Response:
Historia
and Anachronism
in Renaissance
Art
Charles Dempsey
Alexander
what
which
the
in
the
as we
period.1
it since
his
antiquity
artists
from
the
as
Brown
the
prologue
of what
of
the
Many
antiquity.
book
actually
of one
as a
of
the
Warburg
in art but
and Leonardo),
civic rituals
to
shop
has
contexts
casts
but
embodiment
by Patricia
offered
the
in person,
of
as a
Antiq
had
witnessed
actually
Our
conversation
was
seem
to have
we
it seemed,
expert,
time
the
name
mean
time
Petrarch's
to be
notion
and
sure,
of
recovery
and
in recent
you
to
the
of historical
he
texts
ancient
them
just
the
venerated
we
by which
is broadly
new
the
defined,
age
which
beginning,
of
the
necessi
such
Absent
ceptualization
arts in
early
a fourth,
ing
Lorenzo
Like
and
Wood's
of
the maniera
was
had
the modern
followers.
distinct
would
not
before
too
Vasari's
him,
the
historical
In
this
respect
focused.
for
setting
Above
ancient
achievement
succeeded
it, and
era
all,
that
their
possible.
point
ancient
arts
arts
from
Giotto
the
this
distinguished
and
his
in the
ill-proportioned
and
ungainly
the
women
he
di
Baldini's
by
of
subject
as
"not
In
plaster
the
color,...
saw
Renaissance
early
it."3 He
of Bac
engraving
in
enacted
being
entided
carro,
giovinezza."4
has
argument
adapted
of
been
others,
taken
in the
past
renewed
vividly
di
Bacco,
resisted
up,
by
has
years
twenty
in
interest
fes
carnival
Canzona
the
often
and
the
himself composed
result
Europe,
ing in a rapidly burgeoning bibliography by German, French,
and Italian scholars.5 I have myself tried to develop certain of
in case studies devoted to Sandro Botticelli's
his perceptions
and Mars
Primavera
and
in
that
not
never
the
central
insisted
who
to
parison
entailed
the
of
the
experience)
Greeks
vernacular
come
might
and
Romans
of
expressions
living
forms
of
to
(which
history),
or
Likeness
equal
even
to
ambition
complex
culture
by
Greek
and
assimilat
Roman
In this way
expressions
the
achievements
among
them,
the
of
the
surpass
com
of
unworthy
other
were,
die-hards
living
actual
of
the
things,
as Vasari
the
in
had done.
fact believed Michelangelo
Belting's
are
(which
humanist
was
perfect
as in literature.
in art as well
civilizations,
forms
a few
of
remaking
more
the
it
a
for
expression
far more
the
ancients,
a renovatio,
into
Save
vernacular
antiq
sense) was
in the Winckelmannian
issue.6
that
the
others,
among
advancing
a literal
of
"rebirth"
Venus,
the Renaissance
(and certainly
uity
is a powerful
and Presence
recent
con
tribution to the problems addressed by Nagel and Wood, and it
is especially pertinent in that the material discussed is for the
most
part
religious.
Belting's
celebrated
jamin's
formulation
point
that
of
departure
two
polarities
of art: its cult
of a work
reception
one
notion
hand
adumbrated
(a
by Warburg's
as an
terest
in art and ritual),
and
its value
object
determine
Vasari.
What did the humanists actually see in their minds' eyes when
reading the ancient authors? And what did artists look for when
studying the ancient models? The classical prototype for Anto
is all but
nio Pisanello's famous drawing of dancing maenads
unrecognizable
been
Hans
gemstone
in his Commen
the
with
is with
the
lie with Ghiberti,
in
further
as
Warburg's
some
and
ing
develop
and
Nagel
far
So
the
commenced
quarrel
succeed
ultimate
of
the
the theme of the second half
narrowly
the
made
of
periods
been
have
to be the sigillum Neronis, and who
tarii
distinguished
maniera
that
greca
from
three
the roots of their complaint
proudly
he thought
history,
Giorgio
of the development
with Panofsky,
seems
essay,
con
Vasari's
account
Pliny's
art.
of ancient
progress,
are concerned,
who
greca,
Ghiberti's
polemic
their
periodization
Italy into
modern
of
departure
or
ment,
of
consciousness
? bella
argument
tated the humanist invention of the techniques of philology,
or the study of language founded
in historical principles.
canto
immortal
"Quant'
present.2
it when
was
and
times,
periods
formulated
being
we meant
by which
celebrated
the
history,
more
I
us,
among
ancient,
then
from
with
largely
rulers
Roman
of Christ,
the
the
in
the
before
concerned
divided
and such
celebration
appeared
of
life and
tivities of 1490, for which Lorenzo de' Medici
which
the
the deities appear just as Florentines
inwhich
chus and Ariadne,
past
Baccio
example
as
and Calendimaggio).
full
figures
as the
antiquity
prime
(Leon
culture
the
out
to pose.
For
not
sought
only
Battista
Alberti
to be
theory
popular
of
so
nor
(Politian and Luigi Pulci),
of
figures
as
Johann
in order
was
(the Festa di San Giovanni
such
not
evokes
unhandsome
clothes
questions
art
literature
expressions
neither
his
shed
to such
Gozzoli's
simplicity and quiet grandeur
assistant,
in contemporary
also
his
first
and
teenage
tamers
horse
noble
on which
sarcophagus
in Benozzo
man
the young
the Quirinal
who
ordinary,
the answer
in his cele
Venice
of
bronze battle relief is
to the marble
and
Joachim Winckelmann's
much
di Giovanni's
than
modeled;
vernacular
that a sense
seems
past
to Ghiberti's
self
The Venetian Sense of thePast),
subtitled
uity, significantly
to her
for
historical
have appeared with Petrarch, who in 1341 wrote
brated letter to Fra Giovanni Colonna
(quoted
Fortini
it is
of its influence
had agreed
classical
in
of
counted
vis-?-vis
far closer
drawing
source
question
artists
"interested"
(well before Erwin Panofsky)
distance
a
drew; the style of Bertoldo
in
out
pointed
of itself acknowledges
question
historical
attention
famous
that
by Renaissance
torians
of
Winckelmann?still
asked
and
it about
awareness
have,
as
antique
study
that
deal
hallmark
beauty?the
little"
The
"the
century
known
comparatively
was
then
of
fifteenth
have
larger
at least since Aby Warburg
and measured
poised
have presented
phenomena
a
great
received
another,
way
from art historians
that
S. Wood
to a much
prolegomenon
to retheorize
attempt
or
they
in one
fact,
and Christopher
Nagel
is clearly
the
isWalter
in
Ben
particular
on the
value,
pioneering
for exhibition,
in
on the other.7 Belting posits a medieval concept of the image
(Bud), which has its own history that develops and changes over
time
but
which
on
another
level
paradoxically
remains
always
DEMPSEY
INTERVENTIONS:
same.
