History of Aesthetics, Vol. 3: Modern Aesthetics [Reprint ed.] 9027939438, 9789027939432

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HISTORY OF AESTHETICS Vol. Ill MODERN AESTHETICS

WLADYSLAW TATARKIEWICZ

HISTORY OF AESTHETICS VOL. III

MODERN AESTHETICS edited by

D. PETSCH

1974

MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

PWN—POLISH SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHERS WARSZAWA

Copyright © 1974 by Pañstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe (PWN—Polish Scientific Publishers) Warszawa

This is a translation from the original Polish Historia estetyki. Estetyka nowoczesna published in 1967 by "Ossolineum", Warszawa translated by Chester A. Kisiel and John F. Besemeres

All rights reserved

Printed in Poland (DRP)

CONTENTS

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATONS

ix

xvii

PREFACE I. INTRODUCTION

1

1. The Promise of New Aesthetics A. Texts from Petrarch and Boccaccio 2. The Heritage of the Old Aesthetics 3. Periods in Modern Aesthetics 4. Literature on Modern Aesthetics

1 9 12 17 22

I I . THE YEAR 1400

24

A-l. Texts from Cennini

31

I I I . THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

32

1. The Renaissance 2. The Philosophy of the Renaissance 3. Arts and the Theory of Art B. Texts of Fifteenth-Century Art Theorists 4. The Aesthetics of Nicholas of Cusa C. Texts from Nicholas of Cusa 5. The Aesthetics of the Humanists D. Texts from the Humanists and Savonarola 6. Alberti E. Texts from Alberti 7. The Aesthetics of the Florentine Academy F. Texts from Ficino

32 40 45 58 60 64 66 75 79 92 98 107

I V . THE YEAR 1500

1. The Theory of Art of the Classical Renaissance G. Texts from Raphael, Castiglione, Bembo, Pico, Leone Ebreo 2. The Aesthetics of Leonardo da Vinci H. Texts from Leonardo da Vinci

112

. .

112 121 126 136

vi

CONTENTS V . THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

1. The Aesthetics of Michelangelo I. Texts from Michelangelo and de Hollanda 2. The Aesthetics of Mannerism J. Texts from Pontormo and Cardano 3. The Poetics of the Sixteenth Century K. Texts on Poetics of the Sixteenth Century 4. The Sixteenth-Century Theory of the Visual Arts L. Texts from Theoreticians of Art of the Sixteenth Century . . . . 5. Emblematics and Iconology M. Texts from Ripa and Menestrier 6. The Theory of Music N, Texts from Renaissance Musicologists 7. Diirer's Aesthetics and Central European Art Theory O. Texts from Dürer and Erasmus 8. Aesthetics in France: The Poets and Montaigne 0-1. Texts from the Pleiade, Montaigne and Malherbe 9. A Summary of Sixteenth-Century Aesthetics V I . THE YEAR 1 6 0 0

1. The Events of the Year 1600 2. Italian Aesthetics P. Texts from Patrizi, Bruno, Zabarella and Galileo 3. English Aesthetics Q. Texts from Sidney, Shakespeare and Bacon 4. The Aesthetics of Spain and Poland R. Texts from Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Sarbiewski V I I . THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

1. The Changed Circumstances 2. Baroque Aesthetics S. Texts from Rubens, Baldinucci and Charron 3. The Revival of Classical Aesthetics: Poussin T. Texts from Poussin and Bellori 4. The Poetics of the Seventeenth Century U. Texts from French Poets and Writers on Poetics of the Seventeenth Century 5. Seventeenth-Century Philosophers and Aesthetics V. Texts from Seventeenth-Century Philosophers 6. The Aesthetics of Literary Mannerism W. Texts from Sarbiewski, Gracián, Bouhours and Tesauro . . . . 7. The Theory of Painting in the Seventeenth Century X. Texts from Art Theorists from Félibien to de Piles and Sandrart .

141

141 148 151 159 161 184 192 212 222 230 232 241 244 256 260 268 272 277

277 279 292 297 305 309 312 315

315 321 328 330 337 342 355 361 372 383 391 396 408

CONTENTS

VII

8. The Theory of Architecture in the Seventeenth Century X-l. Texts from Seventeenth-Century Theorists of Architecture . . .

415 423

VIII. THE YEAR 1700

428

1. The Aesthetics of the French Y. Texts from André, Crousaz and Dubos 2. The Aesthetics of the Italians Z. Texts from Muratori, Gravina and Vico

429 437 441 447

I X . THE END OF THE EPOCH

452

NAME INDEX

459

SUBJECT INDEX

.'

475

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAITS

1. 2. 3. 4.

Francesco Petrarch, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century. . . . after p. 12 Giovanni Boccaccio, engraving by P. de Jode I, after Titian, c. 1600. ,, 12 Antonio Filarete, engraving, c. 1600 „ 76 Nicholas of Cusa, fragment of a painting in a church in Cues, 15th century „ 76 5. Lorenzo Valla, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century ,, 92 6. Girolamo Savonarola, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century. ,, 92 7. Leone Battista Alberti, engraving by F. Allegrini after G. Zocchi, 1765 „ 92 8. Marsiglio Ficino, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century. . . . „ 92 9. Pietro Bembo, engraving, 17th century ,, 116 10. Balthasar Count Castiglione, engraving by J. Sandrart after Raphael, 17th century „ 124 11. Leonardo da Vinci, self-portrait, cartoon in Turin „ 124 12. Michelangelo Buonarroti, engraving by G. Ghisi, before 1580. . . „ 156 13. Girolamo Cardano, woodcut, 1553 „ 156 14. Marco Girolamo Vida, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century. . ,, 156 15. Girolamo Fracastoro, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century. „ 156 16. Iulius Caesar Scaliger, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century. „ 156 17. Torquato Tasso, engraving by J. David, 1627 „ 156 18. Benedetto Varchi, engraving, c. 1600 „ 156 19. Lodovico Dolce, woodcut, 16th century „ 196 20. Giorgio Vasari, engraving by P. A. Parriso (Parisot) after G. Menabuoni ,, 196 21. Andrea Palladio, engraving by B. Picart after P. Caliari, 18th century. „ 196 22. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, engraving by V. Denon, c. 1800 „ 204 23. Federigo Zuccaro, engraving by N. Billy after G. D. Campiglia, 18 th century „ 204 24. Cesare Ripa, engraving, c. 1600 ,, 204 25. Claude François Menestrier, engraving by I. B. Nolin after P. Simon,

χ

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

26. Albrecht Dürer, engraving by J. Haid after J. Rotenhammer, 18th century after p. 220 27. Michel de Montaigne, engraving, 16th century „ 268 28. François de Malherbe, engraving by J. Lubin, early 17th century. ,, 268 29. Francesco Patrizi, engraving, 16th century 268 30. Giordano Bruno, engraving, 17th century „ 268 31. Giacomo Zabarella, engraving, late 16th century „ 284 32. Sir Philip Sidney, engraving by P. Elstracke and C. Holland, late 16th century „ 284 33. Lope de Vega Carpio, engraving by I. de Courbes, c. 1600 ,, 284 34. Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, drawing based on an old portrait, „ 284 19 th century , 35. Rudolph Goclenius, engraving, 17th century „ 316 36. Lorenzo Bernini, engraving by G. B. Gaulli and A. v. Westerhout, based on a self-portrait, 17th century ,, 316 37. Pierre Charron, engraving, early 17th century 38. Franciscus Junius, engraving by A. v. Werff and P. Gunst, 1694. 39. Nicolas Poussin, engraving by G. Audran after J. Pesne, 17th century. 40. Giovanni Pietro Bellori, engraving, 17th century 41. Jean Chapelain, engraving by R. Nanteuil, 1699 42. Pierre Corneille, engraving by L. Cossin after F. Sicre, 17th century. 43. George de Scudéry, engraving by R. Nanteuil, 17th century.. . 44. Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, engraving by P. Drevet after H. Rigaud, 17th century 45. René Descartes, engraving by G. Edelinck after F. Hals, 17th century. 46. Pierre Nicole, engraving by A. L. de la Lave, 17th century 47. Emmanuel Tesauro, engraving by Despienne after Ch. Cl. Dauphin, 17th century 48. Dominique Bouhours, engraving by N. Habert after J. Jouvenet, 17th century 49. Charles Le Brun, engraving by J. Lubin based on a self-portrait, 17th century 50. 51. 52. 53.

André Félibien, engraving by P. Drevet after Ch. Le Brun, c. 1700. Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, engraving, late 17th century. . . . Roger de Piles, engraving by B. Picart, 1704 Claude Perrault, engraving by G. Edelinck after Vercelin, late 17th century 54. Jean Baptiste Dubos, engraving by Ch. E. Gaucher, 18th century. 55. Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, engraving, 18th century 56. Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Vico, engraving by F. Sesone, 18th century

,, „ „ „ ,, „ ,,

316 348 348 348 348 348 348

,,

348

,, ,,

348 380

„

380

„

380

„

380

„ ,, ,,

396 396 412

,, ,, „

412 428 444

,,

444

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XI

OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

I. Hierarchy of the Sciences. Allegory. Woodcut in: G. Reisch, Margarita philosophica, 1503 after p. 76 II. Music. Allegory. Woodcut in: G. Reisch, Margarita philosophica, 1503 „ 76 III. The Papal Cancelleria, Rome, built in the years 1487-1497, universally regarded as one of the surpassing masterpieces of Renaissance architecture „ 108 IV. The Villa Thieni in Cicogna, designed by Andrea Palladio. . . . „ 108 V. Architecture should have the same proportions as the human body. Drawing by Francesco di Giorgio in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Codex Magliab p. 115 VI. The proportions of the human body correspond to geometrical figures. Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, 1492, in the Venetian Academy, after p. 116 VII. The Academy of Fine Arts, engraving by C. Cort after J. v.d. Straet, 1578 „ 196 VIII. Painting and Sculpture. Allegory. Engraving by J. Palma in: J. Franchi, De excellentia et nobilitate delineationis ,, 196 IX. Painting and Sculpture. Allegory. Engraving by Le Clerc after Ch. Le Brun in: Conférences de VAcadémie, 1670 ,, 196 X. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Γ architecture antique et moderne, Π02 ,, 196 XI. The Church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi, built after 1508 by Cola di Caprarola. Ground-plan and Section „ 196 XII. The Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, built by Donato Bramante in 1502. Section and Ground-plan ,, 196 XIII. Bramante's design for St. Peter's, Rome, 1506. Ground-plan. . . „ 196 XIV. Michelangelo's design for St. Peter's, Rome, c. 1546. Ground-plan. ,, 196 XVa. The Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, designed by Andrea Palladio and „ 196 built in the years 1567-1591 „ 196 XVb. The Królikarnia Palace near Warsaw, built by Domenico Merlini, 1788 „ 196 XVc. Palace in Lubostron, built by Stanislaw Zawadzki, 1800 196 XVI. Nine ground-plans for centrally-designed churches by S. Serlio, taken from his Treatise on Architecture (1st ed.), 1537 „ 196 XVII. Art. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603. „ 220 XVIII. Poetry. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603. 220 XIX. Furor Poeticus. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603 „ 220

xii

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XX. Beauty. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603. after p. 220 XXI. Venustà. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603. „ 220 XXII. Symmetry. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603 „ 220 XXIII. Design. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603. „ 220 XXIV. Nature. Allegory. Woodcut in: E. Ripa, Iconologia, 3rd ed., 1603. „ 220 XXV. Sight. Allegory. Engraving by G. Fentzel after M. de Vos, c. 1650. „ 220 XXVI. Smell. Allegory. Engraving by G. Fentzel after M. de Vos, c. 1650. „ 220 XXVII. Beauty-Vanity. Allegory. Engraving by J. de Gheyn, c. 1600. „ 220 XXVIII. The Muse of the Dance. Allegory. Engraving by H. Goltzius, 1592 „ 220 XXIX. The Muse of Epic Poetry. Allegory. Engraving by H. Goltzius, 1592 „ 220 XXX. Music. Allegory. Engraving by L. Kilian, 1606 „ 220 XXXI. Eloquence. Allegory. Engraving by L. Kilian, 1606 „ 220 XXXII. Architecture. Allegory. Engraving by B. Audran after L. Boulogne in: Ch. Perrault, Cabinet des Beaux Arts, 1690 ,, 220 XXXIII. Nature. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Γ architecture antique et moderne, 1702. ,, 220 XXXIV. Artistic Knowledge. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Varchitecture antique et moderne, 1702 ,. 220 XXXV. The Artistic Idea. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Varchitecture antique et moderne, 1702 „ 220 XXXVI. The Artistic Imagination. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Varchitecture antique et moderne, 1702 „ 220 XXXVII. Artistic Imitation. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Varchitecture antique et moderne, 1702 „ 220 XXXVIII. Artistic Practice. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de l'architecture antique et moderne, 1702 „ 220 XXXIXa. Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, built by Giacomo Vignola, 1559-1573 „ 316 XXXIXb. The Krzyitopór Castle in Ujazd, built by Lorenzo Mureto de Sent, 1631-1644 „ 316 XL. Plan of the colonnade before St. Peter's in Rome, designed by Lorenzo Bernini, 1656-1667 332 XLI. Ancient Art the Model for Modern. Allegory. Engraving from F. Junius' De pictura veterum, 1694 „ 332

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xiii

XLII. Zeuxis Painting a Goddess with Five Beautiful Women as Models, after p. 332 Engraving by R. Collin, after J. Sandrart in: J. Sandrart, Academia artis pictoriae, 1683 „ 332 XLIII. Birds want to eat Fruit Painted by Parrhasius. Engraving by R. Collin, after J. Sandrart in: J. Sandrart, Academia artis pictoriae, 1683 „ 332 XLIV. Nature the Model for Art. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin, after Errard, in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Γ architecture antique et moderne, 1702 „ 332 XLV. Measure Rules Art. Allegory. Engraving taken from H. Testelin, Sentimens des peintres sur la peinture, 1696 „ 396 XLVI. Models of Facial Expressions. Engraving after Ch. Le Brun from: H. Testelin, Sentimens des peintres sur la peinture, 1996 ,, 396 XLVII. The Great Colonnade of the Louvre in Paris, designed by Claude Perrault, 1665 „ 428 Plates I-II come from the Warsaw University Library; VII from the Cartoon Room of Warsaw University; IX, Χ, ΧΧΧΠΙ-ΧΧΧνΠΙ, XLV and XLVI from the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; VIII and XXV-XXXI from the National Museum in Warsaw; XLI-XLIII from the Jagellonian Library in Cracow; XVII-XXIV from the National Library in Warsaw; V and XI from R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism·, The architectural drawings were prepared by the Department of History of Architecture, Warsaw Technical University, under the direction of Prof. P. Bieganski.

Les hommes ont des différentes notions qu'ils appliquent aux mêmes termes. Et s'il est difficile d'entendre le sens des termes des gens de notre temps, il y a bien plus de difficultés d'entendre les anciens livres.* G. W. Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain, IX.

* People have different notions which they apply to the same terms. And if it is difficult to understand the sense of the terms used in the works of our time, it is even more difficult to understand the ancient books.

PREFACE

Robert Zimmermann, in his at one time highly-regarded Geschichte der Ästhetik als philosophischer Wissenschaft (1858) wrote: "In the philosophy of beauty and art, the centuries from the third to the seventeenth are nothing more than one great gap (nichts als eine grosse Lücke)". A similar opinion was expressed by M. Schasler in another well-known history of aesthetics of that period, Kritische Geschichte der Ästhetik, 1872, Vol. I, p. 253. Neither work, of course, had anything to say about the "great gap". B. Bosanquet, author of the third and last large-scale history of aesthetics published in the nineteenth century, A History of Aesthetics, 1892, devoted only a few sentences to the period in question. A different approach is adopted by the present writer. The subject of volume II and volume III is the development of aesthetics from the third through the seventeenth centuries, precisely that period, in other words, which until recently was regarded as a "great gap". This volume of the History of Aesthetics, written five years after the two preceding volumes, has the same character as the first two. The discussion is not limited to the aesthetic views of philosophers, but includes opinions contained in treatises on poetics, painting and architecture. Nor is the analysis limited to aesthetic views openly stated expressis verbis, but includes also what can be gleaned from works of art, buildings and paintings, poems and musical compositions, and even modes of dress. As in the first two volumes, an attempt is made to show not only what was new in aesthetics, but also what was typical of each period. As before, the expository discussion is supplemented by a collection of original texts. The sources are supplied together with translations. Biographical details about aestheticians are limited to what seems necessary for an understanding of their views. The bibliography is also limited to what seems particularly important; a full bibliography of the subject was not intended as part of this history. As in the previous volumes, discussion of the history of aesthetics is supplemented by a discussion of events in the history of the visual arts and literature, and even in economic and political history—but only when such events apparently caused or ran spectacularly parallel to events in the history of aesthetics. The reader who wishes to read about aesthetics in the strict sense of the term may be left unsatisfied by the chapters on methodology, the Renaissance and Humanism, the state of painting and architecture, and philosophical trends in Renaissance Italy.

xviii

PREFACE

Nevertheless, without such background material the aesthetic views of the humanists and artists and professors of the 15th and 16th centuries would be much harder to understand. This applies equally to the Baroque and Mannerist periods. There are differences between this volume and the previous ones. But then the times which are discussed were different. Or rather they seem different to the historian, being less remote and more readily comprehensible. Furthermore, since these times already belong to the age of printing, their opinions have been better preserved and are better known. The larger number of statements in print makes it possible to place less emphasis on the aesthetics implicit in works of art themselves. Such procedures cannot be avoided altogether, however. For example, many artists of the 17th century advocated classicism, while practising Baroque. Which is more important, the explicit aesthetics, or the implicit one which actually guided their creative work? This volume, like its predecessors, contains original texts; but those included here have a different, more illustrative purpose. Whereas it was possible to include nearly all of the texts of antiquity and the Middle Ages because there were so few of them, the larger number of works produced in the 15th—17th centuries makes it impossible to think of them as a complete "corpus aestheticae". A choice among texts along the lines of an anthology was all that was possible. But all such differences between the aesthetics of the first centuries of the modern' era and the aesthetics of antiquity and the Middle Ages are formal in nature. They concern only the degree to which these aesthetics are known and the manner in which they are interpreted. The aesthetics of our period remained similar to that of earlier periods. Such a conclusion becomes obvious when one compares earlier aesthetics with contemporary aesthetics. The aesthetic thinking of the 15th, l-6th and 17th centuries seems just as outdated today as ancient and medieval aesthetics. Despite certain changes, it remained close to ancient and medieval aesthetics; it is more similar to them than to the aesthetics of today. Aesthetics was still not a unified discipline. It had neither a special name nor its own specialized practitioners. As in previous centuries, aesthetics was largely the preserve of philosophers, and still more, of men of letters and artists. Despite the voluminous recent literature on the Renaissance and Baroque, the aesthetics of these times has still been little investigated. The historian of these periods must again rely directly on the sources. Most of these were obtained from the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow and the National Library and Warsaw University Library in Warsaw. Gaps in these Polish holdings were filled in by collections in the Marcian Library in Venice, the British Museum and the Warburg Institute in London, and libraries in Paris and America. The richness and diversity of the historical material created its own special difficulties. It was difficult to decide where to place the starting-point of modern aesthetics, how to classify its various sub-types, and when to regard the period as ending. It seemed appropriate to begin with the end of the Middle Ages, around the year 1400. In some ways, however, it was necessary to begin earlier, for Renaissance motifs

PREFACE

xix

had already appeared in the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio; in other respects, later, for at least another quarter of a century was to pass before these motifs became dominant over medieval ones. Periodization occasioned ever more difficulties. The principles of division which were finally accepted required that this history be presented in alternating chapters focusing first on developments in aesthetic theory and then on the resultant state of that theory at the end of each century. The periodization network is much denser than in the first two volumes, for there was more thinking on aesthetic problems, and more of this thought is known to us. Discussion follows the chronological principle as closely as possible, but since this is a history, not a chronicle, one must group together similar trends in aesthetics, and a departure from chronological order is sometimes necessary. To end this volume with the year 1700 may seem arbitrary. This choice was made not for formal reasons alone (so that the volume be of reasonable length), but also in the belief that this date is a watershed in the history of aesthetics. Perhaps this date was not as significant for art, literature, politics or economic relationships, but it was important for aesthetics and the whole of philosophy, which now passed from the period of the great systems towards the Enlightenment. Even taking this date as given, however, concrete problems of application still remained. One had to decide whether to include Dubos and Vico, whether to exclude Shaftesbury and Addison. It is quite true that the great change did not take place in one year—historical periods cannot be cut so finely—but it did take place more or less around 1700. Only after this date does one observe a loosening of tradition and a growing dissimilarity between modern aesthetics and that of antiquity and the Middle Ages in that one "classical" doctrine no longer prevails. Only after 1700 does one encounter the term "aesthetics"; only then is the attempt made to turn aesthetics into a separate discipline. The scope of the "fine arts" becomes more precisely defined and the psychological method and subjective understanding of aesthetic values firmly established. These great changes took place during the 18th century: only then did the aesthetics of modern times become truly modern. "Modern" aesthetics in this sense is not the subject of the present History of Aesthetics. Should its author wish to continue the story further, he will have to follow another method and develop a different framework. Although the present work tries to integrate similar views and to treat related authors together, it nevertheless repeats certain ideas. Time and again such motifs as art imitating nature, selection from nature, the unchanging rules of art, etc. recur in new form. These repetitions are introduced intentionally. A certain monotony cannot be avoided, because only in this way can one give an accurate picture of the aesthetics of these centuries, emphasize the constancy of their theses, their slow development, and their persistent attachment to certain views. This background of constancy and uniformity, however, makes it easier to single out new views and departures from tradition.

