for brilliant answer

The Paragone and the Art of Michelangelo Author(s): Judith Dundas Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 87-92 Published by: Sixteenth Century Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2541134 Accessed: 20-12-2017 17:00 UTC

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Sixteenth CeintuiryJournal XXI, No. 1, 1990

The Paragone and the Art of Michelangelo

Judith Dundas

University of Illinois

The purpose of Renaissance debates about the relative merits of the arts, known as theparagone, was far from negligible. Michelangelo himself only reluctantly took part in the debate over which art, painting or sculpture, was the superior. However, in his conversations with Francisco De Hollanda, he shows a real engagement with another paragone, Horace's parallel between poet and painter. Claiming the freedom of the poet for the painter and sculptor, Michelangelo subjects it to the limitation implicit in the artist's true vocation, which is to imitate the works of God.

TODAY, ENDLESS DEBATES ABOUT THE RELATIVE MERITS OF THE ARTS,

known as the paragone, seem both fruitless and boring. Why, we may ask,

were Renaissance artists and theorists so preoccupied with defining the

ends and means of the various arts in the abstract? One answer has been proposed by Paul 0. Kristeller: that these debates were a step on the way to a "modern system of the fine arts"1 And yet clearly, for Leonardo da Vinci and Castiglione-to givejust two examples-these debates had a more than

theoretical interest: they concerned the best means of arriving at the goal of all art, imitation. Quite naturally, their deus artifex was defined in accord- ance with their own convictions about the relationship of art to nature: God was for them a great painter.2 Even Michelangelo made his contribution to the debate, though often rather enigmatically, which could only lead to further debate about what he really meant. Sometimes he would make sculpture the superior art; sometimes he made painting include sculpture. The one certainty that emerges from his scattered comments is that it was disegno which he considered as the essential, lying behind both painting and sculpture. The artist who possesses the gift of disegno can, he maintained, turn his hand to either painting or sculpture with equal mastery.3 But this remark is as deliberately provocative as Socrates at the end of the Sympo-

IP 0. Kristeller, "The Modern System of the Arts, " in Renaissance Thought 2 (New York:

Harper & Row [Harper Torchbooks], 1965), 216-17. 2Leonardo da Vinci, Paragone, ed. and trans. Irma A. Richter (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1949); Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1976), 96-101.

3See, for example, Michelangelo's letter to Benedetto Varchi (1594), cited by Richter, Paragone, 91, and Leatrice Mendelsohn, Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi's Due Lezzioni and Ciuiquecento Art Theory (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), especially 156-59; Cf Francisco De Hollanda, Four Dialogues oii Painting, trans. Aubrey F. G. Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928), 68. See also David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), Pt. 1, chap. 19.

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88 Sixteenth Century Journal

sium, when he says that "the man who knew how to write a comedy could

also write a tragedy, and that a skilful tragic writer was capable of being

also a comic writer."4 Since perhaps only Michelangelo and Shakespeare

couldjustify these claims, they remain in the realm of the possible, but not,

for most artists, in the realm of the realizable. For both Socrates and Michelangelo, the powerfully enigmatic statement is a way of putting an end to disputes of which they had grown tired.5

If in Michelangelo's answer to Benedetto Varchi's request for his contribution to the paragone debate being conducted among some of the leading artists of the day, there is an element of perfunctoriness, he elsewhere expressed himself with more engagement. Of special interest to me is the part of Francisco De Hollanda's Dialogues in which Michelangelo touches on another paragone-the one between painter and poet. Now this

particular paragone was included in Leonardo's treatise on the art of paint- ing, and his comments make a fitting prelude to a consideration of

Michelangelo's allusions to the poet-painter. Although for the most part, Leonardo denies that the poet can speak so directly to the soul as the painter

can, he has a few remarks, tantalizing in their brevity, that suggest that the painter is also a poet. He does not dwell on this notion, admittedly, nearly as much as on the inferiority of the poet to the painter:

"the science of painting stands to poetry in the same relation as a body to its cast shadow; but the difference is even greater; because a shadow penetrates through the eye to the understanding while the object of the imagination does not come from without but is born in the darkness of the mind's eye. What a difference between forming a mental image of such light in the darkness of the mind's eye and actually perceiving it outside the darkness. "6

After such a criticism of the power of poetry to imitate, it is mildly

surprising to hear Leonardo accepting ut pictura poesis as valid:

"Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting have here interchanged the sense by which they penetrate to the intellect. "7

This statement may seem little more than a harking back to Plutarch's comparison of poetry and painting, borrowed from Simonides, but Leonardo's language suggests something about the aspiration of both painting and poetry to transcend their own limitations, each appropriating

4Plato, The Symuposiumn, trans. William Hamilton (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1951), 113. 5The enigma is inspiration or the artist's own genius. In Socrates's case, the allusion to

inspiration is tinged with the same irony that pervades the Ioll. 6Richter, Paragome, 49-50. 71bid., 58.

