert von Michael Ladwein. Dornach: Pforte, 2004) ......................................................... 11. Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim altar: The Annunciation (From: Michael Schubert, Der Isenheimer Altar: Geschichte— Deutung—Hintergründe. Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 2007) .................. 12. Giovanni Battista Paggi: Self-portrait with portrait of an architect (From: Jodi Cranston, The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: CUP, 2000) ................................................. 13. Lucas Cranach the Elder: “Vienna Crucifixion” (Courtesy of Alte Pinakothek, München) ......................................... 14. Rembrandt: The Mennonite preacher Claes Anslo and his wife (From: Amy Golahny, Rembrandt’s Reading: The Artist’s Bookshelf of Ancient Poetry and History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003) .................................................... 15. Charles Lebrun: Portrait (Courtesy of Residenzgalerie, Salzburg) ............................................ 16. Albrecht Dürer: Melencolia I (From: Albrecht Dürer 1471 / 1971: Ausstellung des Germanischen Nationalmuseums Nürnberg 21. Mai bis 1. August 1971. München: Prestel, 1971[exhibition catalogue]) ....... 17. Franciscus Lang: De affectu tristitiae (From: Franz Lang, Abhandlung über die Schauspielkunst. Übersetzt und herausgegeben von Alexander Rudin. Bern / München: Francke, 1975) ....................................................................... 18. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo: title-page of the score (From: Libretto accompanying the first recording of Monteverdi’s Orfeo by Nicolaus Harnoncourt [TelefunkenDecca, 1968]) ..............................................................................................

165

165 166

167 167

172 174

175

176

184

Introduction The topic of this study is not entirely new; it refers to a tradition that reaches as far back as classical Greco-Roman Antiquity. The intention here is to explore that tradition, but in the form of a monograph. For as the appended bibliography indicates, various articles have already appeared on the topic, though always with limited historical segments as their focus. Furthermore, several anthologies present a broad spectrum of reflections on enargeia. The volumes Dire l’évidence (ed. Carlos Lévy & Laurent Pernot) from 1997, Rhetorics of Display (ed. Lawrence J. Prelli) from 2006 and Evidentia (ed. Gabriele Wimböck, Karin Leonhardt & Markus Friedrich) from 2007 contain for the most part outstanding contributions. A monographic treatment of the concept of enargeia or evidentia requires a coherent presentation. This is not easy to achieve, given the need on the one hand to relate theoretical writings to practical documents and on the other to forge a link between the various—verbal, visual, and tonal—artes. Separate sections are devoted to each of these, which in some cases involve thematic overlap. One instance of such an overlap is found in the discussion of ut pictura poesis. There can be no doubt about the “friendly relations” between literature and the visual arts, particularly in the Early Modern Age. As William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Cleanth Brooks expressed it so pointedly in their history of literary criticism: Friendly relations between poetry and the visual arts were also much assisted during the 18th century by antiquarian, virtuoso, and Hellenizing trends of the day. One of these was the “illustration” of classical literature by classical sculpture, reliefs, and medals—as in the encyclopedic dialogue Polymetis, 1747, the work of the Oxford Professor of Poetry and friend of Pope, Joseph Spence. There was also the fresh illustration of classical poetry by living draughtsmen and at least an implicit judgment in favor of this poetry according to its capacity to inspire such illustration—as in the Count Caylus’ Tableaux Tirés de l’Iliade, de l’Odysée de Homère et de l’Enéide de Virgile, 1754–1758. Such matters were the theme of the archeologist Winckelmann’s Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, 1755. The instructive frontispiece of this book, in an edition of 1756, shows the learned painter at work on a sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon holding his cloak to his eyes, on the ground at the painter’s feet are scrolls bearing versions of the story by Sophocles and Aeschylus, and in the painter’s left hand is the play by Euripides at the passage: “Putting his cloak before his eyes” (hommatōn peplon protheis). The

2

introduction appearance of the three books just mentioned precipitated in 1766 the most notable act of theorizing upon our theme to recur in the 18th century, the Laokoon of G.E. Lessing.1

Despite the importance Wimsatt and Brooks ascribe to the relation between literature and the visual arts, this is not the main concern of the study at hand. The thematic focus here is much more on rhetoric, with its ability to activate the imagination of both the creator of art and its recipients. Not real, drawn, painted or sculpted images are central to this discussion, but mental images which both precede the material images and are generated by them. Because rhetoric, by reason of its origin, is primarily a matter of the word, it is particularly interesting for poetry in which the evocation of mental images rivals, in a sense, the visual arts: ut pictura poesis. All the important poets of the Early Modern Age make liberal use of rhetorical enargeia in order to bring about an effective imitatio naturae. Because this consists in creating a fictive presence of the described subject, the result is in a deep sense realism in the great literary works of the age: from Lodovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, the poetry of the Pléiade, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and John Milton’s Paradise Lost to the odes of John Dryden and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. The verbal art of William Shakespeare occupies a special place in the Early Modern Age, since this English dramatist—more than any other dramatist of that era—made use of enargeia as a stylistic device. Just as the American composer Philip Glass inserted “Knee Plays” into his opera The Civil Wars, a work occasioned by the 1984 Summer Olympics, the chapters devoted to Shakespeare are not digressions but—in musical terminology— a kind of ritornelli, passages that keep presenting the same author but each time elucidating a different facet of his work. These sections can therefore be read on their own, one after the other. Their full significence, however, becomes apparent only in the context of the larger discussion. While the main focus of this book is on Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age, this does not mean that enargeia played no role in the artes in the Middle Ages or in modern or post-modern times. Quite on the contrary: it is also deeply rooted in these cultural epochs, as various individual studies have shown. While this suggests that enargeia should be elevated to the status of a universal principle of representation, this is not the aim of the present study. It is much more concerned with

1 William K. Wimsatt, Jr. & Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959, p. 267.



introduction

Figure a. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, title-page

3

4

introduction

Figure b. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, illustration

presenting this concept as it functioned in significant epochs of European culture, both in theories and in concrete examples of the various artes. The approach can therefore be described as comparative. Pivotal to the discussion is the idea Norman E. Land expressed in his book title The Viewer as Poet (1994). For the present undertaking it could be formulated more generally as “the viewer as artist,” with “artist” subsuming representatives of all the artes: orators, poets, painters, musicians. But it could just as well be phrased “The recipient as viewer,” with the implied “seeing” understood not as optical but imaginative. Perhaps this formulation comes closest to capturing the essence of enargeia—a concept considered equally fundamental for the successful creation and reception of ars in the various media. Aesthetically speaking its significance is similar to the mimesis concept in Aristotle. In contemporary German philosophy, however, Anschauung—the German counterpart of the Greek enargeia or the Latin evidentia—is not discussed in relation to rhetoric in a contribution to the special issue of the Neue Hefte für Philosophie of 1980 devoted to “Anschauung als ästhetische Kategorie.” This rhetorical connection is present, however, in the aesthetics of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. The supranational task facing scholars today is therefore to reconstruct this relation by combining a study of theoretical documents with practical analyses.

Prologue In the year 1764 the Royal Prussian Academy in Berlin published a number of papers under the title Dissertationes ad quaestionem de EVIDENTIA ab Academia Regia Berolinensi propositam, spectantes.1 The first and probably most interesting of these treatises on the topic of evidence is entitled Dissertatio de evidentia in rebus non mathematicis and deals primarily with the disciplines of metaphysics and theology. The remaining papers are similarly devoted to the humanities, but to other disciplines, namely rhetoric and oratory, poetics and poetry, art theory and both painting and sculpture, music theory and composition—all as practised in the Early Modern Age. Even the Aesthetica (1750/1758) of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762), the first modern work on aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, contains a section (§§ 847–863) on evidentia aesthetica.2 Rhetoric, however, as the origin of the concepts evidentia and enargeia, occupies a central position in both works, for from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century it formed the foundation of these studia humanitatis. The concepts can be traced back to Greek and Roman writings handed down to us from Classical Antiquity. It is therefore with a discussion of those sources that this study will begin.

1 Dissertationes ad quaestionem de Evidentia ab Academia Regia Berolinensi propositam, spectantes. Berolini: Apud Haude et Spener, Regis & Academ. Bibliopol., MDCCLXIV.— For the use of evidentia in theology see Joannes Straub, De certitudine et evidentia eorum argumentorum, quibus Deum esse et animorum immortalitas demonstratur. Aschaffenburg: G. Werbrun, 1916. 2 Alexander G. Baumgarten, Ästhetik. [Latin text with a German translation]. Ed. with introduction and notes by Dagmar Mirbach. 2 vols. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2007, vol. II, pp. 868–884 (§§ 847–863): “§ 847 Verisimilibus eiusmodi, §§ 843–846, dum aesthetica suada, § 838, circumfundit perspicuitatem sensitivam, § 618, nascitur inde evidentia, M. § 531, sensitiva, quam alii demonstrationem ad oculum, ad sensus, et palpabilem dixerint, demonstrationis intellectualiter convincentis analogon. Hanc evidentiam, quoniam immediatam, intuitivam et per se patentem plurimi iudicant, non raro praeferunt argumentando demum eliciendae, si vel ille maxime tandem intellectum convincat. (II,868).” This passage and the following argumentation are supported by numerous quotations from Cicero.

Chapter One

Classical Sources and Their Humanist Reception In Book VI of his Institutio Oratoria the Roman rhetorician Quintilian (i.e. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus [ca. 35–ca. 100]) describes how he would proceed in court as the public prosecutor in a murder case: Occisum queror: non omnia quae in re praesenti accidisse credibile est in oculis habebo? non percussor ille subitus erumpet? non expavescet circumventus, exclamabit vel rogabit vel fugiet? non ferientem, non concidentem videbo? non animo sanguis et pallor et gemitus, extremus denique expirantis hiatus insidet? Suppose I am complaining that someone has been murdered. Am I not to have before my eyes all the circumstances which one can believe to have happened during the event? Will not the assassin burst out on a sudden, and the victim tremble, cry for help, and either plead for mercy or try to escape? Shall I not see one man striking the blow and the other man falling? Will not the blood, the pallor, the groans, the last gasp of the dying be imprinted on my mind? (VI.ii.31).1

The orator who is capable of such an imaginative feat is called by Quintilian euphantasiotos, that is: “one who is exceptionally good at realistically imagining to himself things, words, and actions” (Russell). The result of this activity is “enargeia, what Cicero calls illustratio and evidentia a quality which makes us seem not so much to be talking about something as exhibiting it.” (VI.ii.32). Another Latin synonym for enargeia is

1 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education. Edited and translated by Donald A. Russell. 5 vols. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England, 2001, vol. III, pp. 60–61. In his Études sur Quintilien. 2 vols. Paris: Boivin & Cie, 1935–1936, vol. II, p. 74, Jean Cousin comments upon ἐνάργεια: Illustration. Latin: evidentia, illustratio, repraesentatio. Qualité de la narration qui ne semble pas tant dire une chose que la montrer. Text: Quintilien, IV, II, 63: Sunt qui adiciant his euidentiam, quae ἐνάργεια Graece vocatur. [. . . . .]. G. Lehnert (De scholiis ad Homerum rhetoricis. Diss. Leipzig, 1896, p. 92) montre que le sens d’ ἐνάργεια est inconnu d’Aristote; il n’est vraisemblablement pas ignoré de Théophraste, car Dionys d’Halicarnasse qui est un de ses disciples, lui consacre d’importants développements (cf. Ad Pomp., 3,775; Lys. 7.466, Isocr. 2,538, 11.556, Isae., 3,589, De imit., 6,3,426): il la place entre les vertus nécessaires et les vertus d’ornement. [. . . . .].

8

chapter one

demonstratio, for which the Rhetorica ad Herennium (IV.liv.68) provides the following definition: Demonstratio est cum ita verbis res exprimitur ut geri negotium et res ante oculos esse videatur. Id fieri poterit si quae ante et post et in ipsa re facta erunt comprehendemus, aut a rebus consequentibus aut circum instantibus non recedemus [. . .]. It is Ocular Demonstration when an event is so described in words that the business seems to be enacted and the subject to pass vividly before our eyes. This we can effect by including what has preceded, followed, and accompanied the event itself, or by keeping steadily to its consequences or the attendant circumstances.[. . .].2

Enargeia or demonstratio thus brings about a time shift, in that something from the past or future is made present and, as it were, visibly exhibited. This comes about primarily through a detailed description that makes use of circumstantiae (τὰ παρακολοῦντα, τὰ συμβαίνοντα), which lend immediacy and concreteness to facts about a state of affairs. The ways in which an orator can put this into practice are then elucidated with several examples. In Book VIII of his Institutio Oratoria, which is devoted to ornamentation (ornatus), the same Quintilian offers as an exemplum of a certain type of figurative embellishment the description of the sacking of a city: Sine dubio enim qui dicit expugnatam esse civitatem complectitur omnia quaecumque talis fortuna recipit, sed in adfectus minus penetrat brevis hic velut nuntius. At si aperias haec, quae verbo uno inclusa erant, apparebunt effusae per domus ac templa flammae et ruentium tectorum fragor et ex diversis clamoribus unus quidam sonus, aliorum fuga incerta, alii extremo complexu suorum cohaerentes et infantium feminarumque ploratus et male usque in illum diem servati fato senes: tum illa profanorum sacrorumque 2 [Cicero], Ad C. Herennium de ratione dicendi. With an English translation by Harry Caplan. London: Heinemann / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1954, pp. 404–407.—Cf. Anton D. Leeman: “Evidentia, called demonstratio by the Auctor ad Herennium, who considers it a figure of thought, gets a remarkable emphasis in Quintilian. One more natural kind consists in vivid and direct descriptions of scenes like captures of cities, luxurious banquets etc. A special kind is formed by similes (similitudines), which may lend sublimitas— the most desirable stylistic quality in this period—and beauty to our style: ornat orationem facitque sublimem, floridam, iucundam, mirabilem; nam quo quaeque longius petita est, hoc plus adfert novitatis atque inexspectata magis est. He adds the warning: Quod quidem genus a quibusdam declamatoria maxime licentia corruptum est. Nam et falsis utuntur nec illa iis, quibus similia videri volunt, applicant. [Plin. Epist. 2, 1, 6]. One of his examples is: ‘Magnorum fluminum navigabiles fontes sunt’, which indeed is neither true nor applicable (to a talented youth?)” (Orationis Ratio: The Stylistic Theories and Practice of the Roman Orators, Historians, and Philosophers. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1986, vol. I, p. 300).



classical sources and their humanist reception

9

direptio, efferentium praedas repetentiumque discursus, et acti ante suum quisque praedonem catenati, et conata retinere infantem suum mater, et sicubi maius lucrum est pugna inter victores. Licet enim haec omnia, ut dixi, complectatur ‘eversio’, minus est tamen totum dicere quam omnia. Consequemur autem ut manifesta sint si fuerint veri similia, et licebit etiam falso adfingere quidquid fieri solet. (Inst. Or. VIII.iii.68–72). No doubt, simply to say “the city was stormed” is to embrace everything implicit in such a disaster, but this brief communiqué, as it were, does not touch the emotions. If you expand everything which was implicit in the one word, there will come into view flames racing through houses and temples, the crash of falling roofs, the single sound made up of many cries, the blind flight of some, others clinging to their dear ones in a last embrace, shrieks of children and women, the old men whom an unkind fate has allowed to live to see this day; then will come the pillage of property, secular and sacred, the frenzied activity of plunderers carrying off their booty and going back for more, the prisoners driven in chains before their captors, the mother who tries to keep her child with her, and the victors fighting one another wherever the spoils are richer. “Sack of a city” does, as I said, comprise all these things; but to state the whole is less than to state all the parts. We shall succeed in making the facts evident, if they are plausible; it will even be legitimate to invent things of the kind that usually occur. (VIII.vi.67–70).3

Sub specie rhetorica, then, the unified whole (totum) of an utterance is less relevant than the multiplicity of its parts (omnia), because only the latter make the subject of description directly palpable (manifesta). From Quintilian’s further remarks on enargeia and/or evidentia we can conclude: 1. With his command of rhetorical techniques the orator is able to create φαντασίαι or visiones, that is: imaginary scenes. These present the verbal utterance of a narratio in such a way that the event described seems to be happening hic et nunc before the inner eye of the recipient.4 2. To the extent that the orator succeeds in creating this illusion of presence, he can claim for himself the appellation εὐφαντασίωτος (Inst.Or. VI.ii.30). A specific kind of imagination is thereby attributed to the orator, a kind not to be understood as divinely inspired—whether by Apollo or the Muses or, in the Christian era, the Holy Spirit or the Muse Urania (e.g. in John Milton’s Paradise Lost)—but as originating in the orator himself, who artificially produces it in an act of auto-affection. 3 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, vol. III, pp. 378–379. 4 Cf. Gabriella Moretti, “Quintiliano e il ‘visibile parlare’: Strumenti visuali per l’oratoria latina”, in: Quintilien ancien et moderne. Ed. Perrine Galand et al. Tournhout: Brepols, 2010, pp. 67–108.

10

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The rhetorical concept of imagination therefore clearly differs from the Platonic or Neo-Platonic concept, as convincingly demonstrated by Murray Wright Bundy.5 3. This characteristic enables the orator not only to produce effective images,6 but also, as a consequence, to evoke affects, either of pleasantly moderate ethos or of intensely passionate pathos.7 4. The two examples of evidentia in narratione (Quintilian, Inst. Or. IV.ii.63) yield the following points relevant to our topic: a) A short message, such as communicated in a headline or a telegram, does not penetrate the human heart; its essence [the sacking of a city] has to be developed, or “unpacked,” [aperias] in a detailed description to produce an effect of this kind.

5 Murray Wright Bundy, The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Thought. [Urbana, Ill.]: The University of Illinois, 1927; rpt. Philadelphia: R. West, 1978. Cf. also J.M. Cocking, Imagination: A Study in the History of Ideas. Ed. with an introduction by Penelope Murray. London / New York: Routledge, 1991, Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1994.—Cf. also Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, “ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑ und Einbildungskraft: Zur Vorgeschichte eines Leitbegriffs der europäischen Ästhetik”, Poetica 18 (1986), 187–248. 6 The power of images was already discussed by Ernesto Grassi, who in Macht des Bildes: Ohnmacht der rationalen Sprache Köln: DuMont-Schauberg, 1970 places them in contrast to rational language.—On the role of evidentia/enargeia in the Middle Ages cf. Ingunn Lunde, “Rhetorical enargeia and Linguistic Pragmatics: On Speech-Reporting Strategies in East Slavic Medieval Hagiography and Homiletics”, Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5/1 (2004), 49–80; for its role in Early Modern German narrative literature cf. Andreas Solbach, Evidentia und Erzähltheorie: Die Rhetorik anschaulichen Erzählens in der Frühmoderne und ihre antiken Quellen. München: Fink, 1994. 7 Cf. for Quintilian the essays of Jeroen Bons & Robert Taylor Lane, “Institutio oratoria VI.2: On Emotion”; Richard A. Katula, “Emotion in the Courtroom: Quintilian’s Judge— Then and Now”, and José Domingo Rodríguez Martin: “Moving the Judge: A Legal Commentary on Book VI of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria”, in: Olga Tellegen-Couperus (ed.), Quintilian and the Law: The Art of Persuasion in Law and Politics. Leuven: Leuven UP, 2003, pp. 129–144, 145–156, 157–167.—For general studies on Antiquity and the Early Modern Age see Klaus Dockhorn, Macht und Wirkung der Rhetorik: Vier Aufsätze zur Ideengeschichte der Vormoderne. Bad Homburg v.d.H. / Zürich: Gehlen, 1968, passim; id., “Affekt, Bild und Vergegenwärtigung in der Poetik des Barock”, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen 223/1–2 (1973), 135–156; H.F. Plett, Rhetorik der Affekte: Englische Wirkungsästhetik im Zeitalter der Renaissance. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975; François Cornilliat, Ėthos et Pathos: Le statut du sujet rhétorique. Paris: Champion, 2000; Joachim Poeschke / Thomas Weigel / Britta Kusch (eds.), Tugenden und Affekte in der Philosophie, Literatur und Kunst der Renaissance. Münster: Rhema-Verlag, 2002; Robert Cockcroft, Rhetorical Affect in Early Modern Writing: Renaissance Passions Reconsidered. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire / New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; Erwin Rotermund, “Der Affekt als literarischer Gegenstand: Zur Theorie und Darstellung der Passiones im 17. Jahrhundert”, in: Rotermund, Artistik und Engagement: Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur. Ed. Bernhard Spies. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994, pp. 11–42.



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b) Such details or, rhetorically speaking, circumstantiae, are needed before the description becomes “manifest”, that is: acquires reality value in the reception process. This is very important for historiography. In How to Write History the sophist Lucian of Samosata (125–180) emphasizes the historian’s vivid arrangement of events. Dedicated to factual truth, he will “give a fine arrangement to events and illuminate them as vividly as possible (εἰς δύναμιν ἐναργέστατα ἐπιδεῖξαι αὐτά). And when a man who has heard him thinks hereafter that he is actually seeing what is being described (ὁρᾶν τὰ λεγόμενα) and then praises him—then it is that the work of our “Phidias of history” is perfect and has received its proper praise (51). He will give the impression, not of having heard but of having seen what he writes (29); for nothing will elude the scrutiny of his most critical readers whose “eyes are keener than Argus’s and all over their body” (10).8 Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) refers to the practice of using an enargetic style in historiography in his characterization of Thucydides: For his style, I refer it to the judgment of divers ancient and competent judges. Plutarch in his book, De gloria Atheniensium, saith of him thus: “Thucydides aimeth always at this; to make his auditor a spectator, and to cast his reader into the same passions that they were in that were beholders. [These things] are so described and so evidently set before our eyes that the mind of the reader is no less affected therewith than if he had been present in the actions.” There is for his perspicuity. Cicero in his book entitled Orator, speaking of the affection of divers Greek rhetoricians, saith thus: “And therefore Herodotus and Thucydides are the more admirable. For though they lived in the same age with those I have before named,” (meaning Thrasymachus, Gorgias, and Theodorus), “yet were they far from this kind of delicacy, or rather indeed foolery. For the one without rub, gently glideth like a still river; and the other” (meaning Thucydides) “runs stronglier, and in matter of war, as it were, bloweth a trumpet of war. And in these two (as saith Theophrastus) history hath roused herself, and adventured to speak, but more copiously, and with more ornament than in those that were before them.”9

8 Lucian, Works. Trans. K. Kilburn. 8 vols. London: Heinemann / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1968, vol. VI, pp. 15–65. 9 The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Collected and edited by Sir William Molesworth. London: J. Bohn, 1839–1845, vol. VIII (Translation of Thucydides), p. xxii.

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Miriam M. Reik comments upon this passage in the following manner: By skillful description, the historian provokes the emotions of a spectator in the reader, and the events thereby become “evident”—a word that appears several times in the Hobbes essay and one that he uses more in the older meaning of the immediately manifest or “seen”. While the events of the past are not open to present observation, yet the historian can present true images of them which the reader observes and thus becomes an indirect eyewitness to them.10

Here the representation of the past as a present event is connected with the theatrical metaphor. It will recur several times in the following discussion; for it regularly contributes to the realistic semblance of the works under consideration. The inventio of fictive circumstances added to the reported historical facts can also contribute to amplifying the effet de vérité introduced by the enargeia procedure—a point made by the historian Carlo Ginzburg about historiography.11 Both Cicero and Quintilian therefore place special value on the ability of a rhetorical description to produce the semblance of reality. Such a “making present” takes place not before the outer eye but before the inner eye of the imagination. The enargeia or evidentia of the description thus aims to generate effective images, which depict as present that which is temporally and spatially absent. The procedure itself is frequently termed πρὸ ὀμμάτων τιθέναι or oculis subicere. In his treatise Peri Hermeneias (“On Style”) Demetrius of Phaleron (ca. 350–ca. 280 B.C.) makes the following claim: Πρῶτον δὲ περὶ ἐναργείας•γίνεται δ᾿ ἡ ἐνάργεια πρῶτα μὲν ἐξ ἀκριβολογίας καὶ τοῦ παραλείπειν μηδὲν μηδ᾿ ἐκτέμνειν, οἷον “ὡς δ᾿ ὅτ᾿ ἀνὴρ ὀχετηγὸς” καὶ πᾶσα αὕτη ἡ παραβολή •τὸ γὰρ ἐναργὲς ἔχει ἐκ τοῦ πάντα εἰρῆσθαι τὰ συμβαίνοντα, καὶ μὴ παραλελεῖφθαι μηδέν. We shall treat first of vividness, which arises from an exact narration overlooking no detail and cutting out nothing. An instance is the Homeric simile which begins “As when a man draws off water by a runnel.” [Il.xxi.257]. The

10 Miriam M. Reik, The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1977, p. 47. 11 Carlo Ginzburg, “Veranschaulichung und Zitat: Die Wahrheit der Geschichte”, in: Fernand Braudel et al., Der Historiker als Menschenfresser: Über den Beruf des Geschichtsschreibers. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1990, pp. 85–102.



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comparison owes its vividness to the fact that all the things that happen are mentioned and nothing is omitted.12

The stylistic principle of enargeia therefore comes about through the concreteness of many details (circumstantiae). These create the realistic effect which makes an abstract and absent state of affairs concrete and “manifest” in the present of the recipient. In Classical Antiquity the concept of enargeia is a frequent topic of discussion, not only in the context of rhetoric,13 but also in philosophical writings on ontology and epistemology by Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, and the New Academy.14 Thus in his ethical treatise De finibus bonorum et malorum (About the Ends of Goods and Evils) II.xxi.69 Cicero reports that the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes used to instruct his listeners to produce imaginary panel paintings: Non potes ergo ista tueri, Torquate, mihi crede, si te ipse et tuas cogitationes et studia perspexeris; pudebit te, inquam, illius tabulae quam Cleanthes sane commode verbis depingere solebat. Iubebat eos qui audiebant secum ipsos cogitare pictam in tabula voluptatem pulcherrimo vestitu et ornatu regali in solio sedentem; praesto esse virtutes ut ancillulas, quae nihil aliud agerent, nullum suum officium ducerent nisi ut voluptati ministrarent, et eam tantum ad aurem admonerent (si modo id pictura intellegi posset) ut

12 Demetrius, On Style. In: Aristotle, The Poetics; “Longinus”, On the Sublime; Demetrius, On Style. London: Heinemann / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1960, pp. 428–429. Further texts by and information on Demetrius in: Demetrius of Phalerum, Text, Translation and Discussion. Edited by William W. Fortenbaugh & Eckart Schütrumpf. New Brunswick (U.S.A.) / London: Transaction Publishers, 2000. 13 Further occurrences of enarg(e)ia are to be found in late classical compendia of rhetoric such as De schematis Dianoeas by Julius Rufinianus, where we read: “᾿Ενάργεια est figura, qua formam rerum et imaginem ita oratione substituimus, ut lectoris oculis praesentiaeque subiciamus.” Or in the anonymous Schemata Dianoeas, quae ad rhetores pertinent, where we read: “᾿Ενάργεια est imaginatio, quae actum incorporeis oculis subicit et fit modis tribus: persona, loco, tempore. Persona, cum absentem alloquimur quasi praesentem. Vergilius: Nec tu carminibus nostris indictus abibis, Oebale. Loco, cum eum, qui non est in conspectu nostro, tanquam videntes demonstramus, ut Hic Dolopum manus, hic saevus tendebat Achilles. Tempore, cum praeterito utimur quasi praesenti, ut : Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.” Or in Isidorus of Sevilla, De rhetorica: “[. . .] At contra orationem extollit et exornat energia, tum emphasis, quae plus quiddam, quam dixerit, intellegi facit, ut si dicas: ‘ad gloriam Scipionis ascendit’, et Vergilius:’ demissum lapsi per funem.’ Cum enim dicit lapsi, altitudinem suggerit. Huic contraria virtus est verbis minuere quae natura sua magna sunt. [. . .]. Enargia est rerum gestarum aut quasi gestarum sub oculis inductio [. . .].” (Quoted from: Carolus Halm (ed.), Rhetores Latini minores. Lipsiae: In aedibus B.G. Teubneri, A.MDCCCLXIII, reprint: Dubuque, Iowa: Brown Reprint Library, [n.d.], pp. 62.29, 71.1, 517.10, 521,2). 14 Cf. Nina Otto, Enargeia: Untersuchung zur Charakteristik alexandrinischer Dichtung. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2009, Chap. II.

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chapter one caveret ne quid faceret imprudens quod offenderet animos hominum, aut quidquam e quo oriretur aliquis dolor. ‘Nos quidem virtutes sic natae sumus ut tibi serviremus; aliud negoti nihil habemus.’ Believe me then, Torquatus, if you will but look within, and study your own thoughts and inclinations, you cannot continue to defend the doctrines you profess. You will be put to the blush, I say, by the picture that Cleanthes used to draw so cleverly in his lectures. He would tell his audience to imagine a painting representing Pleasure, decked as a queen, and gorgeously apparelled, seated on a throne; at her side should stand the Virtues as her handmaids, who should make it their sole object and duty to minister to Pleasure, merely whispering in her ear the warning (provided this could be conveyed by the painter’s art) to beware of unwittingly doing aught to offend public opinion, or anything from which pain might result. ’As for us Virtues, we were born to be your slaves; that is our one and only business.’15

In philosophical protreptics therefore use was made of a pictorial internalisation in order to imprint moral instructions by such a kind of exemplum. In this context a famous ekphrasis deserves mentioning, that is The Calumny of Apelles of the Sophist Lucian of Samosata who rendered details of a painting by Apelles which was no longer extant in his lifetime and thus could not serve as the basis of a mimetic ekphrasis. Lucian gives the following description of this imaginary picture: On the right of it sits a man with very large ears, almost like those of Midas, extending his hand to Slander while she is still at some distance from him. Near him, on one side, stand two women—Ignorance, I think, and Suspicion. On the other side, Slander is coming up, a woman beautiful beyond measure, but full of passion and excitement, evincing as she does fury and wrath by carrying in her left hand a blazing torch and with the other dragging by the hair a young man who stretches out his hands to heaven and calls the gods to witness his innocence. She is conducted by a pale ugly man who has a piercing eye and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness; he may be supposed to be Envy. Besides, there are two women in attendance on Slander, egging her on, tiring [dressing] her and tricking her out. According to the interpretation of them given me by the guide of the picture, one was Treachery and the other Deceit. They were followed by a woman dressed in deep mourning, with black clothes all in tatters—Repentance, I think, her name was. At all events, she was turning back with tears in her eyes and casting a stealthy glance, full of shame, at Truth, who was approaching.16 15 Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum. With an English translation by H. Rackham. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP / London: Heinemann, 1967, pp. 156–159. 16 Quoted from Rudolph Altrocchi, “The Calumny of Apelles in the Literature of the Quattrocento”, PMLA 36/3 (1921), 354–491, here: 456–457 (Quotation of the translation of



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Figure 1. Sandro Botticelli: La Calumnia di Apelle

This verbal picture was transposed into an allegorical painting by the artist Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510). Under the title La Calumnia di Apelle it is on exhibit in the Florentine Galleria degli Uffizi.17 A modern description of this picture, together with a commentary, is given by Federico Poletti: À la frontière entre l’expressionisme moralisateur et la grâce mondaine, cette Calomnie d’Apelle marque le retour de Botticelli à l’allégorie profane complexe, mais traitée dans un langage nouveau, qui transpose en images picturales d’érudites citations classiques et se réfère directement à une description de Lucien réélaborée par Leon Battista Alberti. Datable vers 1495–1496, le tableau fut conçu au lendemain du bannissement définitif des Médicis de Florence, dans un climat propice aux délations et aux dénonciations des partisans de cette maison. Ce petit panneau se réfère ainsi à

A.M. Harmon).—On a further ekphrasis by Lucian cf. Zahra Newby, “Testing the Boundaries of Ekphrasis: Lucian on the Hall”, Ramus: Critical Studies on Greek and Roman Literature 31 (2002), 126–235. 17 For interpretations of this painting cf. David Cast, The Calumny of Apelles: A Study in the Humanist Tradition. New Haven: Yale UP, 1981 and—in the context of the artist’s biography—Andreas Schumacher, “Der Maler Sandro Botticelli: Eine Einführung in sein Werk”, in: Botticelli: Bildnis—Mythos—Andacht. Ed. A. Schumacher. Exposition catalogue. Frankfurt/Main: Städel Museum, 2010, pp. 15–55, esp. pp. 23–24.

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chapter one l’injustice subie par le peintre Apelle, comme le relatent Lucien et un célèbre passage du De Pictura (De la peinture) de Leon Battista Alberti. Dans un espace à la perspective très calculée, decoré de sculptures inspirées de l’antique et orné de bas-reliefs, l’Innocence est traînée par la Calomnie— que la Tromperie et la Fraude agrémentent de fleurs et de tresses—devant Midas, qui a pour conseillers l’Ignorance et le Soupçon. Le lien entre les deux groupes est assuré par la Rancœur, qui tient la Calomnie par la main et, d’un geste péremptoire, demande audience auprès de Midas; à l’extrême gauche, la triste Pénitence observe la Vérité nue. Les motifs des bas-reliefs mettent en evidence l’extraordinaire culture littéraire qui nourrit le tableau; on y retrouve une iconographie puisant à des sources diverses, de la mythologie classique aux Saintes Écritures, de Dante et Boccace (très mal vu à l’époque) à des textes encore non identifiés. La signification d’ensemble de l’œuvre reste à ce jour en partie obscure; surtout, la question principale qu’elle pose demeure sans réponse; qui est l’innocent calomnié à tort, destinataire idéal de l’œuvre, et pour quel motif ? Certains voient en Botticelli lui-même le calomnié, à cause, entre autres, de ses liens avec les Médicis; d’autres pensent que l’artiste offrit le tableau à son ami Antonio Segni, qui pourrait être le protagoniste du tableau, en raison d’événements d’ordre privé qui nous sont inconnus.18

It is therefore possible that this allegorical painting can be “read” in a similar manner as the Greek painter Apelles (b. 375 B.C.) had originally conceived it, namely as a defence against a false accusation of a plot against the ruling pharaoh by another artist, allegedly a false friend and envious colleague, the painter Antiphilos (fl. later 4th cent. BC), at the court of Ptolemy IV Philopater (221–205 B.C.) in Alexandria. If utilized by Botticelli in a similar manner at the court of the Medici in Florence, this painting can be interpreted as a pictorial allegory in the function of a rhetorical exemplum. According to David Cast such an interpretation raises the following difficulty: If the past was like the present, could an image of the past be used to comment on what was going on in Florence in any specific way? Perhaps this painting is an allegory of misrule; might it then be a criticism of the misrule of Piero de’ Medici? Was it a comment on the circumstances that had led to the execution of Savonarola? Was it a response to charges made against Botticelli himself, for whatever reason? Is it a comment on one event?—or is it a general description of a common moral problem, the role of envy, calumny and judgment in the suffering of innocent people? It is easy to

18 Botticelli: poète du détail. Sous la direction de Cristina Acidini. Introduction de Cristina Acidini. Essai de André Chastel. Notices de William Dello Russo & Federico Poletti. Paris: Flammarion, 2010, p. 234 [p. 235: picture].



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enumerate the possibilities; it is difficult—and will take some time—to decide which of them is most likely.19

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), in De pictura, took up and altered Lucian’s description of the Calumny of Apelles, which Guarino da Verona (1374–1460) had translated from the Greek into Latin.20 Alberti’s commentary reads as follows: Atqui ea quidem [sc. inventio] hanc habet vim, ut etiam sola inventio sine pictura delectet. Laudatur, dum legitur, illa Calumniae decriptio quam ab Apelle pictam refert Lucianus. Eam quidem enarrare minime ab instituto alienum esse censeo, quo pictores admoneantur eiusmodi inventionibus fabricandis advigilare oportere.21 A beautiful invention has such force, as will be seen, that even without painting it is pleasing in itself alone. Invention is praised when one reads the description of Calumny which Lucian recounts was painted by Apelles. I do not think it alien to our subject. I will narrate it here in order to point out to painters where they ought to be most aware and careful in their inventions. [. . . . .].22

Invention is therefore the most important element in a painting, which means that the latter is not really necessary for an impact on the recipient. According to pictorial theory invention is identical with the historia of the work of art.23 Its effectiveness is therefore based on the idea or subject matter that is its foundation and not on the completed pictoriality. Transferred to the verbal arts this means that the inventio is of greater importance than the elocutio. For it is the inventio that, as it were, retrieves from memoria what otherwise would be lost and become a prey to oblivion. From the humanistic point of view, the non-tangible past of Antiquity thus acquires the hidden function of immediate, topical presence. The

19 Cast, The Calumny of Apelles, p. 32. 20 Cf. Richard Förster, “Die Verleumdung des Apelles in der Renaissance”, Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen 8 (1887), 29–56 & 89–113; Rudolph Altrocchi, “The Calumny of Apelles in the Literature of the Quattrocento”, PMLA 36/3 (1921), 454–491; Michael Baxandall, “Guarino, Pisanello and Manuel Chrysolaras”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965), 183–204. 21 Leon Battista Alberti, De Statua / Pictura / Elementa Picturae. Edited, introduced, translated [into German] and commented upon by Oskar Bätschmann et al. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2000, p. 294. 22 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting. Translated with Introduction and Notes by John R. Spencer. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 41973, p. 90. 23 Cf. Clark Hulse, The Rule of Art: Literature and Painting in the Renaissance. Chicago / London: University of Chicago Press, 1990, chap. 3: “Alberti and History” (pp. 47–76 [188–192]).

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basis for this is not provided by mimesis, since the ancient model has not been preserved and is therefore inaccessible, but by the imagination alone. In this vein Peter Paul Rubens (1577– 1640) remarks to Franciscus Junius, in a letter dated August 1st, 1637, in which he thanks him for sending De pictura veterum: Sed quoniam exempla illa veterum pictorum fantasia tantum et pro cuiusque captu magis aut minus assequi possumus, vellem equidem eadem diligentia similem quandoque tractatum excudi posse de picturis Italorum, quorum exemplaria sive prototypa adhuc hodie publice prostant, et digito possunt monstrari et diçier, “haec sunt.” Nam illa, quae sub sensum cadunt, acrius imprimuntur, et haerent, et exactius examen requirunt, atque materiam uberiorem proficiendi studiosis praebent, quam illa, quae sola imaginatione tanquam somnia se nobis offerunt et verbis tantum adumbrata ter frustra comprensa (ut Orpheum Euridices imago) eludunt saepe et sua quemque spe frustrantur. Quod experti dicimus, nam quotusquisque nostrum si praeclarum aliquod Apellis aut Timanthis opus, a Plinio aut aliis autoribus graphice descriptum, pro rei dignitate oculis subicere tentaturus, aliquid non insulsum aut a veterum maiestate non alienum praestabit; sed genio suo quisque indulgens, musteum aliquid pro Opiniano illo dulce amaro promet et iniuriam magnis illis manibus afferet, quos ego veneratione summa prosequor, et vestigia euntium potius adoro, quam vel sola cogitatione assequi me posse ingenue profiteor. Yet, since we can pursue those examples of ancient painters only more or less in our imagination and according to our capacity, I would indeed wish that one day, with the same carefulness, a similar treatise could be made on the paintings of the Italians, whose examples or originals still openly exist today and can be pointed at with a finger and be said, “This is it.” For those that are perceived by the senses are more sharply impressed and stick, and require more precise examination and provide richer matter useful to students than those that present themselves to us only by imagination, just like a dream, and often delude us, as they are expressed only by words, and traced thrice to no avail ( just as Euridice’s image eluded Orpheus), and frustrate everybody in their hope. We say so from experience. For, if they try to bring before the eyes an excellent work by Apelles or Timantes which has graphically been described by Pliny or other authors in accordance with its dignity, how few of us will furnish something that is not insipid or not alien to the ancients’ majesty; but fond of their genius, everyone will produce some must instead of that bittersweet Opimian wine and bring injury to those great hands, which I honour with deepest veneration, and I rather worship the steps of the going than I frankly acknowledge to be able to pursue even only in thought.24 24 Quoted from “FOR MY WORTHY FREIND MR FRANCISCUS JUNIUS”: An edition of the Correspondence of Franciscus Junius F.F. (1591–1677). By Sophie van Romburgh. Leiden /



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Here Rubens appears to be joining the debate between the Antiqui and the Moderni, and in doing so makes a distinction between two types of art historiography. The first, which deals with art works of Classical Antiquity, must rely solely on the written testimony of Pliny the Elder, Quintilian or other authors, as the art works themselves have for the most part been lost.25 Since art requires the visual capacity of the beholder in order to be perceived, imagination takes the place of sight for the purpose of reconstructing the lost image and, as it were, making it visible in the present.26 Rubens is aware that this is true of all the paintings from Antiquity, but emphatically contrasts this history of ancient art, which is based on the archeology of the imagination, with a call for an art history of pictures which are actually available, namely those produced by contemporary Italians. These would require no ekphrasis and no enargeia, in any case unreliable instruments which can—as the Orpheus myth testifies—lead to error and loss. In opposition to the daydream Quintilian cites as a prerequisite for an enargetic description, namely the imagination, he places the verifiable concreteness of visual reception based on a scientifically exact delineation, such as scholars of art history practise today. In the letter quoted above Rubens speaks like a visual artist for whom the enargetic ekphrasis of a Lucian or the Philostrati cannot compete with the painted picture. The fictive “placing before the eyes” with the aid of enargeia is hopelessly inferior to actual, optical visuality. Here, then, rhetoric fails in its task of capturing the imagination with the beautiful semblance it produces as a substitute for aesthetic sense perception. It succeeds mainly in the area of the verbal arts, poetry in particular. In Classical Antiquity we find a detailed definition of enargeia in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (ca. 50 B.C.–7 A.D.), when he attributes the lively Boston: Brill, 2004, letter no. 114b, pp. 598–601. On Rubens cf. Joanna Woodall et al. (eds.), Pieter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance. Oil Sketches and Related Works from the State Hermitage Museum and the Courtauld Institute Gallery. Munich / Berlin /London / New York: Prestel, 2003. 25 On the Greek sources of Pliny the Elder and Quintilian cf., among others, R.G. Austin, “Quintilian on Painting and Statuary”, Classical Quarterly 38 (1994), 17–26; Fernand Hallyn, “Quintilien et le débat sur la peinture à l’âge classique: l’expression des passions”, in: Quintilien ancien et moderne. Ed. Perrine Galand et al. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010, pp. 515–526.— Cf. also Jacob Isager, Pliny on Art and Society: The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art. Trans. H. Rosenmeier. Odense, Denmark: Odense UP, 1991, also London / New York: Routledge, 1991, rpt. 2010. 26 For a modern view cf. the article by Nadia J. Koch, “Zur Bedeutung der phantasia für die Rekonstruktion der klassischen Tafelmalerei”, in: Maiandros: Festschrift für Volkmar von Graeve. Ed. R. Biering et al. München: Biering & Brinkmann, 2006, pp. 165–178, esp. p. 172.

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style of the orator Lysias to his use of concrete details (ta parakolouthounta) (Lysias, 7);27 in this way he transforms, as it were, the listener into an eyewitness (ὁρἆν).28 As pointed out, Pseudo-Demetrius also emphasized the relevance of descriptive details for an effective enargeia, citing two outstanding pictorial passages from Homer’s Iliad (21.257 & 23.379–381).29 In Pseudo-Longinus (15.1) the accent is rather on the phantasia, which he views as activated in such a way that the orator “sees” what he is speaking about and presents it to the eyes of the listeners. This vivid immediacy is therefore completely fictive. For this reason enargeia can be viewed as the basic presupposition for the constitution of the artes—of poetry, the visual arts and music—and for their rhetorical foundation in poetics and theories of art and music. In further pursuing this question, it is important to keep in mind that in the theories of the Early Modern Age numerous synonyms appear for enargeia and evidentia. In the widely used textbook Epitome troporum ac schematum et grammaticorum et rhetorum (1562) by Joannes Susenbrotus (1484/5–1542/1543) they are identified with hypotyposis and illustratio, but also with energia, the Latin equivalent of the Greek enérgeia, a term with which it is often confused if not completely fused in the Early Modern Era.30

27 “According to Dionysius ἐνάργεια is the stylistic effect in which appeal is made to the senses of the listener and attendant circumstances are described in such a way that the listener will be turned into an eyewitness (ὁρᾶν); he will inevitably see the events Lysias depicts and, as it were, feel the presence of the characters he introduces. The sense uppermost in Dionysius’ mind is plainly sight.” (Quoted from Graham Zanker, “Enargeia in Ancient Criticism of Poetry”, Rheinisches Museum 124 (1981), 297–311, here: 297). 28 Cf. Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham / Burlington: Ashgate, 2009, p. 93–94. 29 Demetrius, On Style. Ed. & trans. William Rhys Roberts. Hildesheim: Olms, 1969, pp. 209–210. 30 Joannes Susenbrotus, Epitome troporum ac schematum et grammaticorum & rhetorum. Londini: Apud Gerardum Drewes, super coemiterium D. Pauli. M.D.LXII, p. 86. The critical term enargia also appears in Richard Sherry’s Treatise of Schemes and Tropes (1550), which is based on Susenbrotus, in the following definition: “Enargia, euidence or perspicuitie called also descripcion rethoricall, is when a thynge is so described that it seemeth to the hearer or reader [that] he beholdeth it as it were in doyng. Of this figure be many kyndes.” (Facsimile Reprint. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1961, p. 66). Cf. the articles by C. Downey, “Ekphrasis”, RAC, IV, 921–944; D.P. Fowler, “Narrate and describe—The Problem of ekphrasis”, Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991), 25–34; Sandrine Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia: La description antique comme parcours”, in: Carlos Lévy & Laurent Pernot (eds.), Dire l’évidence (Philosophie et rhétorique antiques). Paris: Éditions L‘Harmattan, 1997, pp. 249–264: Bernhard F. Scholz, “Ekphrasis and Enargeia in Quintilian’s Institutionis Oratoriae libri xii”, in: P.L. Oesterreich & T.O. Sloane (eds.), “Rhetorica



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In The Arte of English Poesie (1589) by George Puttenham (ca. 1529– 1590) what was previously called enargeia or evidentia appears under the heading “Hypotiposis, or the counterfait representation”, which, he maintains, requires great “cunning,” “wit” and “invention,” especially since it often involves fabricating something that has never existed and will never exist.31 In Puttenham’s description, therefore, enargeia emerges as a special characteristic of mimetic invention. Hypotyposis is also the equivalent of enargeia in the mannerist poetics Il Cannocchiale Aristotelico (1770) of the rhetorician, dramatist, and historian Emanuele Tesauro (1592–1675). The work which is primarily on tropes subtitles the chapter on METAPHORA QVARTA as D’Hipotiposi defining this metaphor in the following way: “[. . .] io vengo alla HIPOTIPOSI, qual dicemmo essere il Quarto Genere delle Figure Ingeniose. Questa è quella, che pon sotto gli occhi con viuezza ogni Vocabulo: & consequentemente, ogni Continuata Oratione, ogni Motto, ogni Concetto, ogni Simbolo, ogni Pittura; & qualunque faceto ò tragico ritrouamento [. . . .].”32 Which means that Tesauro here may follow Aristotle’s treatment of ἐνέργεια as a vivifying metaphor setting things before the eyes (Rhetoric III.xi.1: πρὸ ὀμμάτων ποιεῖν).33 Tesauro differs from Aristotle in that he defines this metaphor as an “ingenious figure”, that is, a mannerist trope to be found in allegory (= continuata oratio), motto, conceit, symbol, and picture.

movet”: Studies in Historical and Modern Rhetoric in Honour of Heinrich F. Plett. Leiden / Boston / Köln: Brill, 1999, pp. 3–24. 31 George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie. Ed. Gladys Doidge Willcock & Alice Walker. Cambridge: CUP, 1970 (1936), p. 238. On Puttenham cf. Dorothee Rölli-Alkemper, Höfische Poetik in der Renaissance: George Puttenhams “The Arte of English Poesie” (1589). München: Fink, 1996.—On Puttenham’s enargeia cf. Linda Galyon,”Puttenham’s Enargeia and Energeia: New Twists for Old Terms”, Philological Quarterly 60 (1981), 29–40. 32 Emanuele Tesauro, Il CANNOCCHIALE ARISTOTELICO O sia Idea DELL’ ARGVTA ET INGENIOSA ELOCVTIONE. IN TORINO, M.DC.LXX—Facsimile Reprint. Ed. August Buck. Bad Homburg v.d.H. / Berlin / Zürich: Gehlen, 1968, p. 396; translation: “I come to the Hypotyposis which we designate as the fourth genre of the ingenious figures. This is that one which puts vividly before one’s eyes every word and, consequently, every continued oration, every motto, every concetto, every symbol, every picture, and whatever we deem facetious or tragic.”—In the context of his theory Tesauro’s continuata oratio seems identical with continuata translatio, Quintilian’s technical term for allegory in his Institutio Oratoria VIII.vi.44. 33 Cf. Sara Newman, “Aristotle’s Notion of ‘Bringing-Before-the-Eyes’: Its Contributions to Aristotelian and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Metaphor, Style, and Audience”, Rhetorica 20/1 (2002), 1–23.

Chapter Two

Enargeia in Humanist Writings and Its Theoretical Foundation With these premises as a point of departure, we can now examine more sources of humanist rhetoric and poetics as well as texts in which enargeia or evidentia has constitutive significance either for the individual text or for the genre. It must be kept in mind here that in the Early Modern Age rhetoric and poetics were considered sister arts. The Dutch humanist Gerhardus Joannes Vossius (1577–1649), for example, writes: “Poeticam et Oratoriam esse disciplinas affines ac priorem quidem ad alteram praeparare.”1 The relation between the two arts is of particular significance, however, in the rhetorical theory of style (elocutio). For this reason we will first discuss the widely used manual on rhetorical figures mentioned by Susenbrotus: De duplici copia rerum ac verborum by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536).2 This work devotes a great deal of attention to the art of describing—ekphrasis or descriptio—and the various forms it can take.3 About the ekphrasis of an object (descriptio rei) Erasmus writes in the Quinta ratio locupletandi of Book II of his epochal work De duplici copia (London 1573):

1 Gerhardus Joannes Vossius, Tractatus philologi de rhetorica, de poetica, de artium et scientiarum natura et constitutione quorum catalogum pagina post praefationem exhibet. Amstelodami, 1697, vol. IX, § 7, p. 23, quoted from P. Kehrli, “Rhétorique et Poésie: Le De Eloquentia sacra et humana (1618) de Nicolas Caussin”, Travaux de linguistique et de littérature 14 (1976), 21–50, here: 35, n. 35. 2 On this rhetoric cf. Jacques Chomarat, Grammaire et rhétorique chez Erasme. 2 vols. Paris: Société d’ Édition “Les Belles Lettres”, 1981, vol. II, chap. V: “Le style et l’art d’écrire” (pp. 711–843); Thomas O. Sloane, On the Contrary: The Protocol of Traditional Rhetoric. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997, esp. chap. 3: “Copiousness” (pp. 56–79). 3 On ekphrasis in Antiquity cf. Paul Friedländer, Johannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius Kunstbeschreibungen justinianischer Zeit. Leipzig / Berlin: Teubner, 1912 and, recently, the special issue of Classical Philology 102/1 (2007). Ed. Shadi Bartsch & Jaś Elsner.—On the aesthetics of ekphrasis in the Modern Age cf. Murray Krieger, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign. Emblems by Joan Krieger. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992; Stephen Cheeke, Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis. Manchester / New York: Manchester UP, 2008.

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Figure 2. Albrecht Dürer: Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam



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Rei descriptione locupletabimus orationem, quum id quod fit aut factum est non summatim, aut tenuiter exponemus, sed omnibus fucatu[m] coloribus ob oculos ponemus, vt auditorem siue lectorem iam extra se positum velut in theatrum auocet. Hanc ab effingenda rerum imagine Graeci vocant Hypotyposim.4 We shall enrich speech by description of a thing when we do not relate what is done, or has been done, summarily or sketchily, but place it before the reader painted with all the colors of rhetoric, so that at length it draws the hearer or reader outside himself as in the theatre. The Greeks call this ὑποτύπωσις from painting the picture of things.5

This can be called the iconicity or “theatricality” of ekphrasis.6 Presupposed here is the imaginary picture which the rhetorician can produce himself by means of an artificially generated act of imagination—but not only the rhetorician; the poet also uses these means to create a fictive world. Thus Aristotle gives the following advice to dramatists in his Poetics (§ 17 [1455a]): [. . . . .] in constructing one’s plots and working them out in language one should put them directly before one’s eyes as much as possible. That way, seeing most vividly, as if he were actually getting close to the events as they happen, the poet can devise the appropriate “business,” and discrepancies are least likely to escape his notice.7

In other words, the poet should first conjure up (πρὸ ὀμμάτων τιθέναι) the plot of a tragedy in such a way that in his imagination he seems to be present at the events himself, so that he can concretise the plot in keeping with the principle of decorum (πρέπον). In his imaginary theatrum poeticum he himself plays one of the roles. At the same time, however, he stands outside the play, confronting it as its inventor and creator. Turning now to the aspect of theatricality in enargetic ekphrasis, we find the concept raised to a mythological-theological dimension in the Fabula

4 D. ERASMI ROTERODAMI DE DVPLICI COPIA VERBORVM AC RERVM COMMENTARII DVO, multa accessione nouisque formulis locupletati. Vna cum commentarijs M. Veltkirchij Oratoriæ professoris in schola Wittembergensi, iam recens natis ac æditis. LONDINI, Apud Henricum Middletonum. Anno Domini 1573, p. 121. 5 Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, On Copia of Words and Ideas (De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia). Translated from the Latin with an Introduction by Donald B. King & H. David Rix. Milwaukee, Wis: Marquette University Press, 1963, p. 47. 6 Cf. Astrid Schenka, Ekphrasis und Theatralität: Begegnung zweier Konzepte. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2007. 7 Aristotle, Poetics. Translated with an introduction and notes by Gerald F. Else. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1970, p. 47.

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de homine (1518) of the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540).8 This allegorical fable begins with Juno asking Jove to use his omnipotence to improvise an amphitheatre and create new characters of the type familiar from conventional drama. Her request was granted, and thus the whole world in all its diversity came into being at the behest of almighty Jupiter. The gods were seated as spectators in the heavenly region while the earth served as a stage for the human actors as well as all other living creatures. The director of this play was Jupiter, and when all actors were present he gave the signal to begin the performance. Everyone then entered the stage and enacted their many types of dramas: tragedies, comedies, satires, mimes and farces. When Juno asked the spectators who was the best actor, most of them said: the human being. This actor, however, had the ability to transform himself into every possible guise: as a plant [planta], as an animal [belua], as a human being [homo], as an angel [angelus], until he finally, as a second Proteus, was even able to enact an imitation of the gods. On seeing this, the gods embraced him as their brother and offered him a place beside themselves, since the stage with its disrespectful art of theatre was not worthy of him. Humanity therefore appears as mimus dei and in this way acquires its exalted position in the great chain of being.9 The form in which the poeta theologus Vives presents this philosophical theology is that of a mythopoetic ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is the genre which ever since Classical Antiquity made use of enargeia to influence the affects of listeners or readers. As the late classical Theon writes in his Progymnasmata: ἔκφρασις ἐστὶ λόγος ἐναργῶς ὑπ᾿ ὄψιν ἄγων τὸ δηλούμενον. Ekphrasis is a descriptive speech that brings the thing shown vividly before the eyes.10

And Nikolaos of Myra in his Progymnasmata writes:

8 Text in: Joannis Ludovicis Vivis Valentini Opera Omnia. Valentiae 1783, vol. IV, pp. 3–8; English translation and introduction by Nancy Lenketh in: Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller & John Herman Randall, Jr. (eds.), The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948, pp. 383–393. 9 Cf. J.A. Fernández-Santamaría, The Theater of Man: J.L. Vives on Society. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998; Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea. With a new introduction by Peter J. Stanlis. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2009. 10 Quoted from Simon Goldhill, “What is Ekphrasis for?”, Classical Philology. Special issue on ekphrasis. Ed. Shadi Bartsch & Jaś Elsner. 102/1 (2007), 1–19, here: 3.



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πρόσκειται δ’ ἐναργῶς, ὅτι κατὰ τοῦτο μάλιστα τῆς διηγήσεως διαφέρει. ἣ μὲν γὰρ ψιλὴν ἔχει ἔκθεσιν πραγμάτων, ἣ δὲ πειρᾶται θεατὰς τοὺς ἀκούοντας ἐργάζεσθαι.11 Vividness (enargeia) is singled out as a special characteristic of ekphrasis, because it is primarily on this point that it differs from a report—for the latter contains a merely factual presentation of the object, while the former tries to turn listeners [or readers] into spectators.12

The Progymnasmata of the Greek Sophist and rhetorician Aphthonius of Antioch (fl. second half of the 4th cent.) are available in a bilingual edition from the year 1626 in the Latin translation by Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655). There the reader encounters the following explication of descriptio: Descriptio, oratio est, rem propositam ita circunscribens, vt eam euidenter & perspicuè subiiciat oculis. Describenda autem sunt Personæ, Res, Tempora, Loca, ratione carentia Animalia, ac Plantæ. Personæ quidem, vt in Odyssea de Eurybate Homerus. [. . . . .].13 A description is an oration describing a proposed object in such a manner that this is placed in an evident and perspicuous way before one’s eyes. Objects of description are persons, things, times, places, animals lacking reason, plants. Among the persons that are described belongs, for instance, Eurybatis in Homer’s Odyssey. [. . . .].

A person reading Juan Luis Vives’ Fabula de homine is indeed transformed from a reader into a spectator. This effect is produced not only by the allegorical frame of presentation, but also by its graphic vividness, for there is nothing static in this narrative, but a dynamic forward movement of the action, as in a drama. Jupiter is the director of the mythological play, but not of the ekphrasis. It is rather the skilled rhetorician who, as a deus faber, stages this scene and fills it with so much vivid detail that the reader finds himself in an imaginary theatrum mundi. The rhetorical device used here is that of pragmatographia or descriptio rei. This lies at the basis of

11  Nicolai [Myrensis] Progymnasmata. Ed. Joseph Felten. Lipsiae: Teubner, 1913, p. 68. 12 Cf. Fritz Graf, “Ekphrasis: Die Entstehung der Gattung in der Antike”, in Gottfried Boehm & Helmut Pfotenhauer (eds.), Beschreibungskunst—Kunstbeschreibung: Ekphrasis von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: München: Fink, 1995, pp. 143–155, here: p. 145; Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric. Translated with Introductions and Notes by George A. Kennedy. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003, pp. 45–47. 13 ΑΦΘΟΝΙΟΥ ΣΟΦΙΣΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΓΥΜΝΑΣΜΑΤΑ / APHTHONII SOPHISTÆ PROGYMNASMATA. Accedit ejusdem Interpretatio, ita emendata, vt noua videri poßit. LVGDVNI BATAVORVM. Apud ABRAHAMVM COMMELINVM. M.DCXXVI., pp. 71–72 (Reprint as Anthonii Sophistae Progymnasmata [1626]. Daniel Heinsius Aphthonius. (Kessinger Reprint, [2009]).