the
He
that
suggests
of
the age
cult
the
or
image,
Renaissance
and
lasting
a different
on
theory."8
each
and what
of a
is understood
(or icon),
image
of substitution,
defined
ciple
or
tion,"
derstood
making
as effective
Nagel
and Wood's
better
in
were
Both
copies
extremely
lost
originals...."
would
the historical
vera
icon and
seem
popular,
of
repeated
plars
era
the
in Munich10)
Self-Portrait
an
evolving
of
of art,
of
theory,
an
as a cult
understood
took
as
and
object
and
preceding
that
could
image
as
them
to me
embodying
its own. Each takes its origin from a heavily
in one
preserved
former
of
the
sudarium
the
in St.
Peter's
and
a
two
cult
for which
prototypes,
even
as
it
tutes,
can
be
that most
argument)
they
said
also
per
to
said
as
stand
and
Nagel
the
exemplify
the
latter
refer to these
effectively
(as
icon
the Great.
Gregory
of the two themes explicitly
All later depictions
of
the
that was
in S. Croce
icon
in Gerusalemme
Byzantine
a vision
to Saint
record
of Christ
granted
be
in Rome,
Wood's
are
exquisite
depictions
as Lorenzo
Monaco
diverse
van
both
are
too,
So,
Meckenem's
his
reveals
ably
literal
by the artist's
van Meckenem's
a
of
own
ically but not
image
of
None
by
prototype
these
attempts
a work
nor
art
and Wood,
Nagel
to the
of
impress
not
times
does
refer
to
a relic,
of
of
the
a
seal
back
in
Studion's
of
various
to an
his
of
saints
The
between
formative
Florence
in
the works
example Nagel
two different
and
that
of
they
art
could
they
and Wood
versions
substitutional
of
not
saw
in
chose
the
modes
recognize
artistic
Christ
or
Italy.)
to illustrate "a clash
time-artifact
simultaneously
relation"
(per
at work),
Saint Augustine inHis Study (The Vision of
Saint Augustine), is perhaps not entirely appropriate for the
purpose. They call it a historical picture. But what does this
Vittore
Carpaccio's
are
to
the
the
from
deriving
justifiably
the
later
Indeed,
astronom
on
the
saint's
to be charac
as do
quattrocento,
bronze
are
skeptical)
a
not
recall
ground
And
base
perhaps
the bronze
of
familiar,
the
in
made
Redentore
the
that
its round
the pose
base,
of
statue
but
Christ,
Severo's
the
conventional
highly
low-relief
symmetrical
Redentore
adorning
foliage
as the
seen
simply
to be.
it appears
pattern
be
should
decorative
If this is the case, it would follow that the bronze for S. Maria
della Carita does not substitute for the prototype described by
Eusebius
a
of
woman.
statue
miracle-working
as the resurrected
specified
it would
Moreover,
Carpaccio
for Eusebius's
on
the
in
altar
of
that
follow
either,
crucial
details:
is not
(which
the hemorrhaging
the
bronze
since
especially
shown
not
does
study
Augustine's
prototype
Christ
and
Christ)
by
substitute
the
statue
he
of the Redentore in two
the base
the
of
statue
has
been
altered, omitting any depiction of foliage (whether iconograph
ically significant or simply decorative), and the drapery falling
from Christ's arm all the way to the ground is also deleted.
Although the statue depicted on Saint Augustine's private altar
has a ritual function, like everything else in the room (including
the mosaic with the seraph) it is wholly consistent with the
Venetian furnishings and contents of his study, which include
his ecclesiastical paraphernalia, his beautifully bound books,
crafted
astrolabes
crafted
are
by
uniquely
and
the
finest
appropriate
armillary
spheres,
artists
of Carpaccio's
to the
apartments
prelate living about the year 1500.
The concept of a history painting
of Renaissance
history
to
accustomed
no's
is Christ. (This is also clear from
prototype. The prototype
the complaint made in 1439 by the Byzantine prelates at the
Council
the
object
the room
Saint John theBaptist in the Cappella del Santo at Padua.
This being so, perhaps the detail of the extended fall of drapery
should be considered a styleme without iconographie signifi
the
relation
on
single
books,
bell
up
conjures
a
marble
All
iconograph
the prototype
of
altar,
finely
bronzes
reproduction
that Theodore
added,
graced
including
is made
is because
unmistak
proudly
examples,
an exact
reference
is neither
be
icon
is
and
auctor.
as
by artists
Even
Israel
Francke.
manner
an
by
S. Croce
the
stylistically. This
at different
materials
Meister
of
engraving,
to which
cited
comparison,
and
and
distinctive
they
truly refer
same
it must
sense,
the
singular
performances
the Man
of Sorrows
copy
signature.
relic-prototype,
which
of
of
productions
iconographically
prin
ciple." D?rer's Sudarium Held by Two Angels and Domenico
Fetti's Sudarium of Veronica in the Walters Art Museum, Balti
more,
as ancient.
in its
furnishings,
d'art.
