The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Paul Oskar Kristeller
The Modern System of the Arts:
A Study in the History of Aesthetics
Part I
Journal of the History of
Ideas, 12 (4)
Oct. 1951, 496-527.
|
Content P ART I
V –
18th Century VI – France
VII –
VIII – IX – Conclusions |
Dedicated to Professor Hans Tietze on his 70th
birthday
The fundamental importance of the eighteenth century in the history of aesthetics and of art criticism is generally recognized. To be sure, there has been a great variety of theories and currents within the last two hundred years that cannot be easily brought under one common denominator. Yet all the changes and controversies of the more recent past presuppose certain fundamental notions which go back to that classical century of modern aesthetics. It is known that the very term “Aesthetics” was coined at that time, and, at least in the opinion of some historians, the subject matter itself, the “philosophy of art,” was invented in that comparatively recent period and can be applied to earlier phases of Western thought only with reservation
. [1] It is also generally agreed that such dominating concepts ofI am indebted for several suggestions and references to Professors Julius S. Held, Rensselaer Lee, Philip Merlan, Ernest Moody, Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Schapiro, and Norman Torrey.
1. B.
Croce, Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generate: Teoria
e storia, 5th ed. (Ban, 1922; first ed., 1901); Problemi di estetica,
2nd ed. (Ban, 1923); ,Storia dell’estetica per saggi (Ban, 1942).
Katharine E. Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, A History of Esthetics (New York,
1939). See also: J. Koller,
Entwurf zur Geschichte und Literatur der Aesthetik von Baumgarten bis auf die
neueste Zeit (
HHC:
[bracketed]
displayed on page 497 of original.
496
modern aesthetics as taste and sentiment, genius, originality and creative imagination did not assume their definite modern meaning before the eighteenth century. Some scholars have rightly noticed that only the eighteenth century produced a type of literature in which the various arts were compared with each other and discussed on the basis of common principles, whereas up to that period treatises on poetics and rhetoric, on painting and architecture, and on music had represented quite distinct branches of writing and were primarily concerned with technical precepts rather than with general ideas
. [2] Finally, at least a few scholars have noticed that the term “Art,” with a capital A and in its modern sense, and the related term “Fine Arts” (Beaux Arts) originated in all probability in the eighteenth century. [3]In this
paper, I shall take all these facts for granted, and shall concentrate instead
on a much simpler and in a sense more fundamental point that is closely related
to the problems so far mentioned, but does not seem to have received sufficient
attention in its own right. Although the terms “Art,” “Fine Arts” or
“Beaux Arts” are often identified with the visual arts alone, they are also
quite commonly understood in a broader sense. In this broader meaning, the term “Art”
comprises above all the five major arts of painting, sculpture, architecture,
music and poetry. These five
constitute the irreducible nucleus of the modern system of the arts, on which
all writers and thinkers seem to agree. [4] On the other hand, certain additional arts are sometimes
added to the scheme, but with less regularity, depending on the different views
and interests of the authors concerned: gardening, engraving and the decorative
arts, the dance and the theatre, sometimes the opera, and finally eloquence and
prose literature. [5
5. See
the works of Zimmermann and Schasler, cited above, note
1.
The
basic notion that the five “major arts” constitute an area all by themselves,
clearly separated by common characteristics from the crafts, the sciences and
other human activities, has been taken for granted by most writers on aesthetics
from Kant to the present day. It is
freely employed even by those critics of art and literature who profess not to
believe in “aesthetics”; and it is accepted as a matter of course by the general
public of amateurs who assign to “Art” with a capital A that ever narrowing area
of modern life which is not occupied by science, religion, or practical
pursuits.
It is my purpose here to show that this system of the five major arts, which underlies all modern aesthetics and is so familiar to us all, is of comparatively recent origin and did not assume definite shape before the eighteenth century, although it has many ingredients which go back to classical, medieval and Renaissance thought. I shall not try to discuss any metaphysical theories of beauty or any particular theories concerning one or more of the arts, let alone their actual history, but only the systematic grouping together of the five major arts. This question does not directly concern any specific changes or achievements in the various arts, but primarily their relations to each other and their place in the general framework of Western culture. Since the subject has been overlooked by most historians of aesthetics and of literary, musical or artistic theories,
[6] it is hoped that a brief and quite tentative study may throw light on some of the problems with which modern aesthetics and its historiography have been concerned.The
Greek term for Art (τέχνη) and its Latin equivalent (ars)
do not specifically denote the “fine arts” in the modern sense, but were
applied to all kinds of human activities which we would call crafts or sciences.
Moreover, whereas modern aesthetics
stresses the fact that Art cannot be learned, and thus often becomes involved in
the curious endeavor to teach the unteachable, the ancients always understood by
Art something that can be taught and learned. Ancient statements about Art and the arts
have often been read and understood as if they were meant in the modern sense of
the fine arts. This may in
some
498
cases have led to fruitful errors, but it does not do justice to the original intention of the ancient writers. When the Greek authors began to oppose Art to Nature, they thought of human activity in general. When Hippocrates contrasts Art with Life, he is thinking of medicine, and when his comparison is repeated by Goethe or Schiller with reference to poetry, this merely shows the long way of change which the term Art had traversed by 1800 from its original meaning
. [7] Plato puts art above mere routine because it proceeds by rational principles and rules, [8] and Aristotle, who lists Art among the so-called intellectual virtues, characterizes it as a kind of activity based on knowledge, in a definition whose influence was felt through many centuries. [9] The Stoics also defined Art as a system of cognitions, [10] and it was in this sense that they considered moral virtue as an art of living. [11The
other central concept of modern aesthetics also, beauty, does not appear in
ancient thought or literature with its specific modern connotations. The Greek
term καλόν and its Latin equivalent (pulchrum)
were never neatly or consistently distinguished from the moral good. [12] When Plato discusses beauty in the Symposium and
the Phaedrus, he is speaking not merely of the physical beauty of human
persons, but also of beautiful habits of the soul and of beautiful cognitions,
whereas he fails completely to mention works of art in this connection.[13] An incidental remark made in the Phaedrus
[14] and elaborated by Proclus [15] was
certainly not meant to express the modern triad of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.