XX

PREFACE

In order to be more than a mere chronicle of Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics this book had to include comparisons with both earlier and later aesthetic thinking. Comparison of historical events with earlier ones is usually felt to be innocent enough, but comparison with later events may well be rejected as an improper procedure. Such objections are unfounded, however, for comparisons of this type aid greatly in the selection and interpretation of ideas. It is comparisons like these which enable one to decide which fifteenth or sixteenth century aesthetic views should be given emphasis. The historian knows more than an earlier author whom he is investigating—and he has the right to make use of this knowledge. To be sure, the contemporary historian has convictions and requirements which differ from those of the men of the 15th or 16th century; he has a different "scientific taste". The historian who writes about the 15th or 16th century can attempt to eliminate the taste of his own epoch should he so desire. However, is this desirable? It would seem not, for the more mature taste of today makes it possible to see the contributions of the past in sharper perspective. The illustrative material in this volume is more abundant than in the previous ones. As in the earlier volumes, it includes architectural drawings which give the ideas of those times sensible form. Two other categories of illustrations are introduced. First, allegories which exemplify aesthetic concepts, allegories of beauty and art which are particularly characteristic of the first centuries of the modern era. Second, likenesses of writers who were important in the history of aesthetic thought between the 15th and 17th centuries. There are few such likenesses for the ancient and medieval periods, and those which are attested are so famous (Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure) that it would have been superfluous to have included them. In the case of the 16th and 17th centuries, however, one can find portraits, especially engravings, of nearly all those who have a place in the history of aesthetics. The publication of the portraits seemed the more appropriate inasmuch that they have not been previously collected. In collecting these portraits, the author relied mainly on the Engravings Collection of the Library of the University of Warsaw supplemented by portraits from collections in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

I. INTRODUCTION

1. The Promise of New Aesthetics People today seem convinced that art is difficult to create but easy to discuss. The practice of art, not its theory, is felt to be difficult. It is easier to create theories of art than to realize them in practice. In other words, it is easier to be an aesthetician than an artist. In the past this view was not held. The often repeated classical French formula— La critique est aisée, l'art est difficile—was coined by the dramatist Philip Destouches and first appeared in his play Le Glorieux, 1732. This notion was not present in antiquity, the Middle Ages, or even in the Renaissance. In the Renaissance, a century and a half before Destouches, Montaigne had expressed an entirely different opinion of poetry, namely, that it is easier to create poetry than to understand its basic principles (// est plus aisé de la faire que la conoistre). Although he was speaking of poetry, he held the same view about art as a whole. It is really impossible to decide which of these two activities is the easier. One individual finds it easier to write good verse, another to write good poetic criticism. Nonetheless, the historian can establish how these activities fared at different times. He will find that during certain periods the practice of art developed more rapidly than theory, which encountered difficulties that even the greatest minds were unable to unravel. In these periods one can find good verse, sculpture, and music but no knowledge of general principles or explanations of what constitutes good verse, sculpture, or musical composition. Such was the case in the modern age. Modern art developed first, and in its wake there followed the modern theory of art and aesthetics, which is the subject of this book. The theory of art developed only slowly, precisely because it was difficult to formulate. Moreover, in the earlier stages of the modern era there was the additional reason; new theory was unnecessary, since the rediscovery of the treatises of Horace and Vitruvius satisfied the immediate need for theory in poetry and the visual arts. But as Renaissance poetry and plastic arts evolved, a new theory did become necessary, and was shortly developed. Soon after its emergence, this theory began to influence poetry and art. Modern art, then, first gave the impetus to theory and guided its development. Later, this theory, in turn, influenced art and guided its

2

INTRODUCTION

development. Modern history clearly shows a mutual dependency—theory on art and art on theory. 1. PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO. Modern forms of poetry and art that were fundamentally different from medieval forms did not appear until the fifteenth century: modern poetics and art theory began to develop simultaneously. * The work of two writers of the previous century, however, Petrarch (111. 1) and Boccaccio (111. 2), had foreshadowed this new poetry and theory. Their work was no more than an anticipation of things to come, however, for during their lifetimes and long afterwards art, poetry, aesthetic theory, ways of life, and social relationships remained essentially medieval. Petrarch was a scholar as well as a poet; and Boccaccio wrote not only the Decameron, but also a scholarly work on the history of mythologies. Above all, however, both were poets. Their theoretical views on poetry and art were expressed as occasional comments on their own literary works. Neither of them had Dante's philosophical background. But they did have theoretical views on beauty, poetry, and art, views which, for the most part, were original and new, and which ensure them a place in the history of aesthetics. Though only slightly older than they, Dante (died 1321) was still a medieval poet with a medieval style and a medieval conception of the world. Those of his views on poetry and art which appear to have non-medieval features do not seem to express his main intentions. Such is not the case with these two other great Italian writers of the fourteenth century, Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Though bom during Dante's lifetime, they did not reach maturity until a quarter-century after his death. This quarter-century was important for its shift of emphasis. In addition to Thomas Aquinas and Peter Lombard, writers could now use as authorities Cicero, Quintilian, or Varrò. Petrarch and Boccaccio were less concerned with the transcendental world than Dante and the scholastics. Boccaccio, especially, was more interested in contemporary human affairs than theology or mysticism. This interest in contemporary matters did not last throughout their lives; their last works reflect a return to the earlier mystical and moralistic style. (Boccaccio returned to this earlier style rather quickly, around 1354, only a few years after writing the Decameron.) Boccaccio and Petrarch were contemporaries, fellow-countrymen, and personal acquaintances. Boccaccio consciously modelled himself on his elder, Petrarch. Their literary work, though different from various points of view, had similar aesthetic foundations. Hence, their aesthetic views can be treated conjointly. Petrarch initiated the new aesthetics, Boccaccio developed it. Their general aesthetic views are similar, their particular ones complementary. Petrarch expressed his views on poetry, art, and beauty in passing—in his Invectivae, Epistolae Familiares, and Epistolae Seniles, * K. Vossler, Poetische Theorien der italienischen Frührenaissance, 1900. S. Scandura, L'estetica di Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, 1938.

THE PROMISE OF NEW AESTHETICS

3

Boccaccio, by contrast, devoted two special chapters of the Genealogy of Pagan Gods (Chapters 14 and 15)* to these same matters. Though their artistic work and views were very unusual for the fourteenth century, there were, nevertheless, certain social factors which favoured such a development. Petrarch led an active life in various social circles and under different conditions and alternated his residence between Italy and France. Boccaccio, too, lived in various places, among them Naples and Florence. But he owed little to Florence and its artistic environment, for at this time Florence was still a city of politicians and businessmen who were not interested in science and the arts. The inspiration for his artistic creativity seems rather to have come from Naples, where he spent his youth (and met Petrarch) and where the court of Robert of Angevin was like the Decameron—very artistic and very uninhibited. 2. GENERAL VIEWS. Petrarch and Boccaccio used the terms "beauty", "art", and "poetry", but in meanings different to those they were to acquire in later aesthetic writings. Their concept of beauty, consistent with ancient and medieval tradition, was both narrower and broader than our concept. It was narrower in that, for the most part, it referred only to the beauty of man, not of nature and art: and it was broader in that in relation to man, it included not only the beauty of his body, but the virtues of his soul as well. Art was also interpreted in accordance with ancient and medieval tradition, hence more broadly than today: it meant the ability to produce things, not just the art of producing pictures and verses, but any skill based on principles and rules. Boccaccio, making use of the distinctions drawn by the scholastics, already had a clearer conception of art (ars); he distinguished it from wisdom (sapientia), from science (scientia), as also from purely practical skills (facultas). Since they were both professional writers, Petrarch and Boccaccio were almost exclusively interested in literary art. However, they detected certain features of literature which are equally present in all the arts. Some of these features had not been noticed before: their poetics thus foreshadows the new aesthetics. 3. DEFINITION OF POETRY. The Greeks of the classical period had not thought of poetry as an art; they regarded it as being the product of inspiration, not rules. Since poetry was not subject to rules, it could not be an art. This opinion began to change only from the time of Aristotle, who was perhaps the first to show that poetry is also subject to certain rules, and hence similar to the arts. Only from this time was poetry regarded as a kind of art. The Middle Ages inherited this belief. In the history of European thought, then, there was first a period in which poetry was not regarded as an art, and then a period in which it was regarded as an art like any other. On the threshold of the Renaissance, however, a third period in the evolution of the concept of poetry began. The view became accepted that poetry was, indeed, an art, but one distinct and different from all the others. * C. G. Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry, Princeton, 1930.

4

INTRODUCTION

In the writings of Petrarch and Boccaccio one can find at least six features of poetry distinguished: 1. poetry results from man's need to express himself (desiderium dicendi); 2. in expressing himself the poet invents things (invertii), some of which are untrue, unreal, incredible, and non-existent (inauditae inventiones); 3. the poet speaks the truth only in a veiled manner (velamento veritatem contegit) ; 4. he strives to make this screen beautiful (exquisita, amoena) ; 5. he fulfils this task with fervour (fervor); 6. despite its "unreality" and "fervour" poetry is subject to certain rules, basically the same rules which apply in grammar and rhetoric. Petrarch and Boccaccio mention these features at different points in their writings, but treating the latter as a whole the historian can present these features as one group. Which of these features did they regard as the most essential? Which one did they introduce into the definition of poetry? They gave at least two different definitions. Firsta· 2 ) * poetry is beautifully (exquisite) composed speech which represents everything behind a veil (sub velamento). The definitive features of poetry here are beauty and allegory. Second, poetry is speech characterized by fervour, beauty, and inventiveness (inventio). In addition to beauty, two other qualities, fervour and inventiveness, appear in this definition which are absent from the first. Beauty appears in both definitions. This was something of a novelty, for the majority of earlier writers, until Dante, had not mentioned beauty in connection with poetry. The introduction of inventiveness as a distinguishing feature of poetry was also a new idea. The same is true of fervour. To be sure, the ancient writers, especially in the Hellenistic period, had described poetry in such terms as fervor, inflammatio, enthusiasmus; however, Petrarch and Boccaccio placed more emphasis on fervour and its influence than anyone before them (fervoris sublimes effectus). It was not their intention to extend this quality of poetry to other arts like painting and architecture. Like the ancients, they regarded it as a peculiar feature of poetry: peculiar to poetry, but not present in all poetry. There are, they held, two kinds of poets : (4) the first are the skilful and scholarly poets (poeta-theologus, poeta-rhetor, poeta-eruditus)·, the second are characterized by Platonic "madness", divinus spiritus. Petrarch and Boccaccio also defined poetry as allegory—quite naturally in view of the allegorical character of medieval poetry. Medieval literary critics had rarely mentioned this feature of poetry, perhaps because it seemed unnecessary to discuss anything so obvious. Dante, who made use of theological distinctions in his poetics, was the first to assert that poetry could be interpreted metaphorically as well as literally. He even introduced a three-fold distinction into the metaphorical interpretation of poetry—allegorical, moral, and anagogie. Petrarch and Boccaccio placed even greater emphasis on the importance of allegory in poetry.—They described poetry as the "description of things through a veil" (sub velamento), or as the "representation of things indirectly through images" (obliquis figurationibus). Petrarch used the neologism alieniloquium(1) (which can be translated as "speech of transfer* Numerical references refer to the textual sources which are found at the end of each chapter.

THE PROMISE OF NEW AESTHETICS

5

enee") and explained that this expression meant the same thing as that which is usually called allegory. It might appear, then, that Petrarch simply retained the medieval interpretation of poetry as allegory. But it was precisely here that he introduced a great change, one of those changes which go unnoticed because they express new ideas with old words. The difference can be explained as follows: In the medieval interpretation, allegory was supposed to express philosophical and theological truths that were hidden from and unknown to man: the allegorical form was used because such difficult truths were more easily explained indirectly than directly. Allegory in Petrarch's and Boccaccio's interpretation, however, was only supposed to embellish ordinary truths that were known to everyone; in a certain sense, allegory was even supposed to hide truths which were too ordinary/ 3 ' Medieval allegory had philosophical-theological objectives, whereas this second kind had only aesthetic ones. This change in the conception of allegory took place between Dante and Petrarch. Petrarch, then, attributed two quite opposite features to poetry—craftsmanship and fervour, or skill and feeling. The historian should note that there were certain features he did not attribute to poetry, in particular, one thing which poetry had been suspected of in the Middle Ages, and indeed from the time of Plato, namely, of being deceitful, and hence harmful. 4. POETRY AND TRUTH. For the three great poets of the Trecento the most problematical thing about poetry was its relationship to reality; for poetry speaks of real things as well as of "unheard-of" ones. Moreover, they said, it "reveals the truth". In other words, if poetry represents reality, it represents it faithfully. Of course, "revelation of truth" by poetry had been a stock phrase since at least the time of Macrobius. And this revelation of truth was, simultaneously, its veiling through metaphor (alieniloquium), without which, Petrarch would not regard any writing as poetry. In any event, he regarded as unfounded medieval arguments concerning the deceitfulness of poetry. On the contrary, he thought that "truth is illuminated" in poetry. But he did state that the poet gives truth a different form.— Truth in poetry is no longer ordinary, "plebian" truth accessible to everyone. It is refined, exceptional, and difficult. "Poets do not lie", For poets the word for, and idea of, phantasy did not, curiously, yet exist. On this point the theory of the visual arts preceded the theory of poetry. Cennini added a new term—disegno—to the general terms used in earlier works. Not only was this a new term, it was a new concept as well, and one which was destined to become one of the central concepts of Renaissance theory of art. It is difficult to say whether this was Cennini's own idea, or whether this too was a term

* J. Schlosser, Die Kunstliteratur, 1924, p. 77 et seq. — L. Venturi, History of Art Criticism, 1936, p. 79 et seq. — The treatise of Cennini was published as late as 1821 ; a better edition (Milan) came out in 1859; among translations the earliest is in English, 1844. t F. Antal, Florentine Painting and its Social Background, 1947.

THE YEAR 1400

29

used in the workshops of painters. With Cennini the term "disegno" already had the two meanings which it has today in Italian: it meant a drawing as well as a project or intention. Disegno is not what the artist discovers, but what he creates. It is the active element in art in contrast t a the passive one. This concept, which appeared with Cennini around 1400, would continue to play a leading role in Renaissance aesthetics. 5. ANALYTICAL AND EVALUATIVE JUDGEMENTS. A quarter of a century had passed in 1400 since the deaths of Petrarch and Boccaccio, but some of their thoughts were still remembered (at least in certain literary circles): among these was the idea that poetry is inventive and strives toward beauty. But these thoughts—together with Cennini's fantasia and disegno—were all that was added to the theory of art and poetry around 1400. But this was not insignificant—ritrarre la natura, along with inventio, cose non vedute, disegno and forma artificiosa. The mature Renaissance would add little to this other than details. And all of this was already to be found in Cennini around 1400, even before the great rediscovery of antiquity of the fifteenth century. More can be discovered from the art of those times. Scenes from everyday life on canvas and fabric, secular portraits, a soft and elegant style even in religious portraits, and beautiful Madonnas—all seem to suggest another non-Gothic beauty, a beauty without transcendence which did not require anagogie or analogical interpretation. Art began to evolve away from the earlier conception without leaving the medieval framework and the Gothic style; there was gradual evolution not sudden change. The aesthetics of those times was made up of statements of two kinds : analytical and evaluative. The first explained such matters as the nature of beauty, art, poetry and artistry, as well as the artist's relation to his work and his work's relation to nature. Then, as now, these were the most important issues in aesthetics. Being by nature, however, abstract and difficult, they appealed only to a few. And once the appropriate judgements had been formulated, they were passed on from generation to generation; consequently, their development was gradual. On the other hand, this gradual development made them relatively independent of the artistic situation and taste of the time in which they had been formulated, of fluctuations in artistic trends and tastes. The independence of these judgements can mistakenly lead one to regard them as objective. At the turn of the fourteenth century, the beginning of the modern era, there was little interest in such analytical matters. The epoch displayed little intellectual resource and little interest in improving inherited concepts. Such was not the case with regard to evaluative judgements, those, for example, which stated that beauty consists in richness of form or, on the contrary, in simplicity of form, in works of art that are simple and natural or in those which are contrived and unusual. Every epoch produces statements of this kind, be they expressis verbis, or implicit in the art, dress, dwellings and way of life, of the age. These were judgements of taste, and every epoch has its taste, its value judgements. Whenever taste changed, accepted value judgements would loose their force, whilst earlier analytical

30

THE YEAR 1400

statements about beauty and art would, for the most part, remain unchanged. The period around 1400, poor in analytical aesthetics, created its own aesthetics of taste and value judgements. Even though it was not formulated by writers, we can, nevertheless, discover it, because it was implied in the art, and even more in the dress and manners of the time*. 6. MANNERIST AESTHETICS. The dress of the time was marked by invention, idiosyncracy and extravagence. Even men wore multicoloured and asymmetrical dress; their dress was frequently divided vertically, and the right half was different from the left half; they wore décolletage like women, at times even featuring bells, and headgear of the most diverse shapes, on occasion composed of two caps, one on top of the other. Footwear became more and more elongated, until finally, in order to move, the points were tied to the knees. In the fifteenth century these extremely elongated forms were even used by the military. Clothes were impractical, even dangerous, but little thought was paid to this. Historians say that impractical dress was the reason for the defeat of the French at Agincourt—when horses fell, the armour and clothes of the knights did not permit them to move. The flowing streamers attached to helmets for decoration and elegance were likewise held to be responsible for the disaster at Crécy. The elegance of the times was uncomfortable and irrational, but more care was paid to this than to comfort and sense. Men's clothing took little account of the human form, women's clothing even less. Waist and belt were placed much higher than the natural build of the body. At the same time, trains were contrived which trailed along the ground or had to be carried by servants. The cornets and veils, of women's headdress became so high and broad as to impede movement, often even hindering passage through doorways. Hairdressing was artificial and unnatural—men wore hair curled in locks, and women affected to have unnaturally high foreheads. All of these elements were unmistakable signs of mannerist taste. To a certain extent, this taste was transferred to art, even to church art. Architecture was loaded down with an excess of decoration, strange holes known as "donkeys backs" were placed in windows and doors, utensils had an excess of carvings and decorations, church chalices had such elaborate rims that they were difficult to use. Dishes were shaped in imitation of animals or ships. The love of interior decoration led to a custom which seems natural today but was unknown at the time: then—and only then—did people begin to hang pictures on the walls of dwellings. Painters dressed people in exaggerated contemporary costumes even in scenes from the Old and New Testaments and the lives of the saints, not just in picture with contemporary themes. Mannerist proportions, body movements, and gestures entered art along with mannerist costumes. Perhaps such taste was not universal at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but there can be no doubt that it did exist. It was not expressed in any written source, but it can be discerned in the * J. v. Falke, Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks, 1880.

TEXTS FROM CENNINI

31

fashions and manners of the time. The essence of this taste was a predilection for artificial, contrived forms: elegance was more pleasing than naturalness and simplicity, and only elegance seemed beautiful. Mannerism appeared in life and customs around 1400; only later did it penetrate literature and art (in the 15th and 16th centuries) and still later, aesthetics (in the 17th century).