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all classical and modern descriptions of objects and events. Probably the best-known ekphrastic presentations from Antiquity are the Eikones of the Philostrati and the poetic descriptions of the shield of Achilles by Homer and the shield of Aeneas by Virgil. Classical and early modern rhetoricians make frequent reference to these examples.14

14 In Antiquity enargeia was regarded as constitutive for poetry, above all in Homer and Virgil; cf. Claude Calame, “Quand dire c’est faire voire: L’évidence dans la rhétorique antique”, in: Études de lettres: Revue de l’Université de Lausanne. Réd. et administr. Gilbert Guisan (et al.). Lausanne: Faculté des Lettres de Lausanne, 1991, pp. 3–22.

Chapter Three

Shakespeare and Enargeia (A) In Shakespeare we find a striking instance of this enargetic ekphrasis in Enobarbus’ description of Cleopatra’s barge in Antony and Cleopatra (II.ii.201–215): The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggared all description; she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue; O’erpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature. On each side her Stood pretty-dimpled boys, like smiling cupids, With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did.1

This description comes across as a mythological painting, but one which does not limit itself solely to visual impressions; instead it mingles them with acoustic, olfactory, and tactile sensations. The addition of similes and metaphors transforms the ekphrasis into synaesthetic scenery filled with dramatic impulses provided by kinetic verbs. An even clearer appeal to the imagination is made in the Prologue to the history play Henry V, where we read: O, for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention; A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, 1 William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Ed. John Wilders. The Arden Shakespeare. London / New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 139–140.

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chapter three Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dar’d On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object; can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confin’d two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance; Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth; For ‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass: for the which supply, Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. [Exit]. (Henry V. I. Prol.1–34)2

Here an absent state of affairs is made present through the power of words alone: not in the sense of a real presence but an imaginary one. This point is emphasized by the speaker of the prologue in a series of varying expressions: the invocation of the Muse (1), the appeal to the “imaginary forces” of the audience (17), the imperative “suppose” (19), “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts”, “make imaginary puissance” (25), and “Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them / Printing their hoofs i’the receiving earth” (26–27). Again and again he conjures up the imaginary seeing—necessary in this drama because the stage available to Shakespeare was not large enough for an adequate mimesis, either with regard to the represented topography of the battlefields or the number of soldiers involved in the military encounters. In his Arte of English Poesie

2 William Shakespeare, King Henry V. Ed. John H. Walter. London: Methuen, 1962, pp. 5–7.



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(1589) George Puttenham (c.1529–1590) calls this poetic device “Hipotiposis, or the counterfait representation” and explains it as follows: The matter and occasion leadeth vs many times to describe and set foorth many things, in such sort as it should appeare they were truly before our eyes though they were not present, which to do it requireth cunning: for nothing can be kindly counterfait or represented in his absence, but by great discretion in the doer. And if the things we couet to describe be not naturall or not veritable, than yet the same axeth more cunning to do it, because to faine a thing that neuer was nor is like to be, proceedeth of a greater wit and sharper inuention than to describe things that be true.3

Two types of inventio are therefore implied here: one which represents real things or states of affairs, and one which makes visible something that is completely fictive. The latter type of inventio is mainly the task of the poet, the former of historians (among others), for whom enargeia has been a relevant means of representation ever since Classical Antiquity.4 As a historical dramatist Shakespeare occupies a middle position between the two types of inventio. 3 George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, p. 238. 4 Cf. Andrew D. Walker, “Enargeia and the Spectator in Greek Historiography”, Transactions of the American Philological Association 123 (1993), 353–377. In his treatise Bellone an pace clariores fuerint Athenienses: 3. Mor. 347a) Plutarch takes up the famous Simonides bon mot that “painting is silent poetry, poetry painting that speaks” and uses it for a discussion of historians and Thucydides in particular: καὶ τῶν ἱστορικῶν κράτιστος ὁ τὴν διήγησιν ὥσπερ γραφὴν πάθεσι καὶ προσώποις εἰδωλοποιήσας.—L. van der Stockt in: “Twinkling and Twilight: Plutarch’s Reflections on Literature”, Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschapen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, Jaargang 54, Nr. 145. Brussel: Paleis der Academiën, 1992, p. 31 comments upon this passage as follows: “In 347C Plutarch praises Thucydides explicitly for his story of the disastrous expedition to Sicily (Th.VII, 69.4 sqq.). [. . . . .] ‘by his word-painting’ and his vivid representation he is characterized by pictorial visuality’. In Nic. I, 1–2, too, Thucydides is abundantly lauded for the same story. Is it coincidental that Plutarch in Bellone an pace praises the same passage in Thucydides as Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Plutarch quotes Th.VII.71.1 and 3, Dionysius quotes Th.VII.69.4–72.1) and that his criticism in Nic. I, 1–2 shows the same rhetorical-practical interest as Dionysius, viz. in the question whether or not Thucydides is a model? [. . . . .] Finally, in view of this relation with rhetorical doctrine, for διατυπώσις [sic!] (“genaue Darstellung der Einzelnen [sic!] Vorgänge, lebhafte ‘malerische’ Schilderung”), we refer to H. LAUSBERG: ‘Die den statischen Charakter des Gesamtgegenstandes bedingende Gleichzeitigkeit der Einzelheiten ist das Gleichzeitigkeitserlebnis des Augenzeugen: der Redner versetzt sich und sein Publikum in die Lage des Augenzeugen’. The rhetorical ἐνάργεια appeals to the ὄψις and results in a strong emotional involvement of the hearer-readerspectator in the events: τὰ γιγνόμενα περὶ τοὺς ὁρῶντας ἐκπληκτικὰ καὶ ταρακτικὰ πάθη τοῖς ἀναγιγνώσκουσιν ἐνεργάσασθαι (347A). The mimetical ἐνάργεια, being a virtus dicendi, which as such is no verdict on the historical reliability, is a sensational-pathetical appeal to the spectator. Through the concept of mimetic ἐνάργεια, Plutarch reflects on the reception of the work of art rather than on its ontological status.”

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Another way of making the absent present can be found in Shakespeare’s romance Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608–1609). Here the speaker of the Prologue assumes the role of John Gower, a late-medieval English poet who lived from ca. 1330 to 1408 and wrote his three main works in three different languages: French, Latin, and English. The Prologue begins with the words: To sing a song that old was sung From ashes ancient Gower is come, Assuming man’s infirmities To glad your ear and please your eyes. It hath been sung at festivals, On ember eves and holy ales, And lords and ladies in their lives Have read it for restoratives. The purchase is to make men glorious, Et bonum quo antiquius eo melius. If you, born in these latter times When wit’s more ripe, accept my rhymes, And that to hear an old man sing May to your wishes pleasure bring, I life would wish, and that I might Waste it for your taper light. This Antioch, then. [Gestures.] (Pericles I. Chorus /1.01–1.0.17)5

Here the rhetorical role playing of prosopopoeia functions in a way familiar from the Mirror for Magistrates,6 bringing to life a figure long dead and placing him in the present in order to introduce to the audience a hitherto unknown dramatic work, possibly one written by the speaker himself. For it is no coincidence that a line of Latin verse is given to a character reminiscent of Gower—who was able to produce poetic works in Latin—as verification and attestation of verisimilitude. His self-representation ends with another fictive shift, first a spatial one from England (London) to Asia Minor (Antioch), where the story of Pericles takes place. Subsequently the entire dramatic action appears as the product of the poet and stage manager Gower, who assumes the role of a poeta orator with magical powers and who, like Prospero in The Tempest, can transpose seemingly impossible things into a present reality. Gower’s fictional role is not limited to

5 William Shakespeare, Pericles. Ed. Suzanne Gossett. London: Thompson, 2004, pp. 171–173. 6 Edition: The Mirror for Magistrates. Edited from the original texts in the Huntington Library by Lily B. Campbell. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1960 (11938).



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the Prologue, but also serves to introduce each dramatic act. In every case the narrated passage leads the audience into the scenic action of the drama. At times it is preceded by a pantomime, for which Gower assumes the role of commenting presenter: “What’s dumb in show I’ll plain with speech.” (III. Cho.14). The drama itself either immediately continues where the chorus words of Gower left off, or Gower explicitly announces the next stage action—as in the reference to the entrance of Pericles: And here he comes. What shall be next, Pardon old Gower, this ‘longs the text. (Per. II. Cho.39–40).7

The transition from the narratio to the actio is the translatio to a manifest presence, which the Spanish physician Juan Huarte Navarro (c. 1530–1592) describes as follows: The fourth propertie wherwith good oratours should be endowed, and the most important of all, is action, wherwith they giue a being and life to the things which they speake, and with the same do moue the hearers, and supple them to beleeue how that is true which they go about to persuade. For which cause Cicero said, Action is that which ought to be gouerned by the motion of the body, by the gesture, by the countenance, & by the confirmation and varietie of the voice. As if he should say: action ought to be directed in making the motions and gestures, which are requisite for the things that are spoken, lifting vp and falling with the voice, growing passionate, and sodainly turning to appeasement; one while speaking fast, anotherwhile leisurely, reproouing, and cherishing, mouing the bodie, sometimes to the one side, sometimes to the other, plucking in the armes, and stretching them out, laughing and weeping: and vpon some occasions beating the hands togither.8

The result of this highly persuasive actualization is an artistic illusion, the inventio of a euphantasiotos, who is as skilled in the ars of enargeia as in the ars of actio and can transport imaginative presence into actional presence. Both forms of presence serve to evoke in the recipient affects either moderate or passionate. Actional presence requires of the speaker a virtuoso’s command of the entire gamut of mimicry and gesture as well as vocal possibilities in order to captivate the audience.

7 Shakespeare, Pericles, p. 222.—An immediate change from the narratio to an actio also takes place in the comedy The Old Wives’ Tale (1595) by George Peele (1556–1596). 8 Juan Huarte Navarro, The Examination of Mens Wits (London 1594). Facsimile Reprint: The English Experience, 126. Amsterdam: Da Capo Press / New York: Theatrvm Orbis Terrarvm, 1969, pp. 134–135.

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chapter three

Not only the prologue but also the epic epilogue in Shakespeare requires the stylistic device of enargeia in order to make that which is absent vividly present one last time, and thus to maintain the dramatic action’s flow of presence and to prolong it, so to speak, into the future. We find this, for example, in Puck’s epilogue in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–1596): Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task fordone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite In the church-way paths to glide. And we fairies, that do run By the triple Hecate’s team From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallow’d house. I am sent with broom before To sweep the dust behind the door. (MND V.i.357–376).9

But this is not yet the end of the epilogue. The first part [V.i.357–376] concludes with the festive pageant of Oberon and Titania “with all their Train”; the second part [V.i.409–424] consists of the traditional address ad spectatores and the request of plaudite. The first part stages a theatrical presence by means of words, an effect conspicuously created by the repetition of the anaphoric adverb “now” (vv. 357, 361, 365).10 In addition participia praesentis (vv. 362, 366) portray the action as taking place in the present. The imaginary sensations which Puck attempts to convey are heightened by acoustic (“roars”, “behowls”, “snores”, “screeching”) and optical (“glow”, “gaping”) verbs that are partly metaphorical. All these linguistic elements contribute to the rhetoricity of the text, which is largely responsible for its memorable quality. 9 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. Harold F. Brooks. London: Methuen, 1979, pp. 124–125. 10 According to Pseudo-Demetrius the διλογία (literally: saying twice) is an effective instrument of enargeia.



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One of Shakespeare’s most famous epilogues is that of The Tempest (1611–1612), in which the protagonist Prospero takes leave from the stage and his life: Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s my own, Which is most faint: now, ’tis true, I must be here confin’d by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands: Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, Art to enchant; And my ending is despair, Unless I be reliev’d by prayer, Which pierces so, that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free. Exit. (The Tempest, Epilogue 1–20).11

In these words Prospero synthesizes two levels of meaning: the end of his existence of an actor in a theatre performance and that of his human existence on earth. His allocutio ad spectatores implies a secular and a spiritual release: the request to be freed from his role and the request to be absolved from his sins. This procedure is a kind of “de-theatricalization”, and that again both in profane and religious terms, which also means that a human being is regarded as an actor in the grand theatrum mundi.12 This refers to the Fabula de homine by Juan Luis Vives interpreted above. Shakespeare appears here, however, not as a poeta theologus but more as an expert of the theatre who, even to a greater extent as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, uses the words of the Epilogue for the purposes of retentionality and protentionality, which means the recapitulation and, in a way, prolongation of the dramatic plot. The result is imaginary presence. The instrument to bring this about is rhetorical enargeia.

11  William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Ed. Frank Kermode. London: Methuen, 1962, p. 133. 12 On Shakespeare and the theatre metaphor cf. Frances A. Yates, Theatre of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

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A master of rhetorical enargeia and thus a creator of imaginary presence is Iago in Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello (1604). Seducing the protagonist both with “artificial” and “inartificial” evidence he proves the very opposite of Quintilian’s euphantasiotos, that is: a man of good phantasy. By producing grotesque images of Desdemona’s alleged infidelity in Othello’s brain he turns this noble hero into a monster whose monstrous imagination makes him commit crimes of a horrible nature. The origin of these are persuasive acts of Iago who uses a rhetoric of celare artem in order to reach his mischievous aims. The core of this celare artem is a rhetoric of presence enticing Iago’s victim in such a way that he seems to become an eyewitness to what this vice figure is visualizing with words and things.13

13 For an interpretation see H.F. Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture. Berlin / New York: W. de Gruyter, 2004, pp. 455–475.

Chapter Four

Ekphraseis of Places and Pictures Place descriptions, a standard rhetorical-literary device of the Early Modern Age, also have their roots in classical rhetoric. Quintilian mentions them in the context of parekbasis or egressio in his Institutio Oratoria (IV.iii.12–14): Hance partem παρέκβασιν vocant Graeci, Latini egressum vel egressionem. Sed hae sunt plures, ut dixi, quae per totam causam varios habent excursus, ut laus hominum locorumque, ut descriptio regionum, expositio quarundam rerum gestarum vel etiam fabulosarum. Quo ex genere est in orationibus contra Verrem compositis Siciliae laus, Proserpinae raptus, pro C. Cornelio popularis illa virtutum Cn. Pompei commemoratio: in quam ille divinus orator, veluti nomine ipso ducis cursus dicendi teneretur, abrupto quem inchoaverat sermone devertit actutum. The Greeks call this part of speech parekbasis; the Latin terms are egressus or egressio. There are however (as I said) several types which allow excursuses of various kinds at all points in the Cause: for instance, Encomia of persons or places, descriptions of areas, exposition of historical or legendary events. Such are the Encomium of Sicily and the Rape of Proserpina in the Verrines, or the demagogic recital of the virtues of Gnaeus Pompeius in the Pro Cornelio, where the divine orator, stopped in his tracks as it were by the general’s name, breaks off the topic on which he had embarked and plunges straight into his digression.1

Shadi Bartsch draws on this text as the theoretical basis for her interpretation of topographical ekphraseis in Seneca and Epictetus, with the following conclusio: Epictetus tells us that God has brought man into the world to be a spectator of Himself and His works, and not merely a spectator of them but also an interpreter (Disc. I.6.20). How does one get from spectator to interpreter? By becoming a practicing Stoic and perhaps by reading Seneca’s ekphraseis, whether glorious or horrific. For Seneca’s ekphrastic usage, understood together with some of his and Epictetus’ comments on the power of our reception of images, has the threefold purpose of evoking parallels to the procedure of the interpretation of phantasiai in Stoic philosophy, questioning 1 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, vol. II, pp. 288–291.

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chapter four ekphrasis’ traditional criteria of excellence, and, finally, training the viewer/ reader to control and disown the prescribed reactions to vivid images and the propositional content they may bring with them. In a remarkable twist on rhetorical prescription, it is, finally, learning to yawn in the face of these visions that offers the Roman viewer his path to salvation.2

Bartsch’s interpretation of Epictetus is reminiscent of Vives’ use of the theatrical metaphor in his Fabula de homine, although the relation of God to humanity is the reverse of that described by Vives: for him the spectator is not the human being but God, who in the pagan version of Jupiter and the other Olympian deities is assigned this role. Returning to Quintilian, however, we see that in Antiquity the ekphrasis of places, like that of persons, often serves a panegyric purpose. This is undoubtedly also true of the Eikones of Philostratus the Elder3 (born ca. A.D. 191), a member of an Athenian family, in which the name continued to be used over several generations.4 Composed around 200 A.D., these “purported descriptions of pictures in a Neapolitan collection” (O.C.D.) together comprise one of the outstanding works of Greek literature from the imperial age. In his introduction the author makes the following point: Whosoever scorns painting is unjust to truth; and he is also unjust to all the wisdom that has been bestowed upon poets—for poets and painters make equal contribution to our knowledge of the deeds and the looks of heroes—and he withholds his praise from symmetry of proportion, whereby art partakes of reason. For one who wishes a clever theory, the invention of painting belongs to the gods—witness on earth all the designs with which the Seasons paint the meadows, and the manifestations we see in

2 Shadi Bartsch, “ ‘Wait a Moment, Phantasia’: Ekphrastic Interference in Seneca and Epictetus”, Classical Philology. Special issue on ekphrasis. Ed. Shadi Bartsch & Jaś Elsner. 102/1 (2007), 83–95, here: 95. 3 There are several Philostrati, descendants of a prominent family of Lemnian origin which produced several important literary men. The author of the Life of Apollonios of Tyana, Flavius Philostratos, was [. . .] a contemporary of Septimius Severus. The author called “Philostratos the Elder” or “the Lemnian” was apparently the son-in-law of Flavius Philostratos and was born in the late 2nd century. “Philostratos the Younger” was, by his own testimony, a grandson of the Elder Philostratos and was active c. A.D. 300. (source: J.J. Pollit, The Art of Rome c.753 B.C.–A.D 337: Sources and Documents. Cambridge: CUP, 2001 [1983], p. 219.). Both Philostrati were authors of Eikones. Of the life of Kallistratos, a further author of descriptions of art-works, not of paintings but of statues, nothing is known, although he has been dated on the basis of his style as late as the 4th century. Pollit (p. 219, n. 48) refers to the discussion in the edition by C. Schenkl and E. Reisch (Leipzig, 1902), pp. xxii–xxiii. 4 For the biography cf. Ewen Bowie, “Philostratus: the life of a sophist”, in: Ewen Bowie & Jaś Elsner (eds.), Philostratus. Cambridge: CUP, 2009, pp. 19–32.



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the heavens—but for one who is merely seeking the origin of the art, imitation is an invention most ancient and most akin to nature; and wise men invented it, calling it now painting, now plastic art. There are many forms of plastic art—plastic art proper, or modelling, and imitation in bronze, and the work of those who carve Lygdian or Parian marble, and ivory carving, and, by Zeus, the art of gem-cutting is also plastic art—while painting is imitation by the use of colours; and not only does it employ colour, but this second form of art cleverly accomplishes more with this one means than the other form with its many means. For it both reproduces light and shade and also permits the observer to recognize the look, now of the man who is mad, now of the man who is sorrowing or rejoicing. The varying nature of bright eyes the plastic artist does not bring out at all in his work; but the “grey eye,” the “blue eye,” the “black eye” are known to painting; and it knows chestnut and red and yellow hair, and the colour of garments and of armour, chambers too and houses and groves and mountains and springs and the air that envelops them all.5

Zahra Newby comments upon the context of these discourses in the following manner: This [sc. context] is explained in the proem to the work, where the narrator tells us that they took place during a visit to Naples, a city noted for its Greek enthusiasm for speeches, logoi. Our narrator says that he was unwilling to offer any addresses, meletai, in public, yet was continually pestered by groups of youths who kept arriving at the house where he was staying. This house contained an impressive gallery of paintings which he had already examined and which the host’s son was eager to have explained to him. Finally the narrator gives in, agreeing to make a discourse (epideixis) about the images when the young men arrive. To any reader of Lives of sophists the situation is a familiar one—a man attended by a group of youths, eager to hear him speak, a man who can give epideixis and meletai—he must be a sophist. Philostratus here sets himself up as the expert: these ’narrations of paintings’ will be ’instructions to the young from which they will interpret and pay attention to what is worthy’ (though whether in the paintings or the discourse is somewhat unclear). These descriptions, given by a famous sophist to would-be-pupils, are thus suggested as having a two-fold educative

5 Philostratus, Imagines / Callistratus, Descriptions. With an English translation by Arthur Fairbanks. London: Heinemann / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1960, pp. 3, 5. The introduction contains the following note (p. xxvii) about Goethe on “Philostrats Gemälde”: In 1818 Goethe published an essay on the paintings of Philostratus in which he refers to the enthusiasm of the “Weimarsche Kunstfreunde” for this work, and to the extended study which they had given it. His essay was intended, he says, to preserve some of the results of this study, as the times were not favourable for the publication of the elaborate edition, with illustrations, which they had hoped to make. To his translation of a series of the Descriptions reference has already been made. (p. xix).

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chapter four purpose, indicating both the right way to view and understand paintings, and also suggesting the variety of ways in which visual images, like other material, can be used for sophistic declamations. These two aims correspond neatly to the needs of the speaker’s audience. For the boy, to whom these interpretations are primarily addressed, the main interest is in the explanation and interpretation of the pictures themselves. The youths, however, seem interested in hearing any discourse the speaker may choose to give. Their main concern, then, is with sophistic rhetoric rather than painting in particular. On the level of the written text, too, a similar duality can be seen. While on the one hand this is a collection of ecphraseis of individual images, on a wider scale it is also an example of how this material can be used to produce a highly polished and sophisticated piece of writing.6

Many more observations can be made on details of the paintings, such as the (black, blue, or grey) colour of the eyes of persons represented that is indicative of the sophia of art and artist.7 More important is, however, the assessment that Philostratus is here implicitly referring to Simonides’ maxim, “painting is silent poetry and poetry talking painting” or to Horace’s aphorism ut pictura poesis. From the rhetorical point of view it can be stated concerning the proem of Philostratus’ Eikones: Defence and praise of painting are here related to the recognition that the visual arts are inventions which resemble poetry in that their primary goal is the imitation (mimesis) of nature. At the same time the author emphasizes that the artes place heroes in a proper light; in other words, they belong to the rhetorical genre of the genos epideiktikon (genus demonstrativum).8 As a whole, the work of Philostratus presents an imaginary gallery of paintings and uses them to illustrate paradigmatically the possibilities of the rhetorical art of description. Since the paintings he describes do not exist, the only possible way to reconstruct their visuality is exclusively through the enargeia of a fictive mimesis. In this connection it is important to note that the text says very little about a real picture gallery, but makes crucial points about the concrete practice of looking 6 Zahra Newby, “Absorption and erudition in Philostratus’ Imagines”, in: Ewen Bowie & Jaś Elsner (eds.), Philostratus, Cambridge: CUP, 2009, pp. 322–342, here: pp. 323–324. 7 Cf. S. Maffei, “La σοφία del pittore e del poeta nel proemio delle Imagines di Filostrato Maggiore”, in: Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di lettere e filosofia, serie III, 21,3: 591–621; Sandrine Dubel, “Colour in Philostratus’ Imagines”, in: Ewen Bowie & Jaś Elsner (eds.), Philostratus, pp. 309–321. 8 In his Rhetoric I.iii, Aristotle presents three genres of oratory: deliberative, forensic, and epideictic. The epideictic genre is different from the other two in that the orator either praises or censures somebody and the hearer is not required to (re)act, as a judge either of things past or of things to come but is a mere spectator. (Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric. Ed. & trans. J.H. Freese. Cambridge, Mass. / London: Harvard UP, 2000, pp. 32–33).



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at paintings. There are few other classical texts from which the contemporary observer and interpreter of ancient works of art speaks so directly. This testifies not only to Philostratus’ exceptional skill as a rhetorician but also to his excellent knowledge of painting and sculpture.9 We find an example of enargetic descriptive technique in the passage about the Erotes painting (I,6), where the children of the nymphs are described in detail as shooting their arrows at one another, and eating or playing catch with apples. Finally the person addressed by Philostratus is told to look closely at Aphrodite herself: [. . . . .] σὺ δέ μοι τὴν ᾿Αφροδίτην βλέπε. ποῦ δὴ καὶ κατὰ τί τῶν μήλων ἐκείνῃ; ὁρᾷς τὴν ὕπαντρον πέτραν, ἧς νᾶμα κυανώτατον ὑπεκτρέχει χλωρόν τε καὶ πότιμον, ὃ δὴ καὶ διοχετεύεται ποτὸν εῖναι ταῖς μηλέαις; ἐνταῦθά μοι τὴν ᾿Αφροδίτην νόει, Νυμφῶν οἶμαι αὐτὴν ἱδρυμένων, ὅτι αὐτὰς ἐποίησεν ᾿Ερώτων μητέρας καὶ διὰ τοῡτο εὔπαιδας. καὶ κάτοπτρον δὲ τὸ ἀργυροῦν καὶ τὸ ὑπόχρυσον ἐκεῖνο σανδάλιον καὶ αἱ περόναι αἱ χρυσαῖ, ταῦτα πάντα οὐκ ἀργῶς ἀνῆπται. λέγει δὲ ᾿Αφροδίτης εῖναι, καὶ γέγραπται τοῦτο, καὶ Νυμφῶν δῶρα εἶναι λέγεται. καὶ οἱ ῎Ερωτες δὲ ἀπάρχονται τῶν μήλων καὶ περιεστῶντες εὔχονται καλὸν αὐτοῖς εἶναι τὸν κῆπον. [. . . . .] and do you look, please, at Aphrodite. But where is she and in what part of the orchard yonder? Do you see the overarching rock from beneath which springs water of the deepest blue, fresh and good to drink, which is distributed in channels to irrigate the apple trees? Be sure that Aphrodite is there, where the Nymphs, I doubt not, have established a shrine to her, because she has made them mothers of Cupids and therefore blest in their children. The silver mirror, that gilded sandal, the golden brooches, all these objects have been hung there not without a purpose. They proclaim that they belong to Aphrodite, and her name is inscribed on them, and they are said to be gifts of the Nymphs. And the Cupids bring first-fruits of the apples, and gathering around they pray to her that their orchard may prosper.10

The author twice uses the cernas formula, first as an imperative and then as a question, in order to activate the visual imagination of the person addressed and thus to enable him, with the aid of ekphrasis, to call up the visual image of Aphrodite. It is not at all clear, however, that the goddess herself is portrayed in this painting. Most visible are her attributes.

9 For this reason Paul Friedländer’s critique, that concedes Philostratos only a “gewisses Gefühl für Kunst” (a certain feeling for art) is unjust (Johannes von Gaza, Paulus Silentiarius und Prokopios von Gaza: Kunstbeschreibungen justinianischer Zeit. Leipzig / Berlin: Teubner, 1912, p. 89).—Cf. Luca Giuliani, “Die unmöglichen Bilder des Philostrat: Ein antiker Beitrag zur Paragone-Debatte”, Pegasos 8 (2006), 91–116. 10 Philostratus, Imagines [etc.], pp. 28–29.—Analyses of the Perseus picture (I, 29) and the Xenia picture (II, 26) are provided by Pollit, The Art of Rome, pp. 222–223.

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The mirror, the golden sandal, and the golden brooches hang there as votive offerings—and not without a purpose, for they proclaim that they belong to Aphrodite and her name is also inscribed on them (γέγραπται). The observer is thus expected to infer the presence of the goddess from her attributes, a device known in rhetoric as metonymy or synecdoche.11 According to Kenneth Burke we can substitute the term reduction for metonymy, but representation for synecdoche.12 The enargetic-ekphrastic procedure here is thus one of either reduction or representation, and probably of both simultaneously. Inasmuch as the described painting does not portray static figures and objects but shows them in motion, this is an instance of imagines agentes, that is, figures and objects realised by the Aristotelian principle of energeia. These φαντασίαι or visiones thus acquire an almost theatrical character, with a deictic presenter fulfilling a didactic function. The capacity of the intellect for φαντασία, a significant element in this reception process, is described by Aristotle in his treatise De anima as movement (κίνησις).13 The Greek philosopher here tries to distinguish phantasia from doxa, with which Plato connects it in his Philebos (39.a ff.).14

11 Cf. H.F. Plett, Literary Rhetoric: Concepts—Structures—Analyses. Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2010, pp. 233–238. 12 Kenneth Burke, “The Four Master Tropes”. In: Burke, A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, pp. 503–517.—On the supplementary concepts of metaphor and metonymy, as interpreted by Roman Jakobson, cf. David Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing. London: E. Arnold, 1977, rpt. 1979, Part Two (pp. 73–124). 13 Aristoteles, De anima. Ed. R.D. Hicks. Cambridge: CUP, 1907. III.iii.428b.30 ff.: “If, then, nothing else has the stated characteristics except imagination, and this is what was said, imagination will be a movement taking place as a result of actual sense-perception A. And since sight is a sense-perception A, par excellence, the name for imagination (phantasia) is taken from light (phaos), because without light it is not possible to see.” (Translator: D.W. Hamlyn). 14 Cf. Plato, Philebus. Translated with Notes and Commentary by J.C.B. Gosling. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, pp. 35–36: Soc[rates]. I think memory interacting with perception together with the things undergone in connection with them write as it were statements in our minds (psyche). When what is undergone writes the truth (alethes) we acquire true (alethes) judgements or statements; when this as it were internal scribe of ours writes falsehoods, the result is the opposite of truth (alethes). Prot[archus]. I’d accept that. It seems quite right to me. Soc. Then I want you to accept the presence of another worker in our minds (psyche) on that occassion alongside the first. Prot. What is that? Soc. A painter, who follows the scribe and paints pictures in the mind (psyche) of what the scribe writes. Prot. I am not sure what you are referring to now, or when this painter operates.



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The late classical statesman and Aristotle interpreter Themistius (317–ca. 390 A.D.), in his paraphrase of De anima, supplements Aristotle’s teaching with the notion that the phantasia can serve as a repository, or treasure house (ταμιεῖον) of sensory perceptions (αἰσθήματα).15 This might be a reference to the Aristotelian concept of εἰδωλοποιεῖν, which appears later in Pseudo-Longinus as a characteristic of enargeia, but there with regard to the value of mental images.16 In The Painting of the Ancients (1638), Franciscus Junius (1591–1677) refers to this author in the following passage: Yet must not the Artificers here give too much scope to their own wittes, but make with Dionysius Longinus [De sublimi oratione, §.2] some difference between the Imaginations of Poets that doe intend onely an astonished admiration, and of Painters that have no other end but Perspicuitie. Wherefore saith the same author in another place [§.13], what the Poets conceive, hath most commonly a more fabulous excellencie and altogether surpassing the truth; but in the phantasies of Painters, nothing is so commendable as that there is both possibilitie and truth in them. Seeing then it has been proved in our former discourse, that not Poëts only, but Painters also receive great benefit by a continuall exercise of their Phantasie, it m[a]y likewise be gathered from thence what need both have to cherish such a good and trustie nourse of profitable conceits: for although it be a very hard thing, saith Dio Chrysostomus [Orat. XII.], yet it is very often required that the same image should remaine in the minde of the Artificer, and that sometimes for many yeeres, untill the whole worke be finished: so may wee also gather from thence the true reason why Dionys. Longinus affirming [§.13.] that Perspicuitie is the chiefest thing our Phantasie aimeth at, doth furthermore adde, that Art by the helpe of that same Perspicuitie doth seeme to obtaine easily of a man what shee forceth him to, and though shee doth ravish the minds and hearts of them that view her workes, yet doe they not feel themselves violently carried away, but thinke themselves gently led to the liking of what they see: neither can it bee otherwise: for as the Artificers that doe goe about their workes filled with an imagination of the presence of things, leave in their workes a certaine spirit drawne and derived out of the contemplation of things present; so is it not possible but that same spirit transfused into their Soc. I am thinking of when a person isolates what he previously judged or said from sight or any other form of perception and as it were sees in his mind’s eye the images of what was judged and stated. Or don’t you think this sort of thing can happen? Prot. Of course it can happen. Though it may be tempting to connect the image of the painter used here with the enargeia subject, it refers in this context to the doxa problem (cf. Gosling’s commentary on pp. 217 ff.). 15 Themistius, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, V.iii.—Cf. Themistius, On Aristotle On the Soul. Trans. Robert B. Todd. London: Duckworth, 1996. 16 Ps.-Longinos, De sublimitate, XV.2.

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chapter four workes, should likewise prevaile with the spectatours, working in them the same impression of the presence of thinges that was in the Artificers themselves. And this is questionlesse that same Perspicuitie, the brood and only daughter of Phantasie, so highly commended by Longinus, for whosoever meeteth with an evident and clear sight of things present, must needs bee mooved as with the presence of things.17

In this text Junius appeals to the authority of Longinus in distinguishing between the poet’s and the painter’s use of the imagination. Both artists need to constantly exercise their imaginative powers in order to achieve the best possible results of their artistic activities. For the painter this goal consists primarily in the clarity (perspicuitas) of the representation. The category of perspicuitas is taken from rhetoric, where it belongs to the virtutes elocutionis; in that framework it refers to the intellectual comprehensibility of a linguistic utterance and is thus a precondition for the success of the oration. Here Junius interprets this category in the sense of evidentia; for Longinus’s “ravish the minds” cannot be effectuated by the perspicuitas of the presentation, since it produces no emotional mental images. The aim of the pictorial depiction, however, is to create a visual presence, which will in turn generate affects. In this respect painting and poetry are similar: Both doe hold the raines of our hearts, leading and guiding our Passions by that beguiling power they have, whithersoever they list. [. . . . .] both then have a hidden force to move and compell our minds to severall Passions, but Picture for all that seemeth to doe it more effectually; seeing things that sinke into our hearts by the means of our eares, sayth Nazarius [in Panegyrico], doe more faintly stirre our minde, then such things as are drunke in by the eyes. Polybius doth likewise affirme [Lib. XII], that our eyes are more accurate witnesses then our eares: and it may be very well that Quintilian out of such a consideration hath drawne this same conclusion; Picture, sayth he [Lib.XI.orat.inst. cap.3.], a silent worke, and constantly keeping the same forme, doth so insinuate it selfe into our most inward affections, that it seemeth now and then to be of greater force then Eloquence it selfe.18

17 Franciscus Junius, THE PAINTING OF THE ANCIENTS, in three Bookes: Declaring by Historicall Observations and Examples, THE BEGINNING, PROGRESSE, AND CONSVMMATION of that most Noble ART. And how those ancient ARTIFICERS attained to their still so much admired Excellencie. Written first in Latine by FRANCISCUS JUNIUS F.F. And now by Him Englished, with some Additions and Alterations. LONDON, Printed by Richard Hodgkinsonne; and are to be sold by Daniel Frere, at the signe of the Bull in Little-Britain, 1638, pp. 63–64.—On Franciscus Junius, cf. Philipp Fehl & al., “Franciscus Junius and the Defence of Art”, Artibus et Historiae 3/II (1981), 9–55. 18 Franciscus Junius, THE PAINTING OF THE ANCIENTS, pp. 55–56.



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Thus visual reception is more effective than auditive, and the rhetoric of the image more persuasive than the rhetoric of the word. It is astonishing that Quintilian already arrived at this insight, which in the age of the mass media—that finds Roland Barthes writing about the rhetoric of the image19—is simply taken for granted. In the paragone between painting and poetry the latter must therefore strive to compensate for the visual deficit. This is brought about, however, mainly through the enargeia of verbal ekphrasis. Such ekphraseis are what the two Philostrati attempt to realize in their Eikones.20 Philostratus the Younger also prefixes a prooemium to his picture gallery, part of which is rendered here: Most noble is the art of painting and concerned with not insignificant matters. For he who is to be a true master of the art must have a good knowledge of human nature, he must be able to discern the signs of human nature, he must be able to discern the signs of men’s character even when they are silent, and what is revealed in the state of the cheeks and the expression of the eyes and the character of the eyebrows and, to put the matter briefly, whatever has to do with the mind. If proficient in these matters he will grasp every trait and his hand will successfully interpret the individual story of each person—that a man is insane, perhaps, or angry, or thoughtful, or happy, or impulsive, or in love, and, in a word, will paint in each case the appropriate traits. And the deception inherent in his work is pleasurable and involves no reproach; for to confront objects which do not exist as though they existed and to be influenced by them, to believe that they do exist, is not this, since no harm can come of it, a suitable and irreproachable means of providing entertainment?21

In a sense, then, Philostratus the Younger writes a programmatic piece for an art centred on what would later be called realism. A pictorial ekphrasis should therefore let the respective emotional sensitivities shine through the outer features of human portraits—an approach which eventually leads to a typology of the passions and their visual representations, as 19 Roland Barthes, “La rhétorique de l’image”, Communications 4 (1964), 40–51, also in Barthes, L’obvie et l’obtus: Essais critiques, III. Paris: Seuil, 1982, pp. 25–42; id., Le texte et l’image. Pavillon des arts, 7 mai–3 août 1986; Jean-Marie Floch, “Roland Barthes. Sémiotique de l’image”. Bulletin du Groupe de recherches sémio-linguistiques 4/5 (1978), 27–32; Göran Sonesson, Pictorial Concepts: Inquiries into the Semiotic Heritage and its Relevance for the Analysis of the Visual World. Lund: Lund UP, 1989. 20 A magnificent French version of the Eicones was made by the diplomat and cryptographer Blaise de Vigenère (1523–1596), with elaborate moralization and full-page plates, in 1578; a facsimile edition of this translation, with introduction by Stephen Orgel, was published in the Garland series The Renaissance and the Gods, in 1976. 21 Philostratus, Imagines / Callistratus, Descriptions, pp. 283, 285.

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explicitly proclaimed and visually depicted in Renaissance treatises on art. This would give the reader or the person looking at art aesthetic pleasure and simple enjoyment. Philostratus the Younger continues: Learned men of olden times have written much, I believe, about symmetry in painting, laying down laws, as it were, about the proper relation of each part of the figure to the other parts, as though it were impossible for an artist to express successfully the emotions of the mind, unless the body’s harmony falls within the measurements prescribed by nature; for the figure that is abnormal and that exceeds these measurements cannot, so they claim, express the emotions of a rightly constituted being. If one reflects upon the matter, however, one finds that the art of painting has a certain kinship with poetry, and that an element of imagination is common to both. For instance, the poets introduce the gods upon their stage as actually present, and with them all the accessories that make for dignity and grandeur and power to charm the mind; and so in like manner does the art of painting, indicating in the lines of the figures what the poets are able to describe in words. And yet why need I say what has been admirably said by many, or by saying more give the impression that I am undertaking an encomium of painting? For even these words, few indeed though they be, suffice to show that our present effort will not have been wasted. For when I have met with paintings by a clever hand, in which ancient deeds were treated not without refinement, I have not thought it right to pass them by in silence. But in order that our book may not proceed on one foot, let it be assumed that there is a person present to whom the details are to be described, that thus the discussion itself may have its proper form.22

Philostratus the Younger thus follows Philostratus the Elder in making the beholder the point of departure for his descriptions of paintings. For what first appeared to be an encomium on the symmetria of painting turns out to be a reflection on the affinity of art with poetry and on their common rootage in the imagination. That enargeia is closely linked to the imagination is clear, for example, from the fifth eikon, entitled “Hercules in Swaddling Clothes”, which begins as follows: Ἀθύρεις, ῾Ηράκλεις, ἀθύρεις καὶ γελᾷς ἤδη τὸν ἆθλον, ἐν σπαργάνοις ὢν καὶ ταῦτα, καὶ τοὺς ἐξ Ἥρας δράκοντας ὲκάτερον ὲκατέρᾳ χειρὶ ἀπολαβὼν οὐδὲν ἐπιστρέφῃ τῆς μητρὸς ἔκφρονος παρεστώσης καὶ περιδεοῦς. ἀλλ᾿ οἱ μὲν ἤδη παρεῖνται μηκύναντες ἐς γῆν τοὺς ὁλκοὺς καὶ τὰς κεφαλὰς ἐπικλίναντες ταῖς τοῡ νηπίου 22 Philostratus, Imagines / Callistratus, Descriptions, pp. 285, 287.—The ekphraseis of Callistratus are also edited, with German translations and commentaries, by Balbina Bäbler and Heinz-Günther Nesselrath in Ars et Verba: Die Kunstbeschreibungen des Kallistratos. Einführung, Text, Übersetzung, archäologischer Kommentar. München / Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2006.



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χερσὶν ὑποφαινούσας τι καὶ τῶν ὀδόντων • κάρχαροι δὲ οὗτοι καὶ ἰώδεις λοφιαί τε αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ θανάτου ἐς θάτερα ἐπικρεμεῖς καὶ τὰ ὄμματα οὐ δεδορκότα ἥ τε φολὶς οὐκ ἐξανθοῦσα χρυσῷ καὶ φοίνικι ἔτι οὐδὲ πρὸς τὰς κινήσεως τροπὰς ὑπαυγάζουσα, ἀλλ᾿ ὕπωχρος καὶ ἐν τῷ δαφοινῷ πελιδνή. Τὸ δὲ τῆς ᾿Αλκμήνης εῖδος ἀνασκοποῦντι ἀναφέρειν μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς πρώτης ἐκπλήξεως δοκεῖ, ἀπιστεῖ δὲ νῦν οἷς ἤδη ὁρᾷ, ἡ δ᾿ἔκπληξις αὐτὴν οὐδὲ λεχὼ κεῖσθαι ξυνεχώρησεν• ὁρᾷς γάρ που, ὡς ἄβλαυτος καί μονοχίτων ἀναπηδήσασα τῆς εὐνῆς σὺν ἀτάκτῳ τῇ κόμῃ τὰς χεῖρας ἐκπετάσασα βοᾷ, θεράπαιναί τε, ὅσαι παρῆσαν τικτούσῃ ἐκπλαγεῖσαι ἄλλη ἄλλο τι προσδιαλέγονται τῇ πλησίον. Οἱ δὲ ἐν ὅπλοις οὖτοι καὶ ὁ γυμνῷ τῷ ξίφει ἕτοιμος, οἱ μὲν Θηβαίων ἔκκριτοι βοηθοῦντες ᾿Αμφιτρίωνι, ὁ δ᾿ὑπὸ τὴν πρώτην ἀγγελίαν σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος εἰς ἄμυναν ὁμοῦ ἐπέστη τοῖς δρωμένοις, καὶ οὐκ οῖδ᾿ εἴτε ἐκπέπληγεν εἴτε χαίρει λοιπὸν• ἡ μὲν γὰρ χεὶρ ἔτ᾿ ἐν τῷ ὲτοίμῳ, ἡ δὲ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἔννοια χαλινὰ τῇ χειρὶ ἐφίστησιν, οὐδὲ ἔχοντος ὅ τι καὶ ἀμύναιτο, καὶ χρησμοῦ προμηθείας δεόμενα τὰ παρόντα ὁρῶντος. Ταῦτά τοι καὶ ὡδὶ πλησίον ὁ Τειρεσίας θεσπίζων οῖμαι ὁπόσος ὁ νῦν ἐν σπαργάνοις ὢν ἔσται, γέγραπται δὲ ἔνθεος καὶ μαντικὸν ἐπασθμαίνων. Γέγραπται καὶ ἡ Νὺξ ἐν εἴδει, ἐν ᾗ ταῦτα, λαμπαδίῳ καταλάμπουσα ὲαυτὴν, ὡς μὴ ἁμάρτυρος τοῦ παιδὸς ὁ ἆθλος γένηται. You are playing, Heracles, playing, and already laughing at your labour, though you are still in swaddling clothes; and taking the serpents sent by Hera one in each hand you pay no heed to your mother, who stands near by crazed with fear. But the serpents, already exhausted, are stretching out their coils upon the ground and drooping their heads towards the babe’s hands, showing withal a glimpse of their teeth; these are jagged and poisonous, and their crests sag to one side as death approaches, their eyes have no vision in them, their scales are no longer resplendent with golden and purple colours, nor do they gleam with the various movements of their bodies, but are pale and, where they were blood-red, are livid. Alcmene, if one looks carefully at her face, seems to be recovering from her first fright, but she now distrusts what she really sees, and her fright has not permitted her to remain in bed even though she has lately given birth to a child. For doubtless you see how, leaping from her bed, unsandalled and only in her shift, with disordered hair and throwing out her arms she utters a shout, while the maid-servants that were attending her in her travail are in consternation, talking confusedly each to her neighbour. Here are men in armour, and one man who stands ready with his drawn sword; the former are the chosen youth of the Thebans, come to the aid of Amphitryon; but Amphitryon has at the first tidings drawn his sword to ward off danger and has come with them to the scene of action; nor do I know whether he is overcome with fear or rejoices; for his hand is still ready to act, but the thoughtfulness revealed by his eyes sets a curb to his hand, since he finds no danger to ward off, and he sees that the situation before him needs the insight of an oracle to interpret it. Here, in fact, is Teiresias near at hand, foretelling, I think, what a hero the babe in swaddling clothes will become; and he is represented as divinely inspired and breathing out prophecies. Night also, the time in which these events take place, is represented in human form;

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chapter four she is shedding a light upon herself with a torch that the exploit of the child may not lack a witness.23

Here we have a classic example of various forms of enargeia. At first the reader, in the role of the person viewing a painting, addresses the Heracles figure in the picture, thus eliminating the border between picture and beholder. The author does not leave it at this kind of fictive communicative presence, but expands this presence into the painting itself: The pictorial stasis of Heracles’s victorious struggle with the two serpents is transformed into a dramatic action such as could be performed on stage. The ekphrasis brings this event to life by heaping up details (circumstantiae) and verba agentis, which lend to the mimesis the energeia prescribed by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. The effect of this kind of lively theatricality is that the reader becomes a “spectator” of an actional ekphrasis which he experiences as a euphantasiotos at close hand. In this way he doubles the role of Heracles’s mother, whom Philostratus describes as standing at the edge of the picture. She, in turn, is drawn into a dramatic action, which also involves Amphitryon and the entire Theban household. Despite the empathy shown by the author in this scene, he at the end restores his distance to the painting and assumes the role of the art critic who expresses his personal opinion of the art work to his audience. With a reference to a pictorial detail, the allegorical depiction of Night and its realistic effect, the lecture comes to an end. In The Painting of the Ancients (1638) Franciscus Junius elaborates on the prooemium of Philostratus the Younger with quotations and ideas from other classical authors in which the synkrisis of painter and poet plays a significant role. Of Poëts and Painters both together are the following words of Philostratus [In prooemio Iconum], Whosoever doth not embrace Picture, sayth he, wrongeth the truth, he wrongeth also the wisedome of the Poëts; seeing both are alike busie about the shapes and deeds of the Worthies. Dio Chrysostomus speaketh likewise of both together; Painters and Carvers, sayth he [Orat. XII], when they were to resemble the Gods, departed not one inch from the Poëts; not onely to shun the punishment offenders in such a kinde undergoe; but also because they saw themselves prevented by the Poëts, and that now the manner of Images made after their conceit went currant, as being upholden by antiquitie: neither would they seeme to be troublesome and unpleasant by lying novelties, but they have for the most part made their Images after the example of

23 Philostratus, Imagines / Callistratus, Descriptions, pp. 306–309.



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Poëts: Sometimes for all that have they added one or other thing of their own, professing themselves to have an emulation with Poëts about the same Art of imitation, endeavouring likewise to lay open before the eyes of more and poorer spectators, what Poëts have plainly rehearsed to the eares of men. Although now the words of Philostratus and Dio Chrysostomus may serve us for a sufficient proofe of that same great affinitie there is betwixt Painting and Poësie, yet hath Simonides expounded this point somewhat neatlier when he affirmeth that Picture is a silent Poësie, as Poësie is a speaking Picture: and upon occasion of these words sayth Plutarch [Bellone an Pace clariores fuerint Athenienses.], the things represented by Painters as if they were as yet adoing before our eyes, are propounded by Orators as done alreadie: seeing also that Painters doe expresse with colours what Writers doe describe with words; so is it that they doe but differ in the matter and manner of Imitation, having both the same end: and he is the best Historian that can adorne his Narration with such forcible figures and lively colours of Rhetorike, as to make it like unto a Picture.24

These comments by Franciscus Junius contain the following thematic points: 1) Poetry and painting, like “sister arts”, are closely related and typically present praiseworthy deeds and those who perform them in a proper light. 2) Painters, in creating their art, look to the example of poets for their orientation. 3) Both arts realise the aesthetic principle of mimesis. 4) Both arts best demonstrate their respective capabilities when they follow the aphorism of Simonides, namely that painting is silent poetry and poetry a speaking picture. 5) Verbal art attains a painterly quality by ornamenting its presentation with such powerful figures and “lively colours” of rhetoric that it comes across as a picture. The quoted passage from Junius’s art historical treatise thus summarizes essential points that will recur later in this discussion. Not least among them is the technique of ekphrasis, the various forms it can take, and their function, which is anchored in the genos epideiktikon (genus demonstrativum) of rhetoric: praise or blame, whereby blame more often appears in the subtle forms of irony or paradox. An early modern instance of topographical ekphrasis is the Oratio de Laudibus Florentine Urbis composed by the humanist Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444) between 1402 and 1404 to honour his native city Florence.25

24 Franciscus Junius, THE PAINTING OF THE ANCIENTS, pp. 53–54. 25 Editions: Leonardo Bruni, Panegirico della città di Firenze. Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1974; with an English translation: Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of Florence: The Panegyric of the City of Florence and an Introduction to Leonardo Bruni’s Civil Humanism. Introduction and translation by Alfred Scheepers. Amsterdam: Olive Press, 2005.—On the

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This ekphrastic panegyric belongs to the genus demonstrativum, the rhetorical genre which, according to Ernst Robert Curtius, is related to poetry.26

humanism of Leonardo Bruni and his use of language cf. Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny. Rev.ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1966, Part Three, esp. chap. 10: “The Genesis of the Laudatio” (pp. 212–224); Jerrold Seigel, “Civic Humanism or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni”, Past and Present 34 (1966), 3–48.—On an analysis of Bruni’s panegyric, cf. Clémence Revest, “Les enjeux de la transmission aux origines de l’humanisme: L’exemple de la Laudatio urbis Florentinae de Leonardo Bruni”, Questes 11, 7–16.—For classical predecessors of this kind cf. Laurent Pernot (ed.), Eloges Grecs de Rome. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997 (1966). 26 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated from German by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1973.

Chapter Five

Enargetic Representations of Persons Ekphrastic poetic language also extends to the rhetorical genre of prosopographia or description of persons, particularly when it pursues an epideictic aim, as in the Eloge du Roy Louis XIV composed by the French Jesuit Nicolaus Caussinus (1583–1651) in 1651.1 Its exordium reads as follows: LE silence, & la joye sont deux choses presque incompatibles, & la moderation des plaisirs me semble plus difficile que la patience des douleurs: la tristesse se cache assez d’elle-mesme, & ne se fait connoistre que par l’absence de la passion qui luy est contraire: mais l’allegresse s’épanoüit au cœur, se peint au visage, se manifeste aux paroles, & se fait des ailes pour voler, s’y elle peut, d’vn Pole à l’autre. Ne voyons-nous pas que l’air, dans l’obscurité de ses nuages, nous dérobe toutes les Estoiles: mais il ne couure point ce bel Arc que le Soleil forme par ses rayons, parce que c’est le ris du ciel pleurant. Les disgraces de la vie refferrêt quelquesfois pour vn temps les lumieres de l’esprit; mais elles ne peuuent empescher la vraye ioye, qui est l’épanoüissement de l’ame; vne certaine fauueur de la Diuinité (comme disoit vn ancien) vn amour content, & acheué qui ne se peut celer non plus que l’odeur & le feu.2

The eulogy on the French King Louis XIV begins with a theoretical discourse on the affects, which owes its visual density to the correlation made between the affects and natural phenomena, both in the microcosm of human physiognomy3 and the macrocosm of the heavens. It is therefore no coincidence that the argument culminates in the affect of joy and the sun, the emblem of the king who has gone down in history as Roi Soleil. The king then enters the stage himself—in the words of the author: 1 The exact title reads as follows: ELOGE DV ROY LOVIS XIV DIEV-DONNÉ. Composé par le P. NICOLAS CAVSSIN de la Compagnie de IESVS. PRESENTÉ A LA REYNE, à la Majorité du Roy. A PARIS, Chez DENIS BECHET, ruë Sainct Iacques, à l’Escu au Soleil. M.DC.LI. Auec Priuilege, & Approbation.—For an excellent critical survey of the works of Caussin cf. the articles assembled by Sophie Conte (ed.), Nicolas Caussin: Rhétorique et spiritualité à l’époque de Louis XIII. Actes du colloque de Troyes (16–17 septembre 2004). Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2007. 2 CAVSSIN, ELOGE DV ROY LOVIS XIV DIEV-DONNÉ, pp. 1–2. 3 Cf. Rüdiger Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck: Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990, passim; id. /Manfred Schneider (eds.), Geschichten der Physiognomik: Text—Bild—Wissen. Freiburg: Rombach. 1996.

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chapter five Quand le Roy fit son entrée dans le monde, il auoit pleu à la prouidence de me donner vne profonde solitude aux extremitez de la France, & ie la regardois auec plaisir, comme celle pour qui i’ay vne assez forte passion dés l’innocence de mes premieres années; ie viuois comme vn esprit démeslé de toutes les affaires de la terre, ie m’estois resolu de ne parler qu’au Ciel, à la mer, aux rochers, estant en vn pays où nostre langue ne s’apprend point auec celle des nourrices: mais aussi-tost que i’ouys le nom & la naissance d’vn Dauphin, par les cris, & les canonades de ces peuples tres-affectionnez à leur Prince; ie ne pû m’empescher que ie ne leuasse la teste, & que ie ne fisse du feu, & du bruit pour me conformer au reste de la France; ce feu ne parloit que de la sincerité de mes affections, & ce bruit ne venoit que de ma plume: l’vn ne bruloit rien, & l’autre ne rompoit la reste à personne.4

The author, in an attitude of affected modesty (mea parvitas), thus pre­ sents the birth of the dauphin as ushering in a grand spectaculum mundi, a new Golden Age, and summons his audience to respond accordingly: Ce ieune Roy, assisté des conseils de Ioiadas, fit naistre vn siecle d’or, & regna quarante ans, en grande veneration des peuples; mais comme apres la mort de ce sage Conseiller, il entra dans des opinions extrauagantes de sa capacité, & voulut tout gouuerner par sa teste, il perdit en sa vieillesse cette haute reputation qu’il auoit acquise en son enfance, & finist par vne deplorable catastrophe.5

This is a topos which from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age was frequently associated with the ekphrasis and epideixis of a ruler.6 Even more trenchant, also more poetic, than the description of a person is impersonation, the description of an abstract quality as a figure endowed with rationality. The rhetorical term for this is prosopopoeia (sermocinatio).7 The essential ingredient of this type of description is verisimilitude (verisimile).

4 CAVSSIN, ELOGE DV ROY LOVIS XIV, pp. 2–4. 5 CAVSSIN, ELOGE DV ROY LOVIS XIV, p. 68. 6 Cf. Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972; for the classical context cf. also Eduard Norden, Die Geburt des Kindes. Leipzig / Berlin: Teubner, 1924. 7 George A. Kennedy, Progymnasmata, p. 47 translates prosopopoieia with “personification” and comments upon it in this manner: “Personification (prosopopoeia) is the introduction of a person to whom words are attributed that are suitable to the speaker and have an indisputable application to the subject discussed; for example, What words would a man say to his wife when leaving on a journey? Or a general to his soldiers in the time of danger? Also when persons are specified, for example: What words would Cyrus say when marching against the Massagetae? Or what would Datis say when he met his king after the battle of Marathon? Under this genus of exercise fall the species of consolations and exhortation and letter writing.”



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Figure 3. Hans Holbein: Stultitia

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A striking example of prosopopoeia is Erasmus’s work entitled Moriae Encomium, id est, Stulticiae Laus, Erasmi Roterodami Declamatio, in which personified Folly (Stultitia) presents herself as follows: STVLTICIA LOQVITVR Vtcunque de me vulgo mortales loquuntur, neque enim sum nescia, quam male audiat stulticia etiam apud stultissimos, tamen hanc esse, hanc, inquam, esse vnam quae meo numine deos atque homines exhilaro, vel illvd abunde magnum est argumentum quod, simulatque in hunc coetum frequentissimum dictura prodii, sic repente omnium vultus noua quadam atque insolita hilaritate enituerunt, sic subito frontem exporrexistis, sic laeto quodam et amabili applausistis risu, vt mihi profecto quotquot vndiqve praesentes intueor, pariter deorum Homericorum nectare non sine nepenthe temulenti esse videamini, cum antehac tristes ac solliciti sederitis, perinde quasi nuper e Trophonii specu reuersi. Caeterum quemadmodum fieri consueuit, vt cum primum sol formosum illud et aureum os terris ostenderit aut vbi post asperam hyemem nouum ver blandis aspirarit Fauoniis, protinus noua rebus omnibus facies, nouus color ac plane iuuenta quaedam redeat, ita vobis me conspecta mox alius accessit vultus. Itaque quod magni alioqui Rhetores vix longa diuque meditata oratione possunt efficere, nempe vt molestas animi curas discutiant, id ego solo statim aspectu praestiti.8 An oration, of feigned matter, spoken by Folly in her own person, At what rate soever the world talks of me (for I am not ignorant what an ill report Folly has got, even among the most foolish), yet that I am that she, that only she whose deity recreates both gods and men, even this is a sufficient argument, that I no sooner stepped up to speak to this full assembly than all your faces put on a kind of new and unwonted pleasantness. So suddenly you have cleared your brows, and with so frolic and hearty a laughter given me your applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me seem to me no less than Homer’s gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe; whereas before you sat as lumpish and pensive as if you had come from consulting an oracle. And as it usually happens when the sun Of the Elizabethan rhetoricians Henry Peacham in The Garden of Eloquence (1593) gives the following definition: “Prosopopoeia, the faining of a person, that is, whe[n] to a thing sencelesse and dumbe we faine a fit person, or attribute a person to a commonwelth or multitude: This figure Orators do vse as wel as Poets: the orator by this figure maketh y[the] commonwealth to speake, to commend, to dispraise, to aske, to complaine, also life and death, vertue and pleasure, honesty and profite, wealth and pouerty, enuy and charity: to contend and plead one against another, and sometime he raiseth againe as it were the dead to life, and bringeth them forth complaining or witnessing what they knew. [. . . . .]” (Beate-Maria Koll, Henry Peacham’s “The Garden of Eloquence”: Historisch-kritische Einleitung, Transkription und Kommentar. Frankfurt/M. / Berlin / Bern / New York: P. Lang, 1996, p. 134). 8 Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami. Recognita et adnotatione critica instrvcta notisqve illvstrata. Ordinis qvarti. Tomvs tertivs. Amsterdam / Oxford: North Holland Publishing Co., 1979, pp. 71–72.



