Notes [Imitation]

2. Quoted from Babbitt, op. cit., p. 10.

3. For instance in Boccaccio's praise of Giotto's ability to paint so accurate a likeness of things that men mistook his paintings for reality; see Decameron, VI, 5. This recalls Pliny.

4. Alberti, whose theory in many respects anticipates the Cinquecento, nevertheless states that it is the painter's business to reproduce reality very closely (Della pittura, p. 143); and his instructions concerning perspective and anatomy belong to an age that was scientifically interested in the exact reproduction of reality.

5. Hist. nat. XXXV.

6. See note 24.

7. Trattato, III, 411.

8. Introduction to the 1568 edition of the Vite (ed. Milanesi, Florence, 1878, pp. 168 ff.). Vasari was elsewhere aware of the idealizing function of art. See Schlosser-Magnino, La Letteratura artistica, pp. 278 ff.

9. Dialogo della pittura, p. 106: "Dico . . . la Pittura non essere altro che imitatione della Natura: e colui, che più nelle sue opere le si avicina, è più perfetto Maestro." Cf. p. 112.

10. Ibid., p. 176: "Deve adunque il Pittore procacciar non solo d'imitar, ma di superar la natura. Dico superar la Natura in una parte: che nel resto è miraculoso, non pur, se vi arriva, ma quando vi si avicina. Questo èin dimostrar col mezzo dell'arte in un corpo solo tutta quella perfettion di bellezza, che la natura non suol dimostrare a pena in mille. Perch è non si trova un corpo humano cosi perfettamente bello, che non gli manchi alcuna parte. Onde habbiamo esempio di Zeusi . . ."(the story of Zeuxis follows). Dolce here anticipates in a tentative and unsystematic way, and without discarding the really antagonistic theory of the direct imitation of nature, Bellori's seventeenth-century Platonico-Aristotelian definition of art (see p. 14 and notes 55-60)as the artist's imitation of an Idea or mental image of beauty in his own mind derived, as in the case of Zeuxis, from a bringing together of excellences observed in different individuals none of whom was, however, perfectly beautiful in himself. Dolce, who was anything but a systematic thinker, thus reflects in unreconciled form opposite points of view concerning imitation that had been present in antiquity itself [see E. Panofsky, Idea, Leipzig, 1924, pp. 5 ff., for discussion of antique theories of imitiation). He was still too close to the realistic point of view of the Renaissance to give up entirely, as Bellori did later, the theory of exact imitation of nature in favor of the definite theory of art as a universalizing and embellishing agent. In an interesting passage in Benedetto Varchi (Due Lezzioni, Florence, 1549, pp. 111 ff.), Dolce could have found a hint for his juxtaposition of the two doctrines of imitation. Apropos of the fact that poets and painters have a like goal in imitating nature (cf. note 6 for Dolce's comments on the same subject), Varchi writes: "Essendo il fine della Poesia e della Pittura il Medesimo, secondo alcuni, cioè imitare la natura, quanto possono il piu, vengono ad essere una medesima, e nobile ad un modo, e però molte volte gli scrittori danno a' Pittori quello, che è de' Poeti, e cosi per lo contrario, onde Dante, che . . . seppe tutto, e tutto scrisse, pose nel Ventinovesimo canto del Purgatorio: 'Ma legge Ezechiel, che gli dipinse.'" Varchi here states the Renaissance doctrine already noted in Dolce of the exact imitation of nature. But shortly after he continues: "I dipintori, se bene nel ritrarre dal naturale, debbono imitare la natura, e sprimere il vero quanto piu fanno, possono non dimeno, anzi debbono, come ancora i Poeti, usare alcuna discrezione, onde molto fu lodato la prudenza d'Apelle, il quale devendo ritrarre Antigono, che era cieco da uno occhio diede tal sito alla figura, che ascose quell'occhio di maniera, che non si poteva vedere." Here Varchi qualifies his advice to the painter to imitate nature as closely as possible with the phrase con alcuna discrezione, a phrase which hints at idealization and which he explains in the familiar story of Apelles and Antigonus; and he thus closely parallels Dolce who, though he advises painters to imitate nature exactly, says that art must at the same time surpass nature.