A-l. Texts from Cennini C. CENNINI, Il libro dell' arte, I, 1 (ed. D. V. Thompson). 1. E quest'é un'arte che si chiama depingnere, che conviene avere fantasia e hoperazione di mano, di trovare cose non vedute, diacciandosi sotto ombra di naturali e fermarle con la mano dando a dimonstrare quello che non ne sia. E con ragione merita metterla assedere in secondo grado alla scienza, e choronarla di poesia. La ragione è questa: che'l poeta con la scienza, per una che ha, il fa degno, e libero di potere conporre e legare insieme, sì e non, come gli piace, secondo sua volontà. Per lo simile, al dipintore dato é libertà potere conporre una figura ritta, a sedere, mezzo huomo, mezzo cavallo, siccome gli piace, secondo sua fantasia.

COSE NON VEDUTE 1. There is an art called painting, which requires phantasy and manual dexterity to discover and make permanent unseen things hidden behind real ones, and to prove that what is not, exists. Quite properly, this art deserves to be placed second, after science and before poetry, because the poet, though he has only one skill, is free and worthy to create things and make connections as he sees fit. The painter has the freedom to conceive a standing or a sitting figure, or a half-man-half-horse as he wills and according to his phantasy.

C. CENNINI, ibid. I, 27. 2. Però che se ti muovi a ritrarre oggi di questo maestro, doman di quello, né maniera dell'uno né maniera dell'altro, non arai e verrai per forza fantastichetto chè amor per ciaschuna maniera ti straderà la mente. Ora voi fare a modo di questo, doman di quello altro, e chosl nessuno n'arai perfetto. Se seguiti l'andar d'uno, per chontinuvo uso, ben sarà lo intelletto grosso che non ne piglie qualche cibo. Poi a te interverrà che se punto di fantasia la natura t'arà concieduto, verrai a pigliare una maniera propria per te, e non potrà essere altro che buona; perché la mano e lo intelletto tuo, essendo sempre uso di pigliare fiori, mal saprebbe torre spina.

PHANTASY AND STYLE 2. Meanwhile, should you begin to draw according to one style today and another style tomorrow, you will not master the techniques of either but will become an eccentric, for the inclination to pursue every style will cause you to lose your balance. Now you will wish to work according to one style, tomorrow according to another, without perfecting either. But if you hold consistently to one style and practice it continually, then you would truly have to be dull not to begin to profit from it. Even if you are only weakly endowed with phantasy by nature, the time will come when you will have your own style; and it will surely have to be good, for if your intellect becomes used to gathering flowers, your hand shuns the thorns.

C. CENNINI, ibid. I, 28. 3. Attendi, che la più perfetta guida che possa avere, e miglior timone, sie la trionfai porta del ritrarre naturale.

RITRARRE NATURALE 3. Take care to follow the most perfect guide and best helm which you can have, the triumphal arch of drawing from nature.

III. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

1. The Renaissance The first years of the fifteenth century saw the beginning of the period in history known as the Renaissance. The beginning of this period was also the beginning of the modern era in the history of Europe. There are many reasons for regarding this moment as the beginning of a new era: 1. At this time, there was a departure from convictions and predilections which had lasted throughout the thousand years of the Middle Ages. This departure consisted above all in a turning away from the transcendental world; temporal matters began to engross people, and the laicization of life and culture began. 2. In one European country, Italy, art, science, and refinement of life advanced far beyond that of any other country. This one country alone created a new and lofty culture. * 3. Having emancipated itself from the recent medieval tradition, Italy renewed a much older tradition, that of antiquity, which again became alive and relevant. 4. The visual arts led the way in the cultural advance, and artists enjoyed a position superior to that they had had in previous centuries. The aspirations of the Italian Renaissance were only partially realized. It became impossible to make a complete break with medieval culture, or to return to antiquity completely. Nonetheless, the achievements of this period were new and important. The new predilections and aspirations also concerned aesthetics. Its fate was influenced by the departure from medieval tradition and the return to antiquity, and by the laicization of culture and the primacy of Italy in the visual arts. The historian of aesthetics must accordingly place his principal emphasis on Italy, the ancient inheritance, and the theory of the visual arts. 2. DEBATES ABOUT THE RENAISSANCE. There are many debatable issues about the Renaissance: When did it begin? Did it appear suddenly, or was it the product of gradual development? Does it belong to modern times, or was it only a transitional phase? How long did it last, and when did it end? What are its essential features?

* A. Hauser, A Social History of Art, 1,1951, p. 274, even sees in this one of the essential features of the Renaissance: "The Renaissance appears to be a particular form in which the Italian natural spirit emancipates itself from universal European culture".

THE RENAISSANCE

33

Was it a specifically Italian phenomenon, or was it also a universal European one? Did it mark an epoch only in the history of art or in the whole of culture as well? The answers to these questions are so diverse that in the final analysis it might seem that everything one might say about the Renaissance would be dubious. Such is not the case, however: the truth of the matter is that everything was fluid at that time, as is usually the case in history. It is also true that the Renaissance was not monolithic. Art developed in one way, science in another. The period began in one way, ended in another. But in art and the theory of art, at least, thé Renaissance was a distinct period with clear features. The chronological limits of the Renaissance are a dispute issue. Some historians maintain that the Renaissance was just developing in the 15th century. Italian scholars call this age the century of "Humanism", and regard the Renaissance as beginning from the 16th century. Others, however, see it as coming to an end around 1530, since at this time art was already passing under the influence of the new trends of Mannerism and Baroque. If one acepts this, it follows that the Renaissance lasted only one generation, from 1500 to 1530. This kind of reductionism has been taken even further. One generation, it is argued, is not a period, but merely a transition between periods; therefore, the generation of 1500 was only a transitional phase between Gothic on the one hand and Mannerism and Baroque on the other. Hence the assertion of at least one well-known historian that there was no Renaissance. But a periodization which eliminates such a distinct phenomenon as the Renaissance cannot be correct. Nor can it be correct to limit the Renaissance to one generation (1500-1530), for in this case Ghiberti, Alberti, and Ficino, on the one hand, and Palladio, on the other, would not belong to the Renaissance. The generation of 1500 occupied only the centre of this period: the period itself began earlier and ended later. Certain elements of Renaissance culture and aesthetic thinking had already appeared around 1400 and were still very much in evidence in 1600. Consequently, there are grounds for asserting that the Renaissance lasted for two centuries. The period began around 1400, with the turn away from the Middle Ages and the appearance of an intoxication with antiquity, and the emergent dominance of Italy, and the visual arts; and ended in 1600, when all of these things had passed away. 3 . FEATURES OF THE RENAISSANCE. Jacob Burkhardt, whose works are one of the central pillars of Renaissance scholarship, regarded individualism and naturalism as the essential features of this period. But both of these words are ambiguous and are applicable only in a certain meaning. The Renaissance did, indeed, produce many outstanding individuals, and in this sense it was an era of individualism. But it strove to create a culture of universal, not individual, forms. Naturalism was also a feature of the Renaissance, if by naturalism one understands a temporal attitude * R. Hamann, Geschichte der Kunst, I ed. 1932, the last 1969 (I-VI vols.). A similar view was presented by O. Spengler.

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THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

without transcendence. But naturalism was not a feature of the Renaissance, if naturalism is taken to mean an interest in nature. On the contrary, the Renaissance was more interested in man than in the nature surrounding him. Other definitions of the Renaissance have been proposed. But a definition like Michelet's—"the epoch which discovered man and the world"—is only a phrase. "An epoch with a particular interest in man?" But this can be said of any epoch. "An epoch of universal men?" But one cannot characterize an entire epoch on the basis of a few exceptional people like Alberti, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. "An epoch of freedom?" Quite surely false, for the Renaissance was ruled over by numerous precepts and prohibitions, and had its own authorities and canons, the only difference being that these restrictions were more secular than those of the Middle Ages. "An epoch of optimism?" Neither Leonardo, Michelangelo, nor Macchiavelli were optimists. Even should one decide to eliminate the external phenomena which would suggest that the new era began around 1400, like for example, the concentration of culture in Italy, or even the advanced state of the visual arts, two other factors would still remain: one could still define the period as a breaking-away from the immediate past (the Middle Ages) and a return to the more distant past (antiquity), or, at a deeper level, the abandonment of the transcendental attitude and the acceptance of a secular, temporal attitude with the corresponding laicization of culture, art, and literature. This Renaissance position can be stated in the words of Alberti: "The body will decay to dust, but while it breathes to contemn the body—is to contemn life itself. On the contrary, it is wisdom to love our bodies and keep them in health". * This change was also reflected in literature, art, and aesthetics. The Renaissance introduced many changes in ways of living and thinking, but the new national language and the discovery of printing intensified these changes many times and made it seem that they were actually much greater than they were. Italian began to replace Latin, and even old thoughts appeared new in the vernacular. It seemed that new thoughts were multiplying when put in print and distributed in many copies. 4. FLUID BOUNDARIES. In fact, the changes which the Renaissance brought were partial and gradual; this was particularly true of the process of separation from the Middle Ages and the religious view of the world. Savonarola, who called for a life guided exclusively by religion, was not alone, and among his supporters was such a famous artist as Botticelli. Raphael was a close collaborator of the Papacy, and history knows of few artists who were as religious and transcendental as Michelangelo. The Platonic humanists of the Florentine Academy did not think in an orthodox manner, but they did think transcendentally. Petrarch and Valla did not hide their dislike for the Middle Ages, but other men of the Renaissance, like Pico della Mirandola, came out in its defense. At that time the Middle Ages were re* L. B. Alberti, Opere Volgari, 1843/9, Π, 487.

THE RENAISSANCE

35

proached more for bad Latin style than for scholastic ways of thinking. In Italy, most of the sciences of the quadrivium, like law, medicine or mathematics, were taught little differently than in the Middle Ages. The organization of art and artists remained the same as .in the 14th century. Giotto, who is regarded as the first artist of the Renaissance, made few departures from the Gothic. Even such a modern man as Leonardo da Vinci based himself more on medieval than on ancient scientists in his scientific investigations. All this is bound to be reflected in aesthetics and the theory of art as well. This conclusion is not surprising, for most changes in history are partial and gradual. Changes in patterns of life and thought in the Renaissance were also gradual. These changes were apparent only in the lives and thoughts of a few people, initially only in the tiny group of more enlightened and free individuals. The majority of the inhabitants of Italy, and in even greater measure of other countries of Europe in the 15th and even 17th centuries, lived, worked, travelled, and thought about the world, life, and themselves in essentially medieval ways. But artists and theorists of art were members of the few enlightened circles where the new ideas of the Renaissance were most quickly adopted. 5. Two RENAISSANCES. The Renaissance received its name for two different reasons, and the name really has two meanings. First, the Renaissance was and is regarded as the rebirth of humanity, renovatio hominis, as the movement of man to a higher level. Second, it was and is regarded as the rebirth of the past, of earlier culture, knowledge and art, the rebirth of antiquity, renovatio antiquitatis. The people of the 15th and 16th centuries, and Petrarch already in the 14th, felt that they had broken with a bad past and belonged to a "reborn" humanity, Such a feeling was not unique—at critical turning points in history people had often thought the same thing; for example, the early Christians had no less strong a feeling. The people of the Renaissance themselves spoke of their "rebirth", but they did not use this term often: it was an occasional term, not one universally accepted. It became popular only in the nineteenth century; it was not really coined by the men of the Renaissance, but by later historians. At first, the men of the Renaissance had only this second Renaissance in mind, the rebirth of the past. They regarded this renaissance of the past as a unique phenomenon, which it was really not. There had been other rebirths of antiquity in history. Antiquity itself had tried on occasions, to renew its earlier culture and return to the classical era; in the Middle Ages the Carolingian epoch was an attempt to revive ancient art and scholarship; and the thirteenth century, though the zenith of the Middle Ages, probably did more for the revival of ancient Greek philosophy than the Renaissance. But it was indeed only in the Renaissance of the 15th century that the great turning point came. The term Renaissance is used in both meanings today and is, therefore, imprecise. It is true, though, that both "renaissances" were related to one another—the people of the fifteenth century, who were anxious for an intellectual rebirth, sought assist-

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ance in the ancient writers; in order to renew art they brought about a rebirth of antiquity. 6. THE POSITION OF ITALY. The exceptional position of Italy in the Renaissance cannot be doubted, even though not everything in Renaissance art, science, and aesthetics was initiated by Italians in the 15th century. Some of the essential ideas of antiquity had already been recalled in the Middle Ages: this took place earlier in France than in Italy. * The study of ancient authors had been initiated in medieval France. The philosophical via moderna of the fifteenth century, more modern than the philosophy of the Renaissance, had also been born in France whence it spread to all of Nothern Europe. But the development of Northern Europe was slowed by wars, turmoil, and the Black Death, and Italy, where things were somewhat better, was left without competitors. Besides these negative forces, there were also positive factors working in Italy's favour. Artists attracted by antiquity found models for their art in Italy itself and could observe antiquity for themselves at first hand. Consequently, they felt that antiquity was close to them; from the time of Petrarch, Italians had felt a sense of direct kinship with antiquity. Italy also had unusually favourable geographic conditions—the land was a peninsula separated from neighbours by mountains and seas and, therefore, safer; moreover, it was self-sufficient and relatively affluent. The national character was also conducive to the development of a rich culture: talented, versatile, active and impulsive. The Italian people produced an unusual number of industrious and creative individuals. Social and political conditions were also favourable—the predominantly urban order with cities in a position of dominance, the multiplicity of small rival states, the early decline of knightly tastes and occupations, the abandonment of feudal relationships, the dominance of the merchant class, and the high standard of living spread across a sizable stratum characteristic of capitalist economies, democratic principles (not always observed in the time of the condottiere), a new aristocracy which owed its position to personal abilities and not to doubtful genealogy, great diversity of conditions of life and types of people from Lombardy and Tuscany to Rome and Naples—all of these factors created conditions which were unequalled on either side of the Alps in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "Here I am a lord" Dürer wrote in Italy "and at home I am a parasite". The conditions in Italy at the Renaissance were strikingly similar to those in Greece two thousand years ago in the classical era. The slogan in Italy now was Facciamo festa tuttavia; twenty centuries earlier Pericles had said exactly the same thing: "Every day with us is a festival". 7. THE ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS. The period of the Renaissance when this flowering of culture, and particularly art, took place was not a time of economic expansion, f * P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains, 1961. t R. S. Lopez, "Hard Times and Investment in Culture", in The Renaissance. Six Essays, ed. R. H. Bainton, 1953.

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On the contrary, the economic state of Italy at that time was rather poor. After the period of prosperity in the late Middle Ages came stagnation. Wars and plagues, which did not spare Italy altogether, caused a significant decline in population especially in the cities—Florence in Dante's time had one hundred thousand people, in Michaelangelo's time only seventy thousand. The population decline led to a shrinking of markets. Land and goods lost value, prices declined. In the great weaving centre of Florence, production declined severalfold. The customs of the port of Genoa which had yielded up to 4 million lira annually around 1300, now amounted to less than a million despite the intervening fall in value of the currency. Work became scarce and available only to the citizens of towns; often only the sons of masters could become journeymen. Taxes became burdensome and inflation struck the population, especially the bourgeoisie, who held more of their assets in cash. Cities which could not balance their budgets lost part of their autonomy. In such a financial situation only a few became wealthy, and the vast majority lost. Nevertheless, this economic decline did not hinder the development of art and science, and it even seems that it was a contributing factor in their development. Money was uncertain, and so were land and goods. The great powers—Empire and Papacy—lost much of their previous power and authority, the position of small rulers in Italian states was uncertain, and one coup followed another. But where economic, financial, and political values were undermined, there the values of intellectual culture grew. It became an "economic investment"—one of the few that could be trusted. Hence, investments were made in books, buildings, and works of art. Intellectual and artistic goods became a kind of escape from shaken economic values. And it was, precisely they which became the Renaissance's main claim to fame. The disappointment with other values increased the worth of intellectual values. It led to the Renaissance thesis that intellectual values were the highest of all goods. 8. CENTRES AND PHASES. The participation of various Italian centres in the Renaissance was uneven. The rulers of small states in Northern and Central Italy attracted artists to their courts—the Malatesta to Rimini, the Montefeltro to Urbino, the Este to Mantua, the Sforza to Milan. But the most powerful and lasting centre of art and the theory of art in the fifteenth century was the large bustling city of Florence, where power and with it, patronage over the arts were assumed by the Medici. An art and theory of art equally magnificent, though different, developed only in Venice. Venice's special advantages were, on the one hand, its wealth, and, on the other, its political alliance with Padua, the leading university centre in Italy. Florence and Venice did not cease to play a significant role in art and the theory of art at the end of the fifteenth century, but the main centre of activity had shifted to Rome. Two "geographical" phases in the Renaissance can therefore be distinguished—an earlier, Florentine (more precisely, Florentine-Venetian) phase, and a later, Roman (more precisely, Roman-Venetian) phase. A more complete periodization of the Renaissance would recognize at least three phases: The first was characterized by a feeling that man himself had been reborn

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and an intensive effort to renew antiquity: this was more a phase of search than one of definite achievements. This phase, which lasted until near the end of the fifteenth century, the Italians call Quattrocento or Umanesimo. The second period is short, beginning around 1500, or not much earlier, and lasting no longer than a quarter of a century. But it can be said that it was in this period that the Renaissance definitely found what it had earlier been only seeking; it had now already achieved certain definite results and ceased to think of its own "rebirth"—and still less of the rebirth of the past. The Italian name Cinquecento embraces the entire sixteenth century and, therefore, also the later phase of the Renaissance. For this reason, it would be better to call this most magnificent phase of the century the classical Renaissance on the grounds that its art had classical features similar to those of Athenian art of the fifth century B.C. The third phase of the Renaissance comprises the rest of the century, beginning from the Sacco di Roma. In this period some artists and thinkers still sought to retain classical forms of art and thought, but others were already seeking new ones. Thus the two centuries of the Renaissance can be divided into three phases—the preclassical, a short classical phase, and a post-classical in the later years of the sixteenth century.* To be sure, neither the tempo of contemporary life, nor economic and demographic relationships, nor science would afford the grounds for such a periodization: however, one can base it on art, and it was art that was the leading element of culture in this period. The first phase of the Renaissance corresponds roughly to the 15th century, the second to the turn of the century, the years on either side of 1500 and the early part of the 16th century, and the third to the rest of the 16th century. Each of these three phases produced a different art, but all of them threw up similar aesthetic ideas, which were in fact unusually enduring and uniform throughout these two centuries. The aesthetics of the Renaissance did appear in different versions, however: for in some cases the inspiration was philosophy, in others, literature, and in still others, art. The aesthetics of the fifteenth century will be presented in three chapters —the aesthetics of the philosophers (particularly Nicholas of Cusa), the aesthetics of the humanist men of letters (particularly Marsilio Ficino), and the aesthetics of artists (particularly Alberti). The same three-dimensional scheme will be applied to the sixteenth century. Only in the short classical phase of the Renaissance do all of these orientations approach each other and flow into one uniform stream. 9 . ANCIENT MODELS FOR AESTHETICS. Among the ancient philosophers, Plato was the one from whom aestheticians of the Renaissance benefited the most: the aesthetics of Aristotle became known much later. Nonetheless, Renaissance aestheticians were unable to accept the fundamental theses of Plato's aesthetics (this problem will be discussed in detail later). Among the poets the main source was Horace, but the Ars poetica was a source only for special problems in poetics, and, furthei* H. Wölfflin, Die klassische Kunst, Ist ed., 1912.

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more, the theory had to be culled from the poem. The aestheticians benefited more from the ancient rhetors, Quintilian and especially Cicero. They borrowed most of all from the Ten Books on Architecture of Vitruvius, the only ancient treatise on the visual arts which was known to the scholars and artists of the Renaissance. 10. THE LEGACY OF VITRUVIUS. The Middle Ages knew the books of Vitruvius, but they did not make use of ancient models for Gothic structures, and gradually these writings were forgotten. When they were rediscovered at the beginning of the Renaissance, in 1414, in the library of Monte Cassino, they were a revelation. They were published in 1485, reprinted in the translation of Cesariano in 1521, and that of Daniele Barbaro in 1556. They were read and admired, and in 1542 the Vitruvian Academy was founded in Rome. Practising architects, beginning with Brunelleschi and Alberti, benefited most from Vitruvius information, models, and measurements.* Bramante in 1514 called his books gran luce·, Peruzzi planned a cathedral according to Vitruvius' measurements; Venice, in particular, became the centre of the cult of Vitruvius—Serlio revered him almost as a Bible, Palladio and Vignola were his faithful disciples, and when Sansovino was engaged to build the Venetian Library he had to present a recommendation from the Vitruvian Academy. Vitruvius was probably even more important, however, in relation to Renaissance theory of art. The main contemporary treatise on architecture, De re aedificatoria of Alberti, was based on his Ten Books. Other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century treatises made similar use of Vitruvius. The most important theses which entered the aesthetics of the Renaissance through Vitruvius were the following A. Beauty (venustas) is just as essential in architecture as utility. B. Beauty is what is in harmony with reason, but also what pleases the sight; beauty is the species, aspectus of things. C. Beauty consists in a harmony of parts : the main term handed down by Vitruvius was symmetry, but there were others: consensus membrorum, convenientia and compositio, as well as modus in the sense of measure. D. Beauty is realized in nature, which is moreover, an indispensable model for art. E. The human body in particular is such a model: in architecture, "symmetry and good proportions should be solidly based on the proportions of a well-built man". F. There are various levels of beauty up to the elaborate, or "elegant". G. There are varieties of beauty: the Doric style is masculine, the Ionian—feminine, the Corinthian—virginal. H. There is a social element in beauty, namely, the appropriateness of a work • F. Burger, "Vitruv und die Renaissance", in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, XXXII, 1909, p. 199 et seq. t A more detailed account of Vitruvius' aesthetic views can be found in volume I of this work, pp. 270-282, and of the attitude of the Middle Ages to Vitruvius in volume II, pp. 92 and 165.