The
objets
showed differs from its specific model
substi
"performative
that
not
has
of the feet, and the fatal detail of the long drapery falling all the
cance.
into
indulgenced
churches
pilgrimage
of Veronica
exem
simultaneously
an aesthetic
flavor"
studiolo
identified
up-to-date
even
and
Paduan
the
way
a
over
continuing
world,
securely
equipment,
authors
Sorrows.9
prime
be
"all'antica
this
1490s for the altar of S. Maria della Carita.12 The reasons for
(of which our
attributing this statue to Severo da Ravenna
(followed in this respect by
long period of time. Belting
in
Koerner
his
of Albrecht
discussion
Joseph
absorbing
D?rer's
can
an
having
insistendy
teristic
on
of two
in art
from
historical
statuette of Venus felix by An tico and the bronze Resurrected Christ
... un
fortunes
the Man
often
a
the prin
"reinstantia
icons
to show
desk and bronze horse on his shelf both appear
he means
sequential
of painted
why
of
Augustine's
in it that
ical
auctor,
call
authors
principle
by tracing
the
as
for
substitution
particular,
an
of
in a
him
attempt
fifth-century
setting,
to be a very accurate
is often
claimed
the painting
humanist
the characteristic
of a Venetian
studiolo
Far
seems
to which
by which
our
them
surrogates
exemplified
images
of Bild,
by
"modern
of
the
Nagel
according
creation
the
what
embraces
holy
act, but
is
cleric.11
of a singular historical perfor
concept
Belting's
a proper
by
what
paccio
which
4J7
is no doubt a historical figure, Car
Augustine
no
made
depiction
not really by analogy
principle,
they call "the product
Equally,
its own
for
encompasses
speech
to be
in the
"art took
day, when
acknowledged
artist and defined
of Kunst
notion
art
of
work
mance."
a famous
call the performative
L. Austin's
withj.
by
concept
Belting's
and Wood
became
and
meaning
as invented
sake?art
to the
present
down
mean? Although
icon, was
gradually superseded by the era of art (Kunst), originating
RESPONDS
dei
in the
Fasti
of
thinking
Sala
as
"histories,"
or Francesco
di Costantino
exquisite
generation.
a humanist
of
is a surprising latecomer
even
and
art,
and
to
are
that we
paintings
as
such
Giulio
Roma
in the
Salviati's
Sala
are discussed
in terms of
by contemporaries
as
such
For a
of
literary genres
epic poetry.13
painter
Carpaccio's
an historia would
the point
of reference
for
generation
painting
were
of course
be Alberti,
in the
whose
well
known
writings
courts
as
of north
Grafton
has
Latin,
Italy. In classical
Anthony
two related
historia
carries
but distinct
out,
pointed
meanings,
referring
Farnesiani,
both
(narrationes).14
to
res
Albert!'s
gestae
and
particular
to narrative
use
of
accounts
the
term,
of
them
however,
is
notoriously so difficult as to be the only word Cecil Grayson
declined to translate into English in his exemplary edition of De
pictura.
Alberti's
"historia"
does
not
really
carry
the meaning
BULLETIN
ART
418
"history,"
"story,"
exclusively
translated
(and
inventions
of good
an
for
of
allegory
nor
histories).
Apelles'
stories
so. Nor
not
certainly
it is often
as
2005 VOLUME
SEPTEMBER
historia,
the
are,
it
mean
quite
Alberti
examples
are
indeed,
"a representation,"
by
simply
in the sense
the use of historia
neither
speaking,
as
from
'laropia
or
appears
in other
meaning
late medieval
as
historiatus),
to the
it refers
foliate
image
or even
subject.16
Alberti
However,
which
pictura,
applied
as
(such
properties
tion, and
the
pictoris
to the things represented
in
forth
horses,
and
animals,
including
toriation"
as a
but
abstract,
representation,
its
of
the
it refers
say "historiated") or set
human
sense
also
forth,"
"his
a more
1516
the
of
edification
"opera
dilettevole
alerting
them
his
vulg?re
that what
in the Tuscan
narrated,
Venetian
Venetian
audience
this was
that
an
in
toscha
thereby
lingua
hystoriata,"
or
were
to read was
set forth,
about
they
or
not
in
the
and
in Latin
vernacular,
Carpaccio's
as the
but
sented
a
setting
Venetian
to me
it seems
Saint
Augustine
of an
narratio
in a contemporary
consonant
with
As
viewers.
such
more
inHis
Study
from
incident
visual
the
satisfactory
not as a
the
saint's
lived
actual,
an
history
the
vernacular,
it is also
to
event
experiences
consider
all
sense
he
inter
in Augustine's
of the word
when
exposition
for the needs
of a contemporary
the Psalms
audience,
preted
new
to the present.
life and
them
meaning
pertinent
giving
as historical
are
not
and Jerome
Saints Augustine
presented
only
as
of
humanist
and
but
also
irai?sia,
exempla
learning
figures
an
in virtue, just as they were invoked in 1471 by the
in his speech officially
legate Bernardo Giustiniani
training
Venetian
to the
Car
Sixtus
IV on his elevation
congratulating
papacy.19
a
to
reconstruct
not
did
remote,
attempt
historically
paccio
as Nicolas
Poussin
and as Andrea
have done,
Roman
past,
might
Mantegna did do for the Introduction of theCult ofCybele toRome
or the Triumph of Caesar. For him the meaning of Augustine's
was
vision
and
he
alive
in the
the
imagined
and
religious
saints,
civic
inWarburg's
culture
words,
of
the present,
as
plaster
"not
casts but in person, as figures full of life and color." In this his
painting is typical of its time, an obvious parallel being Botticel
li's fresco Saint Augustine in His Study in the church of the
Ognissanti,
as well
Saint Jerome inHis
episode
shown
as
its companion,
Study, which
by Carpaccio.20
Domenico
together depict
The
only
difference
Ghirlandaio's
the very same
is that
the
a
similar
of
of
cultures
saint
appears
should
Bruges.21
as an affirmation
be
in humanist
city,
as
just
studies
in the
that
Saint Jerome
and
at work
in a
anachronistic
but
serenely
considered
and
culture
contemporary
religious
way,
the
saint
and
his
humanistic
Saint
Carpaccio's
as the very model
in
study
instead
in
its foundation
of
learning
George
In
the past.
the Dragon,
Slaying
The
chivalric
of contemporary
outfitted
horse
harnessing.
as
appears
sense
of
like
in
completely
up-to-date
is characteristic
painting
he
culture,
armor
of Renaissance
and
depic
the preux
chevalier
anachronism,
and
excellence,
par
honored
his
patron
by
no
with
Raphael,
Saint
showing
George displaying the English order of the garter, which only
recently had been bestowed on Federico da Montefeltro.