11. The most important sixteenth-century treatises on poetry were the following: Vida, De arte poetica, Rome, 1527 (in verse); Daniello, la poetica, Venice, 1536; Robortelli, In Librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes, Florence, 1548; Fracastoro, Naugerius sive de poetica dialogus, Venice, 1555; Minturno, De poeta, Venice, 1559, and L'arte poetica, Venice, 1564; J. C. Scaliger, Poetices, Geneva, 1561; Castelvettro, La Poetica d'Aristotele, vulgarizzata et sposta, Vienna, 1570; Torquato Tasso, Discorsi dell'arte poetica, Venice, 1587. All of the comparisons between painting and poetry in Aristotle and Horace were also available to the critics of painting in these influential treatises where they recur many times. The following, for instance, is Minturno's way of summing up Aristotle's position that peotry and painting have the same objects of imitation, but that their means of imitation are different: "Ne più la poesia, che le pittura questa varietà di persone ci discrive (Minturno has just been saying that poets represent men as better or worse than they are, or as average). Perciochè tra pittori Polygnoto i migliori dipinse; Pausone i peggiori; Dionysio i mezzani. Diverse anchora sono le cose con le quali si fa l'imitazione. Conciosia cosa che i pittori con li colori e co' liniamenti la facciano: . . . i poeti, com' ho detto, con la parole, con l'harmonia, con li tempi" [L'arte poetica, pp. 2-3). Cf. notes 12,13, 26, 27.

12. See note 40.

13. Op. cit., p. 190: "Devesi adunque elegger la forma più perfetta, imitando parte la Natura. Il che faceva Apelle, il quale ritrasse la sua tanto celebrata Venere, che usciva dal Mare . . . da Frine famosissima cortigiana della sua età; et ancora Prasitele cavò la bella status della Venere Gnidia della medesima giovane. E parte si debbono imitar la belle figure di marmo, o di bronzo de' Mestieri antichi. La mirabil pefettion delle quali chi gusterà e possederà a pieno, potrà sicuramente corregger molti defetti di essa Natura, e far le sue Pitture riguardevoli e grate a ciascuno: perciochè le cose antiche contengono tutta la perfettion dell'arte, e possono essere esemplari di tutto il bello" For Scaliger, Virgil among ancient poets was superior to nature for the same reasons that Dolce found the ancient artists superior. The following passage [Poetices, III, 25, p. 113) which should also be compared with the quotation from Dolce in note 40, is a most interesting epitome of what was most important in Renaissance aesthetic combining as it does the comparison of Virgil to painters who idealized nature; the doctrine that by a selective process the painter is able, as Dolce said, "non solo d'imitar, ma di superar la natura"; the doctine that there is a universal perfection inherent in the regular system of proportions in nature [cf. Vasari, loc. cit. in note 38), but that nature contains defects which result from accidents of time and place; finally the notion that antiquity is "belle nature": "Hactenus rerum ideae quem ad modum ex ipea natura exciperentur, Virgilianis ostendimus exemplis. Ita enim eius poesi evenisse censeo sicut et picturis. Nam et plastae et ii, qui coloribus utuntur, ex ipsis rebus capessunt notiones, quibus lineamenta, lucem, umbram, recessus imitentur. Quod in quibusque praestatissimum inveniunt, e multis in unum o pus suum transferunt: ita ut non a natura didicisse, sed cum ea certasse, aut potius illi dare leges potuisse videantur. Quis enim putet ullam unquam talem fuisse foeminae cuiuspiam pulchritudinem in qua aliquid non desideraretur ab iudice non vulgari? Nam tametsi in ipsis naturae normis atque dimensionibus universa perfectio est: tamen utriusque parentis mistio, tempus, coelum, locus multa afferunt impedimenta. Itaque non ex ipsius naturae opere uno potuimus exempla capere, quae ex una Virgiliana idea mutuati sumus."

14. Scaliger, for instance, following Vida, carried the un-Aristotelian notion of the imitation of models to a dogmatic extreme in practically deifying Virgil. Why bother with nature at all, he says when you have everything you may want to imitate in Virgil who is a second nature [Poetices, III, 4, p. 86]. Later he added, apparently with some heat [ibid., V, 3, p. 233), that "nothing was omitted by that heavenly genius: there is nothing to be added unless by fools, nothing to be changed unless by the impudent." (Ita nihil omissum coelesti viro illi: nihil addendum, nisi ab ineptis, nihil immutandum nisi ab impudentibus.) Cf. Pope's remark in the Essay on Criticism that Virgil had found his own second nature in Homer: "But when t'examine ev'ry part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same." See the discussion of the theory of imitation in Babitt, The New Laokoön, pp. 3-18.