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to the needs and habits of people. In addition to formal beauty there is also functional beauty, in addition to symmetria there is also decor. I. Beauty is also determined by a psychological factor—not only by the objective "symmetry", but also by a composition of parts which would evoke a subjectively pleasant impression at sight, which Vitruvius called "eurythmia". In the name of eurythmia he permitted and even recommended corrections in objectively perfect proportions; be called these corrections temperaturae. J. The aesthetics of Vitruvius was modelled on architecture, but it introduced parallels with other arts, particularly with music, and, mutatis mutandis, could be applied as a general theory of art and aesthetics. These aesthetic ideas agreed with another system of ideas, which also now became known in full, the aesthetics of Cicero. Here, too, beauty was held to be an objective property of things {per sé). It depended on the composition of parts (ordo, conveniente partium), and acted on the senses (aspectu). It had the same forms which Vitruvius had distinguished: it was either intellectual or physical, either formal (pulchrum), or functional (decorum), either masculine (dignum) or feminine (venustum). It was fully realized in nature. Cicero had similar ideas about art as well; art, he said, is the regular production of things, and depends on knowledge. Cicero advanced the further idea that art is determined by the idea which the artist has in his mind. This thought, which was peculiar to Cicero, entered into the aesthetics of the Renaissance somewhat later. In the first century of the Renaissance, however, the greatest use was made of those ideas which were common to both Vitruvius and Cicero. For the Renaissance aestheticians, the philosophy of Plato (and later that of Aristotle as well) formed the general background, while the doctrine of Vitruvius supplied the detailed content of aesthetics. This content was to be repeated innumerable times in different versions.

2. The Philosophy of the Renaissance 1. RENAISSANCE AND EARLIER PHILOSOPHY. The Renaissance really accepted only two systems of philosophical ideas from antiquity:* Platonism and Aristotelianism; but it accepted neither of these in absolutely pure form, adopting the former in its Neo-Platonic and the latter in its Arabian version. Furthermore, both of these versions had been transformed in the medieval spirit, for they had been filtered through medieval Latin before they reached the Renaissance. These ideas were not a novelty for the West: Scholasticism also had its Platonism and Aristotelianism. Since Scholasticism also had its via moderna, three traditions developed together—the Platonic (as interpreted by Augustine), the Aristotelian (as interpreted by Thomas Aquinas), and the later indigenous tradition of Ockham.

* P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 1961.

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The last is more in harmony with later views, more so than the Platonic and the Peripatetic, but the Renaissance did not accept this indigenous tradition. The reason for this was, in a sense a fortuitous one: the dislike of the humanist philosophers for Scholasticism from whom the Ockhamists were derived and the lack of sufficient contacts between Italy and the North, where the Ockhamists were held in esteem. Leonardo knew and admired them, but he was not a professional philosopher. From among the strains of ancient philosophy the Renaissance renewed neither Stoicism, naturalism, nor Scepticism. Neither was the Renaissance entirely and exclusively Platonic. In the fifteenth century Platonism was a watchword of the humanists, but in the sixteenth century the time of the humanists had passed, and philosophers were on the side of Aristotelianism, especially in aesthetics. 2. RENAISSANCE PLATONISM.* There were many Platonisms, even in Plato himself, who seems rather different in each dialogue—ethical in the Republic, critical-epistemological in the Theaetetus, mystical in the Phaedrus, cosmological in the Timaeus, dialectical in the Parmenides. Even Plato's own Platonism was not a finished system. Consequently, later Platonists complemented it with other trends or embellished it according to their own design until the name Platonism became a refuge for all varieties of philosophy which were hostile to empiricism and materialism. The scholars of the Renaissance were confronted with four varieties of Platonism, none of which was the pure Platonism of Plato. 1. The first variety was Platonism combined with Neo-Pythagoreanism, i.e. with mathematical speculations and pagan religious traditions. It was developed during the decline of antiquity. In the Middle Ages it found particularly fertile ground among the Arabs. Eclectic and superstitious, it was the foundation for all kinds of "hermetical" writings, mysteries, religious-speculative constructions, secret sciences like astrology, alchemy, and the conception of secret truths and hidden forces. This variety suited many of the humanists of the Renaissance. 2. The Platonism of Plotinus and his pupils, constructed in the third century A.D. and known later by the name "Neo-Platonism", was a transcendental, abstract, and absolute philosophy. It was an authentic metaphysic—hierarchical, emanative, and intuitive. It had been adapted to Christian thought by Pseudo-Dionysius and found recognition in the Byzantine East as well as among Western scholastics. It suited the Renaissance philosophers, just as Neo-Pythagorean Platonism suited the Renaissance humanists. 3. Platonism in its third form was an interpretation and transformation of Plato's ideas by Augustine and originated in the fourth century A.D. It interpreted Plato's ideas as the thoughts of God. It was a religious philosophy, a Christian variety of Platonic philosophy. There was as much Augustine in it as Plato, as much of the Middle Ages as of antiquity. This medieval form of Platonism entered the Renaissance before any other, but it was also the first to disappear in this period. * B. Kieszkowski, Studi sul platonismo del Rinascimento in Italia, 1936.

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4. The fourth variety was scientific Platonism, which took from Plato only this mathematical, a priori epistemological method. It was genuinely derived from Plato and an authentic element of his thought, but only one element of many. It developed the Platonic theory of knowledge and methodology, but ignored the metaphysics. Alien to the humanists as well as to the theologians and university professors, it did, however, appear in the work of Nicholas of Cusa, attracted certain mathematical natural scientists, and, oddly enough, appealed to some Renaissance artists, who wished to construct a mathematically precise theory of their arts. Petrarch had appealed to Plato, but in fact hardly knew him at all. If Platonism was known at all in the West in the 14th century, it was in the Augustinian version. Before the middle of the 15th century, however, a wave of Platonism from a different source reached Italy—from Byzantium. It was brought by Greek emigré scholars, particularly Phethon and Bessarion. They also brought with them the original dialogues of Plato, which argued against the Augustinian interpretation. At first, however, the dialogues inclined contemporaries to accept the interpretation which these dialogues had in the East, namely, a Neo-Platonic, mystical, and irrational interpretation combined with hermetical constructions. It was in this form that Platonism was accepted by the great Renaissance centre of Platonism, the Florentine Academy of the 15th century. Plato was treated as a supreme, even superhuman authority in this Academy, but beyond its walls, his influence was limited. In Renaissance universities his philosophy was rarely lectured on. For the humanists beyond the Academy, Plato was the model of a beautiful prose style rather than of correct thinking. Little more of Plato's thought was accepted other than the conception of poetry as furor divinus. The influence of Aristotle already predominated in the sixteenth century. Even at that time, however, some philosophers, who required support in antiquity and were dissatisfied with Aristotle, reached back for their world-view to the "NeoPlatonic" Plato, or grounded their mathematical method in the "scientific" Plato. These sixteenth-century supporters of Plato were no longer philosopher-aestheticians as in the fifteenth century: rather, they were the creators of the new astronomy and physics. The first ones outside Italy, like Copernicus and Kepler, and later, Italians too, like Galileo, were Platonists at least to the extent that they adopted the method of a priori assumptions and mathematical calculations. Nor was the aesthetic point of view foreign to them. 3. ARISTOTELIANISM. Aristotle waited a long time for recognition — as far as the Latin world is concerned he waited fifteen hundred years. Fame came to him only at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. Before this, in antiquity, his influence had been small—logical or methodological fragments were borrowed from him and incorporated into the Platonic or some other world-view; no one thought of any Aristotelian world-view. The Arabs endorsed him, but they interpreted him in a Platonic manner. The Scholastics also approved of him, but they interpreted him in a Christian manner. Their endorsement came late—the Middle

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Ages discovered Aristotle in the 12th century, recognized him in the 13th, and accepted him in the schools only from the 14th century. This acceptance was only partial, however. Philosophy was based on Aristotle, theology on Peter Lombard. These two thinkers represented two different areas which were separate from one another, neither complementary nor mutually conflicting. A rather significant part of what antiquity and modern times regarded as philosophy then belonged to theology, however, and little was left to philosophy other than logic and the philosophy of nature. Consequently, Aristotelianism was more of a methodology than a worldview. The medieval world-view was determined by theology, not by philosophy, and therefore, not by Aristotelianism. The latter, as a philosophical system of concepts and methods, had to be adapted, and indeed was adapted to the prevailing worldview. At that time it was the only such system—Thomism and Scotism were more theological standpoints than systems : Platonism entered theology via the works of Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, but as a system of concepts and methods, and as a philosophy of nature and logic it did not compete with Aristotelianism; and other ancient systems were even less a source of potential competition. The development of philosophical thought in Italy was belated. Aristotelian philosophy really became known there only in the 14th century at the same time as the first signs of Humanism were appearing. On the other hand, it was cultivated there until the end of the 16th century with the result that Aristotelianism became a characteristically Renaissance phenomenon in Italy. There were many reasons for this rather considerable durability. For Italy in the 15th century, Aristotelianism still had the appeal of novelty. The organization of Italian universities inclined philosophy toward medicine, where the influence of Aristotle was firmly established. Finally, the discovery by the Humanists of the Greek commentators of Aristotle—Themistios, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius—produced a more secular interpretation of Aristotle than the Scholastic version. Interpreted in this way, Aristotelianism was consistent with other Renaissance trends, Platonism in particular. Contemporary Aristotelianism and Platonism did not represent contradictory positions. Humanists devoted to Plato carried on polemics with the Aristotelians only briefly and intermittently. New ideas in logic and the philosophy of nature appeared in the 16th century, but at first they were not sufficiently developed to enter curricula and compete with Aristotelianism. The first real blow against Aristotle was not struck until Galileo's time and then more from the point of view of physics than of philosophy—the Aristotelian methodology, which facilitated progress in some sciences, for example biology, was deficient in physics, because it did not take account of mathematics and the quantitative treatment of phenomena. This anti-Aristotelian conception was not forced through until the seventeenth century, however. Whereas in the Middle Ages the boundary between philosophy and theology was more clearly demarcated in Italy than anywhere else, in the beginnings of the Renais-

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sanee the reorganization of higher education, which combined various schools in universities, brought philosophy and theology closer together. The result was unexpected—the philosophy of the Renaissance became more theological than it had been in the Middle Ages. Padua was an exception.* In 1405 it was politically joined to Venice, whose government was totally secular, and thanks to this it became a centre of secular philosophy. The university of Padua became for Europe in the 15th century what the university of Paris was in the 13th and 19th centuries. The patron of this sober and secular Paduan philosophy was Aristotle. Here the materialist Lucretius was considered just as unscientific as the idealist Plato. Today one may wonder why the patron of this centre was not the so much more modern Ockham. Ockham was not nearly as influential, however, for though modern in content, he was medieval in form, and this form was repellent in the age of Humanism; Ockham had the stigmata of a medieval thinker, whereas Aristotle had the advantage in the age of Humanism of belonging to antiquity. Of course, Aristotle was interpreted differently than he had been by the Thomists. In Averroes, the Paduan professors found a naturalistic interpretation of Aristotle suited to their tastes; and basing themselves on his interpretation, they passed into history under the special name of "Paduan Averroists". Their philosophy, naturalistic and scientific, took a negative atitude toward supernatural factors, the creation of the world, and the immortality of the soul ; they regarded man simply as an undistinguished fragment of nature marked by neither freedom, nor greatness. This attitude did not appe alto the Humanists, who were convinced of the distinctness, freedom, and greatness of man. This disagreement underlay their antagonism toward the university philosophers of the Renaissance, and given the peculiar interpretation of Plato and Aristotle, this antagonism became an antagonism between Platonism and Aristotelianism. The Humanists who sought support in Plato, were centred around and organized in the Academy at Florence. The spiritualistic Platonic Academy in Florence and the naturalistic Aristotelian university in Padua represented the most important philosophical antithesis of the Renaissance. First, one side had the advantage, then the other. The great period of the Florentine Academy and Renaissance Platonism falls in the fifteenth century, during the lifetime of Ficino. The high point of Paduan philosophy, on the other hand, belongs rather to the sixteenth century. At the beginning of the 16th century, a certain accommodation between the two adversaries was reached. In 1497, the Paduan faculty of artists founded a chair in which Aristotelian philosophy in the authentic Greek version was taught. After 1405 (the beginning of Paduan philosophy) and 1462 (the founding of the Florentine Academy) this is the most important date in the * J. H. Randall, The Career of Philosophy, 1962, p. 55 et seq.—P. O. Kristeller, "Paduan Averroism and Alexandrism", in Renaissance Thought, Π, 1965 (also in Atti de! Congresso di Filosofia, Vol. ΧΠ, 1960).

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history of Renaissance Aristotelianism. Now, i.e. after 1497, having been confronted with the authentic texts, the Paduan professors disgarded the naturalistic interpretation of Aristotle. If they continued to be called Averroists, it was only to designate their non-theological position. There was now a place in their system for an individualistic conception of the human soul, and their antagonism toward the Florentine Platonists diminished. This was the state of things in the 16th century, but toward the end of the century there was a turning away from Aristotle in Italy, especially in Padua. This change took place not so much in the area of philosophy as in physics, where qualitative physics was abandoned in favour of a mathematical physics difficult to square with the teachings of Aristotle. The change was largely the work of Galileo, who lectured in Padua from 1592 until 1610, in other words, on the threshold of a new epoch. This was a turning point in the history of science, but it did not directly affect aesthetics. 4. AESTHETICS. The fate of aesthetics can be better understood if viewed in the light of the situation in Renaissance philosophy. From the outset, aesthetics was an essential part of Florentine philosophy, but not of the Paduan. Nonetheless, certain Paduan Aristotelians did deal with aesthetic problems in their writings; among them such famous scholars as Minturno, Trissino, and Campanella. Whereas the aesthetics of the Platonists was a theory of beauty, the aesthetics of these Aristotelians was a theory of art, and even only a theory of poetry, for the theory of music and the visual arts remained in the hands of specialists, and philosophers dealt only with poetics. Philosophers did not begin working on aesthetics until the middle of the 16th century, by which time the influence of the Stagirite was already weaker. It was just at this time, however, that the Poetics of Aristotle were translated and published. The work delighted and inspired Italian writers and seemed the incomparable and sole model for the scientific treatment of art—and thus it happened that at a time when Aristotle's general influence was declining, his influence on poetics, and indirectly on all aesthetics, reached its peak. Consequently, the place for treating aesthetics of the Platonic type is with the 15th century, and that of the Aristotelian type with the 16th; the former in connection with Humanism, the latter in connection with university philosophy. 3. Arts and the Theory of Art The shift away from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance began in literature; it came later, but not much later in the visual arts; before long, the latter had registered greater achievements and begun to be more important than literature. This shift occurred first in Florence, where the social and administrative conditions of the artists who lived there were quite different to those enjoyed by Humanist men of letters elsewhere. These conditions also influenced the theory of art, since it was primarily artists who developed theory.

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1. THE LIBERAL AND MECHANICAL ARTS. The discussion here is of "art" in the contemporary meaning of the term, i.e. painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. At the beginning of the Renaissance, there still persisted the broader, more traditional conception of the arts as skills, more akin either to science or to handicrafts. Two sub-groups of the arts were distinguished: the liberal and the mechanical arts. The liberal arts corresponded roughly to what today are called sciences and the mechanical arts to what today are called handicrafts. Some of the art forms of today were included in the artes liberales, or sciences, others in the arts mechanicae, or handicrafts. The Margarita Philosophica of Gregor Reisch, an encyclopedia from the end of the 15th century (first edition 1497) which was republished throughout the 16th century, still retained this traditional view. A woodcut included in this work represents the edifice of science as a six-storied building, where poetry and rhetoric are on the third storey next to logic, and music is on the fourth next to astronomy (111. I). The understanding of music as a science was in keeping with a tradition that went back to antiquity. In Reisch's book, however, another woodcut (111. II), which depicts music, also placed a poet among the musicians. Renaissance poetics, which subjected poetry to rules, brought it close to the sciences. Two rival conceptions were to do battle in the Renaissance: poetry as skill and poetry as inspiration, furor poeticus. However, the arts which are now called the visual arts, painting, sculpture, and architecture, were included among the mechanical arts; their place was among the handicrafts, just as the place of music was among the sciences. For centuries, there was a complete hiatus between these two groups of arts. Only at the Renaissance did practitioners of the visual arts make an effort to move from the mechanical to the liberal category, from handicrafts to sciences.—This chapter will take up the Renaissance theory of the visual arts; the theory of music and poetry will be discussed in other chapters. 2 . SOCIAL POSITION. The oiganization of Italian cities, and of Florence in particular, was based on the guild system. This placed artists at a disadvantage: they had to belong to guilds and yet did not have a privileged position in them. They did not have their own guilds, but were assigned to other ones according to somewhat obscure principles: in Florence, painters (from 1378) belonged to the guild of physicians and apothecaries (in Bologna they belonged to the guild of the bombasari, or stationers), whilst architects and sculptors were bundled together with the masons and carpenters. Painters were not even full legal members of their guild. They tried in vain to have their profession entered in the name of the guild. The only advantageous feature of their situation was that they belonged to one of the highest guilds: and thanks to this, they enjoyed primacy among the visual artists and had a somewhat better economic situation. In the fifteenth century, some painters even managed to enter the wealthy stratum of the bourgeoisie, but for the most part they remained

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artisans. Their manner of work was truly artisan-like: they did not paint pictures on their own initiative, but worked only to commission like weavers and dyers. * There was no social order less democratic than the Florentine. In the previous century the upper middle classes first settled accounts with the nobility, then with the workers, and then the great guilds, above all those associated with the clothing industry which employed one third of the population—Lana, Calimala, Seta (jointly referred to as the artes)—proceeded to seize wealth and power. A painter or architect could not enter these spheres. There were only two other possibilities for moving out of the artisan class: by joining the courtiers of the scholars. To improve their social position painters and architects began to demand that their arts be included among the liberal arts, which were nearer to science than to the handicrafts. Among the architects of the Renaissance, the most famous no longer belonged to the guilds; their education was not technical, but humanistic. Architecture ceased to be a real profession and became an occupation which could be carried on by people of various professions—Brunelleschi was a goldsmith, Bramante initially a painter by profession, Alberti mainly a man of letters; and Raphael and Michelangelo, who played such a leading role in the architecture of the Renaissance, were not, of course, professional architects. Alberti, Leonardo, Michelangelo were simultaneously painters, sculptors, men of letters, and scholars: they were not, therefore, professionals. The concept "master" lost its medieval meaning; now the sense of the term was to veer from "foreman" to "genius". These social relations had an effect not only on the art of that time, but also on the theory of art, on general concepts and aesthetic views: their most singular effect was that art began to be regarded as an intellectual endeavor related to science. 3. THE ATTITUDE TO ANTIQUITY. The first outstanding artists of the Renaissance were ill-disposed toward the leading styles of art of their times—to Gothic and Byzantine art. They felt a calling to create new things, but they needed help in this endeavor; and they sought this help in ancient writers. There is evidence that Brunelleschi, initiator of Renaissance architecture and, to a certain extent, all Renaissance art, also sought models in the art of the earlier Middle Ages, namely, in pre-Gothic, Romanesque art. But he altered the direction of this inquiries when he, and others after him, found what was desired in the art of antiquity. The example of the Humanists influenced the visual arts, the more so in view of the fact that the Humanists, in their enthusiasm for antiquity, began to search for remnants of ancient art and excavate statues and ruins. Architects joined in this endeavor, and in the course of their work became familiar with ancient forms which they then applied in their own structures. Sculptors, and then painters, followed their example. At first, a terminology was used that was different from the one later accepted: those who patterned their architecture on ancient models, like Brunelleschi or Alberti, * F. Antal, Florentine Painting and its Social Background, 1947, ΙΠ, 4. See also M. Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death, 1951.