When the Stoics in one of their
famous statements connected Beauty and Goodness, [16] the context as well as
7.
[HHC: Greek not reproduced] Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 1. Seneca, De
brevitate vitae, 1. Schiller, Wallensteins Lager, Prolog, 138.
Goethe, Faust I, Studierzimmer 2, 1787.
9.
Nicomachean Ethics, VI 4, 1140 a 10.
10.
Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim, I, p. 21; II, p. 23 and
30; III, p. 51.
11
Ibid., III, pp. 49 and 148f.
12. R.
G. Collingwood, “Plato’s Philosophy of Art,” Mind, N.S. 34 (1925),
154-72, esp. 161f.
13.
Symposium, 210 a ff. Phaedrus, 249 d.
14.
[HHC: Greek not reproduced] 246 d—e.
15.
Commentary on Plato’s Alcibiades I (ed. Cousin, 356-57). I am indebted for this reference to Dr.
Laurence Rosán. The καλόν does not denote aesthetic beauty in this
passage any more than in Plato, and to interpret the [HHC: Greek not
reproduced] as Truth seems arbitrary. Yet the passage may have influenced its
editor, Cousin.
16
Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta III, p. 9ff. [HHC: Greek not
reproduced]
“Beauty” nothing but moral goodness, and in turn understood by “good” nothing but the useful. Only in later thinkers does the speculation about “beauty” assume an increasingly “aesthetic” significance, but without ever leading to a separate system of aesthetics in the modern sense. Panaetius identifies moral beauty with decorum,
[18] a term he borrows from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, [19] and consequently likes to compare the various arts with each other and with the moral life. His doctrine is known chiefly throughLet us
now turn to the individual arts and to the manner in which they were evaluated
and grouped by the ancients. Poetry
was always most highly respected, and the notion that the poet is inspired by
the Muses goes back to Homer and Hesiod. The Latin term (vates) also
suggests an old link between poetry and religious prophecy, and Plato is hence
drawing upon an early notion when in the Phaedrus he considers poetry one
of the forms of divine madness. [22] However, we should also remember that the same
conception of poetry is expressed with a certain irony in the Ion
[23] and the
Apology,
[24] and that even
in
20.
Enn. V 8, 1. I 6, 1-3. See
also I 3, 1. There is no evidence
that Plotinus intended to apply his remarks on music to all the other fine arts,
as E. Krakowski believes (Une philosophie de l’amour et de la beauté:
L’esthétique de Plotin et son influence [Paris, 1929], 112ff.). The triad of Goodness, Truth and Beauty
is made a basis of his interpretation by Dean William R. Inge (The Philosophy
of Plotinus II [London, 1918], 74ff. and 104) but does not occur in the
works of Plotinus.
22.
245a.
23.
533eff.
500
the Phaedrus the divine madness of the poet is compared with that of the lover and of the religious prophet
. [25] There is no mention of the “fine arts” in this passage, and it was left to the late sophist Callistratus [26] to transfer Plato’s concept of inspiration to the art of sculpture.Among
all the “fine arts” it was certainly poetry about which Plato had most to say,
especially in the Republic, but the treatment given to it is neither
systematic nor friendly, but suspiciously similar to the one he gives to
rhetoric in some of his other writings. Aristotle, on the other hand, dedicated a
whole treatise to the theory of poetry and deals with it in a thoroughly
systematic and constructive fashion. The Poetics not only contains a
great number of specific ideas which exercised a lasting influence upon later
criticism; it also established a permanent place for the theory of poetry in the
philosophical encyclopaedia of knowledge. The mutual influence of poetry and
eloquence had been a permanent feature of ancient literature ever since the time
of the Sophists, and the close relationship between these two branches of
literature received a theoretical foundation through the proximity of the
Rhetoric and the Poetics in the corpus of Aristotle’s works. Moreover, since the order of the writings
in the Aristotelian Corpus was interpreted as early as the commentators of late
antiquity as a scheme of classification for the philosophical disciplines, the
place of the Rhetoric and the Poetics after the logical writings
of the Organon established a link between logic, rhetoric and poetics
that was emphasized by some of the Arabic commentators, the effects of which
were felt down to the Renaissance. [27]
Music
also held a high place in ancient thought; yet it should be remembered that the
Greek term μουσική, which is derived from the Muses, originally comprised
much more than we understand by music. Musical education, as we can still see in
Plato’s Republic, included not only music, but also poetry and the dance.
[28]
Plato and Aristotle, who also
employ the term music in the more specific sense familiar to us, do not treat
music or the dance as separate arts but rather as
25. 244
a if.
26.
Descriptiones, 2.
28.
