Ut Pictura Poesis - Lee, Rensselaer W. Ut Pictura Poesis, The Humanistic Theory of Painting. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. 1967
It has already been noted in the discussion of Gilio da Fabriano's estimate of Michelangelo's Last Judgment that the critics associated a painter's observance of decorum with his knowledge of texts; for a violation of historical truth taken in its broadest sense to include the events of religious narrative, might mean in the latter case religious impropriety, or with other subject matter, the incongruity now slight, now serious enough to occasion loss of universal truth, that anachronism is likely to bring in its train. but in point of fact decorum [taken in its most inclusive sense to mean the observance in any subject of seriousness or magnitude of a certain propriety, not only for the sake of representative truth but also in one sense or another of decency or good form], although it will always depend to some extent on avoiding the picturesque use of contemporary costume and setting at the expense of emphasis on universal human content, simply does not depend on that total avoidance of the local and contemporary that the critics thought an accurate observance of texts would insure. In spite of the contemporary dress of the apostles and servants and the presence of a small dog under the table, no sensible critic of today would say, for instance, that Titian's Supper at Emmaus in the Louvre lacks decorum; for although the painter has given the religious theme a patrician character that is not in keeping with the Gospel, he has nevertheless treated it with becoming reverence and dignity. And with all due respect to FÚlibien who remarked, as we have seen, that Titian lacked decorum, genuine decorum in a picture depends not on the presence or absence of the realistic and contemporary, but on the painter's treatment of these elements. It depends, that is, on his personal attitude towards his subject which is embodied in his style, and one may say truly that if the dog under the table in Titian's Supper at Emmaus were prominently displayed as he is in Veronese's painting of the same subject --a painting, by the way, in which the French Academy, this time with good reason, refused to admit the existence of decorum^ --or if the contemporary dress or landscape instead of taking their places easily in the monumental pattern of the picture intruded in any self-assertive manner on the importance and dignity of the human content, then to speak of indecorum might be justified. And that would be to admit that decorum is actually far more a matter of the artist's point of view as reflected in his style than of adherence to the truth of historical detail, and to give the lie to those sixteenth-century critics who in self-defense would have had logically and foolishly to declare that the decorum of the picture would at least be improved had the painter displayed a knowledge of Palestinian dress, architecture, landscape, and tableware of the first century A.D.
This is perhaps an overstatement of the case, but it is not without its foundation in [p. 42] fact in the writing of the sixteenth century. Dolce, for instance, declares that for decorum's sake the painter must not only represent a traditional figure like Moses with due grandeur and majesty, but must also on all occasions "take into account the rank of the persons whom he will represent, and not less, the nations, customs, places and epochs: so that if he will paint a feat of arms of Caesar or of Alexander the Great, it would not be appropriate to arm the soldiers as they would be armed today; and in the one case he will depict Macedonian arms and, in the other, Roman; and if it shall be his task to represent a modern battle, he must not seek to dispose it in the antique manner. By the same tokens, if he wished to represent Caesar, it would be ridiculous to put a Turkish turban on his head, or one of our caps, or yet one in the Venetian style."^ And shortly thereafter he adds: "Not less must the painter fashion localities and buildings according to the nature of the countries in which they are found so that he will not attribute to one country what is appropriate to another. Wherefore that painter was not very wise who, when he painted Moses striking the rock with his rod and causing the water desired by the Hebrews miraculously to issue forth, imagined a country fertile, grassy, and girt with charming hills: because history has it that this miracle happened in the desert; and besides, in fertile places there is always plenty of water."