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were called antichi: in contrast to them, the proponents of the Gothic were called moderni: only later was the opinion accepted that the proponents of a return to antiquity were really the moderni and that the name rightly belonged to them. A. This departure from the accepted way of building and the application of another style and technique was an event that had not been encountered in the history of European architecture for centuries; similarly, with sculpture and painting. Insofar as we can understand the psychology of a medieval builder or painter, it would seem that these artists understood their work as being governed by general principles; there was no question of choosing between various forms and styles of building or painting. Of course, each artist carried on his profession according to his talents and temperament, and there was diversity, but this diversity was limited. There was just one mode of operation—not only from the point of view of technique, but also of style: the tradition of the workshop was dominant, and although this tradition changed, the changes were non-volitional and undetectable. This situation changed in the Renaissance when the two camps of the antichi and moderni emerged. B. The situation was somewhat different in each of the visual arts. Architects had access to ancient buildings as well as to architectural theory. This theory was handed down in Vitruvius' "books on architecture", which, though not unknown, were little used in the Middle Ages, but which were now rediscovered (in Monte Cassino in 1414) and published (1485). Sculptors had ancient sculptures before their eyes, but they did not have access to the theory behind these works. And painters had neither one thing nor the other: neither concrete ancient models nor a general ancient theory of their art. For this reason, the influence of antiquity on painting was less than on the other arts. C. Even for architects, however, matters were far from simple. Italy did indeed have relics of ancient architecture, but there were few of these in the Northern provinces near the main artistic centers; the relics of Rome were in ruins, and the places where the most beautiful relics were located, Paestum and Sicily, were known only to a few artists. The first Florentine artists to make the trip to Rome were the architect Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello. Moreover, Renaissance architects faced different tasks than the ancients—urban dwellings and Christian churches—and they had to seek new solutions. They did not entertain the notion (as would the Neo-Classicists of the 18th century) of simply giving homes and churches the shape of ancient temples. They found an intermediate solution: they did not accept ancient compositions in their entirety, but only their elements : columns, entablature, arches. But this was enough to bring about a turning point. When ancient orders replaced Gothic buttressed systems, and full arches replaced vaulted arches, Italy became a changed country. The introduction of ancient elements into modern construction was not simple, however. In churches with a basilica façade ancient temples with their triangular pediments had no direct application. Did Brunelleschi not find a satisfactory solution? In any event, he left the façades of his churches unfinished.

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Later architects had different ideas about façades: Alberti applied the motif of a triumphal arch, Bramante split the pediment into two parts, and Palladio constructed façades with two intersecting orders.* The very conception of architecture was now somewhat different to that of ancient Greece: then it had been the encirclement of space: now it was also the adornment of surfaces, the decoration of walls. In Greece, columns had been a spatial element, whereas the architects of the Renaissance made them an element of the walls; embedded in walls they lost their original sense, and changed from being a structural element into an ornament. Since neither relics of nor theoretical treatises on ancient painting had survived, the influence of antiquity on Renaissance painting was naturally looser and less intense. This influence appeared only in a small group of painters with antiquarian interests, who adopted themes from antiquity (painting the gods of Parnassus or imperial processions) as well as ancient ornaments, and background details. The influence of antiquity on sculpture was different: sculptors accepted few ancient themes, but in moulding David or Magdalene they would apply the forms, proportions, and attitudes observed in sculptures of ancient gods. D. But the influence of antiquity on the Renaissance was sufficient to appear not only in particular works of art, but in the theory of art as well: artists of the Renaissance not only learned to reproduce ancient columns, frontons or human figures, but they also learned that the column, fronton or figure have definite proportions, are subject to canons, and are a matter of calculation and knowledge. Even though new models were adopted old habits and tastes were not abandoned at once. Renaissance architecture retained certain medieval traditions for some time; the early Florentine palaces of the 15th century no longer had vaulted arches, but they did have heavy rustic work, bare walls, and only few windows. Old traditions were reflected not only in details: the visual arts did not at once "come down from heaven to earth". Nonetheless, liturgical considerations now had less influence than aesthetic ones on the shapes of places of worship or pictures: though liturgy and tradition alike favoured basilicas, for aesthetic reasons, central plans were now adopted for churches. 4. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARTS AND THEIR VARIETIES. The division of the Renaissance into three phases—preclassical, classical, and postclassical—is nowhere more clearly reflected than in the visual arts; here this division has real foundation. But in each area of the visual arts, development was somewhat different. Architecture, which made use of ancient models from the outset, attained to classical forms soonest, and retained them longest. Even here, however, three phases can be differentiated. The first phase was initiated by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377— 1446), who (according to Vasari) "renewed classical proportions", and his near con* R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 1949, especially Ch, II. p. 29 and others.

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temporary, Alberti; the great architect of the second period was Donato Bramante (1444-1514), and of the third, Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). The first phase had its centre in Florence, the second in Rome, the third more in the North of Italy— Vicenza and Veneto. "After a decline"—Vasari writes ... "it is easier to revive sculpture than painting, since sculpture takes its forms directly from life, whereas painting has to translate them into contours". And indeed, the painters of the fifteenth century were anticipated by the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455). His works indicate the date of the turning point: of his two sets of bronze doors to the Florentine Battistero, the Northern ones completed in the years 1403-1424 were still partially medieval, whereas the Eastern ones begun in 1425 were already the purest Renaissance. They were a revelation; the vox populi called them "the gate of Paradise". In painting, the famous "Adoration of the Magi" of the Umbrian painter Gentile da Fabriano (1370-1427), completed in 1423, was still on the whole Gothic. But already in the following years the Florentine painter Masaccio (1401-1428) crossed the dividing line between the Gothic and the Renaissance, particularly in the frescos of the Brancacci chapel in Florence, 1426-1427. Vasari explains his modernity: "He understood that painting is nothing more than imitating things as they are". Above all, this involved a three-dimenional rendering of reality. But Masaccio and his followers introduced still other changes: (a) in order to "imitate things as they are" the new Renaissance painting gave things different proportions than were used in the Middle Ages; the charm of Gothic verticalism was renounced; (b) in order to reveal the essential forms of things, incidental forms began to be avoided; phenomena were simplified and Gothic detail was abandoned; (c) the line, which was an essential element of medieval painting, lost part of its significance, and the body was represented with the help of planes rather than lines. The painting of the 15th century had many varieties and tendencies. Among these was an antiquarian trend, to which Mantegna belonged, and which reproduced everyday details of ancient life. Then there was a descriptive trend, concerned with such details of Florentine or Venetian existence of the 15th century as costumes, dwellings and the appearance of the streets; among its representatives were Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence and Vittore Carpaccio in Venice. There was also a lyrical group, which had more Gothic than classical features; Fra Angelico in his devotion to religious feelings went beyond the medieval masters; Sandro Botticelli was the illustrator of an edition of the Divine Comedy. But the painting of the fifteenth century also had a mannerist strain, which became more significant in the last phase of the Renaissance, but which also appeared in the earlier phase. This mannerism was characterized by intricate and agitated line, exaggerated treatment of details, emotional movement of the figures, and manneristic gestures. Botticelli and Fillipino Lippi approached this strain, and

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among those who belonged to it completely were such curious and artificial painters as Carlo Crivelli in Venice and Cosimo Tura in Ferrara. Details like these about the art of the Renaissance have a place in a history of aesthetics, and for more than one reason. They are necessary to show the parallelism of development between actual works of art and the general theory of art as well as to indicate the limits of this parallelism: the great diversity of some trends in art and the great uniformity of theory. They are necessary also in order to bring out the fact that there was more Gothicism as well as mannerism in the art of the Renaissance than in the Renaissance theory of art. 5. SCIENTIFIC ASPIRATIONS OF ART. One of the trends in contemporary painting had a particular significance for the history of aesthetics, namely the trend with scientific aspirations. This school conceived the art of painting as knowledge of perspective, permitting the representation of the three-dimensional world on plane surfaces in accordance with the laws of optics. Such was the conception of art exposed by the great Piero della Francesca (c. 1412-1492), who was not only a painter, but also a mathematical scholar. While today he is admired for his paintings, contemporaries admired him for his scholarliness. In the last twenty years of his life he gave up painting and devoted himself solely to mathematics. The goal which he set for art is more like the one which science sets itself. Luca Pacioli, who was close to della Francesca, said of him that in art he tried to replace opinion by certainty (certezza). This rapprochement of art and mathematics was natural in an epoch which accepted the Platonic tradition together with the Pythagorean. It returned to ancient aesthetic intellectualism, but the equation "art = exact science" was something new even in relation to antiquity. Piero della Francesca was by no means the only representative of the scientific approach to art; it was a phenomenon typical of the Renaissance; in another form it would be an attribute of Leonardo da Vinci. Gauricus, author of a treatise on sculpture, would say at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries: Nihil sine litteris, sine erudit ione.11 u Beginning with Ghiberti sculptors, painters and architects wrote treatises on their art, even when they did not have the necessary scientific and literary training to do so. The aspirations of Renaissance artists to gain a reputation as scholars were caused by more than intellectual factors; there were also social and economic motivations at work, for in this way artists raised their social status and moved out of the artisan class. 6. TREATISES ON ART. The art of the Renaissance implies certain aesthetic views and thus provides evidence about contemporary views on art. However, a more direct source of knowledge about these views are contemporary treatises on art. Whereas the art of the Renaissance taken on its own implies a variety of different conceptions, the treatises present a conception of art which is basically unitary, monolithic, and coherent; theory was more monolithic than practice. Nevertheless, both sources argue in a similar fashion, which is quite natural in view of the fact that among

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the authors of treatises were artists, including even such famous ones as Alberti and Piero della Francesca.—The term theorica dell'arte is already to be found in Alberti.» There were naturally fewer Renaissance treatises on art than works of art; not all of them have been preserved, and still fewer were published when they were written. After Cennini, who belonged to the previous epoch, the following fiftcenth-century authors left treatises on art: 1. Leone Battista Alberti, famous humanist and outstanding architect, was both the first and the most outstanding among the Renaissance writers on art; he was also the most versatile, for he wrote treatises on three different arts: on painting in 1435, on architecture in 1450-1452, and on sculpture in 1464. He will be discussed in greater detail separately. Only one of his treatises (on architecture) was published in the fifteenth century: the other two were not published until the sixteenth century. 2. Lorenzo Ghiberti, the great Florentine sculptor, wrote his Commentarli in 1436 (published only in the 20th century, in 1912 and 1947, according to a copy from the 15th century). This is more a collection of materials than a finished work. Ghiberti relied not only on his own experiences, but on ancient writers as well. The first part of his work is historical (on the basis of this Ghiberti is regarded as "the founder of the modern historiography of art"). The second part is autobiographical (and is regarded as the first autobiography of an artist). Only the third part takes up the theory of art. Though Ghiberti was enthusiastic about theory, he had much less to say about it than Alberti. 3. Antonio Averlino, called Filarete (1400-1470; 111. 3), another Florentine, assistant to Ghiberti, sculptor and architect, author of the bronze doors of the basilica of Saint Peter in Rome (1445) and the great hospital in Milan in 1456, wrote his Treatise on Architecture in the years 1457-1464; (it was not, however to be published until 1890). The treatise was composed in the form of a description of the ideal city of Sforzinda projected for the Sforzas; it was the work of a practitioner rather than a scholar, though it did display some knowledge of Vitruvius and Alberti. 4. Piero della Francesca, the great painter who died in 1492, left a treatise De perspectiva pingendi, which, again, was not published until the 19th century (1894, new edition, 1942). He did not belong to the great Florentine circle but was active in the provinces. For the historian of aesthetics it is only the principle of his mathematical calculations which is of interest, not the calculations themselves. The same is true of Pacioli. 5. Luca Pacioli, a mathematician associated with the Milanese court, wrote a treatise in 1497 on proportions in architecture De divina proportione, which was published in 1509.

* R. Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti, 1956.

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6. Francesco di Giorgio Martini (died 1506) was active at the court in Urbino; some time after 1482, he wrote a Trattato d'Architettura (published in 1841). 7. Pomponius Gauricus (1482-1530) in 1504 published a treatise, De sculpture. He was a humanist and philosopher, but self-taught in the visual arts. His activity falls in the 16th century, but the content of his treatise belongs to the 15th. 8. On the border of the theory of art one finds a kind of novel on the topic of architecture, Hipnerotomachia Poliphyli written in 1467 by the Dominican Francesco Colonna, and published anonymously in 1499.* Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on painting and his other works on art belong to the classical period of the Renaissance, even though begun in the 15th century. With the exception of the writings of Pacioli, a mathematician, and Gauricus, a philologist, all these treatises were written by artists. The majority of them were from Florence. Theoretical treatises were also written by artists from Milan, by the well-known painter Vincenzo Foppa and a few of his pupils: however, these works have not been preserved. It is interesting to note that middling works like the Hipnerotomachia and the treatise of Gauricus, were published and disseminated at once, whereas the works of Leonardo and some of those of Alberti remained as manuscripts. These treatises displayed much erudition: not only Gauricus, who was a professor of philology, but also Ghiberti quoted freely from ancient writers, or even transcribed from them (as, for, example, from Atenaios) without acknowledgement. Ghiberti also made use of medieval writers like Vitelo, Peckham and Roger Bacon. Part of the content of these treatises was like that of the earlier medieval ones: technical prescriptions such as how to mix paints, cast sculptures, and build houses. But in addition to this they also took up new themes. They provided information, firstly, about historical matters, about ancient and contemporary art, with catalogues of famous artists, a genealogy of their own art. Second, the treatises of the fifteenth century took up topics which can be regarded as belonging to aesthetics in the broad sense * The majority of these treatises were published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some as re-editions and some for the first time: Francesco di Giorgio by C. Saluzzo 1841, Hipnerotomachia by A. Zig 1872 and most recently also in the collection I Cimeli: Ristampe Anastatiche. Gauricus by H. Brockhaus 1886, Filarete by W. v. Oettingen 1888, Pacioli by C. Winterberg 1889, Piero della Francesca also by Winterberg 1899, Ghiberti by Molisani 1947. — Among earlier partial editions and discussions of treatises: Mrs. Merrifield's Original Treatises dating from the XHth to XVIIth Century of the Arts of Painting, 2 vols, 1849, is dated; A. Pelizzari's I Trattati attorno arti figurative in Italia e nella Peninsola Iberica dall' Antichità classica ad Rinascimento ed al secolo XVIII, 2 vols. 1915, is of greater use. Quite modern interpretations have been provided of the treatises of Ghiberti (J. Schlosser, Leben und Meinungen des Florentiner Bildners Lorenzo Ghiberti, 1941, as well as R. Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Princeton, 1956) and Averlino-Filarete (P. Tigler, "Die Architekturtheorie des Filarete", in Neue Münchener Beitrage zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 5, 1963). More will be said later about the editions and interpretations of Alberti and Leonardo.—All the treatises of the fifteenth century aie discussed in J. Schlosser, Kunstliteratur, 1924. On treatises relating to architecture see: O. Stein, Die Architektur theoretiker der italienischen Renaissance, 1944.

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of the term; there was a little logic (in the sense of analysis of terms), some psychology, and much mathematics. Matters of perspective and proportion were given first importance. All of these themes will be discussed jointly for those treatises which have been preserved, excepting Alberti's, which will be discussed separately. 7. PERSPECTIVE. The two matters regarded as most important peispective and proportion—could, it was held, and should be treated scientifically. The first of these problems interested painters, the second all artists working in the visual arts. A. The works of Piero della Francesca and Pacioli were exclusively devoted to perspective; and Alberti and Leonardo also devoted much attention to this issue. Not only painters were concerned with this problem, but sculptors as well: Ghiberti, Donatello, and even the greatest architects like Brunelleschi, Bramante. Brunelleschi was probably the first. An indication of the veneration for prospettiva is afforded by the fact that it was mentioned on the grave of Sixtus IV in Saint Peter together with the seven liberal arts and philosophy and theology as the tenth representative of the science. B. Perspective is that well-known optical phenomenon consisting in the fact that the image of a perceived object diminishes depending on the distance and is deformed depending upon its position in relation to the eye. Perspective may be understood either in a broader or narrower sense; in the narrow sense it is a purely geometrical phenomenon dependent exclusively on the position of the perceived object and its distance from the observer. In the broader sense, perspective is also affected by the air between eye and object, which may change the object's colour and diminish its visibility. This latter, which is called painter's perspective—is not as constant and calculable as the geometric. The Renaissance did not concern itself with this variety of perspective, devoting itself solely to perspective in the narrower, geometrical sense of the term. "Optics, which we generally call perspective, belongs to the science of geometry", Volaterrani wrote in a mathematical treatise in 1506. And Gauricus (1504) distinguished "graphical" perspective from "physiological" perspective. C. Painting has not always and everywhere taken account of perspective. The Egyptians avoided it consciously, and medieval artists, when they did use it, applied it loosely and only approximately. But the Renaissance recognized nothing else but perspective painting; great stress was placed on proper perspective, and there was a particular fondness for frontal perspective, the simplest and clearest. What seems easy in the age of photography was not easy then; painters simplified their work by using mirrors. D. Characteristic of the Renaissance was the simultaneous pursuit of perspective drawing and of scientific investigations into perspective and the laws which govern it. The philosophers of Classical Greece—Democritus and Anaxogoras—had once conducted such investigations, and there was now a return to these interests in the 15th century. To be sure, medieval scholars, Arabs as well as Scholastics, had also taken up perspective, but only as a problem of physics; for the Renaissance it was a matter relevant to painting. Formerly, it had been a case of perspectiva naturalis,

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i.e. of optics; now what was involved was perspectiva artificialis, the "applied" perspective of today. E. Plato once declared perspective to be a negative phenomenon, a sign of the imperfection of the eye, which deforms things. For the people of the Renaissance, however, it was an object of wonder for its mathematical regularity and precision. In their opinion, it raised art to the rank of a science, endowing it with scientific certainty and necessity. Doubts have been raised as to whether the perspective on which the artists and scholars of the Renaissance laboured was really a scientific achievement, or whether it was merely one of many possible stylistic conventions. It has even been suggested that this fifteenth-century convention does not correspond to our actual perception of things, for it Tepresents monocular perception whereas we observe things in fact with both eyes. Moreover, it does not take account of the sphericity of the retina and the sphericity of the object which is reflected on it; nor does it consider the continual movements of the eye; consequently, Renaissance perspective is a schematic abstraction, not a true reconstitution of perception. But these doubts do not seem well-founded; the sphericity of the retina and the curvature of the horizon cause only minor departures from the straight line, which is the basis of Renaissance perspective. It was not only a useful abstraction, but also close to reality. This abstraction could not be simply extracted from phenomena; and the Renaissance did not derive it directly from phenomena, but constructed it on their foundation; it was a simplification of phenomena, an accentuation of the laws which govern them. The creation of this abstraction testifies to the rationalistic aspirations of the Renaissance. Using an antithesis typical of the epoch—between empirical phenomena and a priori harmony—Volaterrani wrote that perspective is necessary in art in order to introduce harmony to phenomena. Perspective had both a cognitive and an aesthetic function. "In the 15th century geometrical optics and the science of projection entered the orbit of aesthetic problems", and because of this "part of objective knowledge became part of artistic language". * This objective, scientific point of view was one of the more important factors underlying the development of the classical art of the Renaissance at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Later, perspective was studied less, but it continued to be applied until well into the twentieth century. 8. PROPORTIONS. A S with perspective, the particular debates about proportion which excited Renaissance artists and writers are not important for the history of aesthetics: How many times, they asked, for example, should the face be fitted within a perfect human form—7, 8, 8$, 9, or 10 times? Is the face, the palm, or the foot the proper unit of measure? What is important is that there was agreement * M. Rzepinska, "Doktryna i wizja artystyczna Albertiego" (Alberti's Doctrine and Artistic Vision), Estetyka, IV, Warszawa, 1963.