About the second half of Nagel and Wood's paper I have little
to add. It is devoted to an extended critique of the "powerful
they
had
ists, who
as
practice
has
Panofsky's
challenged.
on medieval
it should,
especially
to his notion
in
of
"renascence,"
responded
itmodifies
Charles
Homer
however,
theoretical
that the Renaissance
and Mantegna.
It was
who
they,
for
the
discus
not
sure
that
has
even
been
noticed,
in actual
pos
only began with Botticelli
to
according
first
classic
far as Renaissance
So
I am
claim
iting as it does
disjunction,"
Haskins's
"Renaissance."
concerned,
Panofsky's
which
book
as
twelfth-century
are
scholars
and Renascences,
been
its influence,
have
particular
sion of the
in Renaissance
by Panofsky
never
since
argued
claim has
call
treme,
in
(enarratio),
interpretation
None
mally
painting
life repre
placed
of
own
their
time
Panofsky's
"principle
to unite
classical
attempted
of
form (pathos) with its own subject matter (ethos), in an effort
not fully realized until the time of Raphael and what we nor
dialect.18
Analogously,
the
Ghirlandaio)
certainly
the
Venetian publisher Nicol? Zopino issued the Fac?tie,fabule emotti
del Piovano Arbtto pr?te florentino (reproducing the Florentine
edition published a year earlier by Giovanni Stefano), he added
for
of
but
Study putatively ascribed to Jan van Eyck (which was
owned by the Medici and was a precedent for Botticelli and
model"
seen,"
of
has
in
When
application.
figures,
to be
worthy
The
ships.17
"setting
clear,
part
and
mentions
as
or
all
construc
supreme
event
the miraculous
tions of the popular subject of Saint George, including Rapha
In that painting Saint George
el's for the duke of Urbino.
painting,
and
object
such
objects
nonetheless
historia"),
other
"every
inanimate
opus
he
to
spatial
the
(we might
which
among
painting,
color,
calls
to
necessarily
phenomenon
light,
he
Historia
where
grotesques,
not
to refer
word
total
lines,
points,
composition).
work
("summum
painter's
another
encompasses
animals,
and
initials,
capital
employs
(from the me
illumination,
manuscript
of men,
set
Venetian
Saint Augustine inHis Study part of the series of paintings he
undertook for the Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, depicts
The
sources.15
is "historiated"
itself, whether
decorations,
a narrative
to
and,
painting,"
or
imago also
of
figura
Renaissance
and
closest surviving English parallel
dieval
"a
not
in His
used by the Byzantine rhetoricians (to whom humanist scholars
were gready indebted), who were the first to apply it to painting,
it
3
Florentines
gives
and
Graces
the Three
properly
derives
term
NUMBER
does
namely,
Calumny,
Alberti's
LXXXVII
the
the High
even
eccentric,
nearly
originate
of the recovery
of ancient
on
It has had
little effect
to
continue
Renaissance,
(though
own
their
of
before
years
with
letters,
ex
an
the Renaissance,
of
to
and
as
beginnings
with Giotto.
quattrocento
students
some
perhaps
of
the
medieval
encouraged
was
needed)
in time,
later
and
trecento
themselves
encouragement
researches
the
with
Petrarch,
of
scholars
think
it has
though
I doubt
ists
this was
frank,
reconceptualization
two hundred
art,
be
(and I think rightly) had been understood
which historically
who
To
Renaissance.
to
extend
continuities
emphasizing
rather than positing a decisive break with the Middle Ages.
Some of the best work in this respect has again been done by
ical
to
the
in lived
based
a medievalist,
himself
Belting,
sensitive
paintings
who,
fundamentally
has
however,
new
been
structures
social
especially
of
reality,
and allegor
the narrative
that inform
experience,
of the trecento,
which
he terms vernacular
("volk
indeed often include
and which
Gebildeten")
lengthy inscriptions in the vernacular.22 Imight add that it is
surely significant that while earlier iconic paintings of the Virgin
sprachliche
in
the
neath
maniera
her
Simone
of
golden
beneath
radical
greca
we
mantle,
Martini's
hair
their
recasting
the
of
color
and
the
of
can
in
for
Annunciation
cover
hide
completely
find
that
the
Laura's
be
associations
the Madonna's
the
seen
trecento
begin
to
her
slip
face.
in the
be
as
tresses
of Siena,
cathedral
framing
inherent
hair
instead,
out
from
A more
traditional
in
INTERVENTIONS:
icon,
tributes
be
the Queen
of Heaven
endowing
of the Petrarchan
of the beauty
at
normative
the
with
could
beloved,
scarcely
imagined.25
it seems tome
As I suggested at the beginning,
Wood's
the
the
distorts
Panofsky
criticism
of Renaissance
twentieth-century
gards
on
focus
specific
as
especially
the
a
between
makes
Giovanni
century).
classical
that
the
most
the norms
ing
E. H.
by
achieved
physical
the
primacy
who
Gombrich,
the
time
we mean
we
when
who
one
Whatever
who
nowadays
the
exclusive
as
classic
of
requirements
ecclesiastical
whether
put
one
of
permanence
who
set of
to the
opposed
in forms
especially
for Rembrandt,
opt
might
or
of
to
the
the
easily
an
of
values?the
ruling
the
or
or
a
or
trium
phalist capitalism. It is this that (only) pardy accounts for sharply
recent
renewed
in
interest
the
irrational,
Warburg's
the
darker,
sense, aspects of the afterlife
Renaissance
found
in
burg,
L'image
that the
less,
of
Didi-Huberman's
Georges
classical
is a model
solution
solution
still
all,
potism,
humane
and
ucts
turbulent
days
and
brutality
values
of Renaissance
revival
Guarino
of
to
arts
notion
and
of
does
increase,
of nineteenth-
and
the corpus of Hermetic
Renaissance
scholars
and
those
surpass
of
the
studia
it is
certainly
it
cen
the prod
in
and
by Battista
Isaac Casaubon's
But
it
demonstration
(who
theologians
had
been
tian
hieroglyphs
analyses
mensuration
of medieval
correcdy.
came
science,
Similarly,
gradually
alchemists
even
to
as
sophisticated
supersede
and
drawn
quan
the qualitative
astrologers
dominance
of
typo
in his
to
preface
the Raccolta
to
and
both
ancient
earlier
study
to water
of
the gardens
present-day
even more
beautiful
flowers.
produce
was
emulation
of
an
in the possession
of
the
in
conceived
now
then
lost,
began with Petrarch's
ancient
and
past
the
broad distinction
era
Christian
it,
succeeding
after
Constantine
more
is scarcely
contemporaneously
and
and
Pope
Sylvester,
tuned.