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begins to show his beams, or when after a sharp winter the spring breathes afresh on the earth, all things immediately get a new face, new color and recover as it were a certain kind of youth again: in like manner, by but beholding me you have in an instant gotten another kind of countenance; and so what the otherwise great rhetoricians with their tedious and longstudied orations can hardly effect, to wit, to remove the trouble of the mind, I have done it at once with my single look.9

The stage manager of this spectacular rhetorical scene is in the last analysis Eiron, who in the guise of a personified abstraction means the opposite of what he says. In the paradoxical encomium Querela Pacis (Complaint of Peace [1517]), personified Peace (Pax) makes an appearance analogous to that of personified Folly (Stultitia) and inveighs against the absurdity of the religious wars of the time. This complaint (querela or quaerimonia) takes the form of a monologue, a convention frequently found in Neo-Latin and vernacular dramas of the time, in imitation of classical tragedies (Seneca).10 Yet an enargetic theatricality of this kind assumes an even more complex form in the dialogic presentation of ideas—as in the Convivium Religiosum (1522), one of the Colloquia of Erasmus.11 Here, in imitation of Plato’s Phaidros, a dialogue about religious and moral issues takes place on the rural estate of a certain Eusebius, a place rich in significant images and emblems.12 The three examples mentioned here illustrate three forms of an enargetic presentation: ekphrasis—monologue—dialogue. In each successive type the recipient is drawn, in his imagination, more intensively into the role of spectator of a drama unfolding in the present. To the extent that an ekphrastic presentation or impersonation succeeds, the presence of the words is transformed for the recipient into a presence of mental images, which in turn stimulate a sensory presence.

9 Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly. Translation: John Wilson in his 1668 edition. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2003, p. 5. 10 Edition: Querela pacis undique gentium eiectae profligataeque. Basilea, 1518.—For an interpretation cf. André Hoffmann, Die Querela Pacis des Erasmus von Rotterdam—Der Pazifismus in seiner Entstehung und politisch-historischen Auswirkung. München: GRIN Verlag, 2011. 11 An analysis under this aspect of enargeia is provided by Terence Cave, “Enargeia: Erasmus and the Rhetoric of Presence in the Sixteenth Century”, L’Esprit Créateur 16 (1976), 5–19; id., The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, pp. 102–109. 12 Discussion in Cave, The Cornucopian Text, pp. 102–109.

Chapter Six

The Poetics of Ekphrasis and Enargeia The earliest statements regarding a poetics of description go back to the humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405–1464), later Pope Pius II, who writes: [. . .] multa & uaria scire oportet eum qui sit poeta. Nanq; cum bella gesta suum sit scribere, cum tempestates, cum tempora, cum locorum situs, cum personarum conditiones, cum maris stratus ante oculos hominum ponere habeat, cum uirtutes laudare, uitiaq; reprehendere debeat, quis non uidet ad hæc bene tractanda multis artibus opus esse? multas autem artes pauci sunt qui assequantur, idcirco & pauci sunt poetæ.1 [. . .] indeed a poet must know manifold and various things. For as his task is to describe the course of warfares, to submit to the eyes of men tempests, seasons, the placement of locations, the conditions of personages, the extension of the sea, moreover to praise virtues and to blame vices, who does not see that in 1 AENEAE SYLVII PICCOLOMINEI SENENSIS’, QVI POST ADEPTVM PONTIFICATVM PIVS EIVS NOMINIS SECVNDVS appellatus est, opera quæ extant omnia, nunc demum post corruptissomas æditiones summa diligentia castigata & in unum corpus redacta, quorum elenchum uersa pagella indicabit [. . . . .] BASILEÆ, EX OFICINA HENRICPETRINA. Cum Gratia & Priuilegio Caes. Maiest. [1551]. Facsimile-Reprint: Frankfurt/M.: Minerva, 1967, p. 599.—This reference is provided by Perrine Galand-Hallyn in Les yeux de l’éloquence: Poétiques humanistes de l’évidence. Orléans: Paradigme, 1995, pp. 104–105, with this translation of the passage quoted (p. 105): En effet, puisque la tâche [du poète] est d’écrire le déroulement des guerres, puisqu’il lui faut mettre sous les yeux des hommes (ante oculos hominum ponere) les tempêtes, les saisons, l’emplacement des lieux, la condition des personnages, l’étendu de la mer, puisqu’il doit louer les vertus et blâmer les vices, qui ne voit que, pour bien traiter ces sujets, il a besoin de nombreux arts? Or, ils sont peu nombreux ceux qui pratiquent de nombreux arts, voilà pourquoi les poètes aussi sont peu nombreux. Her commentary on this passage: “Si, fidèle à la tradition cicéronienne, Piccolomini rattache la vive représentation à la connaissance des artes, il n’en suggère pas moins le caractère visionnaire du phénomène, lorsqu’il énumère les sujets traditionnellement considérés comme propres à susciter l’enargeia: la mention des « guerres, tempêtes, saisons, lieux, personnes » et l’image finale de « l´étendu de la mer » confèrent au poète un regard surnaturel, capable d’embrasser la réalité humaine dans sa totalité spatiale et temporelle. Ce regard est pareil au regard de Dieu, ce qui souligne Enea Silvio lui-mểme, en rappelant immédiatement que la poésie est un don divin accordé à peu des mortels: Personne ne peut être poète à moins que ne lui ait été transmis d’en-haut ce don singulier [. . .] La poésie en effet, comme le dit Cicéron dans son discours, Pour Archias, est un Don de Dieu. Pour Piccolomini, la vive représentation apparaît donc comme la toute première finalité da la poésie, dont elle atteste à la fois le savoir terrestre et l’inspiration divine.” (p. 105).

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chapter six order to treat these subjects well he must have a command of many arts? However, there are a few who attain many arts; therefore there exist only few poets.

Here, in the context of various types of ekphrasis, emphasis is placed on the enargetic aim of ante oculos ponere. Also early in stressing the significance of this concept for verbal description was the humanist Rudolph Agricola (1444–1485), in his De inventione dialectica (1539): Ad haec, praesens rei conspectus praecipue penetrat animos, nec est res ulla ad movendos affectus potentior. “Segnius” enim (ut inquit Horatius) “irritant animos demissa per aurem, Quàm quae sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus”. Detectae itaque sunt in adverso pectore cicatrices in concione, et vulnera deligata in iudiciis, et parentum cognatorumque lachrymae, infantium puerorum aetas, reorum sordes prolatae in conspectum, et praesentibus aptata oratio. Quod si minus res patitur fieri, oratione tamen conantur, quam maxime datur, rem velut in conspectum dare, et oculis subiicere. Quod describenda re, et imagine eius verbis exprimenda, eo, quod ἐνάργειαν Graeci, nostri evidentiam interpretati sunt, maxime consequuntur. Moreover, the actual seeing of something penetrates the human spirit in a very special way, and there is nothing more powerful when it comes to stirring the affects. For “that which is perceived through the ear” (as Horace says) “moves the spirit less effectively than that which the trustworthy eyes see.” Scars on the breast are therefore shown in public meetings, bandaged wounds are exposed during judicial proceedings, the tears of parents and relatives are made publicly visible, also the age of little children and the oration is made to fit the facts presented. If the subject does not allow for this, an attempt is made nevertheless to make the matter as vivid as possible in the oration, and to let the listeners “see” for themselves. This is best achieved by means of description and a graphic verbal presentation of the subject: what the Greeks called ἐνάργεια, which is translated into Latin as evidentia.2

Central to this passage, as elsewhere, are the affects, particularly those which deeply influence the psyche. The predominant organ here is the eye, since what is perceived through the ear possesses less energy than optical perceptions. On this point Agricola appeals to the classical authority of Horace, who in his Ars Poetica states the following: Aut agitur res in scaenis aut acta refertur. segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem quam quae sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus et quae ipse sibi tradit spectator: non tamen intus 2 Rudolf Agricola, De inventione libri tres / Drei Bücher über die Inventio dialectica. On the basis of the edition of Alardus of Amsterdam (1539) edited, translated [into German] and commented by Lothar Mundt. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992, pp. 448–449.



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digna geri promes in scaenam, multaque tolles ex oculis, quae mox narret facundia praesens; ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet, aut humana palam coquat exta nefarius Atreus, aut in avem Procne vertatur, Cadmus in anguem. quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi. (vv. 179–188).3 Either an event is acted on the stage, or the action is narrated. Less vividly is the mind stirred by what finds entrance through the ears than by what is brought before the trusty eyes, and what the spectator can see for himself. Yet you will not bring upon the stage what should be performed behind the scenes, and you will keep much from our eyes, which an actor’s ready tongue will narrate anon in our presence; so that Medea is not to butcher her boys before the people, nor impious Atreus cook human flesh upon the stage, nor Procne be turned into a bird, Cadmus into a snake. Whatever you thus show me, I discredit and abhor.4

Consequently the word, being inferior to the image, requires a special compensatory technique which gives it the possibility of influencing the recipient in the same way as optical evidence. Before giving a concrete answer to the question at hand, Agricola cites examples from judicial practice and legislative assemblies in which the speaker employs nonartificial techniques, displaying sensory signa such as scars or the tears of parents and relatives and letting them speak for themselves, as it were, in order to effectively influence those responsible for making a decision. Only then does he mention the Greek and Latin names of the rhetorical concept: enargeia—evidentia. Horace, however, places a somewhat different emphasis. For him, too, the concrete actio on the stage is superior to the report; yet limits are imposed by decorum and verisimile in the theatre. Such considerations require that actions morally repugnant and improbable be placed behind the stage and substituted with a verbal description. Here, then, stylistic enargeia can—and must—step in to compensate as much as possible for the loss of sensory immediacy. The authors who follow this rule in their dramatic works are labeled Neoclassicists. In his early tragedy Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare practises the exact opposite of what Horace demands, forgoing an enargetic presentation in favour of showing the barbaric action of the protagonist openly on the stage.

3 On this passage see the commentary by C.O. Brink in: Horace on Poetry: The ‘Ars Poetica’. Cambridge: CUP, 1971, pp. 245–246, with reference to the rhetoric of enargeia and hypotyposis. 4 Translation by H. Rushton Fairclough, in: Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England: Harvard UP, 2005, pp. 465, 467.

Chapter Seven

Enargeia in Teichoscopy and Messenger’s Report In dramatic technique, enargeia occurs as a classic descriptive device in teichoscopy and the messenger’s report, for there things spatially and temporally absent are exhibited, not physically but narratively. Since the narratio takes the place of the physical actio, the playwright must strive to achieve the same effect with the art of words as with the art of drama. A famous example of teichoscopy, perhaps the first in the history of theatre, is found in Agamemnon of the Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525–426 B.C.), when the watchman (phylax) declares: I beg the gods to give me release from the misery—from my long year of watch-keeping, during which I’ve spent my nights on the Atreidae’s roof, resting on my elbows like a dog, and come to know thoroughly the throng of stars of the night, and also those bright potentates, conspicuous in the sky, which bring winter and summer to mortals, observing them as some set and others rise. And now I’m looking out for the agreed beacon-signal, the gleam of fire bringing from Troy the word and news of its capture; for such is the ruling of a woman’s hopeful heart, which plans like a man. But while I keep this night-walker’s bed, wet with dew, this bed of mine not watched over by dreams—for it is Fear instead of Sleep that stands beside me, preventing me from closing my eyes firmly in sleep—but when I decide to sing or hum, applying this remedy to charm away sleep, then I weep, grieving over the fortunes of this house, which is not now admirably managed as it used to be. But now may there be a happy release from misery, by the appearance in the darkness of the fire that brings good news. He suddenly leaps up in joy. O welcome, beacon, bringing to us by night a message of light bright as day, a message that will be the cause of many choral dances in Argos in response to this good fortune! Ahoy, ahoy! I proclaim plainly to the wife of Agamemnon that she should raise herself from her bed, as quickly as may be, and on behalf of the house raise a shrill, auspicious cry of triumph over this beacon, if indeed the city of Ilium has been taken as the fire-signal vividly declares. And I will dance a prelude myself [skipping about in delight]: I shall take advantage of the dice that have fallen well for my masters—this beacon-watch has thrown me a triple six! Well, anyway, may it come to pass that the master of the house comes home and that I clasp his well-loved hand in this hand of mine. About other matters I say nothing; a great ox has stepped upon my tongue. The house itself, were it to find voice, might speak

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chapter seven very plainly; as far as I am concerned, I am deliberately speaking to those who know—and for those who do not, I am deliberately forgetting.1

The monologue of the watchman at the beginning of the tragedy, quoted here in its entirety, consists of three parts: a praeludium, describing the watchman’s pitiable situation on his tower; the actual, very brief teichoscopy, which tells of the beacon signalling Agamemnon’s return; and a postludium, which conveys the reaction of the watchman (a dance) and possible other reactions of the palace residents. Western dramatic literature is replete with teichoscopies of this kind. Invariably they occur because an action or event cannot be presented in visu on the stage. And this deficit is always compensated by the stylistic device of enargeia, which creates a different type of stage, namely one of the imagination. Although not a teichoscopy in the strict sense of the term, the words of the chorus at the beginning of Act III of Shakespeare’s history play King Henry V also conjure up an imaginary stage: Thus with imagin’d wing our swift scene flies In motion of no less celerity Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen The well-appointed king at Hampton pier Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phœbus fanning: Play with your fancies, and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give To sounds confus’d; behold the threaden sails, Borne with th’invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow’d sea, Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think You stand upon the rivage and behold A city on th’inconstant billows dancing; For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, And leave your England, as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, Either past or not arriv’d to pith and puissance: For who is he, whose chin is but enrich’d With one appearing hair, that will not follow

1 Aeschylus, Oresteia: Agamemnon / Libation-Bearers / Eumenides. Edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England: Harvard UP. 2008, pp. 5–7.



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These cull’d and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege; Behold the ordinance on their carriages, With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. Suppose th’ambassador from the French comes back; Tells Harry that the king doth offer him Katherine his daughter; and with her, to dowry, Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms: The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,  [Alarum, and chambers go off.] And down goes all before them. Still be kind And eke out our performance with your mind. (King Henry V. III.1–35).2

Right at the beginning the chorus makes an appeal to the imagination, whose activity is described as swift and independent both of place and time, for it is capable of autonomously constituting places and times. It requires, however, the cooperation of the recipient. Repeated appeals are made to this imaginative activity, with imperatives such as “suppose” (3) or “behold” (7, 14) or “think” (13). The chorus also assigns the spectators a precise vantage point for their “beholding”: the Hampton pier, from which they can watch the royal fleet leave the harbour and sail to France. Descriptive details (circumstantiae) which address all the senses—the sight of the “ship-boys” climbing, the shrill sound of the command whistle—create a panaesthetic imaginative perception, which to a large extent substitutes for real perception that embraces all the senses. The chorus goes even further. Not only should the theatre-goer see the fleet from the outside, as it were, and follow it with all the senses of his imagination; he should also accompany the fleet in spirit and himself become part of this mission. The dramatist is, of course, well aware that this is impossible in the reality of a theatre performance. The “Follow, follow” can therefore only refer to an act of the imagination, which—in the years when the England of Elizabeth I was threatened by the Spanish Armada—at the same time constituted an appeal to the patriotism of the English, and to their willingness to fight an external enemy. But the teichoscopy of the chorus at the beginning of Act III goes further yet. It anticipates the plot of the drama, mentioning actions and events that will assume concrete form only in the subsequent acts. In this way the teichoscopy goes beyond its original limited function of a “viewing from a wall,” that is, a device for making 2 William Shakespeare, King Henry V. Ed. John H. Walter. London: Methuen, 1962, pp. 56–57.

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that which is spatially absent present, and draws that which is temporally absent—more specifically events which lie in the future, and thus have not yet entered the realm of temporal processes—into the present. Many examples for the dramatic messenger’s report can be found in Latin literature, notably in tragedies like Seneca’s Thyestes, where in the fourth act the murder of the protagonist’s sons (ll. 641–743) and the preparation of the cannibalistic meal (ll. 744–788) are described in detail by the Nuntius.3

3 Six of the eight Senecan tragedies have detailed messenger’s reports, consisting of either an unbroken oration (Agamemnon, Oedipus, Phaedra) or of dialogues of questions and answers (Hercules Furens, Troades, Thyestes).

Chapter Eight

Shakespeare and Enargeia (B) Shakespeare uses the same device, in fact refines it for his theatrical purposes. In the first scene of his tragedy Hamlet Horatio challenges the sentinel Bernardo to describe the ghostly scene he had witnessed the previous night. Bernardo begins with a subsidiary clause specifying the time: When yond same star that’s westward from the pole, Had made his course t’illumine that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one— Enter GHOST. Mar. Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again. (Hamlet I.i.39–43).1

While this adverbial clause leads the dramatic suspense towards anticipated information of the main clause, that clause does not appear here in its usual enargetic form, with visual verbs and possibly imperatives or apostrophes for additional intensification. What follows instead is a coup de theâtre: The object of the report appears in persona. Speaking in formal terms, this procedure is signified by the change of persons or a translatio personarum. In the rhetorical doctrine of status this process is known as status translationis meaning that the competence of a specific person (e.g. an orator who leads the defence) is questioned and transferred to another person.2 In the first scene of Hamlet visual presence replaces an imaginary presence and, since it was unannounced, creates a shock in the listeners. The effect of the actual stage presence is thus greatly heightened. Change of persons (translatio personarum) is one of two important modes of creating presence in Hamlet. The second is a change of tense

1 William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. London / New York: Methuen, 1982, rpt. 2002, pp. 167–168. 2 Cf. Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study. Ed. David E. Orton & Dean Anderson. Foreword George A. Kennedy. Tr. Matthew T. Bliss et al. Leiden / Boston / Köln: Brill, 1998, § 131: “The status translationis (Quint. Inst. 3.6.83–84) consists in the questioning of the legality of the actio itself [. . .], initiated by the defendant’s response (Quint. Inst. 3.6.73 Non habes ius actionis; 3.6.83 non (videtur) iure actio intendi): Hermog. Stat. 2.16 ἐν γὰρ μεταλέψει . . . ζητήσεις . . . αὐτὸ τοῦτο, εἰ δεῖ ζητῆσαί τι τούτων. Translatio is given detailed treatment in Hermog. Stat. 8.52–54.”

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(translatio temporis). According to Thornton Wilder, on the stage it is always now. If this presence is not enacted by persons on the stage, it must be established artificially. In his Latin work De emendata structura Latini sermonis libri sex, emendatiores (1550), the English Renaissance scholar Thomas Linacre (1460–1524) concentrates on the linguistic operation of a change of tense (temporum enallage) rather than on the grammatical tense itself.3 According to him the substitution of the past tense or the present perfect by the present tense creates the impression that the objects represented (1) act, and (2) are put before the inner eye. This vivifying presence may be regarded as dramatization. In his encyclopaedic theory entitled De Poeta (1559), the Italian poet and critic Antonio Sebastiano Minturno (1500–1574), whose literary theories are largely Aristotelian, regards the temporum translatio as a means of evidence.4 Some modern linguists therefore interpret this translatio from past tense to present tense as a “metaphor of tense”, because it has no grammatical independence, and speak of a “dramatic” or “scenic” present.5 A particular instance of this technique of dramatization is to be found in Ophelia’s narration in Hamlet: Ophelia. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d, No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d, Ungarter’d and down-gyved to his ankle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors, he comes before me. Polonius. Mad for thy love? Ophelia. My lord, I do not know,

3 Thomas Linacre, De emendata structura Latini sermonis. Parisiis: Apud C. Wechelum, 1550, p. 381.—The Latin grammarian Donatus calls the change from past to present tense enargeia (on the occasion of Terence, Eunuchus 574 ff.).—See Marvin T. Herrick, Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1964, p. 200. 4 ANTONII SEBASTIANI MINTVRNI DE POETA, AD HECTOREM PIGNATELLVM, VIBONENSIVM DVCEM, LIBRI SEX. Cum Priuilegijs. VENETIIS, ANN. M.D.LIX. [Colophon: Venetiis: Apud Franciscum Rampazetvm]. Facsimile reprint: München: Fink, 1970, p. 524: “Temporum translatione.” 5 Cf., for instance, Suzanne Fleischmann, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1990, pp. 75–81.—On the aesthetic dimension of this grammatico-rhetorical feature see François Rigolot, “The Rhetoric of Presence: Art, Literature, and Illusion”, in: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. IIII: The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Cambridge / New York: CUP, 1999, pp. 161–167.



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But truly I do fear it. Pol. What said he? Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard. Then goes he to the length of all his arm, And with his other hand thus o’er his brow He falls to such perusal of my face As a would draw it. Long stay’d he so. At last, a little shaking of mine arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound As it did seem to shatter all his bulk And end his being. That done, he lets me go, And with his head over his shoulder turn’d He seem’d to find his way without his eyes, For out o’doors he went without their helps, And to the last bended their light on me. (Hamlet. II.i.77–100)6

As regards the use of tense in these lines, it can be observed that in four instances (italicized) the narrative past tense is replaced by the present tense. This results from the fact that Ophelia is so moved by the events which she relates that she feels as if she is experiencing them a second time. She changes from a distanced narrator to an empathic spectator in whose mind the physical laws of time are suspended. By beginning her sentence in the past tense she is still able to keep a certain distance to her own report. Disturbed by an emotional ekphrasis of Hamlet, however, she ends her sentence in the present tense: “[. . .] he comes before me.” Here, the reported event is no longer in the past, but takes place in the here and now. Hamlet is standing literally in front of her. In this way the related events emerge from the remoteness of the past and assume the quality of present actions. When Linacre characterizes the exchange of tenses leading to this as energia, he certainly means by this term enargeia, the rhetorical principle and method of creating an imaginary presence. The historical present is needed when dramatic mimesis is superseded by epic narration. In such cases the translatio temporum7 simulates the 6 Shakespeare, Hamlet, pp. 234–235. 7 Cf. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria IX.ii.41: “Nec solum quae facta sint aut fiant sed etiam quae futura sint aut futura fuerint imaginamur. Mire tractat hoc Cicero pro Milone, quae facturus fuerit Clodius si praeturam invasisset. Sed haec quidem tralatio temporum, quae proprie μετάστασις dicitur, in diatyposi verecundior apud priores fuit (praeponebant enim talia: ‘credite vos intueri’, ut Cicero: ‘haec, quae non vidistis oculis, animis cernere potestis’): novi vero et praecipue declamatores audacius nec mehercule sine motu quodam imaginantur, ut Seneca in controversia, cuius summa est quod pater filium et novercam inducente altero filio in adulterio deprensos occidit: ‘duc, sequor: accipe hanc senilem

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physical presence of that which is narrated. A messenger’s report is the prototype of this kind of description. It has the function to recapitulate that which is past by means of language. Ophelia’s narration is a case in point. Her metaphors of tense are intended to simulate the physical presence of Hamlet’s pantomimic act. In contrast to this instance, Benvolio’s eyewitness report in Romeo and Juliet (III.i.152–175) shows what the spectator already has seen: the duel between Mercutio, Tybalt, and Romeo. This verbal duplication of a complex action, however, is not tautologic, but serves a persuasive function. Supported by specific techniques of visualisation, such as the historical present and direct speech, it focuses on those aspects which support the Montagues’ case, with the aim to evoke mercy in Prince Escalus. That such a reiteration of stage scenes can also produce comic effects, is demonstrated in the boastful account in which Falstaff describes his amorous adventures to the fooled Ford (The Merry Wives of Windsor III.v.64–122). Several other instances of the enargetic instrument of the historical present in messenger’s reports in Shakespeare could be mentioned here. What is remarkable is the variety of its perspectives and functions, which may well surpass the requirements of verisimile and decorum.

manum et quocumque vis inprime.’ Et post paulo: ‘Aspice, inquit, quod diu non credidisti. Ego vero non video, nox oboritur et crassa caligo.’ Habet haec figura manifestius aliquid: non enim narrari res sed agi videtur.” Translation (D.A. Russell): “We can form a picture not only of the past and the present, but also of the future or of what might have happened. Cicero in Pro Milone gives a marvellous account of what Clodius would have done if he had secured the praetorship. But this time shift, strictly called metastasis, was more cautiously used as a mode of vivid description by the earlier orators, who commonly prefaced it by‚ ‘Imagine that you see’ or (as Cicero says) ‘These things, which you have not seen with your eyes, you can see with your mind.’ Modern orators, on the other hand, especially declaimers, produce such pictures more boldly, and not without emotional effect, as Seneca does in a controversia the gist of which is that a father, guided by one of his sons, catches his other son and the stepmother in adultery, and kills them: ‘Lead me, I am following; take this aged hand, and guide it where you will.’ And a little later: ‘See, (he says) what you long did not believe. For my part, I cannot see: night and thick darkness rise before me.’ This Figure has something peculiarly vivid about it; the facts seem not to be told us, but to be happening.” (Quintilian, The Orator’s Education. Books 9–10. Vol. IV. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England: Harvard UP, 2001, pp. 56–59).

Chapter Nine

Enargeia in Operatic Libretti In the Early Modern Age musical libretti frequently include forms of enargeia, as in the opera serenade Le Cinesi (“The Chinese Women”) by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787). A synopsis of the plot is as follows: Lisinga and her two friends, Sivene and Tangia, are seeking ways of driving away boredom, but cannot come up with anything. Silango then appears, Lisinga’s brother, who has just returned home from a trip to Europe. The girls are afraid that the neighbors could have seen that he entered their chambers, although this is forbidden. While Tangia tries to attract Silango, he casts his eye on Sivene. Then Lisinga has the idea of banishing boredom by playacting. She wants to play a tragic scene, because one thereby learns to endure the burdens of fate. Sivene chooses the pastoral genre because it awakens pure emotions, Tangia the comical because it mocks and amuses. Each must first describe the scene to be performed. As the two friends are too embarrassed to begin, Lisinga leads off with Andromache’s tragic aria: following Hector’s death in the Trojan War, Pyrrhus forces her to decide whether she will obey him or watch while he murders her son (according to the tragedy by Euripides). Sivene is second and plays the innocent nymph Licoris, who laughs at the shepherd Tirsis’ tears. Tirsis is grieving about the nymph’s hardness. Silango offers to participate in Sivene’s aria in the rôle of the shepherd and improvises his scene, half playfully, half seriously, to which Sivene answers with her aria “. . . after my dog and the lambs you are first in my heart . . .”. Tangia, who is third, still does not have a topic for her comic aria. Following a suggestion made by Lisinga, she chooses the prototype of the conceited dandy who has just returned home from Europe, again something between playacting and reality. Her aria is a parody of Silango; real life takes place in Paris and Rome, there are only poor fools here in China. Then comes the discussion of which aria was best acted, but there is no agreement. Finally Silango suggests dancing together as then there would be “no crying, no yawning, and no bad feelings”. The ballet, in which the music returns to the D major tonality of the Overture, brings the work to a conclusion.1

1 Christoph Willibald Gluck, Le Cinesi. Audio-CD GD 77174 1986. Booklet, pp. 9–10.—The score of the musical work is available in the following edition: Christoph Willibald Gluck, Le Cinesi / Die Chinesinnen. Opernserenade von Pietro Metastasio. Ed. Gerhard Croll. Kassel / Basel / London / New York: Bärenreiter, 1987.—Cf. Max Loppert, “Gluck’s Chi-

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In this musical chinoiserie the dualism of theatre and reality plays a significant role. Such dualism is often found in the examples of enargeia cited above as well. From Le Cinesi we will first select and analyse Lisinga’s staging of Andromache’s recitative and aria as a case in point for operatic tragedy: Il barbaro m’affretta alla scelta funesta, Io piango e gemo, ma risolver non so. Pirro è già stanco delle dubbiezze mie: già non respira che vendetta e furore. Ecco s’avanza il bambino a rapir. Ferma. Crudele; ferma! Verrò. Quell’ innocente sangue non si versi per me! Ceneri amate dell’ illustre mio sposo, e sarà vero ch’io vi manchi di fe? Ch’io stringa . . .? Oh Dio. Pirro, pietà! Che gran trionfo è mai al vincitor di Troia d’un fanciullo la morte? E quale amore può destarti nell’alma una infelice, gioco della fortuna. odio de’ Numi? Lascia, lasciaci in pace! Io te ne prego per l’ombra generosa del tuo gran genitor, per quella mano che fa l’Asia tremar, per questi rivi d’amaro pianto . . . Ah! Le querele altrui l’empio non ode. [. . . . .]. Prenditi il figlio . . .! Ah no! E troppa crudeltà. Eccomi . . .Oh Dei! che fo? Pietà, consiglio! Che barbaro dolor! L’empio dimanda amor, lo sposo fedeltà, soccorso il figlio.2 Already the tyrant is forcing me to decide. I weep and wail with no one to help or advise me. Mercilessly he presses a horrifying choice upon me; filled with rage, he wants revenge. Now he approaches, reaches his hand out to my son. Stop, you villain, leave him alone! Take me! The blood of my precious child shall not flow for me! Shades of Hector, my magnificent husband—ah, could I ever live fully without you? Would I break . . .? O Pyrrhus, no, desist! Would you, the victor over Troy, derive honour from murdering a boy? What kind of love can this wretched woman, enemy of the gods, plaything of fate, awaken in you? Pyrrhus, take pity on us! Let yourself be moved by the shade of your father, the spirit of Achilles, that arm before which Asia trembles, by these streams of bitter tears . . . Oh, what good is my wailing? There is none who hears. [. . . . .] Cruel villain, take my son away! But no—who can be so cruel? Take me, then, take my hand!

nese Ladies: An Introduction”, Musical Times 125 (1984), 321–332 + 325; cf. also Raymond Monelle, “Gluck and the Festa Teatrale”, Music & Letters 54/3 (1973), 308–325. 2 Gluck, I Cinesi. Booklet, pp. 21–22.



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Hear my cries, o gods, help this poor woman! O monstrous misery! Wicked Pyrrhus wants my hand, My husband demands faithfulness, My son mercy.

The recitative, which in the opera seria usually contains reflections and actions of the singing figure, here presents an imaginary visio based on a fictive dialogue between Andromache and the tyrant Pyrrhus. In this fantasized scene Pyrrhus first approaches her, then reaches out to kill her son Astyanax. This causes the fictive Andromache to cry out against him and offer herself as a victim in place of her son. This completely imaginary action gains its pathos from the rhetoric of imaginary apostrophes, exclamations and pseudo-questions of the protagonist. The pathos of the imaginary actio continues in Andromache’s aria, which also includes a psychomachia, reflecting the inner turmoil of the actress. The recitative and the aria are here represented as a kind of model for the opera seria. Since the presence of a stage performance is lacking, the enargeia of the verbal texture conjures up an imaginary presence, which so moves the listening Tangia that she feels the urge to strangle Pyrrhus (“Ammazerei colui”). Rhetorical enargeia is used in a different way to realise the operatic visio in the musical idyll sung by Sivene: Rappresenti la scena una valletta amena! Abbia all’ intorno di platani e d’allori foltissimo recinto, e si travegga fra pianta e pianta, ove è maggior distanza, qualche rozza capanna in lotananza! Qui al consiglio d’un fonte il crin s’infiora Licori pastorella, semplice quanto bella. Ha Tirsi al fianco che piangendo l’accusa di poco amore. Ella che amor promise, e d’amor non s’intende, ride a quel pianto, e il pastorel s’offende. Crudele, ingrata egli la chiama, ed ella che non sa d’esser rea, sdegnasi, e a lui, piena d’ire innocenti, simplicetta risponde in questi accenti. [. . . . .].3 Imagine a scene in a beautiful valley! Woodland all around it, with thick foliage of laurel and plane trees; through a clearing that opens up there one’s gaze can wander: far in the distance poor hovels are visible. The shepherdess Licoris bends down over the mirror of the spring and decorates her hair with flowers. Lovely she is, and full of innocence. With her is Tirsis who, with tears in his eyes, accuses her of coldness. She promised love without knowing what love was. She laughs at his tears. But Tirsis is sad. He calls the nymph barbaric and cold. Licoris, unaware of any guilt, angers him. She provokes him with feigned anger and offers these simple words in reply. [. . . . .]. 3 Gluck, Le Cinesi. Booklet, p. 22.

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The text of the pastoral libretto begins with what is rhetorically termed the cernas formula, the summons to imaginary seeing. What the listener is supposed to imagine here is a stereotypical place, a locus amoenus, an idyllic landscape, as so often found in the tradition of the pastoral genre, in literature and painting as well as in music. Such a landscape is made present here by means of a rhetorical ekphrasis, a procedure described in numerous textbooks of rhetoric ever since Antiquity.4 Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813), an important German author of the Rokoko Age whose reputation as a Shakespeare translator still stands today, can rightfully be called not only a forerunner of German Classicism but also one of the pioneers of an independent German opera tradition. In his programmatic piece Versuch über das Teutsche Singspiel, und einige bis dahin einschlagende Gegenstände (Essay on the German singspiel and a Few Related Subjects) he presents himself as an advocate of a German lyric theatre. His aim he describes as follows: [. . .] durch Abstellung alter Mißbräuche, durch neue, bessere Einrichttungen, durch einige Aufmunterung patriotischer und vom Genius ihrer Kunst ohnehin schon erwärmter Tonkünstler, mit sehr geringem Aufwand auch in diesem Fache die Reste der uralten Barbarey aus Germanien zu vertreiben, und den guten Gesang—dieses sichre Zeichen eines gefühlvollen und gesitteten Volkes—unter uns allgemein zu machen.5 by abolishing old abuses, by creating new and better institutions, and by providing some encouragement to patriotic musicians who are already inspired with the genius of their art, to drive out of Germania, also in this field and at very little cost, the remnants of the old-age barbarism and to make good singing—this certain index of a sensitive and moral nation—our common property.

Wieland develops his model of a German singspiel against the foil of the opera seria of the Baroque Age. In his singspiel, text and music should be equally subject to the postulate of mimesis. Of the matter of reception he declares: Das Singspiel setzt [. . .] einen stillschweigenden Vertrag zwischen der Kunst und dem Zuhörer voraus. Dieser weiß wohl, daß man ihn täuschen wird; aber er will sich täuschen lassen. Jene verlangt nicht, für Natur gehalten zu

4 Cf. Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: Foundation for Literary Study, § 810. 5 Christoph Martin Wieland, “Versuch über das Teutsche Singspiel und einige dahin einschlagende Gegenstände”, in: Wielands Werke (Oßmannstedter Ausgabe). Vol. 12.1 Text: Bearbeitet von P.-H. Haischer & T. Hartmann. Berlin / New York: W. de Gruyter, 2009, pp. 308–309.



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werden; aber sie triumphirt, wenn sie mit ihrem Zauberstab noch größere und schönere Wirkungen hervorbringt als die Natur selbst.6 The singspiel presupposes a tacit contract between the art and the listener. The latter knows that he is being deceived; but he wants to be deceived. The former does not ask to be considered nature; but it triumphs when it produces with its magic wand even greater and more beautiful effects than nature itself.

In this sense Wieland created his Alceste (1733) as a prototype of a German singspiel and characterized it as a “conventional tragedy”. He alludes here to the classical tragedy of Euripides, but omits the chorus of antique drama and reduces the number of dramatis personae to the protagonists Alceste and Admet, Pathenia, a sister of Alceste, and Hercules, who leads Alceste out of Hades. For Wieland’s libretto Anton Schweitzer (1735–1797) composed the music. The subject matter was not entirely new in the music theatre of the time but had already been adapted for opera by Philippe Quinault / Jean-Baptiste Lully and Ranieri de’ Calzabigi / Christoph Willibald Gluck. Wieland could therefore make use of these earlier texts. In his Briefe an einen Freund über das deutsche Singspiel “Alceste” (Letters to a friend on the German singspiel “Alceste”) he writes the following: Ein Singspiel, eine förmliche Oper, eine Alceste, in fünf (freylich sehr kurzen) Aufzügen, wie das regelmäßigste Trauerspiel!—Erstaunen Sie nicht über meine Verwegenheit? Beynahe erstaune ich selbst darüber.7 A singspiel, a formal opera, an Alceste, in five (admittedly very short) acts, like the most conventional tragedy!—Are you not astonished at my boldness? I am almost astonished myself.

The plot of the opera, which follows the traditional narrative line, contains a scene, in which Admet, after the death of Alceste, recalls the happy days of their life together and pictures her present existence in the underworld: O Jugendzeit, o goldne Wonnetage Der Liebe, schöner Frühling meines Lebens, Wo bist du hin?—Ist’s möglich, bin ich der,

6 Wieland, “Versuch über das Teutsche Singspiel [etc.],” in: Wielands Werke. Vol. 12.1., p. 322. 7 Schweitzer / Wieland, Alceste. Audio-CD Berlin Classics. 001622B.C. 2008. Booklet, p. 9.—For an interpretation of this work see Christian Geltinger, Eine Oper der Dichter: Studien zum deutschen Opernlibretto um 1800. Anif/Salzburg: Verlag Mueller-Speiser, 2010, Chap. I.: “Die Oper und das regelmäßige Trauerspiel: Christoph Martin Wielands Lyrisches Drama Alceste” (pp. 14–25).

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chapter nine Der einst so glücklich war? So glücklich einst, Und itzt [= jetzt] so elend! Ohne Grenzen elend, Wenn nicht die Hoffnung, bald, Alceste, dir Zu folgen, meine Qual erträglich machte. Wo bist du?—Irrst du schon, geliebter Schatten, Um Lethe’s Ufer?—Ah! Ich seh sie gehn! In traur’ger Majestät geht sie allein Am dämmernden Gestad; ihr weichen schüchtern Die kleinern Seelen aus, sehn mit Erstaunen Die Heldin an.—Der schwarze Nachen stößt Ans Ufer, nimmt sie ein.—Der Schleier weht Um ihren Nacken.—O! nach wem, Geliebte, Unglückliche, nach wem siehst du so zärtlich Dich um?—Ich folge dir, ich komme! Weh mir! Schon hat das Ufer gegenüber Sie aufgenommen! Liebreich drängen sich Die Schatten um sie her; sie bieten ihr Aus Lethens Fluth gefüllte Schalen an. O hüte dich, Geliebte! Koste nicht Von ihrem Zaubertranke! Ziehe nicht mit ihm Ein ewiges Vergessen unsrer Liebe ein. O flieh, geliebter Schatten, fliehe! Ich unterläge dem Gewicht Von diesen schrecklichsten der Schmerzen.8 O youthful years, o golden days of the delight Of love, beautiful springtime of my life, Where have you gone?—Is it possible, am I the one Who was once so happy? Once so happy And now so wretched! Infinitely wretched, If the hope of following you soon, Alceste, Did not make it bearable. Where are you? Are you already wandering, dear shade, Along the banks of Lethe? Ah! I see her there! In sombre majesty she walks alone On that twilight shore; the smaller souls shyly Make way for her, and look with amazement At the heroine.—The black boat arrives At the shore and takes her in. The veil blows Around her neck.—O, for whom, my love, Unfortunate one, for whom do you look back So tenderly?—I shall follow you, I am coming! Woe is me! The opposite shore has already Received her! Lovingly the shadows crowd

8 Schweitzer / Wieland, Alceste. Booklet, 79.



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Around her; they offer her drinking bowls Filled with the waters of Lethe. O beware, my love! Do not taste That magical potion! Do not let it draw you Into an eternal forgetfulness of our love. O flee, dear shade, flee! Or I will die of this most terrible pain.

This opera monologue opens up, with the aid of the enargeia concept, a poignant scene—a scene, however, not enacted on the stage of the theatre but on the stage of the human heart. Inaccessible to the sense of sight, it can be perceived with the eyes of the imagination, which can in this way attend an imaginary drama. Admet is located both outside and inside this scene—outside because he is the “inventor”, inside because he is intensively involved in its action. The enargeia is here realised by means of a special type of description, the pragmatographia. About this device, the Elizabethan rhetorician Henry Peacham (1546–1634) writes the following: PRagmatographia is a description of things whereby ye [the] Orator by gathering together all circumstances belo[n]ging to them, doth as plainly portray their image, as if they were most liuely painted out in colours, & set forth to be séene: [. . . . .]. This kinde of exornation helpeth much to amplifie, to declare things plainly, and none more forcible to moue pittie.9

The effect of such an enargetic description is therefore the cathartic effect of pity, as prescribed by Aristotle for tragedy in his Poetics. The opera monologue quoted here is highly emotional. Figures of affect such as exclamatio and interrogatio, which are scattered through the descriptive passage quoted, also contribute to this effect. Again and again we encounter verbs of seeing which closely follow the events and accompany them with empathy. Admet frequently addresses Alceste in a fictive dialogue, pities her, warns her. Even when no answer is forthcoming, which creates a gap in the communication, the dramaturgy of the imaginary scene conjured up in words is extremely effective. The listener can hardly escape its power. In the age of Neoclassicism the most egregious indecorum a dramatist could be guilty of was to let one of his invented figures die on stage. 9 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (1593). Edited and commented by B.-M. Koll, pp. 137, 138. In the bracketed passage reference is made to Quintilian, Inst. Or. IX.ii.40 discussed above.

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For instead of bringing about a catharsis, it produces a comic effect. This explains why Shakespeare in his tragedy parody in A Midsummer Night’s Dream has Pyramus die so volubly: “Now die, die, die, die, die” (V.i.295). This excess of verbal copia does not produce an enargetic mental image but is redundant, since the audience is presented with the action on the stage. One generation later the English poet John Dryden (1631–1700) made this problem a point of discussion in his essay Of Dramatic Poesy (1668): I have observed that, in all our tragedies, the audience cannot forbear laughing when the actors are to die; ’tis the most comic part of the whole play. All passions may be lively represented on the stage, if to the well-writing of them the actor supplies a good commanded voice, and limbs that move easily, and without stiffness: but there are many actions which can never be imitated to a just height: dying especially is a thing which none but a Roman gladiator could naturally perform on the stage, when he did not imitate or represent, but naturally do it; and therefore it is better to omit the representation of it. ‘The words of a good writer, which describe it lively, will make a deeper impression of belief in us than all the actor can persuade us to when he seems to fall dead before us; as a poet in the description of a beautiful garden, or a meadow, will please our imagination more than the place itself can please the sight. When we see death represented, we are convinced it is but fiction; but when we hear it related, our eyes (the strongest witnesses) are wanting, which might have undeceived us, and we are all willing to favour the sleight when the poet does not too grossly impose on us. They, therefore, who imagine these relations would make no concernment in the audience, are deceived by confounding them with the other, which are of things antecedent to the play: those are made often in cold blood (as I may say) to the audience; but these are warmed with our concernments, which are before awakened in the play. What the philosophers say of motion, that when it is once begun it continues of itself, and will do so to eternity without some stop put to it, it is clearly true on this occasion: the soul, being already moved with the characters and fortunes of those imaginary persons, continues going of its own accord; and we are no more weary to hear what becomes of them when they are not on the stage than we are to listen to the news of an absent mistress. But it is objected that if one part of the play may be related, then why not all? I answer, some parts of the action are more fit to be represented, some to be related. Corneille says judiciously that the poet is not obliged to expose to view all particular actions which conduce to the principal: he ought to select such of them to be seen which will appear with the greatest beauty, either by the magnificence of the show, or the vehemence of passions which they produce, or some other charm which they have in them, and let the rest arrive to the audience by narration. ’Tis a great mistake in us to believe the French present no part of the action on the stage: every alteration or crossing of a design, every new-sprung passion, and turn of it, is a part of the action, and much the noblest, except we conceive



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nothing to be action till they come to blows; as if the painting of the hero’s mind were not more properly the poet’s work than the strength of his body. Nor does this anything contradict the opinion of Horace, where he tells us, segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem, quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus. For he says immediately after, non tamen intus digna geri promes in s[c]ænam; multaque tolles ex oculis, quæ mox narret facundia præsens. Among which he recounts some: nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet, aut in avem Procne mutetur, Cadmus in anguem, &c. That is, those actions which by reason of their cruelty will cause aversion in us, or, by reason of their impossibility, unbelief, ought either wholly to be avoided by a poet, or only delivered by narration. To which we may have leave to add such as to avoid tumult (as was before hinted), or to reduce the plot into a more reasonable compass of time, or for defect of beauty in them, are rather to be related than presented to the eye. Examples of these kinds are frequent not only among all the Ancients, but in the best received of our English poets.10

Dryden’s argumentation first deals with the art of theatre and its acoustic or kinetic deficits when presenting a dying figure; for the discrepancy in this case between the presentation and what it represents comes across not as tragic but as ridiculous. He therefore concludes that strictly speaking only an actual death, such as that of a Roman gladiator, would have a credible effect on stage. Since this could hardly be realised, nor would it be desirable, a narratio takes the place of the actio and describes this unperformable event as vividly as a poet typically describes a beautiful scene. The effect of this is as a rule hedone, or aesthetic pleasure. The argument goes on to focus on the memory of the recipient and his capacity for

10 John Dryden, Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays. Edited with an introduction by George Watson. 2 vols. London: Dent / New York: Dutton—Everyman’s Library, 1964, vol. I, pp. 51–53. The quotations from Horace appear translated into English in n. 1 on p. 53: Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 180–187: ‘The mind is stirred less by what enters through the ears than by what lies before its faithful eyes, and by what the spectator sees for himself. But do not bring on stage what should be performed off. Medea must not butcher her boys before the audience, or evil Atreus cook human flesh on the stage, or Procne be turned into a bird, or Cadmus into a serpent.’—For an interpretation of the passage quoted cf. Max Nänny, John Drydens rhetorische Poetik: Versuch eines Aufbaus aus seinem kritischen Schaffen. Bern: Francke, 1959, pp. 91 ff.

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retention. In an act of protentionality (Husserl) he then wants to find out what the future holds for the dramatis personae, whose fate he has been following. The third and final strand of argumentation cites the Ars Poetica of Horace, which is interpreted in keeping with the French Neoclassicist dramatists (Corneille, Racine) as a normative poetics. Taken as such, it requires that everything which falls under the heading non verisimile and indecorum is excluded from a direct presentation and consequently banned from the stage.11

11 Cf. René Bray, La formation de la doctrine classique en France. Paris: Nizet, 1966 (1927); Emmanuel Bury, Le classicisme. Paris: Nathan, 1993; André Blanc, Lire le classicisme. Sous la direction de Daniel Bergez. Paris: Dunod, 1995; Roger Zuber (avec la collaboration de Micheline Cuénin), Le classicisme. Paris: Flammarion, 1998; Marc Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence: Rhétorique et ‘res literaria’ de la Renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique. Genève: Droz, 2002 (11980).—On rhetoric in French classicist drama cf. Michael Hawcroft, Word as Action: Racine, Rhetoric, and Theatrical Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004 (11992).

Chapter Ten

Enargeia in Mnemonics and Meditation Rhetorical enargeia assumes a special role in mnemonics1 and spiritual meditation or religious mnemonics. It is based on images, concrete visual images as well as imaginative ones generated by a mental act of the meditating person. On the function of real images in churches Thomas of Aquinas (1225–1274) states: a threefold reason for the institution of images in the Church: first, for the instruction of the unlettered, who might learn from them as if from books; second, so that the mystery of the Incarnation and the examples of the saints might remain more firmly in our memory by being daily represented to our eyes; and third, to excite the emotions which are more effectively aroused by things seen than by things heard.2

The first function of images in churches is therefore that of the biblia pauperum, the second is that of a mnemonic aid, while the third—and probably most important one because it includes the other two functions—is that of instruments for stirring the emotions of the observer. The basis of visual representations in religious spaces could, however, be the rhetorical memoria, which according to the classical tradition consists of places (loci) and images (imagines).3 The English mnemonician John Willis (d. 1628?) discusses such images in his treatise The Art of Memory (1621). He calls them ideas und divides them into various categories: Direct Ideas (= mimetic images of reality), Relatiue Ideas (= tropical images: metaphors, metonymies), Subdititiall Ideas (= visualizations of proper names),

1 For Shakespeare’s mnemonics which will not be dealt with here see Linda Perkins Wilder, Shakespeare’s Memory Theatre: Recollection, Properties, and Character. Cambridge: CUP, 2010. 2 Thomas Aquinas, Commentarium super libros sententiarum: Commentum ad librum III, dist.9, art. 2, qu.2, translated by David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 162. 3 Cf. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966; Paolo Rossi, Clavis Universalis: Arti della memoria e logica da Lullo a Leibniz. Bologna: Il mulino, 1983; Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: CUP, 1990; Edward Joseph Whelan, The Rhetoric of Early Renaissance Meditation. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI, 1988 (1972).

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Scriptile Ideas (= visualizations of letters), and compound Ideas (= syntheses of simple images). In Chapter III, “Of Idea’s in generall,” he writes: An Idea is a visible representation of ought to be remembred, bestowed by the Imagination in one of the places of a Repositarie, by the remembrance whereof we call to mind that which was thereby signified.4

And in Chapter XII: “Of the choosing Idea’s,” he continues: IT is meet in the next place, to giue such rules, whereby we may know at the first, with what Idea euery thing that is to be remembred, must be expressed. Touching which, these six Rules following giue infallible and certaine direction. Rule 1. All histories, things done, fables, common businesses, finally whatsoeuer is visible or conceiued vnder a visible forme, and not illustrated by ought written, ought to be layd vp in memory, by a Direct Idea in equall quantitie, greater or lesse, as the nature of the Idea requireth. Rule 2. All histories, things done, fables, morals, and the like, explaned by verses or other writing: as also all Epigrams, Epitaphs, Anagrams, Impreses and libels, are to be expressed by an Idea compounded of a Direct Idea and a Scriptile. Rule 3. All Emblemes and sentences exemplified by some notable instance, are to be expressed by a compound Idea, consisting of a Relatiue and Scriptile Idea. Rule 4. All Characters, solitary letters, bare numbers, and quotations, are to be layd vp by a Scriptile Idea. Rule 5. All single words and proper names, expressible by a Subditiall Idea, ought so to be expressed. Rule 6. All sentences, phrases, words or names which can not presently be expressed by a Direct, a Relatiue, a Subditiall, or a compound Idea, ought to be expressed by a Scriptile Idea. And this for the choice of Idea’s shall suffice.5

In this typology of images one type is missing: an image that expresses something abstract—in the realm of religion, for example, God and the angels.6 Images of this kind, however, are found in the meditation theories of the Early Modern Age, which were based on the classical memoria.

4 John Willis, The Art of Memory as it Dependeth upon Places and Ideas (London 1621). Facsimile Reprint. The English Experience, no. 634. Amsterdam: Da Capo Press / New York: Theatrvm Orbis Terrarvm, 1973, p. 12. 5 Willis, The Art of Memory, pp. 48–50. 6 Cf. Moshe Barasch, Das Gottesbild: Studien zur Darstellung des Unsichtbaren. München: Fink, 1998.



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Ignatius Loyola (1491—1556) was thoroughly familiar with the tradition of rhetorical mnemonics. In his Exercitia Spiritualia7 he describes how the meditating person should conjure up a biblical place in his imagination and call to mind what happened there. A vision of hell can be generated in the following way: The first prelude consists of composing the place and to see with the eyes of the imagination the length, breadth and depth of Hell. [. . .] The first point is to behold in the imagination the vast fires of Hell, and the souls enclosed in their burning bodies; second, to hear the moans, the shouts, the screams and blasphemies coming from there; third to smell the smoke, the sulphur and the putrefying feces; fourth to taste these most bitter things, tears, rancour, the worm of conscience; fifth, somehow to touch the fires by which the souls themselves are burnt; and so, as one speaks all the time with Christ, those souls will present themselves to one’s memory, as well as their dreadful punishment, their opprobrious sins.8

This compositio loci is the constitution of a spiritual memorial site, which serves as fictive stage (topothesia) to make present “with the eyes of imagination” an event in the history of salvation. The scenes conjured up in this way are not limited to the visual, however, but address—in the imagination—all five senses of the meditator, from the noblest of sight to the lowliest of touch. This creates a fictive panaesthesia, which can evoke in the observer the cathartic affects of tragedy, as described in Aristotle’s Poetics, namely fear and pity. For this meditative practice Ignatius lists many possibilities from the Bible in his Exercitia Spiritualia. As Louis L. Martz explains in his The Poetry of Meditation (1954), the meditative technique of Ignatius forms the basis of a great many early modern poems of meditation.9

7 Text: S.P. Ignatius de Loyola, Exercitia Spiritualia. Cum versione litterali, ex autographo Hispanico. Notis illustrata. Editio altera. Namurei: E typographia F. Doux Fils bibliopolae, 1841. 8 Ignatius Loyola, Exercitia spiritualia, 1: Hebdomada quintum exercitium, translated by David Freedberg, The Power of Images, p. 170.—Cf. also The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. A Translation and Commentary by George E. Ganss, S.J. St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992.—On Ignatius’s rhetoric cf. Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Loyola’s Acts: The Rhetoric of the Self. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press, 1997.—On the relevance of images for the Jesuits cf. Elisabeth Oy-Marra & Volker R. Remmert (eds.), Le monde est une peinture: Jesuitische Identität und die Rolle der Bilder. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2011. 9 Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation. A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century. Rev. ed. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 1962.—Cf. also Christian Belin (ed.), La méditation au XVIIe siècle: Rhétorique, art, spiritualité. Colloques, Congrès et Conférences sur le Classicisme. Paris: Champion, 2006.

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A more intensive instance of the procedure than in Ignatius and the poets indebted to his theory can be found in the oratorio I pellegrini al sepolcro di nostro Signore (The Pilgrims at the Grave of our Lord) composed by Johann Adolph Hasse (1699–1783) of Hamburg for the libretto of Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino (1672–1742). Here five pilgrims set out on a journey to Jerusalem in search of the passion story of Jesus Christ and to solemnly remember what took place at each of the individual stations. This is presented in the form of short dramatic scenes. In total they form a theatrum meditationis or memoriae, in which the pilgrims empathically relive the passion story as if they were present as spectators. The spiritual guide (Guida) of the meditative travel companions instructs them accordingly: Quanto scorgete intorno, alme fedeli, degno è d’onor, di riverenza è degno; queste vie, questi colli, operando prodigi, e benefici, tutti ha scorsi il Signore; e incontra il passo dal divino sudor, se non dal sangue, consacrata ogni zolla, ed ogni sasso, l’orme, che un Dio v’impresse, a calcar togli, nudo il piè, chino il ciglio, pellegrino a ragion; ma poco giova se dai terreni affetti il cor non spogli, vano amor, vano orgoglio, invidia od ira, nella santa Città con voi non entri; e a salutarla intanto alziam per via, qual è costume, il canto. All that you see around you, faithful souls, is worthy of honour and of reverence. Upon these streets, these hills, our Lord once walked, working miracles and doing good; and where you walk the grassy turf and every stone has been consecrated by His sacred sweat, if not by His blood. You tread in the footsteps of God with unshod feet, head bowed, quite rightly, O pilgrim; but this avails but little if you do not rid yourself of earthly passions: bring not lust, pride, envy or wrath to the Holy City with you. And now, as is the custom, let us raise Our voices as we go in a song of greeting.10 10 Johann Adolf Hasse, I Pellegrini al Sepolcro di Nostro Signore. (Translation: Avril Bardoni). Booklet. Audio-CD (Virgin Veritas 72435392 4/5329 24 [1998]), pp. 21–22.—On



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Figure 4. Johann Adolph Hasse (1699–1783)

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The musical composition intensifies the affective side of this imagined reliving with its own kind of rhetoric. A similar work was created by the Bohemian Baroque composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745), an oratorio entitled I Penitenti al Sepolcro del Redentore (The Penitents at the Tomb of the Redeemer) to a libretto by the same Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino so that we can rightly conclude that musical meditations on religious themes were typical of this age. As Georgia Frank points out, however, this meditative practice of an imaginary pilgrimage goes back to a classical tradition.11

Hasse’s oratorios cf. Michael Koch, Die Oratorien Jahann Adolf Hasses: Überlieferung und Struktur. Erster Teilband. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1989.—Cf. also the excellent contribution to the programme book of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2008 by Sabine Radermacher entitled “Music should be clear and simple, yet sublime: Johann Adolf Hasse—Il divino Sassone” (pp. 28–33). 11 Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press, 2000.