15. See note 68.

16. At the end of the seventeenth century Roger de Piles sums up at its best the critical attitude toward the study of antiquity, adding a particular word of caution for the painter who in imitating ancient sculpture would be imitating an art different in certain ways from his own: "Le Peintre ne sauroit donc mieux faire que de tâcher à pénétrer l'excellence de ces Ouvrages, pour connoitre la pureté de la Nature, et pour dessiner plus doctement et plus élégamment. Néanmois comme il y a dans la Sculpture plusieurs chose qui ne conviennent point à la Peinture et que le Peintre a d'ailleurs des moyens d'imiter la Nature plus parfaitment que le Sculpteur, il faut qu'il regarde l'Antique comme un Livre qu'on a traduit dans une autre langue, dans laquelle il suffit de bien rapporter le sens et l'esprit, sans s'attacher servilement aux paroles de l'Original" ["L'idée du penitre parfait" in his Abrégé de la vie des peintre, Paris, 1715, pp. 26-27; 1st ed. 1699).

17. See Félibien's report of Van Opstal's analysis of the Laokoön group before the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture; also Sébastien Bourdon's remarks on the imitation of antique statues (Jouin, Conférences de l'Académie, pp. 19-26; 137-140). These are exagerated examples of the uncritical worship of the antique. Bourdon's own painting is, in part at least, typical of the stultifying effect of such doctrine. In condemning the Academy's excessive enthusiasm for antique models, it should not be forgotten that some sensible things were said during its Conférences.

18. Compare, for instance, Varchi's use of the word discrezione (see note 40) to suggest merely that the artist should alter and improve the raw material of nature with Lomazzo's very different and highly significant use of it in his last work, Idea del tempio della pittura, Milan, 1590, 12-14, where as a result of Neo-Plantonic influences near the end of the sixteenth century, the term is used to mean that inner perceptive faculty of the artist which enables him to behold in his own mind the emanation of the supreme Idea of beauty which is in God, and to discern in this emanation the standard of perfect art. This theory of imitation differs fundamentally from the earlier theory of Dolce who finds an outward standard of perfection in the antique, not an inward standard in the image of ideal beauty in the mind's eye. The locus classicus, however, for Lomazzo's Neo-Platonism is chapter XXVI of the same book, entitled "Del modo di conoscere e constituire le proporzione secondo la bellezza," in which, following Ficino's famous commentary on Plato's Symposium, he develops the theory that earthly beauty is an immaterial emanation of the divine beauty which the artist recongizes only because he is aware of the reflection of the divine beauty in his own mind [See Panofsky, Idea, pp. 52-56; for the reprinted texts of Ficino's commentary and Lomazzo"s chapter ibid, pp. 122-30; see note 108).

19. L'idea del pitture, dello secultore e dell'architetto, a lecture given before the Academia di San Luca in Rome in 1664 and printed in 1672 as introduction to his Vite de' pitturi, sculturi et architetti moderni.

20. Alberti was aware of the concept of selective imitation; he tells the famous story of Zeuxis; his statement that "the Idea of the beautiful escapes the inexperienced artist" [Della pittura, p. 151) is typical of an age that associated artistic achievement with experiment and practice. Raphael writes in 1516 to Castiglione that if he will paint a beautiful woman, it is necessary to see many beautiful women, but since there is a scarcity of handsome models, he makes use of a certain Idea that comes into his mind. This Idea or mental image of beautiful womanhood he probably associated with his experience of the individual beauty of women, but he cannot be said to have had in mind any very definite approximation of Aristotle's theory of the selective imitation of nature. The Idea may also have had some association in his mind with the Platonic idea of absolute beauty about which he could have heard much from Castiglione and others, but, again, writing as an intuitive artist, not as a humanist or philosopher, he does not say so. Vasari's remarks on the Idea [Introduction to the 1568 edition, pp. 168 ff.) have been explained by Panofsky to mean that it is derived empirically from experience of nature. But Vasari was no theorist and cannot be said to have given much thought to the classical doctrine of imitation. See the important discussion of the concept of the Idea during the Renaissance in Panofsky, Idea, pp. 23 ff. Panofsky cites and discusses all of the passages mentioned here. Friedlaender's Neo-Platonic interpretation of the passage in Vasari in his review of Panofsky's Idea (Fahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, VI, 1928, 61-62) in may opinion overemphasizes the importance of what rather appears to be a very slight adumbration of Neo-Platonic theory.

21. See notes 40-43.

22. Cf. Panofsky, op. cit., p. 61. He makes the point that Bellori's definite formulation of a theory that had already existed without such formulation in Renaissance criticism was the result of his opposition to Mannerism on the one hand, and on the other hand to the naturalism of Caravaggio who, says Bellori, like Demetrius (mentioned in Aristotle's Poetics), painted things as they are (not, the implication is, as they ought to be). Cf. note 12.