However,
finely
a
applying
far more
the modern
Lorenzo
Valla
was
criti
discriminatory,
cally sensible, and erudite historical judgment in his proof that
the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. And in 1516, just
about
a decade
donensis
of
omnia
opera
hence
Hippo,
Carpaccio's
with
glaring
Saint
Carpaccio's
in his magisterial
rejected
to Augustine
of Saint
miracle
after
Erasmus
Jerome's
striking
as
pious
would
have
in His
Augustine
Study,
Divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stri
the
forgeries
letters,
very
and Cyril of Jerusalem,
that relate the
appearance
posthumous
from
the very
the canon
texts
imagery
depended.
anachronisms
and
were
The
letters
were
written
to the
bishop
on which
he
filled,
in a Latin
said,
so bad
if forced to speak it,
stuttered.28
in
to
them precisely because of their presumed antiquity, their dis
tance from the present) did not bring to a halt the search for the
prisca theobgia, any more than did an inability to read the Egyp
titative
the
that
writings had been dated far too early by
and
for
and
history
twentieth-century
the Renaissance.
the
that
evidence
claim,
or
It certainly
does
a
for
continuing
of history.
that "balbutiret ipse Tullius." Even Cicero,
humanitatis.26
true
in the
extraordinarily
precocious
of artifacts
statues,
(whether
study
wrote
Medici
Mercury,
an
attributed
(also
in
only
forms of thinking by humanist histo
necessary
Venus.27 We
between
des
irrationality,
warrant
for the
scholars
the
Niccoli. Botticelli's Birth of Venus (Warburg's
bewegteB?werk and all) consciously places the artist, beyond any
doubt aided by the philological knowledge of Politian, in a
historic rivalry with Apelles and with the Roman sculptor of the
Desiderius
literature
as
bronze
especially
who
lived
Neoplatonism
translated
Traidsia,
and
incrementally,
of
generation
twentieth-century
found
who
historical
century
greatly
It was
arts.25
of
in the mid-fifteenth
Knowledge
achievements
the
in Renaissance
times)
the Greek
two
past
that
remark
humanist Niccol?
era
Faith in that
the
the
images"
they might
bronze
David
decline
in Rome,
in 1797 when Friedrich Schlegel first
entire
darkest
of
from
of distance
certainly does not give evidence of fine chronological
distinctions. Ghiberti's distinction between antiquity, a period of
of War
and
later
which
be
neverthe
undiminished,
scholarship
in relation
the
among
the
through
philology
creases
its force
all
virtually
"classicism"
powerful
the
of
study
per
as an
value
authors
of
that
Donatello's
Medici
in the
may
true,
emphatically
the High
Renaissance
retains
turies, from the moment
of
observe,
not created by Panofsky or Gombrich.
underpins
defined
authors
above-cited
It ismost
survivante).
above
Raphael
as the
the
Nietzsche's
(Nachleben) of antiquity
of which,
(a sample
with
preoccupation
in Friedrich
Dionysian
of Richard
par
chronological
is a truism,
centuries
awareness
me
for
in order
letters
ancient
Stalinist,
de'
it was
literature,
whether
class
in
than
an
evidentiary
force
Lorenzo
Tuscan
to
adapted
fascist
elite
As
aragonese,
alternatives?
authoritarianism,
whether
state,
service
so
of
strains
science.
rians.
question
expressive
of all other
contingency
that have
been
various
would
"anachronistic
description
Chrysoloras's
strikes
objects)
as our
to be,
his
and
to see things as they actually appeared
logical over chronological
more
Madonnas
beautiful
than
Raphael's
we
Rembrandt's
like
better."24
may
though
are
of
this
think
there
those
statement,
may
seem
not
the
is as
Newton
Isaac
of a medieval
in the Renaissance
Manuel
made
of
or other
coins,
call
even
Rembrandt's,
exist.
were
they
affirmation
concluded that "Iknow quite well that ideals of beauty vary from
country to country and age to age, but I still think we know what
as a
developed
mean
that
images is it possible
claimed
and
meaning,"
not
did
past
less
not
Sir
calculus
(as their citation
apt
that
suggest
and
his
under
that Nagel
and Wood's
is
skewed
of
and
history
conceptions
acknowledges)
To
con
physiology
to me
be more
indeed
419
long after William Harvey
practice
blood,
as for
superstitions
it seems
RESPONDS
pneumatological
of
of Renaissance
was
ticularity
but
this does
sixteenth
of
reasons
these
spective.
be exaggerated,"
that
easily
in lucid narrative
and present
by Raphael
a
"have
permanent
beauty
polemic
the
his
Krautheimer
can
in these matters
"relativism
of
affirmation
made
in
of Rome
for
standing
and Carlo Cesare Malvasia
school
extreme
was
solution
local
circulation
the
proved
famous
For
Galen's
to influence medical
would
so
"neoclas
the
particular?as
Pietro Bellori
clear?with
The
in
identifiable
style
re
classical
lution (which I think they are right to call Renaissance
sicism,"
of
historiography
accorded
evaluation
high
universally
that Nagel and
art,
their work.
continued
tinued
DEMPSEY
serenely
Charles Dempsey is the author of numerous articles and edited volumes
on Italian
Renaissance
and
Baroque
art. His
books
include
Annibale
Carracci and the Beginnings of Baroque Style (1977, 2000); The
Portrayal of Love (1992); The Farnese Gallery (1995); Nicolas
Poussin (withElizabeth Cropper, 1996); and Inventing the Renais
sance Putto (2001) [Department of theHistory ofArt, Zanvyl Krieger
School ofArts and Sciences,John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
21218-2685,
[email protected]].