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that there was a perfect form for man, a perfect proportion, and that this proportion was quantifiable and calculable. First: certain proportions were called "natural" (not only by artists, but also by humanists like Landino), "true" (vera proportione), and these natural proportions were regarded as beautiful. "Only proportionality is the basis of beauty", wrote Ghiberti. (1) Second: in principle these "natural" proportions were established on the basis of living persons, but according to the theoreticians of the Renaissance they were also obligatory in art, in sculpture and painting. Gauricus drew a rather strange conclusion from this: since a perfect human proportion consists of 9 units of measure, the sculptor, if he does not reflect this shape in its natural size, has the right to diminish or magnify it only in the proportions 6/9, 3/9, and 1/9. Third: the proportions of the human form are binding also in architecture/" They are, said Filarete, "the measure of the proportions of the column and other things"/ 5 ' Since man derives his proportions from nature, every art which adheres to them adheres to nature and is ars imitandi naturarti in quantum potest.™ Fourth: As can be particularly clearly seen in Gauricus, at the basis of their calculations was a mystical belief in the harmony of bodies. "What a geometer and what a musician was the creator of man?"/ 7 ) Pacioli, quoting Plato, remarks that perfect proportions can be known only to the extent permitted by the Almighty. Pacioli's treatise contained quite as much speculation as calculation/ 4 ' Fifth: Renaissance theoreticians did not pretend to be innovators in matters of proportion: they identified "true proportion" and "commensurability" with what the Greeks called "analogy" and "symmetry"/ 8 , 1 0 ) But they did not cease their efforts to discover it anew and calculate it. Sixth: They tried to apprehend the construction of bodies arithmetically as well as geometrically by dividing the face and entire form of the human body into geometrical forms—squares and triangles. This was called quadrature del corpo umano. Lomazzo later asserted that this invenzione rara e mirabile al mondo had been initiated by Foppa (whose treatise has been lost) and Bramante. However, we know that this was not their invention, for the same thing was done in the Middle Ages. "I could spend an entire summer day"—wrote Gauricus—"in showing that as they say a slender face is a triangle, and a full face — a square; and that, as the connoisseurs of Plato's Timaetis assert, the entire body can be embraced into triangles and squares".' 9 ' The same Gauricus gave the most emphatic expression to this artistic mathematics: we have to preserve and love measure, he said. (10) 9. ARTISTIC CATEGORIES. These matters of a mathematical nature, perspective and proportion, were one stable item in Renaissance theory of art, particularly in its earlier phase. A second item was the relationship of art to nature: art is the imitation of nature and should be this "to the degree to which it is possible" (according to a formula oft repeated from Ghiberti to Pacioli). Of these two items, one was quantitative, the other qualitative, one a priori and the other empirical.

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They were inter-related and complementary. Both were strikingly stable, being repeated in all the treatises. Apart from these two items, the most important element in the treatises were the compendia of the various factors of art, or artistic categories as they might be called. These were also continually repeated in the treatises — and in stereotyped terminology. Piero della Francesca distinguished three factors in painting: disegno—commensuratio—color ire.il2) A similar three-fold division can be found in Alberti: circoscrizione—composizione—recezione di lumi. Somewhat later Dolce would distinguish: disegno—invenzione—colorito. This three-fold division was taken from rhetoric. Gauricus clearly relied on the handbooks of rhetoric of Quintilian and Hermogenes. In nearly all authors, disegno is in first place, colorito in last. But the second factor was interpreted variously: as proportion (commensuratio), structure (composizione), or as idea (invenzione). This is an essential difference: neither in Piero nor in Alberti was there any talk of ideas or inventions, but only of proportion and structure. To the theoreticians of art of the 15th century, it seems, what was important in a work of art was not invention, but cognition and calculation. Gauricus applied many more distinctions in his analysis of the work of art, differentiating the main object from its supplementary ornamentations, and the artist who could express what he had invented (enfantasiotos) from the one who could render what he wished to express {kataleptikos). He further distinguished works of art on the basis of their material, their diginity of theme, even their format; and, as befits a philologist, he gave each kind a Greek name. The most important of his distinctions was that between designatio and animatio, which one might perhaps render as that between form and expression, or the form and psychological content of a work. In the first element (designatio—form) he included symmetry, perspective, and physiognomy: in the second he included imitation (animatio—content). In short, then, one can say that he distinguished two features of art: proportion and imitation. 10. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ARCHES. Only a small number of fifteenth-century treatises dealt with the psychology of artistic experience. Comparatively, the largest number of observations of this kind is contained in the treatise of Filarete. (6) Among other things, he asserted that high naves are erected in churches in order to elevate the spirit. More noteworthy is what he wrote about the full arch and the ogive. He accepted as a general thesis the notion that man likes what he can follow easily and effortlessly with the eye. The eye follows the circle and semi-circular arch without difficulty but not the ogive; in the latter there is a break, a change of direction, a blockage, an unpleasant turn for the eye; for this reason, the ogive is less beautiful than the full arch. One might discern in this remark an attempt at psychological explanation of aesthetic judgements, suggesting that aesthetics was to assume a psy-

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chological direction. But it is rather doubtful if this was Filarete's intention. In any event, it can be noted as a fact that he made psychological observations on architecture and the delight which man takes in it. B. Texts of Fifteenth-Century Art Theorists L. G H I B E R T I , I commentarli (ed. Morisani, 1947, Π, 96). 1. Quando le membra fossono proporzionali alla quantità della larghezza e della faccia, sarà la forma bella, avvenga che i membri per sé non sieno belli. Ma la proporzionalità solamente fa pulchritudine.

PROPORTION AND BEAUTY 1. If the limbs of the body are proportional to the width of the face, then their form will be beautiful, even though the limbs themselves are not beautiful, for proportionality is the only criterion of beauty.

L. GHIBERTI, ibid. II, 22. 2. Mi ingegnai con ogni misura cereare imitare la natura quanto a me fosse possibile ... Furono istorie tutti in casamenti col la ragione che l'occhio li misura e veri in modo tale che stando remoti da essi appariscono come rilevati.

IMITARE LA NATURA 2. I spared no effort to imitate nature in as many ways as possible. I produced historical scenes together with buildings, giving them the measure which the eye established and so authentic that from a distance they appear convex.

L. PACIOLI, Divina Proportione, 1509 (ed. Winterberg, 1889, p. 131). 3. Primo diremo della humana proportione respecto al suo corpo e membri però che dal corpo humano ogni mesura con sue denomination] deriva e in ipso tutte sorti de proportioni e proportionalità se ritrova con lo deto de 'Altissimo mediante li intrinseci secreti della natura... Li antichi considerata la debita dispositione del corpo humano tutte le loro opere maxime li templi sacri a la sua proportione le disponevano. Perochè in quello trovavano le doti principalissime figure senza le quali non è possibile alcuna cosa operare cioè la circular perfettissima e di tutte l'altre ysoperimetrarum capacissima come dice Dionisio in quel de sferis l'altra la quadrata equilatera.

PROPORTIONS OF MAN AND ARCHITECTURE 3. First we shall speak of human proportions, for all measures and their names are derived from the human body and in them one can find all those relations and proportions through which God reveals the greatest secrets of nature. Having analysed the true structure of the human body, the ancients gave to all their works, above all to their temples proportions which harmonized with it. They found in the human body the two main forms without which it is impossible to accomplish anything, namely, the circle, which is the most perfect and rational, as Dionysus says in De sferis, and the square.

L. PACIOLI, ibid., p. 162. 4. Ma el quanto appunto a noi per certa proportione fia incognito. Ma perché „ars imitandi naturam in quantum potest" a noi mai pò esser noto se non quanto dal l'Altissimo ci fosse concesso come nel suo Timeo dice Platone e certo per secreto proposito videlicet. Hec enim soli Deo nota sunt atque ei, qui Dei sit amicus.

THE DIVINITY OF PROPORTION 4. A perfectly accurate numerical proportion (such as the works of nature possess) is not known to us. But "the art of imitating nature to the greatest degree" cannot be known to us if the Almighty One does not permit it, as Plato says with some secret intent in his Timaeus. These are things known only to God and to him who is His friend.

TEXTS OF FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ART THEORISTS

A. FILARETE, Trattato (ed. v. Oeningen, p. 251). 5. Imparate pure a fare la figura (umana), perché in essa contiene ogni misura e proportione di colonne e anche d'altre cose.

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MAN AS A MODEL FOR ART 5. Learn to reproduce the human form, for it contains all measure and proportion, for columns and also for other things.

A. FILARETE, ibid., p. 273. 6. La ragione perchè sono più begli ê tondi che gli acuti: questo non'è dubbio che ogni cosa che impediscie o tanto o quanto la vista, non è si bella, come quella, che seguita è da l'occhio non à niuna cosa, che la ritengha. Quando vedi uno archo mezzo tondo, l'occhio o vuoi dire la vista, come tu il guardi, subito la vista lo circunda intorno al primo sguardo, e transcorsa la vista, che non à ritegnio nè ostaculo nessuno. Cosi il mezzo tondo; come lo guardi, subito l'occhio e la vista senza alcuna obstaculità, o senza alcun'altro ritegnio o impedimento nessuno corre da l'una testa a l'altra del mezzo cerchio. Non è così l'acuto.

THE FULL ARCH AND THE OGIVE 6. The reason why full arches are more beautiful than ogives: there is no doubt that every thing which in any way impedes the sight is less beautiful than that which can be followed freely by the eye, which is not concealed from the eye. When you see a full arch, nothing in the viewing restricts the eye, just as when you look at a circle the eye embraces it at first sight and works without any impediment; it is the same with the semi-circle, where the eye moves from one end to the other; but it is different with the ogive.

P. GAURICUS, De sculptura (ed. Brockhaust p. 138). 7. Qualem rogo Geometram? qualem et musicum fuisse existimabimus eum, qui hominem ita formavit? Qualem vero esse oportere eum qui talem typum sit imitaturus?

THE CREATOR OF GEOMETRY AND MUSIC 7. What a geometer, I ask, and what a musician was the creator of man? And what demands must then be made of one who would wish to follow this model?

P. GAURICUS, ibid., p. 134. 8. Consideranda vero et ipsa inter se partium αναλογία, quam alibi Proportionem heic, ni fallor, proprie commensum dixerimus. Quanta est longitudo ab interciliis ad summas nares, tanta erit productio menti ab iugulo.

CONSTANT PROPORTIONS 8. One must also consider the άναλογΙ ? :

6. Girolamo Savonarola, engraving by J. J. Boissard, 16th century.

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19. Lodovico Dolce, woodcut, 16th century.

20. Giorgio Vasari, engraving by P. A. Parriso (Parisot) after G. Menabuoni.

21. Andrea Palladio, engraving by Β. Picart after P. Caliari, 18th century.

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into whether it was more noble; and he thought that it was, for it had greater aspirations: to represent existence, not appearances. The painter Bronzino rejected the pretensions of sculptors to superiority. Is sculpture more lasting? Only the material is· more lasting, and it is neither the work nor the merit of the artist Sculpture demands more effort? Effort lowers art, and reduces it to the mechanical arts. The painter Vasari defended the superiority of painting. It stands higher from the viewpoint of difficulty: in sculpture convexities emerge from the material, while in painting they are the work of art, an expression of intellect (esprime il valor dello intelletto). Painting also stands higher from the viewpoint of its greater consistency with nature: it can reproduce more things than sculpture. But Vasari added that from this viewpoint architecture stands still higher (più perfettamente alla natura si accosta) : this is an indication of how nature and its reflection were understood at the time. The painter Pontormo was less sure of the superiority of his art; but he argued that painting not only imitates nature, but corrects and enriches it, makes things which nature has not made, and gives natural things added grace. Michelangelo's contribution to the questionnaire (to which reference has already been made) in effect abolished the problem. Varchi came up with an equally unexpected, conclusion: painting and sculpture are not really different, for they have the same goal—imitation, and the same form—disegno. They are one art, una arte sola, because (as he expressed it in the philosophical terminology of the time) they have the same essence; only their accidents are different/ 2 ' The Renaissance, which had contrasted the arts with such fondness, now went to the other extreme, and asserted that there was no difference between them. Other such comparisons were less frequent, but they were made. Which stands higher: science or art? Art or nature (as Gilio enquired), the visual arts or poetry? Most artists were not much interested in poetry. One exception to this was Varchi, who was a scholar and man of letters, and well acquainted with Horace's aequa potestas and ut pictura poesis. If poetry is an art, he asked, then in what sense? To be sure, not in the sense that it produces real objects: but it is an art in that it is subject to rules, and also in the sense that it imitates reality, just like the visual arts: the difference is that the plastic arts imitate it from outside, poetry from inside. He even wrote (not very responsibly) that they are to one another like body and soul, he also pointed out that painting helps poetry, and that, contrariwise, it receives help from poetry; without Dante there would be no Sistine chapel. 8. PROBLEMS. Some of the traditional problems in the theory of art (still discussed in poetics) now receded into the background. There was a decline of interest in the problem of whether the aim of art is pleasure or utility? The moralist-philosophers were concerned with utility,\for the artists pleasure was enough. Theorists also ceased to ask whether the source of arts is craftsmanship or inspiration. Platonic philosophers expatiated ?n inspiration; artists were more interested in craftsmanship.

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What was emphasized now was the relationship of art to nature: should the artist learn from it, adapt himself to it, or can he improve on it? Is there also an internal factor in art which comes from the artist in addition to the external one which comes from nature? Another prominent theme was the matter of proportion and canons: can they be formulated, or should the artist proceed without them and replace them by intuition? Also : is there beauty in art, and if so, in what does it consist? Is it really only a matter of the proportion of the parts? 9. ART AND NATURE. The dependence of art on nature was the locus communis of the theory of the time. Vasari wrote of it in various places: "Our art is mainly the imitation of nature". "Imitation of nature directs the development of art". "The artist is the more perfect the closer he approaches nature". Varchi added that for many, painting and poetry have the same ideal, namely, "to imitate nature as much as possible".—And Dolce declared : "I assert that painting is nothing other than the imitation of nature; he who approaches most closely to it in his works is the perfect master". He whose work lacks similarity to nature is no painter at all. (E quel pittore, a cui questa similitudine manca, non è pittore). Gilio speaks of the same thing in different words: "Truth (la verità) is the most important thing in art; better to bend beauty to truth than the reverse". But he also says that art is a beautiful mixture of truth and fiction (leggìo dra mascolanza di cose vera e finte). Vasari also says something else. On the one hand he declares that "no one can make works exactly like those of nature". And, on the other, that not everything in nature is good: "Nature sometimes creates strangely and by chance. It leaves behind it parts which are not beautiful". But art has a grace and perfection, which are beyond the order of nature. Hence, nature is "vanquished by art", natura vinta dall'arte. Other writers said similar things. Theoretically they proposed to subject art to nature, but in practice they made departures from this programme. Nature is not the only material for art, nor the only model, nor the only goal, nor the only criterion of its perfection. "The painter", wrote Dolce, "should strive not only to imitate nature, but to surpass it". (9) Danti thought that art really is more perfect than nature, and also that it is different from and independent of it: There is no doubt that the art of drawing reproduces all visible things, but it can create new complex wholes and things which seem invented by ar/. (14) Art is imitation, but not reproduction. Pontormo declared that painting makes things which nature has not made, tries to breathe life into canvas (but also felt that this was excessively ambitious for painters). Pino wrote that painting is invention which represents that which does not exist.12 ^ Zuccaro took the view that art imitates nature, but also competes with it (emulando la natura).(41) This implied at least a certain freedom for the artist. The treatises do not say very much about it explicitly, but Paolo Veronese before the tribunal of the Inquisition in 1573 said: "We painters enjoy the same freedom as poets and madmen". He explained that when he painted a historical picture, he supplemented the historical

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figures with fictional ones if the composition required it. He appealed to a licence analogous to that of the poets: artists also have the right to licence. The most profound duality in the concept of nature had already appeared in antiquity: for if art is to imitate nature, then this can mean either one of two things: to imitate the laws which govern nature, or to imitate its appearance. The first of these alternate conceptions came from Democritus, the second from Plato. The modern theory of art began with the Platonic conception, but gradually passed ever to the Democritean: Alberti still retained the Platonic, Leonardo already professed the Democritean. A further element was added to this in the 16th century: the art of the ancients was now found to realize the laws of nature better than nature itself— and for this reason it was held to be just as good as nature and an even better model for art. * 10. IMITATION. It was universally accepted that art is imitation. However, imitation was understood in a special way, and certainly not as the copying or simple reproduction of things. Reproduction, wrote Danti, is as different from imitation as narration is from poetry." υ We reproduce things as we see them, but we imitate them as they should be seen. In imitation a selection is made: both Danti and Pino wrote of procedimento selettivo. Danti spoke of reproducing reality not only through painting and sculpture, but also through architecture, thereby illustrating how widely he understood the term "imitation". Aesthetic thought departed from the Platonic conception of copying, though it did not cease to use the Platonic term "imitation". The conception of imitation did not mean that the artist could not be regarded as being independent in his work. More than one theorist of the time wrote that art is like nature and replaces nature. Zuccaro said that art opens up new paradises. 11. DISEGNO. In art, what is not taken from the outside, from nature, comes from inside, from the artist. For the writers of the 16th century this internal element was the most important. Varchi wrote in Aristotelian style that things of art differ from natural things in that the latter have their principle in themselves, whereas the principle of things of art resides elsewhere, namely, in the artist.(1) In his biography of Giulio Romano, Vasari wrote simply: "The arts derive from the mind". However, none of them were thinking of the subjective experience of the artist, but of the model, form, intention, or idea which is to be found in his mind. One further expression was.added to these traditional ones during the Renaissance, namely design— disegno. Like nearly all Renaissance art theory terms, disegno was derived from Latin, from designatio. In the transition to the volgar lingua, however, it changed its meaning * J. Bialostocki, "Pojçcie natury w teorii sztuki, Estetyka, Vol. ΠΙ, 1962, p. 203n, in English; "The Renaissance Concept of Nature and Antiquity", in The Renaissance and Mannerism, Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, Π, 1963, p. 19.—See E. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, I960, p. 30: "Classical art itself, in manifesting what natura naturans had intended but natura naturata had failed to perform, represented the highest and "truest" form of naturalism".

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more than the others. The Latin term was abstract, and had the same meaning as the English "designation". The Italian disegno retained the notion of intention, but it also acquired a new meaning, drawing or design. The same thing occurred in French, but there intention (dessein) and drawing (dessin) are differentiated by their spelling. In Italian, intention and drawing did not even differ to this extent: they were referred by the same term. Because of this, however, something of the idea of intention entered into the concept of drawing: the expression disegno denoted a physical object, but connoted something psychological, volitional. Alberti had already defined disegno as "a strong plan derived from the spirit and executed in lines and angles". Dolce called it the form which the artist gives to things. Vasari vacillated in his use of the expression: for him disegno was either a form in the mind, or a form already realized by the hand. The first meaning was more essential: it assumed that the mind discovers one "form" or "idea" in individual things, or, as Vasari also expressed it, a "general judgement". The artist shapes his work according to this form or idea: the form or idea manifests itself in the design. Cesare Ripa in his Iconology, which will be more fully discussed later, called design "the father of painting, sculpture, and architecture" and "the nerve of all pleasant things" : there is as much beauty in a work of art as there is design. He represented "Disegno" allegorically in the form of a youth, holding a compass in his right hand and a mirror in his left (111. XXIII). The compass indicated that design is based on measure, and that it is good when it holds to simple proportions; the mirror indicated that design reproduces not the external world, but the internal organ of the soul, a phantasy preserving the form In his Four Books on Architecture Palladio reiterated some old formulae: that beauty consists in the proper relation of the parts to one another and of the parts to the whole; (28) that a building should be a complete and finished organism; that among forms some are more perfect than others—the circle and square, for example, are more perfect than other forms because of their simplicity and unity. However, these forms have more than purely formal values. In particular, the circle, whose circumference is equidistant at every point from the centre, lends itself best to expressing the unity, infinite being, uniformity and justice of God. (30) This belief guided Palladio in his work and inclined him towards central architecture. He wished his buildings to reflect the beauty of the universe so that "the small temples which we raise to God should be like the greatest and most perfect which He has created"/29» Other Renaissance architects also held to simple forms, which they regarded as being perfect. They conceived designs of central buildings based on circles and squares, relatively few of which, however, were realized : Brunelleschi's Cappella Pazzi in Florence, the church Madonna di Consolazione in Todi (111. XI), Bramante's Tempietto in Rome (111. XII). The main church in Christendom, the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, was a central building in Bramante's project (111. XIII) and remained such in Michelangelo's amended version (111. XIV). Of Palladio's central buildings, the most perfect and best known and for centuries the most influential was the Villa Rotonda (111. XV). Though he was already moving over from classicism to Mannerism, Sebastian Serlio also retained a liking for central plans (111. XVI). * * S. Wiliñski, "S. Serlio e A. Palladio", in Bollettino del Centro A. Palladio", VI, 2, 1964, and: "Sebastiano Serlio", ibid., ΥΠ, 2,1965.