Chapter Eleven

Enargeia and the Visual Arts Like music, the visual arts can amplify the evidence provided by a text. This is the case, for example, in pictorial scripts like the hieroglyphs of Horapollo or the Symbolica Aegyptiorum Sapientia of Nicolaus Caussinus1 as well as the symbola and the emblems.2 In the emblem the motto (inscriptio) represents the soul and the picture (pictura) the body. Michael Bath, in explicating the spiritual emblems of Francis Quarles (1592–1644) and Henry Hawkins (1577–1646), discusses the concept of enargeia: The conjunction of spiritual vision and rhetorical enargeia in the writing of Quarles and Hawkins can also be more narrowly explained in terms of the history of that received idea of the eye of understanding, oculi mentis, for the eye of the mind was not only a theological, it was also a rhetorical concept, ’a basic assumption that conditioned all discourse’ (Heninger 1984, 13). And in rhetoric it was invariably associated with the capacity of language to call before the mind of the listener a vivid image of the thing described; that is

1 The exact title is: SYMBOLICA ǼGYPTIORUM SAPIENTIA. Authore P. NICOLAO CAVSSINO E’ SOCIETATE IESV. OLIM AB EO SCRIPTA, nunc post varias Editiones, denuo edita. PARISIIS, Sumptibus SIMEONIS PIGET, viâ Iacobæâ, ad insigne Fontis. M.DC.XLVII. CVM PRIVILEGIO REGIS. 2 Cf. the early publication by Ludwig Volkmann, Bilderschriften der Renaissance: Hieroglyphik und Emblematik in ihren Beziehungen und Fortwirkungen. Leipzig: Karl Hiersemann, 1923, rpt. Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1962; Rudolf Wittkower, “Hieroglyphics in the Early Renaissance”, in: Wittkower, Allegory and the Migration of Symbols. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977, pp. 113–128; E.H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance. London: Phaidon, 1972, passim; and, more recently, Anne-Elisabeth Spica, Symbolique humaniste et emblématique: L’Évolution et les genres (1580–1700). Paris: Champion, 1996. Cf. also Bernhard F. Scholz’s important treatise Emblem und Emblempoetik: Historische und systematische Studien. Berlin: E. Schmidt, 2002.—On Jesuit emblematics cf. Jean-Vincent Blanchard, L’Optique du discours au XVIIe siècle: De la rhétorique des jésuites au style de la raison moderne (Descartes, Pascal). Saint-Nicolas, Québec, Canada: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005, Première Partie: « Probabilisme, méthode et rhétorique de l’emblème dans la culture jésuite de la Contre-Réforme » (pp. 13–97).—The hieroglyphic tradition starts with the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo; cf. The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo. Translated and introduced by George Boas. With a foreword by Anthony T. Grafton. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1993.

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chapter eleven to say in rhetoric the concept of oculi mentis was connected specifically with the power of enargeia.3

In spiritual emblematics we therefore find a conjunction of theological and rhetorical concepts. The most frequently quoted source on the visualization of verbal, above all poetical, texts, is the Ars Poetica of Horace in the lines 361–365: Ut pictura poesis: erit quae, si propius stes, te capiat magis, et quaedam, si longius abstes. haec amat obscurum, volet haec sub luce videri, iudicis argutum quae non formidat acumen; haec placuit semel, haec deciens repetita placebit. A poem is like a picture: one strikes your fancy more, the nearer you stand; another, the farther away. This courts the shade, that will wish to be seen in the light, and dreads not the critic insight of the judge. This pleased but once; that, though ten times called for, will always please.4

According to Wesley Trimpi this passage is in a way precedented by a passage in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (III.xii), which he renders thus: Now the style of oratory addressed to public assemblies is really just like scene-painting (σκιαγραφία). The bigger the throng, the more distant (πορρωτέρω) is the point of view: so that, in the one and the other, high finish in detail (ἀκριβῆ) is superfluous, and seems better away. The forensic style is more highly finished; still more so is the style of language addressed to a single judge (κριτῇ), with whom there is very little room for rhetorical artifices, since he can take the whole thing in better, and judge of what is to the point and what is not; the struggle is less intense and so the judgement is undisturbed. This is why the same speakers do not distinguish themselves in all these branches at once; high finish is wanted least when dramatic delivery is wanted most, and here the speaker must have a good voice, and above all, a strong one.5

Here the political and the forensic speech are compared to different types of painting, one of which can be apprehended from a distant view and the other rather at close range. The major focus of this syncrisis is one of stylistic representation, above all delivery. But apart from that, an interesting

3 Michael Bath, Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London / New York: Longman, 1994, p. 253. 4 Horace, Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica. With an English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England: Harvard UP, 2005, pp. 480–481. 5 Wesley Trimpi, “The Meaning of Horace’s Ut Pictura Poesis”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973), 1–34, here: 5.



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point is implied in this argument: the pictorial perspective which is an invention of artists and theorists of the Renaissance. As the passages quoted from Horace and Aristotle demonstrate, it is curiously anticipated by rhetorical and poetological, and not by pictorial, theorists of Classical Antiquity. Thus it can be regarded as an intermedial phenomenon that appears in manifold shapes, above all in such hybrid Renaissance inventions as symbola and emblemata.6

6 Cf. Arthur Henkel / Albrecht Schöne (eds.), Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978.

Chapter Twelve

Ut Pictura Poesis1 That many emblematists were very much aware of the fact that their printed works realised the Horatian ut pictura poesis is clear from their titles, for example: Barthélemy Aneau, Picta poesis, ut pictura poesis erit (1552) Mathias Holtzwart, Emblemata tyrocinia: sive picta poesis Latino Germanica (1581) Daniel Mannasser, Poesia tacens, Pictura loquens, quibus Occasio arrepta, neglecta delineatur, decantatur (1630) Daniel Stolcius, Viridarium chymicum figuris cupro incis[i]s adornatum, et poeticis picturis illustratum (1624)2

Another title, modeled after the fiction of the time, especially the Hecatommithi, is the Hecatomographie (1540) of Gilles Corrozet (1510–1568) with its “cent figures & histoires”.3 An often quoted statement by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538–1600) is that poetry and painting are sister arts. Even before him, however, the historian Scipione Ammirato (1538–1600) emphasized the same close relationship in his Il Rota, ovvero dell’Imprese (1562), declaring that the two arts were born simultaneously. This sibling relationship is developed by Christoforo Giarda (1595–1649), who writes in his Bibliothecae Alexandrinae icones symbolicae (1626) that poetry is “a careful emulatory picture of nature”, and that painters, seeing how perfectly the poets imitate nature, strive to surpass them. Painters and poets in the last analysis emulate their common parentage, namely nature: the former with lines, figures, 1 For several interesting articles on that topic see Word & Image. Volume I, Number 1 (January–March 1985).—Cf. also Mario Praz, “Ut Pictura Poesis”, in: Praz, Mnemosyne: The Parallel Between Literature and the Visual Arts. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1970, pp. 3–27; Thomas Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle’s Poetics and the Rise of the Modern Artist. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 2005, pp. 27–33; William G. Howard, “Ut pictura poesis”, PMLA 24 (1909), 40–123. 2 Robert J. Clements, Picta Poesis: Literary and Humanistic Theory in Renaissance Emblem Books. Temi & Testi, 6. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1960, p. 175. 3 On the general context cf. Florence Vuilleumier Laurent, La Raison des figures symboliques à la Renaissance et à l’âge classique: Etudes sur les fondements philosophiques, théologiques et rhétoriques de l’image. Genève: Droz, 2000.

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and shadows, the latter with arguments, words, and rhetorical figures. Giarda continues: The painter thinks himself victorious because he subjects things to the eyes and rather often deceives them; the poet claims to be the winner because he expresses things to minds, and often sweeps them up in deceits.4

Painting imitates bodies, poetry not only bodies but minds as well. The visual arts are bold, yet poetry is bolder. On this point he quotes the beginning of Horace’s Ars Poetica, in which the author rejects the composite figure of the grotesque.5 When Joachim du Bellay (1522–1560) offers ironic criticism of poor translators in La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoise (1527), he also assigns a significant role to enargeia and the rhetoric of the image. He does so in two successive chapters: in chapter 5 entitled “Que les Traductions ne sont suffisantes pour donner perfection à la Langue Francoyse” and in chapter 6 entitled “Des mauvais Traducteurs, et de ne traduyre les Poëtes”: eloquution (dy je) par la quelle principalement un orateur est jugé plus excellent, & un genre de dire meilleur que l’autre: comme celle dont est apellée la mesme eloquence: & dont la vertu gist aux motz propres, usitez & non aliénes du commun usaige de parler, aux methaphores, alegories, comparaisons, similitudes, energies, & tant d’autres figures & ornemens, sans les quelz tout oraison & poëme sont nudz, manques & debiles: je ne croyray jamais qu’on puisse bien apprendre tout cela des traducteurs, pour ce qu’il est impossible de le rendre avecques la mesme grace dont l’autheur en a usé: d’autant que chacune Langue a je ne scay quoy propre seulement à elle, dont si vous efforcez exprimer le naif en une autre Langue, observant la loy de traduyre, qui est n’espacier point hors des limites de l’aucteur, vostre diction sera contrainte, froide, & de mauvaise grace. Et qu’ainsi soit, qu’on me lyse un Demosthene & Homere Latins, un Ciceron & Vergile Francoys, pour voir s’ilz vous engendreront telles affections, voyre ainsi qu’un Prothée vous transformeront en diverses sortes, comme vous sentez, lysant ces aucteurs en leurs Langues. [. . . . .]. Mais que diray-je d’aucuns, vrayement mieux dignes d’estre appellés traditeurs que traducteurs? Veu qu’ilz trahissent ceux qu’ilz entreprennent exposer, les frustrant de leur gloire, & par mesme moyen seduysent les

4 Christophorus Giarda, Icones Symbolicae. Milano, 1628, p. 96. Translation by R.J. Clements in: Picta Poesis, p. 176. 5 On the history of the grotesque cf. Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Tr. U. Weisstein. New York: Columbia UP, 1981 (1963). For the English Renaissance cf. Neil Rhodes, Elizabethan Grotesque. London / Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.



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lecteurs ignorans, leur montrant le blanc pour le noyr: qui, pour acquerir le nom de scavans, traduysent à credict les Langues, dont jamais ilz n’ont entendu les premiers elementz, comme l’Hebraique & la Grecque: & encor’ pour myeux se faire valoir, se prennent aux poëtes, genre d’aucteurs certes auquel, si je scavoy’ ou vouloy’ traduyre, je m’adroisseroy aussi peu, à cause de ceste divinité d’invention qu’ilz ont plus que les autres, de ceste grandeur de style, magnificence de motz, gravité de sentences, audace & varieté de figures, & mil’autres lumieres de poësie: bref ceste energie, & ne scay quel esprit, qui est en leurs ecriz, que les Latins appelleroient genius. Toutes les quelles choses se peuvent autant exprimer en traduisant, comme un peintre peut representer l’ame avecques le cors de celuy qu’il entreprent tyrer apres le naturel. Ce que je dy ne s’adroisse pas a ceux qui, par le commandement des princes & grands seigneurs, traduysent les plus fameux poëtes Grecz & Latins: pour ce que l’obëissance qu’on doit à telz personnaiges ne reçoit aucune excuse en ce endroit: mais bien j’entens parler à ceux qui de gayeté de cœur (comme on dict) entreprennent telles choses legerement, & s’en aquitent de mesmes. O Apolon! O Muses! prophaner ainsi les sacrées reliques de l’Antiquité? Mais je n’en diray autre chose. Celuy donques qui voudra faire œuvre digne de prix en son vulgaire, laisse ce labeur de traduyre, principalement les poëtes, à ceux qui de chose laborieuse & peu profitable, j’ose dire encor’ inutile, voyre pernicieuse à l’acroissement de leur Langue, emportent à bon droict plus de molestie que de gloyre.6

Here the term energie appears twice, first in the plural, in the context of the tropes metaphor, allegory, and parable; these are declared indispensable for good orations and poems, for without such ornamentation they would seem bald and bare.7 The second time it appears, in the singular, in the discussion of esprit or genius, which was no doubt meant as the characteristic of the most elevated, and essentially untranslatable poetry. The comparison with painting serves mainly, it seems, to emphasize the concept of imitatio naturae, which applies to both of the sister arts. The question arises here whether with energie the author perhaps meant enargeia, which enables the poet to paint with words, specifically with the aid of ekphrasis, which—as in the case of the emblem—constitutes both the body and soul of verbal mimesis. In the emblem the image (pictura) represents the word (subscriptio) and the word represents the image—in keeping with the maxim of ut pictura poesis, which from the Renaissance to Lessing’s Laokoon oder: Über 6 Joachim du Bellay, La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse. Texte présenté et commenté par Louis Terreaux. Paris / Bruxelles / Montréal G.O. Harrap, 1972, pp. 32–36. 7 On the concept of style as dress of thought cf. Wolfgang G. Müller, Topik des Stilbegriffs: Zur Geschichte des Stilverständnisses von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1981, chap. IV: “Stil als Einkleidung des Gedankens” (pp. 52–84).

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die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1766) formed the basis of the mimetic relationship between poetry and painting.8 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) begins his treatise with an important sentence underlining this idea: Der erste, welcher die Malerei und Poesie miteinander verglich, war ein Mann von feinem Gefühle, der von beiden Künsten eine ähnliche Wirkung auf sich verspürte. Beide, empfand er, stellen uns abwesende Dinge als gegenwärtig, den Schein als Wirklichkeit vor; beide täuschen und beider Täuschung gefällt.9 The first person who compared painting and poetry was a man of refined feeling, who perceived that the two arts affected him in a similar way. Both, he felt, present to us absent things, as if they were present, appearance as reality; both deceive, and the deception of both is pleasing.

Lessing’s main point here concerns the effect of the mimesis produced by the two arts. In each case it consists in the fictive presence of a scene which essentially takes place in the imagination. Ever since Classical Antiquity the history of painting has included fables about paintings that appear so real that they deceive the senses of those who look at them.10 Already on the title page of his Laokoon, however, Lessing emphasizes the disparity between painting and poetry with a quotation from Plutarch: ‘hyle kai tropois diapherousi, which translated means: “In the material and forms they differ.” The emphasis thus is on the dividing line, for which arguments and examples are provided in the treatise itself.

8 Cf. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray; Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting. New York: Norton, 1967.—For a bibliography of treatises with this programmatic aphorism see Arno Molders, “Ut pictura poesis: Selective Annotated Bibliography of Books Published between 1900 and 1980 on the Interrelation of Literature and Painting from 1400 to 1800”, Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 32 (1983), 105–124. 9 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie. Ed. Kurt Wölfel. Frankfurt/M.: Insel Verlag, 1988, p. 9.—On the history of evidence, with special emphasis on Lessing, see Hans Christoph Buch, Ut pictura poesis: Die Beschreibungs­ literatur und ihre Kritiker von Lessing bis Lukács. München: Hanser, 1972; Gottfried Willems, Anschaulichkeit: Zu Theorie und Geschichte der Wort-Bild-Beziehungen und des literarischen Darstellungsstils. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989; Niklaus R. Schweizer, The ut pictura poesis Controversy in Eighteenth-Century England and Germany. Bern / Frankfurt/M.: P. Lang, 1972.—On the relationship of art and literature cf. the recent work by Arbogast Schmitt / Gyburg Uhlmann (eds.), Anschaulichkeit in Kunst und Literatur. Berlin / New York: W. de Gruyter, 2009.—On Diderot see the study of Hubertus Kohle, Ut pictura poesis non eritDenis Diderots Kunstbegriff. Hildesheim / Zürich / New York: Olms, 1989. 10 Cf. Ernst Kris / Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment. Preface by E.H. Gombrich. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.



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Lessing therefore clearly distances himself from the theorem of the Horatian ut pictura poesis, which declares poetry and painting to be “sister arts.” Plutarch (ca. 46–120) was also instrumental in passing this theorem on to the Early Modern Age; in his treatise How the Young Man Should Study Poetry (ΠΩΣ ΔΕΙ ΤΟΝ ΝΕΟΝ ΠΟΙΗΜΑΤΩΝ ΑΚΟΥΕΙΝ), addressed to Marcus Sedatus, he describes how poetry can be used as a way to introduce a young man to philosophy. Plutarch embeds the theorem into the following advice on how the young man should go about reading poetry: Ἒτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐπιστήσομεν αὐτὸν ἅμα τῷ προσάγειν τοῖς ποιήμασιν ὑπογράφοντες τὴν ποιητικὴν ὃτι μιμητικὴ τέχνη καὶ δύναμίς ἐστιν ἀντίστροφος τῇ ζῳγραφίᾳ. καὶ μὴ μόνον ἐκεῖνο τὸ θρυλούμενον ἀκηκοὼς ἔστω, ζῳγραφίαν μὲν εῑναι φθεγγομένην τὴν ποίησιν, ποίησιν δὲ σιγῶσαν τὴν ζῳγραφίαν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τούτῳ διδάσκωμεν αὐτὸν ὅτι γεγραμμένην σαύραν ἢ πίθηκον ἢ Θερσίτου πρόσωπον ἰδόντες ἡδόμεθα καὶ θαυμάζομεν οὐχ ὡς καλὸν ᾿αλλ᾿ ὡς ὅμοιον. οὐσίᾳ μὲν γὰρ οὐ δύναται καλὸν γενέσθαι τὸ αἰσχρὸν ἡ δὲ μίμησις, ἄν τε περὶ φαῦλον ἄν τε περὶ χρηστὸν ἐφίκηται τῆς ὁμοιότητος, ἐπαινεῖται. καὶ τοὐναντίον ἂν αἰσχροῦ σώματος εἰκόνα καλὴν παράσχῃ, τὸ πρέπον καὶ τὸ εἰκὸς οὐκ ἀπέδωκεν. We shall steady the young man still more, if, at his first entrance into poetry, we give a general description of the poetic art as an imitative art and faculty analogous to painting. And let him not merely be acquainted with the oftrepeated saying that “poetry is articulate painting, and painting is inarticulate poetry,” but let us teach him in addition that when we see a lizard or an ape or the face of Thersites in a picture, we are pleased with it and admire it, not as a beautiful thing, but as a likeness. For by its essential nature the ugly cannot become beautiful; but the imitation, be it concerned with what is base or with what is good, if only it attain to the likeness, is commended. If, on the other hand, it produces a beautiful picture of an ugly body, it fails to give what propriety and probability require.11

Imitation, in other words, is the way to achieve likeness. And likeness, for Plutarch, is the fundamental criterion for judging a poem or a painting. In view of the fact that eidolopoiein (εἰδωλοποιεῖν) can refer to the evoking of mental images—that is, the interplay of the images conjured up and the images presented in the work—the term “likeness” could imply the phenomenon of recognition. In another place (Mor. IV.347) Plutarch stresses not only what painting and poetry have in common, but also explains how they differ: Although both depict deeds and actions, these appear in paintings as present but in verbal representations as having already occurred. 11 Plutarch, “How the Young Man Should Study Poetry”, in: Plutarch’s Moralia. With an English translation by F.C. Babbitt. In 16 volumes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP / London: Heinemann, 1969. Vol. I, pp. 74–197, here: pp 90–93.

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The analogy between poetry and painting drawn by Plutarch and other classical and humanist12 authors is sharply criticized by Lessing, who attempts to create some order in the theoretical confusion that had arisen over the centuries. An art theorist like Lodovico Dolce (1508/10–1568), for instance, expands the pictorial analogy, maintaining that not only poets but all writers are painters and that every sentence written by learned men (qualcunque componimento de’ dotti) is a painting. On the other hand, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo represents the complementary view that there is no painter of rank who is not inspired by a poetic spirit. And at the end of this Renaissance tradition Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), the first president of the London Royal Academy, can without the least hesitation refer to Shakespeare as “that faithful and accurate painter of nature” and at the same time remark that “Michelangelo possessed the poetical part of our art in a most eminent degree.”13 Lessing was the first to disparage the views of such critics: Völlig aber, als ob sich gar keine solche Verschiedenheit fände, haben viele der neuesten Kunstrichter aus jener Übereinstimmung der Malerei und Poesie die krudesten Dinge von der Welt geschlossen. Bald zwingen sie die Poesie in die engern Schranken der Malerei; bald lassen sie die Malerei die ganze weite Sphäre der Poesie füllen. Alles was der einen recht ist, soll auch der andern vergönnt sein; alles was in der einen gefällt oder missfällt, soll notwendig auch in der andern gefallen oder missfallen; und voll von dieser Idee, sprechen sie in dem zuversichtlichsten Tone die seichtesten Urteile, wenn sie, in den Werken des Dichters und Malers über einerlei Vorwurf, die darin bemerkten Abweichungen voneinander zu Fehlern machen, die sie dem einen oder dem andern, nach dem sie entweder mehr Geschmack an der Dichtkunst oder an der Malerei haben, zur Last legen.14 Still, many recent critics have drawn the most ill-digested conclusions imaginable from this correspondence between painting and poetry, just as though no such difference existed. In some instances they force poetry into the narrower limits of painting; in others they allow painting to fill the whole sphere of poetry. Whatever one is entitled to must be permitted to the other also; whatever pleases or displeases in one must necessarily please or displease in the other. And so, full of this idea, they pronounce the shallowest judgments with the greatest self-assurance and, in criticizing the work of a 12 Cf. the report on the humanist discussion by Ulrich Pfisterer, “Künstlerische Potestas audiendi und Licentia im Quattrocento: Benozzo Gozzololi, Andrea Mantegna, Bertoaldo di Giovanni”, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 31 (1996), 107–149, esp. 109–118: “I. Malerei und Dichtung in der humanistischen Diskussion.” 13 For the preceding argument and its sources cf. Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting, pp. 3–4. 14 Lessing, Laokoon, p. 10.



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poet and a painter on the same subject, they regard the differences in treatment observed in them as errors, which they blame on the one or the other, depending on whether they happen to prefer painting or poetry.

This critical position is of course based on an implicit ranking of the arts.15 For Lessing poetry enjoys a higher status than painting. Like other theorists before Lessing the Italian Jesuit Antonio Possevino (1534–1611) was very early in pointing out the symbiosis of the sister arts.16 He did so in his Neo-Latin work TRACTATIO / De poësi & Pictura ethica, humana, & fabulosa collata cum vera, honesta & sacra. / [. . . . .] / LVGDVNI, / APVD IOANNEM PILLEHOTTE ad insigne Nominis IESV. / M.D.XCV. He had good reason for doing so, for the powerful effect of such a symbiosis explains why Jesuit theatre of the seventeenth century often combines the two arts for the propaganda fidei.17 When music and ballet are added as well, the result can rightly be termed multimedia theatre.18 In the Early Modern Age painting was viewed as language and poetry as a kind of painting—in keeping with the ut pictura poesis from the Ars Poetica or Epistola ad Pisones (v. 361) of Horace. This dictum was mistakenly interpreted after the example set by Acron (3rd cent.) as meaning a poem will or should be like a picture: ut pictura poesis erit.19 This 15 Cf. Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The Modern System of the Arts” (1951–1952), in: Kristeller, Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts. New York / Evanston / London: Harper & Row, 1965, pp. 163–227. 16 Antonius Possevinus, Bibliotheca selecta (1593), Pars II, lib. XVII: “Quamobrem aequum erat, ne dissociarentur, quae tot symbolis persimiles, ac quasi nexibus aptae essent inter se.”, quoted from Barbara Bauer, “Multimediales Theater: Ansätze zu einer Poetik der Synästhesie bei den Jesuiten”, in: H.F. Plett (ed.), Renaissance-Poetik / Renaissance Poetics. Berlin / New York: W. de Gruyter, 1994, pp. 197–238, here: p. 206; cf. also Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer, “Antonio Possevino’s Bibliotheca Selecta: Knowledge as a Weapon”, in: Manfred Hinz & al. (eds.), I Gesuiti e la Ratio Studiorum. Roma: Bulzoni, 2004, pp. 315–355; Luigi Balsamo, Antonio Possevino S.J. bibliografo della controriforma: e diffusione della sua opera in area anglicana. Firenze: Olschki, 2006; Alberto Castaldini (ed.), Antonio Possevino: I gesuiti e la loro eredità culturale in Transilvania. Atti della giornata di studio Cluj-Napoca, 4 dicembre 2007. Biblioteca Instituti Historici S.J., 67. Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2009.—For an older discussion of this subject cf. Walter Delius, Antonio Possevino SJ und Ivan Groznyi: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der kirchlichen Union und Gegenreformation des 16. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Evang. Verlagswerk, 1962. 17 Cf. Evonne Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. Berkeley / London: University of California Press, 2004. 18 Cf. Barbara Bauer, “Multimediales Theater: Ansätze zu einer Poetik der Synästhesie bei den Jesuiten”, in: H.F. Plett (ed.), Renaissance-Poetik / Renaissance Poetics, pp. 197–238; cf. also Jean-Marie Valentin, Le théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue Allemande: Répertoire chronologique des pièces et des documents conservés (1555–1773). 2 vols. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1983. 19 Cf. J. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray. Chicago / London: University of Chicago Press, 1958, 31968.

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modification of the Horatian formula can be found, for example, in the Italian philosopher and literary critic Jacopo Mazzoni (1548–1598). In his discussion of the mimesis concept he refers to classical authors who connect painting with poetry, among them Philostratus the Elder with his Eikones, which are not descriptions of concrete paintings but rather pictures conjured up through vivid language alone: Per questa particularizzazione esatta propria de’ poeti (credo io) scrisse Filostrato nel I delle Immagini, che la poesia era simile alla pittura. « Ut pictura poesis erit » disse Orazio. E Plutarco, nel libretto dov’ egli insegna il modo col quale si devono ascoltare li poeti, scrive chiaramente che la poesia è una pittura parlante, e soggiunge che come nella pittura non si biasma la bruttezza delle cose rappresentate, purché elle sieno imitate bene, che medesimamente nella poesia non si deve biasimare la bruttezza de’ costumi s’ella sia espressa artificiosamente.20 Concerning exact particularization, which is proper to the poet, I believe that Philostratus writes in his first chapter on images that poetry is similar to painting. And Horace said, “Ut pictura poesis erit.” And Plutarch in the essay where he teaches how we ought to listen to poets clearly writes that poetry is a speaking picture and adds that as in a picture we do not censure the ugliness of the things represented if they are well imitated, so likewise in poetry we ought not to censure the ugliness of manners if they are artfully expressed.21

Mazzoni concludes from such comments that mimesis is closely related to enargeia or evidenza. To substantiate this claim he quotes from Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes (V.114): Traditum est etiam Homerum caecum fuisse. At eius picturam, non poësim videmus. Quae regio, quae ora, qui locus Graeciae, quae species formaque pugnae, quae acies, quod remigium, qui motus hominum, qui ferarum non ita expictus est, ut quae ipse non viderit nos ut videremus effecerit?22

pp. 59–60.—Cf. on the tradition of poetics and art theory since the Classical Antiquity the voluminous work of Karl Borinski, Die Antike in Poetik und Kunsttheorie. 2 vols. Darmstadt: Wiss Buchgesellschaft, 1965. [Leipzig 11914]. 20 Jacopo Mazzoni, Introduzione alla Difesa della “Commedia” di Dante. Ed. Enrico Musacchio & Gigino Pellegrini. Bologna: Cappelli, 1982, p. 38. The reference here is to Plutarch’s treatise quoted above. 21 Giacopo Mazzoni, On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante: Introduction and Summary. Translated, with a critical preface by Robert L. Montgomery. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida: A Florida State University Book, pp. 51–52. 22 Mazzoni, Introduzione alla Difesa della “Commedia” di Dante, p. 39.—For the Latin text a modern edition is used: Cicero, Tusculan Disputations. With an English translation by J.E. King. London, England / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1945, pp. 538—540.



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There is the tradition also that Homer was blind: but it is his painting not his poetry that we see; what district, what shore, what spot in Greece, what aspect or form of combat, what marshalling of battle, what tugging at the oar, what movements of men, of animals has he not so depicted so vividly that he has made us see, as we read, the things which he himself did not see?23

Mazzoni comments upon it in this way: E in quel luogo Filippo Beroaldo, avendo notate molte cose, soggiunge finalmente quelle parole: « Laus optimi poetae ita graphice cuncta describentis, vel potius depingentis, ut ea oculis legentium spectanda subicere videatur. » Per tutte queste autorità, si può, per mio giudicio, arditamente confessare ch’ancora nel racconto la poesia fusse rassomigliata alla pittura parlante. E però tutti le buoni poeti si sono sforzati nelle sue narrazioni di raccontare le cose con tanta evidenza ch’elle sieno quasi vedute cogli occhi della fronte.24 And Filippo Beroaldo having noted many things on that point adds these words at the end: “The greatest praise for a poet is to skilfully portray everything, or even better to depict things so that they seem to be right in front of the gaze of the reader.” On the basis of all this authority we can in my judgment confidently admit that poetry, when it is narrative, may resemble a speaking picture. Almost all good poets are forced in their narrations to report things with such clarity that we virtually see them before our very eyes.25

Though the visuality of the eyes is conjured up—as a metaphor—in these words, the pictorial perception generated by enargeia is of a mental, not a visual sort. In England pictorial poetic evidence comes in for comment by George Chapman (1559–1634) in the preface to his epic poem The Banquet of Sense (1595), where the painter is held up as an example for the poet: That, Enargia, or cleerenes of representation, requird in absolute Poems is not the perspicuous deliuery of a lowe inuention; but high, and harty inuention exprest in most significant, and vnaffected phrase; it serues not a skilfull Painters turne, to draw the figure of a face onely to make knowne who it represents, but hee must lymn, giue luster, shaddow, and heightening; which though ignorants will esteeme spic’d, and too curious, yet such as haue the iudiciall perspectiue, will see it hath, motion, spirit and life.26

23 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, pp. 539–541. 24 Mazzoni, Introduzione alla Difesa della “Commedia” di Dante, p. 39. 25 Mazzoni, On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante, p. 52. 26 George Chapman, Poems. Ed. Phyllis Brooks Bartlett. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969, p. 49.—On this and other poems of Chapman cf. Raymond B. Waddington, “Visual Rhetoric: Chapman and the Extended Poem”, ELR 13 (1983), 36–57.

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Vernacular Italian poetics also include definitions which speak of poets painting with words, as in the Discorsi [. . .] intorno al comporre dei romanzi (1554) of Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio (1504–1573). Although the author does not mention the term enargeia or evidentia, he does offer examples of such a rhetorical-poetic procedure.27 In discussing the poema eroico, he makes the following remarks about enargeia: Sarà adunque, messer Giovambattista, allo scrittore di cose gravi et illustri, questa ferma regola: che trallasci quelle descrizzioni che o possono recare fastidio o sono senza grazia o sono indegne della grandezza eroica et traggono il poeta fuori de’ suoi termini. Perché la “energia” nel poeta (per parlare alla greca), apresso i Latini et appresso noi, non sta (come si ha creduto il Trissino) nel minutamente scrivere ogni cosuccia, qualunque volta il poeta scrive eroicamente, ma nelle cose che sono degne della grandezza della materia c’ha il poeta per le mani. Et la virtù dell’energia, la quale noi possiamo dimandare “efficaccia”, si asseguisce qualunque volta non usiamo né parole né cose oziose. Et sebene Omero (padre veramente di tutti i poeti quanto alle materie e agli ordini) è molte volte in ciò trascorso, non vi è però mai trascorso Vergilio (quantunque avesse veduto Catullo che nell’ Epitalamio di Peleo et di Tetide avesse così minutamente descritto il filare della Parca), come quegli che sempre ha atteso al grande et al magnifico et ha fuggito quello che portava con essolui bassezza indegna dello stile eroico; ancoraché il Trissino (quantunque nol nomini ma sotto velame il descriva) gli dia biasimo per questa cagione. Né fu maraviglia che egli, intento all’umile et al basso non convenevole a materia grave, biasimasse chi a lui non era simile. Dee adunque considerar l’uomo ch’a’ nostri tempi scrive che, come Vergilio stimò non convenire simili cose a’ tempi suoi et allo scrittore di cose gravi, così non convengono a noi, per le cagioni che di sopra dicemmo quando della maestà parlato abbiamo.28 The Enargeia (to use the Greek term) of the poet among the Latins and us does not consist (as Trissino thought it did) in writing minutely of every little insignificant thing whenever the poet writes heroically, but of things worthy of the greatness of the theme with which the poet is working. The virtue of Enargeia that we can call efficacious is achieved whenever neither words nor things are used unpleasantly. Although Homer (truly father of all poets as to matter and the ordering of it) lapsed many times in this

27 Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, Discorsi dei romanzi. A cura di L. Benedetti G. Monorchio & E. Musacchio. Bologna: Millennium, 1999, p. 209; cf. n. 405: “È il discorso della ἐναργεια [. .], quasi una citazione da Cicerone in Partitiones (20) ‘rem constituet paene ante oculos’, ma arricchita, nell’ amplificazione che segue, da una vasta esemplificazione di topos.” 28 Giraldi Cinzio, Discorso dei romanzi, pp. 97–99.—On Giraldi und his poetics cf. Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, vol. I, pp. 433–444.



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respect, Vergil never did (although Catullus might have seen that in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis he had thus minutely described the spinning of the Parcae). Vergil always attained to the grand and the magnificent and avoided the baseness unworthy of the heroic style; yet Trissino censures him for this reason, though he writes of Vergil not by name but under a veil. It was not remarkable that Trissino, intent on the low and base that is unfitting to a serious subject, would censure one who was not like him. Anyone who writes in our time ought therefore to consider that, as Vergil did not regard such things as suitable to his times and to the writer of serious subjects, so they are not suitable to us, for the reason we stated above when we discussed grandeur.29

In the original text of Giraldi Cinthio’s we find instead of enargeia the term energeia (Italian efficaccia). This is mentioned in the Rhetoric (III. xi.1f. [1410b33–36, 141b22–1412a10]) of Aristotle, and is there, in the context of the theory of metaphor, defined as “Bringing-Before-the-Eyes” of something in such a way that it makes for actuality.30 Yet the humanists not infrequently interpret energeia as enargeia or evidentia. The Strasbourg humanist Johann Sturm (1507–1589), for example, entitles the corresponding chapter in his edition of the Rhetoric—a work enthusiastically lauded by the English humanist Roger Ascham—“CAPVT XIIII. De illustri seu euidenti genere dicendi, quod rem constituit ante oculos.”31 Marcus Antonius Maioragus (1514–1555), an orator named after his birthplace near Milan, where he was a member of the Academia degli Transformati and in 1541 was appointed professor, creates even greater confusion. At one point he correctly renders energeia as actus, actio, motus and animus, citing Quintilian’s definition of energeia (Inst.Or.VII.iii.89). Shortly before that, however, he translates energeia as evidentia and illustris explanatio, expressly

29 Giraldi Cinthio, On Romances. Being a translation of the Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi. With introduction and notes by Henry L. Snuggs. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968, p. 182, n. 70 on Trissino: “In La Poetica, VI Divisione, Trissino defines ‘enargia’ as ‘un ponere la cosa quasi avanti gli occhi’ (Tutte le Opere [Verona, 1729], II, 115). In the succeeding pages Trissino’s copious detailing of what ought to be the substance of a poem leads one to the conclusion, as apparently it did Giraldi, that by enargia Trissino meant very minute detail.” 30 Cf. Sara Newman, “Aristotle’s Notion of ‘Bringing-Before-the-Eyes’: Its Contributions to Aristotelian and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Metaphor, Style, and Audience”, Rhetorica 20/1 (2002), 1–23; J. Kirby, “Aristotle on Metaphor”, American Journal of Philology 118 (1997), 517.—On the reception history of energeia in humanist commentaries on Aristotle’s Rhetoric cf. H.F. Plett, Rhetorik der Affekte: Englische Wirkungsästhetik im Zeitalter der Renaissance. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975, pp. 184–193. 31 Aristotelis Rhetoricorum libri III. in latinum sermonem conuersi, & scholis breuioribus explicati a IOANNE STVRMIO, ARGENTINÆ, [n.d.], p. 365v.

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relating it to the definitions of enargeia in Quintilian (Inst.Or. VII.iii.61) and Cicero (De Or. III.liii.202).32 In humanism the Aristotelian energeia is often rendered in Latin as efficacia, first in the Aristotle commentaries, but subsequently also in a poetics as influential as the Poetices libri septem (1561) of Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), a work of greatest significance for French classicism.33 In chapter xxvii (efficacia) of Book III of this poetics energeia or efficacia is elevated to a general principle of style, which is defined in contrast to the two stylistic vitia: affectedness or bombast on the one hand—that is, too much art—and on the other weakness or inertia—too little art. For both deficits Scaliger mentions characteristic examples from Roman poetry, with Virgil as its ideal representative.34 But enargeia or evidentia also appears in Scaliger’s poetics, albeit under synonyms, namely in Lib. III. Cap. xxxiiii. on Demonstratio, Descriptio, Effictio. Here Scaliger presents the types of ekphrasis familiar from classical and humanist rhetorics, as discussed above. They range from the enargetic description of place to impersonation (prosopopoeia) in the dramatic monologue. In the year 1586 Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597), in his time an important exponent of Platonic philosophy at the court of Ferrara, published two separate volumes of his Poetica. In the second part, under the title La deca disputata, he wrote a critical commentary on the Aristotelian theory of mimesis. His analysis yielded six different meanings of this concept, which Baxter Hathaway paraphrased as follows: (1) all nouns taken as imitations of things, an interpretation borrowed by Aristotle from the Cratylus of Plato, in which Plato had asked whether

32 M. Antonii Maioragii in tres Aristotelis libros, De Arte Rhetorica, quos ipse Latinofecit, Explanationes, Venetiis M.D.LXXII, pp. 399–400. This is one of the many commentaries he wrote on Aristotle and Cicero. 33 Cf. René Bray, La formation de la doctrine classique en France. Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1963.—On Scaliger’s poetics cf. Bernard Weinberg, “Scaliger versus Aristotle on Poetics”, Modern Philology 39 (1942), 337–360; Mario Costanzo, “Introduzione alla Poetica di Giulio Cesare Scaligero”, Giornale storico della letteratura 138 (1961), 1–38; Luigi Corvaglia, “La Poetica di Giulio Cesare Scaligero nella sua genesi e nel suo sviluppo”, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 38 (1959), 214–239; Marijke Spies, “Between Epic and Lyric: The Genres in J.C. Scaliger’s Poetices Libri Septem”, in: Spies, Rhetoric, Rhetoricians and Poets: Studies in Renaissance Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Henk Duits & Ton van Strien. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999, pp. 21–27.—On Scaliger’s linguistic theory cf. Kristian Jensen, Rhetorical Philosophy and Philosophical Grammar: Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Theory of Language. München: Fink, 1990. 34 Cf. Gregor Vogt-Spira, “Julius Caesar Scaliger: Über Homer und Vergil”, Modern Language Notes 105/3 (1990), 409–431.



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words should be thought of as imitators, imitations, symbols, signs, similars, images, figures, or declarations (2) the rhetorical concept of enargeia (putting scenes concretely and vividly before our eyes) extended to mean imitation (3) the fable or plot of an action thought of as an imitation of an action (4) imitation consisting of the relation between an action presented on a stage and a real-life action (5) an extension of the principle in 4 to include epic and dithyrambic poetry (6) a further extension including musical accompaniment.35

If in the last analysis all these meanings converge, Patrizi argues, then Aristotle’s definition is no longer ambiguous. The only thing relevant for the reception is that enargeia is closely connected with mimesis, which means that the rhetorical category of evidence is not restricted to just one literary genre, namely drama, but ideally extends to the epic as well, and even to non-verbal art genres, like mimetic painting and non-mimetic music. Horace’s ut pictura poesis led to endless repetitions in poetic and art theory of the chiastic aphorism of Simonides of Ceos, namely that poetry is speaking painting (pictura loquens) and painting mute poetry (muta poesis). This idea is also clearly expressed on the title page of an emblem book, where we read: POESIS TACENS. PICTVRA LOQUENS QVIBVS OCCASIO ARREPTA, NEGLECTA DELINEATVR DECANTATVR. DILINGÆ Formis ÆNEIS Danielis Mannassee. FESTINO LENTE Typis Caspari Sutoris. Anno Christi M DC XXX.

The alleged muteness of painting does not, however, constitute a disadvantage. On the contrary, as the Portuguese art theorist and painter Francisco de Holanda (1517–1585) states in the second of his Four Dialogues on Painting 1538:

35 Baxter Hathaway, The Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1962, p. 10.

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chapter twelve E os bons poetas a cousa por que se mais cansam e que têm por mór fineza é com palavras (porventura demasiadas e longas) vos mostrar como pintada uma tormenta do mar, ou um incendio de uma cidade, que se elles podessem, antes o pintariam; a qual tormenta quando acabaes com trabalho de lêr, já vos o começo esquece, e sómente tendes presente o curto verso em que levaes os olhos. E o que vos isto melhor mostrar, este é o melhor poeta. Ora quanto mais diz a pintura, que juntamente vos mostra aquella tormenta cos trovōes, raios, ondas e rottas, naos e penedos. [. . .] E assim mesmo mostra mui presente e vesivelmente todo aquelle incendio d’aquella cidade, em todas as suas partes, representado e visto tão igualmente como se fosse mui vero. That for which poets strive and which they regard as the highest art, is to paint with words (and often with far too many and far too difficult words) a storm at sea or a city on fire, which they would much prefer to paint as a real picture if only they were able. However, once you have with great effort read such a storm to the end, you have already forgotten the beginning, and only the last line, on which your eyes still rest, is present. The one who is most capable of executing such a depiction is the best poet. But how much more eloquent is painting, which shows at the same time the entire storm with thunder, lightning, surging waves, as well as sinking ships, rocks and boats. [. . .] It also brings the burning city, with all its horrors, directly and clearly before our eyes, as naturally and vividly as if it were reality.36

The Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) similarly contrasts painting and poetry: [. . .] Et in questo caso la pittura, immitata da quella, in gran parte supplisse il che suplire non potra la discretione del poeta. Il quale in questo caso si vole ecquiparare al pittore, ma no s’avede che’lle sue parole nel far mentione delle membra di tal bellezze, il tempo le divide l’un da l’altro et infra mette la obblivione et divide le proportioni. Le quali lui sanza gran prolissita non può nominare et non potendole nominare, esso non può comporne l’armonicha proportionalita, la quale è composta de divine proportioni. [. . .] In this case painting, copied from divine beauty, supplies in great part what the poet’s description will not be able to supply. If the poet wishes to make himself equal to the painter in this case, he does not take into account that when his words mention these beauties according to their members, time divides one from another and puts oblivion between each of them and divides the proportions. He cannot name the proportions without great prolixity, and in not being able to name them, he cannot compose their harmonic proportionality, which is composed of divine proportions.37 36 Francisco de Holanda, Vier Gespräche über die Malerei geführt zu Rom 1538. Ed. & trans. Joaquim de Vasconcellos. Wien: Carl Graeser, 1899, pp. 70–73. 37 Claire J. Farago, Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Paragone’: A Critical Interpretation with a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas. Leiden / New York [etc.]: E.J. Brill, 1992, pp. 222–223.



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In his Notebooks Leonardo addresses the poet directly and in his admonition makes it clear that his art is inferior to that of the painter: [. . .] e se tu poeta figurerai una storia colla pittura della penna, el pittore col pennello la farà di piv facile sadisfatione e mē tediosa a essere cōpresa: se tu dimãderai la pittura muta poesia, ãcora il pittore potrà dire del poeta orba pittura. And if you, O poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness and less tedious to be understood. [. . .] And if you call painting dumb poetry the painter may call poetry blind painting.38

In the same context Leonardo liberates painting from the poets’ stigmatizing claim that it is merely an ars mechanica: [. . .] uoi avete messa la pittura ifra l’arti mecaniche, cierto se i pittori fussino atti al laudare collo scriuere l’opere loro come voi, io dubito nõ giacerebbe ĩ si uile cognome; se uoi la chiamate mecanica, perchè è prima manvale che le mani figurano quel che truovano nella fantasia, voi scrittori disegniate colla penna manualmēte quello che nello igiegnio vostro si truova, e se voi diceste essere mecanica perchè si fa a prezzo chi cade ĩ questo errore, se errore si può chiamare piv di uoi? You have ranked painting among the mechanical arts but, in truth, if painters were as apt at praising their own works in writing as you are, it would not lie under a stigma of so base a name. If you call it mechanical because it is, in the first place, manual, and that it is the hand which produces what is to be found in the imagination, you too writers, who set down manually with the pen what is devised in your mind. And if you say it is mechanical because it is done for money, who falls into this error—if error it can be called—more than you?39

In the Paragone between painting and poetry Leonardo therefore decides in favour of painting, because it conveys its beauties directly as a whole, while the temporal art of poetry necessarily and less effectively offers them in portions, and thus encourages the forgetting which accompanies its segmented reception. Francisco de Holanda expresses the same opinion, giving the aphorism of Simonides a clearly partisan slant and twisting Quintilian’s example of the vivid verbal depiction of a burning city, quoted earlier, in order to make precisely the opposite point. The theatre metaphor, which already appears in Vives’ Fabula de homine, here reveals 38 The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter. 2 vols. New York: Dover Publications, 1970, vol. I, p. 327. 39 The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. I, p. 328.



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itself as a signal of a perfect mimetic evidentia. The role of enargeia in the visual arts at first appears to be a quantité negligeable, since these involve direct optical visuality which requires no imaginative seeing. Yet under the influence of rhetoric it does play a part here, too—not in the production or the reception of the visual arts, but in their conception, as the art theorist Franciscus Junius (1591–1677) emphasized in De pictura veterum (1637): Artifex [. . . . .] animum suum usque adeo uiua delineandarum actionum specie implere studet, ut post multam acremque studiosae imaginationis curam uelut in rem praesentem perductus, euidentiam quandam ex re ipsa non modo in omnes totius operis partes, uerum etiam in animum spectatoris paulo attentioris transfundat.40 The artist [. . .] so fills his spirit with the living form of that which he wants to draw, that he—after an extensive and passionate effort to imagine it with great intensity—transports himself, as it were, into the subject matter at hand and transports the evidence from this subject not only into all the parts of the total work but also into the soul of the somewhat less attentive observer.

Although here enargeia also appears primarily as a methodological procedure for creating visual art, the author does not want to exclude its capacity for intensifying the viewer’s reception. As John Shearman in Only Connect . . .: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance (1992) rightly points out, the theorists of the Renaissance were the first to place the recipient at the centre of the artes: In these [sc. Mellon] lectures so far I would admit to having been devious in only one respect, in that I have at several points planted the idea that one thing that seems to distinguish Renaissance from Mediaeval artists is the intention to place the subject more vividly before the eye. If there was one artist who raised that ambition to prominence—and probably there was more than one—it was Donatello. It is an ambition, I think, that distinguishes the illusion of Renaissance dome decoration from the Byzantine. But we can also go back to a text that was cardinal in our discussion of portraits; it is Leonardo taking on the poets, breaking a lance for Painting, in a note written about 1500: “And if the poet claims that he can inflame men to love . . . the painter has the power to do the same, and indeed more so, for he places before the lover the very image of the beloved object, [and the lover] often engages with it, embracing it and talking with it; which he would not

40 Franciscus Junius, De pictura ueterum libri tres. Amsterdam: Apud J. Blaev, 1637 Facsimile edition: Portland, Or.: Collegium Graphicum, 1972, III.5.12.—Translation: Beate Hintzen / Myra Scholz.

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chapter twelve do were the same beauties placed before him by the writer” (and then he illustrates his point with the anecdote of the man who fell in love with his painting of a female saint). In another passage in which he is clearly reacting defensively to an argument from poetics that he has heard applied to Dante, he says: “If you [the poet] would say: but I describe for you the Inferno, or Paradise, or other delights or terrors, the painter can beat you at your own game, because he will put it directly in front of you.” Now that idea of placing the image before the eye comes to Leonardo, as he knows perfectly well, from the closely related theoretical writings on rhetoric, poetics, and tragedy. It would be hard to say whether he had been reading Cicero, Quintilian, or Aristotle. The vivid illustration of images is a very much admired quality in the epic poetry of Homer and still more in that of Virgil, and this quality has a name: enargeia, in Greek, which is defined in the Cinquecento literary theory as an elevated clarity or vividness of expression in placing the event or image before the eye. Leonardo, playing fast and loose with the visual metaphor used by the theorists of poetics, is saying that Painting may have the quality to a higher degree than Poetry ever can.41

As both the theory set forth in historical documents and the practice of the artes themselves show, the sister arts of painting and poetry have since the Renaissance agreed that the focus should be on the recipient. Not the artist but the “consumer” of the art he creates—whether viewer or reader/listener—stands in the centre. The reason for this shift of perspective is not in the last place the rhetorical principle of enargeia or evidentia handed down from Classical Antiquity. Lodovico Dolce (1508/10–1568)42 pursues this theme in dialogue form in his treatise on art theory entitled Aretino (Venetiis, M.DL.VII), a reference to the author and poet Pietro Aretino (1492–1556).43 He first stresses the mimetic character of painting: Dico adunque la Pittura, brevemente parlando, non essere altro, che imitatione della Natura: e colui, che piu nelle sue opere le si avicina, è piu perfetto Maestro. Ma, perche questa diffinitione è alquanto ristretta e manchevole, (percioche non distingue il Pittore dal Poeta, essendo che il Poeta si affatica ancora esso intorno alla imitatione) aggiungo, che il Pittore è intento a imitar per via di linee, e di colori (o sia in un piano di tavola, o di muro,

41 John Shearman, Only Connect . . .: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1988. The National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C.: Bollingen Series, 37. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1992, p. 208. 42 For Dolce in context cf. Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, esp. pp. 82–84, 123–125. 43 On Pietro Aretino cf. Lara Anne Palladino, Pietro Aretino: Orator and Art Theorist. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI, 1984.



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o di tela) tutto quello, che si dimostra all’ occhio: & il Poeta col mezo delle parole va imitando non solo cio che si dimostra all’ occhio, ma che ancora si rappresenta all’intelletto. La onde essi in questo sono differenti, ma simili in tante altre parti, che si possono dir quasi fratelli. To put it briefly, then, I say that painting is nothing other than the imitation of nature; and the closer to nature a man comes in his works, the more perfect a master he is. This definition is, however, somewhat narrow and defective, in that it fails to distinguish the painter from the poet—the point being that the poet too goes to trouble over imitation. I add, then, that the painter is concerned to imitate, by dint of lines and colors (whether it be on a flat surface of panel, wall or canvas), everything that presents itself to the eye; while the poet, through the medium of words, characteristically imitates not only what presents itself to the eye but also what presents itself to the intellect. The two arts differ, therefore, in this respect; but they are similar in so many other respects that one can almost call them brother arts.44

We have therefore returned to the idea of the “sister arts”, although here the term used is “brother arts”. Later the painter appears as a mute poet (“Poeta mutolo”) and the poet as a speaking painter (“Pittore, che parla”)—likewise topoi familiar from theories of art and poetry. But the differences between the two artes are set forth as well: While painting imitates that which addresses the eye (“all occhio”), the mimesis of poetry is also directed at the intellect (“all’intelletto”). By this the author undoubtedly means the ratio, but not primarily the imagination as the origin and aim of the enargeia. Nevertheless Giovan Francesco Fabrini objects to this statement by his conversation partner Aretino as follows: Dirò ancora, che, se bene il Pittore è diffinito Poeta mutolo, e che muta si chiami altresi la Pittura: sembra pure un cotal modo, che le dipinte figure favellino, gridino, piangano, ridano, e facciano cosi fatti effetti. I would like to add that, even though the painter is defined as a “mute poet,” and though painting itself is similarly called “mute,” nevertheless it works in such a way as to make it appear that the painted figures are talking, crying out, weeping, laughing, and generally engaging in actions of this kind.45

To which Aretino replies that this is mere illusion, for the portrayed figures are not actually doing anything of the sort. He thus dispels the mystique of enargetic pictorial mimesis; for since it is often accorded nearly magical

44 Mark W. Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino and the Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento. Toronto / Buffalo / London: University of Toronto Press in association with the Renaissance Society of America, 2000, pp. 96–97. 45 Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino, pp. 96–97.

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qualities, it can—as in the Pygmalion myth about sculpture—blur the distinction between art and reality. But Fabrini has a response ready: In cio si puo ricercare il parer del vostro virtuoso Silvestro, eccellente Musico, e sonatore del Doge: ilquale disegna e dipinge lodevolmente: e ci fa toccar con mano, che le figure dipinte da buoni Maestri parlano, quasi a paragon delle vive. Here one might solicit the opinion of your man of talent Silvestro, that excellent musician who performs for the Doge. For he draws and paints commendably, and gives us a tangible conviction that the figures painted by masters of quality are speaking, almost as though they were alive.46

Aretino then concludes this phase of the dialogue with the statement: Questa è certa imaginatione di chi mira, causata da diverse attitudini, che a cio servono e non effetto e proprietà della Pittura. This idea is plain imagination on the spectator’s part, prompted by different attitudes which serve that end. It is not an effect or a property of painting.47

In the last analysis, then, the subject matter of the picture is not responsible for the effect it produces, but the viewer, who perceives it from his own chosen perspective. Aretino elaborates on this idea when citing the example of the portrayal of figures in his discussion of pictorial inventio: Dalla historia egli [sc. il Pittore] ha semplicemente la materia. E dall’ ingegno oltre all’ ordine e la convenevolezza, procedono l’attitudini, la varietà, e la (per così dire) energia delle figure. ma questa è parte commune col disegno. Basta a dire, che in niuna parte di questa inventione il Pittore sia ocioso: e non elegga piu, che un numero convenevole di figure, considerando, che egli le rappresenta all’occhio del riguardante: ilquale confuso dalla troppa moltitudine s’infastidisce; ne è verisimile, che in un tempo gli si appresentino inanzi tante cose. Subject matter simply supplies the painter with his material. From his intellect, over and above the elements of disposition and propriety, there come the poses, the variety, and again (so to speak) the dynamism of the figures— although this last links up with the matter of design. It is enough to say that the painter should avoid being slipshod in any of these areas which come under invention. He should not select more than an appropriate number of figures, bearing in mind how the target of his representation is the spectator’s eye, which finds annoyance in the confusion of too large a cast, and

46 Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino, pp. 98–99. 47 Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino, pp. 98–99.



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how it is unlikely that such a wealth of things should confront us at any given moment.48

This is a clear statement that the aim of a painterly portrayal is the eye of the viewer (“occhio de riguardante”); this is, however, a secondary aim, for the primary aim remains, undiminished, the imitatio naturae. In this context the Greco-Latin term energia appears, here without a visible kinship with enarg(e)ia. The translator’s choice of “dynamism” does not seem the best equivalent either; better would be “movement” or “animation”, which are probably closest in meaning to the Aristotelian ἐνέργεια. The view that the inventio of an idea is more important than its execution is articulated for poetry in Abrégé de l’Art poétique français (1565) of the French “prince of poets” Ronsard (1524–1585): L’invention n’est autre chose que le bon naturel d’une imagination concevant les Idées et formes de toutes choses qui se peuvent imaginer tant célestes que terrestres, animées ou inanimées, pour après les représenter, décrire et imiter: car tout ainsi que le but de l’orateur est de persuader, ainsi celui du Poète est d’imiter, inventer, et représenter les choses qui sont, qui peuvent être, ou que les anciens ont estimées comme véritables: et ne faut point douter, qu’après avoir bien et hautement inventé, que la disposition suit l’invention mère de toutes choses, comme l’ombre fait le corps. Quand je te dis que tu inventes choses belles et grandes, je n’entends toutefois ces inventions fantastiques et mélancoliques, qui ne se rapportent non plus l’une à l’autre que les songes entrecoupés d’un frénétique, ou de quelque patient extrêmement tourmenté de la fièvre, à l’imagination duquel, pour être blessée, se représentent mille formes monstrueuses sans ordre ni liaison: mais tes inventions, desquelles je ne te puis donner règle pour être spirituelles, seront bien ordonnées et disposées: et bien qu’elles semblent passer celles du vulgaire, elles seront toutefois telles qu’elles pourront être facilement conçues et entendues d’un chacun.49

48 Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino, pp. 128–131. 49 Pierre de Ronsard, “Abrégé del’Art poétique français”, in: Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance. Ed. Francis Goyet. Paris: Le livre de poche classique, 1990, pp. 465–487, here: pp. 472–473.—Cf. the translation of this passage by the German Baroque poet Martin Opitz (1597–1639) in his Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (1624) which reads as follows: Die erfindung der dinge ist nichts anders als eine sinnreiche fassung aller sachen die wir uns einbilden können / der Himlischen und jrrdischen / die Leben haben und nicht haben / welche ein Poete jhm zue beschreiben vnd herfür zu bringen vornimpt: davon in seiner Idea außfürlich berichtet Scaliger. (Martin Opitz, Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey [1624]. Nach der Edition von Wilhelm Braune neu herausgegeben von Richard Alewyn. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1963, p. 17).—In Nachahmung und Einbildungskraft. Bad Homburg v.d.H. / Berlin / Zürich: Verlag Gehlen, 1970, pp. 85–86, Hans Peter Herrmann refers to the partial translation of this passage in Opitz and emphasizes the conceptual differences.

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Ronsard here distinguishes between two kinds of inventio: one that creates beautiful objects and another that creates fantastic or monstrous objects. The causes for these differences Ronsard locates in dissimilar psychological dispositions, linking the one to a healthy and the other to an ill person—by which he particularly means the melancholic. The writings of the first have an organized dispositio, those of the second are chaotic. And they produce corresponding effects. It goes without saying that the products of a healthy imagination are more highly valued. Analagous in the visual arts is the distinction between the representation of beautiful ideas and grottesche.50 While it is true that the Renaissance rediscovered the grottesche in the testimony of ancient fresco painting in the aurea domus Neronis, it should not be forgotten that the classical theory of the grotesque had long been known, namely from the Ars Poetica of Horace, which begins (1–5) as follows: Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam iungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne, spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici? If a painter chose to join a human head to the neck of a horse, and to spread feathers of many a hue over limbs picked up now here now there, so that what at the top is a lovely woman ends below in a black and ugly fish, could you, my friends, if favoured with a private view, refrain from laughing?51

C.O. Brink in his fine commentary on this theory from Classical Antiquity, second in importance only to Aristotle’s Poetics for the history of reception, sees in it a plea for the “doctrine of unity”, which plays a significant role in the critical tradition, and makes reference to hybrid monsters like centaurs, scyllas and sirens in classical art.52 For the broader context he also points out Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (VIII.iii.59–60), where we read: Σαρδισμός quoque appellatur qaedam mixta ex varia ratione linguarum oratio, ut si Atticis Dorica et Aeolica Iadicis confundas. Cui simile vitium

50 For modern views cf. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Aurora, Col.: Davies Group Publishers, 2006; Victor Kommerell, Metamorphosed Margins: The Case for a Visual Rhetoric of the Renaissance Grottesche under the Influence of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”. Hildesheim / New York: Olms, 2008. 51 Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica. With an English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England: Harvard UP, 2005, pp. 450–451. 52 C.O. Brink, Horace on Poetry: The ‘Ars Poetica’. Cambridge: CUP. 1971, pp. 77–85.