ART
420
BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER
2005 VOLUME
LXXXVII
NUMBER
3
called Antico, special issue of
son, The Bronzes ofPierJacopo Alari-Bonacolsi,
in Wien 53-54, no. 29 (1993
Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen
Sammlungen
of the bronze Christ tentatively
94): 222-27. Carpaccio's
adaptation
now in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum,
to Severo da Ravenna,
attributed
in the literature,
is well established
Milan,
though with an equally ten
see Jan Lauts,
tative attribution
of the statue to Antonio
Lombardo;
Notes
1. Aby Warburg,
The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural
introduction
(Los
History of theEuropean Renaissance,
by Kurt Forster
Institute for the History of Art and the Hu
Angeles: Getty Research
161.
manities,
1999), 89,
2. Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of thePast
E.
Press, 1996), 49; and see Theodor
(New Haven: Yale University
"Petrarch's Conception
of the Dark Ages," Speculum 17
Mommsen,
The bibliography
is enormous,
but for a brief but effi
(1942): 226-42.
cient discussion
of the distinction made between
ancients and moderns
see Salvatore Settis, Futuro del
in the fourteenth
and fifteenth
centuries,
as well as 124-25 for
"classico" (Turin: Giulio Einaudi,
2004), 61-64,
notes.
bibliographic
3. Warburg,
4. Lorenzo
1992),
Renewal
de' Medici,
357.
of Pagan Antiquity,
Opere, ed. Tiziano
Zanato
(Turin: Giulio
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
7. Walter Benjamin,
Reproduc
tion" (1936), in nominations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt
York:
Hans
Likeness
and Pres
217-51.
Fontana, 1968),
(New
Belting's book,
ence: A History of the Image before theEra ofArt (Chicago: University of Chi
as Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte
cago Press, 1994), xxi, originally published
des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuch
1990), is based on a far more sustained historical analysis than
handlung,
short essay, which centers on Raphael's Sistine Madonna and
Benjamin's
of its com
Hubert Grimme's now discredited
analysis of the circumstances
mission
("Das R?tsel der sixtinischen Madonna,"
Zeitschrift fur bildende
for which, see Daniel Arasse, "L'ange spectateur:
Kunst 57 [1922]: 41-49);
in Les visions de Rapha?l (Paris:
La Madonne Sixtine et Walter Benjamin,"
Liana Levi, 2003), 113-41.
Likeness and Presence, xxi.
9. Ibid. See also Hans Belting, Das Bild und sein Publikum imMittelalter:
Form und Funktion fr?her Bildtafeln der Passion
(Berlin: Gebr?der Mann,
in the Liturgy: The Man of
1981); idem, "An Image and Its Function
Sorrows in Byzantium," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34-35
1-16;
(1980-81):
and Gerhard Wolf, Schleier und Spiegel: Traditionen des Christusbildes und
die Bildkonzepte der Renaissance
(Munich: Fink, 2002).
The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance
10. Joseph Leo Koerner,
Art (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1993), 80-126.
of Carpaccio's
11. Brown, Venice and Antiquity, 248. The contemporaneity
the tendency among scholars, including Brown,
setting itself explains
to hypothesize
is portrayed with the features of Cardinal
that Augustine
a notion
that has received formidable
Bessarion,
support from Vittorio
Branca. The identification
has been exploded
by Augusto Gentili, Le
storie di Carpaccio: Venezia, i Turchi, e gli Ebrei (Venice: Alfieri,
1996), 85
the question
90, who is the only scholar I know to have examined
saint with Gentile Bellini's por
compares Carpaccio's
closely. Gentili
his spectacularly
bul
trait in Vienna
of the white-bearded
Bessarion,
bous nose almost as outsize as his intellect, who could not conceivably
be the same man painted by Carpaccio. He suggests that Carpaccio
a major benefactor
of the Scuola
may have portrayed Angelo Leonino,
as Augustine,
and he moreover
di S. Giorgio
proposes
degli Schiavoni,
bulbous-nosed
that Bessarion may appear as the old, white-bearded,
monk
shown at the far left of Carpaccio's
Exequies of Saint Jerome, one of
to Saint Augustine
inHis Study (which, properly
the companion
pictures
takes as its subject a miracle
of Saint Jerome, one of the
considered,
dedicatees
of the Scuola).
in identifying
the
12. Nagel and Wood
rightly follow Zygmunt Wazbinski
statuette of Venus as a copy of Antico's
Venus felix, though not the vir
Museum
in the Kunsthistorisches
in Vienna, with its fire
tuoso version
an
reproduced
gilt hair and drapery and its silvered eyes. Carpaccio
in Naples
cast, similar to those preserved
(Museo di Capodi
ungilded
see A. H. Alii
and Albert Museum);
and London
monte)
(the Victoria
(London:
Phaidon,
in Counter-Reformation
Paint
Dempsey,
"Mythic Inventions
ing," in Rome and theRenaissance: The City and theMyth, ed. Paul A.
and Renaissance
N.Y.: Center for Medieval
Stud
Ramsay
(Binghamton,
ies, 1982), 55-75. The same is true of the seventeenth
century, when
on
discussion
centered not only on epic but also tragic construction
the basis of Aristotle's
"Nicolas Poussin
Poetics; for which see Dempsey,
between
Italy and France: Poussin's Death of Germanicus and the Inven
tion of the Tableau,"
in L'Europa e Var?e italiana, ed. Max Seidel
(Venice: Marsilio,
2000), 321-35.
Einaudi,
6. Charles Dempsey,
The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli's "Primavera" and Hu
manist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo theMagnificent
(Princeton: Princeton
Press, 1992); and idem, Inventing theRenaissance Putto
University
of North Carolina Press, 2001).
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University
Complete Edition
13. Charles
161.
5. To cite only a very few examples: Dieter Wuttke, Aby M. Warburgs Me
thode als Anregung und Aufgabe (1977; reprint, Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz,
et al., eds., Aby Warburg: Akten des internatio
1990); Horst Bredekamp
nalen Symposion Hamburg
Humaniora,
(Weinheim: VCH-Acta
1991);
Vor
Salvatore Settis, "Pathos und Ethos, Morphologie
und Funktion,"
1 (1997): 31-73; Giorgio Agamben,
tr?ge aus dem Warburg-Haus
"Aby
et la science sans nom," in Image et m?moire (Paris: SI. Ho?