Republic II, 376 e ff.
elements of certain types of poetry, especially of lyric
and dramatic poetry. [29] There is reason to believe that they were thus clinging
to an older tradition which was actually disappearing in their own time through
the emancipation of instrumental music from poetry. On the other hand, the Pythagorean
discovery of the numerical proportions underlying the musical intervals led to a
theoretical treatment of music on a mathematical basis, and consequently musical
theory entered into an alliance with the mathematical sciences which is already
apparent in Plato’s Republic,
[30]
and was to last far down into early modern
times.
When we
consider the visual arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, it appears
that their social and intellectual prestige in antiquity was much lower than one
might expect from their actual achievements or from occasional enthusiastic
remarks which date for the most part from the later centuries. [31]
It is true that painting was compared to
poetry by Simonides [32] and Plato, [33] by Aristotle [34] and Horace, [35] as it was
compared to rhetoric by
29.
Poetics 1, 1447 a 23ff. Laws II, 669 e f. 30 VII, 531 a
ff.
35.
De arte poetica 1ff.; 361ff.
37.
De veteribus scriptoribus 1.
38.
Quintiian, Institutio Oratoria XII, 10, 3ff.
502
painting by Pliny
[41] and Galen, [42] that Dio Chrysostom compared the art of the sculptor with that of the poet, [43] and that Philostratus and Callistratus wrote enthusiastically about painting and sculpture. [44] Yet the place of painting among the liberal arts was explicitly denied by Seneca [45] and ignored by most other writers, and the statement of Lucian that everybody admires the works of the great sculptors but would not want to be a sculptor oneself, seems to reflect the prevalent view among writers and thinkers. [46] The term δημιονργός, commonly applied to painters and sculptors, reflects their low social standing, which was related to the ancient contempt for manual work. When Plato compares the description of his ideal state to a painting [47] and even calls his world-shaping god a demiurge, [48] he no more enhances the importance of the artist than does Aristotle when he uses the statue as the standard example for a product of human art. [49] When41.
Natural History XXXV, 76f.
42.
Protrepticus (Opera, ed. C. G. Kuehn, I [Leipzig, 1821],
39).
43.
Oratio XII. Cf. S. Fern, “Ii discorso di Fidia in Dione Crisostomo,”
Annali della R. Scuola Normale Supériore di Pisa, Lettere, Storia e
Filosofia, Ser. II, vol. V (1936), 237-66.
44.
Philostratus, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptiones.
Ella Birmelin, “Die Kunsttheoretischen Gedanken in Philostrats Apollonios,”
Philologus 88, N.F. 42 (1933), 149-80;
392-414.
45.
Epistolae Morales 88, 18.
46.
Somnium 14. Cf. Plutarch,
Pericles 1-2.
47.
Republic V, 472 d. Cf. VI, 501
a ff.
48.
Timaeus 29 a.
49.
Physics II 3, 194 b 24f. and 195 a 5f. Metaphysics IV 2, 1013 a 25f. and
b 6f.
50.
Orator 8f.
52. The
opinion of S. Haupt (“Die zwei Bücher des Aristoteles [HHC: Greek not
reproduced], Philologus 69, N.F. 23 [1910], 252-63) that a lost section of
Aristotle’s Poetics dealt with the visual arts, as well as with lyrical
poetry, must be rejected.
53. 8ee
above, note 31. Cf. esp. Plato,
Republic II, 373 b; X, 595 a ff. Laws II, 668 b f. Aristotle, Poetics 1, 1447 a 19ff.
Rhetoric I 11, 1371 b 6ff.
Politics VIII 5, 1340 a
38f.
54. It
seems clear, at least for Plato (Republic X and Sophist 234 a
ff.) that he arrived at his distinction between the productive and
imitative arts without any exclusive concern for the “fine arts,” since
imitation is for him a basic metaphysical concept which he uses to describe the
relation between things and Ideas.
55.
Perhaps lyrical poetry is also excluded. It is not discussed by Aristotle, except
for certain special kinds, and there are passages in Plato’s Republic (X,
595 a) that imply that only certain kinds of poetry are
imitative.
56. See
above, note 29.
57.
Aristotle, Poetics 1, 1447 a 24ff.
58.
Plato, Sophist 234 e f.
59.
Republic X, 596 d f.
60.
Ibid., 602 d. Cf. Sophist, 235 a.
61.
Plato, Cratylus, 423 c. Cf.
Aristotle, Poetics 1, 1447 a 21 (a controversial passage). See also Rhetoric III 2, 1404 a
20ff. for the imitative character of words and language.
62.
Metaphysics I 1, 981 b 17ff.
504
The final ancient attempts at a classification of the more important human arts and sciences were made after the time of Plato and Aristotle. They were due partly to the endeavors of rival schools of philosophy and rhetoric to organize secondary or preparatory education into a system of elementary disciplines (τά έγκύκλιа). This system of the so-called “liberal arts” was subject to a number of changes and fluctuations, and its development is not known in all of its earlier phases
. [64]65.
Pro Archia poeta 1, 2: “etenim omnes artes quae ad humanitatem pertinent
habent quoddam commune vinculum.”
66. See
above, note 39.
67.
Charles S. Baldwin, Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic (New York, 1924), esp.
1ff., 63ff., 226ff.
50
5that
is, disciplines we should classify as sciences.
The
same picture is gained from the distribution of the arts among the nine Muses.