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est apud nos si quis sublimia humilibus, vetera novis, poetica vulgaribus misceat—id enim tale monstrum quale Horatius in prima parte libri de arte poetica fingit:  humano capiti pictor equinam  iungere si velit et cetera ex diversis naturis subiciat. There is also what is called Sardismos, a style made up of a mixture of several kinds of language, for example a confusion of Attic with Doric, Aeolic with Ionic. We Romans commit a similar fault, if we combine the sublime with the mean, the ancient with the modern, the poetic with the vulgar, for this produces a monster like the one Horace invents at the beginning of the Ars Poetica:  Suppose a painter chose to put together  a man’s head and a horse’s neck, and then added other limbs from different creatures.53

For the Greeks, then, the mixing of dialects was considered a vitium of style, while for the Romans it was the mix of different linguistic registers. What disappears completely from sight in Quintilian is the reaction of recipients to such stylistic deficits. Horace speaks of the laughter that viewers of grotesque depictions cannot suppress, not the laughter occasioned by a successful comedy but the wry, contorted response to unharmonious disproportionality. Quintilian makes no mention of this kind of reaction to a failed work of art. Without further commentary he instead introduces a positive note: the concept of enargeia, discussed in the context of his remarks on ornatus (Inst. Or. VIII.iii.61–62): Ornatum est quod perspicuo ac probabili plus est. Eius primi sunt gradus in eo quod velis exprimendo, tertius qui haec nitidiora faciat, quod proprie dixeris cultum. Itaque ἐνάργειαν, cuius in praeceptis narrationis feci mentionem, quia plus est evidentia vel, ut alii dicunt, repraesentatio quam perspicuitas, et illud patet, hoc se quodam modo ostendit, inter ornamenta ponamus. Magna virtus res de quibus loquimur clare atque ut cerni videantur enuntiare. Non enim satis efficit neque, ut debet, plene dominatur oratio si usque ad aures valet, atque ea sibi iudex de quibus cognoscit, narrari credit, non exprimi et oculis mentis ostendi. “Ornament” is what goes beyond Lucidity and Acceptability. Its first two stages consist in carrying out your intention; the third is the stage that puts the polish on, and may properly be called “finish.” We must thus count as an Ornament the quality of enargeia, which I mentioned in giving instructions for Narrative, because vividness, or, as some

53 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education. Ed. and Trans. Donald A. Russell. Vol. III, pp. 374–375.

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chapter twelve say, “representation,” is more than mere perspicuity, since instead of being merely transparent it somehow shows itself off. It is a great virtue to express our subject clearly and in such a way that it seems to be actually seen. A speech does not adequately fulfil its purpose or attain the total domination it should have if it goes no further than the ears, and the judge feels that he is merely being told the story of the matters he has to decide, without their being brought out and displayed to his mind’s eye.54

Here, therefore, the question of effect does arise in a positive sense. This is hardly surprising, for what is rhetoric concerned with—and Quintilian, too, as very likely the first public professor of this discipline—if not the effect of the (spoken) word on its audience? In order to bring about such an effect it is not enough for the listeners, in this case the judges, simply to hear the content of the speech acoustically; they also have to internalize it, and this the orator accomplishes most effectively with a demonstratio ad oculos. The eyes (oculi) can refer to the instruments of optical sensory perception. However, if there is nothing demonstrable in the form of objects or physical marks on the body of an injured party, the lawyer has to address the imagination of the judge, his capacity to see with his mind’s eye, which may have greater importance than physical eyesight. Poets, however, with exception of dramatists, can as a rule present nothing of a sensory nature to achieve effects in the recipients, and have to rely primarily on the appeal to the imagination. In order to clarify this, Quintilian and other rhetoricians, but also literary theorists like Horace,55 often cite examples from the visual arts, even though no imagination seems necessary for perceiving them. But perhaps it is needed after all; for mere optical perception does not penetrate deeply enough for a

54 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education. Ed. and Trans. Donald A. Russell. Vol. III, pp. 374–375. 55 Cf. especially Wesley Trimpi, “The Meaning of Horace’s Ut Pictura Poesis”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973), 1–34.—On p. 12 he quotes from PseudoLonginus, On the Sublime 17–1–3, trans. W. Rhys Roberts. Cambridge 1935, pp. 95–97: For just as all dim lights are extinguished in the blaze of the sun, so do the artifices of rhetoric (ῥηθορικῆς σοφίσματα) fade from view when bathed in the pervading splendor of sublimity. Something like this happens also in the art of painting. For although light (φῶς) and shade (σκιά), as depicted in colours, lie side by side upon the same surface, light nevertheless meets the vision first, and not only stands out, but also seems far nearer (ἐγγυτέρω παρὰ πολὺ). So also with the manifestations of passion and the sublime in literature. They lie nearer to our minds through a sort of natural kinship (διὰ φυσικήν τινα συγγένειαν) and through their own radiance, and always strike our attention before the figures, whose art (τέχνη) they throw into the shade (ἀποσκιάζειν) and as it were keep in concealment. In other words: As in paintings the greater highlights dominate the lesser ones, even so in rhetorical or poetic figurative works the lesser lumina are overcome by the sublime ones.



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thorough comprehension of a work of visual art. Here, too, genuine effect is produced by the enargeia. Lodovico Dolce’s treatise on painting similarly discusses the aspect of effect, through the mouth of Aretino: Bisogna, che voi sappiate, che’l Pittore non dee procacciar laude da una parte sola, ma da tutte quelle, che ricercano alla Pittura, e piu da quelle, che piu dilettano. Percioche essendo la Pittura trovata principalmente per dilettare, se’l Pittor non diletta, se ne sta oscuro e senza nome. E questo diletto non intendo io quello, che pasce gliocchi del volgo, o anco de gl’intendenti la prima volta, ma quello, che cresce, quanto piu l’occhio di qualunque huomo ritorna a riguardare: come occorre ne’buoni poemi: che quanto piu si leggono, tanto piu dilettano e piu accrescono il desiderio nell’animo altrui di rileggere le cose lette. Gli scorti sono intesi da pochi, onde a pochì dilettano, & anco a gl’intendenti alle volte piu apportano fastidio, che dilettatione. Vuo ben dire, che, quando e’sono ben fatti, ingannano la vista di chi mira, stimando spesso il riguardante, che quella parte, che non è lunga un palmo, sia a debita misura e proportione. Di qui leggiamo in Plinio, che Apelle dipinse Alessando Magno nel Tempio di Diana Efesia con un folgore in mano: ove pareva, che le dita fossero rilevate, e che’l folgore uscisse della tavola. Ilche non poteva Apelle haver finto, senon per via di scorti. Ma pure io son di parere, che per le cagioni dette essi non si vadano a bello studio sempre ricercando: anzi dico rade volte, per non turbare il diletto. You need to grasp the fact that the painter should not limit his pursuit of praise to one element alone, but extend it to every one of the elements which are involved in painting, and more especially those which afford the greater pleasure. Painting was invented primarily in order to give pleasure; by this token, then, if the artist fails to please, he remains unnoticed and devoid of reputation. And the pleasure in question is not, in my books, the one which gives sustenance to the eyes of the masses, nor even the one which connoisseurs experience on first encounter, but the one which increases, the more the eye of any sort of man undergoes a renewed exposure. This is what also happens in the case of good poems: the more they are read, the more they give pleasure and further increase, within one’s spirit, the desire to re-read the passages in question. Because few people understand foreshortenings, few derive pleasure from them; and even with connoisseurs they prove at times more annoying than pleasing. What this really means is that when they are well carried out, they deceive the admirer’s sight. Often, that is, the spectator finds himself thinking that some element which measures less than a hand’s breadth has the length and proportion which it should by rights possess. Hence the passage in Pliny describing how, in the temple of Diana at Ephesus, Apelles painted Alexander the Great, thunderbolt in hand, and made it look as if the fingers were in relief and the thunderbolt were projecting out of the picture, Apelles could not have achieved this illusion except by dint of foreshortenings. But I still consider that, for the reasons I gave earlier, their invariable appearance does not make for fine

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The speaker Aretino probably bases his description of the work of visual art on Aristotle’s Poetics, where hedone is identified as the telos of a literary work, but perhaps also on the delectare of ancient rhetoric, which, together with docere and movere, constitutes Cicero’s classic triad of effects.57 Once again painting is placed in analogy to poetry, this time with respect to the reception by the viewer or reader. Common to both is that the more often the respective recipients see or read the work of art, the greater their pleasure. This is independent of their level of education. Here a new consideration enters the argumentation: the perspective of the depiction. This is a discovery of the Renaissance, and although it began to play a major role for literature only in the twentieth-century, with the “novel of consciousness”, its first main impact was on painting. This is no coincidence, for it was closely linked to the discovery of the individuality and autonomy of the human being, the qualities which according to Pico della Mirandola endow him with dignity, and which—as Vives shows in his Fabula de homine—elevate him above all other living creatures and even place him among the gods. Visual art of the Early Modern Age offers countless examples of a thorough command of the technique of perspective. As Aretino explains in Dolce’s treatise, perspective is an art of illusion. Although this does not make it identical with the rhetorical enargeia, it is clearly related, as it produces a similar effect. The historical Pietro Aretino is himself very much aware of this; for in a letter thanking Bernardino Daniello for sending him his most recent work on poetics, he abruptly moves from praising this book to a discussion of Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: E quello che più mi ha sospeso in me stesso ne l’opera uscitavi de la mente, è l’avere io conosciuto ne le sue discrezioni il proprio giudizio, che Michel­ angelo volse che si conoscesse ne le sue pitture di Capella a Roma. Egli, che sapeva il valor del suo stile, accioché i dipintori avesser meglio a considerare il profondo disegno che il cielo e il suo studio gli diede, uscendo de l’uso degli altri fece le figure grandi oltra il naturale, perchè gli occhi, nel subito alzarsi a quelle, si confondessero ne la maraviglia, e confusi nel maravigliarsi

56 Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino, pp. 148–149. 57 For the tradition of this triad cf. H.F. Plett, Rhetorik der Affekte: Englische Wirkungsästhetik im Zeitalter der Renaissance; Barbara Kursawe, Docere—delectare—movere: Die officia oratoris bei Augustinus in Rhetorik und Gnadenlehre. Paderborn / München / Wien / Zürich: Schöningh, 2000.



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di ciò, cominciassero sottilmente a ritrar col guardo la possanza de le sue fatiche. And the aspect of my work that has left my wits suspended is that I recognized in your reasoning the very judgment which Michelangelo wanted recognized in his Sistine Chapel paintings. Michelangelo, who knew the worth of his style, in order to induce painters to meditate upon his accomplished draftsmanship (which heaven and training gave him), departed from common usage and made his figures larger than life, so that the viewers, as soon as they looked up to the frescoes, would be confounded in marvel and, lost in marveling at the work, would begin carefully to retrace with their gazes the force of his labors.58

Aretino here highlights two different aspects of Michelangelo’s painting. First, with the expression “profondo disegno” he praises his consummate artistic skill, the fruit of ingenium and exercitatio. He then emphasizes his mastery of the technique of perspective—without mentioning this term—which enables him to create in his painting the missing third dimension. Given the height of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and hence the great distance from the viewer, this could only be accomplished by painting extremely large figures. Only then would the viewer be able to see and recognize them in all their detail. With regard to the art theoretical concept of imitatio naturae, this means that no exact mimesis takes place here but that it is modified by the imaginative disegno.59 In order to execute this modification perfectly the visual artist must—in the words of Quintilian—be a euphantasiotos; in other words he must be able to project himself into the receptive potential of the viewer. Only then will a twodimensional drawing or painting acquire the fictive three-dimensional plasticity which proves it to be a product of enargeia. Essential for the constitution of this quality is the simulated cooperation of the producer and the recipient of the work; this comes about through the act of autoaffection whereby the producer assumes the role of the recipient. Only in this way can he produce in the latter the desired affects—which in the case of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings are concentrated mainly in a single affect: admiratio, which Cicero in his Partitiones

58 Text and translation from: Lora Anne Palladino, Pietro Aretino: Orator and Art Theorist, Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1982, pp. 106–107. 59 Cf. Michael Baxandall, “English Disegno”, in: England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J.B. Trapp. Ed. Edward Cheney & Peter Mack. Woodbridge, Suffolk [England] / Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 1990, pp. 203–214, rpt in Baxandall, Words for Pictures: Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism. New Haven / London; Yale UP, 2003, pp. 83–97.

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Oratoriae (6.23) describes as follows, endorsing as it were the Aristotelian θαυμαστόν in a tragedy (Poetics 25.1460a15): Fiet autem suavis oratio, cum aliquid aut inusitatum aut novum dicas. Delectat etiam quidquid est admirabile [. . . . .].60 An oration becomes agreeable when you say anything unexpected or unheard of or novel. For whatever is wonderful brings delight [. . . .].

Admiratio also plays a significant role in the poetic theories of the Renaissance, for instance in Antonio Sebastiano Minturno’s De Poeta (1559), where we read: Illud autem ne te prætereat uelim, sic poetis esse dicendum, ut siue doceant, siue oblectent, siue moueant, hæc singula statim admiratio legentis, audientisue consequatur.61 This, however, should not escape your notice, namely that poets should be told that whether they instruct or delight or move, the immediate result should be the admiration of the reader or hearer.

Similar statements appear in other poetic theories from the Italian Renaissance.62 The affect of admiratio, as well as the entire procedure that generates it, actually has its roots in rhetoric, which thus supplies the conceptual framework and the tools not only for oratory and poetry but also 60 M. Tulli Ciceronis Rhetorica II: Brutus, Orator, De optimo genere oratorum, Partitiones oratoriae, Topica. Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit A.S. Wilkins. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935, s.p.—Cf. Cicero, De Oratore I.33.152; Brutus 53.198; Orator 57.192. Also Petri Victorii Commentarii in Primum Librum Aristotelis de Arte Poetarum, Secunda Editio (Florence, 1573), p. 257. Victorius acknowledges a debt here to Robortelli (according to Marvin T. Herrick, “Some Neglected Sources of Admiratio”, MLN 62/4 (1947), 222–226). 61 Antonio Sebastiano Minturno, De Poeta (1559). Reprint: Poetiken des Cinquecento, 5. München: Fink, 1970, p. 106. 62 Cf. Benedetto Varchi (1502/3–1565) in: Hercolano (Florence, 1570), p. 269: Il Poeta oltra il verso ben composto, e sentenzioso ha vna grandezza, e maestà più tosto diuina, che humana, e non solo insegna, diletta, e muoue, ma ingenera ammirazione, e stupore negli animi, o generosi, o gentili, e in tutti coloro, che sono naturalmente disposti, perche l’imitare, e conseguentemente il poetare è (come mostra Aristotile nella Poetica) naturalissimo all’huomo. The poet, in addition to well-composed and sententious verse, has a greatness, a majesty more divine than human, and not only teaches, delights, and moves, but engenders admiration and wonder in the minds of the listeners, if they are noble and gentle, and in all those who are naturally disposed, for imitation and consequently poetry is (as Aristotle shows in the Poetics) most natural for man. (Quoted from Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, vol. I, p. 149.—Further illustrations are provided by Bartolomeo Maranta (Weinberg I, 172); Tommaso Correa (Weinberg I, 185, 229); Giovanni Talentoni (Weinberg I, 238–239); Francesco Robortello (Weinberg I, 397).



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for the theory and practice of painting. According to Patricia Rubin the art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), in his Life of Leonardo da Vinci, uses verbs of demonstration (mostrare, dimostrare, fece vedere, fece conoscere) in order to make the reader, as it were, “see” him as represented in the biography which is written in the rhetorical mode of the genus demonstrativum, the genre usually reserved for the praise of saints or rulers in order to rouse the admiratio of the recipient but now used to present a model biography for a model artist.63

63 Patricia Rubin, “What Men Saw: Vasari’s Life of Leonardo da Vinci and the Image of the Renaissance Artist”, Art History 13/1 (1990), 34–46).—The text of Vasari’s Life of Leonardo is available in the edition: Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti. A cura di Licia e Carlo L. Ragghianti. 4 vols. Milano: Rizzoli, 1971–1978, here: vol. II (1973), pp. 597–649.

Chapter thirteen

Enargeia and Perspective In Il libro del cortegiano (1528) Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529) compares the “vaghi colori” of Raphael with Michelangelo’s supreme skill, which enabled him to use the art of perspective to bring into view that which is not [visible] (“far parer per arte di prospettiva quello che non é”).1 He thus ascribes to the technique of perspective the ability to invent a visible presence of that which is invisible, or in any case imperceptible, a quality completely comparable to the fictionality of poetry. Not only painting but also architecture works with perspective, as can be seen in the Teatro Olimpico of Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) in Vicenza, which opened only in 1585, after the death of the architect.2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe writes in 1786 the following about this building in his Italienische Reise (1816): Das Olympische Theater ist ein Theater der Alten, im kleinen realisiert und unaussprechlich schön, aber gegen die unsrigen kömmt mir’s vor wie ein vornehmes, reiches, wohlgebildetes Kind, gegen einen klugen Weltmenschen, der, weder so vornehm, noch so reich, noch wohlgebildet, besser weiß, was er mit seinen Mitteln bewirken kann.3 The Olympic Theatre is a theatre of the ancients, realised on a small scale and inexpressibly beautiful, but compared with ours it looks to me like a refined, wealthy, well-educated child, as opposed to a worldly-wise person, who, although neither so wealthy nor so well-educated, has a better sense of what he can achieve.

Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico is therefore decoration and ornament, erudite programme and ceremonious act, but not really a practical theatre. The interior, preserved in its original state, is itself a stage set: a monumental imitation of the Olympic Academy of Vicenza, with a large stage wall decorated with classical pillars, statues and reliefs depicting scenes from 1 Baldassar Castiglione, Opere. Ed. Giuseppe Prezzolini. Milano / Roma: Rizzoli, [1937], p. 47. 2 For an analysis of the Teatro Olimpico, together with illustrations, cf. Andreas Beyer, Andrea Palladio: Teatro Olimpico. Triumpharchitektur für eine humanistische Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer TB, 1987. 3 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Italienische Reise. München: Hanser, 101981, p. 53.

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the life and labours of Hercules. Through openings in the stage wall, the spectators—seated in a semi-circle copied from classical Greek theatre— can see several roads and lanes leading into skilfully layered, illusionistic background architecture. This is completely perspectival in its design, that is: the greater the distance to the eye of the spectator, the greater the foreshortening. Perspective as conceived for pictorial representations is here therefore applied to (stage) architecture. The same procedure is still used in theatres today for determining the size and order of stage scenery. But in contrast to the static permanence of the scenery built onto the stage of the Teatro Olimpico, these scenic props are movable. Common to both, however, is that they realise not an objective construction but a subjective one, dictated by the perception of the recipient. The famous art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) devotes a lengthy discussion to perspective in his important work Die Perspektive als symbolische Form (1924).4 He begins as follows: „Item Perspectiva ist ein lateinisch Wort, bedeutt ein D u r c h s e h u n g.“ So hat Dürer den Begriff der Perspektive zu umschreiben gesucht. Und obgleich dies „lateinisch Wort“, das schon bei Boethius vorkommt, ursprünglich einen so prägnanten Sinn gar nicht besessen zu haben scheint, wollen wir uns doch die Dürersche Definition im wesentlichen zu eigen machen; wir wollen da, und nur da, von einer in vollem Sinne „perspektivischen“ Raumanschauung reden, wo nicht nur einzelne Objekte, wie Häuser und Möbelstücke, in einer „Verkürzung“ dargestellt sind, sondern wo sich das ganze Bild—um den Ausdruck eines andern Renaissancetheoretikers zu zitieren—gleichsam in ein „Fenster“ verwandelt hat, durch das wir in den Raum hindurchzublicken glauben sollen—wo also die materielle Mal- oder Relieffläche, auf der die Formen einzelner Figuren oder Dinge zeichnerisch aufgetragen oder plastisch aufgeheftet erscheinen, als solche negiert ist und zu einer bloßen „Bildebene“ umgedeutet wird, auf die sich ein durch sie erblickter und alle Einzeldinge in sich befassender Gesamtraum projiziert—wobei es nichts verschlägt, ob diese Projektion durch den unmittelbaren sinnlichen Eindruck oder durch eine mehr oder minder „korrekte“ geometrische Konstruktion bestimmt wird. Diese „korrekte“ geometrische Konstruktion, die in der Renaissance gefunden wurde und später wohl technische Vervollkommnungen und Erleichterungen erfuhr, in ihren Voraussetzungen und Zielen aber bis zu den Tagen Desargues’ unverändert blieb, lässt sich am einfachsten folgendermaßen begreiflich machen: ich stelle mir— im Einklang mit jener Fensterdefinition—das Bild als einen planen Durchschnitt durch die sogenannte „Sehpyramide“ vor, die dadurch entsteht, daß 4 Erwin Panofsky, „Die Perspektive als ,symbolische Form‘ “, in: Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1924–1925. Ed. Fritz Saxl. Vol. 4: Vorträge. Leipzig / Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1927, pp. 258–330; rpt. in: Panofsky, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze. Ed. Karen Michels & Martin Warncke. 2 vols. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1998, vol. II, pp. 664–757.



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ich das Sehzentrum als einen Punkt behandle und diesen mit den einzelnen charakteristischen Punkten des darzustellenden Raumgebildes verbinde. Da nämlich die relative Lage dieser „Sehstrahlen“ für die scheinbare Lage der betreffenden Punkte im Sehbilde maßgebend ist, so brauche ich mir das ganze System nur im Grundriß und im Aufriß aufzuzeichnen, um die auf der Schnittfläche erscheinende Figur zu bestimmen: der Grundriß ergibt mir die Breitenwerte, der Aufriß die Höhenwerte, und ich habe diese Werte nur auf einer dritten Zeichnung zusammenzuziehen, um die gesuchte perspektivische Projektion zu erhalten (Abb.1).5 “Item Perspectiva ist ein lateinisch Wort, bedeutt ein Durchsehung” (“Perspectiva is a Latin word which means ‘seeing through.’ ”). This is how Dürer sought to explain the concept of perspective. And although this lateinisch Wort was used already by Boethius, and did not originally bear so precise a meaning, we shall nevertheless adopt in essence Dürer’s definition. We shall speak of a fully “perspectival” view of space not when mere isolated objects, such as houses or furniture, are represented in “foreshortening,” but rather only when the entire picture has been transformed—to cite another Renaissance theoretician—into a “window,” and when we are meant to believe we are looking through this window into a space. The material surface upon which the individual figures or objects are drawn or painted or carved is thus negated, and instead reinterpreted as a mere “picture plane.” Upon this picture plane is projected the spatial continuum which is seen through it and which is understood to contain all the various individual objects. So far it does not matter whether this projection is determined by an immediate sensory impression or by a more or less “correct” geometrical construction. This correct construction was in fact invented in the Renaissance, and although later subjected to various technical improvements and simplifications, it nevertheless remained in its premises and goals unchanged to the time of Desargues. It is most simply explained as follows: I imagine the picture—in accord with the “window” definition—as a planar cross section through the so-called visual pyramid; the apex of this pyramid is the eye, which is then connected with individual points within the space to be represented. Because the relative position of these “visual rays” determines the apparent position of the corresponding points in the visual image, I need only draw the entire system in plan and elevation in order to determine the figure appearing on the intersecting surface. The plan yields the width, the

5 Erwin Panofsky, “Die Perspektive als ‚symbolische Form’ ”, in: Panofsky, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, vol. II, pp. 664–666.—Leon Battista Alberti writes: “scrivo uno quadrangulo . . . el quale reputo essere una fenestra aperta per donde io miri quello que quivi sara dipinto” (in: Kleinere kunsttheoeretische Schriften. Ed. Hubert Janitschek. Osnabrück: Zeller [11877], p. 70). English translation: “I inscribe a quadrangle . . . which is considered to be an open window through which I see what I want to paint” (in: On Painting. Trans. John R. Spencer, p. 66).—See also Leonardo da Vinci, where the same analogy to a “pariete di vetro,” or pane of glass, is drawn (in: Jean Paul Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883, n. 83).—Cf. Judy Green & Paul S. Green, “Alberti’s Perspective: A Mathematical Comment”, Art Bulletin 69/4 (1987), 641–645.

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chapter thirteen elevation yields the height; and if I combine these values on a third drawing, I will obtain the desired perspectival projection (Figure 1).6

Panofsky illustrates his points with a whole series of reproductions of Italian Renaissance paintings, which will not be dealt with here. An important thesis can be derived from his essay, however, namely: Perspectival representation in visual art is largely identical with what is termed enargetic represention in the discussion at hand. The geometric side of the perspectival procedure holds little significance for our purposes. Of greater interest is the window ( fenestra), as described by Leon Battista Alberti, and the “seeing through” (perspicere) in Albrecht Dürer’s theoretical writings, which Panofsky quotes at the beginning of his essay. Relevant here is the contrast between imitatio naturae and perception. The two are not identical, for the mimetic principle as articulated in poetics and art theories through the entire Early Modern Age is primarily ontological rather than perspectival in nature. The perception of a work of art in the imagination, however, precedes its constitution as a depiction of reality. Similarly, the perspective of a person viewing a work of visual art does not coincide with measurings of how precisely it renders reality. An exact rendering is not possible, because the person who stands in front of a visual construction assumes a certain point of view that determines the nature of his perception. This viewpoint is not fixed, however, but changes according to the will of the viewer. The eye is not objective here, but is firmly guided by the imagination. It can therefore be said that the artist of a visual creation must, in a sense, be a euphantasiotos in order to adequately realise the perspective of an art work from the beholder’s point of view. And the recipient must also be a euphantasiotos in order to gain an adequate perception of the visual art object. The mediating element between the creator and the viewer is the perspective. From a rhetorical standpoint this is not identical with a mathematical construction but a matter of the imagination. As Panofsky states: “I imagine the picture—in accord with the ‘window’ definition—as a plane cross section through the so-called visual pyramid.” The picture consequently has the characteristic of enargeia. In contrast to Erwin Panofsky, Hanneke Grootenboer advances a different concept of the pictorial perspective: 6 Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form. Translation & Introduction: Christopher S. Wood. New York: Zone Books, 1997, 2009, pp. 27–28.—Gérard Desargues (1591–1661) was a French architect and mathematician. The Desargues theorem states: In a projected space, two triangles are in perspective axially if and only if they are in perspective centrally.—A more modern work is by Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective. New York / Evanston / San Francisco / London: Harper & Row, 1975.



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From the point of its origin onward, perspective has manifested itself as a separator. It divides the natural space of the beholder—perspectiva naturalis—from the artificial space in painting—perspectiva artificialis—and, as a consequence, forces a division in the corpus of pictures between perspectival and nonperspectival, realist and nonrealist images. Perspective splits real space outside a picture frame from the mathematical space that has to be imagined within a picture frame. Erwin Panofsky’s distinction between obvious and disguised symbolism also implies that perspective has created a distance between realistically painted objects and their meaning. The discovery of perspective has created a clear-cut caesura between the appearance of reality and reality of appearance.7

While Panofsky offers a mathematical and symbolical view of perspective, Grootenboer at first seems to repeat once more the mathematical theory, which would be in opposition to the title of her book with its emphasis on rhetoric. Nevertheless this view emerges as a central hypothesis that is amply documented by examples from art history. In this respect Grootenboer takes up an idea of Panofsky who by no means neglects the rhetorical point of view, all the more as it has its Italian progenitor in Leon Battista Alberti with his window (fenestra) metaphor. This does not give way to an unreflected imitatio naturae but to the concept of an imaginary vision. This is the source of illusion and deception, resulting in figures appearing—as Shakespeare put it in Timon of Athens (1604/5)—“livelier than life” (I.i.37).8 For the same art-nature paragone Judith Dundas refers to a passage from Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, where we read: Look when a painter would surpass the life In limning out a well-proportion’d steed, His art with nature’s workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed: So did this horse excel a common one, In shape, in courage, pace, and bone. (Venus and Adonis, ll. 289–294)9

7 Hanneke Grootenboer, The Rhetoric of Perspective: Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. Chicago / London: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 3.—On the author’s discussion of Panofsky and other perspective theorists see Chapter 3: “The Rhetoric of Perspective: Panofsky, Damisch, and Anamorphosis” (pp. 97–133). 8 On this paradoxical formula cf. the discussion in Judith Dundas, Pencils Rhetorique: Renaissance Poets and the Art of Painting. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press / London & Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993, chap. 2: “ ‘Artificial Strife’: Shakespeare and Emulation” (pp. 54–89, esp. p. 65). 9 Shakespeare, The Poems. Ed. F.T. Prince. London: Methuen / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1961, p. 18.

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The context of the statement in Timon of Athens is a paragone between a painter and a poet on the question of which art is greater, painting or poetry. The poet cannot conceal his admiration for the picture of his rival: Poet. Admirable. How this grace Speaks his own standing! What a mental power This eye shoots forth! How big imagination Moves in this lip! To th’ dumbness of the gesture One might interpret. Pain. It is a pretty mocking of the life. Here is a touch: is’t good? Poet. I will say of it, It tutors nature: artificial strife Lives in these touches, livelier than life. (Timon I.i.30–38).10

The ekphrasis of the picture includes the traditional topos of painting as mute poetry: the mimics and gestures of the protagonist as depicted in the portrait have no need of words but speak for themselves. For here the pictorial representation is not only a perfect mimetic copy of reality, and thus an altera natura, but as such also the expression of inner character: corpus imago animi. In such a case neither poetry nor prose is needed to make the work of art a lifelike quality, which embraces body and soul equally. The winner of this contest between the artes, then, is clearly the painter.

10 William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. Ed. H.J. Oliver. London: Methuen, 1959, pp. 5–6.—The high esteem pictures enjoyed in the Early Modern Age can be documented by a number of cases, as documented by a letter written in 1449 by Sigismondo Malatesta to Giovanni de’ Medici, in which the Lord of Rimini asked urgently for a painter to decorate a palace chapel: “This was not just about a single job, a limited commission, but about an artist entering courtly service: Tell me how much the painter wants, so that I can reach agreement with him. For, if you like, it is my intention to pay him a fixed annual salary, as high as as he wishes. I also promise to treat him well, so that he will want to spend his whole life here. I also want you to know, that I shall grant him a fixed allowance, which he will be paid punctually even if he works solely for his own pleasure [per suo piacere]. [. . . . . . .] Andrea Mantegna, in 1484, sent a small picture,’qualche operetta’, to Lorenzo il Magnifico in Florence, clearly expressing his expectation to be rewarded with a sum of money. Thus the court artist gains freedom from guild rules; his pension, salary or retainer is not remuneration for work delivered but is paid in recognition of his natural talent, his God-given virtù and ingenium; therefore it is exempt from taxation. As a familiaris and a courtier, the artist could think of himself as a gentleman, and in rare cases, as with Mantegna and later Titian, he might even be ennobled. Warnke has argued persuasively that these were the conditions out of which much of the Renaissance theory of art grew.” (Thomas Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle’s Poetics and the Rise of the Modern Artist. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 2005, p. 26).

Chapter Fourteen

Shakespeare and Enargeia (C) In The Winter’s Tale (1610–1611) Shakespeare goes even further in incorporating visual art into his drama. In a gallery scene, Paulina presents Hermione, King Leontes’ rejected wife who is now presumed dead, as a statue modelled—supposedly—after the living woman. When Paulina unveils the statue, the spectators are at first silent, then express their amazement: Leon. Her natural posture! Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she In thy not chiding; for she was as tender As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing So aged as this seems. Pol[ixenes]. O, not by so much. Paul. So much the more our carver’s excellence, Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her As she liv’d now. Leon. As now she might have done, So much to my good comfort as it is Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood, Even with such life of majesty, warm life, As now it coldly stands, when first I woo’d her! I am asham’d: does not the stone rebuke me For being more stone than it? O royal piece! There’s magic in thy majesty, which has My evils conjur’d to remembrance, and From thy admiring daughter took the spirits, Standing like stone with thee. (Winter’s Tale V.iii.23–42).1

This entire scene is built on illusion and deception. For this is not a real statue but the living Hermione, who with aid of art (ars) is simulating a

1 William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale. Ed. J.H.P. Pafford. London: Methuen / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1963, pp. 155–156.

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statue.2 The result is extremely life-like, for the purported creator of the art work even managed to depict the intervening years—a masterpiece of perspective or temporal enargeia. This so affects the viewer Leontes that he starts speaking to the “stone”; it in fact moves him as deeply as if it were a living figure. This movere comprises both the Aristotelian anagnorisis and catharsis: Leontes acknowledges his guilt and begs his wife for forgiveness. Shakespeare here gives a new twist to the well-known Pygmalion motif, in which a stone image of a living creature comes alive and acquires an identity of its own among other living creatures. What this drama shows is that the addition of a moral issue to the mimetic and epistemological aspects of the motif can yield a complex plot involving guilt and reconciliation. The following pages will be devoted to examples from Shakespeare’s work that elucidate the relevance of the perspective of the viewer—more precisely, the viewer of art—in terms of the aspects mentioned above. Shakespeare’s epyllion The Rape of Lucrece (1593–1594), based mainly on a story in Ovid’s Fasti (II, 711–852), contains various descriptions of paintings. They are closely bound up with the lamentable fate of the protagonist. She seeks comfort, for example, in a painting of the Trojan War: At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece Of skilful painting, made for Priam’s Troy, Before the which is drawn the power of Greece, For Helen’s rape the city to destroy, Threat’ning cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy;  Which the conceited painter drew so proud,  As heaven, it seem’d, to kiss the turrets bow’d. A thousand lamentable objects there, In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life: Many a dry drop seem’d a weeping tear, Shed for the slaughter’d husband by the wife; The red blood reek’d to show the painter’s strife,  And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,  Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. There might you see the labouring pioner Begrim’d with sweat and smeared all with dust; And from the towers of Troy there would appear The very eyes of men through loop-holes thrust,

2 For an interpretation of the play cf. Leonard Barkan, “ ‘Living Sculpures’: Ovid, Michelangelo, and The Winter’s Tale” (1981), in: Stephen Orgel & Sean Keilen (eds.), Shakespeare and the Arts. New York / London: Garland, 1999, pp. 137–165.



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Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust:  Such sweet observance in this work was had,  That one might see those far-off eyes look sad. In great commanders grace and majesty You might behold, triumphing in their faces, In youth, quick bearing and dexterity; And here and there the painter interlaces Pale cowards marching on with trembling paces,  Which heartless peasants did so well resemble,  That one would swear he saw them quake and tremble. [. . . . .] There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand, As ‘twere encouraging the Greeks to fight, Making such sober action with his hand That it beguil’d attention, charm’d the sight; In speech it seem’d his beard all silver white  Wagg’d up and down, and from his lips did fly  Thin winding breath which purl’d up to the sky. [. . . . .] For much imaginary work was there,— Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles’ image stood his spear Gripp’d in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:  A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head  Stood for the whole to be imagined. [. . . . .] To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come, To find a face where all distress is stell’d. Many she sees where cares have carved some, But none where all distress and dolour dwell’d, Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,  Staring on Priam’s wounds with her old eyes,  Which bleeding under Pyrrhus’ proud foot lies. (Lucrece, ll. 1366–1449).3

As the protagonist sees her fate mirrored in the “lamentable objects” of the Troy painting, the emotions she recognizes in the depicted figures become the focus of an optical presence. Yet the optical factor in itself is not unimportant, for it is fictive in nature, the product of a skilled ekphrasis that enables the reader to become, like Lucrece, a viewer of the picture. 3 William Shakespeare, The Poems. Ed. F.T. Prince. London: Methuen / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1961, pp. 128–132.—For the general context cf. David Rosand, “Troyes Painted Woes’: Shakespeare and the Pictorial Imagination”, in: Stephen Orgel / Sean Kellen (eds.), Shakespeare and the Arts, pp. 215–243.

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Presupposed here, however, is the art of the painter, which endows the picture with an altera natura. This point is made with the oxymoron “lifeless life”, meaning that the picture seems to come alive. This semblance of liveliness is a creative illusion which generates enargeia—which accounts for how both Lucrece and the reader are able to identify emotionally with the painted scene. This effect can be described as the pathetic fallacy, or rather the empathetic fallacy. Apostrophes of the narrator to the reader— “There you might see” (1380, cf. 1401), “that one might see” (1386), “you might behold” (1388), “might one behold” (1395)—enhance this effect. All these summons to (fictive) looking and seeing contribute significantly to the imagined presence of that which is absent.4 The lines “A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head / Stood for the whole to be imagined” (ll. 1427–1428) call to mind the pictorial ekphrasis of the Erotes by Philostratus discussed before. Here as there the metonymy or synecdoche serves as a method to conceal the primary object of perception and substitute it by its parts. The last stanza quoted opens up the perspective on “Time’s ruin” and thus is a specimen of the pictorial enargeia which recurs in the late romance The Winter’s Tale. Shakespeare uses ekphrasis in a completely different function in the closet scene of his tragedy Hamlet. Here the protagonist confronts his mother with two painted portraits, most likely miniatures, one of his deceased father and the other of the present king, his uncle Claudius: Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow, Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill, A combination and a form indeed Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband. Look you now what follows. Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?

4 On Shakespeare’s enargetic procedure in his other epyllion cf. Laetitia CoussementBoillot, Copia et cornucopia: La poétique shakespearienne de l’abondance. Bern / Berlin / Frankfurt/M.: P. Lang, 2008, pp. 76–79.



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You cannot call it love; for at your age The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble, And waits upon the judgment, and what judgment Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have, Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d But it reserv’d some quantity of choice To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax And melt in her own fire; proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn And reason panders will. (Hamlet III.iv.53–88).5

Hamlet’s comparison of the two portraits has a double dramaturgical function: one relating to inner and the other to outer drama. The inner dramatic function shows Hamlet in his ekphrastic interpretation of two pictures, amplifying the value of his father’s portrait (auxesis, incrementum) and devaluing that of his uncle (meiosis, extenuatio).6 The aim of his rhetorical performance is to evoke affects of resistance and disgust in his mother and in this way to alienate and separate her from her present husband, King Claudius. To achieve this, Hamlet repeats the deictic cernas formula “Look” (53, 63), “see” (55), which also places the pictures before the eyes, so to speak, of the spectators. The auxesis in the ekphrasis of the father’s portrait comes about through mythological comparisons with Hyperion, Jove, Mars and Mercury; they elevate the portrayed figure above the human sphere and thus make him unassailable. The expanded cernas formula in the rhetorical question “Have you eyes?” (65) is intensified by repetition in the epiphora “Ha, have you eyes?” (6) and forms the transition to moralizing pronouncements and further rhetorical questions 5 Shakespeare, Hamlet, pp. 321–324.—For a different view of this text cf. Stephen Orgel, “ ‘Counterfeit Presentments’: Shakespeare’s Ekphrasis”, in: Orgel / Keilen (eds.), Shakespeare and the Arts, pp. 253–260. 6 Cf. Lee Sonnino, A Handbook to Sixteenth-Century Rhetoric. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968, pp. 111 (auxesis), 95 (meiosis).

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aimed at generating the passionate affects of pathos. Hamlet’s mother responds (III.iv.88–91): O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul, And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.7

Thus we see that Hamlet’s ekphrasis does have the character of enargeia, for otherwise all his talk would have been without effect. Here the effect consists in a pseudo-religious metanoeite. Spectators or readers of this play will not, of course, undergo the same effect. For them Hamlet’s ekphrasis has a different function. Since they cannot be expected to see the two portraits, owing to their distance from the stage, they have to imagine the appearance of the persons pictured. For this purpose they are supplied with metaphorical rather than naturalistic descriptions. The ekphrasis of the older Hamlet draws on qualities (e.g., grace, majesty) associated with the gods of Classical Antiquity, while that of Claudius employs metaphors of poison and illness, concretized in the murder of King Hamlet. In this way the recipient participates intensively in the fate of the figures in this tragedy; he, too, experiences the effectiveness of Hamlet’s pathetic, enargetic speech. In the second Induction Scene of his early comedy The Taming of the Shrew (1593–1594), Shakespeare proceeds differently from the epic epyllion The Rape of Lucrece and the tragedy Hamlet. Here the drunken tinker Christopher Sly is fed false promises about a painting collection which would give him the status of an aristocrat of culture and good taste. The lord and his servants take turns filling in the details of an enargetic presentation: Sec. Serv. Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight Adonis painted by a running brook, And Cytherea all in sedges hid, Which seem to move and wanton with her breath Even as the waving sedges play with wind. Lord. We’ll show thee Io as she was a maid, And how she was beguiled and surpris’d, As lively painted as the deed was done. Third Serv. Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood, Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds,

7 Shakespeare, Hamlet, p. 324.



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And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep, So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn. (Shrew, Ind.ii.50–61)8

The description here is exclusively of invented, not real pictures from Greek mythology, each of which is individually presented in an iconographia. Their imaginary character is emphasized by the fact that they appear to be alive in the perception of the viewer—as conveyed not only by the verb “seem” but also by the use of the future tense (“one shall swear”, “shall sad Apollo weep”). This creates a situation with invented ekphraseis, the comic point of which is to tempt Sly rhetorically and draw him deeper and deeper into a world of illusions. This use of ekphrasis can also be found elsewhere in Shakespeare’s drama, notably in his play Cymbeline (1609–1610), where Iachimo tries to convince Posthumus that his wife has been unfaithful. Like a kind of later Iago, the villain in Othello, he describes his rhetorical strategy: [. . . . .] But my design. To note the chamber: I will write all down: Such, and such pictures: there the window, such Th’adornment of her bed; the arras, figures, Why, such, and such; and the contents o’ th’ story. Ah, but some natural notes about her body Above ten thousand meaner moveables Would testify, t’enrich mine inventory. (Cymbeline II.ii.23–30).9

Exact description will thus be the key to Iachimo’s strategy, and to the success he later enjoys at his meeting with Posthumus in Rome following a bravura ekphrastic performance (II.iv.82–85): [. . . . .] The chimney Is south the chamber, and the chimney-piece, Chaste Dian, bathing: never saw I figures So likely to report themselves; the cutter Was as another Nature, dumb; outwent her, Motion and breath left out. (Cymbeline II.iv.80–85).10

With these words Iachimo describes how a carved mantelpiece in the bedroom of Posthumus’s wife Imogen affected him. The relief pictures one of the favourite motifs of Renaissance and Baroque art and literature: 8 William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. Brian Morris. London / New York: Methuen, 1981, pp. 165–166. 9 William Shakespeare, Cymbeline. Ed. J.M. Nosworthy. London: Methuen / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1964, pp. 52–53. 10 Shakespeare, Cymbeline, p. 69.

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Diana bathing—an image of chastity.11 Posthumus takes up this motif later, when he says: [. . .] yet my mother seem’d The Dian of that time: so doth my wife The nonpareil of this. (Cymbeline II.iv.158–160).12

This description of a work of art serves the villain Iachimo as one link in the chain of his argument—which consists partly of ekphrastic evidence (tapestry, ceiling decoration, andirons, birthmark under Imogen’s breast) and partly of exhibited objects (Imogen’s ring)—to convince Posthumus of the “evident” guilt of his wife. The lifelike character of the carving is especially highlighted here: “the true life on’t was”. The carved figures of the mantelpiece seem to speak for themselves, with only breath and movement lacking. They represent an altera natura, which in its speaking muteness forms a contrast to reality and—in this sense—surpasses it. It is precisely this quality that reveals the close relationship between enargeia and mimesis, which constitutes an illusory reality. The depictive means available to painting are line and colour; the sense organ that it addresses is the eye. Paintings present an object at a fixed moment in a spatial extension. If the viewer then experiences the pictured object as speaking, he is actually claiming more than the depictive means can possibly offer. If he experiences the pictured object in movement, he has overstepped the boundaries of painting as a spatial art. Both kinds of effect are thus unreal to the extent that they ignore the nature and medium of painting; yet they are undeniably real experiences. The reality of these effects is obviously of an entirely different order from that of the painterly medium and the pictorial mode constituted by this medium. It is a purely mental reality; its locus is in the human imagination, and the speaking and/or moving picture developed from the concrete visual painting is a fantasy. The imagined picture is illusory, that is, it creates the semblance of something that does not exist. The illusion here is of two types: (1) an illusion of the simultaneous perception of heterogeneous sensory impression (synaesthesia); (2) an illusion of movement. 11 Cf. Pierre Klossowski, Diana at her Bath: The Women of Rome. Translations by Stephen Sartarelli & Sophie Hawkes. Boston, Mass.: Eridanos Press, 1990; Wolfgang Cziesla, Aktaion polypragmon: Variationen eines antiken Themas in der europäischen Renaissance. Frankfurt/M. / Bern / New York / Paris: P. Lang, 1990; Beat Wismer & Sandra Badelt (eds.), Diana und Actaeon: Der verbotene Blick auf die Nacktheit. Exhibition catalogue. Düsseldorf: Museum Kunst-Palast, 2008. 12 Shakespeare, Cymbeline, p. 75.



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Iachimo’s achievement—if that term is appropriate here—consists in the verbal reproduction of various objects in the form of a word painting, specifically one that will have an affective influence on the listener. That it does indeed have such an effect is evident from the response of Posthumus: He loses his patientia (II.iv.113, 130, 150) because he now believes his wife to be guilty. But this is a matter of deception, illusion. The picture he sketches of his wife and his mother, actually of all women, is also nothing more than a figment of his imagination. To convince him, Iachimo made use of rhetorical means which guarantee the “in-lusion” of the listener. This also requires a certain disposition of the speaker with respect to the listener: Iachimo plays the triumphant seducer, while he is actually nothing of the sort. His play-acting presents itself as reality, and because it is accepted as such by Posthumus, evokes the intended effect. The reason for this is probably, as Terence Cave maintains, a potential ambiguity that arises when copia in the form of enargeia blurs the distinction between ’true’ and ’false’ representation.13 More important, however, could be the factor described by Wayne Rebhorn, namely the growing sense in the Renaissance that rhetoric might be “a concession to human insufficiency”, since it operates on the level of belief or opinion (doxa) and can only refer to possible but not absolutely conclusive truths.14

13 Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, p. 30. 14 Wayne A. Rebhorn, Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric. Ithaca, N.Y. / London: Cornell UP, 2000, pp. 7–8: “The accusations against rhetoric as the art of lying [. . .] point to yet another debate about rhetoric in the Renaissance, a debate that arises because rhetoric, by its nature, operates in the realm of opinion and contingency, assumes a skeptical epistemology, and can thus promise only probable, not absolute truths. [. . .]. The quarrel dates back to Plato and the Sophists, and pitted Plato’s belief in the realm of Ideas as constituting an absolute reality that offered sure knowledge, against the Sophists’ more skeptical view that accepts the world as a place where we can argue for ideas that are only more or less true than others and where words cannot have a secure, one-to-one relationship to things.”

chapter fifteen

Enargeia in Theory and Practice of the Visual and Verbal Arts Renaissance art theory and poetics are both primarily effect-oriented. As M.H. Abrams points out in The Mirror and the Lamp, this pragmatic orientation was dominant in poetics from Hellenism right into the 18th century.1 The focus was not so much on the poetic genius as on the public which had to be influenced, whether in ethical, aesthetic or affective terms. However, the verbal art that coincides almost completely with its influencing function is rhetoric. Since the Renaissance, it is rhetoric that transforms all the arts—literature, painting, sculpture and music—and their theories into effect-related phenomena. This relation between painting and poetry, however, was at an early point also the target of scepticism. Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) articulates the reservations of the poet with regard to painting in his De remediis utriusque fortunae, in a dialogue between Gaudium and Ratio that was translated into English by Thomas Twyne (1543–1613). In the translation the two speakers are called Joy and Reason. The following excerpt offers a representative impression of the rather lengthy dialogue:    Of Pictures and Tables. The XL. Dialogue. Ioy. I am delighted with pictures, and painted tables. Reason. A vaine delight, and no lesse folly then hath raigned sometyme in great personages, and no deale more tollerable then it hath ben in olde tyme. For every evyl example is then worst, when as eyther the weight of auctoritie, or of yeeres is ioyned unto it. The force of custome [increases with age] from whence soever it tooke beginning, and age as it advaunceth good thinges to better, so doth it cast downe evyl thinges to woorse. But O, I would God, that ye that do far surpasse your auncetours in vaine things, would matche them

1 M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. New York: Norton, 1958, pp. 20–21: “The pragmatic orientation, ordering the aim of the artist and the character of the work to the nature, the needs, and the springs of pleasure in the audience, characterized by far the greatest part of criticism from the time of Horace through the eighteenth century. Measured either by its duration or the number of its adherents, therefore, the pragmatic view, broadly conceived, has been the principal aesthetic attitude of the Western world.

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chapter fifteen in earnest matters, and with them would esteeme of glory and vertue, with whom ye stand fondly gazing at Pictures without ende. Ioy. Truely, I am woonderfully delighted with painted tables. Reason. O woonderfull madness of mans minde, which woondreth at evry thing, saving it selfe, [than which] there is nothing not only among all the woorkes of art, but also of nature, more woonderful. Ioy. Painted tables delight me. Reason. What mine opinion is herein, thou mayest perceive in that which I have sayde before. All earthly delyghtes, if they were governed by discretion, would styre men up to the heavenly love, and put them in minde of their first original. For, I pray thee, who ever loved a river, and hated the head thereof? But you weltring heavily upon the ground, stouping, and as it were fastened to the earth, dare not look upwardes to wardes heaven, and forgettyng the chiefe woorkeman [of the Sunne and Moone], with marvellous pleasure ye beholde [their] slender pictures, and where the passage is to the highest places, [you look down, and] there ye ende the boundes of your understanding. Ioy. I am specially delyghted with painted tables, and Pictures. Reason. Thou conceivest delight in the pencill and colours, wherein the price, and cunning, and varietie, and curious dispersing, doth please thine eye: even so likewyse the lively gestures of lyvelesse pictures, and the [motions of unmovable images], and countenaunces comming out of poastes, and lively portraitures of faces, doo bryng thee into woondring, insomuch as thou wilt almost thynke they would speak unto thee: and this is the onely danger in this behalfe, in that many great wittes have been [those most] overtaken by these meanes. So that, whereas the clowne and unskylfull person will with small woondring pass them over: the wyser wyll repose hym selfe with sighing and woondring. A cunning matter truly, howbeit it is not possible from the beginning to unfold the fyrst originall and encrease of this art, and the wonderfulnesse of the woorkes, and the industrie of the woorkmen, the madnesse of princes, and the unreasonable prices wherewith these have been bought and brought from beyonde the seas, and placed at Rome, eyther in the Temples of the Goddes, or in the bed chambers of the Emperours, or in the common streetes, or publique porches and galleries. Neyther was this sufficient, but that they must also apply their owne right handes, which of duety ought to have been busied about greater affayres, unto the exercise of this art, which the most noble Philosophers of all Greece had doone before: Whereby it came to passe, that among you the art of paintyng was esteemeed above all handie craftes, as a thyng more neere to the woorke of nature: And among the Grecians, yf ye wyll beleeve Plinie, it was accompted [a first step in] the Liberal Artes. But I let passe these thinges, for that they are in a maner contrary to mine entended brevitie, and present purpose: and may seeme rather to minister infected humours to the sicknesse, whose cure I promised to undertake, and by the excellencie of the thinges, to excuse the madnesse of the woonderers at them. How beit I sayde yer whyle, that the greatnesse of them that dyd erre, made not the errour the lesse: but I touched that poynt the rather to this intent, that it myght appeare how great the force of that folly was, with whiche so many



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and so great wittes have conspired, unto which also the prince of errour the common multitude, and long continuance, whiche is the engenderer of customes, and auctoritie, whiche is a great heape of all mischiefes, are ioyned: so that the pleasure and admiration thereof, is able privily to remoove and withdrawe the minde from contemplation of higher matters. But yf these thynges that are counterfeited and shadowed with vayne colours doo so muche delyght thee, cast up thyne eyes uppon him that hath adorned mans face with senses, his minde with understandyng, the heaven with starres, the earth with flowres, and so shalt thou contemne those woorkemen whom thou woondredst at.2

While Joy, representative of the delight in the sensory perception and optical pleasure of visual representations, repeats its litany of delectare, Reason—by no means a Puritan—comes with an argumentative refutatio criticizing the superficiality of mere sensory pleasure. At a moment when humanism had not yet liberated the painter from the context of the artes mechanicae and elevated him to the rank of pictor doctus, painters were considered mere “princepleasers”,3 a judgment based on the testimony of Classical Antiquity, even though not a single painting from that era had survived. Furthermore, painting in the pre-emblematic4 age of Petrarch was viewed as an ars incapable of adequately representing religious concepts. This is especially true of the invisibility and thus the incomprehensibility of God in bodily terms, an issue with which John Milton (1608–1674) still struggled in his great epic Paradise Lost (1667).5 For Petrarch it is no problem to represent this absence, or invisible quality, as present in words. The Italian humanist Lodovico Castelvetro (1505–1571) has little difficulty describing the relation between poetry and painting, for he can appeal to the authority of Aristotle. In his Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta (“The Poetics of Aristotle in the Vulgar Language”) from the

2 Quoted from Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition 1350–1450, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, pp. 53–55. 3 According to the title of Richard Firth Green’s book Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages. Toronto / Buffalo / London: University of Toronto Press, 1980, which testifies to the courtly epideictic context of such artistic products. 4 Cf. Anne-Elisabeth Spica, Symbolique humaniste et emblématique: L’évolution et les genres (1580–1700). Paris: Champion, 1996. 5 Cf. Petra Bahr, Darstellung des Undarstellbaren: Religionstheoretische Studien zum Darstellungsbegriff bei A.G. Baumgarten und I. Kant. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.—On Milton cf. Martin Windisch, Miltons Urania: Poetik im Spiegel der lesbaren Welten. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1997.

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year 1570, the most famous Italian commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, he declares: [I, 28] Aristotle asserts (I.47a 18–20) that “there are those who imitate many things with color and form, some by art, others by practice”, thereby indicating that art and practice constitute the modes of the arts which employ color and form as their media. These modes appear not to bear a very close resemblance to the modes of poetry, which determine the species of a poem; for whereas the narrative or dramatic mode of treating an action—that is, the imitation of both the language and the things of a possible action with language, and the imitation of its language with language and its things with things—determines the species of the resulting poem, the species of a painting or a sculpture is not determined by its mode, that is, by whether it is the product of art or practice. And yet Aristotle could have expounded the modes of poetry with greater precision if, while still going to painting for his analogy, he had dwelt upon certain aspects of that art that bear a greater resemblance to poetry than those to which he has drawn our attention. His argument might then have run in this fashion. Poetry represents possible actions either by employing language to represent language and things to represent things, or by employing language alone to represent both language and things. Of these two modes of representing actions the first gives the more lifelike representation. We have an analogous phenomenon in painting, which represents its objects either by reproducing their natural colors or by using only light and shade. The latter representations, which we call monochromes, are analogous to narrative poetry, which employs language only to represent both language and things, and paintings in color are analogous to dramatic poetry, which employs language to represent language and things to represent things. We must not conclude these remarks without observing that the less lifelike representations include the poetry which represents dancing and other things with dancing only, while music and the dance are to be classified with the more lifelike representations when they represent music and dancing. In like manner we classify language with the more or less lifelike representations when they represent music and dancing. In like manner we classify language with the more or less lifelike representations according as it represents language only or both language and things.6

Here Castelvetro formulates Aristotle’s analogy of poetry and painting in more precise terms, by distinguishing between the mimesis of words and things. This difference leads him to another distinction, namely that of monochrome and colour in pictorial representation. According to this line 6 Castelvetro on the Art of Poetry. An Abridged Translation of Lodovico Castelvetro’s Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta. With Introduction and Notes by Andrew Bongiorno. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 29. Binghamton, N.Y.: medieval & renaissance texts & studies, 1984, p. 9.



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of thought colour depictions have a greater mimetic quality—analogous to drama, which in Aristotle’s Poetics is superior to other linguistic genres with regard to imitation. This means that drama and paintings in colour might also claim a more intense enargeia. The French poet Jacques Carel de Sainte-Garde (1620–1684), author of an epic poem (1666) about the expulsion of the Saracens from France, writes in his Réflexions (1676) about the relation between poetry and painting: C’est ce qui rend ces deux Arts, je veux dire la Poésie et la Peinture, si agréables à ceux qui ont un peu plus d’intelligence, et l’imagination plus belle comme que le commun. Et c’est aussi pourquoi on les nomme sœurs, et que l’on a dit: que la peinture était une Poésie muette; de même que la Poésie était une Peinture parlante. Avec cette différence néanmoins, que la dernière est bien plus heureuse, puisqu’elle peut représenter beaucoup plus de choses. Car le Peintre ne peut représenter que l’instant d’une action. Par example, s’il veut donner le portrait d’une bataille: tous les personnages auront toujours la posture d’un certain instant. Celui qui lève l’épée pour frapper son ennemi, la tiendra toujours levée. Celui qui tombe de son cheval, demeurera toujours en cet état. Mais le Poète décrit aisément l’action tout entière. Il décrit, dis-je, ce qui arrive aux premiers moments, et d’un fil continu il va jusqu’aux derniers et en achève la suite. Joint que la peinture n’exprime point, ou n’exprime que faiblement les pensées et les passions: elle n’a point de couleurs pour cela. Mais la Poésie a des couleurs spirituelles qui les représentent d’une manière très noble.7

Here, in two respects, the author revives an old discussion. The first theme is the antithetical conception of painting as mute poetry (muta poesis) and of poetry as speaking painting (pictura loquens). The second theme is concerned with painting as a static spatial art and poetry as a dynamic temporal art—contrary conceptions, which led Lessing in his Laokoon to make a decisive separation between what had formerly been apostrophized as “sister arts”. While Francisco de Holanda disparages poetry from the perspective of painting, claiming its representation to be too long-winded and not sufficiently “evident” to be absorbed by the recipient, in contrast to the immediately accessible and self-explanatory mimesis of painting, the poet Carel de Sainte-Garde comes with precisely the opposite argument. Using a battle scene as an example, he denounces the static nature of painting as totally unsuited for a portrayal of such a dynamic scene. In

7 Carel de Sainte-Garde, Réflexions (1676), quoted from: Aron Kibédi Varga (ed.), Les poétiques du Classicisme. Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1990, p. 57.