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Perfect proportions were sought for architecture as well as for painting and sculpture. Their perfection was proved in various ways: mathematically, theologically, cosmologically, musically, anthropologically, and psychologically. It was asserted that certain simple proportions and geometrical figures are obligatory because they are perfect in themselves; also because they are a picture of God, because they constitute universal laws, because they are the same proportions which we hear in music as harmony, because they correspond to the human form, and because they suit man's inclinations and habits. This last explanation, however was less frequent; its time would come in the 17th century. 13. NON SO CHÉ. The belief in the power of proportion, number, and geometry that had developed in antiquity and the Middle Ages remained prevalent in the 16th century, but a new motif also began to appear at the same time. Rules, order and measurements are doubtless necessary in architecture, which operates with points and lines, but can painting and sculpture measure and establish rules to the same extent? asked Danti. The view emerged that beauty cannot be reduced to rational, numerical relationships, that there is something irrational in it. How might this something be called? Someone thought of Petrarch's phrase non so ché for something which cannot be expressed, or defined. This expression now became a formula. Dolce wrote: "Human beauty (venustà) is non so ché, it attracts both painters and poets and fills the soul with infinite pleasure, though no one knows whence it comes nor what it is that pleases".(7) Firenzuola expressed himself similarly in his dialogue on feminine beauty: beauty derives from hidden proportion and from a measure which we do not know and about which books tell us nothing; one can only say of it what one says when one cannot express something: that it is: un non so ché.'·24'' He defined beauty traditionally as agreement and harmony, but he added nontraditionally that beauty emerges secretly (occultamente) from the structure and combination of parts. "$ ;

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XXXI. Eloquence. Allegory. Engraving by L. Kilian, 1606.

XXXIII. Nature. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de l'architecture antique et moderne, 1702.

XXXIV. Artistic Knowledge. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart Chambray, Parallèle de Γ architecture antique et moderne, 1702.

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XXXV. The Artistic Idea. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de l'architecture antique et moderne, 1702.

XXXVI. The Artistic Imagination. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de Varchitecture antique et moderne, 1702.

XXXVII. Artistic Imitation. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de l'architecture antique et moderne, 1702.

XXXVI11. Artistic Practico. Allegory. Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard in: Fréart de Chambray. Parallèle de l'architecture antique et moderne, 1702.

26. A l b r e c h t D ü r e r , e n g r a v i n g by J. H a i d a f t e r J. R o t e n h a m m e r , 18th century.

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allora potiamo pensare... Poi conforme a questo concetto interno andiamo con lo stile formando, e designando in carta, e poi con penelli, e colori in tela o in muro colorando. Ben è vero, che per questo nome di Disegno interno io non intendo solamente il concetto interno formato nella mente del pittore, ma anco qual concetto, che fofma qualsivoglia intelletto... Non uso il nome d ' i n t e n t i o n e, come adoprano i logici e filosofi, o di e s s e m p l a r e o i d e a com'usano i theologi... Si devono usare i nomi conforme alle professioni.

to what we have been able to grasp in the mind at that moment. Next, we begin to form the thing and draw it on paper in accordance with this internal concept, and then we paint it on canvas or on a wall with a brush. But by the term "internal design" I understand an internal concept formed not only in the miad of a ρ linter, but in any mind. I have not used here the term "intention", as philosophers and logicians are wont to, nor "model", nor "idea", as theologians do. One should use the terminology proper to one's profession.

F. ZUCCARO, ibid., Π, 3. 36. Disegno non è materia, non è corpo non è accidente di sostanza alcuna, ma è form a idea, ordine, regola, termine, o oggetto dell'intelletto... E per meglio anco capire questa definizione si dee osservare che essendovi due sorte d'operazioni, cioè altre esterne, come il disegnare, il lineare, il formare, il depingere, lo scolpire, il fabricare: ed altre interne, come l'intendere e il volere.

36 Design is not matter, nor body, nor affection« nor substance: it is a form, idea, order, rule, term, and object of the mind. In order to better understand this definition, one should remember that two kinds of activities exist: on the one hand, external ones like drawing, drafting, shaping, painting, sculpturing, building, and, on the other hand, internal ones like reasoning and desiring.

F. ZUCCARO, ibid., Π, 1, p. 2. 37. Disegno esterno altro non è che quello che appare circonscritto di forma senza sostanza di corpo, simplice lineamento, circonscrittione, misuratione e figura di qual si voglia cosa imaginata e reale. Il qual Disegno cosi formato e circonscritto con linea è essempio e forma della imagine Ideale. F. ZUCCARO, ibid., Π, 2, p. 5. 38. Vi sono tre sorti di Disegno esterno proprio à noi Pittori. Uno si chiama Disegno n a t u r a l e , esemplare proprio e principale dalla natura prodotto, e poi dall'arte imitato. L'altro si chiama Disegno a r t i f i c i a l e essemplare dell'artificio humano, col'quale formiamo varie inventioni e concetti historici e poetici. Il terzo lo chiamaremo Disegno pur articiale, ma f a n t a s t i c o , che farà di tutte le bizarrie, caprici, inventioni, fantasie e ghiribizzi dell'huomo. F. ZUCCARO, ibid., Π, 6, 1607, pp. 29-30. 39. Ma dico bene e so che dico il vero, che l'arte della pittura non piglia i suoi principi,

EXTERNAL DESIGN 37. External design is nothing other than form without bodily substance, simple outline, contour, the measure and shape of any real or imagined thing. In this way a design shaped and encompassed with line is an example and form of the ideal imagination. THREE KINDS OF DESIGN 38. There are three kinds of external design peculiar to us painters. The first, natural design, is the principal and proper example of what is created by nature and then imitated by art. The second kind of design is called artistic, being a specimen of human skill; with its aid we formulate historical and poetic concepts. The third we would also call artistic, but phantastic design; it expresses all the eccentricities, caprices, thoughts, phantasies, and delusions of man. WITHOUT MATHEMATICS AND SPECULATION 39. I say (and I know that I speak the truth) that the art of painting does not need to strive

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né ha necessità alcuna di ricorrere alle mattematiche scienze, ad imparare regole e modi alcuni per l'arte sua, né anco per poterne ragionare in speculazione; però non è di essa figliuola, ma bensì della Natura e del Disegno. L'una le mostra la forma; l'altra le insegna ad operare. ... L'intelletto ha da essere non solo chiaro· ma libero, e l'ingegno sciolto, e non così ristretto in servitù meccanica di sì fatte regole, perocché questa veramente nobilissima professione vuole il giuditio e la prattica buona, che li sia regola e norma al bene operare.

for principles and does not have to base itself on the mathematical sciences in order to gain prescriptions and procedures for its art, and even less does it have to engage in speculative reasoning. It is not the child of either, but that of nature and design. The former shows its form, the latter teaches it how to proceed. The mind (of the artist) should be not only clear, but free: his talent should be free and not hampered by mechanical submission to rules, for this most noble profession has to base its prescriptions and norms on good judgement and practice in order to be well done.

F. ZUCCARO, ibid., Π, 6, p. 28. 40. Ecco il vero, il proprio ed universale fine della pittura, cioè l'essere imitatrice della Natura e di tutte le cose artificiali, che illude e inganna gli occhi de' viventi e de' più saputi.

PAINTING DECEIVES THE EYES 40. The true, proper, and universal goal of painting is to imitate nature and all products of art so as to deceive and delude the eyes of even those who are most knowledgeable about these things.

F. ZUCCARO, ibid., I, 7, p. 14. 41. (Dio) volle anco dargli facoltà di formare in sé medesimo un Disegno interno, intellettivo, acciocché col mezzo di questo conoscesse tutte le creature e formasse η se stesso un nuovo Mondo,... con questo Disegno quasi imitando Dio ed emulando la Natura, potesse produrre infinite cose artifiziali simili alle naturali e col mezzo della pittura e della scoltura farci vedere in terra novi Paradisi.

NEW WORLDS 41. God wished to impart to man the ability to form internal, mental design within himself so that he might thereby cognize all creatures and create within himself a new internal world, and that thanks to this design, he might, as if imitating God. and competing with nature, also create artificial objects which resemble natural ones, and with the help of painting and sculpture present new paradises on earth.

G. PALEOTTI, Discorso interno alle imagini sacre e profane, 1582 (ed. Barocchi, II, 462). 42. Formiamo corpi di figure tali, che rendono non solo vaghezza all'aspetto per la varietà delle cose che sono figurate, ma apportano ancor mirabile giovamento all'animo per li similitudine misteriose che si rappresentano, o vogliamo dire per la medolla della yirtù che in esse è contenta. Queste sono stati chiamati s i m b o l i , perché, tra i varii significati che porta seco questa voce, l'uno serve principalmente per certa nota e contrasegno di un'altra cosa m a g g i o r e .

SYMBOLIC ART 42. We form figures so that they might have beauty in their appearance due to the diversity of the things which have been represented, but also so that they might afford marvellous spiritual delight by exhibiting secret similarities or the core of those virtues which they possess. Such figures are called symbols, for among the many meanings which an expression bears, one serves mainly to denote some other, greater thing.

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5. Emblematics and Iconology The men of the Renaissance thought in allegorical categories: the belief was widely prevalent that every thing can be expressed in a sign, a word, a concept, a motto, a slogan or an emblem. And every thought and concept, even the most abstract, can be expressed in a picture. Everything is allegory, and an allegory can be found for every thought. The manner of thinking was not new, but the novelty of the century lies in its particular fascination with allegory and mottos and the juxtaposing of concepts and images. Certain people now devoted themselves specifically to the task of discovering emblems and allegories. They carried out this task as systematically as if it were a science, for they were convinced that it really was a science. Their work took two main forms: emblematics and iconology. 1. EMBLEMATICS. The science of selecting mottos had one of its models in heraldry. Heraldic forms, which date from the 12th century, were a by-product of warfare: recognizable signs on banners and rallying cries were necessary to discover and call together one's forces during battle. At first they were selected arbitrarily by individuals, but in time they became stabilized as the coats of arms of families and institutions. By the time of the Renaissance they no longer had any practical military significance, but they had, on the other hand acquired a new meaning as mottos and symbols, and served as models and incentive for new mottos and symbols. These were selected with careful consideration for the character and dignity of those who would use them. An effort was made to scientifically select signs, mottos, slogans and emblems suitable for individuals, families, countries, institutions or ideas. In this process a gradual stabilization took place of those forms which were supposed to be strictly adhered to in emblematics.* The expression "emblem" originally meant something completely different from motto, namely, mosaic. This meaning is still given for it in Ambrosio Calepino's Dictionarium, which appeared in 1558. It was used in the changed, metaphorical sense perhaps for the first time by the Frenchman Budé in his theory of law. Later, the Italian professor Andrea Alciati used it in the sense of ornament, motto, figure. Alciati's own collection of mottos and figures, Emblemata, was first published in 1531. The collection was unusually successful; it was imitated and the title of Alciati's work became the name of a genre. Alciati's work was based on a tri-partite arrangement: first, slogans composed of a few words {lemma), were given; these were then illustrated by suitable drawings {ikon), after which came an epigram which developed or explained the slogan and the drawing. From this time onward, the expression "emblem" was used in two meanings, a broader and a narrower. In the wider meaning it meant motto, allegory, symbol, with the difference that a symbol is natural and hence easily understood, whereas an emblem * R. J. Clements, Picta Poesis, Roma, I960—W. S. Heckscher, Κ. A. Wirth, "Emblem, Emblembücher", in Reallexicon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Lieferung 49, pp. 85-228.

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is an artificial creation whose deciphering requires effort. Emblem in the narrower sense (used most frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries) signified the Alciati scheme of slogan, image, and epigram. These three main components could also be complemented by a commentary justifying the selection and by quotations from classics recommending the particular illustration in question in preference to some other. This arrangement was universally accepted by the "emblemologists", Alciati's successors; it was a strictly observed formula for ars emblematica. Emblematics thus conceived drew to a considerable extent on ancient epigrams and medieval tituli and allegories, hieroglyphics and rebuses. But at the same time, taken as a whole, it represented something qualitatively new, the essential feature of which was that it made use in equal measure of word and image. It was an art combining poetic commentary on symbolic drawings with graphic illustration of poetry. The same idea was expressed twice over, in abstract and in pictorial terms. 2. ICONOLOGY. Iconology was analogous to emblematics, in that it, too, combined words with images, the abstract with the concrete. The difference between them lay in the fact that whereas emblematics gathered symbols for individual human beings as well as for general concepts, iconology dealt exclusively with concepts. The art of iconology was initiated by Cesare Ripa (111. 24) in his Iconologia, which appeared in 1593.* The title was derived from the Greek eikôn (image), an accurate reflection of the book's concern with the pictorialization of abstract concepts. Here again, the title of a book was adopted as the name of the new art; and here again, the personality of the founder left a deep imprint on the art itself, as the personality of Alciati did on emblematics. Ripa was a learned man, a member of the circle of filomati in Siena, master of ceremonies at various courts, closely acquainted with the tastes and mentality of his age. His Iconologia gives expression to that mentality. The volume treats of 400 abstract concepts, some of which—Beauty, Grace, Symmetry, Art, Poetry and Furor Poeticus (111. XVII-XXII) for example—are specially relevant to aesthetics. The first two editions of his book contained only verbal descriptions of the allegorical figures which were to pictorialize the concepts selected, but in the third edition, published in 1603 while Ripa was still alive, the drawings were included, so that—in parallel with emblematics—concrete and verbal interpretations of things complemented each other. The later editions of the Iconologia prepared by G. Z. Castellini, were equipped with scholarly apparatus in the form of commentaries and quotations from philosophers and classics. As had been the case with emblematics, iconology durably retained the form imparted to it by its founder. 3. THE BASIC PRINCIPLES. The underlying objective of both arts, emblematics and iconology, was the linking together of all things: mystica, naturalis et occulta rerum significatio, to quote the words of Antonio Ricciardo (1591). Both were poised between literature ánd the visual arts. And in each case, the founding figure was a writer * E. Mandowsky, Untersuchungen zur Iconologie des C. Ripa, Hamburg, 1934.

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interested and competent in the arts (Alciati drew the illustrations for his book himself). In other works of the same type, littérateurs joined forces with artists. Though close to one another, however, emblematics and iconology employed differing conventions: emblematics used representations of animals, plants and objects— everything, in fact, other than human figures, whereas iconology restricted itself to human figures, with the added disciplinary sophistication that only one figure might be used for any one concept. Both books enjoyed incredible success, though their fates were, at the same time, strangely diverse. Alciati inspired innumerable successors and imitators. Bibliographers have estimated that in the course of some 150 years (from the late 16th to the early 18th century), a total of 3000 books by 1300 different authors were published in the field of emblematics. A variety of names were used: the Italians referred to arte delle imprese, arte delle emblemi and arte delle allusioni and the French to art des devises', the Latin name commentario symbolica was also used, and there were others. New people made their appearance in the world, and wished to have emblems of their own; new collections of them were accordingly published, always, however, observing the principles and schematic framework created by Alciati. Ripa's book, by contrast, covered so many basic abstract concepts as to be virtually exhaustive. New editions appeared one after the other. Explanatory commentaries were added, and at times his material was supplemented, though abridged versions were more common. French, Spanish and Dutch translations were published. The heyday of iconology lasted throughout the entire 17th century; though the idea and its basic realization were a product of the 16th century, it was the following century which produced the greatest number of publications in the field. Underlying both these arts was the allegorical pattern of thinking typical of the times. Everything—plant, animal, utensil—might be an allegory; and conversely, for every abstract concept it was possible to discover a concrete, visual image. Writing in 1602, Taurellus saw emblems as being "images of the moral virtues and failings that are expressed in different works of God and nature". Francis Bacon observed that emblems lower things of the mind to the level of the senses, but added that it was precisely this which constituted their strength. Artists learnt from writers, and writers from artists; the epoch demanded illustrations of the poetic word, and poetic summaries of the content of visual images. And thus there arose the dualistic aesthetic of emblematics and iconology, of painted poetry, pictapoesis, as the French emblematist Aneau styled his art.* 4. A R T OR SCIENCE. Emblematics and iconology were not regarded as being an area for the free play of the imagination, but as sciences with general principles and roles. It was in this now archaic sense of the term that they were called arts: ars est quae dat rationes certas. They employed standard allegories, based themselves on a fixed relationship between words and images of things, adhered to general * B. Aneau, Picta Poesis, Lyon, 1552.

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principles and avoided arbitrariness. Efforts were made not to invent emblems and iconological figures, but rather to find them somewhere in the classics. This procedure was felt to guarantee their scientific and objective character. Collections of emblems had all the system, order and completeness that one associates with science. And indeed they were called sciences as well as arts: the words la science et l'art des devises recur in book titles. Emblemists strove more towards scholarship than the exercise of imagination. They would never have dared to publish emblems or allegories which were not hallowed by tradition. They were compared to bees drawing their sustenance from outside sources. Ricciardo wrote that he based his emblematics and symbolic system on "the most ancient among philosophies" : the Egyptian wisdom, the Orphic mysteries, the prophets and the gospels. Particular esteem was accorded to the tradition of hieroglyphics. Special textbooks on the subject appeared in the 16th century, the most famous among them being P. Valeriani's Hieroglyphica (1595),* a work of formidable learning based on hundreds of ancient authors. The men of the Renaissance, upon being confronted with Egyptian hieroglyphics, had taken them to be symbols and adopted them as such, linking them, however, with medieval and biblical symbolic systems and thereby creating a curious new Renaissance hieroglyphics of their own, one which was founded on a misunderstanding of the functions of its predecessors, and the confusion of different systems. Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride in the translation of Ermolao Barbaro made a special contribution towards achieving this result. One of the earliest Renaissance treatises on art, the Hipnerotomachia, was illustrated with hieroglyphics. Thereafter, there emerged a whole elaborate art of emblems and mottos based on this ancient tradition—but at the same time, adapted to the needs and stylistic preferences of its new adepts.f The historic credentials of allegories were usually fictitious; writers and artists moulded and augmented them at will. They were more frequently the product of artistic and poetic imagination than diligent, scholarly research. Renaissance allegories were certainly the repositories of traditions, but even more an indigenous growth. Passed from hand to hand, they gradually stabilized, and this stability gave them an illusory objectivity, as though they had been deciphered from nature and belonged to the realm of science rather than of art. Thus emblematics and iconology were arts both in the traditional sense of disciplines akin to science and in the more modern sense of "fine" arts. And at the same time, they had the additional peculiarity of belonging equally to literature and the visual arts, to both artes poeticae and artes pictoriae. 5. THE INFLUENCE OF EMBLEMATICS AND ICONOLOGY. AS the spirit of the age dictated, emblems and allegories set themselves the task of moral instruction. It was generally * J. P. Valeriani Bellunensis, Hieroglyphica sive de Sacris Aegiptiorum aliarumque gentium Uteris commentariorum libri XVIII, Francofurti, 1678. t L. Volkmann, Bilderschriften der Renaissance, Hieroglyphik und Emblematik in ihren Beziehungen und Fortwirkungen, 1923.—Cf. Κ. Giehlow, "Hieroglyphenkunde des Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissance", in: Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen, XXXII, 1, 1913.

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believed that they were morally and politically useful; and accordingly, they usually contained lofty sentiments. As well as forming part of science and art, they were to serve the cause of the betterment of the human race. Their influence was considerable, the more so since books of emblems and allegories were used as textbooks for rhetoric, so that they also reached people in the form of the spoken word. They also had an impact on all the other arts. The French edition of Alciati's Emblemata published by J. Bauduoin in 1637 declared that a knowledge of the subject was essential for orators, poets, sculptors, painters, engineers, medallionists, and the devisers of mottos, ballets and dramatic works. Ripa's book was an important source of material for the artists of the 17th and 18th centuries, as the cases of Poussin, Bernini or even Vermeer indicate. Winckelmann could still describe it as "a kind of artist's Bible". Ripa's allegories also found their way onto the stage, as for example in the Court Masques of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson in the years after 1605.* Emblematics also exerted an influence on the field from which it had originally sprung: heraldry. Mottos were added to coats of arms in the spirit of the new art, and new coats of arms were devised in the style of the epoch, embellished with crests, crowns and labrets. Costumes were designed to match, with devices embroidered on the material. The aesthetic principles of emblematics were thus introduced into heraldry. Emblematics and iconology were arts, and as such belong to the history of art. But they also have a place in the history of aesthetics for at least two reasons. The fact that they belonged in equal measure to literature and the visual arts had certain specific aesthetic implications; and they were also singular arts inasmuch that they were exclusively and by their very nature allegorical. Moreover, their content was at times explicitly aesthetic. There are fewer ideas of an aesthetic nature expressed in the works of Alciati, but here too they are to be found. One of his emblems, for example, depicts Ars naturarti adiuvans: Mercury with his caduceus, and Fortune with world, helm, and horn of plenty; there is an entire conception of aesthetics contained in this emblem. One can find similar emblems touching on matters of art and beauty in many others among the three thousand" sixteenth- and seventeenth-century volumes on emblematics, though the amount dealing with political and moral themes is incomparably greater. In Ripa's work, on the other hand, there is an abundance of material personifying and commenting on such concepts as Arte, Bellezza, Venustà and Grazia. 6. ART AND POETRY. The allegorical figure representing art in the works of Ripa and iconology generally was a woman in a green gown, holding a hammer, chisel and paint-brush in her right hand, and resting her left hand on a staff around which a young climbing plant was depicted (111. XVII). The staff symbolized the guidance given by art to the young shoots, and the green the hopes of artists to achieve fame * D. J. Gordon, "The Imagery of Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Masque of Beauty", in: Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, VI, 1943.