Warburg
beke, 1998), 9-43; Philippe Michaud,
Aby Warburg et l'image en mouve
ment (Paris: Macula,
1998); and Georges Didi-Huberman,
L'image survi
vante: Histoire de l'art et temps des fant?mes selon Aby Warburg (Paris:
further bibliography.
See also the excel
Minuit,
2002), with extensive
lent introductions
Renewal of Pagan Antiquity,
by Forster toWarburg,
to Aby Warburg,
Le rituel du serpent: R?cit
and by Joseph Leo Koerner
d'un voyage en pays pueblo (Paris: Macula,
n.d.).
8. Belting,
Carpaccio: Paintings and Drawings,
1962), 232, cat. no. 13.
14. Anthony Grafton,
"Historia and Istoria: Alberti's
text," / Tatti Studies 8 (1999): 37-68.
Terminology
in Con
15. Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 29; and Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in
Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 9. For examples
of the influence of the Byzantine rhetoricians on humanist criticism of the
arts, see Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of
(Oxford:
Painting in Italy and theDiscovery ofPictorial Composition 1350-1450
Oxford University Press, 1971). And for historia as figura or imago, see
Charles du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis (Graz: Akade
mische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt,
"Historia and
1954), s.v. historia. Grafton,
Istoria" correctly emphasizes
of historia to sculpture as well
the application
as painting, and especially to relief sculptures.
16. Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. historiare and historiatus, as well as historiogra
phus, which carries via the Greek fathers the meaning
pictor. See also
. .un'
"vedea.
Dante, Purgatorio, canto 10, lines 49-52
(and 73-75),
comments:
altra storia," to which Charles Singleton
"'Storia' here is
used in the sense suggested
later by 'storiata' (v. 73), i.e., a depiction
or
in art, even as stained-glass windows or initial letters in manuscripts
frescoed walls were said to be 'historiated'"; Dante Alighieri,
The Divine
vol. 2, part 2, Purgato
Comedy, trans, with a commentary
by Singleton,
rio, Commentary (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1973), 204.
17. Leon
Battista Alberti, On Painting and Sculpture: The Latin Texts of "De
and trans. Cecil Grayson
(London: Phai
pictura" and "De statua,"ed.
don, 1972), 103.
18. Gianfranco
Folena, ed., Motti efacezie del piovano Arlotto
cardo Ricciardi,
288.
1953), 290, ill. opposite
(Milan: Ric
19. Patricia H. Labalme, Bernardo Giustiniani: A Venetian of the Quattrocento
(Rome: Edizioni di Storiae Letteratura,
1969), 197: "Nullum omisisti
Sic Augustinus,
litterarum genus, cui non animum
incenderis?
sic Hi
non dubi
eronymus, Basilius, Gregorius
aliique complures
qui profecto
tarunt in omni litterarum genere et ratione versari," and so on. For
see Eugene F. Rice Jr., "Di
saint par excellence,
Jerome as a humanist
vus litterarum princeps,"
(Balti
chap. 5 in Saint Jerome in theRenaissance
more: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1985), 84-115.
of Augustine
shown in fifteenth-century
20. For other examples
studies, see
in 'St. Jerome's
I. Roberts,
the classic analysis by Helen
"St. Augustine
Source," Art Bulletin 41
Painting and Its Legendary
Study': Carpaccio's
in his study
of Saint Jerome
(1959): 283-97. Quattrocento
depictions
are much more common,
show the
and they, too, characteristically
room.
saint in a contemporary
21.
I am aware that this painting
is disputed between Jan van Eyck and
Petrus Christus and have here followed
the attribution
argued by James
Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts
to
1575 (Englewood
New York:
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall;
from 1350
I leave final resolution
of the
150-51.
1985), 116-17,
Harry N. Abrams,
to specialists
in the northern Renaissance.
problem
22. See in particular Hans Belting's masterly
essay "Das Bild als Text:
inMalerei und Stadt
und Literatur
im Zeitalter Dantes,"
Wandmalerei
der Bilder, ed. Belting and Die
kultur in der Dantezeit: Die Argumentation
ter Blume
"Ordenskonkur
(Munich: Hirmer,
1989); and also Blume,
renz und Bildpolitik:
nach dem theoreti
Franziskanische
Programme
in ibid., 149-70. See also Belting,
"The New Role
schen Armutsstreit,"
in Public Painting of the Trecento: Historia and Allegory,"
of Narrative
L.
in Antiquity and theMiddle Ages, ed. Herbert
in Pictorial Narrative
Kessler and Marianna
S. Simpson,
Studies in the History of Art, no. 16
D.C.: National
(Washington,
Gallery of Art, 1985), 151-68. Also rele
vant is Blume, Regenten des Himmels: Astrologische Bilder inMittelalter und
traces astrological
Renaissance
(Berlin: Akademie,
2000), which
thought
and illustration from the later Middle Ages to the humanist
period;
an
case
of
the
for
of
communal
and
excellent
and,
intermingling
study
The Game of Courting and the
vernacular
cultures, see C. Jean Campbell,
Art of the Commune of San Gimignano,
1290-1320
(Princeton: Princeton
University
Press,
1997).
INTERVENTIONS:
COLE
RESPONDS
42J
at one end of which
Sis
of the Zwinger in Dresden,
is hung Raphael's
tineMadonna
and at the other, facing it on axis, Rembrandt's
famous
Saskia on his
Self-Portrait in which he raises a roemer aloft and bounces
knee.
23. Petrarch, of course, wrote two sonnets
{Rime sparse, 77 and 78) about
Simone's portrait of Laura: "Ma certo il mio Simon fu in Paradiso /
onde questa gentil donna si parte; / ivi la vide, et la ritrasse in carte /
per far fede qua giu del suo bel viso." Aside from her telltale blonde
in the Annunciation
Simone painted
also follows
hair, the Madonna
See Demp
other normative
conventions
the poet's beloved.
describing
sey, Portrayal of Love, 53-64; and the classic article by Elizabeth Crop
Petrarchismo, and the Vernac
per, "On Beautiful Women:
Parmigianino,
ular Style," Art Bulletin 58 (1976): 374-94.
in Literary His
"The Term and Concept
of Classicism
25. Rene Wellek,
(Balti
tory," in Aspects of theEighteenth Century, ?d. E. R. Wasserman
more,
1965), 105-28; and Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey,
Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting
(Princeton: Princeton
Press, 1996), 24-26.