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addition, visual art is incapable of expressing the thoughts or passions of persons, since no colours for these exist; poetry, on the other hand, has the psychological “colours” for depicting these in a noble manner. Obviously the painters and art theorists could not accept this degradation of their art, for ever since the Italian Renaissance there was the absolutely new link between painting and discourse, one which had not existed in Classical Antiquity. When Leon Battista Alberti calls upon the painter to be both a good man and well lettered (“huomo buono et docto in buono lettere”), he is defining the humanist ideal of a learned, well-read artist, who is familiar with the literary arts and who can serve as a reference for those who practise them. He thus arrives at a fruitful interaction between literature and the visual arts. Painters draw their subjects (historiae) from literature, first from the ancient classics and the Bible and later also from contemporary literature (e.g., Ariosto, Tasso), and poets for their part verbalize themes and works of ancient and contemporary art—which is now no longer grouped with the artes mechanicae, as it was in the Middle Ages, but thanks to outstanding artists, many of whom are also active as art theorists and art critics, has risen to the rank of an ars liberalis. Basic to both of their methods is rhetoric, with its quinque partes artis, its topics and the effects it aims to produce, which were already set down in the Ciceronian trio of docere, delectare and movere, and even earlier in the doctrine of the affects formulated in Book II of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.8 If verbal rhetoric serves as the model for the visual arts, conversely pictorial rhetoric is also a model for poetry. In the context of his Discorsi dell’Arte Poetica (1587) Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) writes the following in Book I of his Discorsi del poema eroico: I poemi eroici, e i discorsi intorno a l’arte e il modo del comporli a niuno ragionevolmente dovrebbono esser più cari che a coloro i quali leggono volentieri azioni somiglianti alle proprie operazioni e a quelle de’ lor maggiori: percioché si veggono messa innanzi quasi una imagine di quella gloria per la quale essi sono stimati a gli altri superiori; e riconoscendo le virtù del padre e de gli avi, se non più belle, almeno più ornate con varii e diversi lumi della poesia, cercano di conformar l’animo loro a quello essempio; e l’intelletto loro medesimo è il pittore che va dipingendo nell’anima a quella similitudine le forme della fortezza, della temperanza, della prudenza, della

8 On the tradition cf. Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani, La rhétorique des passions. Paris: P.U.F., 2000; Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.



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giustizia, della fede, della pietà e della religione e d’ogni altra virtù la quale o sia acquistata per lunga essercitazione, o infusa per grazia divina.9 Heroic poems, and discussions of the art and mode of composing them, should naturally interest no one more than those who enjoy reading about deeds like their own and their ancestors’ because in such poems they may see an image, as it were, of the very glory that gets them considered superior to others. Recognizing the virtues of their fathers and forefathers as made, if not more beautiful, at least more various and illustrious by poetry, they try to raise their own minds to its example; and their intellect itself becomes a painter who, following its pattern, paints in their souls forms of courage, temperance, prudence, justice, faith, piety, religion, and every other virtue that may be acquired by long practice or infused by divine grace.10

Heroic poems therefore present epideictic images of heroic deeds, both of the readers themselves and of their ancestors. Their function is on the one hand to provide confirmation (confirmatio) of their own (social) superiority, on the other hand to serve as a model (exemplum) for imitation. In this way the poet becomes a kind of painter of ideas11 or virtues such as courage, prudence or justice; he creates images of these that the (aristocratic) reader can call up in his imagination. The place where such poetic works are read and commissioned is the princely court. In his epic The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) about Queen Elizabeth I, the English court poet Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) takes a similar approach, as is clear from his epistle of dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh: In that Faery Queene I meane glory in my generall intention, but in my particular I conceiue the most excellent and glorious person of our soueraine the Queene, and her kingdome in Faery land. And yet in some places els, I doe otherwise shadow her. For considering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautifull Lady, this latter part in some places I doe expresse in Belphœbe, fashioning her name according to your owne excellent conceipt of Cynthia (Phœbe and Cynthia being both names of Diana.). So in the person of Prince Arthure I sette forth magnificence in particular, which vertue for that (according to Aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of all the rest, and conteineth in it them all, therefore in the whole course I mention the deedes of Arthure applyable to that vertue, which I write of in that booke. But of

9 Torquato Tasso, Discorsi dell’arte poetica e del poema eroico. A cura di Luigi Poma. Bari: Gius. Laterza & figli, 1964, p. 61. 10 Torquato Tasso, Discourses on the Heroic Poem. Translated with notes by Mariella Cavalchini & Irene Samuel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, p. 5. 11 Cf. Erwin Panofsky, Idea: Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunsttheorie. Berlin: Hessling, 1960.

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chapter fifteen the xii other vertues, I make xii. other knights the patrones, for the more variety of the history: Of which these three bookes contayn three, The first of the knight of the Redcrosse, in whome I expresse Holynes: The seconde of Sir Guyon, in whome I sette forth Temperaunce: The third of Britomartis a Lady knight, in whome I picture Chastity. But because the beginning of the whole worke seemeth abrupte and as depending vpon other antecedents, it needs that ye know the occasion of these three knights seuerall aduentures. For the Methode of a Poet historical is not such, as that of an Historiographer. For an Historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions, but a Poet thrusteth into the middest, euen where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and diuining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing Analysis of all.12

With these words Spenser explains the complex allegorical structure of his great work, which is conceived as a kind of national epic. Like the epic poems of Ariosto and Tasso, it is epideictic in character.13 The object of the poet’s praise is the English queen, who does not, however, appear in the poem as a single person but as split up into several figures, each of which typifies one facet of her character. Her encomiastic and nearly cultic identification with Gloriana, Una, Belphoebe and others lends her the dignity of a superhuman being and makes her practically unassailable.14 In this way Spenser can also identify her with the Virgin Mary, a second Eve, the Christian faith and the true Church, and thus makes the mythographic idealization even more complex by applying the patristic tradition of fourfold scriptural exegesis.15 The catalogue of virtues which is superimposed

12 Edmund Spenser, The Poetical Works. Ed. J.C. Smith & E. de Selincourt. London / New York / Toronto: OUP, 1960, pp. 407–408. 13 Cf. H.F. Plett, “Epideictic”, in: A.C. Hamilton & al. (eds.), The Spenser Encyclopedia. Toronto / Buffalo: University of Toronto Press / London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 249–250.— On Ariosto cf. Daniel Javitch, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1991; on Tasso cf. Ulrich Leo, Torquato Tasso: Studien zur Vorgeschichte des Secentismo. Bern: Francke, 1951, esp. pp. 114ff. on evidenza / chiarezza; Domenico Chiodo, Torquato Tasso poeta gentile. Bergamo: Centro di studi tassioni, 1998. 14 Cf. Robin Headlam Wells, Spenser’s Faerie Queene. London / Canberra: Crom Helm / Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1983. 15 Cf. Erich Auerbach, “Figura”, in: Auerbach, Scenes from the Drama of European Literature. New York: Meridian Books, 1959, pp. 11–76.—For the wider horizon of this concept cf. Jon Whitman (ed.), Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period. Leiden / Boston / Köln: Brill, 2000.—The primary sense is the literal or historical. Allegory is the first spiritual or symbolic sense that shows the Old Testament foreshadowing the New; the second spiritual sense is the tropological or moral; and the third is the anagogical, which relates to eternal glory and after life. Thomas Aquinas’s explication is to be found in the Summa Theologica Pt. I, Q.i, Art 10. Dante explains the process in his “Letter to the Can Grande della Scala”.



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on the epic structure undergoes an analogous treatment. It, too, is split into iconic elements. The sum of these is personified in Prince Arthur, presented as the epitome of all virtues and the manifestation of magnificentia (Greek: megaloprepeia), a term derived from the megalopsychia or “greatness of soul” of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (IV.ii–iii), the connection between these two virtues being honour (τιμή), which is the goal of magnanimity and the result of magnificence. In Spenser’s epic one of the diversifications of this central virtue is justice, the iconography of which is presented in the fifth book of The Faerie Queene.16 Other remarks in the dedication refer to the structural method of the historical poet,17 who in contrast to the historiographer does not ab ovo find his orientation in chronological sequence but, following the example of Virgil’s Aeneid, dives directly into the action (medias in res), then narrates the prior history in flashbacks. He thus fulfils the Ciceronian maxim of variatio delectat and pursues the rhetorical goal of avoiding the possible monotony of a verbal picture gallery. Several more expressions borrowed from the art and techniques of painting appear in Spenser’s poetological writings: “shadow”, “fashion”, “picture”, for example. They suggest that Spenser’s epic should be interpreted as an important testimonial for literary pictorialism.18 In the Introduction to Book III of The Faerie Queene Spenser uses the ironic form of the modesty topos to play with the pictorial metaphors: How then shall I, Apprentice of the skill, That whylome in diuinest wits did raine, Presume so high to stretch mine humble quill? Yet now my lucklesse lot doth me constraine Hereto perforce. But O dred Soueraine Thus farre forth pardon, sith that choicest wit Cannot your glorious pourtraict figure plaine That I in colourd showes may shadow it, And antique praises vnto present persons fit. But if in liuing colours, and right hew, Your selfe you couet to see pictured, Who can it doe more liuely, or more trew,

16 Cf. Jane Aptekar, Icons of Justice: Iconography & Thematic Imagery of Book V of the Faerie Queene. New York / London: Columbia UP, 1959. 17 On the historical dimension cf. Michael O’Connell, Mirror and Veil: The Historical Dimension of Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. 18 John B. Bender, Spenser and Literary Pictorialism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1972.

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Figure 6. Edmund Spenser: The “Februarie” eclogue Then such sweet verse, with Nectar sprinckeled, In which a gracious seruant pictured His Cynthia, his heauens fairest light? That with his melting sweetnesse rauished, And with the wonder of her beames bright, My senses lulled are in slomber of delight. (F.Q. III.3–4).

The author thus humbles himself to the position of an apprentice in the art of epideictic word painting, presenting this poetic piece as “coloured”— coloured, that is, with colores rhetorici, which place their “evidence” in a proper light. Already in the “Februarie” eclogue of his early poem cycle The Shepheardes Calender (1579) Spenser makes use of rhetorical enargeia in a way that prompts the commentator E.K. to write: THis Æglogue is rather morall and generall, then bent to any secrete or particular purpose. It specially conteyneth a discourse of old age, in the persone of Thenot an olde Shepheard, who for his crookednesse and vnlustinesse, is scorned of Cuddie an vnhappy Heardmans boye. The matter very well accordeth with the season of the moneth, the yeare now drouping, and as it were, drawing to his last age. For as in this time of yeare, so then in our bodies there is a dry and withering cold, which congealeth the crudled blood, and frieseth the wetherbeaten flesh, with stormes of Fortune and hoare frosts of Care. To



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which purpose the olde man telleth a tale of the Oake and the Bryer, so liuely and so feelingly, as if the thing were set forth in some Picture before our eyes, more plainly could not appeare.19

On this the literary critic John B. Bender comments in turn: This obviously is a reference to the concept of enargeia. But it is not profound or even helpful to say that this fable’s immediacy is as great as a picture’s when the portrait of Elisa in “April” and the fable in “May” are not granted similar praise. Also, what does the picture set before our eyes look like?—surely not like the woodcut that appears in the Calendar! E.K. accepts the metaphors of ut pictura poesis uncritically, and he employs them merely to describe a general effect of immediacy that is supposed to arise from Spenser’s iconic image of the oak and the briar.20

First of all the radius for applying the term enargeia here seems expanded and relevant to other poems in the Calendar as well. And indeed, this stylistic device plays a significant role in almost all of Spenser’s poetry and poetic fragments. Bender goes even further, however, and draws John Harington, another Elizabethan author, into his argument: Twelve years later, in 1591, John Harington declares in “An Advertisement to the Reader,” prefatory to his illustrated translation of the Orlando furioso, that “the use of the picture is euident, which is, that (hauing read ouer the booke) you may reade it (as it were againe) in the very picture.” That you can “read” these pictures as a mnemonic is partly true: the illustration to canto I, for example, shows Rinaldo six times with his name inscribed near each image; but Ariosto’s interlacing of events is no more than roughly apparent in this engraving, even though Sacripante does seem to go off with Angelica at the end (i.e., at the top).21

Here, in an illustrated book, a double function is ascribed to enargeia: that of a visual (pictorial) and that of an imagined (mental) vividness. The two forms make two separate “readings” of such a work possible: the first an interpretation of its iconicity against the background of the written/ printed word, the second an interpretation of the same with the aid of menmonic images stored in the memory. The two “readings” complement and reinforce each other.

19 Spenser, The Poetical Works, p. 423.—On E.K. see Patsy Scherer Cornelius, E.K.’s Commentary on The Shepheardes Calendar. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur der Universität Salzburg, 1974. 20 Bender, Spenser and Literary Pictorialism, p. 11. 21 Bender, Spenser and Literary Pictorialism, p. 11.

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The verb “set forth” that appears in Edmund Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queene and in E.K.’s commentary on the “Februarie” eclogue, clarifies the plasticity of the word painting and signals the intermediality of rhetorical semiotics, in which the evidentia of verbal and visual art participate to an equal degree. This becomes even clearer in the expression “figure forth” in the Apology for Poetry (1595) of Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), where we find the following definition: Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting or figuring forth— to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture—with this end, to teach and delight.22

In his biography of Philip Sidney, Sir Fulke Greville (1554–1628) confirms that Sidney superbly realised this definition in The New Arcadia, for he characterizes him as an “excellent Image-maker” and as a writer who transforms “barren Philosophy precepts into pregnant Images of life”.23 In his Directions for Speech and Style, the poet and rhetorician John Hoskins (1566–1638) writes on the poetic practice of this most prominent Elizabethan author: Sir Philip Sidney’s course was (besides reading Aristotle and Theophrastus) to imagine the thing present in his own brain that [h]is pen might the better present it to you.24

Thus Sidney puts into practice the classical prescription to produce first a mental picture in his imagination before concretising it in an act of verbalization. An outstanding example of Sidney as an “excellent Imagemaker” in The New Arcadia is the scene in which Kalander shows his 22 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry or The Defence of Poesy. Ed. G. Shepherd. London: Nelson, 1965, p. 101.—On Sidney’s Apology cf. Kenneth Myrick, Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Craftsman. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 21965 (11935), chap. II: “The Defence of Poesie as a Classical Oration” (pp. 46–83); Robert L. Montgomery, The Reader’s Eye: Studies in Didactic Literary Theory from Dante to Tasso. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press, 1979, chap. IV: “ ‘The Gates of Popular Judgments’: Sidney’s Apology for Poetry (ca. 1581–1583).” (pp. 117–141). 23 Sir Fulke Greville’s Life of Sir Philip Sidney. Ed. Nowell Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907, pp. 14–16. 24 John Hoskins, Directions für Speech and Style. Ed. with an Introduction and Notes by Hoyt H. Hudson. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1935, p. 42. It is this rhetorician who makes the memorable remark that the “conceits of the mind are pictures”.—On John Hoskins cf. also Louise Brown Osborn, The Life, Letters, and Writings of John Hoskyns 1566–1638. Yale Studies in English, 87. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1973.—On Sidney’s relationship to the visual arts cf. Judith Dundas, Pencils Rhetorique: Renaissance Poets and the Art of Painting, chap. I: “ ‘Without Art Artificial’: Sidney and the Imitation of Nature” (pp. 22–53).



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picture gallery to Palladius. The gallery is in a summer house situated in a beautifully planned garden, complete with sculptures. Here Sidney employs ekphrasis: Hard by was a house of pleasure builte for a Sommer retiring place; whether Kalander leading him, he found a square roome full of delightfull pictures, made by the most excellent workeman of Greece. There was Diana when Actæon sawe her bathing, in whose cheekes the painter had set such a colour, as was mixt betweene shame & disdaine: & one of her foolish Nymphes, who weeping, and withal lowring, one might see the workman meant to set forth teares of anger. In another table was Atalanta; the posture of whose lims was so livelie expressed, that if the eyes were the only judges, as they be the onely seers, one would have sworne the very picture had runne. Besides many mo, as of Helena, Omphale, Iole: but in none of them all beautie seemed to speake so much as in a large table, which contained a comely old man, with a lady of midle age, but of excellêt beauty; and more excellêt would have bene deemed, but that there stood betweene thê a yong maid, whose wonderfulnesse tooke away all beautie from her, but that, which it might seeme shee gave her backe againe by her very shadow. And such differêce, being knowne that it did in deed counterfeit a person living, was there betweene her and al the other, though Goddesses, that it seemd the skill of the painter bestowed on the other new beautie, but that the beautie of her bestowed new skill of the painter.25

This passage includes various types of enargeia. The basic one consists in the presentation of figures from classical mythology—absent figures which are also, in the last analysis, unrepresentable. A second type is that of the illusionistic life-like effect of the static painted figures. This reveals itself in the appearance of movement and the possibilities for expressing emotions by means of corresponding colours. As Benedetto Varchi (1502– 1565) writes, when emphasizing the interdependence of verbal and visual 25 Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia. The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney. Vol. I. Ed. Albert Feuillerat. Cambridge: CUP, 1963, p. 18.—The description of such a picture gallery could have been influenced by a progymnasma such as that by Lucian On the Hall, aptly introduced by Zahra Newby in an article which begins as follows: Picture yourself in a beautiful room, flooded with early morning light. It has a lofty ceiling, gilded and glinting in the sunshine. The walls are adorned with paintings, in colour and detail as bright as Spring. What is one to do in the face of such beauty? Standing mute, gazing in wonder, or articulate the impact of the visual, rival it even, in words? This is the question posed by Lucian’s On the Hall, a rhetorical introduction or prolalia, probably written between 160 and 180 CE. (“Testing the Boundaries of Ekphrasis: Lucian On the Hall”, Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature 31 (2002), 126–135). Lucian’s text is available in the Loeb edition, with an English translation by A.M. Harmon: Lucian, vol. I. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England: Harvard UP, 2006, pp. 175–207.

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art: “[. . .] as the poets [sometimes] describe the exterior, so the painters show, as far as they can, the interior, that is, the emotions.”26 This means that the portrait painter pursues not only pictographic but also symbolic or emblematic goals. In the words of Norman K. Farmer, Jr.: Kalander’s gallery, then, is the picture or image of art itself—in an emblematic sense. In a more representational sense it contains on its walls artful expressions of human passion, a major theme throughout the Arcadia. But in contrast to Arcadia at large, passions here are contained and controlled by art; as the two princes soon discover as they are assimilated into the Arcadian world, passions there are the province of Nature.27

The same author points out that Sidney heightens the pictorialism in the revised version of his novel Arcadia: Sidney recast much of his narrative and a great deal of his description in an apparent effort to appeal more vividly to his reader’s sense of specific pictorial genres: landscape, paintings on mythological themes, portraits, statuary, jewelry, emblems, impresas.28

This enargetic reorientation is apparent already at the beginning of the New Arcadia (1590), where we read: IT was in the time that the earth begins to put on her new aparrel against the approch of her lover, and that the Sun rũning a most evê course becums an indifferent arbiter betweene the night and the day; when the hopelesse shepheard Strephon was come to the sandes, which lie against the Island of Cithera; where viewing the place with a heavy kinde of delight, and sometimes casting his eyes to the Ileward, he called his friendly rivall, the pastor Claius unto him, and setting first downe in his darkened countenance a doleful copie of what he would speake: O my Claius, said he, hether we are now come to pay the rent, for which we are so called unto by over-busie Remembrance, Remembrance, restlesse Remembrance, which claymes not onely this dutie of us, but for it will have us forget our selves. [. . . . .]29

This opening passage, which seems to imitate the classic prooemium, includes various forms of ekphrasis: first an extensive chronographia of spring, then a brief topographia of Cyprus, the island where the goddess Aphrodite was born from the surf, and finally the prosopographia of the

26 Quoted from Norman K. Farmer, Jr., Poets and the Visual Arts in Renaissance England. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1984, p. 3. 27 Norman K. Farmer, Jr., Poets and the Visual Arts in Renaissance England, pp. 7–8. 28 Norman K. Farmer, Jr., Poets and the Visual Arts in Renaissance England, p. 1. 29 Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney. Vol. I, p. 5.



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shepherd Strephon, which forms a transition to a prosopopoieia of the same figure, when he speaks to his friend and fellow shepherd Claius. All these forms of ekphrasis were already described in detail in medieval rhetorics and poetics.30 They and the works influenced by them served as models for the literature of the Renaissance. Sidney’s introduction also alludes to the rhetorical doctrine of memoria, which plays a role later in the novel as well, for example in the Urania episode.31 In the passage quoted above the exclamatio and the varied repetition of the key term in emphatic epithets indicate the link between memory and affect—which here appears in the allegorical form of a cruel ruler at the Court of Love. Memory here has certain characteristics in common with imagination, for it not only stores the images in the thesaurus memoriae but also generates them. Another trait shared with memory is that it makes the absent present—or more precisely, present again—and thus becomes the agent of melancholy for the pastoral actors. The immediate source of the quoted passage from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia is probably the Spanish novel Diana (1545) by Jorge de Montemayor (1520–1561). There the shepherd Syrenius remembers the place where he first saw his beloved Diana and accuses that memory of causing him pain. A contemporary English translation renders his complaint as follows: Ah memorie (cruell enemie to my quiet rest) were not thou better occupied to make me forget present corsies, then to put before mine eies passed contents? What saiest thou memorie? That in this medow I beheld my Lady Diana, that in the same I began to feele that, which I shal never leave of to lament, That neere to that cleere fountaine (set about with high and greene Sicamours) with many teares she solemnly sware to me, that there was not the deerest thing in the world, no, not the will of her parents, the perswasion of her brethren, nor the importunities of her allies, that were able to remoove her from her setled thoughts? And when she spake these words, there fell out of those faire eies teares like orientall pearles, which seemed to testifie that, which remained in her secret hart, commanding me, upon paine to be accounted of her a man but of a base and abject minde, if I did not beleeve that, which so often times she had told me. But stay yet a little Memorie, since now thou hast put before me the foundations of my mishap (and such they were, that the joy, which I then passed, was but the beginning of the greefe which now I suffer) forget not to tune me this jarring

30 Cf. Edmond Faral, Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle. Paris:  E. Champion, 1924; rpt. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1971, pp. 75–84. 31 Cf. Lothar Cerny, “Beautie and the use thereof ”: Eine Interpretation von Sir Philip Sidneys Arcadia. Köln / Wien: Böhlau, 1984, pp. 75–103, esp. pp. 76–81: “Das Bild der Erinnerung” and pp. 81–93: “Das Bild der Anamnesis”.

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chapter fifteen string, to put before mine eies by one and one, the troubles, the turmoiles, the feares, the suspects, the jealousies, the mistrusts, and cares, which leave not him, that most truly loves. Ah memorie, memorie, how sure am I of this answere at thy hands, that the greatest paine, that I passed in these considerations, was but little in respect of that content, which in lieu of them I received. Thou hast great reason memorie, and the worse for me that it is so great: and lying and lamenting in this sort, he tooke a paper out of his bosome, wherein he had a few greene silken strings and haire tyed up together, and laying them open before him upon the greene grasse, with abundance of teares he tooke out his Rebecke, not halfe so jocund as it was woont to be, at what time he was in Dianas favour, and began to sing that which followeth. [. . . . .].32

Memoria therefore reveals itself not only as a valuable aid in making the past present again, but also as an imperfect instrument for reactivating what might be irretrievably lost. As Judith Dundas concludes: “This is a call for verse to be made from the misery of memory.”33 Another possibility is to learn through practice the art of forgetting (ars oblivionis)34 or the remedia memoriae—after the example of Ovid, who wrote a remedia amoris as a sequel to his ars amatoria. The novel The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) by John Bunyan (1628–1688) contains an episode reminiscent of Kalander’s gallery in Sidney’s Arcadia. Here the first-person narrator Christian visits the house of the Interpreter, who likewise shows him a gallery—with not only paintings but also sculptures and even moving images in the form of a ballet and a miniature drama. The episode shows how abstract spiritual themes can be rendered in sensory form, as the Interpreter explains to Christian the meaning of each piece. After Christian introduces himself to the Interpreter, the latter tells him: Inter. Then said the Interpreter, come in, I will shew thee that which will be profitable to thee. So he commanded his man to light the Candle, and bid Christian follow him; so he had him into a private Room and bid his Man open a Door; the which when he had done, Christian saw a Picture of a very 32 A Critical edition of Yong’s Translation of George of Montemayor’s Diana and Gil Polo’s Enamoured Diana. Ed. Judith M. Kennedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, p. 12.—In quoting this passage from Montemayor’s novel Judith Dundas in Sidney and Junius on Poetry and Painting. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007, p. 86, gives valuable comments on this work.—Cf. also Anthony Parry, “Ideal Love and Human Reality in Montemayor’s Diana”, PMLA 84/2 (1969), 227–234. 33 Judith Dundas, Sidney and Junius on Poetry and Painting, p. 86. 34 Cf. on this subject Harald Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting. Trans. from the German by Steven Randall. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 2004; Communications no 49 (1989): « La mémoire et l’oubli ».



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grave Person hang up against the wall, and this was the fashion of it, It had eyes lift up to Heaven, the best of Books in its hand, the Law of Truth was written upon its lips, the World was behind its back; it stood as if it pleaded with Men, and a Crown of Gold did hang over its head. Chr. Then said Christian, What means this? Inter. The Man whose Picture this is, is one of a thousand, he can beget Children, Travel in birth with Children, and Nurse them himself when they are born. And whereas thou seest him with his eyes lift up to Heaven, the best of Books in his hand, and the Law of Truth writ on his Lips: it is to shew thee, that his work is to know, and unfold dark things to sinners; even as also thou seest him stand as if he Pleaded with Men: And whereas thou seest the World as cast behind him, and that a Crown hangs over his head; that is, to shew thee, that slighting and despising the things that are present, for the love that he hath to his Masters service, he is sure in the world that comes next to have Glory for his Reward: Now, said the Interpreter, I have shewed thee this Picture first, because the Man whose Picture this is, is the only Man, whom the Lord of the Place whither thou art going, hath Authorized, to be thy Guide in all difficult places thou mayest meet with in the way: wherefore take good heed to what I have shewed thee, and bear well in thy mind what thou hast seen; lest in thy Journey, thou meet with some that pretend to lead thee right, but their way goes down to death.35

The picture for which the Interpreter gives an exegesis is a religious emblem of a type common in the 17th century. At the same time it can be interpreted in the tradition of the rhetorical doctrine of memory (memoria), that is, as a mnemonic image (pictura) which is hung in a special place of remembrance (locus memorialis). It is therefore an image that Christian should store in his memory to keep him from going astray and failing to reach the true goal of his pilgrimage. The second scene in the tour of the Interpreter’s House shows Christian confronted with another sort of image: Then he (sc. The Interpreter) took him (sc. Christian) by the hand, and led him into a very large Parlour that was full of dust, because never swept; the which, after he had reviewed a little while, the Interpreter called for a man to sweep: Now when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that Christian had almost therewith been choaked: Then said the Interpreter to a Damsel that stood by, Bring hither Water, and sprinkle the Room; which when she had done, was swept and cleansed with pleasure.

35 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Ed. by James Blanton Wharey. Rev. by Roger Sharrock. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 21960, pp. 28–29.—On Bunyan and his works cf. Roger Sharrock, John Bunyan. London / Melbourne / Toronto: Macmillan / New York: Martin’s Press, 1968.

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chapter fifteen Chr. Then said Christian, What means this? In. The Interpreter answered; This Parlor, is the heart of a Man that was never sanctified by the sweet Grace of the Gospel: The dust, is his Original Sin, and inward Corruptions that have defiled the whole Man. He that began to sweep at first, is the Law; but She that brought water, and did sprinkle it, is the Gospel: Now, whereas thou sawest that so soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did so fly about, that the Room by him could not be cleansed, but that thou wast almost choaked therewith, this is to shew thee, that the Law, instead of cleansing the heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give power to subdue.36

Christian here receives his spiritual teaching by means of an emblematic pantomime interpreted by his host in the manner of a doctor, vexillator, nuntius, or poeta, the figure from early modern morality plays who explains the drama to the spectators. From the perspective of rhetorical mnemonics this scene is a “moving image” (imago agens) that serves to forcefully impress mnemonic teachings on the spectator. About the meaning and function of such images the Rhetorica ad Herennium (III.xxii.37) states: Imagines igitur nos in eo genere constituere oportebit quod genus in memoria diutissime potest haerere. Id accidet si quam maxime notatas similitudines constituemus; si non multas nec vagas, sed aliquid agentes imagines ponemus; si egregiam pulcritudinem aut unicam turpitudinem eis adtribuemus; [etc.]. We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the memory. And we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; [etc.]37

In the effort to produce a more memorable effect, the mnemonician can animate the images, that is, have them performed as dramatic actions. This is the origin of the mnemonic pantomimes and dramas used to create a strong, enargetic impression of the lessons contained in sermons and religious literature.

36 Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, pp. 29–30. 37 Cf. [Cicero], Rhetorica ad C. Herennium. Ed. Harry Levin. London: Heinemann / Cambridge, Mass. Harvard UP, 1954, pp. 220–221.—Cf. Cicero, De Oratore II.359.—Of particular importance are the imagines agentes in Giulio Camillo’s (1480–1544) Memory Theatre: cf. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory, chaps. VI & VII; Lu Beery Wenneker, An Examination of “L’Idea del Theatro” of Giulio Camillo. An annotated translation, with special attention to his influence on emblem literature and iconography. PhD dissertation. University of Pittsburgh, 1970.



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A similar technique is applied to the well-known poem “The Churchfloore” by George Herbert (1593–1633), from his poem cycle The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633): Mark you the floore? that square & speckled stone,  Which looks so firm and strong   Is Patience: And th’other black and grave, wherewith each one  Is checker’d all along,   Humilitie: The gentle rising, which on either hand  Leads to the Quire above,   Is Confidence: But the sweet cement, which in one sure band  Ties the whole frame, is Love   And Charitie.  Hither sometimes Sinne steals, and stains  The marbles neat and curious veins: But all is cleansed when the marble weeps.  Sometimes Death, puffing at the doore,  Blows all the dust about the floore: But while he thinks to spoil the room, he sweeps.  Blest be the Architect, whose art  Could build so strong in a weak heart.38

The poem consists of two parts. The first half (v. 1–12) offers a topothesia, the description of the floor of a fictive church. The second half (v. 13–20) presents a steadily intensifying description of two actions aimed at soiling the floor, and ends in a climax of praise for the Deus Artifex. The place described is a standard emblematic location, with the cernas formula “mark” indicating the enargetic manner of its constitution. The emblematic method here consists in explicating the individual elements of the location as metaphors: the speckled stone as Patience, the black stone as Humility, the gentle incline to the choir as Confidence, and the cement which forms the strong framework as Love and Charity. This does not correspond to textbook examples of classical mnemonics, for there the function of the loci is much more structural than pictorial. Yet Herbert

38 George Herbert, The Works. Ed. F.E. Hutchinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964, pp. 66–67.

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does make use of the structural possibilities as well, by placing the virtues in a hierarchical order, with Charitie as its telos. In the second half of Herbert’s poem movement enters the stasis of poetic memory architecture as the allegoric figures Sin and Death appear in the memory place of the “Church-floore”. Their intention is to disrupt the work of the memory architect, but they fail, owing to the resistance of the material. Sin and Death here function as the imagines agentes of memory theories. They perform a kind of spiritual pantomime or morality play, the positive outcome of which is assured in advance, thanks to the divine Architect. The temple of memory remains unspoiled: Patience, Humility, Confidence and Charity are not obliterated. Instead of the term “memory” Herbert uses “heart” to underscore the additional dimension memory has for him. His temple is not only an edifice of memory but of faith. Because unbelief is essentially a matter of forgetting God, the task of a poeta theologus is to make religious truths accessible to the senses by means of memorable images. The lack of homogeneity in George Herbert’s Temple may be a reference to the brokenness of faith and anamnesis under the influence of Sin and Death. As a whole Herbert’s poem “The Church-floore” can be read as an imaginative staging of a psychomachia by means of enargeia. Such a concept came in for sharp criticism from the theological iconoclasts of the Early Modern Age. The most radical among them rejected not only pictorial representations in churches, like those from the medieval tradition of biblia pauperum (“laye mennes bokes”),39 but also the mental images of religious mnemonics. William Perkins (1558–1602), probably the most prominent Puritan theologian of the time, writes in his Art of Prophecying (1607): Artificiall memorie, which standeth upon places and images, will very easily without labour teach how to commit sermons to the memorie: but it is not to be approved. 1. The animation of the image, which is the key of memorie, is impious; because it requireth absurd, insolent and prodigious cogitations, and those especially, which set an edge upon and kindle the most corrupt affections of the flesh. 2. It dulleth the wit and memorie, because it requireth a threefold memorie for one: the first of the places: the second of the images: the third of the thing that is to bee declared.40 39 Cf. Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique (1553). Facsimile-Reprint: The English Experience, CCVI. Amsterdam: Da Capo Press / New York: Theatrvm Orbis Terrarvm, 1969, Fol. 116v. 40 William Perkins, “The Art of Prophecying”, in: The Works. London: John Legatt, 1631, vol. II, p. 670.



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William Perkins was certainly not alone in expressing hostility to imagery. This strong opposition explains why John Bunyan felt compelled to preface his novel The Pilgrim’s Progress with “The Author’s Apology for His Book”, in which he defends his poetic concept of images by referring to the “Types, Shadows and Metaphors” (v. 10) of the Bible.41 As we have seen, Bunyan’s House of the Interpreter contains another whole set of images constituted by the same mnemonic-emblematic procedure. In contrast to Sir Philip Sidney, who explains poetic mimesis with the aid of visual art, Ben Jonson (1572–1637) declares in Timber: or Discoveries (1641): Poetry, and Picture, are Arts of a like nature; and both are busie about imitation. It was excellently said of Plutarch, Poetry was a speaking picture, and Picture a mute Poesie. For they both invent, faine, and devise many things, and accommodate all they invent to the use, and service of nature. Yet of the two, the Pen is more noble, then the Pencill. For that can speake to the Understanding; the other, but to the Sense. They both behold pleasure, and profit, as their common Object; but should abstaine from all base pleasures, lest they should erre from their end; and while they seeke to better mens minds, destroy their manners. They both are borne Artificers, not made. Nature is more powerfull in them then study. Whosoever loves not Picture, is injurious to Truth: and all the wisdome of Poetry. Picture is the invention of Heaven: the most ancient, and most a kinne to Nature. It is it selfe a silent worke: and alwayes of one and the same habit: Yet it doth so enter, and penetrate the inmost affections (being done by an excellent Artificer) as sometimes it orecomes the power of speech, and oratory.42

With regard to mimesis, poetry and painting are here placed on equal footing. Their difference lies in the techniques they employ for their respective types of imitation. Ideally their mimesis should be considered of equal value. Both arts employ the instruments of rhetoric in order to bring about a moral effect. Poetry uses them to appeal to the intellect, while painting addresses the sense of sight. The poet can attempt to translate the immediate sensory evidence of the visual arts into word paintings. Conversely, the materia of poetry can be transformed into works of visual art by a painter or sculptor schooled in the septem artes liberales—such as Nicolas

41 On this subject cf. Ernest B. Gilman, Iconoclasm and the English Reformation. Chicago / London: University of Chicago Press, 1986. 42 Ben Jonson, [Works]. Ed. C.H. Herford & Percy & Evelyn Simpson. 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–1952, vol. VIII (1947), pp. 609–610. Reference is made to Plutarch, De audiendis poetis, c. 3.

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Poussin (1594–1665), who painted scenes from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and thus converted verbal texts into pictorial texts.43 The textual images of poetry and the textual images of painting differ with respect to mimesis in the materials and structures they employ. Their respective forms of visuality come about through heterogeneous rhetorical enargeia methods. The underlying assumption here is what Early Modern theorists describe as an intermedial rhetoric, which is thus elevated to the rank of a general semiotics. Poussin even takes this a decisive step further in a letter to Chanteloup of November 24th, 1647, where he draws an analogy between pictorial styles and musical keys or modes (modi).44 By thus combining painting and music, in keeping with the maxims ut musica pictura and ut pictura musica, Nicolas Poussin implicitly claims the same (rhetorical-semiotic) sign system for both arts. This line of thinking ultimately leads to a synaesthesia or symbiosis of the arts. On the other hand, his thoughts on the idea of beauty are of interest for the theme of enargeia: L’idea della Bellezza non discende nella materia che non sia preparata il più che sia possibile; questa preparatione consiste in trè cose, nell’ordine, nel modo, e nella specie o vero forma. L’ordine significa l’interuallo delle parti, il modo hà rispetto alla quantità la forma consiste nelle linee, e ne’ colori. Non basta l’ordine, et l’interuallo delle parti, e che tutti li membri del corpo hab-

43 Jonathan Unglaub, Poussin and the Poetics of Painting: Pictorial Narrative and the Legacy of Tasso. Cambridge: CUP, 2006, p. 71: “Subjects derived from literary sources such as Gerusalemme liberata add a new dimension to Poussin’s practice of imitation. In such cases, the materia consists not only of his own prior work and other judiciously elected pictorial prototypes, but a text that is a work of artifice, an integral form. The textual sources of religious and historical subjects, however refined and literary they may be, do not share this characteristic. Their ostensible embodiment of fact dictates orthodoxy or verisimilitude. This authority derives from content. Literary texts, on the contrary, exert their authority principally through form: the plot, its arrangement, its ornamentation, its tropes, and its imagery. All of these features contribute to a work’s textuality, by which I mean the opacity of poetic language, the texture of the text, its literariness rather than its content. The realization of textuality is the prerogative of the reader. Only at the receptive end of a text does its intersection of literary and social codes, the adaptability of these features to further elaboration in an endless constellation of potential meaning, come into play. There is a ‘readerly’ aspect of poetic production that takes stock of textuality, inasmuch as painters and poets are readers of previous works before they are makers of new ones. The poetic act marks the confluence of reception and projection. In the case of a painter, the degree of textuality that migrates from a literary to a pictorial work is, as Wollheim has demonstrated, a question of response. This response determines the balance of deference and difference vis-à-vis the model that Poussin’s theory of novità advocates.” 44 Cf. Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin. Foreword M. Kitson. London: Pallas Athene, 1995, pp. 367–370.—On the context cf. Todd P. Olson, Poussin and France: Painting, Humanism, and the Politics of Style. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 2002, pp. 73–80.



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Figure 7. Nicolas Poussin: Self-portrait biano il loro sito naturale, se non si aggiunge il modo, che dia a ciascun membro la debita grandezza proportionata al corpo, e se non vi concorre la specie, accioche le linee sieno fatte con gratia, e con soaue concordia di lumi vicino all’ombre. E da tutte queste cose si vede manifestamente che la bellezza è in tutto lontana dalla materia del corpo, la quale ad esso mai s’auuicina, se non sarà disposta con queste preparationi incorporee. Et qui si conclude che la Pittura altro non è che vna idea delle cose incorporee, quantunque dimostri li corpi, rappresentando solo l’ordine, e l’modo delle specie delle cose, e la medesima è più intenta all’idea del bello che a tutte l’altre: onde alcuni hanno voluto che questa sola fosse il segno, e quasi la meta di tutti i buoni Pittori, e la pittura vagheggiatrice della bellezza e Regina dell’arte. The idea of beauty does not descend into matter unless it has been prepared as much as possible; this preparation comprises three things: the order, the mode, and the species or form. The order concerns the interval of the parts, the mode relates to quantity, the form has to do with lines and colors. Neither the order nor the interval of the parts is sufficient, nor is it sufficient that all the limbs of the bodies be in their natural place unless, besides this, according to the mode, each limb be proportioned to the size of the body and, according to the species, all the lines be handled gracefully and with a suave harmony of lights adjacent to shadows. From all these considerations

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chapter fifteen it is apparent that beauty is entirely removed from the physical aspects of the body and only comes close to them when it is prepared by these insubstantial preparations. And thus we conclude that painting is nothing but an idea of incorporeal things even though it shows bodies, for it only represents the order and the mode of the species of things and it is more intent upon the idea of beauty than on any other thing, so much so that there are those who have maintained that this only was the mark and the goal of all good painters, and that painting, looking on beauty with an enamored eye, was the Queen of the arts.45

The beauty of a painting, then, exists essentially in the idea of the painter who produces it, but not in the materialization of this idea in keeping with the criteria that Poussin declares fundamental to that process. On this point, according to Erwin Panofsky,46 he agrees with the Italian art theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538–1600), who maintains that the painter should imagine voices and thoughts before drawing figures.47 This means that it is enargeia, with the aid of the three criteria ordine, modo and specie or forma, that transposes the idea of beauty—or more generally speaking, the rhetorical semiotics of the visual arts—into the concrete visuality of beauty. An essential element of this rhetorical semiotics of the visual arts is the actio of gestures with which the artist can express thoughts and emotions of depicted figures. The painter and art critic Roger de Piles (1635–1709) supplements the statement of Lomazzo by demanding that the artist first look in a mirror to discover suitable gestures. In his five-volume Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes (1666) the art historian André Félibien (1619–1695) describes methods for representing emotions through gestures, and maintains: « de toutes les passions, celles qui entrent dans l’âme par les yeux sont les plus violentes ».48 In Des Principes de l’architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture, et des autres arts qui en dépendent (1670) he singles out Poussin as a painter who realised the actio doctrine in exemplary fashion: Poussin, he says, uses the passions as harmoniously as a musician deals with sounds.

45 Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, p. 364. 46 Erwin Panofsky, Idea: Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunsttheorie, p. 117. 47 For the following discussion cf. H. James Jensen, The Muses’ Concord: Literature, Music, and the Visual Arts in the Baroque Age. Bloomington / London: Indiana UP, 1976, pp. 62–63. 48 André Félibien, Entretiens sur la vie et les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes. Paris, 1666, vol. V, p. 324.



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Figure 8. Nicolas Poussin: The Judgment of Solomon (1649)

Later he maintains that the harmony of Poussin’s work lies in the harmony of its parts. A concrete example of the significance of gestures can be found in Poussin’s painting The Judgment of Solomon, which portrays Solomon immediately after he has declared that the child claimed by two mothers should be divided into two equal parts and given to the women. According to H. James Jensen49 the painting can be “read” in the following manner: Poussin [has] picked the ripe moment, the crisis of the action. Solomon has just given his decree that the live baby shall be sliced into two pieces. Each woman reacts according to her given character. Poussin’s painting more

49 H. James Jensen, Signs and Meaning in Eighteenth-Century Art: Epistemology, Rhetoric, Painting, Poesy, Music, Dramatic Performance, and G.F. Handel. New York / Washington, D.C. / Baltimore / Boston [etc.]: Peter Lang, 1997, pp. 297–299.—Poussin’s paintings as a whole are analysed by Christopher Wright in Poussin: Paintings—A Catalogue Raisonné. London: Chaucer Press, 2007.—For further analyses of Poussin’s paintings cf. Marc Fumaroli in « Muta Eloquentia: La répresentation de l’éloquence dans l’œuvre de Nicolas Poussin », Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire de l’Art Français 1982 (1984), 29–48 and L’inspiration du poète de Poussin: essai sur l’allégorie du Parnsasse. Paris: Ministère de la culture, de la Communication, des Grands Travaux et du Bicentenaire, Editions des Musées Nationaux, 1989.

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chapter fifteen explicitly [than Rubens’s] follows Quintilian, but both are quite similar at least in the gestures of the main characters (all the characters in Poussin’s paintings reveal their thoughts and emotions through gestures corresponding to Quintilian’s descriptions). As eighteenth-century writings on acting say, eyebrows are important, and Quintilian says, for instance, that raised eyebrows indicate refusal, dropped eyebrows indicate consent (XI,iii, section 79). Each character except the impassive Solomon indicates either acceptance or rejection of the decision. The false mother’s brows are lowered, indicating consent, as are the brows of the rather odious man to Solomon’s left. The other figures show varying degrees of rejection or horror, even the child on the right. The soldier drawing his sword indicates his reluctance in the same way. The only variation to this simple gesture is the woman in the group on the right whose lowered brows indicate more extreme grief and whose writhing body indicates pain. [. . . . .]. Hand gestures are significant. Quintilian says that the hands speak by themselves, that they express all passion in an international language (XI,iii, sections 85–87). He says the eyes always are turned the same way as the gesture except where there is abhorrence. In Poussin’s painting we can see the most abhorrance, among the spectators, in the woman on the far right, the one with the child, and the soldier on the far left. Solomon’s hands gesture significantly. Quintilian says that when three fingers are doubled under the thumb, the index finger is “used in denunciation and in indication . . . . . while if it be slightly dropped after the hand has been raised toward the shoulder, it signifies affirmation, and if pointed face downwards toward the ground, it expresses insistence” (XI,iii, section 94). If Solomon were to hold his fingers firmly with his thumb, he would be showing more emotion. Quintilian says this about Solomon’s gestures, in which the last three fingers are folded: “It is much employed by the Greeks both for the left hand and the right, in rounding off their enthymemes, detail by detail. A gentle movement of the hand expresses promise or assent.” Solomon’s left hand is descending, since he has already pronounced the first, or false, decision that has animated the false mother. He is turning his head to the true mother, and his right hand is starting to move, giving promise of the wise judgment yet to come. His thumb and index finger indicate the point he will make.

Thus Poussin’s painting reveals itself as a mirror of emotions. The sensory presence, or surface structure, of the gestures refers by means of enargeia to the imaginable absence, or deep structure, of the passions.50 For painting this rhetorical semiotics includes the theory of colours, which like the colores rhetorici are capable of representing and stirring

50 For the “language of gestures” see Veronica de La Porta, Il gesto nell’arte: L’eloquenza silenziosa delle imagini. A cura di Stefania Macioce. Roma: Logart Press, 2006; André Chastel, Il gesto nell’arte. Trad. D. Pinelli. Roma: Laterza, 2008.



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human thoughts and affects.51 The Italian art theorist Gregorio Comanino (d. 1608), in his dialogue Il Figino overo del fine della Pittura (1591), cites the classical theory of the pictura loquens and integrates into it the issue of colour: An eloquent painting Is this, and the mute colour That paints the golden mouth Resounds sweetly and speaks artfully. With live words Panigarola paints. With dead colour The wise Figino speaks. They are rivals, but who can say if the winner Is the painter or the painted?52

Comanino here expands the theory of color loquens, yet at the same time concedes a vivid liveliness to the rhetoricised word found in the sermons of Francesco Panigarola (1548–1594). He in the end sums up the contest between painted picture and spoken word with a chiastic antithesis: The orator paints with words—the painter speaks with colours. He thus sub specie evidentiae grants priority to neither of the two arts. For each obviously possesses its own enargeia or evidentia: in pictorial art it is visual, in the verbal art imaginative. The early humanist and poet Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) reports the following personal impression made on him by a polychrome stucco relief of St. Ambrose on a wall in Sant’Ambrogio near his lodgings in Milan: [. . . . .] it almost lives and breathes in the stone, and I often look up at it with reverence. It is no small reward for my coming here. I cannot say how much power there is in its expression, how much grandeur in the brow and in the eyes; only the lack of a voice prevents one seeing the living Ambrose.53

51 Cf. Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Couleur éloquente: Rhétorique et peinture à l’âge classique. Paris: Flammarion, 1989, rpt. 1999. On the history of French art cf. Henri Zerner, Renaissance Art in France: The Invention of Classicism. Paris: Flammarion, 2003 (11996); Marc Fumaroli, L’école de silence: le sentiment des images au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Flammarion, 1998, Champs arts, 2008. 52 Gregorio Comanini, The Figino or On the Purpose of Painting. Edited by Ann DoyleAnderson & Giancarlo Maiorino. Toronto / Buffalo / London: University of Toronto Press, 2001, p. 16. 53 Quoted from Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450, p. 51.

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This accords with the traditional topoi of signa spirantia (breathing statues) and vox sola deest (only the voice is lacking). Numerous artist legends going back to Antiquity testify to similar imagined experiences of art viewers.54 The pinnacle of this enargetic empathy is no doubt the Pygmalion myth, which tells how a female statue came alive under the hands of the sculptor and from then on led a life of its (her) own as Galathea—a myth that Shakespeare recast in The Winter’s Tale (1610–1611).55 Roger de Piles (1635–1709), painter, engraver and art theorist, compares painting with rhetoric in his Conversations (1677) and maintains that the painter is an orator, while the sculptor is a grammarian. A sculptor deals clearly and unambiguously with his figures, like a grammarian, and his art is therefore readily accessible, presenting no problem to the understanding of the viewer. The painter, on the other hand, has to persuade our eyes in a way that an eloquent person moves our hearts: Le Peintre est comme l’Orateur, & le Sculpteur comme le Grammerien. Le Grammerien est correct & juste dans ses mots, il s’explique nettement, & sans ambiguité dans ses discours, comme le Sculpteur fait dans ses Figures, & l’on doit comprendre facilement ce que l’un & l’autre nous representent. L’Orateur doit estre instruit des choses que sçait le Grammerien, & le Peintre de celles que sçait le Sculpteur. Elles leurs sont à chacun necessaires pour communiquer leurs pensées, & pour se faire entendre: mais & l’Orateur, & le Peintre, sont obligez de passer outre. Le Peintre doit persuader les yeux comme un homme Eloquent doit toucher le cœur. Et de mesme qu’on ne dit point que l’Orateur pour persuader doit sçavoir la Grammaire, & parler intelligiblement, & et avec justesse, puisque cela s’entend assez; aussi ne dit-on point qu’un Peintre doit sçavoir dessiner pour imposer aux yeux; puisqu’on le suppose pareillement, & dans la plus grande correction qu’il est possible.56

Underlying this understanding of painting is the concept of rhetorica pictura. The curtain that in the synaesthetic school theatre of the Jesuits opens to reveal abstract moral or theological lessons frequently serves as a frame for paintings and even emblems or poems of the Baroque Age.57 The pur54 Cf. Ernst Kris & Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment. Pref. by E.H. Gombrich. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. 55 Cf. Annegret Dinter, Der Pygmalion-Stoff in der europäischen Literatur: Rezeptionsgeschichte einer Ovid-Fabel. Heidelberg: Winter, 1979. 56 Roger de Piles, Conversations sur la connoissance de la peinture, et sur le jugement qu’on doit faire des tableaux. Paris: Langlois, 1677. Reprint: Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1970, pp. 102–103. 57 Cf. the stage curtain of Francis Quarles’ Argalus and Parthenia (1629), reproduced in H.F. Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture, p. 274 (Figure 42).



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pose is to suggest to the viewer that he is not looking at a static image but, like a spectator in a theatre, is watching a dramatic scene that lends evidence (enargeia) and liveliness (energeia) to the content of the teachings. The affects play a special role here. The French Jesuit Nicolaus Caussinus devotes the entire Book VIII of his encyclopedic rhetoric Eloquentiae sacrae et humanae parallela (1619) to this subject.58 The affects already play a significant role in the art theories of humanism. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), for example, sketches various portraits of emotions in § 41 of his treatise De Pictura (1425/1436). Painters like Leonardo arranged such examples into tables for use in their own work as a kind of pictorial topoi.59 The melancholic character type was portrayed especially frequently in the Early Modern Age—not only in the visual arts but also in literature,60 and there most strikingly perhaps in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The sensitivity of the psyche relating to each affect becomes ‘evident’ through an external projection, and thus accessible to perception. At an early stage, on the other hand, authors of the Early Modern Age were already describing themselves as painters or sculptors; Guarino da Verona (1374–1460), for example, testifies in his Epistolario: Dehinc eos addam colores et ornamenta quae pro meae officinae inopia potero. Hactenus enim more sculptorum feci, qui principio ita marmora erudiunt, ut equi aut leonis aut hominis adhuc in forma detegant imaginem, nondum splendor adiectus extremusque color sit. Sic et ipse locos quosdam assumptos in unum ita coegi, ut corpus et forma compareat, necdum autem expolita membra pro mei ingenioli facultate sunt.61 At this point I begin adding such embellishment and rhetorical ornament as the poverty of my literary workshop allows. For so far I have been proceeding

58 Nicolaus Caussinus. Eloquentiae sacrae et humanae parallela. Libri XVI. Flexiae: Sumptibus Sebastiani Chappelet bibliopolae Parisiensis: Via Jacobaeae sub signo oliuae, 16XIX, Liber VIII. De Affectibus (pp. 311–374). Caussinus is equally known both as an author of meditations and as a commentator on hieroglyphic writings; on this subject cf. Michael Hawcroft, Word as Action: Racine, Rhetoric, and Theatrical Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 40–54; Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer, “Nicolaus Caussinus’ Affekttheorie im Vergleich mit Descartes’ Traité sur les passions de l’âme”, in: J.A. Steiger (ed.), Passion, Affekt und Leidenschaft in der frühen Neuzeit. 2 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005, vol. I, pp. 353–390. 59 Cf. the illustration in: Leonardo da Vinci, Sämtliche Gemälde und die Schriften zur Malerei. Edited, commented and introduced by André Chastel. Trans. Marianne Schneider. München: Schirmer/Mosel, 1991, p. 309. 60 Cf. e.g. the Neo-Latin poem Melancholia of Jakob Balde (1604–1668), in: Lateinische Gedichte deutscher Humanisten. Selected, translated and annotated by H.C. Schnur. Stutt­ gart: Reclam, 1967, pp. 4–7. 61 Guarino da Verona, Epistolario. Ed. Remigio Sabbadini. Venezia 1915–1919, vol. II, p. 71.

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chapter fifteen in the manner of the sculptor, who first chisels at the marble so as to reveal, as yet only in form, the figure of a horse or lion or man without yet having added the lustre and embellishment that completes the work. In the same way I too have collected and joined together a number of topics so that a structure and form are in existence, but the individual parts have yet to be given, through such talent as I have, their final polish.62

The author therefore emerges as a practitioner and imitator of the visual arts, who with his words paints pictures and creates statues that are accessible to everyone through the senses, the one difference being that the verbal iconicity only becomes manifest in the imagination—where it is the source of affects. Besides the concretization of emotions in optical images, the art theorist Alberti also recommends another enargetic technique, namely that of including in the picture a figure pointing to the essential element in the work.63 This mediating deictic figure establishes a spatio-temporal equivalence of the observed and the observer. It stands in the tradition of the figure of the doctor, expositor or poeta who delivers the epic prologue of the early modern morality play; and in a work like the Isenheim altar of Matthias Grünewald (1475/1480–1528) he appears as the Apostle John pointing to the crucified Christ.64 This deixis is realised in multiple figures in Raphael’s painting Madonna di Foligno (1512).65 Alberti identifies as a second form of iconic evidence the interaction between figures in a picture. This can be found in the annunciation scene of the Isenheim Altar, where the angel extends his hand to Mary as he delivers the message that will change her life. Some portrait paintings also have interacting figures. Giovanni Battista Paggi (1554–1627), for example, included a self-portrait in his portrait of an architect; this mirrored, and thus double, figure of the painter looks directly at the viewer and seems to draw him into the picture.66

62 Translation in: Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450, p. 88. Reference is made by Baxandall to Cicero, Brutus xxxiii, 126. 63 Alberti, De Statua [etc.]. Ed. O. Bätschmann et al. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2000, pp. 272–273. 64 Cf. Michael Schubert, Der Isenheimer Altar: Geschichte—Deutung—Hintergründe. Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 2007, p. 32 ff. 65 Cf. Michael Ladwein, Raffaels Sixtinische Madonna. Dornach: Pforte Verlag. 2004, p. 17. 66 For illustration and interpretation cf. Jodi Cranston, The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: CUP, 2000, pp. 137–138.



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Figure 9. Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim altar: St. John pointing to the crucified Christ

Figure 10. Raphael, Madonna di Foligno (1512)

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Figure 11. Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim altar: The Annunciation Another instance of a speaking picture (pictura loquens) is the so-called “Vienna Crucifixion” painted around 1500 by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). With regard to the humanistic-rhetorical context of this work, the art historian Edgar Bierende concludes: Zusammenfassend ist festzustellen, dass das neue rhetorische, eben humanistische Bildverständnis dem damaligen Betrachter im Vergleich mit gleichzeitigen und älteren Werken als Neuheit bewusst geworden sein muß. Diese Innovation setzt sich aus mehreren Komponenten zusammen: das dialogische Prinzip, das zu einer Verlebendigung der Figuren führt (Gebärdebzw. Redefiguren); das allegorische Bildverständnis, das eine Beseelung der Landschaft im Zusammensehen von Figur und Landschaftselement bewirkt und die Textreferenz (Johannes-Evangelium), die wiederum das dialogische Prinzip betont und die Gebärde- und Redefiguren in einen rhetorischen Aufbau einbindet. Die strukturierte Abfolge der Gebärdefiguren dient der



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Figure 12. Giovanni Battista Paggi: Self-portrait with potrait of an architect

Figure 13. Lucas Cranach the Elder: “Vienna Crucifixion”

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chapter fifteen heilsgeschichtlichen Erzählung sowohl im Ganzen (Moral- und Lehrbild) als auch in seinen Teilen, in denen mit den Mitteln der Variation, etwa das Schauen der Reiter, Steigerung, wie das Klagen der Marien-JohannesGruppe, und Kontrastierung, etwa beim guten und bösen Schächer, im Sinne der Rhetorik bildhaft erzählt und argumentiert wird.67 To summarize: the new rhetorical, which is the humanist, understanding of the pictorial, as compared with contemporary and older works of art must have appeared as an innovation to the consciousness of the beholder of that age. This innovation consists of several components: the dialogic principle, which brings the figures to life (figures of gesture or speech); the allegorical understanding of images, which in the simultaneous seeing of figure and landscape makes for an animation of landscape; and the textual reference (the Gospel of St. John), which underscores the dialogic principle and integrates the figures of gesture and speech in a rhetorical framework. This structured sequence of the figures of gesture serves the story of salvation both in its totality (moral and didactic image) and in its parts—where, for example, the gazing riders are pictorially narrated and argued in a rhetorical sense through variation, the grieving Mary and John through intensification, and the good and evil malefactors through contrast.

Affective and dramatic enargeia are therefore both realised in this panel painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. In 1507 Raphael (i.e. Raffaele Santi [1483–1520]) created with the “Pala Baglione” a portrayal of the deposition of Christ, where the central focus is on Mary as she takes leave of her son.68 The art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) describes how the artist approached his task: Immaginossi Raffaello nel componimento di questa opera il dolore che hanno i più stretti et amorevoli parenti nel riporre il corpo d’alcuna più cara persona, nella quale veramente consista il bene, l’onore e l’utile di tutta una famiglia.69 Raphael imagined, when creating this work, the pain felt by the closest and most loyal family members, who carry to the grave the body of their most beloved relative on whom indeed the welfare, honour and profit of an entire family depends.