23. See Schlosser-Magnino, La letteratura artistica, p. 591: "Il ragionamento del Bellori è prettamente platonico." This is incorrect. There is plenty of adventitious Neo-Platonism in Bellori, but for a true Platonist the Idea would have unqualified, metaphysical existence independent of nature. Bellori's own opinion [op cit., p. 10) that it was Plato's meaning "che l'Idea sia una perfetta cognitione della cosa, cominciata su la natura" is only true if taken to mean that sense perception is the initial stimulus which prompts the mind to rise to a contemplation of that ideal truth or beauty of which the things of earth are only imperfect copies. For Plato of course, the soul has knowledge of the ideas before birth, and sense perception merely serves to recall this knowledge. But in the very next sentence Bellori speaks of "Natura istressa, da cui deriva la vera Idea," which is a flat contradiction of the Platonic doctrine of a priori knowledge. Cf. Panofsky, op. cit., p. 136, note 2).

24. See Panofsky's discussion of Bellori's theory [ibid., pp. 57-63) to which I am greatly indebted. Panofsky has demonstrated the renewed interest in nature in Bellori's doctrine of ideal imitation and has noted that Bellori was the first to formulate what became among the French theorists of the age of classicism the doctrine of "la belle nature." The whole of Bellori's treatise on the Idea is reprinted in an appendix at the end of Panofsky's book.

25. Bellori, op. cit., pp. 3-5 (unless otherwise noted, my discussion of Bellori's theory is based on this important passage): "Quel sommo ed eterno intelletto autore della natura nel fabbricare l'opere sue maravigliose, altamente in se stesso riguardando, costituì le prime forme chiamatre Idee, in modo che ciascuna specie espressa fù da quella prima Idea, formandosene il mirabile contesto delle cose create . . . . li nobili Pitori e Scultori, quel primo fabbro imitando, si formano anch'essi nella mente un esempio di bellezza superior, e in esso riguardando emendano la natura senza colpa di colore e di lineamento. Questa Idea, overo Dea della Pittura e della Scoltura aperte le sacre cortine de gl'alti ingegni de i Dedali e de gli Apelli, si svela a noi e discende sopra i marmi e sopra le tele; originata dalla natura supera l'origine e fassi originale dell'arte, misurata dal compasso dell'intelletto divine misura della mano, e animata dall'immaginativa dà vita all'immagine. Sono certamente per sentenza de' maggiori filosofi le cause exemplari ne gli animi de gli Artefici, le quali risiedono senza incertezza perpetuamente bellissime e perfettissime. Idea del Pitture e dello Scultore è quel perfetto, ed excellente esempio della mente, alla cui immaginata forma imitando si rassormigliano le cose, che cadono sotto la vista: tale è la finitione di Cicerone nel libro dell'Oratore a Bruto. 'Ut ignitur in formis et figuris est aliquid perfectum et excellens, cuius ad excogitatam speciem imitando referentur ea quae sub oculis ipsa cadunt, sic perfectae eloquentiae speciem animo videmus, effigiem auribus quaerimus.' Così l'Idea constituisce il perfetto della bellezza naturale, e unisce il vero al verisimile delle cose sottoposte all'occhio, sempre aspirando all'ottimo ed al maravigilioso, onde nom solo emula, ma superiore fassi alla natura, palesandoci l'opere sue eleganti e compite, quali essa non è solita dimostraci perfette in ogni parte. Questo pregio conferma Proclo nel Timen, dicendo, se tu prenderai un huomo fatto dalla natura e un altro formato dall'arte statuaria, il naturale sarà meno prestante, perche l'arte opera più accuratamente. Me Zeusi, che con la scelta di cinque vergini formò l'immagine di Elena tanto famosa da Cicerone posta in esempio all'Oratore, insegna insieme al Pittore ed allo Scultore e contemplare l'Idea delle migliori forme naturali, con farne scelta da vari corpi, elleggendo le più eleganti. "Imperochè non pensò egli di poter trovare in un corpo solo tutte quelle perfettioni, che cercava per la venustà di Helena, mentre la natura non fa perfetta cosa alcuna particolare in tutte le parti. 'Neque enim putavit omnia, quae quaereret ad venustatem, uno in corpore se reperire posse, ideo quod nihil simplici in genere omnibus ex partibus natura expolivit.'"

26. Metaphysics I. 1, 98Ia: " ...Greek text not on keyboard...." Artistotle goes on to say that experience is a knowledge of particulars, art of universals, and to suggest that the wisdom of artists resembles that of philosophers.