University
"Norm and Form: The Stylistic Categories
of Art His
24. E. H. Gombrich,
in Renaissance
Ideals," in Norm and Form: Studies
tory and Their Origins
in theArt of theRenaissance
1966), 81-98, esp. 96.
(London: Phaidon,
is odd, for, while Raphael
is famous for his Madonnas,
The comparison
was surely
the Protestant Rembrandt
painted few of them. Gombrich
to me, of the long gallery
thinking, as Elizabeth Cropper has suggested
Bernardo Giustiniani,
26. Labalme,
19.
in Botticelli's
"Love and the Figure of the Nymph
27. Charles Dempsey,
to
Art," in Daniel Arasse et al., Botticelli: From Lorenzo theMagnificent
Savonarola (Milan: Skira, 2003), 25-37.
131, 247 n. 62.
Saint Jerome in theRenaissance,
28. Rice,
Response:
sub Sole Novum
Nihil
Michael Cole
In
the
field
makers'
to works,
be
periods,
rich
unusually
sort
we
and
unimaginable,
of their makers'
stories
a
of
documentation
we
about
for
also
how
of
earlier
we
objects
of writings about everything from the techniques
to the principles of design
and technologies of the workshop
devoted
see
to
production,
able
operation.
we
to
bring
expression:
like
visual
works,
as
first
was
artifacts
with
of
theory
seems
almost
what
habits
this,
that
vividly
the very
one
of
to
and
Nagel
by
a
call
because
the
reflect
Wood
The fact that Nagel and Wood must resurrect Erwin Panofsky
not
a
just
interlocutor
worthy
a new
example,
that defines
seeking
look
seldom
their own objects
Nagel
look
in
and Wood
at our materials
their
inant
of
Mary
their
metaphor"
the basis
of
their
own
model,
study
that,
in part
in a different
at
least
the
sometimes
for
Carruthers,
seem
might.
further
Cyril Mango).
formulations.
substitution
Nagel
out of
light. More
as a medievalist
sharpest
in the
art,
of
is
present
they
If we
question.
Pa
despite
periodization
it will come as lit?e surprise that in
recommendations
Krautheimer,
number
for
that what
forgotten
of Renaissance
question
their field,
comparanda
to areas
especially
almost
historians
that
moreover,
agree,
nofsky's
suggests
an
but
theory
and Wood
necessity,
cast
specifically, what
is that we
to advocate
This
comes
reading
It also
icon, or
picture
depended
about
the image
the
image,"
of
history
and
study
manufactured
image
broader
is
object
idea, as Nagel
associated with mythical,
general
tokens."
structural
or
Consider
how
era
began
sudarium
own work,
their
is most
that
of
of the
in
pointedly
(translated into En
The
but
"a
of Belt
scope
too,
here,
to
counterposed
as
itself
describes
art."
than Wolfs,
frequently
the
into the position
in turn,
a survey
the
of
copying
to move
began
book,
before
is somewhat
ing's
the
the
rep
and Wood
elegantly put it, of "types
dimly perceived origin and enforcing
categorical
across
continuity
taxonomizes
the
of
sequences
earliest
Belting
prints:
was
im
the mass-produced
devotional
or derivative
"a substitute
not with
that
its own voice
age,
spoke
on
but with
the voice
of its model";
the other,
the sheet
that
the
one
hand,
new
explored
"soon became
ity and
there
above
compositions,
an
opportunity
thematic
the
all,
to demonstrate
inventiveness."2
Or
engraving,
which
technical
virtuos
in more
here
again,
dialec
tical fashion, witness the way Belting thinks about Netherlandish
panel painting: "It is not an invention," he writes of aMadonna
and Child in Kansas City often attributed to Hayne of Brussels,
"but
the
repeats
very
type
on which
the same time, however,
eminent
through
defines
in a
for
and Presence),
the
of
left on
face
to the Renaissance,
up
leading
gradually
Wolfs
prototype.1
of
think
explores
laid against it.One of the things that
reverence
artists
as Likeness
(Richard
that "the dom
Reading
model
"is that of the im
the
"true
in the head or in the heart,
or
glish
tistic
echoes
vera
of
ideas
dialogue with Hans Belting's Bild und Kult
on
acutely
characterize.
to find
conceptions
medieval
lica?the
approach
seldom
from
in the years
continued
change:
Urbild,
these
and Wood
precisely
we
too
to
to see
to
natural
but
help
the notion of the "original" that the vera icon exemplified
composed
For
is how
Wolf
notwithstanding,
modes
activities.
the
Christ?especially
know
of making,
and
departed
words
"style,"
applied
artists
themselves
Nagel
And
origin.
invite
to
historical
imagined
seem
a
of
also
not
I could
example,
recent book, Schleier und Spiegel,which
that Renaissance
but
intrigues
their
the first moment
even
to fashion
period
to
works
drawing
language
the manners
"school,"
it can
others,
"performative"
material
itself
to
to
period
from
result
the
vintage
and
back
aspire
their real or
Renaissance
art
think
the Renaissance
the
and
the
the
"hand"
mythologizing
on
a
from
in
to
object
even
can
art
concepts
reasons
the
We
already
visual
us
tempt
composition
on
for
cast,"
the veil that Saint Veronica
its wealth
and
the
Gerhard Wolfs
the way
study
an
provides
were
made;
things
or
press
assign
ourselves
would,
the
field
Our
usually
avail
that
insert
lives.
can
we
history,
so we do:
and
information
biographical
into
art
of Renaissance
names
within
painter,
value."3
the
the
whose
One
waning
same work,
technique
gets
of
its cult
it is a product
the
and
value
depended.
by the hand
style
that
determined
for
impression
Belting,
the Middle
is the coexistence,
Ages
of "the
and "art."
image"
At
of an
its ar
what
even
Comparing what Nagel and Wood refer to as the "principle of
em
substitution" with Belting's idea of the Bild or with Wolfs