67 Edgar Bierende, Lucas Cranach d.Ä. und der deutsche Humanismus: Tafelmalerei im Kontext von Rhetorik, Chroniken und Fürstenspiegeln. München / Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002, p. 83. 68 For interpretations cf. Hubert Locher, Raffael und das Altarbild der Renaissance: Die ’Pala Baglioni’ als Kunstwerk im sakralen Kontext. Zur Kunstwissenschaft und Philosophie. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1995; Wolfgang Brassat, Das Historienbild im Zeitalter der Eloquenz: Von Raffael bis Le Brun. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2003, pp. 3–7. 69 Giorgio Vasari, “Vita di Raffaello d’Urbino”, in: Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti. A cura di Licia e Carlo L. Ragghianti, vol. II, pp. 755–808, here: p. 764.



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He thus maintains that the visual artist needs his imaginatio to portray such powerful emotion in a convincing way—convincing for the viewer, whose imaginatio the work is meant to address. A prerequisite, then, for the arousal of passions is that the painter, like the orator, first be moved by them himself.70 In the visual arts this is especially true of devotional religious images. The homology of painting and poetry claimed equally by art and literary theorists of the Early Modern Age explains why Leon Battista Alberti insists that painters should pay attention to poets and rhetoricians (§ 53): Doctum vero pictorem esse opto, quoad eius fieri possit, omnibus in artibus liberalibus, sed in eo praesertim geometriae peritiam desidero. Assentior quidem Pamphilo antiquissimo et nobilissimo pictori, a quo ingenui adolescentes primo picturam didicere. Nam erat eius sententia futurum neminem pictorem bonum qui geometriam ignorarit. Nostra quidem rudimenta, ex quibus omnis absoluta et perfecta ars picturae depromitur, a geometra facile intelliguntur. Eius vero artis imperitis neque rudimenta neque ullas picturae rationes posse satis patere arbitror. Ergo geometricam artem pictoribus minime negligendam affirmo. Proxime non ab re erit s[i] [sc. pictores] poetis atque rhetoribus delectabuntur. Nam hi quidem multa cum pictore habent ornamenta communia.71 It would please me if the painter were as learned as possible in all the liberal arts, but first of all I desire that he know geometry. I am pleased by the maxims of Pamphilos, the ancient and virtuous painter from whom the young nobles began to learn to paint. He thought that no painter could paint well who did not know much geometry. Our instruction in which all the perfect absolute art of painting is explained will be easily understood by a geometrician, but one who is ignorant in geometry will not understand these or any other rules of painting. Therefore, I assert that it is necessary for the painter to learn geometry. For their own enjoyment artists should associate with poets and orators who have many embellishments in common with painters and who have a broad knowledge of many things.72

70 Cf. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria VI.ii.26: “Summa enim, quantum ego quidem sentio, circa movendos adfectus in hoc positum est, ut moveamur ipsi”.—“The heart of the matter as regards arousing emotions, as far as I can see, lies in being moved by them oneself ” (Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, vol. III, p. 59). 71 Leon Battista Alberti, De Statua [etc.], pp. 292–294. 72 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting. Translated with Introduction and Notes by John R. Spencer. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 41973, p. 90.—Cf. Jack M. Greenstein, “Alberti on Historia: A Renaissance View of the Structure of Significance in Narrative Painting”, Viator 21 (1990), 273–299.

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Rhetoric and poetry offer both theoretical and practical resources for painting. While the practical resource consists in the [h]istoria, the principal theoretical contribution is the five-phase method of Inventio—Dispositio—Elocutio—Memoria—Actio.73 The ultimate aim of the pictorial representation, however, is to move (movere) the viewer emotionally: Animos deinde spectantium movebet historia, cum qui aderunt picti homines suum animi motum maxime prae se ferent. Fit namque natura, qua nihil sui similium rapacius inveniri potest, ut lugentibus conlugeamus, ridentibus adrideamus, dolentibus condoleamus. Sed hi motus animi ex motibus corporis cognoscuntur. Nam videmus ut tristes, quod curis astricti et aegritudine obsessi sint, totis sensibus ac viribus torpeant, interque pallentia et admodum labantia membra sese lenti detineant. Est quidem maerentibus pressa frons, cervix languida, denique omnia veluti defessa et neglecta procidunt. Iratis vero, quod animi ira incendantur, et vultus et oculi intumescunt ac rubent, membrorumque omnium motus pro furore iracundiae in eisdem acerrimi et iactabundi sunt. Laeti autem et hilares cum sumus, tum solutos et quibusdam flexionibus gratos motus habemus. Laudatur Euphranor quod in Alexandro Paride et vultus et faciem effecerit, in qua illum et iudicem dearum et amatorem Helenae et una Achillis interfectorem possis agnoscere. Est et Daemonis quoque pictoris mirifica laus, quod in eius pictura adesse iracundum, iniustum, inconstantem, unaque et exorabilem et clementem, misericordem, gloriosum, humilem ferocemque facile intelligas. Sed inter caeteros referunt Aristidem Thebanum Apelli aequalem probe hos animi motus expressisse, quos certum quidem est et nos quoque, dum in ea re studium et diligentiam quantum convenit posuerimus, pulchre assequemur.74 The istoria will move the soul of the beholder when each man painted there clearly shows the movement of his own soul. It happens in nature that nothing more than herself is found capable of things like herself; we weep with the weeping, laugh with the laughing, and grieve with the grieving. These movements of the soul are made known by movements of the body. Care and thought weigh so heavily that a sad person stands with his forces and feelings as if dulled, holding himself feebly and tiredly on his pallid and poorly sustained members. In the melancholy the forehead is wrinkled, the head drooping, all members fall as if tired and neglected. In the angry, because anger incites the soul, the eyes are swollen with ire and the face and all the members are burned with colour, fury adds so much boldness there. In gay and happy men the movements are free and with certain pleasing inflections. They praise Euphranor since he executed the face and expression of Alexander Paris in which you could recognize him as the judge of the goddesses, the lover of Helen and the slayer of Achilles. There is also great praise

73 Cf. Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture, Section C (pp. 297–364) and Caroline van Eck, Classical Rhetoric and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. 74 Leon Battista Alberti, De Statua [etc.], pp. 268–270 (§ 41).



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for the painter Demon, since in his picture you could easily see [Paris to be] angry, unjust, inconstant, and at the same time placable, given to clemency and mercy, proud, humble and ferocious. They say that Aristides the Theban, equal to Apelles, understood these movements very well. They will certainly be understood by us when we come to know them through study and diligence.75

Alberti here sets forth the rhetorical aim of visual art, especially of paintings. The artist must continually aspire to evoke the affects of the viewer. In order to achieve this he must plan his pictorial invention in such a way that the outer appearance of the portrayed figures reflects the inner stirrings of their soul. This is not undertaken individually for the person depicted, but on the basis of topoi which prescribe specific mimics and bodily kinesics for each affect. Every painter of the Early Modern Age had such topoi at his disposal—most famously, as already mentioned, Leonardo da Vinci.76 In her book Rembrandt’s Reading: The Artist’s Bookshelf of Ancient Poetry and History, Amy Golahny includes a significant chapter on “The Image of the Reader in Rembrandt’s Art”, in which she writes on the artist’s double portrait of the Mennonite preacher Cornelis Claes Anslo and his wife Aeltje Gerritsdr. Schouten: Rembrandt’s grand double portrait of Anslo and his wife [. . . . .] makes an even stronger connection between the divine word and the active roles of interpreter and listener [. . .]. A large Bible, opened to show the source of Anslo’s wisdom and authority, carries as much pictorial weight as either of the sitters. The Bible rests upon a wooden lectern, and another smaller volume lies nearby; a bookshelf, half-curtained, holds volumes of various sizes. The books, as well as the carpet and cloth covering on the table and the attentive spouse, amplify the character, scholarship, wealth, social position, and morality of the Mennonite preacher and cloth dealer. Vondel wrote a short poem about Rembrandt’s portrayal of Anslo; this famous quatrain becomes the intermediary between the sitter and the viewer: O Rembrandt, paint Cornelis’s voice, His visible parts are least of him. The invisible is perceived through the ears alone. He who would see Anslo must hear him.

75 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, p. 77. 76 Cf. the informative publication by Ulrich Pfisterer & Max Seidel (eds.), Visuelle Topoi: Erfindung und tradiertes Wissen in den Künsten der italienischen Renaissance. München / Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003.

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Figure 14. Rembrandt: The Mennonite preacher Cornelis Claes Anslo and his wife Vondel’s exhortation to the beholder to “hear” the voice of Anslo is an emphatic, appropriate response: the image conveys only part of the message of the man. A challenge to the artist, Vondel’s poem was well within the critical response not only of the rivalry between painting and poetry, but also of the expectations of portraiture. Rembrandt’s lively portrayals of Anslo meet the challenge that an image must convey the full presence of the sitter: the image must be both seen and “heard”—that is, it evokes in the viewer the imagined voice of the depicted person. Essential to interpreting the scripture, Anslo’s reading is a public act, one that demands an audience.77

The first important notice to be made here is that Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669), like the other important artists of the Early Modern Age, used the reality of life or literature as an inspiration for his pictorial mimesis. In this case—the portraits of a preacher and his wife— it is the reality of the physiognomies of the sitters, including the theological library of the male protagonist. Between the male and the female sitter exists a relationship in the respective roles of speaker and hearer. As the Dutch poet Jost van den Vondel (1587–1679) expresses in his poem, there exists furthermore the role of another kind of receiver, namely that

77 Amy Golahny, Rembrandt’s Reading: The Artist’s Bookshelf of Ancient Poetry and History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2003, pp. 20–21.



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of the viewer of the portrait which is important here. And here a postulate is advanced: The ideal viewer is someone who both sees and hears— hears not with his ears but in his imagination. Which means: he must be a euphantasiotos who completely realises the enargeia of Rembrandt’s art that addresses not only the eyes but also the imagination where it creates a synaesthesia of perception that far exceeds the pictorial medium. During the regime of Richelieu and Louis XIV the Frenchman Charles Le Brun (1619–1690) worked not only as a painter but also as a theorist of the passions and of methods for depicting them in painting and sculpture. This artist, who was promoted to Premier Peintre du Roi and director of the Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture, in his treatise Les passions de l’âme (1649) consistently draws a link between human physiognomy and the individual states of mind that imprint themselves upon it. In the case of melancholy this is described as follows: SADNESS, as we said before, is a disagreeable, languid supiness, arising from the uneasiness the Soul feels at some evil or defect, which the impressions on the Brain represent to her. And indeed this Passion is figured by such motions as seem to express the inquietude of the Brain, and the dejection of the Heart; for the ends of the Eyebrows are more elevated towards the middle of the Forehead then towards the Temples; in a Person affected with this Passion the Pupils are cloudy, the Whites of the Eye yellow, the Eye-lids fallen and somewhat swelled, the Round of the Eyes livid, the Nostrils drawing downwards, the Mouth somewhat open and the corners down; the head seems negligently hanging upon one Shoulder, the whole Face of a wan lead colour, and the Lips entirely pale.78

The page following this description shows three graphic illustrations of the representation of melancholy labelled with different (English) synonyms: “Sadness”, “Dejection”, “Sadness & Dejection of Heart.” This illustration does not, of course, do justice to the eloquence of colours, a claim made explicitly in the text.79 Although this element is likewise lacking in Albrecht Dürer’s copper engraving Melencolia I, it does play a role in

78 Quoted from the English translation: Charles Lebrun, A Method to Learn to Design the Passions (1734). Introduction by Alan T. McKenzie. William Andrews Clarke Memorial Library. Los Angeles: University of California, 1980, p. 40. Cf. Jennifer Montagu, The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and Influence of Charles le Brun’s “Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière”. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 1994 (with illustrations). 79 On this important subject cf. Jacqueline Lichtenstein, The Eloquence of Color: Rhetoric and Painting in the French Classical Age. Trans. Emily McVarish. Berkeley / Los Angeles / Oxford: University of California Press, 1993.

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Figure 15. Charles Lebrun: portrait

numerous minature portraits of the melancholic courtier in the Elizabethan Age. This tradition is still known to Franciscus Lang (1654–1725), professor of rhetoric at various Jesuit educational institutions (Ingolstadt, Augsburg, Altötting, München), and author of Compositiones rhetoricae, a collection of 71 texts (including school dramas, dialogues and dramatic exercises). In his treatise on drama entitled Dissertatio de actione scenica, cum figuris eandem explicantibus, et observationibus quibusdam de actione comica (1727) he includes a series of figures to illustrate certain affects.80

80 The extensive title is: Dissertatio de actione scenica, cum figuris eandem explicantibus, et observationibus quibusdam de arte comica. Auctore P. Francisco Lang Societatis Jesu.



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Figure 16: Albrecht Dürer: Melencolia I

Figura VII, for example, represents the gestural expression of sadness (De affectu tristitiae). On this topic and on the affects in general Lang writes: Paucula alia subjungo de affectibus. Ac imprimis in genere deliberativo, quod in omni pene argumento locum habet, id curandum, ut causæ gravitas Accesserunt imagines symbolicæ pro exhibitione & vestitu theatrali. Superiorum permissu. Sumptibus Joan. Andreæ de la Haye Bibliopolæ Academici Ingolstadii. Monachii, Typis Mariae Magdalenae Riedlin, Viduae, 1727.—German translation: Franz Lang, Abhand­lung über die Schauspielkunst. Trans. & ed. Alexander Rudin. Bern / München: Francke, 1975.— On this work cf. Heinz Meyer, “Thesaurus Affectuum Humanorum bei Franciscus Lang S.J.: Ein Hinweis zu den Affekten auf der Jesuitenbühne”, in: Joachim Poeschke / Thomas Weigel / Britta Kusch (eds.), Tugenden und Affekte in der Philosophie, Literatur und Kunst der Renaissance. Münster: Rhema, 2002, pp. 155–171.

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Figure 17. Franciscus Lang: De affectu tristitiae per omnes gestus Actoris, quàm fieri potest, maxima cum vivacitate exprimatur. Ad hoc obtinendum non parùm conducit, si frequentes eæq�ue selectiores fiant mutationes corporis, itionum, ac gestuum. Sic quandoque ad Scenam inclinare se potest Actor, dum silens cogitat, quid dicendum, quid capiendum consilii sit, aut, statuendum: jam verò una manu supra mensam posita erectus stare, & alterâ uti ad actionem, qua dubios animi motus explicet. Jam cubito uno supra mensam fixo, capútque manu sustinens peroret; sícque variando situm corporis, varios etiam motus animi exprimat cum decoro, & commendatione. In vehementi dolore, aut tristitia inconcinnum non est, imò laudem meretur, & gratiam obtinet, si totam quandoque faciem, aut utraque objecta manu, aut immerso intra brachium capite, aliquamdiu omnino tegat, acclinatus ad Scenam, vel etiam verba aliqua, sic positus, immurmuret cubito, vel oppanso strophio, quæ licet non percipiantur ab Auditoribus, ex ipso tamen murmure, quod plus, quàm ipsa verba, significat, vehementia doloris intelligitur. Verùm hæc agendi forma brevis sit oportet, ne fastidium faciat pæsentibus.81

81 Franciscus Lang, Dissertatio de actione scenica, pp. 50–51 (Latin text), 198–199 (German translation). —Lang is also author of a voluminous treatise on affections entitled Theatrum Affectuum Humanorum, Sive Considerationes Morales ad Scenam accommodatae as



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I will add here a few small items about the affects. Most importantly, if a person is shown immersed in thought—which occurs in virtually every play—care must be taken to use all the gestures of the actor to make the significance of the situation visible in the liveliest possible way. In order to achieve this, it helps considerably to make repeated changes and good choices of posture, gait and gestures. The actor can sometimes therefore lean against the stage scenery as he quietly thinks about what to say or what decision to make or which measure he should employ; at other times he can stand up straight with one hand resting on a table while he uses the other to act out the vacillations of his mind. At yet other times he can deliver his speech with one elbow propped on a table and his head resting in his hand; and thus he may with dignity and skill express the various stirrings of his mind by changes in his posture. In extreme pain or in grief it is not unseemly, in fact it is laudable and appreciated if an actor occasionally hides his face completely, either by covering it with both hands or by hiding his head in his arms and leaning against the scenery; or he can, while in this position, whisper a few words which the audience need not understand into his elbows or his breast—this expresses more than the words themselves and reveals the violence of the suffering. Nevertheless it is advisable to keep this type of acting brief, in order not to weary those in attendance.

This passage articulates the dramatic principle that all affects and emotional stirrings must be externalized through the mimics and gestures of the actor so that they can be perceived by the spectator. This corresponds to rhetorical enargeia, but also to energeia; for the liveliness (vivacitas) required of the performance is precisely that. The exempla chosen by Lang—persons lost in thought or grief—are affect-mimetic stereotypes, and he also describes them as such. For Lang this was undoubtedly normative teaching material, conceived for practical use in a Jesuit school. In the Early Modern Age these same drama topoi are regularly found in the pictorial topics of the visual arts.82 The basis of this theory and others is the rhetorical doctrine of actio, that is, of delivery. Cicero discusses this primarily in Book III of his treatise De Oratore, where he describes the unity of voice and gesture as a dominant factor in oratory. This bodily semiotics was taken up by early

well as of another one entitled Theatrum Doloris et Amoris.—On the role of the affections with the Jesuits cf. Walter Michels, “Die Darstellung der Affekte auf der Jesuitenbühne”, in: Theaterwesen und dramatische Literatur: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Theaters. Ed. Günter Holtus. Tübingen: Francke, 1987, pp. 233–251. 82 Cf. e.g. the Salzburg exhibition catalogue Beredte Hände: Die Bedeutung von Gesten in der Kunst des 16. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart. Salzburg: Residenzgalerie, 2004.—Cf also André Chastel, Le geste dans l’art. [Paris:] Liana Levi, 2001.

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modern art theorists and practised by artists themselves in painting and sculpture. They could appeal to Quintilian, who had provided a stimulus for this approach in his Institutio Oratoria XI.ii.67–68: Nec mirum si ista, quae tamen in aliquo posita sunt motu, tantum in animis valent, cum pictura, tacens opus et habitus semper eiusdem, sic in intimos penetret adfectus ut ipsam vim dicendi nonnumquam superare videatur. Contra si gestus ac vultus ab oratione dissentiat, tristia dicamus hilares, adfirmemus aliqua renuentes, non auctoritas modo verbis sed etiam fides desit. Decor quoque a gestu atque motu venit. Ideoque Demosthenes grande quoddam intuens speculum componere actionem solebat: adeo, quamvis fulgor ille sinistras imagines reddat, suis demum oculis credidit quod efficeret. Nor is it surprising that these things, which do after all involve some movement, should have such power over the mind, when a picture, a silent work of art in an unvarying attitude, can penetrate our innermost feelings to such an extent that it seems sometimes to be more powerful than speech itself. On the other hand, if Gesture and facial expression were out of tune with speech, and we looked cheerful when what we were saying was sad, or shook our heads when asserting something, our words would lack not only authority but credibility. Seemliness also comes from Gesture and movement. This is why Demosthenes used to plan his performance in front of a big mirror; despite the fact that the bright surface reverses the image, he had complete trust in his own eyes’ ability to tell him what effect he was making.83

Here the same significance is ascribed to kinesics and mimics—together actio—as to a painting, the difference being that the latter is static while the actio produces what seem to be moving images. The two types of representation are similar in that their mimesis is mute and yet in their own way so eloquent that their “speech” moves human hearts, in fact often moves them more than the spoken word. To achieve such an effect the expression of emotion must, in keeping with the law of decorum, accord with the content; for a discrepancy between the two destroys the beauty of the performance (or work of art), which consists in the rhetorical (or pictorial) arrangement of individual parts into a harmonious whole. For this purpose Demosthenes used a mirror, even though it gave him a reversed image, to perfect his oratory. The early modern portrait painter

83 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, vol. V, pp. 118–120. For the history of actio since Quintilian cf. Sophie Conte, Action oratoire du corps de Quintilien à Louis de Cressolles. PhD dissertation, Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2000; ead., « Louis de Cressolles: Le savoir au service de l’action oratoire », XVIIe Siècle (2007/4), 663–687.



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uses the same technique for the self-portrait. This is made strikingly clear in the previously mentioned self-portrait of Paggi.84 Like the painter, the sculptor also has to deal with the problem of an evident mimesis. An Italian art theorist like Pomponio Gaurico (ca.1482– ca.1530), who wrote a commentary on the Ars Poetica of Horace (Pomponius Gauricus super arte poetica Horatii [Rome 1541],85 writes the following on this topic in his treatise De sculptura (1504): Scilicet quam maxime εὐφαντασίωτοϛ esse debebit, qui videlicet dolentis, ridentis, aegrotantis, morientis, periclitantis et eiusmodi infinitas animo species imaginetur. Quod etiam poetis ipsis et oratoribus quam maxime necessarium, nec tamen nisi quatenus ipsa rei natura patietur, ne uelut aegri somnia vanae fingantur species. Dolentis illud [. . .]: He [i.e. the sculptor] must have an imaginative faculty as highly developed as possible so that he can conjure up a suffering, laughing, ill, dying or endangered person and countless other similar types in his imagination. Even for poets and orators this is absolutely necessary; but only to the extent that the nature of the subject requires it, so that it stops short of depicting such things as the nightmares of an ill person; of suffering that one, [. . .]:

Following Quintilian, who in his Institutio Oratoria (VI.ii.32) illustrates enargeia with examples taken from Virgil’s Aeneid, Gaurico takes brief passages from this classical epic in order to exemplify individual passions: 1. Suffering: excussi manibus radii revolutaque pensa. [Virgil, Aeneid IX, 476] the shuttle is dashed from her hands, and the thread unwound.86 2. Death: sternitur infelix alieno vulnere, coelumque aspicit et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos. [Virgil, Aeneid X, 781– 782:]

84 For his self-portrait Paggi evidently makes use of a mirror. The mirror is an excellent instrument for a perspective layout, as shown by Samuel Y. Edgerton in The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope. Ithaca, N.Y. / London: Cornell UP, 2009. 85 The title is: Pomponivs Gavricvs svper arte poetica Horatii. Eivsdem legis poeticae epilogvs videlicet. [Colophon: Impreßit Romae Valerius Doricus & Aloysius Frater Brixiani, Mense Octobri, Anno salutis M.D.XXXXI. Vertente.]—Fasimile-Reprint: Poetiken des Cinquecento, 16. München: Fink, 1969. 86 Most translations of the quotations from Virgil’s Aeneid are taken from H. Rushton Fairclough’s edition (revised by G.P. Goold) in the Loeb Classical Library: Virgil. In two volumes. Vol. II: Aeneid VII–XII / Appendix Vergiliana. London, England / Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2000.

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chapter fifteen He falls, unlucky man, by a wound meant for another, and gazes on the sky and, dying, dreams of his sweet Argos. ut reliqua omittamus, quorum exemplis refertissimus est idem Poeta. Quid? Nonne ipsos ante oculos vestros habere videmini consternatam audita morte filii mulierem atque ipsam peregrini hominis moribundi mortem? Quid vero et illud: So that we can skip the rest, examples of which are overabundant in the same poet. What? Do you not seem to have before your eyes the confused woman after she has heard of the death of her son, and even the death of the moribund stranger as well? Which is also true of the following: . . . pulchrosque per artus it cruor, inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit [Virgil, Aeneid IX, 433f.]; . . . over his lovely limbs runs the blood, and his drooping neck sinks on his shoulder. item: likewise: . . . atque illi in partibus aequis huc caput atque illuc humero ex utroque pependit [Virgil, Aeneid IX, 754–755]. . . . while in equal halves his head dangles this way and that from either shoulder. corruit in vulnus (gemitum super arma dedere) [Virgil, Aeneid X, 488], He falls prone upon the wound (above his armour heaved a sigh). sternitur infelix Acron, et calcibus atram tundit humum expirans, [Virgil, Aeneid X, 730–731]. Down goes hapless Acron, hammers the black ground with his heels as he breathes his last. et mille eiusmodi quae apud hunc Poetam invenias. and one thousand more examples which can be found in this poet.87

87 Pomponio Gaurico, De sculptura [Firenze, 1504]. Introduzione, testo latino, traduzione e note a cura di Paolo Cutolo. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1999, pp. 138– 140.— In the chapter on the technique of perspective (“De Perspectiva”), enargeia appears as a technical term (p. 216): “Posterioris autem huius tres: ἐν�αργεια, quando scilicet ex ea re quodque praecesserit quodque fit evidentissime repraesentatur, sic: ‘. . . et versa pulvis inscribitur hasta [Vergil, Aeneid I, 478] . . . levique patens in pectore vulnus’ [Virgil, Aeneid II, 40].” Even here poetry serves as model for the visual arts.—An excellent commentary on the chapter on perspective, including the enargeia, is to be found in the edition of



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With obvious reference to Quintilian’s euphantasiotos concept Gaurico88 postulates imagination as a prerequisite for depicting affects, a few of which he presents here. On this point he aligns himself with poets and orators, who are also subject to the requirement that their creations should not be the products of sickly nightmares. Like Quintilian, Gaurico concludes this highlighting of the imagination with examples from Virgil’s Aeneid, as evidence of the affective potential of visiones. Even earlier Manuel Chrysolaras (1353–1415), the influential mediator of Greek culture to the Italians, in a letter to Demetrius Chrysolaras attributes to the sculptor the characteristic of phantastikon, which in the mimesis of an object helps create the impression that the chiselled stone is alive and thus makes it an object of the viewer’s admiration (θαυμαστόν). The context of this statement is Manuel’s amazement as he wanders around in Rome, admiring the architectural beauty of the Eternal City and wondering in general why images of people and animals chiselled in stone are admired more than the living creatures themselves: What is the reason for this? It is that we admire not so much the beauties of the bodies in statues and paintings as the beauty of the mind (νοῦς) of their maker. This, like well-moulded wax, has reproduced in the stone, wood, bronze, or pigments an image which it grasped through the eyes to the soul’s imagination (τὸ φανταστκὸν τῆς ψυχῆς): and just as the soul of each man disposes his body, which has no few areas of softness, so that its own disposition—distress or joy or anger—is seen in the body, so too the artist disposes the outward form of the stone, stubborn and hard though this may be, or of the bronze or pigments, disparate and alien to him though these are, so that through portrayal and skill the passions of the soul can be seen in them. The artist’s mind, though it is not itself disposed particularly to laughter or pleasure, anger or sorrow—and may indeed be disposed to their contraries—yet impresses these passions on the materials. This is what we admire in these representations. (VIII).89

André Chastel and Robert Klein: Pomponius Gauricus, De Sculptura (1504). Genève: Droz, 1969. pp. 165–181. See also the essay of Robert Klein, “Pomponius Gauricus on Perspective”, Art Bulletin 43/3 (1961), 211–230 which outlines the history of the perspective in theory and practice. 88 In its structural sequence ARS—ARTIFEX—OPUS, Gaurico’s treatise is probably inspired by Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. 89 Quoted from: Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, p. 82; the entire Greek original is rendered as no. VIII of the source texts on pp. 150–152: Letter to Demetrius Chrysolaras, Patrologiae cursus completus. Ed. J.-P. Migne, Series Graeca, vol. xlvi, Paris, 1866, cols. 57–60 (pp. 81–2).

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The interesting point about these comments is first of all that art is not described from the perspective of the making, but of the reception. An important factor here is that the sculptures of an outstanding artist imitate not only the exterior but above all the mental disposition of the depicted figure, which finds its chief expression in the passions. If, to materialize them, the artist activates his imagination as the source of his inventio, the recipient must likewise activate his for an adequate perception of the work of art. Enargeia might therefore form the bridge between the artist and the beholder.

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The Enargeia of Music in Theory and Practice Although in Aristotle’s Poetics music is not considered a mimetic art, musical rhetoric also makes use of the enargeia of representation, albeit not primarily under this label. The German humanist Joachim Burmeister (1566–1629) defines the terminological equivalent hypotyposis in his Musica Poetica (1606) as follows: Hypotyposis est illud ornamentum, quô textus significatio ita deumbratur, ut ea, quæ textui subsunt & animam vitamq; non habent, vita esse prædita, videantur. Hoc ornamentum usitatißimum est apud authenticos Artifices. Vtinam eâdem dexteritate ab omnibus adhiberetur Componistis.1 Hypotyposis is that ornament through which the meaning of a (song) text is elucidated in such a way that the basic words, which have no soul and no life, seem to become filled with life. This ornament is commonly used by authentic artists. If only it were skillfully applied by all composers!

For Burmeister therefore hypotyposis is an important figure for giving a song text a sensory presence. As an example he cites a composition by Orlando di Lasso: “Benedicam Domino [. . .]”, and in doing so claims that pathopoeia is particularly suited to producing affects: “Pathopoeia [. . .] est figura apta ad affectus creandos.”2 Other music theorists of the time do 1 Joachim Burmeister, Musica Poetica: Definitionibus et divisionibus breviter delineata. Rostochii Excudebat Stephanus Myliander, Anno M.DC.VI. Facsimile ed. with introd. by Ph. Kallenberger. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 22007, p. 62.—Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music. Lincoln / London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, p. 307 makes on this figure the following comment: “The hypotyposis is given the same task in music as in rhetoric: to vividly and realistically illustrate a thought or image found in the text. As such it might even be considered the most important and common text-expressive compositional device of Baroque music, for it is musica poetica’s mandate to delight and move the listener through a musical presentation of the text. Such musical word painting becomes the hallmark of Baroque music, being found in virtually every Baroque vocal composition.” 2 Burmeister, Musica Poetica, p. 61.—On the subject of musical affections cf. Luca Marconi, “Emotional Responses and Musical Signification: Ancient and Modern Theories on the Effects of Music”, in: Musical Signification, Between Rhetoric and Pragmatics / La Significazione Musicale tra Retorica e Pragmatica. Ed. Gino Stefani, Eero Tarasti & Luca Marconi. Bologna: CLUEB, 1998, pp. 29–38; Claude V. Palisca, Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Urbana / Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006, chap. 10: “Theories of the Affections and Imitation” (pp. 179–202).

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Figure 18. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo (1609): title-page of the score

not include hypotyposis in their list of figures, but do mention such means of representation as produce affects.3 Enargeia plays an important role, for example, in the laments (lamenti) of the protagonist and the choruses of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo (1607)4 as well as in the famous Lamento d’Arianna from his opera Arianna with the libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini (1562–1621). The latter work was premiered on May 28th, 1608 for the festivities of Prince Francesco’s marriage to Margherita of Savoy. The scene of the 3 Cf. Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical-rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music, p. 308. 4 Cf. F.W. Sternefeld, The Birth of Opera. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995 (1993), chap. 6: “The Lament” (pp. 140–196).—The complaint of the protagonist is to be found in numerous Orpheus compositions of the Early Modern Age, such as in Jacopo Peri (1581–1633), Giulio Caccini (1551–1618), Stefano Landi (1587–1639), and Marc Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704)—cf. the audio-CD Il Pianto d’Orfeo with works of the composers mentioned (NCA New Classical Adventure-ISBN 3-86562-492-8[EAN CODE 4 019272 60 1422]).



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lament is the lonely Aegean island of Naxos, where the mythic Athenian hero Theseus abondoned Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, even though he had promised to marry her and take her back with him to Athens out of gratitude for her help in defeating the minotaur. The text of the famous monody of Arianna, who sits on a rock wanting to end her life in the sea, reads as follows: Lasciatemi morire, echi volete voi che mi conforte incosì dure sorte, in così gran martire? Lasciatemi morire. O Teseo, o Teseo mio, sì che mio ti vo’ dir’, chè mio pur sei, benchè t’involi, ahi crudo, agli occhi miei. volgiti, Teseo mio, volgiti, Teseo, o Dio, volgiti indietro a rimirar colei che lasciato ha per te la patria e’l regno, e in queste arene ancora. cibo di fere dispietate e crude, lascierà l’ossa ignude. o Teseo, Teseo mio, se tu sapessi, o Dio, se tu sapessi, ohimè, come s’affanna la povera Arianna, forse, forse pentito rivolgeresti ancor la prora al lito. Ma con l’aure serene tu te ne vai felice, et io qui piango; a te prepara Atene liete pompe superbe, et io rimango cibo di fere in solitarie arene; te l’uno e l’altro tuo vecchio parente stringeran lieti, et io più non vedrovvi, o madre, o padre mio. Dove, dove è la fede che tanto mi giuravi? Così nell’alta sede tu me ripon degli avi? Son queste le corone, onde m’adorni il crine? Questi gli scettri sono, queste le gemme e gl’ori: Lasciarmi in abbandono

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chapter sixteen a fera che mi strazi e mi divori? Ah Teseo, ah Teseo mio, Lascerai tu morire, invan piangendo, invan gridando aita, la misera Arianna che a te fidossi e ti diè gloria e vita? Ahi, che non pur risponde! Ahi, che più d’aspe è sordo a miei lamenti! O nembi, o turbi, o venti, sommergetelo voi dentro a quell’onde, correte, orche e balene, e delle membra immonde empiete le voragini profonde! Che parlo, ahi, che vaneggio? Misera, ohimè, che chieggio? O Teseo, o Teseo mio, non son, non son quell’io che i feri detti sciolse ; parlò l’affano mio, parlò il dolore; parlò la lingua , sì, ma non già il core. Misera, ancor do loco a la tradita speme, e non si spegne fra tanto scherno ancor d’amor il foco? Spegni tu, Morte, omai le fiamme indegne. O madre, o padre, o de l’antico regno superbi alberghi, ov’ebbi d’or la cuna, o servi, o fidi amici (ahi fato indegno!), mirate, ove m’ha scorto empia fortuna! Mirate di che duol m’han fatto erede l’amor mio, la mia fede, e’l altrui inganno. Così va chi tropp’ama e troppo crede.

In translation: Let me die; and who do you think could console me in so hard a fate, in so great a torment? Let me die. O Theseus, o my Theseus, yes, I will call you mine, who are mine, even if you fly, o cruel one, from my sight. Turn back, Theseus mine, Turn back Theseus, o God, Turn back to look once more upon her who for your sake left home and kingdom, and now on these sandy shores,



the enargeia of music in theory and practice the prey of pitiless and wild beasts, will leave but fleshless bones behind. O Theseus, o my Theseus, If you but knew o God, if you but knew, alas, the anguish of poor Ariadne, perchance, perchance, repenting you would turn back your prow towards the shore. But before serene breezes you sail happily away, and I weep here; for you Athens prepares joyful, proud parades, and I languish, the prey of wild beasts on lonely strands; your aged parents one by one will happily embrace you, and I will never see you again, o mother, o father. Where, where is the faith that you so often swore me? Is this how you raise me to the high throne of my forefathers? Are these the crowns with which you adorn my tresses? Are these the sceptres, these the jewels, and the gold: leaving me abandoned for the wild beasts to rend to pieces and devour? Ah, Theseus, ah my Theseus, will you leave to die, weeping in vain, crying in vain for help, unhappy Ariadne, Who entrusted herself to you and gave you fame and life? Alas, he does not even answer! Alas, he is deafer than an asp to my laments! O clouds, o whirlwinds, o gales, submerge him beneath the waves, hurry sea ogres and whales, and with your foul bodies fill the deep abyss! What am I saying, alas, what raving! Unhappy one, ah me, what am I asking for? O Theseus, o my Theseus, it is not I who spoke those wild words; it was my anguish that spoke, my torment, it was the tongue that spoke, yes, but not the heart.

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chapter sixteen Unhappy me, do I still give room to betrayed hopes, and not even amidst so much scorn will the fire of love be extinguished? Death, put out at last the unworthy flames. O mother, o father, o proud palaces of my former kingdom, where stood my golden cradle, o servants, o faithful friends (alas, undeserved fate!) behold to what pass my pitiless fate has brought me! Behold to what woe my love, my faith and another’s deceitfulness have made me heir. Such is the fate of him who loves and trusts too much.5

The text of this lamento is replete with enargetic stylistic devices: apostrophes to an absent person, exclamationes that bring the misfortune of the mythical figure into a palpable present, as well as rhetorical questions (interrogationes) which require no phsyically present ’interlocutor’ but simulate his presence. The singing of this lamento so moved the audience that Folino, a contemporary, could write about the performance in 1608: [. . .] every part succeeded well, most especially . . . the lament which Ariadne sings on the rock . . . which was acted with so much emotion (con tanto affetto) and in so piteous a way that no one hearing it was left unmoved, nor was there among the ladies one who did not shed tears (qualche lagrimetta) at her plaint.6

This success spurred Monteverdi and his contemporaries to compose more pieces involving text and music: Six years later (1614) the Arianna monody, which is performed recitar cantando, was transcribed by Monteverdi himself as a polyphonic piece for five voices; even before that, in 1613, Severo Bonini (1582–1663) published a treatise entitled Prima parte de’ discorsi e regole sovra la musica (1649–1650), with a Lamento d’Arianna (1613) closely modelled on Monteverdi’s opera; in 1626 Francesco Antonio Costa (fl. 1615–1626) came with a Pianto d’Arianna, which Anthony Rooley 5 Text and translation from the booklet of the Audio-CD Lamento d’Arianna published by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (DHM 04572-77430-2 995), pp. 18–23.—On the work cf. Annibale Gianuario, “Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna”, Music & Letters 52/4 (1971), 466–467; Nella Anfuso & A. Gianuario, Lamento d’Arianna [di] Claudio Monteverdi: Studio e interpretazione a stampa da gardano, Venezia, 1623. Firenze: OTOS, 1969; A. Gianuario, Modalità e realtà fonetica nel “Lamento d’Arianna” di Claudio Monteverdi. Artiminio: [Stilnovo], 1999.—On the tradition in musical theatre cf. Raphaëlle Legrand, « La rhétorique en scène: Quelques perspectives pour l’analyse de la tragédie en musique », Revue de Musicologie 84/1 (1998), 79–91. 6 English translation from F.W. Sternefeld, The Birth of Opera, p. 177.—For the opera Arianna cf. Tim Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 2002, pp. 202–211.



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characterizes as follows: “Costa’s work has great dignity and his Arianna bears her torment like the noble lady she is.”;7 Antonio Il Verso (1560– 1621) composed a short, evocative arrangement of “Lasciatemi morire”, the highly manneristic concluding piece of the 15th Book of five-part madrigals published in Palermo in 1619; and finally there was Pianto della Madonna a voce sola (1640), a parodia sacra by Monteverdi himself, that transforms the lament of a heathen princess from Attic Greece into a pious lament of Mary, with Jesus taking the place of Theseus.8 In the twentieth century Carl Orff (1895–1982) composed a Lamento d’Arianna (1925, rev. 1940) in the form of a “Riduzione per Canto e Pianoforte”.9 Smaller genres like the madrigal and the chanson also devoted themselves to the representation of affects.10 And Johann Sebastian Bach (1685– 1750) used hypotyposis in his Matthäuspassion for the affective Schilderung (a German synonym for the rhetorical term)11 of the upheaval in nature caused by the death of Jesus. This effect approaches programmatic proportions in one of the great late works of Georg Philipp Telemann (1681– 1767), the oratorio Der Tag des Gerichts [The Day of the Last Judgment] (TWV6:8), first performed on March 17th, 1762 in Hamburg. The work was announced as a “Sing-Gedicht full of stirring action”, indicating that Telemann’s art of tone painting and dramatic presentation here reaches unprecedented heights. This prompted many critics, however, to characterize the oratorio as “solemn music, but, under the influence of poetry, overloaded with painterly effects.” Rhetorical enargeia therefore bears the final responsibility for the effective tone paintings of music, for ever since the early Renaissance the word enjoyed priority over the composition. The turnaround came only with Antonio Salieri (1750–1825)—and, simultaneously, with Mozart (1756–1791)—whose divertimento teatrale bears 7 From the booklet of Audio-CD Lamento d’Arianna, published by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (DHM 05472–77430–2 [1995]), p. 4. 8 Audio-CD Monteverdi, Pianto della Madonna published by Harmonia Mundi Austria (HMA 1951680 [2000] Musique d’abord). 9 Edition: Claudio Monteverdi, Lamento d’Arianna. Trascrizione libera di Carl Orff. Mainz / London: Schott’s Söhne / Schott & Co. Ltd., ca. 1967. Another mythical figure known for its lamento in operas of the Early Modern Age (Scarlatti, Piccinni, Purcell) is Dido. 10 Cf. Florence Alazard (ed.), La plainte à la Renaissance. Journées d’études des 16 et 17 novembre 2005. Paris: Champion, 2008, esp. section II: « Vocalisation de la plainte » (pp. 89–162); a more general survey is provided by Marcel Lepper, Lamento: Zur Affektdarstellung in der Frühen Neuzeit. Frankfurt/M. [etc.]: P. Lang, 2006. 11 Cf. Bernhard Asmuth, “Schilderung: Zur literarischen und schulischen Geschichte eines malerisch-affektiven Textbegriffs”, LiLi: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 8/3 (1978), 307–336.

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the programmatic title Prima la musica e poi le parole (1786). But to return to Telemann’s oratorio: this work provides a prime example of enargetic textual interpretation in the aria sung by Vernunft (Reason) in the Erste Betrachtung (First Reflection), where the storm is rendered through a layering of rhythmic patterns: Des Sturmes Donnerstimmen schallen, seht, die Gebirge wanken, fallen und fallen zur untersten Tiefe hinab; nun wühlt er im Schoße der Erde—sie kracht, und vieler Säklen stolze Pracht steht? nein, versinket ins traurige Grab. The storm’s thunderous voices resound; see, the mountains shake and fall, crashing down to the deepest depths; now they burrow into the womb of the earth—it cracks, and does the proud splendour of many centuries endure? No, it sinks into a mournful grave.12

Here music-dramatic techniques—in the downward pull of the arpeggios—create an impressive pathopoetic tone painting. The rhetoric of the text reinforces this effect with its own acoustic painting, the deictic cernas formula “see”, and the rhetorical question (interrogatio).13 The affects play a significant role throughout the 18th century, not only in literature but also in music, and most notably when the two arts are combined. We see this, for example, in The Passions: An Ode for Music (1750), a setting by the English composer and Oxford professor of music William Hayes (1708–1777) of a text by William Collins (1721–1759), whose lyrical odes depart from the Augustan poetry of the generation of Alexander Pope and herald the approach of the Romantic Age. Hayes’s composition was performed on July 2nd, 1750 in Sir Christopher Wren’s splendid Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford “In Commemoration of the Founders and

12 From the booklet of the Audio-CD Georg Philipp Telemann, Der Tag des Gerichts. Capriccio 10413 (1993), p. 25 (Translation by Lionel Salter).—The topic of nature in music is discussed in detail by Silke Leopold in Scientiae et artes: Die Vermittlung alten und neuen Wissens in Literatur, Kunst und Musik. Vol. I. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockfor­ schung, 38. Ed. Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004, pp 247–270. On the “Betrachtung” (Reflection) cf. Gerhard Kurz, “Die Bedeutung der ’Betrachtung’ in der deutschen Literatur des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts“, in G. Kurz (ed.), Meditation und Erinnerung in der Frühen Neuzeit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000, pp. 219–250. 13 Cf. Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (1593). Ed. B.-M. Koll, p. 106.



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Benefactors of the University” as part of the annual Encaenia. It begins as follows: When Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft to hear the shell Thronged around her magic cell, Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possessed beyond the muse’s painting; By turns they felt the glowing mind, Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined. Till once, ‘tis said, when all were fired, Filled with fury, rapt, inspired, From the supporting myrtles round They snatched her instruments of sound, And as they oft had heard apart Sweet lessons of her forceful art, Each, for madness ruled the hour, Would prove his own expressive power.14

This prologue is followed by a gallery of gallant inventions in the form of dramatic arias for each passion, first Fear, then Anger, Wan Despair, Hope with her beautiful eyes, impatient Revenge, Jealousy, Pale Melancholy, Cheerfulness, the nymph with the healthiest complexion, and finally Joy. Especially interesting is the depiction of Melancholy: With eyes up-raised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sat retired, And from her wild sequestered seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul: And dashing soft from rocks around, Bubbling runnels joined the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, Or o’er some haunted stream with fond delay, Round an holy calm diffusing, Love of peace and lonely musing, In hollow murmurs died away.15

Here an abstract state of mind is visualised and concretised in such a way that the melancholic person takes the place of the abstraction. Rhetoric 14 The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith. Ed. by Roger Lonsdale. London: Longman, 1969, p. 481. Cf. also the booklet accompanying the CD recording of Hayes’ ode (www.GLOSSAMUSIC.COM [2010]). 15 The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith, p. 483.

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labels this device metonymy—which some modern theorists (e.g. Jakobson, Lodge) identify as the source of realism.16 Because the melancholic person here appears as a meditative figure and an artist in a retraite spirituelle, the portrayal of this passion also acquires the character of selfexpression for both the poet and the composer. In Melancholy’s aria—one of the most moving in the entire work—the composer Hayes conjures up “bubbling runnels” of water with wonderfully gurgling figures played by the violas combined with a high cello part, and to this he adds the plaintive tones of a solo horn, a lonely bassoon and velvety muted strings. The instrumentation is thus deftly brought to bear on the relevant passion— an enargetic bimediality which serves the intersensory reinforcement of the abstract content. Hayes, who like Handel believed in the power of this kind of imitative composition, reveals in his Remarks [. . .] on Musical Expression how he himself might have approached the text of Collins’s ode: When a Musician sits down to adapt Music to Words, he acts upon the same Principle as the Poet had done before him: First, he endeavours to create an Idea of the Person, in the same Circumstances with the Character he is composing for. And by the help of powerful Imagination, works himself up almost to a belief that he is that very Person; and speaks, thinks, and acts accordingly. By frequently reading the Words over, he adopts the Sentiments: And as often as he repeats them, marks the Accent, Emphasis, the different Inflections of the Voice, nay even his external Actions: and in the Height of his Enthusiasm, his Fancy suggests various Ways of fitting similar Sounds to each, till at length by little and little, he infuses the Essence of this divine Rage into every Part of the Composition, and this, purely by the Means of Imitation.17

The rhetorical requirement of euphantasiotos therefore applies to the composer as well as to the poet, and constitutes the essential starting point for every concretization in the media of the artes. This applies as 16 Cf. Roman Jakobson / Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton, 21971, chapter on “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances”; David Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature. London: E. Arnold, 1979 (1977), Part II; H.F. Plett, Literary Rhetoric: Concepts—Structures—Analyses, pp. 233–238.—On the entire context cf. Edward Jayne, “The Metaphor-Metonymy Binarism” (http://www.edwardjayne.com/critical/metonymy.html). 17 Cf. the essay by Simon Hughes on “William Hayes: The Passions” in the booklet accompanying the audio CD recording of The Passions, p. 11. On William Hayes and The Passions cf. Simon Heighes, The Lives and Works of William and Philip Hayes. New York / London: Garland, 1995, chaps. I: “William Hayes (1708–1777)” & VII: “Large-scale Vocal Works” (pp. 217–224, 243–244: The Passions).—On the musical aesthetics of the age cf. Herbert M. Schueller, “ ‘Imitation’ and ‘Expression’ in British Music Criticism in the 18th Century”, Musical Quarterly 34/4 (1948), 544–566.



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much to details, of which Hayes offers a few examples here, as to fundamental forms of visible embodiments, such as the kinesics of the delivery in musical drama. Phantasia and enargeia therefore belong together, in a reciprocal relation already present in the theory and practice of Classical Antiquity.18 As studies of contemporary music show, the continuity of the principle of rhetorical enargeia extends far beyond the time-span hitherto dealt with. Siglind Bruhn, for example, in Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and Painting includes a chapter entitled “Musical Ekphrasis Versus Program Music“, where she comments: Musical compositions with explicit reference—whether verbal (in titles and accompanying notes) or onomatopoeic—have existed for much of the history of Western music; yet, I claim, musical ekphrasis has not. This brings me to the important task of defining criteria along which we can agree to distinguish between, on the one hand, the musical equivalent of ekphrasis, and what is generally known as “program music” on the other. The two genres belong to the same general species: both denote purely instrumental music that has its raison d’être in a definite referential, narrative, or pictorial scheme; both have variously been described as “illustrative” or “representative” music. While the term “program music” is considered by many to be simply the umbrella term for both kinds, I will argue that it is essential for a full understanding of music of the “ekphrastic” kind to attempt a distinction.19

It is indeed difficult to draw a line between musical ekphrasis and program music, especially since music ever since Aristotele’s Poetics has been classified as a non-mimetic art. The 19th century set out to eliminate this alleged mimetic deficit with regard to the other artes, and the resulting transpositions of literary works—by means of enargeia—into ambitious instrumental compositions often bear the subtitle “symphonic poem”. Siglind Bruhn attempts a definition of musical ekphrasis that distinguishes it from program music: Musical ekphrasis, by contrast, narrates or paints a fictional reality created by an artist other than the composer of the music: by a painter or a poet. Also, musical ekphrasis usually relates not only to the content of the poetically or pictorially conveyed fictional reality, but also to the form and style of representation in which this content was cast in its primary medium. Thus, in music with titles reminiscent of literary works, Liszt’s Hamlet, for 18 Cf. Alessandra Manieri, L’immagine poetica nella teoria degli antichi: phantasia ed enargeia. Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionale, 1998. 19 Siglind Bruhn, Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and Painting. Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, [2000], p. 28.

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These interpretive comments do not identify a significant difference from program music, a term that is surely applicable to Liszt’s symphonic poem Hamlet. Better examples of musical ekphrasis would no doubt be a 1968 composition by Luciano Berio (1925–2003) and one by Péter Eötvös (*1944) from 2005, both of which bear the title Ekphrasis.21 Interpreting these two ekphraseis in terms of their specific enargeia could prove an interesting challenge for musicologists.

20 Bruhn, Musical Ekphrasis, p. 29. 21 Audio-CD of Luciano Berio, Ekphrasis for Orchestra. Deutsche Grammophon 477 5380 (2005). This interesting work is regrettably neglected in the anthology Some Transformations of Literary Texts: From Program Music to Musical Ekphrasis. Nine Essays edited by Siglind Bruhn. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2008. Information on Berio’s composition is available from the booklet accompanying the audio-CD.—Audio-CD of Péter Eötvös, Ekphrasis [continuo II] for Orchestra. Deutsche Grammphon (2005).

Epilogue The examples presented here of enargeia and its producer euphantasiotos (to use Quintilian’s term) are predominantly positive ones. Negative versions of both can be found in Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the portrayal of Bottom, the lowly character transformed by Puck’s magic into an ass. When released from this metamorphosis, he utters the following words: I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was— and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called ’Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure, to make it more gracious, I shall sing it at her death. (MND IV.i.203–217).1

Bottom here evidently quotes from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 2:9, where we read in the wording of the Bishop’s Bible: “The eye hath not seene, and the eare not heard, neyther have entered into the heart of man those things that God has prepared.” As can easily be seen, Bottom’s is a misquotation. He distorts the biblical pre-text by a wrong semantic collocation of words. The result is not a synaesthesia that expands sensory experience but one which disturbs it. This pretentious speech is far from a harmonious poetic creation. The vision mentioned by Bottom is by no means identical with the visio referred to by classical rhetoric as a precondition for engendering enargeia. For this reason Peter Quince cannot write a ballad of Bottom’s Dream. It is unsuitable for both poetry and drama. Bottom fails to put into practice Aristotle’s advice to the dramatist, and with him to every verbal artist, to put before the eyes of his imagination all the events he wants to represent in a text. The result is artistic failure. Bottom himself is the anti-artist par excellence, which is

1 Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, p. 98.

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made visible by his transformation into an ass, recalled in the report of his dream. This metamorphosis from man into animal is a manifestation of the grotesque2—the very opposite of what Juan Luis Vives describes in his Fabula de homine: the ascent of the human being to the gods. The resulting verbal chaos is shared by his fellow-mechanicals, whose rehearsal and performance of “A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth” (MND V.i.56–57) prove equally disastrous artistic failures. Even the title of the play is a misconstruction. In terms of dramatic genres it is neither a comedy nor a tragedy. It is a hybrid creation that has been termed burlesque, parody, travesty, interlude and perhaps is a combination of all these.3 In the context of the present discussion it is only a dramatic mishap to which the audience’s reaction is not mirth, as is usual with a comedy, but ridicule, the normal response to artistic failure. Of this Puck and the courtly society of Theseus and Hippolyta provide ample testimony. Bottom is therefore the inversion of Quintilian’s euphantasiotos. He does not succeed in creating either an artistic visio or poetic enargeia and as an artist proves a failure. In the 20th century, however, Bottom’s Dream was reawakened to new and better life by the German author Arno Schmidt (1914–1979) in his voluminous novel Zettels Traum (Zettel being the German equivalent of Bottom) of 1970. There the narrator Pagenstecher reports of meetings with the translators Paul and Wilma Jacobi in which they discuss the work of Edgar Allan Poe. By employing the narrative technique of stream of consciousness, Schmidt gives Bottom’s Dream a modern psychological interpretation, and thus finally converts it into a work of art. To summarize the essential arguments of the preceding discussion: In Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age enargeia or evidentia is not one stylistic concept among others, but the fundamental constituent of all the verbal arts. There it compensates for the disadvantage of the ear as opposed to the eye, which as the highest of the senses has direct perceptional access to reality. The enargeia of the representation eliminates this deficit by projecting the absent optical visuality into a self-constructed visuality of the imagination, thus creating a fictionality whose substitutive 2 For this aspect of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream see Rainer Lengeler, Das Theater der leidenschaftlichen Phantasie: Shakespeare’s SOMMERNACHTSTRAUM als Spiegel seiner Dichtungstheorie. Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz Verlag, 1975. 3 For interpretations cf. H.F. Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture, pp. 477–498: “Intertextal Rhetoric: The Comic Interlude in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; id., Literary Rhetoric:—. Concepts—Structures—Analyses, pp. 142–144: “William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (V.i.108–117).



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function forms the basis of an aestheticity of representation. When this procedure is applied to oratory, enargeia contributes to a poeticization of rhetoric. Furthermore, since enargeia also comes to play a role in other artes, such as painting, sculpture and music, it proves to be an intermedial principle. As rhetorical studies of the contemporary artes show, the continuity of this principle extends far beyond the Early Modern Age. In the final analysis enargeia is a subject for comparative aesthetics, and a demanding one, as the French philosopher Etienne Souriau (1892–1979) states: C’est là un problème d’esthétique comparée. Et qu’est-ce que l’esthétique comparée? Permettez-moi un peu de pédantisme. La littérature comparée, vous le savez, c’est cette discipline qui étudie les rapports qu’ont entre elles des littératures usant de moyens d’expression différents, des littératures écrites en des langues différentes: littérature anglaise et littérature française, allemande ou espagnole. Quant à l’esthétique comparée, d’une manière assez analogue elle étudie les rapports d’œuvres utilisant des langages artistiques différents, si on peut dire, c’est à dire par exemple des statues et des symphonies, des amphores et des poèmes, des pièces de théâtre et des palais ou des églises.4

Though nothing can be added to this statement regarding the domain of a comparative aesthetics, a restriction has to be made with regard to the enargeia concept. It principally emerges in those artes that require the working of the imagination and Quintilian’s euphantasiotos as their originator and receiver.

4 Étienne Souriau, La Poésie Française et la peinture. University of London: Athole Press, 1966, p. 6.