It should be noted that the number
of the Muses was not fixed before a comparatively late period, and that the
attempt to assign particular arts to individual Muses is still later and not at
all uniform. However, the arts
listed in these late schemes are the various branches of poetry and of music,
with eloquence, history, the dance, grammar, geometry and astronomy. [68] In other words, just as in the
schemes of the liberal arts, so in the schemes for the Muses poetry and music
are grouped with some of the sciences, whereas the visual arts are omitted.
Antiquity knew no Muse of painting
or of sculpture; they had to be invented by the allegorists of the early modern
centuries. And the five fine arts
which constitute the modern system were not grouped together in antiquity, but
kept quite different company: poetry stays usually with grammar and rhetoric;
music is as close to mathematics and astronomy as it is to the dance, and
poetry; [69] and the visual arts, excluded from the realm of the
Muses and of the liberal arts by most authors, must be satisfied with the modest
company of the other manual crafts.
Thus
classical antiquity left no systems or elaborate concepts of an aesthetic
nature, [70] but merely a number of scattered notions and
suggestions that exercised a lasting influence down to modern times but had to
be carefully selected, taken out of their context, rearranged, reemphasized and
reinterpreted or misinterpreted before they could be utilized as building
materials for aesthetic systems. We
have to admit the conclusion, distasteful to many historians of aesthetics but
grudgingly admitted by most of them, that ancient writers and thinkers, though
confronted with excellent works of art and quite susceptible to their charm,
were neither able nor eager to detach the aesthetic quality of these works of
art from their intellectual, moral, religious and practical function or content,
or to use such an aesthetic quality as a standard for grouping the fine arts
together or for making them the subject of a comprehensive philosophical
interpretation.
50
6The
early Middle Ages inherited from late antiquity the scheme of the seven liberal
arts that served not only for a comprehensive classification of human knowledge
but also for the curriculum of the monastic and cathedral schools down to the
twelfth century. [71] The subdivision of the seven arts into
the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy and music) seems to have been emphasized since Carolingian times. [72] This
classification became inadequate after the growth of learning in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. The
classification schemes of the twelfth century reflect different attempts to
combine the traditional system of the liberal arts with the threefold division
of philosophy (logic, ethics and physics) known through Isidore, and with the
divisions of knowledge made by Aristotle or based on the order of his writings,
which then began to become known through Latin translations from the Greek and
Arabic. [73] The rise of the universities also established
philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence and theology as new and distinct subjects
outside the liberal arts, and the latter were again reduced from the status of
an encyclopaedia of secular knowledge they had held in the earlier Middle Ages
to that of preliminary disciplines they had held originally in late antiquity.
On the other hand, Hugo of St.
Victor was probably the first to formulate a scheme of seven mechanical arts
corresponding to the seven liberal arts, and this scheme influenced many
important authors of the subsequent period, such as Vincent of Beauvais and
Thomas Aquinas. The seven
mechanical arts, like the seven liberal arts earlier, also appeared in artistic
representations, and they are worth listing: lanificium, armatura, navigatio,
agricultura, venatio, medicina, theatrica.
[74]
Architecture as
72.
P. Rajna, “Le denominazioni Trivium e Quadrivium,” Studi Medievali,
N.S. 1 (1928), 4-36.
well as various branches of sculpture and of painting are listed, along with several other crafts, as subdivisions of armatura, and thus occupy a quite subordinate place even among the mechanical arts
. [75] Music appears in all these schemes in the company of the mathematical disciplines, [76] whereas poetry, when mentioned, is closely linked to grammar, rhetoric and logic. [77] The fine arts are not grouped together or singled out in any of these schemes, but scattered among various sciences, crafts, and other human activities of a quite disparate nature. [78] Different as are these schemes from each other in detail, they show a persistent general pattern and continued to influence later thought.If we
compare these theoretical systems with the reality of the same period, we find
poetry and music among the subjects taught in many schools and universities,
whereas the visual arts were confined to the artisans’ guilds, in which the
painters were sometimes associated with the druggists who prepared their paints,
the sculptors with the goldsmiths, and the architects with the masons and
carpenters. [79] The
treatises also that were written, on poetry and rhetoric, on music, and on some
of the arts and crafts, the latter not too numerous, have all a strictly
technical and professional character and show no tendency to link any of these
arts with the others or with philosophy.
The
very concept of “art” retained the same comprehensive meaning it had possessed
in antiquity, and the same connotation that it was teachable. [80] And the term artista
coined in the Middle Ages indicated either the craftsman or the student of the
liberal arts. [81] Neither
for Dante [82] nor for Aquinas has the term Art the
meaning
75.
Ibid., ch. 22. For the
position of the architect in particular, see N. Pevsner, “The Term ‘Architect’
in the Middle Ages,” Speculum XVII (1942),
549-62.
80. De
Bruyne, l.c.
82. D.
Bigongiari, “Notes on the Text of Dante,” Romanic Review 41(1950),
81f.
508
we
associate with it, and it has been emphasized or admitted that for Aquinas
shoemaking, cooking and juggling, grammar and arithmetic are no less and in no
other sense artes than painting and sculpture, poetry and music, which
latter are never grouped together, not even as imitative arts.