^ Now one will readily admit that in a subject of this sort the fertility and beauty of the countryside should not receive undue emphasis. Nevertheless, Dolce's remarks are an example of that literal reading of a picture at the expense of its significant dramatic content that criticism in the name of decorum, or perhaps of verisimilitude,^ or simply of learning for its own sake, would for two centuries seek to encourage. And it is interesting to read in the Poetica of Daniello, published some twenty years before Dolce's treatise, a similar injunction to the poet to encompass in his mind a vast and diverse erudition; for since human and divine events are his province, the poet must have knowledge "if not of all sciences and doctrines, at least of the greater part" and this comprehensive requirement includes more specifically the principles of supernatural, natural, and moral philosophy [for il sapere, and here he translates Horace, è principio e fonte dello scrivere bene ] of which the great Latin and modern poets are the repositories and which must, however, be supplemented by a "very wide experience of things that are done on land and sea"; and this practical experience of the nature of things includes within its own gigantic boundaries not only an expert knowledge of the conduct of land and naval warfare, but also the customs, modes of living, and habits of different peoples; "to put it briefly," as Daniello says with unconscious humor, "everything that has to do with the practical living of life."^
The reader with the leisure to compare the treatises of Daniello and Dolce will encounter a striking similarity between them, not merely in their insistence on the erudition of poet and painter, but in the order which they observe in developing their theories, and in their specific comments on invention, decorum, the purpose of art, and the like.^ Daniello's book, published in Venice in 1536, was of course readily accessible to Dolce, and it is not improbable that the latter modeled the general form of his theoretical exposition on that of the Poetica. In any event, it is scarcely hyperbole to say that in extended passages in both books a substitution of the word painter for poet, or vice versa, as the case required, would make no important difference in the sense. This fact alone, even if one ignored all the knowledge of Horace and Aristotle that Dolce patently displays, would give ample [p. 43] measure of the extent to which the doctrine ut pictura poetica was, alike in its origins and in its sixteenth-century development, a purely literary theory that a writer of humanistic temper could genially transfer to the sister art. But to return to Dolce's learned painter who finds his close parallel in Daniello's learned poet, it is interesting to see how at the end of the sixteenth century that critics influenced by the Counter-Reform exhort the painter to be well read above all in ecclesiastical literature. A painter dare not be ignorant of sacred history, writes Lomazzo in his last book, nor of matters pertaining to theology which he can at least learn by conversation with theologians; thus he will know how he should represent heaven and hell and their inhabitants; nor are the legends of the saints to be neglected.^ Sacred literature then comes first, displacing the poetry of an earlier day, and Lomazzo's list that follows deserves some comment.^ As one who had been a practicing artist he insists upon geometry and perspective which Dolce, as a cultivated connoisseur but no pain er, did not; and on music and architecture, and on history which must be treated with absolute truth. Poetry appears rather ingloriously near the end of the list--further evidence of the temporary eclipse of humanism in the late Cinquecento--although Lomazzo is aware in a passage that has the familiar Horation ring that painter and poet are most alike in possessing freedom of imagination [la licenza del fingere e inventare ]; and that a knowledge of poetry adds charm to the painter's inventions. After this rather conventional concession to the value of humane studies which seems to come almost as an afterthought, as if Lomazzao had suddenly remembered the humanistic compliments to painting in his earlier treatise,^ he abruptly reverts to the Leonardesque by declaring that anatomy is more important to the painter than aught else. But he seems again to recall his earlier writing on expression when he observes that painters must know the "affetti humani" to which he had devoted a whole book of his earlier treatise, not to mention a round fifty pages of quotations from the poets, chiefly Ariosto, and the recently published Gerusalemme liberata, that might serve as touchstones for the painters in their own rendering of human emotions.^ No one will object to Lomazzo's scientific requirements for the painter wherein he remembers Leonardo and Alberti, nor certainly what mention he makes of liberal studies. But it is the totality of the program, let alone the fact that it is set down as a program at all, that is appalling; and it should be remembered that Lomazzo's insistence on unmitigated accuracy in the rendering of history--such accuracy would be the logical result of the learned program--is the general point of view of the sixteenth century from Dolce onward. Very gratuitously Borghini makes assurances doubly sure by enjoining a like strictness in the rendering of fables from the poets, taking Titian seriously to task for a misreading of Ovid and others in a painting of Venus and Adonis.^ Thus the painter, no matter what his source, must quote literally both chapter and verse.