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Paragone & Michelangelo 89

something of the art of the other in order to attain the fullest expression. When, in another passage, Leonardo counters the poet's claim to devise allegories-"a thing which really stands for something else by way of simile"-he has the painter reply that "he can do the same, and in this respect he too is a poet."8 This passage closely resembles Shakespeare's version of the paragone, in Timon of Athens, when he has a poet and painter debate the same issues, with the poet claiming preeminence because he can

create allegories. But here too the painter counters with "A thousand moral paintings I can show."9 It is a pity that Leonardo did not pursue this point, because he would undoubtedly have claimed something for painting beyond a

moralizing picture. But even the little he says indicates that he wishes to have the painter speak to the understanding by means of a more sensible imitation than the poet's.

For the issue is imitation. Every instance of the paragone reveals the

same preoccupation with the ability of the arts to imitate nature as the

prerequisite for moving people and thereby reaching their understanding. To find the means of expression is therefore essential. Indeed, Lomazzo,

building on Leonardo's comments, makes the painter's ability to show the passions by means of gestures the basis of his comparison between painter and poet. 10 It is only through motion or gesture that painting is given a voice. At the heart of pictorial expression is a dictum shared by painters and

rhetoricians alike: to let "the observer think he sees more than he actually sees. "11 Those words of Alberti's are illustrated by the ancient example of the painter Timanthes, who, "having exhausted his resources in showing the grief-stricken faces of those present at the sacrifice of Iphigenia, had no other way to show the grief of the father than to throw 'a drape over his head and let his most bitter grief be imagined even though it was not seen. '12

The role of the imagination in everything that concerns the painter was so well understood by Michelangelo that it naturally colors what he has to

say about imitation. In his conversations with De Hollanda, there is striking evidence that he thought of the painter as like the poet in his reliance on imagination. He takes the classic statement on this issue from

Horace's Ars Poetica, with a view to emphasizing the freedom of the painter:

I shall be glad . . . to tell you why it is the custom to paint things that have never existed and how reasonable is this license and how it accords with the truth. . ..

81bid., 65.

9 Timmn of Atheiis, I. i. 90. '0Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell'arte della pitttlra, scoltura et architettuira (Milan,

1585), 2:2, pp. 108-9.

"Leon Battista Alberti, Oni Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 78.

121bid.

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90 Sixteenth Century Journal

'Pictoribus atque poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas: Scimus, et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim.'13 And in this sentence he does in nowise blame painters but praises and favours them, since he says that poets and painters have license to dare, that is to dare do what they choose. And this insight and power they have always had; for whenever (as very rarely happens) a great painter makes a work which seems to be artificial and false, this falseness is truth; and greater truth in that place would be a lie.14

As the context indicates, Michelangelo uses the expression "a greater

truth" ironically, to imply a mere surface fidelity to nature. But here, as elsewhere in the Dialogues, he qualifies the artist's prerogative by insisting

that only a great painter has the discretion to make proper use of freedom.

He illustrates by denying that a good painter would paint what is really contrary to nature, like a man's hand with ten fingers, and then goes on to defend the painting of grotesques:

But if, in order to observe what is proper to a time and place, he exchanges the parts or limbs (as in grotesque work which would otherwise be very false and insipid) and convert a griffin or a deer downwards into a dolphin or upwards into any shape he may choose, putting wings in place of arms and cutting away the arms if wings are more suitable, this converted limb, of lion or horse or bird, will be most perfect according to its nature; and this may seem false but can really only be called ingenious or monstrous. 15

While seeming to fly in the face of both Horace and Vitruvius in their emphasis on decorum, Michelangelo is really asserting a higher decorum than rules will allow. (Incidentally, Vasari commented that Michelangelo departed from the kind of architecture regulated by proportion, order, and rule, as represented by Vitruvius. 16) In Michelangelo's own words, "some-

13But equall power, to Painter, and to Poet, Of daring all, hath still beene given; we know it; And both doe crave, and give againe, this leave.

(Ben Jonson's translation) 14De Hollanda, p. 61. Here Michelangelo is an accord with the remark of Philostratus the

Younger, that "the art of painting has a certain kinship with poetry, and . . . an element of imagination is common to both." (Proemium to Imagines, trans. Arthur Fairbanks [London: William Heinemann, 1931], p. 285). Varchi, on the other hand, chose to distinguish painting from poetry, on grounds that it belongs to the practical intellect-the workshop-whereas poetry belongs to the speculative intellect. See Francois Quiviger, "Benedetto Varchi and the Visual Arts," JWCI, 50 (1987), 219-224.