[83]
On the
other hand, the concept of beauty that is occasionally discussed by Aquinas [84] and somewhat more emphatically by a few other medieval
philosophers [85] is not linked with the arts, fine or otherwise, but
treated primarily as a metaphysical attribute of God and of his creation,
starting from Augustine and from Dionysius the Areopagite. Among the transcendentals or most general
attributes of being, pulchrum does not appear in thirteenth-century
philosophy, although it is considered as a general concept and treated in close
connection with bonum. The
question whether Beauty is one of the transcendentals has become a subject of
controversy among Neo-Thomists. [86] This is an interesting sign of their
varying attitude toward modern aesthetics, which some of them would like to
incorporate in a philosophical system based on Thomist principles. For Aquinas
himself,
5
09or for
other medieval philosophers, the question is meaningless, for even if they had
posited pulchrum as a transcendental concept, which they did not, its
meaning would have been different from the modern notion of artistic beauty in
which the Neo-Thomists are interested. Thus it is obvious that there was
artistic production as well as artistic appreciation in the Middle Ages, [87] and this
could not fail to find occasional expression in literature and philosophy. Yet there is no medieval concept or
system of the Fine Arts, and if we want to keep speaking of medieval aesthetics,
we must admit that its concept and subject matter are, for better or for worse,
quite different from the modern philosophical
discipline.
The
period of the Renaissance brought about many important changes in the social and
cultural position of the various arts and thus prepared the ground for the later
development of aesthetic theory. But, contrary to a widespread opinion,
the Renaissance did not formulate a system of the fine arts or a comprehensive
theory of aesthetics.
Early Italian humanism, which in many respects continued the grammatical and rhetorical traditions of the Middle Ages, not merely provided the old Trivium with a new and more ambitious name (Studia humanitatis) but also increased its actual scope, content and significance in the curriculum of the schools and universities and in its own extensive literary production. The Studia humanitatis excluded logic, but they added to the traditional grammar and rhetoric not only history, Greek and moral philosophy, but also made poetry, once a sequel of grammar and rhetoric, the most important member of the whole group
. [88] It is true that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries poetry was understood as the ability to write Latin verse and to interpret the ancient poets, and that the poetry which the humanists defended against some of their theological contemporaries or for which they were crowned by popes and emperors was a quite different thing from what we understand by that name. [89] Yet the name poetry, meaning at first Latin poetry, received much honor and88. See
my article, “Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance,”
Byzantion 17 (1944-45), 346-47, esp. 364-65.
510
With
the second third of the sixteenth century, Aristotle’s Poetics, along
with his Rhetoric, began to exercise increasing influence, not only
through translations and commentaries, but also through a rising number of
treatises on Poetics in which the notions of Aristotle constituted one of the
dominant features. [92] Poetic imitation is
regularly
90. M.
Maylender, Stonia delle Accademie d’Italia, 5 vols. (Bologna,
1926-30). See also Pevsner,
l.c., 1ff.
91.
Zilsel, l.c., 293ff.
Musical theory retained during the Renaissance its status as one of the liberal arts,
[93] and the author of an early treatise on the dance tries to dignify his subject by the claim that his art, being a part of music, must be considered as a liberal art. [94] It seems that the prac-tice of the Improvvisatori as well as the reading of classical sources suggested to some humanists a closer link between music and poetry than had been customary in the preceding period
. [95] This tendency received a new impetus by the end of the sixteenth century, when the program of the Camerata and the creation of the opera brought about a reunion of the two arts. It would even seem that some of the features of Marinismo and baroque poetry that were so repulsive to classicist critics were due to the fact that this poetry was written with the intention of being set to music and sung. [96]97.
Schlosser, “Giusto’s Fresken,” 70ff.; Kunstliteratur,
66.
repeat the claim that painting should be considered as one of the liberal, not of the mechanical arts. It has been rightly noted that the classical testimonies in favor of painting, mainly from Pliny, Galen and Philostratus, were not as authoritative and strong as the Renaissance authors who quoted them in support of their claim believed or pretended to believe. [99] Yet the claim of Renaissance writers on painting to have their art recognized as liberal, however weakly supported by classical authority, was significant as an attempt to enhance the social and cultural position of painting and of the other visual arts, and to obtain for them the same prestige that music, rhetoric, and poetry had long enjoyed. And since it was still apparent that the liberal arts were primarily sciences or teachable knowledge, we may well understand why Leonardo tried to define painting as a science and to emphasize its close relationship with mathematics
. [100101.
Schlosser, Kunstliteratur, 385ff.
Olschki, II (Bildung und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter den Renaissance in
Italien, Leipzig, 1922), 188ff. Blunt, 55ff. Pevsner,
42ff.
102.
Pevsner, 48.