27. Politics III. 6, 128Ib. Socrates had been reported by Xenophon to express a similar concept ( Memorabilia III. 10, I), and Plato, despite his hostility to painting, had remarked on its idealizing function when he compared his ideal state to a painter's picture of an ideally beautiful man, adding that the painter would not be any the less a good painter if he could not prove that it is possible for such a man to exist ( Republic V. 472.). These passages are cited by Panofsky ( op. cit., pp. 7-8). The story of Zeurxis is found in Cicero's De intentione (II. I, I) where Bellori read it (he quotes from it at the end of the passage quoted in note 55). It had also been readily available to the Reniassance in Pliny (Hist. nat. XXXV).

28. For the cause esemplari see perhaps the passage in Plato's Phaedo (100c) in which it is argued that the absolute beauty is the cause (Greek text) of beauty in all things that partake of it. But cf. Seneca Epistolae LXV. 2 ff. (quoted by Panofsky, p. 76). After defining the four Aristotelian causes, Seneca adds: "His quintam Plato adicit exemplar, quam ipse ideam vocat."

29. ( op cit., p. 63) for some interesting comments on Bellori's inconsistencies.

30. Cf. another such direct statement as : "Tutte le cose . . . dall'arte . . . hanno principio dalla Natura istessa, da cui deriva la vera Idea" ( op. cit., p . 10). See note 63.

31. Dryden at the beginning of his partial translation of Bellori's discourse which he included in his Parallel between Painting and Poetry [pp. v ff.) remarks that Bellori's Idea of a Painter "cannot be unpleasing, at least to such who are conversant in the Philosophy of Plato"; at the end he makes the following pregnant comment on Bellori's style: "In these pompous Expressions, or such as these, the Italian has gievn you his Idea of a Painter; and though I cannot much commend the Style, I must needs say there is somewhat in the matter: Plato himself is accustom'd to write loftily, imitating, as the Criticks tell us, the Manner of Homer; but surely that inimitable Poet had not so much of Smoak in his Writings, though not less of Fire. But in short, this is the present genius of Italy."

32. See note 54. Cf. Babitt, The New Laokoön, pp. 10-11.

33. Op. cit., pp. 11 ff.: "Ci resterebbe il dire che gli antichi Scultori havendo usato l'Idea meravigliosa, come habbiamo accennato, sia però neccessario lo studio dell'antiche sculture le più perfette, perche ci guidino alle bellezze emendate della natura; . . . li Pittori e gli Scultori, scegliendo le più eleganti bellezze naturali, perfettionano l'Idea, l'opere loro vengono ad avanzarsi e restar superiori alla natura, che e l'ultimo pregio di queste arti, come habbiamo provato. Quindi nasce l'ossequio e lo stupore de gli huomini verso le statue e le immagini, quindi il premio e gli honore degli Artefici; questa fù la gloria di Timante, di Apelle, di Fidia, di Lisippo."

34. Ibid., p. 8; he translates from Poetics XV: ". . . insegna al tragico li costumi de' migliori, con l'esempio de buoni Pittori, e Facitori d'immagini perfette, li quali usano l'Idea: e sono queste le parole: 'Essendo is tragedia imitatione de' migliori, bisogna che noi imitiamo li buoni Pittori; perchè quelli esprimendo la propria forma con farli simili, più belli li fingono. [Greek text.....].' "Il far però gli huomini più belli di quello che sono communemente, e eleggere il perfetto, conviene all'Idea. Ma non una di questa bellezza è l'Idea; varie sono le sue forme, e forti, e magnanime, e gioconde, e delicate, di ogni et` e d'ogni sesso."

35. Ibid., p. 9: ". . . essendo la Pittura rappresentatione d'humana attione."

36. In Bellori, Le vite dei pittori, p. 461 (his collection of Poussin's observations on painting appended to the Vita): "Due sono gli strumenti, con che si dispongono gli animi degli uditori: l'attione e la dittione, la prima per sè stessa è tanto valevole ed efficace, che Demostene le diede il chiama favella del corpo, Quintiliano tanto vigore e forza le attribuisce, che reputa inutili li concetti, le prove, gli affetti sensa di essa, e sensa la quale inutile sono i lineamenti e'l colore." This passage in which Poussin applies to painting some ancient criticism of oratory is interesting as an indication of the great influence which the ancient rhetoricians exerted on Renaissance theorists in reinforcing the Aristotelian view that painting is essentially an imitation of human life. Cf. note 97.

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