The pedantry of the sixteenth-century critics was fortunately not so labored in the age of French classicism, but the critics still insisted in all sincerity that a painter must be a learned man and abide by the truth of the written word. Fréart de Chambray's first two rules for decorous composition are "that in Historical Composures the pure and rigid truth be always religiously observed" --a clear echo of the piety of the Counter-Reform--and [p. 44] "that there be great consideration had of the place where ïtis to be represented."^ John Dryden flatly tells painters and poets alike to follow texts of ancient authors,^ and the famous English connoisseur and traveler John Evelyn, who translated Fréart de Chambray, remarks that the best painters are "learned men, good historians and [note the English touch!] generally skilled in the best antiquities," after which there follows a list of learned artists including Alberti, Rubens, Poussin and finally Bernini, "who on one occasion built the theatre, cut the figures, painted the scenes, wrote the play and composed the music." Evelyn then hastens to add patriotically that Sir Christopher Wren could have done even better had he tried!^
Félibien pays tribute to Poussin's historical sense when he remarks in a passage certainly reminiscent of one lately quoted from Dolce that the great painters "did not fall into the errors and gross examples of ignorance of those painters who represent in fair and verdant landscapes actions that took place in arid and desert countries; who confound sacred history with fable, who clothe the ancient Greeks and Romans in modern dress";^ and that Poussin himself was eager to observe historical truth appears in his reaction, recorded by Félibien, to some criticism of one of his paintings of Moses Striking the Water from the Rock. Some stickler for pictorial accuracy had remarked that the bed in which the stream of water flowed could not have become so deep in so little time, nor could nature have so ordained matters in a place so dry and arid as the desert. But Poussin responded in kind and defended himself by saying that he was "well enough instructed in what is permitted a painter in those things which he will represent, which can be taken and considered as they have been, as they still are, or as they ought to be;^ that so far as he could see, the disposition of the place where the miracle took place ought to be of the sort that he depicted, because otherwise the water could not have been gathered together nor made use of in the need that so great a number of people had of it, but would have spread abroad on all sides."^ This is an example of the casuistry in which in the name of historical truth the critics and even so intelligent a painter as Poussin were prone to indulge. That it has little to do with the final evaluation of a work of art is sufficiently obvious, and it should be again recorded to the credit of the French Academy that on some occasions at least, it justified Poussin for having taken liberties with historical fact because in so doing, it was argued, he attained a higher truth. Thus when he was accused of having violated truth in his painting of Eliezer and Rebecca by omitting the ten camels required by the biblical narrative,^ Le Brun defended him, maintaining that he had showed great discrimination thereby; for by dispensing with what was dramatically irrelevant he had focused the interest of the spectator on the principal subject, and this he could not have done had a quantity of unlovely camels been present to debauch the eye. Furthermore, a whole caravan of camels in such a subject would have been a mingling of the comic with the serious quite as unwarranted as a mingling of contrary modes in music. Thus when Poussin omitted the camels, not only did he fail to violate history in any important sense, but his painting gained in unity of action and in decorum. And to clinch his argument Le Brun made the inevitable [p. 45] appeal to the sister art of poetry, quoting Poussin to the effect that poetry no more than painting allows the easy and familiar expression of comedy to be mingled with the pomp and gravity of the heroic.
But although the concept of the painter as an accurate historian could thus be subjected to intelligent criticism among the Academicians, and for several decades after the death of Le Brun was to decline in influence among the best painters, it persisted in criticism.^ And in 1748 when Charles Coypel attempted to restore the Academy to the learned position of its brave days under Le Brun,^ it was revived with new energy. It was not, however, a concept that would ultimately survive the impact of Rousseau on European thought, and although Delacroix was a distinguished and learned painter of fable whose journals bear witness to his belief in some important elements in the doctrine ut pictura poesis, he was cool to the notion that vast learning was essential for the painter, believing rightly that a thorough knowledge of the techniques and traditions of his own art were far more important.^ But before the eighteenth century had ended, Reynolds with his usual good sense had divested the academic tradition which in the main he championed, of the nonsense of the learned painter, and with it much of the nonsense of decorum. Speaking of that "solid science" on which the art of painting is fonded he remarks:
This is sensible middle ground and caveat alike to academic pedantry and to untutored expressionism.