514
The ambition of painting to share in the traditional prestige of literature also accounts for the popularity of a notion that appears prominently for the first time in the treatises on painting of the sixteenth century and was to retain its appeal down to the eighteenth: the parallel between painting and poetry. Its basis was the Ut pictura poesis of Horace, as well as the saying of Simonides reported by Plutarch, along with some other passages in Plato, Aristotle and Horace. The history of this notion from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century has been carefully studied,
[103] and it has been justly pointed out that the use then made of the comparison exceeded anything done or intended by the ancients. Actually, the meaning of the comparison was reversed, since the ancients had compared poetry with painting when they were writing about poetry, whereas the modern authors more often compared painting with poetry while writing about painting. How seriously the comparison was taken we can see from the fact that Horace’s Ars poetica was taken as a literary model for some treatises on painting and that many poetical theories and concepts were applied to painting by these authors in a more or less artificial manner. The persistent comparison between poetry and painting went a long way, as did the emancipation of the three visual arts from the crafts, to prepare the ground for the later system of the five fine arts, but it obviously does not yet presuppose or constitute such a system. Even the few treatises written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century that dealt with both poetry and painting do not seem to have gone beyond more or less external comparisons into an analysis of common principles. [104]The sixteenth century formulated still other ideas that pointed in the direction of later developments in the field of aesthetics. Just as the period attached great importance to questions of “precedence” at courts and in public ceremonies, so the Academies and educated circles inherited from the medieval schools and universities the fancy for arguing the relative merits and superiority of the various sciences, arts or other human activities. This type of debate was by no means limited to the arts, as appears from the old rivalry between medicine and jurisprudence,
[105] or from the new contest between “arms and letters.” Yet this kind of discussion was also applied to the arts and thus helped to strengthen the sense of their affinity. The parallel between painting and poetry, in so far as it often leads to a plea for the superiority of painting over poetry, shows the same general pattern. [106] No less popular was the contest between painting and sculpture, on which Benedetto Varchi in 1546 held a regular inquiry among contemporary artists, whose answers are extant and constitute interesting documents for the artistic theories of the time. [107] The question was still of interest to Galileo. [108] The most important text of this type is Leonardo’s Paragone, which argues for the superiority of painting over poetry, music, and sculpture. [109] In a sense, this tract contains the most complete system of the fine arts that has come down to us from the Renaissance period. However, the text was not composed by Leonardo in its present form, but put together from his scattered notes by one of his pupils, and again rearranged by most of the modern editors. In any case, architecture is omitted, the separation between poetry and music is not consistently maintained, and the comparison seems to be extended to the mathematical disciplines106.
Schlosser, Kunstiiteratur, 154ff.
516
with
which painting, as a science, is closely linked for
Leonardo.
Another line of thinking which might be called the amateur tradition appears in several writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, probably first in Castiglione’s Courtier
. [110] The exercise, as well as the appreciation of poetry, music and painting are grouped together as pursuits appropriate for the courtier, the gentleman, or the prince. Again, the occupation with these “fine arts” is not clearly marked off from fencing, horseriding, classical learning, the collecting of coins and medals and of natural curiosities or other equally worthy activities. But there seems to be a sense of the affinity between the various arts in their effect upon the amateur, and by the first half of the seventeenth century, the taste and pleasure produced by painting, music and poetry is felt by several authors to be of a similar nature. [111] It does not seem that Plotinus’ view that beauty resides in the objects of sight, hearing, and thought exercised any particular influence at that time. [112]The
most explicit comparison between poetry, painting, and music that I have been
able to discover in Renaissance literature is the appendix which the Bohemian
Jesuit, Jacobus Pontanus, added to the third edition of his treatise on poetics.
[113] In stressing the affinity
between the three arts as forms of imitation aiming at pleasure, the author goes beyond his classical sources
. [114] He argues for the status of painting as a liberal art, as many others had done before, but also places musical composition (not musical theory) as a separate art on the same plane with poetry and painting. The passage is quite remarkable, and I should like to think that it was influential, since the work was often reprinted, inRenaissance speculation on beauty was still unrelated to
the arts and apparently influenced by ancient models. Nifo’s treatise de pulchro, still
quoted in the eighteenth century, dealt exclusively with personal beauty. [116] Francesco da Diacceto’s main philosophical work, which
carries the same title, continues the metaphysical speculations of Plotinus and
of his teacher Ficino and does not seem to have exercised any lasting influence.
[117]
That
the Renaissance, in spite of these notable changes, was still far from
establishing the modern system of the fine arts appears most clearly from the
classifications of the arts and sciences that were
pro-
114.
“[HHC – Latin not
reproduced].”
518
posed during that period. These schemes continued in part the traditions of the Middle Ages, as is clear in the case of such Thomists as S. Antonino or Savonarola
. [118] On the whole, however, there is a greater variety of ideas than in the preceding period, and some of the thinkers concerned were neither backward nor unrepresentative. Vives, Ramus, and Gesner largely follow the old scheme of the liberal arts and the university curriculum of their time. [119] Neither Agrippa of Nettesheim [120] nor Scaliger, [121] nor in the seventeenth century Aisted [122] or Vossius, [123] shows any attempt to separate the fine arts118.
Baur, l.c., 391ff. Spingarn, 24.
121. In
a rather incidental passage, he groups architecture with cooking and
agriculture; singing and the dance with wrestling; speech with navigation
(Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem [no place, 1594], bk. III,
ch. 1, p. 206). Varchi has several
random groupings of the arts and finally gives the prize to medicine and next to
architecture (Opere II, 631ff.). Nizolius classes poetry with grammar,
rhetoric and history (Robert Flint, Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarum and a
History of Classifications of the Sciences [New York, 1904],
98f.).
122. He
includes poetry under philology, and music under theoretical philosophy
(Ibid, 113-15)
5
19from the sciences; they list them scattered among all kinds of sciences and professions, [123] and the same is still true of the eighteenth-century Cyclopaedia of E. Chambers. [124] Francis Bacon connects poetry with the faculty of imagination, [125] but does not mention the other arts, and the same is true of Vico, [126] whom Croce considers the founder of modern aesthetics. [127] Bonifacio stresses the link between poetry and painting, but otherwise does not separate the fine arts from the sciences, [128] and the same is true of Tassoni. [129] Even Muratori, who again stresses imagination in poetry and at times compares poetry and painting, when he speaks of the arti connected with poetry means eloquence and history, in other words, the studia humanitatis
. [129a] The126.
