Page 106 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

siren who haunts man's imagination and who as Mantegna, who was Bellini's brother-in-law. Leonardo's close companion in Milan and Flor-
Eve was the intermediate agent of man's fall Joachim Camerarius, another of Diirer's learned ence and, as mentioned earlier, his geometrical
from grace. German friends, tells a revealing story in the treatise, De divina proportione, was illustrated
This discovery of the evocative power of the preface to his Latin translation of Diirer's Four by Leonardo with perspectival diagrams of
human body across such a broad range of func- Books on Human Proportion (cat. 194). "While the Platonic solids and their derivatives. The
tions in the secular and spiritual worlds has a Andrea was lying ill at Mantua he heard that treatise would have been known to Diirer in
counterpart in Renaissance philosophy. Pico Albrecht was in Italy and had him summoned to the Florentine edition of 1509 (cat. 142). 55
della Mirandola, the philosopher who is often his bed at once, in order that he might fortify Diirer's own works contain plentiful indications
taken as epitomizing the era of Lorenzo il Mag- Albrecht's facility and certainty of hand with that these or other contacts bore fruit—not
nif ico, in a famous passage characterized the scientific knowledge and principles. For Andrea only echoes of Leonardo's creations in his own
diverse potential of the human spirit: "You shall often lamented in conversation with his friends works of art but also, more compellingly, direct
have the power to degenerate into the lower that Albrecht's facility had not been granted to records in Diirer's notebooks of some of the
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forms of life, which are brutish. You shall have him nor his learning to Albrecht." Unfortu- Italian master's artistic inventions and theo-
the power, out of your soul's judgment, to be nately, much to Diirer's regret, before he could retical investigations. The most notable of these
reborn with the higher forms of life which are reach Mantua Mantegna died, so he was unable occur in Diirer's so-called Dresden Sketchbook,
divine." 47 to pay direct homage to the artist who had pro- which contains drafts for his book of human
vided him with some of his earliest knowledge proportions.
of Italian Renaissance style. 50
LEONARDO AND DURER: Camerarius' anecdote, whose truth we have
MAN, NATURE, AND THE no reason to doubt, precisely reflects Diirer's
ART OF UNDERSTANDING conviction that natural gifts of hand should be
When Albrecht Diirer was in Venice in 1506 on cultivated through the "science" of theory, so
the second and last of his trips to Italy, he sent a that the full glory and rationale of God's crea-
series of letters to the learned humanist, Willi- tions might be demonstrated through art. The
bald Pirckheimer, his close confidant in their typical young painter in Germany, Diirer
native city of Nuremberg. Towards the end lamented, "has grown up in ignorance, like a
of a long letter written that October, Diirer wild and unpruned tree," lacking access to the
responded to Pirckheimer's inquiry about the theoretical principles through which he could
date of his return to Germany: "I shall have gain true "understanding" and become a kunst-
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finished here in ten days; after that I should reicher meister (a master rich in artistry). To
like to ride to Bologna to learn the secrets of the rectify this deficiency, Diirer planned to write a fig. 19. Albrecht Diirer, Studies of the Hand, Arms
art of perspective, which a man is willing to comprehensive treatise on art, embracing such and Legs. c. 1517, pen and ink, fol. i3ov, Dresden
teach me. I should stay there eight or ten days topics as the proportions of the human figure, Sketchbook. Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden
and then return to Venice. After that I shall perspective, light and shade, colors ("how to
52
come with the next messenger. How I shall paint like nature"), and composition. His
freeze after this sun! Here I am a gentleman, at unrealized ambition to write such a work
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home only a parasite." The last remark reflects resembles that of Leonardo, and this resem-
one of the most notable aspects of the Italian blance is not coincidental. Not only were the
Renaissance revolution in the visual arts, two masters looking toward the same sources,
namely the high social status attained by a such as the writings of the ancient Roman
select group of major artists, who now expected architect Vitruvius and Alberti's Delia pittura,
to be ranked with the gentlemanly practitioners but also there is ample evidence that Diirer had
of the so-called liberal arts —those arts (like direct knowledge of Leonardo's art and ideas.
music) that could lay claim to an intellectual There is no record of direct personal contact
basis in rational theory. Leonardo was prom- between the two men, but neither is there any
inent among the theorists who began to insist shortage of possible intermediaries. Galeazzo
that artists were not rude craftsmen but rather Sanseverino, son-in-law of Ludovico Sforza and
intellectuals, deserving of high rank in society. one of Leonardo's patrons in Milan, stayed at
Hence the coupling in Diirer's mind of the Pirckheimer's house in Nuremberg in 1502. 53
acquisition of theoretical knowledge — in this One of Leonardo's colleagues in the employ
case, the painters' science of perspective—with of the Sforza, the military architect Lorenz
the perception of his social standing. Although Behaim, returned from Milan to Nuremberg in
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there is evidence of criticism and jealousy 1503. Emperor Maximilian I, a notable patron
directed against Diirer by his fellow painters of Diirer, married the Milanese princess Bianca
in Venice, he was generally accorded the status Sforza, who was accompanied to Germany by
of a celebrity on his second visit. He shared a Ambrogio da Predis, a collaborator of Leonardo.
mutual admiration with the aged Giovanni Bel- And whomever Diirer may have met in Bologna
lini, the father of Venetian Renaissance paint- to learn perspective, it was someone whose fig. 20. Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of the Neck, Legs
ing, and he was greatly respected by the most ideas were closely associated with those of Luca and Arms. c. 1489, pen and ink. Her Majesty Queen
celebrated painter of northern Italy, Andrea Pacioli, if not Pacioli himself. Pacioli had been Elizabeth n, Royal Library, Windsor Castle

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