The idea of the encyclopedic painter has never among the great painters, and rarely at that, had more than an approximation in fact. Poussin who "transports us to the environs of ancient Rome with all the objects which a literary [and, Reynolds should have added, an archaeological] education makes so precious and interesting to man,"^ comes as close as any, and even when the scenes of his paintings were laid in foreign places that he had never seen, he was frequently careful to include some distinguishing mark that would identify the country in which the event took palce. Thus in scenes laid in Egypt he would often add a pyramid or an obelisk to an architecture that he otherwise based on classical or medieval forms, or palm tree to his usual foliage;^ and for the painting of the Virgin in Egypt made for Mme de Chatelou he tells us himself that for a procession of priests, and [p. 46] other Egyptian local color, he had availed himself of the natural and moral history of the Egyptians displayed in the mosaic pavement of the Temple of Fortune in Palestrina.^ And we have already seen that he could take an imputation of factual inaccuracy in his painting seriously enough to argue the point in an effort to prove himself a good historian. Yet for all his Roman learning and his conscientiousness he was far from being elaborately learned in what was called the science of costume^--that exact knowledge of the habits, customs, and local color of various peoples and countries, that the critics in the name of decorum or verisimilitude insisted upon as necessary to the painter of history. To be so he would have had to travel to other lands than Italy, as Delacroix and Descamps were to do in the nineteenth century, when curiously enough the Romantic Movement encouraged exact reproduction of the scene and dress of foreign lands that were far closer to what the academic critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries demanded than anything produced in their own time. But always in his great histories, and even in those cases in which, as we have just seen, he attempted to locate his scene geographically, Poussin's landscape, architecture, and dress are generalizations based on Italian or on classical forms with which the exact science of costume has little to do, and in which even his Roman learning is entirely subsumed. And this subordination of learning to artistic creation was as inevitable in Poussin as it must be in any great and learned painter who sees the forms of nature or the actions of men under the aspect of eternity. A less profound spirit like Le Brun who held by the rules and sponsored an academic program might, as Du Bos tells us, have someone draw Persian horses for him at Aleppo in order that he might observe costume in his histories of Alexander.^ But if one turns to the great painters of the Renaissance who flourished before the doctrine of the learned painter developed, certainly it is true that when they illustrated the fables of the poets or subjects from history or scripture they were never, for all their association with humanists, primarily scholars themselves, nor concerned primarily with the scrupulous following of texts; but treated their literary material freely and imaginatively, adapting it to the possibilities of their own medium of expression and to the traditional language of their own art. Thus, one may repeat, the learned, nay pedantic painter, was never so much an actuality as he was an idea whom the sixteenth-century critics created far more in their own image than on the basis of knowledge actually revealed by the great painters in their art--some of whom, as we have seen, they occasionally took to task for what one might call their misquotation of poetic or historical texts. It is not surprising that this theory should first evolve in a century that saw a decline in the creative energy both of art and scholarship; and like much of the Mannerist art of the period it is a distortion of objective truth. What several critics required of the sixteenth-century painter in the way of erudition we have already seen. And from 1550 to 1750 a host of passages might be quoted in which the mantel of poet, historian, or sage, is made to descend upon the painter's innocent shoulders or in which he is enjoined to deal accurately with the printed word. Near the end of the critical tradition of the Renaissance the eighteenth-century English painter and critic, Jonathan Richardson, who was respected in his day, after remarking on the universal language of painting [by which he [p. 47] means its appeal to the sense of sight], makes the amazing observation that "men of all nations hear the poet, moralist, historian, divine, or whatever other character the painter assumes, speaking to them in their own mother tongue."^ One may be permitted to ask whether the painter may not also assume the character of painter; and it may not be inappropriate to observe in this connection that Leonardo de Vinci two centuries before, near the beginning of Renaissance criticism, had strenuously objected to the poet on precisely the same grounds that Richardson near the end of the Renaissance tradition approves the painter, namely that the poet poaches so much on the alien territory of scientists, theologians, and philosophers that he may be said scarcely to exist in this character of poet at all.^ And it is probable that Leonardo, enamored of the sense of sight, and seeing in the painter's art only direct and vivid imitation of nature uncontaminated by adventitious learning, would have regarded the doctrine of the erudite painter with a mortal disgust.
[pp. 41-48]
* Symbol for the phonetic accent in this word not available on the computer.
[Lee, Rensselaer W. Ut Pictura Poesis, The Humanistic Theory of Painting. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. 1967.]
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