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INDICES

index of Names

Abrams, M.H. 135 Accetto, Torquato 199 Ackrill, J.L. 207 Acron 95 Adams, Ken 207 Adamson, Sylvia 199 Adler, Jeremy 199 Aeschylus 1, 61–62 Agricola, Rudolph 58 Alazard, Florence 189 Alberte, Antonio 207 Alberti, Leon Battista 15, 16, 17, 121, 122, 123, 140, 163, 164, 169, 170–171 Alewyn, Richard 109 Alexander, Gavin 199 Alpers, Paul 207 Alpers, Svetlana 199, 207 Altman, Joel B. 207 Altrocchi, Rudolph 14, 17 Ammirato, Scipione 89 Anderson, Graham 199 Aneau, Barthélemy 89 Anfuso, Nella 188 Antiphilos 16 Apelles 14–18, 113 Aphthonius of Antioch 27 Aptekar, Jane 143 Aquinas, Thomas 79, 142 Aretino, Pietro 106, 114–115 Ariosto, Lodovico 2, 142, 145 Aristoteles 4, 7, 13, 21, 25, 40, 42, 43, 48, 66, 75, 86, 87, 89, 99, 100, 101, 106, 114, 116, 126, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146, 193 Armas, Frederick A. de 199 Ascham, Roger 99 Ashton, D.I.C. 207 Asmuth, Bernhard 189, 207 Auerbach, Erich 142, 207 Austin, R.G. 19 Aygon, Jean-Pierre 199, 207 Bach, Johann Sebastian 189 Badelt, Sandra 132 Bäbler, Balbina 46, 199 Bätschmann, Oskar 17, 199 Bahr, Petra 137, 199 Bakewell, Susan Benforado 203

Balde, Jacob 163 Balsamo, Luigi 95 Barasch, Moshe 80, 199 Barkan, Leonard 126, 207 Baron, Hans 50 Bartel, Dietrich 183, 184, 199 Barthes, Roland 45, 207 Bartsch, Shadi ix, 23, 37–38, 199, 207 Bath, Michael 85–86, 199, 208 Bauer, Barbara 95, 207 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 4, 5, 137 Baxandall, Michael 17, 115, 135–137, 161, 163–164, 181, 208 Beall, Stephen M. 208 Beaujour, Michel 208 Becker, Andrew Sprague 199, 208 Belin, Christian 81, 199 Bellay, Joachim de 90–91 Belting, Hans 199 Bender, John B. 143, 145, 199 Berardi, Francesco 208 Bergmann, Emilie 199, 208 Berio, Luciano 194 Beyer, Andreas 119 Bierende, Edgar 166–168, 199 Blanc, André 78 Blanchard, Jean-Vincent 85, 200 Blumenthal, H.J. 208 Blunt, Anthony 106, 156–158, 200 Boas, George 85 Böhm, Gottfried 27, 200 Böhme, Hartmut 208 Boethius 120, 121 Bolt, Barbara 200 Bongiorno, Andrew 138 Bonini, Severo 188 Bons, Jeroen 10 Borinski, Karl 96, 200 Bormann, D.R. 208 Botticelli, Sandro 15–16 Bowie, Ewen 38, 40 Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke 81 Braider, Christopher 200, 208 Brassat, Wolfgang 168 Braudel, Fernand 12, 210 Bray, René 78, 100 Bredekamp, Horst 200

220

index of names

Bridges, Margaret 208 Brie, Friedrich 208 Brillante, Carlo 208 Brink, C.O. 59, 110 Brittin, Maria E. 200 Brooks, Cleanth 1, 2, 206 Bruhn, Siglind 193–194, 200, 208 Bruni, Leonardo 49 Bryson, Norman 200 Bubner, Rüdiger 208 Buch, Hans Christoph 92, 200 Buck, August 21 Bürger, Peter 208 Bundy, Murray Wright 10, 200, 208 Bunyan, John 150–152, 155 Burke, Kenneth 42, 208 Burmeister, Joachim 183 Bury, Emmanuel 78 Butler, Todd 208 Caccini, Giulio 184 Calame, Claude 28 Calboli Montefusco, Lucia 209 Callistratus 39, 45, 47, 48 Calzabigi, Ranieri de’ 73 Camillo, Giulio 152 Campbell, Lily B. 32 Campe, Rüdiger 51, 209 Caplan, Harry 8 Carnero, Guillermo 200 Carroll, Margaret Deutsch 209 Carruthers, Mary J. 79, 200 Carter, Tim 188 Cast, David 15–17, 200 Castaldini, Alberto 95 Castelvetro, Lodovico 137–138 Castiglione, Baldassare 119 Catullus 99 Caussinus, Nicolaus 23, 51–52, 85, 163 Cavalchini, Mariella 142 Cave, Terence 55, 133, 200, 209 Cerny, Lothar 149 Chaffee, Diane 209 Chapman, George 97 Charpentier, Marc Antoine 184 Chastel, André 16, 160, 163, 177, 181 Cheeke, Stephen 23, 200 Cheney, Edward 115 Chiodo, Domenico 142 Chomarat, Jacques 23 Chrysolaras, Manuel 181 Chrysostomus, Dio 49 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 7, 8, 11, 12–14, 37, 57, 68, 96–97, 100, 106, 115–116, 152, 164, 177

Cizek, Alexandru 200 Clark, Kenneth 209 Cleanthes 13–14 Clements, Robert J. 89–90, 200 Clüver, Claus 209 Cockcroft, Robert 10, 200 Cocking, J.M. 10, 200 Collins, William 190–192 Comanino, Gregorio 161 Conan, Michel 209 Constantini, Michel 200 Conte, Sophie ix, 51, 178 Cook, Elizabeth 209 Corbacho Cortés, Carolina 200 Corneille, Pierre 76, 78 Cornelius, Patsy Scherer 145 Cornilliat, François 10 Correa, Tommaso 116 Corrozet, Gilles 89 Corvaglia, Luigi 100 Costa, Francesco Antonio 188 Costanzo, Mario 100 Cousin, Jean 7 Coussement-Baillot, Laetitia 128, 209 Cramer, Konrad 208 Cranach, Lucas (the Elder) 166–168 Cranston, Jodi 164, 201 Cressolles, Louis de 178 Curtius, Ernst Robert 50, 201 Cziesla, Wolfgang 132 Dahlhaus, Carl 209 Damisch, Hubert 201 Dammann, Rolf 201 Daniello, Bernardino 114 Dante Alighieri 16, 142 Davidson, Michael 209 Davies, Cecily 209 Deconinck, Ralph 201 Delius, Walter 95 Demetrius of Phaleron 12–13, 20, 34 Demosthenes 178 Desargues, Gérard 120, 121, 122 Dinter, Annegret 162 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 7, 19, 20, 31 Dixon, Thomas 201 Dockhorn, Klaus 10, 201, 209 Doederlein, Sue Warrick 209 Doel, Marijke van den 201 Dolce, Lodovico 94, 106–108, 113–114 Donatello (i.e. Donato di Betto Bardi) 105 Donato, Eugenio  209 Donatus 66 Downey, C. 10, 209



index of names

Dross, Juliette 209 Drügh, Heinz 201 Dryden, John 2, 76–78 Dubel, Sandrine 20, 40, 209 Dubois, Claude-Gilbert 209 Dürer, Albrecht 24, 120, 121, 122, 173, 175 Dufour, Mylène 209 Dundas, Judith 123, 146, 150, 201, 209, 210 Eck, Caroline van 170, 201 Eck, Nastasja van 201 Edeline, Francis 201 Edgerton, Samuel Y. 122, 179, 201 Elkins, James 201, 210 Elizabeth I. 141–142 Else, Gerald F. 25 Elsner, Jás 23, 38, 40 Enterline, Lynn 210 Eötvös, Peter 194 Epictetus 37–38 Epicurus 13 Erasmus, Desiderius 23, 25, 54, 55 Ernst, Ulrich 199 Ettenhuber, Katrin 199 Euripides 1 Fabrini, G. 107 Farago, Claire J. 102, 201 Faral, Edmond 149, 201 Farmer, Norman K., Jr. 148, 201 Faust, Joan 210 Fehl, Philipp 44, 210 Feldherr, Andrew 201 Félibien, André 158 Fernandez-Santamaría, J.A. 26 Finse, Hans Carl 210 Fleischmann, Suzanne 66 Floch, Jean-Marie 45 Förster, Richard 17 Forker, Charles R. 201 Fortenbaugh, William 13 Fowler, D.P. 20, 210 Francis, James A. 210 Frank, Georgia 84, 201 Franz, Michael 201 Freedberg, David 79, 201 Fried, Michael 201 Friedländer, Paul 23, 41, 201 Friedrich, Markus 1 Fumaroli, Marc 78, 159, 161, 210 Gadamer, Hans-Georg vii, 210 Galand(-Hallyn), Perrine 19, 57, 201, 202, 210

221

Galyon, Linda 21 García Berrio, Antonio 202 Gaurico, Pomponio 179–181 Geltinger, Christian 73 Gent, Lucy 202 Georgievska-Shine, Aneta 210 Gianuario, A. 188 Giarda, Christoforo 89–90 Gilman, Ernest B. 155 Ginzburg, Carlo 12, 210 Gioseffi, Decio 202 Giraldi Cinthio, Giovanni Battista 98–99 Giuliani, Luca 41, 210 Glass, Philip 2 Gluck, Christoph Willibald 69–72, 73 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 39, 119 Gohlany, Amy 171–172 Goldhill, Simon 26, 210 Goldsmith, Oliver 191 Goldstein, Carl 210 Goldstein, Harvey D. 210 Goldstein, Jack M. 210 Gombrich, Ernst H. 85, 92, 202, 210 González de Cosio Rosenzweig, Maria  202 González, José M. 210 Gooden, Angelica 211 Gorgias 11 Gorman, Ned 211 Gower, John 32 Goyet, Francis 109 Graf, Fritz 27, 211 Grafton, Anthony T. 85 Grassi, Ernesto 10, 202 Gray, Thomas 191 Green, Judy 121 Green, Paul S. 121 Green, Richard Firth 137 Greenstein, Jack M. 169, 211 Greville, Sir Fulke 145 Grootenboer, Hanneke 122–123, 202 Gross, Daniel M. 140 Gross, Kenneth 202 Grünewald, Matthias 165, 166 Guisan, Gilbert 28 Gulyon, Linda 211 Gutzwiller, Kathryn 211 Hägglund, Bengt 211 Hagstrum, Jean H. 92, 95, 202 Haight, Elizabeth Hazelton 211 Halle, Morris 192 Hallyn, Fernand 19 Halm, Carolus 13

222

index of names

Hamilton, A.C. 142 Handel, George Frideric 159, 192 Hamon, Philippe 202, 211 Hansen, João 211 Hardie, Philip 202 Harington, John 145 Harpham, Geoffrey Galt 110 Hasse, Johann Adolph 82–84 Hathaway, Baxter 100–101, 202 Hauck, Robert J. 211 Hawcroft, Michael 78, 163 Hawkins, Henry 85 Hayes, William 190–193 Hazard, Mary E. 211 Heath, Jane M.F. 211 Hebert, Bernhard D. 202 Heffernan, James A.W. 202, 211 Heighes, Simon 192 Heinsius, Daniel 27 Henkel, Arthur 87 Herbert, George 153–154 Hercules 120 Herding, Klaus  202 Hernández, Teresa 202 Herodotus 11 Herrick, Marvin T. 66, 116, 202 Herrmann, Hans Peter 109, 202 Hess, Günter 202 Hintzen, Beate vii, 105 Hinz, Manfred 95 Hobbes, Thomas 11–12 Hobson, Marian 202 Hömke, Nicola 211 Hoffmann, André 55 Holanda, Francisco de 101–102, 104, 139 Holbein, Hans 53 Hollander, John 211 Holtus, Günter 177 Holtzwart, Mathias 89 Homer 20, 28, 106 Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] 58–59, 77, 78, 86, 87, 90, 93, 95, 101, 110, 111, 112 Hoskins, John 146 Howard, William G. 89, 211 Hubbard, Thomas K. 211 Huddleston, Eugene L. 202 Hudson, Hoyt H. 146 Hughes, Simon 192 Hulse, Clark 17, 202 Hurley, Ann 211 Hurst, André 211 Husserl, Edmund 78

Innocenti, Beth 211 Isager, Jacob 19 Isidorus of Sevilla 13 Jacob, Alexander 205 Jakobson, Roman 42, 192 Javitch, Daniel 142 Jayne, Edward 192 Jensen, H. James 158, 159–160, 202 Jensen, Kristian 100 Jongeneel, Els 204 Jonson, Ben 155 Junius, Franciscus 18, 43–44, 48–49, 105–106 K. E. 143–144 Kallenberger, Ph. 183 Kant, I. 135 Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 211 Katula, Richard A. 10 Kayser, Wolfgang 90 Kehrli, Paul 23 Keilen, Sean 127, 128 Kemmann, A. 211 Kemp, Martin 202, 211 Kennedy, George A. 27, 52, 202, 203 Kenney, William 212 Ker, James 212 Kibédi Varga, Aron 139, 203, 212 Kirby, John T. 99, 212 Klarer, Mario 203 Klassen, Janina 212 Klein, Robert 181, 212 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 2 Klossowski, Pierre 132 Koch, Michael 84 Koch, Nadja J. 19, 212 Koelb, Janice Hewlett 203 Kohle, Hubertus 92, 203 Koll, Beate-Maria 54 Kommerell, Victor 110, 203 Korevaar, Gerbrand 201 Kranz, Gisbert 203 Krieger, Murray 23, 203, 212 Kris, Ernst 92, 162 Kristeller, Paul Oskar 26, 95 Kromm, Jane 203 Krüger, Klaus 203, 205 Kurman, George 212 Kursawe, Barbara 114 Kurz, Georg 190 Kurz, Otto 92 , 162 Kusch, Britta 10, 175



index of names

Lachmann, Renate 203 Lacour, Claudia Brodsky 212 Ladwein, Michael 164 Lamp, Kathleen S. 212 Land, Norman E. 4, 203, 212 Landi, Stefano 184 Lane, Robert Taylor 10 Lang, Franciscus 174–177 La Porta, Veronica de 160, 203 Lasso, Orlando di 183 Lausberg, Heinrich 31, 65, 72, 203 Lausberg, Marion 212 Leach, Eleanor Winson 212 Lebrun, Charles 173–174 LeCoat, Gerard 203 Lee, Rensselaer W. 92, 94, 203 Leeman, Anton D. 8 Legrand, Raphaëlle 188, 212 Lehma-Hartleben, Karl 212 Lehnert, G. 7 Leigh, Matthew 212 Lengeler, Rainer 196 Lenketh, Nancy 26 Leo, Ulrich 142 Leonardo da Vinci 102–106, 117, 121, 163, 171 Leonhardt, Karin 1 Leopold, Silke 190 Lepper, Marcel 189 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 2, 91–95, 139, 203 Lévi, Carlos 203 Levin, Harry 52 Lévy, Carlos 1 Levy, Evonne 95 Lichtenstein, Jacqueline 161, 173 Linacre, Thomas 66 Liske, Michael-Thomas 212 Liszt, Franz 193–194 Locher, Elmar 212 Locher, Hubert 168 Lodge, David 42, 192 Lohmar, Dieter 212 Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo 89, 94 Longinus 43, 44, 112 Louis XIV 51, 173 Lovejoy, Arthur O. 26 Loyola, Ignatius de 81, 82 Lucian of Samosata 11, 14–17, 19, 147 Lully, Jean-Baptiste 73 Lund, Hans 203 Lunde, Ingunn 10, 212 Lysias 20 Mack, Peter 115, 212 Maffei, S. 40

223

Mahlmann-Bauer, Barbara 95, 163 Maioragius, M. Antonius 100 Malatesta, Sigismondo 124 Manakidou, Flora 203 Maniates, Maria Rika 203 Manieri, Alessandra 193, 203, 212 Mannasser, Daniel 89, 101 Mantegna, Andrea 124 Maranta, Bartolomeo 116 Marconi, Luca 183 Marek, Michaela 203 Marin, Louis 212 Markiewicz, Henryk 213 Martin, José Domingo Rodríguez 10 Martz, Louis L. 81, 203 Mathieu-Castellani, Gisèle 140, 204 Maus, Katherine Eisaman 212 Mazzoni, Jacopo 96–97 McKenzie, Alan T. 173 McKeon, Adam 204, 212 Medici, Giovanni de’ 124 Medici, Lorenzo de’ (Il Magnifico) 124 Meek, Richard 213 Meltzoff, Stanley 213 Mérot, Alain 213 Metastasio, Pietro 69 Meyer, Heinz 175 Michel, Christoph 213 Michelangelo Buonarotti 94, 114–115 Michels, Walter 177 Miller, Patricia Cox 204 Milton, John 2, 9, 137 Minturno, Antonio Sebastiano 66, 116 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della 114 Mitchell, W.J.T. 204, 213 Mofitt, John F. 213 Molders, Arno 92 Momirovic, Bojana 204 Montagu, Jennifer 173, 204 Montemayor, Jorge de 149–150 Monteverdi, Claudio 184–189 Montgomery, Robert L. 96, 146 Moretti, Gabriella 9, 213 Moses, Gavriel 213 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 189 Müller, Wolfgang G. 91 Munro, Hugh Pettis 204 Musacchio, Enrico 213 Myrick, Kenneth 146 Nänny, Max 77 Nativel, Colette 213 Nauta, Lodi 204 Navarro, Juan Huarte 33 Nesselrath, Heinz-Günther 46, 199

224

index of names

Newby, Zahra 39–40, 147 Newman, Sara 21, 99, 213 Nicolson, Marjorie 213 Nikolaos of Myra 26–27 Norden, Eduard 52 Norton, Glyn P. 213 O’Connell, Michael 143 Oesterreich, P.L. 20 Olson, Todd P. 156 Onians, John 213 Opitz, Martin 109 Orff, Carl 189 Orgel, Stephen 45, 127, 129 O’Rourke Boyle, Marjorie 81 Osborn, Louise Brown 146 Oschmann, Dirk 213 Otto, Nina 13, 204 Ovid 126 Oy-Marra, Elisabeth 81, 204 Paggi, Giovanni Battista 164, 167, 179 Palisca, Claude V. 183, 204 Palladio, Andrea 119 Palladino, Lora Anne 106, 114–115, 204 Pallavicino, Stefano Benedetto 82, 84 Panigarola, Francesco 161 Panofsky, Erwin 120–122, 123, 141, 158, 204 Parrish, Wayland M. 213 Parry, Anthony 150 Patrizi, Francesco 100–101 Peacham, Henry 54, 75, 190 Perelman, Chaim 213 Pérez, Laurent 213 Peri, Jacopo 184 Pericolo, Lorenzo 204 Perkins, William 154, 155 Pernot, Laurent 1, 50, 203, 204, 213 Perry, E. 204 Pestilli, Livio 213 Peters, Sibylle 213 Petrarca, Francesco 135, 161 Petzold, Detlev 204 Pfisterer, Ulrich 94, 171, 204, 213 Pfotenhauer, Helmut 27 Philostrati / Philostratus 1, 19, 28, 38–39, 40, 41, 45–48, 96, 128 Piccinni, Niccolò 189 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (later Pope Pius II) 57 Piles, Roger de 158, 162 Plato 42–43, 55, 100, 133 Plett, H.F. 10, 36, 42, 95, 99, 114, 142, 162, 170, 192, 196, 204, 207, 210

Plette, Albert 214 Plinius 8, 18, 19, 113 Plutarch 11, 31, 49, 93, 94, 155 Poeschke, Joachim 10, 175 Poletti, Federico 14–15 Pollit, J.J. 38, 41 Pope, Alexander 1 Possevinus, Antonius 95 Poussin, Nicolas 155–160 Praz, Mario 89, 204 Preimesberger, Rudolf 205 Prelli, Laurence J. 1 Purcell, Henry 189 Putnam, Michael C.J. 214 Puttenham, George 21, 30–31 Puttfarken, Thomas 89, 124, 204, 205 Quarles, Francis 85, 162 Quinault, Philippe 73 Quintilian [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus] 7, 8–9, 10, 12, 19, 21, 36, 37, 38 44, 65, 67–68, 75, 99, 100, 104, 110–112, 160, 169, 178, 179, 181, 197 Racine, Jean-Baptiste 78 Rademacher, Sabine 84 Raleigh, Sir Walter 141–142 Ramus, Petrus 15 Randall, John Herman 26 Raphael (i.e. Raffaeli Santi) 164, 165 Rebhorn, Wayne A. 133 Reidemeister, Kurt 214 Reik, Miriam M. 12 Rembrandt (i.e. Rijn, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van) 171–172 Remmert, Volker R. 81, 204 Revest, Clémence 50 Reynolds, Joshua 94 Rhodes, Neil 90 Richter, Jean Paul 121 Riffaterre, Michael 214 Rigolot, François 66, 214 Rinuccini, Ottavio 184 Rippl, Gabriele 205 Roberts, Michael John 205 Robillard, Valerie 205 Robortello, Francesco 116 Rölli-Alkemper, Dorothee 21 Röttger, Kati 205 Ronk, Martha 214 Ronsard, Pierre de 109–110 Rooley, Anthony 188 Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg 205 Rosand, David 127, 214



index of names

Rosen, Valeska von 205, 214 Rosenberg, Michael 214 Rosenmeyer, Thomas G. 10, 214 Roskill, Mark W. 107–109, 114, 205 Rossi, Paolo 79 Rossky, William 214 Rotermund, Erwin 10, 214 Rothstein, Eric 214 Rubens, Peter Paul 18, 19, 160 Rubin, Patricia 117, 214 Ruffy, Maria Vamvouri 214 Rufinianus, Julius 13 Russell, Donald A. 7 Rutherford, Aris 214 Sainte-Garde, Carel de 139 Saisselin, Rémy G. 214 Salieri, Antonio 189 Samuel, Irene 142 Saxl, Fritz 120 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 100, 109 Scarlatti, Alessandro 189 Scheepers, Alfred 49 Schenka, Astrid 25, 205 Schenkeveld, Dirk M. 214 Schindel, Ulrich 205 Schink, Wilhelm 205 Schirren, Thomas 214 Schmitt, Arbogast 92, 205 Schneck, Peter 205 Schneider, Manfred 52 Schnur, H.C. 163 Schöne, Albrecht 87 Schönert, Jörg 205 Schoenmakers, Henri 205 Scholz, Bernhard F. 20, 85, 205, 214 Scholz, Myra vii, 105 Schrÿvers, Piet H. 215 Schubert, Michael 164 Schueller, Herbert M. 192, 215 Schütrumpf, Eckart 13 Schumacher, Andreas 15 Schweitzer, Anton 73–75 Schweizer, Niklaus R. 92, 205 Seidel, Max 171, 204 Seigel, Jerrold 50 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 37, 38, 55, 64, 68 Shakespeare, William 2, 29–36, 59, 62–63, 65–68, 76, 94, 123–124, 125–133, 162, 194, 195–196 Sharpling, Gerard Paul 215 Sharrock, Roger 151 Shearman, John K.G. 105–106, 205

225

Sherry, Richard 20 Sidney, Sir Philip 146, 147, 148–150, 155 Siegmund, Bert 205 Silverman, Alan 215 Simonides of Ceos 31, 40, 49, 101, 104 Sloane, Thomas O. 20, 23 Smith, Bruce R. 215 Smith, Paul Julian 215 Snyder, Jon R. 205 Snuggs, Henry L. 99 Sokol, B.J. 205 Solbach, Andreas 10, 205 Soldt, Philipp 205 Sonesson, Göran 45 Sonnino, Lee A. 129, 205 Sophocles 1 Souriau, Étienne 197 Spence, Joseph 1 Spencer, John R. 169, 170–171 Spencer, T.J.B. 215 Spenser, Edmund 142–146 Spica, Anne-Elisabeth 85, 137, 206 Spies, Bernhard 215 Spies, Marijke 100, 206 Steadman, John M. 215 Stefani, Gino 183 Steiger, J.A. 163 Steiner, Wendy 206 Sternefeld, F.W. 184, 188 Stertz, Stephen A. 215 Stewart, Douglas J. 215 Stieglitz, Uwe 206 Stockt, L. van der 31, 215 Stolcius, Daniel 89 Strätling, Susanne 206 Straub, Joannes 5 Stumpfhaus, Bernhard 202 Sturm, Johann 99 Susenbrotus, Joannes 20, 23 Tarasti, Eero 183 Tasso, Torquato 140–141, 142, 156 Taylor, Vernon Lyle 206 Telemann, Georg Philipp 189–190 Tellegen-Couperus, Olga 10 Temmermann, Koen de 215 Terence (i.e. Terentius Afer) 66 Tesauro, Emanuele 21 Themistius 43 Theodorus 11 Theon 26 Theophrastus 7, 146 Thomas, Richard F. 215 Thompson, Claude A. 215

226

index of names

Thrasymachus 11 Thucydides 11, 31 Timantes 18 Torquatus 13–14 Trimpi, Wesley 86, 112, 206, 215 Trissino, Gian Giorgio 99 Tummers, Anna 201 Uhlmann, Gyburg 92, 205 Unglaub, Jonathan 156, 206 Valentin, Jean-Marie 95 Valtolina, Amelia 206 Varchi, Benedetto 116, 147–148 Vasari, Giorgio 117, 168 Vergil[ius Maro], Publius 28, 98, 99, 100, 106, 143, 179–181 Verona, Guarino da 163–164 Verso, Antonio Il 189 Victorius, Petrus 116 Vigenère, Blaise de 45 Vives, Juan Luis 26–27, 35, 38, 104, 196 Vogt-Spira, Gregor 100 Volkmann, Ludwig 85, 206 Vondel, Jost van den 171–172 Vossius, Gerhardus Joannes 23 Vouilloux, Bernard 206 Vuilleumier-Laurent, Florence 89, 206 Waddington, Raymond B. 97 Wagner, Peter 206 Walker, Andrew D. 31, 215 Walker, Jeffrey 206 Walsh, George B. 215 Walzer, Arthur E. 215 Wandhoff, Heiko 206 Warncke, Carsten Peter 206 Watson, George 77 Watson, Gerard 206, 215

Webb, Ruth 20, 206, 215 Weigel, Thomas 10, 175 Weinberg, Bernard 98, 100, 116, 206 Weinrich, Harald 150 Weisstein, Ulrich 90 Wells, Marion A. 215 Wells, Robin Headlam 142 Wenneker, Lu Beery 152 Whelan, Edward Joseph 79, 206 Whitman, Jon 142, 206 Whitmarsh, Tim 206 Wiehl, Rainer 208 Wieland, Christoph Martin 72–75 Wilder, Linda Perkins 79, 206 Wilder, Thornton 66 Willis, John 79–80 Willems, Gottfried 92, 206 Wilson, John 55 Wilson, Thomas 154 Wimböck, Gabriele 1, 206 Wimsatt, Jr., William K. 1, 2, 206 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 1, 3, 4 Windisch, Martin 137 Winn, James Anderson 207 Wismer, Beat 132 Wittkower, Rudolf 85, 206 Wood, Christopher S. 122 Wright, Christopher 159 Wright, D.R. Edward 216 Yakobi, Tamar 216 Yates, Frances A. 35, 79, 152, 207 Zanker, Graham 20, 207, 216 Zelenka, Jan Dismas 84 Zerner, Henri 161 Zeuch, Ulrike 205, 207 Ziegler, Giorganna 216 Zimmermann, Albert 207 Zuber, Roger 78

INDEX OF SUBJECTS abstract 80 Academia degli Transformati 99 Academy New 13 Royal 94 accompaniment musical 101 act persuasive 34 poetic 156 actio 33, 59, 61, 65, 77, 99, 158, 170, 177 comica 174 scenica 174, 176 action 27, 33, 48, 59, 71, 76, 101, 139 dramatic 48, 76, 152 imaginary 71 real-life 101 scenic 33 actor 26, 59, 76 pastoral 149 actuality 99 actus 99 address ad spectatores 34 admiratio 115–116, 117 admiration 43, 113, 181 admirer 113 aestheticity 197 of representation 197 aesthetics 4, 5, 10, 23, 49, 99, 138 comparative 197 affect 10, 26, 33, 39, 44, 51, 58, 73, 81, 84, 96, 99, 114, 115, 129, 130, 133, 134, 140, 147, 149, 154, 155, 160, 161, 163, 164, 170, 171, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179–180, 181, 183, 189 illustration of -s 174, 175, 176 moderate 33 passionate 33 affectedness 100 Age Elizabethan 174 golden 52 imperial 38 Modern 2 Postmodern 2 pre-emblematic 137 Romantic 190 Ages, Middle 2, 10, 140

aisthemata 43 allegory 15, 16, 21, 25, 26, 27, 85, 90, 91, 142, 149, 154 pictorial 16 prophane 15 allocutio ad spectatores 35 altar 164, 165, 166, 167, 168 Isenheim 164  painting 168 ambiguity 133 amphitheatre 26 amplification 75, 129 anagram 80 anagnorisis 126 analogy 94, 138 pictorial 94 anamnesis 154 anaphoric 34 angel 80 animation 109, 166, 168 animus 99 Anschaulichkeit 92 Anschauung 4, 10 antiquarian 1 Antiqui 19 Antiquity, Classical 1, 2, 5, 10, 13, 17, 19, 23, 28, 31, 72, 87, 91, 92, 94, 95, 106, 110, 130, 137, 196 antithesis chiastic 161 apostrophe 71, 128, 188 imaginary 71 architect divine 154 portrait of an 164, 167 architecture 158, 181 illusionistic background 120 memory 154 argument 90, 132 argumentation 114 aria 70, 71, 190, 191, 192 aristocrat(ic) 130, 141 ars 33, 125, 137 amatoria 150 liberalis 140, 155, 169 mechanica 104, 137, 140 oblivionis 150

228

index of subjects

art 2, 10, 17, 40, 44, 46, 66, 73, 105–106, 131, 132, 138, 143, 146, 148,161, 169, 171, 182, 183, 196 Byzantine 105 classical 110 contemporary 140 critic 48, 140, 158 defence of 44 historian 117, 158, 168 historiography 19 history 19, 123 non-mimetic 183, 193 pictorial 161 plastic 39 spatial 132, 139 static 139 verbal 138, 161 visual 122, 125, 140, 155, 171 theorist 105, 106, 140, 161, 162, 164, 178, 179 theory 96, 101, 106, 138, 163 works 19 Art of Prophecying 154–155 artes 1, 4, 40, 57, 105, 107, 124, 192, 193, 197 artificer 155 artificial 59, 66 artist 4, 15, 40, 46, 92, 105, 117, 171, 178, 181, 193 anti- 195 authentic 183 court 124 image of the 92 mediaeval 105 plastic 39 Renaissance 105, 117 visual 2, 115, 169 arts 92 brother 107 ranking of the 95 sister 23, 49, 89, 91, 93, 95, 106, 139 symbiosis of the 156 tonal 1 verbal 1, 2, 17, 19, 138–182, 196 visual 1, 2, 10, 17, 19, 20, 40, 85–87, 88, 90, 105, 112, 114, 122, 138–182, 146, 148, 155, 158, 163, 169, 177 assembly legislative 59 public 86 audience 30, 76, 99 auditor 11, 25 author classical 94, 96 humanist 94 auto-affection 9, 115, 169 auxesis 129

ballet 95, 150 Baroque 10, 72, 131, 162, 183 art 131 German 109 Jesuit 95 literature 131 bas-relief 16 beauty 8, 76, 110, 141, 147, 149, 156–158 architectural 181 of the body 181 of the mind 181 Betrachtung 190 Bible 71, 140, 155, 195 biblia pauperum 79, 154 bimediality 192 biography 146 of model artist 117 blame 49 body 33, 46 bombast 100 book 79 illustrated 145  shelf 171 burlesque 196 Byzantine 105 carver 48 carving 39, 120, 121, 131, 132 ivory 39 catharsis 75, 81, 126 celare artem 36 centaur 110 cernas formula 41, 72, 129, 153, 190 chanson 189 chaos 110, 196 Chapel Sistine 115 chiarezza 142 chinoiserie musical 70 chorus 62–63, 73 church 79, 142, 154, 197 fictive 153, 154  floor 154 chronographia 148 chronology 143 circumstantiae 8, 11, 12, 13, 20, 48, 63 clarity 44, 97 Classicism 89, 100 French 100, 161 German 72 clearness of representation 97 collection painting 130 colloquia 55



index of subjects

color loquens 161 colores rhetorici (colours of rhetoric) 25, 49, 144, 160 colour 39, 49, 107, 132, 138, 139, 140, 147, 160, 163 dead 161 eloquent 161, 173 lively 49 mute 161 psychological 140 comedy 26, 96, 111, 130, 196 commentary 15, 16, 25, 37, 99, 100, 116, 138, 144–145, 146, 179 commentator 144, 163 communication 48, 73, 75 fictive 48 comparison 90 mythological 129 compensation enargetic 45, 59 complaint 55 see querela, quaerimonia composer 2, 73, 183, 190, 192, 193 compositio loci 81 composition 5, 84, 141, 189, 192, 194 imitative 192 musical 84 conceit 21 concreteness 8, 13, 101 confirmatio 141 consciousness stream of—technique 196 contingency 113 contradiction 110 controversia 68 conviction 131 copia 25, 76, 133 copiousness 23 countenance 33 counterfeit 146 Counter-Reformation 85 coup de théâtre 65 court poet 141 princely— 141 courtier 124 melancholic 174 criticism 90 comparative 4 ideological viii literary 96 culture European 4 medieval 79

229

dance 62 dauphin 52 deception 73, 76, 92, 123, 125, 126, 133 declamatio 54 declamation sophistic 40 declaration 101 decoration 105, 119 decorum 59, 68, 178 defence 40, 44 deficit linguistic— 111 deixis 42, 129, 164 delectare 114, 116, 137, 140, 146, 183 delight 116, 146 delivery 97, 177, 193 perspicuous 97 demonstratio 8, 100 ad oculos 112 demonstration 117 depiction 127, 132 pictorial 44 descriptio 100 loci 37, 100 rei 23, 25, 27 description 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27, 28, 31, 37, 38, 41, 46, 49, 57, 59, 61, 63, 68, 73, 75, 76, 77, 92, 99, 100, 109, 114, 131, 132, 137, 145, 148, 153, 160 lively 76 metaphorical 130 naturalistic 130 of persons 51 of pictures 38 rhetorical 12 verbal 59 vivid 59, 68 detail(s) 27, 63, 40, 64, 86, 99, 130 concrete 20 descriptive 63 pictorial 48 vivid 27 de-theatricalization 35 deus artifex 153 faber 27 device stylistic 145 dialect Aeolic 111 Doric 111 Ionic 111 mixing of -s 111

230

index of subjects

dialogue 1, 55, 64, 106–108, 168, 174 fictive 71, 73, 75 diatyposis 67 dignity of man 114 digression 37 dilogia 34 dimension the third 115 dimostrare 117 disegno 115 dispositio 110, 170 disposition psychological 110, 133 disproportionality 111 divertimento teatrale 189 docere 114, 116, 140, 146 doctor 152, 164 dome 105 domus aurea–Neronis 110 doxa 42, 43, 133 see opinion drama 26, 27, 29, 55, 75, 76, 125, 126 classicist 78 French 78 imaginary 75 miniature 150 mnemonic 152 musical 193 school 174 dramatis personae 73, 78 dramatist 2, 31, 61, 75, 78, 112 French 78 historical 31 dramatization 66 dramaturgy 73, 75 drawing 121 dream 10, 18, 195–196 day 19 dynamism 109 ear 49, 58, 59, 76, 77, 79, 171–172, 173, 195 eclogue 144 education 39–40 effect(s) comic 68, 76 moral 155 realistic 13 rhetorical 114 stylistic 20 effectiveness 17 effet de vérité 12 efficacia 100 efficacious 98

effictio 100 egressio 37 eidolopoiein 43, 93 eikones 28, 38, 40, 45, 46, 96 Einbildungskraft 10 see phantasy ekphrasis 14, 19, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 45, 48, 50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 67, 72, 91, 100, 124, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 147, 148, 149, 194 enargetic 29 musical 193 of persons 38, 67 of places 37–38, 49 topographical 37, 49 elocutio 17, 23, 44, 90, 170 éloge 51 eloquence 44, 90 eloquentia muta 159 embellishment 163, 164, 169 emblem(atics) 80, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 137, 148, 151, 152, 162 religious 151 spiritual 86 emblematist(s) 85, 89 emotion 12, 46, 68, 75, 79, 127, 128, 140, 147, 148, 158, 160, 163, 169, 170, 177 empathy 48, 67, 75, 128, 162, 163 emulation 49 enallage temporum 66 enargeia passim enargia 20, 97, 99 encomium 37, 46, 55, 142 paradoxical 55 of persons 37 of places 37 energeia 20, 99 energia 13, 20, 99 energie 90, 91 energy 58 engraver 162 epic 34, 100, 101,141–142 classical 179 national 142 Epicurean 13 epideixis 39, 51, 52, 142, 141, 144 epigram 80 epilogue 34 epiphora 129 epistemology 13, 126, 133, 159 epitaph 80 epithalamium 99 epitome 143



index of subjects

epyllion 126, 130 esprit 91 ethical 138 ethos 10 eulogy 51 euphantasiotos 7, 9, 33, 36, 115, 122, 173, 179, 181, 192, 195, 196, 197 evidence see evidentia artificial 36, 59 ekphrastic 132 inartificial 36 evidentia vii, 1, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, 23, 44, 59, 66, 97, 98, 99, 100, 105, 106, 132, 144, 161, 163, 196 aesthetica 5 iconic 164 in narratione 10 mimetic 105 evidenza 96, 142 exclamatio 71, 73, 75, 149, 188 exegesis scriptural 142 exemplum 15 rhetorical 16 exercise dramatic 174 exercitatio 115 exercitia spiritualia 81 exordium 51 exornation 75 experience simultaneous 31 explanatio illustris 99 expositor 164 expression facial 178 musical 192 self 192 extenuatio 129 eye 12, 18, 39, 58, 59, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 85, 90, 105, 107, 109, 132, 145, 158, 173, 178, 181, 195 bringing before the –s 99 see oculis subicere -s of the imagination 75, 81 inner 12 mind’s 112 physical sight 112 of understanding 85 eyebrow 160 eyewitness 12, 31, 36, 76 fable 26, 80, 92, 145 allegorical 26

231

faculty imaginative 179 facundia praesens 77 fallacy empathetic 128 pathetic 128 familiaris 124 fantastic 109, 110 fantasy 132 farce 26 “fashion” 143 fear 81 see catharsis fece conoscere 117 vedere 117 feign(ing) 155 fenestra 120–123 see window festa teatrale 70 fiction(ality), fictive 25, 31, 32, 40, 48, 66, 71, 76, 81, 115, 127, 128, 133, 153, 155, 196 figura 142 “figure forth” 146 figure ingeniose 21 figures 101 musical-rhetorical 183–184 of gesture 166, 168 of speech 166, 168 rhetorical 90 flashback 143 folly 54–55 foreshadowing 142 foreshortening 113, 120, 121 forma 158 frenetic 109 gallery 136, 150 imaginary 40 of paintings 39 picture 147 garden 147 gem-cutting 39 genius 91 poetic 138 genos epideiktikon 40, 49 genres of oratory deliberative 40 epideictic 40 forensic 40 genus demonstrativum 49, 50, 117 geometry 122, 169 gesture(s) 33, 124, 158, 159, 160, 166, 168, 177 figures of 168 hand 160

232

index of subjects

God 37, 38, 80, 154, 195 god(dess)  26, 46, 114, 130, 136, 147, 196 grandeur 99 Greek vii, 5, 11, 37, 38, 61, 91, 98, 106, 111 grotesque 36, 90, 110, 196 grottesche 110 hagiography 10, 19 harmony 46, 156–159 hearer 33, 116 heart 154 hedone 114 Hellenism 138 hermeneutics vii, viii hieroglyphs 85, 163 hipotiposi 21 historia 17, 140, 169, 170 historian 11, 12 historiographer 142, 143 historiography 11, 12, 31 history 17, 19, 80, 81, 142, 143 play 29, 62–63 homiletics 10 homology of painting and poetry 169 humanism 95, 137, 163 civic 49 humanist 23, 26, 49, 94, 99, 137, 161, 163, 183 humanistic 17, 89, 94, 166, 168 context 166–167 point of view 17 theory of painting 92 humanities viii, 5 hybrid 110, 196 hypotiposis 21, 31 hypotyposis 20, 183, 184, 189 icon 89, 143, 145 icones symbolicae 89–90 iconicity 25, 145, 164 verbal 164 iconoclasm Puritan 154–155 theological 154 iconographia 131 iconography 143 idea 25, 141, 133, 158, 168 beautiful 110 idea (mnemonic) 79–80 compound 80 direct 79, 80 relative 79, 80

scriptile 80 subdititial 79 idealization mythographic 142 idyll 72 musical 71 illusion 9, 23, 33, 66, 105, 113, 114, 120, 123, 125, 128, 131, 132, 133, 147 illustratio 7, 20 illustration 80 graphic 173 image 2, 10, 12, 19, 37, 40, 41, 43, 45, 48, 55, 59, 76, 79, 88, 90, 91, 101, 105, 141, 146, 171 animating the 152, 154 effective 10 epideictic 141 grotesque 36 maker 146 material 2 mental 2, 55, 76, 93, 154 mnemonic 150, 151 moving 150, 152, 179 nonperspectival 123 nonrealist 123 realist 123 rhetoric of the 90 static 163 stone 126 symbolic 85 synthesis of (simple) -s 80 textual 156 tropical 79 typology of -s 80 visual 40, 79, 121 vivid 38, 85 imagery declined 154–155 imagination 2, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 25, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 44, 46, 55, 62, 63, 68, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 92, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 115,122, 131, 132, 133, 139, 141, 146, 156, 158, 169, 173, 196, 197 monstrous 36 pictorial 127 rhetorical 10 visual 41, 121 imago 79 agens 42, 152, 154 animi 124 imitatio naturae 2, 91, 109, 115, 123 imitation 26, 39, 40, 49, 76, 89, 90, 93, 100, 101, 107, 116, 138, 146, 155, 164, 182 of nature 89, 146



index of subjects

imitator 101 immediacy 8, 17, 20, 59, 145, 155 impersonation 52, 100 see prosopopoeia imprese 80, 88, 148 incomprehensibility 137 incrementum 129 indecorum 73, 75, 78 inertia stylistic 100 ingenium 115, 124 in-lusion 133 inscriptio 85 see motto institution educational 174 intellect 107, 155 interaction figurative 164 interference ekphrastic 38 interlocutor 188 interlude 196 intermedial(ity) 87, 146, 197 internalisation pictorial 14 Interpreter 150–151 interrogatio 73, 75, 188, 190 see pseudo-question & question, rhetorical inventio vii, 12, 17, 21, 31, 33, 58, 97, 108, 109, 110, 131, 170 dialectica 58 invention 17, 40, 155, 191 high 97 low 97 mimetic 21 pictorial 108, 171 inventor 75 invisibility 137, 171 invocation 30 irony 49 istoria 170 see historia Jesuit 51, 81, 85, 95, 162, 174, 177 French 163 jewelry 148 joy 138 judge 10, 112 justice 143 kinesics 171, 178 kinesis 42, 193 see movement kinetic 29, 77 lament 184 lamento 184, 185–188, 189

233

landscape pastoral 72 language ancient 111 French 90–91 mean 111 modern 111 moralizing 129 poetic 111 sublime 111 theatrical 78, 163 vivid 96 vulgar 111 Latin 59, 64, 91, 98 laughter 111 laus 49 law 10 law court 7 lawyer 112 legend artistic 163 lesson moral 162 theological 162 letter 80 visualization of -s 80 lettered well 140 un- 79 library painter’s 171 theological 173 libretto operatic 69–78 pastoral 72 life 33, 97, 123, 132, 183 images of 146 lifeless 128 light (phaos) 39, 42 listener 73, 75, 116, 133 literature 1, 2, 10, 17, 38, 64, 66, 72, 89, 112, 114, 131, 138, 163, 169 classical 140 comparative 197 contemporary 140 English 197 European 163 French 197 German 197 Greek 38 religious 152 Spanish 197 liveliness 128, 161, 163, 177 lively 2, 48, 49, 76, 123

234

index of subjects

locus amoenus 72 memorialis 79, 151, 153–154 logoi 39 macrocosm 51 madrigal 189 magic 32, 92, 163, 195 magnificence 76, 141, 143 manifest 11, 12, 13 mathematics 5, 123 Matthäuspassion 189 media 138 medias in res 143 medieval 66, 105 meditation 79–84, 163, 164, 190 spiritual 79 theory 80 meditator 81 megaloprepeia 143 megalopsychia 143 meiosis 129 melancholy 109, 110, 163, 170, 173, 174, 175, 176–177, 191 meletai 39 memoria 17, 79, 80, 149, 150, 151, 170 artificialis 154 memory 34, 42, 77, 80, 145, 149–150, 151 architecture 154 artificial 154 classical 80 place 154 temple theatre 79 metamorphosis 196 metaphor 12, 21, 29, 34, 35, 42, 68, 79, 90, 99, 130, 145, 153, 155, 192 of tense 66, 68 pictorial 143 vivifying 21 metaphysics 5 metastasis 67 metonymy 42, 79, 128, 192 microcosm 51 mime 26 mimesis 4, 18, 30, 31, 40, 48, 49, 67, 72, 91, 92, 100, 101, 106, 107, 115, 124, 126, 132, 138, 139, 146, 155, 181 fictive 40 pictorial 172 mimicry 33 mimics 124, 171, 177, 178 mirror 158, 164, 178, 179

mnemonic(s) 79–84, 145, 152, 155 classical 153 religious 79, 154 rhetorical 81 mode dramatic 138 musical 156 narrative 138 pictorial 132 Moderni 19 modi 156 see modes (keys), musical modo 158 monochrome 138 monody 184–188 monologue 55, 62, 73, 75, 100 dramatic 100 monster hybrid 110 moral 80, 126 moralization 45, 129 mostrare 117 motion 76, 97 of the body 33 motto 21, 85 motus 99 movement 27, 42, 109, 132, 147, 154 dynymic 27 of the body 170 of the soul 170 movere 33, 43, 58, 67, 71, 73, 76, 114, 115, 116, 126, 140, 169, 170, 183, 188 Muse(s) 30, 91 music 48, 73, 85, 95, 101, 138, 183–194, 197 criticism 192 dramatic technique 190 illustrative 193 instrumental 193 non-mimetic 101, 183 program 193, 194 musica poetica 183 musician 4, 158 myth 19, 52, 92, 108, 163 mythography 142 mythological 2, 25, 27, 29, 148, 189 mythology classical 147 mythopoetic 26 name proper 79 narratio 9, 10, 12, 20, 33, 59, 68, 77, 143



index of subjects

narration 39, 66–67, 76, 97, 143 lively 144 narrative 27, 73, 148 narrativity 66 narrator 39, 67, 128, 150 natura altera 128, 132 nature 46, 73, 89, 148, 155, 190 imitation of 40 Neoclassicism 59, 75, 78, 100 French 78, 100 Neo-Platonic 10 novel 148 Spanish 149 number 80 nuntius 64, 152 oblivion 17, 150 oculi mentis 85, 112 oculis subicere 12, 19, 13, 21, 25, 57, 97, 99, 129, 145 ode musical 190–193 ontology 13, 31, 122 opacity 156 opera 2, 73, 184, 188 libretti 69–78 monologue 75 serenade 69–72 tradition 72 opera serenata 69–72 opera seria 71, 72 operation linguistic 66 opinion 133 opsis 31 oratio 8, 25, 49, 58, 91, 116 continuata 21 suavis 116 oration 54, 58, 64, 90, 146 classical 146 orator vii, 4, 7, 20, 33, 37, 49, 68, 75, 90, 99, 106, 109, 137, 162, 169, 181 oratorio 82–84, 86, 189, 190–191 oratory 5, 86, 116, 155, 197 deliberative 40 epideictic 40 forensic 49 order 156–157 ordine 157, 158 ornament(ation) 8, 11, 90, 91, 119, 163 ornamentum 183 ornatus 8, 111 oxymoron 128

235

pageant 34 paint with words 13–14 painter 1, 4, 15, 16, 43, 44, 48, 49, 88, 89, 94, 95, 97, 102, 107, 113, 124, 128, 140–141, 148, 155, 158, 161, 163, 164, 169, 171 ancient 18, 158 of ideas 141 as orator 162 learned 1 modern 158 portrait 78 painting 5, 14,15–16, 17, 19, 29, 31, 39, 41, 45, 46, 72, 77, 92, 93, 94, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 113, 117, 121, 124, 126, 132, 137, 138, 139, 143, 155, 158, 162, 172, 173, 197 allegorical 15–16 blind 104 ceiling 115 collection 130 contemporary 18 defense of 40 eloquent 102, 161 fresco 110 imaginary 13 Italian 18 mimetic 101, 106 miniature 128 mythological 29 narrative 169 panel 13, 166, 168 praise of 40 speaking 107, 139 talking 40 tone 189, 190 palais 197 panaesthesia 63, 81 panegyric 38 ekphrastic 50 pantomime 33, 68 emblematic 152 mnemonic 152 spiritual 154 parable 91 paradox 49 paragone 41, 45, 102, 104, 123, 124, 161 parekbasis 37 parody 76, 196 partes artis quinque 140 participia praesentis 34 particularization 96

236

index of subjects

passion 10, 11, 33, 44, 45, 76, 130, 139, 140, 148, 158, 160, 173, 179–180, 181, 190–193 pastoral 72 pathetical 31 pathopoeia 183 pathopoetic 190 pathos 10, 71, 128, 130 patristic tradition 142 perception 58, 63, 112, 120, 132, 137, 163, 196 imaginative 63 panaesthetic 63 sensory 112, 137 performance medieval 66 rhetorical 129 personification 52 see prosopopoeia perspectiva artificialis 123 naturalis 123 perspective 16, 114, 119–133, 128, 179, 180, 181, 182 linear 122 mathematical 123 pictorial 87, 114, 119–124 symbolical 123 perspicere 122 perspicuitas 44 perspicuity 11, 20, 43, 44, 97, 112 persuasion 20, 76 phantasia 19, 20, 34, 42, 43, 38, 42, 43, 193 phantasiai 9 phantastikon 181 phantasy 10, 34, 43 phenomenon intermedial  87 natural 51 philosophy 5, 10, 13, 26, 37, 76, 92, 96, 146, 197 Platonic 100, 133 Stoic 1, 37 physiognomy 51, 172, 173 pianto 188, 189 pictographic 148 pictor doctus 137, 169 pictorial 31, 156 pictorialism 95, 143, 148 literary 95, 143 pictura 85, 91, 151 loquens 89, 101, 139, 161, 166 rhetorica 162, 166

picture 13–14, 15, 21, 25, 44, 48, 85, 89, 96–97, 128, 129, 143, 144, 178 gallery 43, 143, 147, 150 history of -s 19 imaginary 14, 131, 132 mental 146 moving 132 relief 131 speaking 49, 86, 96, 97, 132, 139, 155, 166 verbal 14, 15 pilgrim(age) 82 , 151 imaginary 84 pity 75, 81 see catharsis places biblical 81 plainte 189 plasticity 146 three-dimensional 115 Platonic 10, 100 play 25, 194 history 29, 62–63 morality 152, 154, 164 mythological 27 play-acting 133 pleasure 98, 113, 114, 155, 137 aesthetic 77, 114 see hedone sensory 137 plot (in drama) 25, 194 poem 90, 91, 114, 162, 172 epic 139, 142 heroic 98, 140–141 symphonic 193, 194 poema eroico 98, 140–41 poesia / poesis muta 101, 139 picta 89 tacens 89, 101 poet 4, 43, 44, 48, 49, 57, 58, 66, 88, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 102, 107, 112, 124, 138, 146, 148, 161, 169, 172, 181, 192, 194 court 141 English 32 historical 142, 143 poeta 152, 164 orator 32 theologus 26, 35, 154 poetical 86 poeticization 197 of rhetoric 197 poetics 5, 10, 23, 25, 30–31, 57, 75, 78, 90, 96, 100, 101, 110, 114, 116, 138, 143, 179, 183, 193



index of subjects

English 30–31 of the grotesque 110 Italian 98 medieval 149 normative 78 of portraiture 164 rhetorical 77 of synaesthesia 95 vernacular 98 poetry 1, 2, 5, 19, 20, 28, 30–31, 40, 45, 46, 50, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96–97, 104, 106, 107, 114, 116, 124, 137, 138, 140, 141, 155, 170, 172, 197 Alexandrian 13 ancient 171 Augustan 190 dithyrambic 101 dramatic 138 dumb 104 epic 101 of meditation 81 mute 107, 124, 139, 155 narrative 97 Roman 100 silent 31, 40, 49 politics 10 polyphony 188 portrait 163 human 45, 124, 129–130, 145, 148, 171–173 miniature 174 painter 178 self- 164, 166, 179 portraiture 164, 172 portrayal lively 172 painterly 109 postludium 62 practice judicial 59 meditative 81 praeludium 62 pragmatographia 27, 75 praise 40, 49, 97, 113, 117, 142, 145 prelude (meditative) 81 presence 9, 17, 30, 33, 35, 36, 42, 44, 55, 64, 65, 66, 71, 73, 149, 188 dramatic 66 historical 68 imaginary 30, 35, 36, 65, 71 imaginative 33 imagined 128 optical 127 physical 68

237

real 30 scenic 66 sensory 55, 183 theatrical 34 topical 17 visual 44 vivid 34 vivifying 66 visual 65 present (grammatical) dramatic 66 historical 68 scenic 66 presentation 1, 27, 28, 55, 59, 77, 93, 130 allegorical 27 dialogic 55 ekphrastic 28 enargetic 130 of ideas 55 presenter 42 princepleaser 137 progymnasma(ta) 26–27, 52, 147 prolalia 147 prologue 29–30, 32, 33, 34, 164, 191 prooemium 148 propaganda fidei 95 proportion 38 prosopographia 51, 148 prosopopoeia 32, 52, 54, 100, 149 protentionality 35, 78 protreptics philosophical 14 pseudo-question (interrogatio) 71 psychomachia 71, 154 Puritan 154–155 purpose educative 39–40 pyramid visual 121, 122 quaerimonia 55 see complaint querula 55 see complaint question rhetorical 129, 188, 190 see interrogatio quotation 80 ratio 107 reader 12, 25, 26, 27, 38, 97, 114, 116, 117, 128, 171 realism 45, 192 reality 32, 70, 133, 96 fictional 193 illusory 132 reason 38, 138, 190

238

index of subjects

reception 19, 31, 37, 110, 120, 182 of images 37 visual 45 recipient 4, 33, 45, 77, 105, 115, 120, 139 recitar cantando 188 recitative 70, 71 reconstruction 40 verbal 19 reduction metonymy 42 reflection 71 refutatio argumentative 137 register linguistic 111 relief 1, 131 stucco 161 religion 80 remedia amoris 150 memoriae 150 remembrance 80, 148 Renaissance 8, 10, 26, 66, 87, 89, 91, 95, 99, 100, 101, 105–106, 110, 114, 116, 120, 121, 131, 140, 148, 149, 164, 169 art 131, 161 culture 86, 162 debate on rhetoric 133 literature 131, 149 meditation 79 painting 122 scholar 66 theoretician 121 repetition 149 report 27, 59, 65, 67 messenger’s 61–64, 68 repository 43, 80 repraesentatio 7, 12 representation 31, 42, 57, 76, 93, 109, 110, 112, 133, 138, 178, 196, 197 synecdoche 42 “counterfait” 21, 31 false 133 pictorial 120, 124 self- 32 true 133 verbal 93 visible 80 visual 45, 79, 137 vivid 57 retentionality 35 retraite spirituelle 192 rhetoric vii, viii, 2, 4, 5, 10, 13, 23, 36, 66, 78, 84, 85, 100, 112, 114, 122, 123, 131, 133, 138, 140, 162, 170, 174 ancient 13, 114, 195

compendia of 13 of display 1 encyclopedic 163 humanist 23 of the image 45 intermedial 156 intertextual 196 literary 65, 192 medieval 149 pictorial 140 of presence 36, 66 sacred 163 scenic 188 secular 163 sophistic 40 traditional 23 verbal 140 visual 97 of the word 45 rhetorician 11, 25, 27, 41, 54, 75, 100, 112, 146, 169 rhetoricity 34 ridiculous 77 ritornello 2 Roi Soleil 51 Rokoko 72 role 32 fictonal 32 playing 32 Roman vii, 5, 111 romance(s) 32, 99 romanzi 99 sadness 173 see melancholy saint(s) 79, 106, 117 salvation 81 sapientia symbolica Aegyptiorum 85 sardismos 110 scene 58, 59, 155, 156 annunciation 164, 166 dramatic 82, 163 induction 130 imaginary 9, 73, 81 painting 86 scenery synaesthetic 29 schemes 20 Schilderung 31, 189 malerische 31 sculptor 155, 163, 164, 179 as grammarian 162 sculpture 1, 2, 16, 41, 108, 138, 147, 150, 158, 173, 179–181, 182, 197 living 126 scylla 110



index of subjects

self-representation 32 semblance 12, 92, 128, 132 beautiful 19 realistic 12 semiotic 45 semiotics bodily 177 general 156 rhetorical 145, 158, 160 sensation acoustic 34 imaginary 34 optical 34 tactile 29 sense 81, 97, 155 acoustic 29, 34 olfactory 29 tactile 29, 81 visual 30, 34, 81 senses of the Scripture allegorical 142 anagogical 142 moral  142 tropological 142 sermocinatio 52 see prosopopoeia sermon 152, 154, 161 “set forth” 31, 146 shade 39 shadow 97, 143, 155 shield of Achilles 28 of Aeneas 28 sight 81 signa 59 sensory 59 spirantia 162 (breathing statues) sign(s) 101 natural 23 of the arts 156 of human nature 45 sign-system rhetorical-semiotic 156 simile 8, 12, 29 similitude 90 similitudo 8, 152 simulation 68, 115, 125–126 singspiel 72 siren 110 skiagraphia 86 see scene-painting sophia 40 sophist 11, 27, 38, 39, 133 sound 158 specie 158

239

spectaculum mundi 52 spectator 11, 12, 26, 27, 31, 34, 37, 44, 48, 49, 55, 63, 67, 82, 105–106, 108, 113, 115, 120, 129, 152, 177 speech 146, 155, 168, 178 descriptive 26 direct 68 enargetic 130 figures of 168 forensic 86 pathetic 130 political 86 spirit 97 poetic 94 spirituality 81 stage 26, 30, 32, 35, 46, 48, 51, 58, 59, 62, 66, 73, 101, 119–120 fictive 81 imaginary 62 manager 32 performance 71 static 20 statuary 19, 148 statue 125–126, 197 breathing 162 status translationis 65 stereotype 177 affect-mimetic 177 Stoa 1, 37 studia humanitatis 5 style 2,8, 11, 20, 23, 59, 86, 91, 99, 111, 145, 146, 193, 196 forensic 86 heroic 99 lucid 111 sublime 13, 111 sublimitas 8 subscriptio see emblem symbol(ic) 21, 85, 87, 89, 101, 120, 137, 148 symbolism 123 symmetria 46 symmetry 38, 46 symphony 197 synaesthesia 29, 95, 132, 156, 162, 195 syncrisis 48, 86 synecdoche 42, 128 Teatro Olimpico 119–120 teichoscopy 61–64 telescope 179 temple of memory 154

240

index of subjects

tense future 131 grammatical 66 past 66, 67 present 66, 67 text pictorial 156 verbal 156 textuality 156 thaumaston 181 theatre 12, 25, 26, 35, 42, 59, 70, 77, 95, 119–120 classical 120 Greek 120 Jesuit 95, 162 lyric 72 metaphor 35, 104 multimedia 95 music 73 performance 35, 63 school 162 Sheldonian 190 theatrical(ity) 25, 34, 42, 48, 55 theatrum amoris 177 doloris 177 mundi 27, 35 poeticum 25 theology 5, 25, 85, 162 Puritan 154 thesaurus memoriae 149 topographia 148 topography 30, 37, 49 topos / topoi 91, 107, 162, 171 of affected modesty 143 pictorial 163 topothesia 81, 153 tragedy 25, 26, 36, 59, 62, 64, 65, 73, 75, 77, 81, 130, 196 classical 55, 75 conventional 73 operatic 70 parody 76 transformation 26, 196 tra(ns)latio 33, 65, 67 personarum 65, 67 temporum 66, 67 translation 27, 90–91 French 90–91 illustrated 145 translator 72, 90–91, 196 Trauerspiel 73 travesty 196

treasure house (tamieion) 43 trope 20, 21, 91, 156 mannerist 21 master 42 truth 133, 151, 155 absolute 133 probable 133 understanding 155 universality 2 ut musica pictura 156 ut pictura musica 156 poesis 1, 2, 40, 86, 89–117, 145 variatio 143 verba agentis 48 verbalization 146 verisimile 52, 59, 68, 78 verisimilitude 52, 156 vexillator 152 vice figure 36 virtú 124 virtuoso 1, 33 virtus dicendi 31 virtutes elocutionis 44 visio 9, 71, 81, 196 vision 38, 195 of hell 81 imaginary 71 operatic 71 spiritual 85 visual(ity) 19, 31, 40, 196 visualization 36, 68, 86 vitia stylistic 100, 111 vivacitas 177 vivid(ness) 11, 12, 13, 20, 26, 27, 31, 38, 58, 68, 85, 95, 96, 101, 105, 106, 111, 145, 161 graphic 27 imagined 145 mental 145 pictorial 145 vivify(ing) 21, 66 voice 33 vox sola deest 162 (only the voice is lacking) window 120, 121, 123, 179 wit 21, 33 word-painting 31, 98, 102, 133, 144, 155, 161 epideictic 144