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and success. The earlier editions of the Iconologia contained only brief commentaries, but later ones offered a definition of art: "disposition based on precepts {precetti) and principles (ragioni)", and distinguished three different meanings for it: 1. the concept in the mind (concetto nella mente), in which sense art is a disposition of the mind (habito dell'intelletto)·, 2. craft (artifizio), the result of that disposition, which finds expression in the work; and 3. the work (opera), representing the product (effetto) of that craft. Depending on which of those meanings is taken for art, it may be said to be in the mind, in the sight (vista) or in the work. Here, the Iconologia appealed to the authority of the Nicomachean Ethics and St. Thomas Aquinas, but the threefold distinction of the meanings of "art" nonetheless took into account the then relatively recent notion of art as being the thing produced by the artist. (1) This book is thus evidence of the way in which the concept of art was developing. Poetry : a woman with one breast exposed, a laurel wreath on her head, her cheeks ablaze, holding a lyre in one hand and a flute in the other. Her deep-blue starred gown is a symbol of divinity, her breast full of milk a symbol of fertility, the lyre and flute symbols of poetry's links with music (111. XVIII). Furor poeticus was given a separate personification in Ripa's book: a winged youth with a wreath on his head, his face turned towards the heavens (111. XIX). The commentary describes poetic inspiration as a state of intense mental activity producing both harmony and marvellous ideas (concetti maravigliasi), which seem unattainable normally, and therefore must be regarded as "special gifts" and signs of divine grace. Painting, curiously enough, was only described in Ripa's book, not illustrated; and the French edition omitted the item altogether. 7. BEAUTY, PERFECTION AND GRACE. Beauty (bellezza) is depicted as a naked woman with her head in a cloud, holding a ball and compasses in her right hand, and a lily in her left (111. XX). The ball and compasses denote that beauty consists in measure and proportion; the flower alludes to beauty's power to attract the soul as a flower attracts by its scent; the head in the cloud symbolized that "beauty is a thing about which it is difficult to speak using human language". In his preface to the book, Ripa wrote that Venus symbolized "beauty, that is to say, the aspiration of primal matter towards form, as the philosophers say". And in the special chapter devoted to beauty, he said that even in created things, it is, metaphorically speaking, "nothing other than the radiance of the divine countenance, as the Platonists put it". Thus iconology contained an entire Platonic-Pythagorean philosophy. Whole phrases of the commentary follow the texts of Ficino. It is true that this commentary was the work of a seventeenth-century publisher of the Iconologia-, but this latter did nothing more than to put into words what Ripa had already expressed pictorially. Ripa gave perfection (perfezione) a special allegory of its own: a fully-clothed figure inside the zodiac, a "symbol of reason and fit measure". Symmetry also had its own allegorical rendering, which interpreted it in the manner of the ancient Greeks,

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that is to say as harmony, fit proportion, the consonance of the parts, measure and felicitous arrangement so that nothing need be added or taken away (the commentary observes that the symmetry of shapes and colours is called beauty, whilst symmetry of sounds is called melody).(3) Grace too had its own allegory: (grazia): a young girl finely dressed and wearing precious stones, with a multi-coloured, thornless rose in her hand, the symbol of a "special and mysterious gift of nature". Venustà was depicted by means of a somewhat complicated allegory: a woman, clothed, with cupid, fasci ardenti and caduceus; on her head there is a wreath of roses; in her right hand an everlasting flower (helichrysum), in her left a bird (111. XXI). The commentary explains that venustà is a kind of grace and condiment (condimento) to beauty; not all beauty is venustà but, without it, beauty cannot be complete/ 2 ' Eighteenth-century editions of the Iconologia, appealing to the authority of Ficino, wrote that beauty is grace, that grace derives above all from ornamentation and elegance, and that it is of three kinds: grace of soul, grace of body (deriving from colour and line) and the grace of harmony of words or sounds. Thus "beauty consists in grace and charm, which act through the mind, eyes and hearing to move and draw the soul". Design (disegno) is represented as a man holding a pair of compasses in one hand and a mirror in the other (111. XXIII). Nature Ripa conceived as a woman, her breasts swollen with milk, holding a vulture in her hand (111. XXIV). According to the Aristotelian teaching, nature had two components, the active and passive, form and material; the active nurtured and supported life, whilst the passive gradually destroyed it. The former is accordingly symbolized by milk, the latter by the most rapacious of the birds of prey. Iconology's principal mode of expression was pictorial rather than conceptual, and one cannot therefore expect too great a precision from it. But for this same reason, it was better able to express the as yet inchoate ideas of the age. It would seem, for example, that despite their different personifications, grazia and venustà were felt by the iconologists to be the same thing. Perfection and symmetry, on the other hand, were a distinct quality, depending on "fit measure". Fit measure and proportion, or in other words, perfection, was treated in the Iconologia as a minimal requirement for beauty. Complete beauty was held to require grace as well. This system of concepts mirrors the change that occurred in the theory of the visual arts in the later phase of the Renaissance. In the "Masque of Beauty" presented in London in 1608 and inspired by Ripa's Iconologia, the "Throne of Beauty" was made up of eight figures representing Splendor, Serenitas, Germinatio, Laetitia, Temperantia, Venustas, Dignitas and Perfectio, which personified the eight components of beauty. Above and therefore symbolically superordinate to them was Harmonía. This was a kind of personified system of aesthetic categories, the aesthetic synthesis of the Iconologia. 8. ALLEGORIES. Iconology strove to present concepts in an unambiguous and definitive manner; but loose and freely interpretable allegories and personifications

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were even more widespread. Usually they were female figures with some kind of special attribute. Whole series of them were published, being the personifications of the planets, the elements, parts of the world, the seasons, the ages of man, and so on. A few personifications of art and beauty might be mentioned here by way of example. In 1592, H. Goltzius engraved the nine Muses: Terpsichore, the Muse of Dancing was depicted playing a lute ; Calliope, the Muse of Epic Poetry, was shown holding a book in her hand (111. XXVIII and XXIX). The engravings of L. Kilian (1606) presented the seven liberal arts: Music was shown playing a lute, whilst Eloquence was addressing her hearers with elaborate gestures (111. XXX and XXXI). Charles Perrault's Cabinet des Beaux Arts (1690) included allegories of architecture, painting, sculpture and poetry, prepared by some of the leading artists of the age; here again, the symbolic figures are ladies surrounded by groups of cherubs in charge of their various attributes—in the case of architecture, for example, compasses, set square, books, plans and blocks of stone (111. XXXII). Another allegorical series, devised by G. Fentzel, presented the five senses; again they are depicted as women, but in fact the allegorical content of the drawings is located rather in the surroundings than in the central figures (111. XXV and XXVI). J. de Gheyn's allegory of beauty (111. XXVII) placed the emphasis not so much on the sublimity of beauty as the danger of vanity which accompanies it. The main concepts used in the theory of art at this period were presented in pictorial form (devised by Errard and engraved by Thomassin) in Fréart de Chambray's Parallèle de l'architecture antique et moderne, 1702. Again they were depicted as female figures: Nature as a woman with six breasts flowing with milk, surrounded by a group of animals including a unicorn and a lion (111. XXXIII) ; Artistic Knowledge as a woman lost in thought and with wings emerging from her head (111. XXXIV) ; The Artistic Idea with a graver and compasses and gazing upward (111. XXXV); Invention and Imagination in a laurel wreath (111. XXXVI); Imitation holding a mirror in her hand and with one foot resting on a monkey (111. XXXVII); Artistic Practice with compasses and plummet (111. XXXVIII). 9. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMAGES. It was only after a century had elapsed that the arts of emblematics and iconology were drawn into one imposing overall scheme. The man to achieve this was the French armorist Claude François Menestrier (1631-1705; 111. 25);* and the name he gave his general theory was "the philosophy of images". His basic proposition was that all arts and all sciences make use of images (travaillent en images).14) He began, he said, with emblems, mottos and hieroglyphics, then proceeded to other things which give joy to the eyes and mind, and on the basis of all, built up a system covering all human enterprises which make use of images. He distinguished four categories of images: painters' images, poetic (and rhetorical) images, scientific images and symbolic images. Poetry and rhetoric were obviously producers of images. But so too were the sciences: philosophy and mathematics alike form images of things, their figures et expressions idéelles. * C. F. Menestrier, Les recherches du blason, 1683.

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Menestrier operated with very broad conceptions of the arts and sciences making use of images. Painting, for example, he did not limit to easel-painting; decorations, ceremonies, triumphal arches, castra doloris, tournaments, merry-go-rounds, theatrical performances, ballet, concerts, pyrotechnical displays and receptions were all included under this same heading. In the category of "symbolic images"(5) which formed the starting point for his enquiries, he distinguished between hieroglyphs, or images of sacred, supernatural and divine things ; symbols, or images of natural things; emblems, or images containing "moral, political or academic instruction"; mottos, or images of various human undertakings, images des entreprises de guerre, de piété, d'estude, d'intrigue et de fortune; coats of arms, representing birth, station or merit; allegories, representing (particularly on the reverse side of medals) great events and fine deeds; iconology, representing things of the mind as though they were living beings. Thus by the end of the 17th century, emblematics and iconology had become the point of departure for an attempt to group together all the arts, an attempt based on the concept of the image, which was held to be a common feature of all. The image had two main elements: firstly, it was something visual and sensible; and secondly, it was a symbol. Thus conceived, the image formed a basis for linking the arts together.

M. Texts from Ripa and Menestrier C. RIPA, Iconologia, ampliata dal G. Zaratino-Castellini, 1603 (ed. 1645, p. 44). 1. ARTE: Questo nome A r t e può significare t r e cose. Prima il C o n c e t t o , o similitudine, cioè la imaginata e conceputa forma delle cose nella mente, e in questo primo modo diciamo che é h a b i t o d e l l ' I n t e l l e t t o . Seconda, il m a g i s t e r i o , o a r t i f i c i o con quei modi nell'opera espresso, con li quali era nell'intelletto l'arte come habito; terza l'opera, o l'è f f e 11 o con l'artifitio formato; si che diremo l'arte essere nella m e n t e il magisterio n e l l a v i s t a , e l'opera nell'E f f e 11 o ... Queste due nobilissime arti (scultura e pittura) si sono sorelle chiamate come nate da uno istesso padre che é il Dissegno, e hanno un istesso fine cioè un artificiosa immitation della Natura. C. RIPA, ibid., p. 646. 2. VENUSTA. La Venustà é una certa gratia, che arrecca perfetto condimento alla bellezza: perché non ogni persona bella hà venustà...

ART 1. This name art can signify three things. First, the concept, or likeness, that is to say the imagined and conceptually apprehended form of the thing in the mind; in this first sense, we are speaking of art as a disposition of the mind. Secondly, it can mean the craftsmanship which enables art in the sense of a disposition of the mind to be expressed in the work. And thirdly, it can mean the work, or the product of that craftsmanship. Thus we can say that art is in the mind, craftsmanship in the sight, and the work in the product. These two most noble arts (sculpture and painting) can be called sisters, for both are sired by the same father, design, and have the same objective, namely the imitation of nature.

2. Venustà is a particular kind of grace which forms the perfect condiment to beauty; not every beautiful person possesses it.

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La bellezza ... é di tre sorti. Primieramente, per l'ornamento di più virtù si forma la gratia ne gli a η i m i : secondariamente, per la concordia, e proportione de c o l o r i , e l i n e e nasce nelli corpi la venustà e la gratia: terzo, venustà e gratia parimenti grandissima nasce dalla consonanza della voce e della dolce armonia delle parole, si che di t r e s o r t i è la bellezza dell'animo, del corpo, e della voce... In sostanza concluder si deve che la bellezza consiste in una certa gratia e venustà che commuove e tira l'animo mediante la mente, l'occhio e l'udito.

Beauty is of three kinds. Firstly there are the virtues which adorn and lend grace to human souls. Secondly there is the grace and attractiveness created in bodies by the consonance and proportion of colour and line. And thirdly, the equally great degree of grace and attractiveness created by the consonance of voices and the sweet harmony of words. Thus of the three kinds of beauty, one is in the soul, one in the body, and one in the voice ... In essence, it should be concluded that beauty consists in a certain grace and attractiveness, which move and draw the soul by way of the mind, eyes and hearing.

C. RIPA, ibid., p. 67. 3. SIMMETRIA. Simmetria é nome Greco, che in nostra lingua vuol dire una consonante e proportionata commensuratione delle cose ... È un nome generico à tutte le proportioni, perciò che se le consideriamo rispetto alla figura, grazia e colore de corpi, si chiama bellezza... Se nelle voci sonore, si dice melodia... Dove é d'avertire che ne i corpi semplici non si dice simmetria, essendo una proportione che nasce dall'accordo di tutte le parti dal compasso insieme giunte. Diremo dunque che la Simmetria é una retta proportione delle cose commensurabili, tanto naturali, quanto fattizie, quali parimente lontana dalli due estremi, senza menda alcuna non se gli può né aggiungere, né diminuire alcuna cosa.

SYMMETRIA 3. Symmetria is a Greek word used in our language to denote a harmonious, commensurate proportion in things ... It is a generic name for all kinds of proportions. When it refers to the shape and colour of bodies, symmetria is called beauty, and when it refers to sonorous voices, it is called melody ... It should be noted that one cannot speak of symmetria in relation to simple things; for it is a proportion stemming from the mutual consistency of all the parts joined one with another. We can see, then, that symmetria is apt proportion in commensurate things, whether natural or artificial, equally far removed from all extremes and insusceptible of having anything either added to it or substracted from it.

C. F. MENESTRIER, Les recherches du blason, 1683,1. Philosophie des images. 4. Tous les arts et toutes les sciences ne travaillent qu'en images, puisque tous les arts ne sont que des imitations de la nature et toutes les sciences des figures et des expressions idéelles des choses que nous connaissons. La philosophie a ses images dans les notions. La médecine n'est qu'une image de la constitution intérieure et extérieure du corps de l'homme. La mathématique estant ime science demonstrative ne consiste qu'en images. La poésie dont le propre est de feindre est une faiseuse d'images.

THE ARTS AND SCIENCES WORK WITH IMAGES 4. All arts and sciences work exclusively with images, for all arts are simply imitation of nature, and all sciences figures and ideal expressions of the things we are acquainted with. Philosophy has its images in the form of concepts. Medicine is nothing other than an image of the external and internal structure of the human body. Mathematics, as a demonstrative science, consists exclusively in images. Poetry, whose distinguishing characteristic is fiction, is a maker of images.

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C. F. MENESTRIER, ibid., IV Partie: Les images symboliques. 5. 1. Les hiéroglyphiques: images des choses sacrées, surnaturelles et divines. 2. Les symboles: images sensibles des choses naturelles et de leurs propriétés. 3. Les emblèmes : enseignements moraux, politiques et académiques. 4. Les devises qui représentent par images les entreprises de guerre, d'amour, de piété, d'estude, d'intrigue t de fortune. 5. Le blason et les généalogies qui représentent en images la naissance, la noblesse, les alliances, les emplois et les belles actions. 6. Les revers des jettons et des médailles qui représentent les grands événements et les belles actions. 7. L'iconologie qui est la peinture des choses purement morales comme si elles étaient des personnes vivantes, comme l'honneur, la vertue, le pla.sir.

SYMBOLIC IMAGES 5. 1. Hieroglyphics: images of sacred, supernatural and divine things. 2. Symbols: sensible images of natural things and their properties. 3. Emblems: moral, political and academic instruction. 4. Mottos, which pictorially represent enterprises of war, love, piety, scholarship, intrigue and fortune. 5. Coats of arms and genealogy which represent images of birth, nobility, family links, position and fine deeds. 6. The reverse sides of coins and medals, which represent great events and fine deeds. 7. Iconology, which depicts purely moral things like honour, virtue or pleasure as though they were living beings.

6. The Theory of Music 1. THE DUTCH SCHOOL. The great turning point in music had come in medieval times, around the year 1300, when counterpoint was developed. This ars nova was the invention of theorists, scholars and scribes (scriptores). Their idea was taken up by practical musicians and composers, but at first in somewhat primitive form. In the 14th century, musical theory was more advanced than practice. The potentialities of the new music did not begin to be fully realized before the 15th century. But the 15th century produced great music, as well as great art. Whereas, however, the arts developed principally in Italy, the flowering of music occurred further to the north, mainly in the Netherlands. The famous Flemish music of the 15th century belonged to the Renaissance only in the chronological sence. It was still medieval in type; and indeed, in the opinion of some historians,* it represents the high point of Gothic music. Insofar as analogies can be found for it in the visual arts, it is in Gothic rather than Renaissance art that they are to be sought. Counterpoint, which made its appearance shortly before the beginning of the 13th century, permitted the singing of two melodies simultaneously. These melodies had obviously to be harmonized with one another, which in turn necessitated elaborate researches into harmony and inventive structuring of sounds in order to avoid dissonance. The music of the 15th century was so preoccupied with these enquiries that it had little time to concern itself with melody or expression. Elaboratelyreasoned, complex and abstract, it was a kind of combinatorial analysis, closer to science than to art. It was no accident that in a classification of the sciences prepared at the time, it was placed next to geometry, j • A. Einstein, A Short History of Music, 1953. t G. Reisch, Margarita philosophica, 1st ed. Heidelberg, 1496.

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The main fifteenth-century composers are usually referred to by the generic name of "the Netherland School". Actually the beginnings were in England around 1400, with the compositions of John Dunstable, but thereafter developments were concentrated in the Netherlands, particularly in the Flemish province of Hainault. The Netherlands had political links with Burgundy at this time, and benefited from the wealth and artistic aspirations of the Burgundian court. Artistic activity and progress in the Netherlands were so intense, that one can distinguish as many as three separate Netherland schools during the course of the century. The first includes such figures as Gilles Binchois, maestro di cappella to Philip the Good, and Guillaume Dufay, the canon from Cambrai, both born around the year 1400. The leading figure in the second was Ioannes Ockeghem (d. 1495), a pupil of Dufay's and maestro di cappella to Charles VII of France. The third and main school included Jakob Obrecht of Utrecht (1430-1505) and Josquin Desprès (about 1450-1521). This latter pair were active in Italy, and their compositions have certain characteristically southern features. The production of the Netherland school was prolific and predominantly intended for use in church : among the works of Ockeghem, Obrecht and Desprès that have been preserved, there are respectively, 17, 24 and 30 masses, not to mention other forms of church music. 2. INHERITED THEORY. The Netherland School produced a new music, but no new theory to go with it. The contrapuntal music of the 15th century was accommodated comfortably within the framework of traditional conceptions. * For the most part, fifteenth-century theory corresponded to that of the ancients initiated by the Pythagoreans and subsequently elaborated and radicalized by medieval glosses. It was from within these theoretical guidelines that modern music emerged. And indeed the idea of counterpoint and the compositions of the Flemish school were the most complete realization of that theory. Extreme and monumentally one-sided, the latter diverged sharply from any natural outlook on music, or at least, from the modern outlook, owing more to philosophy than to any direct contact with music itself. Its main tenets were as follows: 1. Music is knowledge·, knowledge about consonance and dissonance, harmony and disharmony. It is a science, just as arithmetic and geometry are sciences. Musical compositions are an application of that science. 2. Harmonic relations are apprehended by the hearing, but also by the mind; the spiritual (spiritualis, speculativa) music which we cannot hear is even more perfect than the one we can hear. Accordingly, music is not confined to the audible world. 3. Harmonious relations are to be found not only in the human voice and in musical instruments, but also in nature and the soul. The music of nature and the soul is primal, natural (naturalis), whereas the music produced by man is imitative and artificial. Music is divided into three major parts: cosmic (