Page 115 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

tame Coronario, which was to sanction the group of states in conflict with each other and rise of a new concept of Christianity. Even
literary dignity of poetry in the vulgate. threatened by France. The fulcrum for stronger before Luther's proposals regarding doctrine,
Events in Florentine culture in the last two political cohesion, albeit not true unity, could be Savonarola's moral furor had troubled the young
decades of the fifteenth century can seem to be furnished by Rome for its apostolic authority or Michelangelo as much as it had the elder Bot-
a movement backward, a sort of reaction to the Florence for the cultural supremacy expressed ticelli. Beyond condemnation of the corruption
dissipation not only of the doctrine but also of by its language. Tuscan speech, at the same time of the clergy and the contrast between ortho-
the moral force of early humanism: Savonarola noble and popular, would and in fact did become doxy and heresy, an idea was gaining ground
understood that Florentine liberty was ending the national language of Italy. In the Medici that the ontological problem of human being
and blamed Lorenzo il Magnifico, but in the circle at the end of the fifteenth century the and action preceded the gnoseological problem
Medici circle itself there was also a return to the question of language was given highest priority of knowledge of the objective world. The need
past, and precisely to Dante. Remember Lan- by Poliziano, the poet and philologist. He for a different basis for speculation about sci-
dino's monumental edition and Botticelli's showed that it was possible to write poetry in ence did not arise for another century, with
illustrations of Dante's work. Later Michel- the vulgate, in Latin, and even in Greek. Poetry Galileo, who to be sure strongly affirmed the
angelo himself became enthusiastic about Dante was therefore a vital value that took form experimental nature of scientific research but
and, according to Vasari, Leonardo ridiculed him through language but went beyond it. This too also understood that in order to give birth to a
for it. represented a return to an intrinsic vitality that new science it was necessary to define clearly
Much earlier his dissension with Botticelli had been lost: Donatello inserted learned quota- its relationship with religion. Galileo was aware
had been one of the motives for which Leonardo tions from the ancient in his figurative plastic of what was going on in literature and art —
left the learned Florence for the more techno- realism, especially in the last phase of his work, certainly he knew of the opposing meanings
logical Milan: this polemic was at the origin of the two pulpits in San Lorenzo on which Ber- assigned to art by Leonardo and Michelangelo;
Michelangelo's anti-Leonardism. Aiming toldo collaborated so extensively. And Braccio- we could say paradoxically that for him Michel-
toward the direct and unprejudiced experience lini had warned that in poetry things "non angelo's strength in speculation was a stronger
of the real, Leonardo denied the authority of enarrari sed agi videantur" (things should not force than Leonardo's interest in knowledge.
history as a teacher. Michelangelo idealized seem to be narrated, but [made] to happen). Parronchi correctly considers the 1492 relief
history, positing it as the necessary reference The deplorable deviation from the sources of not a later work, but slightly earlier than the
for realizing his own modernity but excluding early humanism was blamed at least in part on Madonna of the Stairs, a work that is in fact a
any form of imitation. In his first relief, the Leonardo: on his interest in knowing, his exper- profound critical reflection on Donatello's
only thing taken from the antique is the theme; imentalism, his religious scepticism, his lack of rilievo schiacciato. Everything is concentrated
the plastic text is in the Tuscan line of Giovanni interest in the ancient. In 1500, in his Nativity into the limited depth between the plane of the
Pisano and Donatello. Similarly, around this now in London, Botticelli had greeted the new Madonna's chair and the gradually receding
same time Botticelli was redoing a famous century with apocalyptic invective. But already planes of the steps. The relief of the Madonna is
painting by Apelles, Calumny, of which no in 1492, Michelangelo's relief had opposed to minimal yet the matronly figure is statuesque,
figurative memory existed. For the elderly Bot- the poetics of the universal harmony of nature a in the ancient style. In the flattened space the
ticelli as for the young Michelangelo, history violent realism that could not achieve catharsis. figures do not represent action but create
was not something that was handed down, but Michelangelo had not yet met Leonardo and a rhythm; this is the same concatenation, but
was a resurrection of the past. With his 1492 therefore his opposition could not have been as more relaxed and open, as that seen in the 1492
relief Michelangelo posited explicitly the prob- strong as it was, ten years later, to the Leonardo relief. The crux of the problem is still the rela-
lem of the relationship between ancient and who returned in triumph from Milan to Flor- tionship between relief and statuary, that is
modern. He was still troubled by the experi- ence. But the antithesis was already clear from between action and figure. In the Madonna of
ence, on one hand flattering and on the other that earliest moment: Michelangelo was fight- the Stairs the space has neither a real nor illu-
bitter, of his Cupid, which had been mistaken ing against what seemed to be a renewed and sory depth; it is as though it were completely
for an ancient piece and sold as such. It was the more extensive feeling about nature, a new contained within the figures. As in the Battle,
same problem that was being faced in language: spirit of investigation, a progressive and prom- where the centaurs are not really centaurs, all
the ancient was Latin, the modern the vulgate. ising marriage between art and science. that is left of the historia, or action, is the
This was a crucial problem from a political point Was Michelangelo's beginning, then, regres- rhythm, the essence. From that moment on, the
of view also, Machiavelli had explained. Michel- sive or reactionary? The gravest problem facing statuary figure will absorb within itself the dra-
angelo faced it by writing his Rime, which he society between the end of the fifteenth and matic action and with it the spatiality of relief;
did as a way of integrating with the word his beginning of the sixteenth century was not the and its extraordinary intense pathos will depend
formal investigations of art. The problem of the problem of a new image of the cosmos: it was on just this absence of any complementarity,
language was political also because Italy was a religious conflict, the crisis of the Church, the that is of any reference to physical space.

114 CIRCA 1492