Vico’s theory of phantasy refers to poetry only. In an incidental passage he lists two
groups of arts: the visual arts, and oratory, politics, medicine (De
antiquissima Italorum sapientia, ch. 2, in Le orazioni inaugurali…
, ed. G. Gentile and F. Nicolii [Ban, 1914], 144).
127.
Estetica, l.c., 243ff.
520
136.
Aucoc, p. XXI-XLIII.
137.
Aucoc, p. CIV ff. Pevsner, 84ff.
138.
Founded in 1676. Aucoc, CXXXVIII ff.
139.
Founded in 1666. Lettres … de Colbert, p. LVIII ff. and
510f.
140.
Founded in 1671. Aucoc, CLXVI if. Lettres... de Colbert,
LXXII.
141.
This Academy, which was nothing else but the Paris Opera, can be traced back to
a privilege granted to Pierre Pernin in 1669; cf. La Grande Encyclopedic
I, 224f. The Opera was
definitely established in 1672 when a similar privilege was granted to Lulli,
authorizing him “d’establir une académie royale de musique dans nostre bonne
ville de Paris... pour faire des representations devant nous… des pièces de
musique qui seront composées tant en vers francais qu’autres langues
estrangères, pareille et semblable aux academies d’Italie” (Lettres…
de Colbert, 5351.).
142.
Founded in 1661. La Grande Encyclopedic I,
227.
522
the
arts that would seem to underly these foundations is more apparent than real.
The Academies were founded at
different times, and even if we limit ourselves only to the period of Colbert,
we should note that there were also the Académie des Sciences
[143] and the
Académie des Inscriptions et Médailles, [144] which have no relation to the “Fine
Arts”; that there was at least a project for an Académie de Spectacles to be
devoted to circus performances and other public shows; [145] and that
the Académie de Musique and the Académie de Danse, like this projected Académie
de Spectacles, were not organizations of distinguished professional artists or
scientists, like the other Academies, but merely licensed establishments for the
regular preparation of public performances. [146] Moreover, an extant paper from the time
of Colbert that proposed to consolidate all Academies in a single institution
makes no clear distinction between the arts and the sciences [147] and lends
additional though indirect support to the view that Colbert’s Academies reflect
a comprehensive system of cultural disciplines and professions, but not a clear
conception of the Fine Arts in particular.
Along
with the founding of the Academies, and partly in close connection with their
activities, there developed an important and extensive theoretical and critical
literature on the visual arts. [148] The Conferences held at the Académie de Peinture et
Sculpture are full of
143.
Founded in 1666. Aucoc, IV. Lettres… de Colbert, LXII
ff.
144.
Founded in 1663. It changed its
name to Académie Royale des Inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1716. Aucoc, IV and LI
ff.
145. The
privilege granted to Henri Guichard in 1674 but not ratified authorizes him
de faire construire des
cirques et des amphithéâtres pour y faire des carrousels, des tournois, des
courses, des joustes, des luttes, des combats d’animaux, des illuminations, des
feux d’artifice et généralement tout ce qui peut imiter les anciens jeux des
Grecs et des Romains,” and also “d’establir en nostre bonne ville de Paris des
cirques et des amphithéâtres pour y faire lesdites représentations, sous le
titre de l’Académie Royale de spectacles” (Lettres… de Colbert,
551f.).
146.
This appears clearly from the charters, cited or referred to
above.
147. A
note prepared by Charles Perrault for Colbert in 1666 proposes an Académie
générale comprising four sections: belles-lettres (grammaire, eloquence,
poésie); histoire (histoire, chronologie, géographie); philosophie (chimie,
simples, anatomie, physique experimentale); mathématiques (géometrie,
astronomie, algèbre). Lettres…
de Colbert, 512f. Poetry
appears thus among belles-lettres with grammar and eloquence, and the
other fine arts are not mentioned.
interesting critical views,
[149] and separate treatises were composed by Du Fresnoy, De Piles, Fréart de Chambray, and Félibien. [150] Du Fresnoy’s Latin poem De arte graphica, which was translated into French and English and made the subject of notes and commentaries, was in its form a conscious imitation of Horace’s Ars poetica, and it begins characteristically by quoting Horace’s Ut pictura poesis and then reversing the comparison. [151] The parallel between painting and poetry, as well as the contest between the two arts, were important to these authors, as to their predecessors in Renaissance Italy, because they were anxious to acquire for painting a standing equal to that of poetry and literature. This notion, which has been fully studied, [152] remained alive until the early eighteenth century, [153] and it is significant that the honor painting derives from its similarity to poetry is sometimes extended, as occasionally in the Italian Renaissance, to sculpture, architecture and even engraving as related arts. [154] Even the term Beaux Arts, which seems to have been intended at first for the visual arts alone, corresponding to Arti del Disegno, seems sometimes for these authors to include also music or poetry. [155] The comparison between painting and music is also made a few times, [156] and Poussin himself, who lived in150. Cf.
Lee, l.c., and Schiosser, l.c.
152.
Fontaine, l.c.; Lee, l.c.
153. P.
Marcel, “Un débat entre les Peintres et les Poètes au debut du XVIIIe siècle,”
Chronique des Arts (1905), 182-83; 206-07.
