Page 96 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

THE MEAN AND MEASURE OF ALL THINGS

Martin Kemp

T the sciousness. "In the Middle Ages both sides of the travel and expansion that had begun to

JL he old and much criticized cliche that
"spirit" of the Italian Renaissance can be identi- human consciousness—that which was turned characterize Europe's relationship to Asia and
fied with a new attitude toward man may still within as that which turned without—lay Africa in the course of the preceding centuries. 5
possess some value in our quest to characterize dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. Even more seriously, the underlying assump-
the arts of this period. The great humanist Leon The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and child- tion—that "man" and "nature" were in some
Battista Alberti, in his innovative dialogues on ish prepossession, through which the world and sense waiting to be "discovered" — can be
private and public life entitled Delia famiglia, history were clad in strange hues. Man was con- shown to be untenable, since every age has
which he composed between 1433 and 1441, scious of himself only as a member of a race, articulated its own special relationship to the
provided a classic formulation of what we have people, party, family, or corporation — only world through selective perceptions that have
come to see as the archetypal Renaissance atti- through some general category. In Italy this veil disclosed that period's own "man" and "nature."
tude to man: "The Stoics taught that man was first melted into air; an objective treatment and This is not to say that we should necessarily
by nature constituted the observer and manager consideration of the State and of all the things expect the full range of these perceptions to be
of things. Chrysippus thought that everything of this world became possible. The subjective at expressed in a transparent way in the works of
on earth was born only to serve man, while the same time asserted itself with corre- art from each age, since the functional contexts
man was meant to preserve the friendship and sponding emphasis; man became a spiritual for what we call the arts do not necessarily pro-
society of man. Protagoras, another ancient individual, and recognized himself as such." 3 vide vehicles for their expression. Thus, the fact
philosopher, seems to some interpreters to His equally crucial section, "The Discovery of that perceptions of man and nature may be less
have said essentially the same thing, when he the World and of Man," opens with a short striking in much of medieval art by no means
declared that man is the mean and measure of essay on the "journeys of the Italians," which indicates that such perceptions were not present
1
all things/' Alberti quotes the same tag from are epitomized by the adventures of Columbus. in the consciousness of medieval thinkers.
Protagoras in his seminal treatise Delia pittura In Burkhardt's view, the voyages of discovery Although we may no longer share Burk-
(On Painting, 1435), when he explains how are prime symptoms of the Renaissance spirit. hardt's confidence in the picture he painted of
the human figure provides the essential frame "Freed from the countless bonds which else- Renaissance man, his intuition that profound
of reference for the scale of all other forms where in Europe checked progress, having changes were taking place in fifteenth-century
in a perspectival picture. 2 reached a high degree of individual development Europe has not been entirely superseded. In the
Alberti's neo-Stoic ideas appear to reveal and been schooled by the teachings of antiquity, present context, it is worth emphasizing that
a heightened and extended definition of man the Italian mind now turned to the discovery of not the least important of these was the chang-
as the "purpose" of nature —as the being for the outward universe, and to the representation ing scope of the arts, which came to articulate
whom nature was created and through whom of it in speech and form Columbus himself the relationship of man to nature in new ways
the order of God's creation becomes apparent. is but the greatest of a long list of Italians who, through the transformation of their communi-
Without man as a rational observer, such order in the service of Western nations, sailed into cative means. Nor is Burkhardt entirely wrong
would remain unseen. The perception of nature distant seas. The true discoverer, however, is in his conviction that shared aspirations can be
and intellectual command over its rules place not the man who first chances to stumble upon discerned behind the geographical ambitions of
human beings in a position of potential mastery anything, but the man who finds what he has those explorers who regarded the surface of the
within the physical world, giving them the sought Yet ever we turn again with admira- earth as a space for conquest and behind the
means to make nature serve their purposes — tion to the august figure of the great Genoese, representational endeavors of those authors and
even if these purposes are ultimately dependent by whom a new continent beyond the ocean was artists who disclosed "real" people in "real"
upon God's decrees. The exploitation of knowl- demanded, sought and found." 4 space and "real" time. What may be outdated is
edge within the context of such admirable pur- Leaving aside the question of whether it was Burkhardt's notion that a shared spirit connects
suits as scholarship and the various arts permits accurate to say that what Columbus found was artist with explorer. We should think instead of
human beings to cultivate virtu (worth, talent, the new continent he sought, modern historians a complex series of interlocking social, political,
and will) as the means of combating fortuna no longer accept Burkhardt's characterization of imperial, religious, and cultural motivations, all
(the whims of fate). the Renaissance enterprise even on its own of which used related tools in the service of the
The expression of such ideas in the writings terms. The polarities of attitude he used to geographical and intellectual extension of the
of Alberti and his fellow humanists provided the demarcate the medieval and Renaissance periods scope of individuals and institutions—tools like
basis for the famous characterization of "Re- have been crucially blurred, both by a greater the splendid scientific instruments included in
naissance man" in Jacob Burkhardt's Civilization understanding of medieval culture in its own this exhibition and the more prosaic devices
of the Renaissance in Italy, the classic study by right and by a greater awareness of the amount used by architects such as Brunelleschi and
the great Swiss historian, first published in of medieval baggage carried by even the most Alberti and which probably lay behind the
1860. At the start of the key section, "The progressive Renaissance thinkers. Moreover, invention of perspective by Brunelleschi in or
Development of the Individual," Burkhardt there is a growing tendency to see the voyages before 1413. We can glimpse the shared mo-
painted a beguiling picture of the new con- of exploration themselves as a continuation of tivations by considering the careers of some

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 95