524
The
Querelle as it went on had two important consequences which have not been
sufficiently appreciated. First,
the Moderns broadened the literary controversy into a systematic comparison
between the achievements of antiquity and of modern times in the various fields
of human endeavor, thus developing a classification of knowledge and culture
that was in many respects novel, or more specific than previous systems. [159]
Secondly, a point by point examination of the claims of
the ancients and moderns in the various fields led to the insight that in
certain fields, where everything depends on mathematical calculation and the
accumulation of knowledge, the progress of the moderns over the ancients can be
clearly demonstrated, whereas in certain other fields, which depend on
individual talent and on the taste of the critic, the relative merits of the
ancients and moderns cannot be so clearly established but may be subject to
controversy. [160]
159.
Brunetière (120) emphasizes that Perrault extended the discussion from literary
criticism toward a general aesthetics, by drawing upon the other arts and even
the sciences. The Italian
forerunners of the Querelle had no system of the arts and sciences
comparable to that of Perrault or Wotton, see above, note
128.
160.
Rigault (323f.) recognizes this distinction in Wotton, and Bury (104f. and
121ff.) attributes it to Fontenelle and Wotton. We shall see that it is also present in
Perrault. For Wotton, see
below.
Thus
the ground is prepared for the first time for a clear distinction between the
arts and the sciences, a distinction absent from ancient, medieval or
Renaissance discussions of such subjects even though the same words were used.
In other words, the separation
between the arts and the sciences in the modern sense presupposes not only the
actual progress of the sciences in the seventeenth century but also the
reflection upon the reasons why some other human intellectual activities which
we now call the Fine Arts did not or could not participate in the same kind of
progress. To be sure, the writings
of the Querelle do not yet attain a complete clarity on these points, and
this fact in itself definitely confirms our contention that the separation
between the arts and the sciences and the modern system of the fine arts were
just in the making at that time. Fontenelle, as some scholars have
noticed, indicates in an occasional statement of his Digression that he
was aware of the distinction between the arts and the sciences.
[161]
Much
more important and explicit is the work of Charles Perrault. His famous Parallèle des Anciens et
des Modernes discusses the various fields in separate sections which reflect
a system: the second dialogue is dedicated to the three visual arts, the third
to eloquence, the fourth to poetry, and the fifth to the sciences. [162] The separation of the fine arts from the sciences is
almost complete, thought not yet entirely, since music is treated in the last
book among the sciences, whereas in his poem, Le Siècle de Louis le Grand,
which gave rise to the whole controversy, Perrault seems to connect music
with the other arts. [163] Moreover, in his prefaces Perrault states explicitly
that at
HHC: [bracketed] displayed
on page 527 of original.
526
least
in the case of poetry and eloquence, where everything depends on talent and
taste, progress cannot be asserted with the same confidence as in the case of
the sciences which depend on measurement. [164] Equally interesting, though unrelated to
the Querelle, is another writing of Perrault, Le Cabinet des Beaux
Arts (1690). This is a
description and explanation of eight allegorical paintings found in the studio
of a French gentleman to whom the work is dedicated. In the preface, Perrault opposes the
concept Beaux Arts to the traditional Arts Libéraux, which he
rejects, [165] and then
lists and describes the eight “Fine Arts” which the gentleman had represented to
suit his taste and interests: Élloquence, Poésie, Musique, Architecture,
Peinture, Sculpture, Optique, Méchanique. [166] Thus on the threshold of the eighteenth century we are
very close to the modern system of the Fine Arts, but we have not yet quite
reached it, as the inclusion of Optics and Mechanics clearly shows. The fluctuations of the scheme show how
slowly emerged the notion which to us seems so thoroughly
obvious.
164. “Si
nous avons un avantage visible dans les Arts dont les secrets se peuvent
calculer et mesurer, il n’y a que la seule impossibilité de convaincre les gens
dans les choses de gout et de fantaisie, comme sont les beautez de la Poësie et
de l’Éloquence qui empesche que nous ne soyons reconnus les maîtres dans ces
deux Arts comme dans tous les autres” (Parallèle I [Paris, 1693],
preface). “Les Peintres, les
Sculpteurs, les Chantres, les Poëtes / Tous ces hommes enfin en qui l’on voit
regner / Un merveilleux scavoir qu’on ne peut enseigner” (Le genie, verse
epistle to Fontenelle, ibid., 19Sf.). “Si j’avois bien prouvé, comme il est
facile de le faire, que dans toutes les Sciences et dans tous les Arts dont les
secrets se peuvent mesurer et calculer, nous l’emportons visibiement sur les
Anciens; il n’y auroit que l’impossibiité de convaincre les esprits opiniastres
dans les choses de goust et de fantaisie, comme sont la plupart des beautez de
l’Éloquence et de la Poësie, qui pust empescher que les Modernes ne fussent
reconnus les maistres dans ces deux arts comme dans tous les autres” (ibid.,
202). Cf also vol. III,
preface. In his general conclusion
also (IV, 292f.) Perrault excepts poetry and eloquence from his proof for the
superiority of the Moderns.
165.
“Apres avoir abandonné cette division (of the seven liberal arts), on a choisi
entre les Arts qui méritent d’être aimés et cultivés par un honnête homme ceux
qui se sont trouvées étre davantage du gout et du genie de celui qui les a fait
peindre dans son cabinet” (p. if.).
166.
Eloquence, poetry, and music are put together in one group, as are the three
visual arts (p. 2).
527
to PART II