15Ibid., 61-62. 16Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. Carlo L.

Ragghianti (Milan: Rizzoli, 1943), 3: 443. The following passage is of particular interest as supporting the words of Michelangelo as reported by De Hollanda: ". . . la quale licenza ha dato grande animo a quelli, che hanno veduto il far suo, di mettersi a imitarlo; e nuove fantasie si sono vedute poi, alla grottesca piuttosto che a ragione o regola conformi a'loro ornamenti."

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Paragone & Michelangelo 91

times it is more in accordance with reason to paint a monstrosity (to vary

and relax the senses and the object presented to men's eyes, since sometimes

they desire to see what they have never seen and think cannot exist) rather

than the ordinary figure, admirable though it be, of man or animals. " What

is seemingly "impossible and contrary to reason" may, he says, "be really

great work if it is made by a skilful artist. "17 That this defense of the grotesque, against which Horace (while

having his own share of grotesque imagery) warns, is really a defense of the

imagination which the painter shares with the poet becomes evident when

in another passage Michelangelo attributes everything the painter creates

to this faculty. He speaks of how the bad painter is unable to conceive the

image or desire of good painting in his mind-otherwise his hand could

produce it, "for if his imagination could conceive good or masterly painting, his hand could not be so abject as not to reproduce some part or

trace of his noble aspiration. But high aspiration in this science belongs only to the mind which understands what is good and how much thereof it is able to attain. And the extreme difference between the aspirations of a

high and of a low understanding in painting is indeed a tremendous

thing. "18 Perhaps nothing so clearly supports the authenticity of these dialogues as the difference between the obtuseness of the comments made

by his interlocutors and the profound, if sometimes capricious, responses of Michelangelo. For example, the moment fantasy is mentioned, it evokes among his listeners mention of decorum, just as in Horace. But Michelangelo goes far beyond the others' sense of decorum, which seems to be limited to the appropriateness of grotesques to a country residence or pleasure-house,

and so on.

Claiming for the painter the boldness of the poet, Michelangelo says

that the great artist who possesses disegno will "be able to make figures taller than any tower, both painted and as statues, and he will find no wall or side of a building that will not prove narrow and small for his great imaginings, " but equally, "in the scanty space of a piece of parchment, he

will prove himself a great and perfect artist, as great as in those other ways. "19 But the one curb on this prowess is the fear and trembling with which, according to Michelangelo, a great artist will paint, and this is in proportion to his understanding of God's creation. His defense of gro- tesques, then, though ostensibly done in the name of varietas, includes a concession to mortal eyes, "that sometimes desire to see that which they never see and think cannot exist. "20 Referring to this whole passage, even David Summers, as sympathetic an interpreter of Michelangelo's art

17De Hollanda, Four Dialogues, 62. 18Ibid., 64. 191bid., 68. 201bid., 61

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92 Sixteenth Century Journal

theory as has appeared on the scholarly scene, makes a comment which

stops short of recognizing the artist's quest for truth: "Michelangelo argues that artifice and falsehood were inescapable, that it was precisely in the false

that the truth of artifice could become most clearly manifest. "21 While on

one level this is a reasonable interpretation, on another it fails to put the

truth of artifice into perspective, as subordinate to the truth that lies

outside the artist, the truth to which he can only aspire.

When Michelangelo's listeners fail to understand him, he does put in a word for decorum, but always he is thinking of a higher decorum than theirs. He is not merely claiming an artist's freedom to make grotesques but

an audacity like the poet's. In Dio Chrysostom's imaginary defense of

Phidias's statue of Zeus, spoken by the sculptor himself, Phidias claims the imagination of the poet but says that he is a "better and a more temperate

artificer than Homer." He goes on to describe poetry as "an extravagant

thing . . . and a law unto itself "22

If Michelangelo does not claim temperance for himself-and it was generally agreed that his art was extraordinarily bold-he and Phidias are in agreement, both in their reference to the imagination as the source of their art and that whichjoins them to poetry, and in their acknowledgement of the truth they serve, a truth which lies beyond any paragone and which is the chief or only reason for engaging in a paragone in the first place. But here

we enter on another subject, the imitation of nature and its justification,

which is where Michelangelo finally takes his discussion: "In my opinion that painting is excellent and divine which resembles and best copies any

work of immortal God. "23 Put beside his defense of grotesques, this kind of statement may suggest a hierarchy of imitation, of nature as above gro- tesques, but it also points to something more ultimate than nature, that

controls whatever the great artist does, making his freedom only a condi- tional freedom, dependent on his attunement to the divine will and grace.

21Summners, Michelangelo and Language of Art, 142. 22Dio Chrysostom, "The Twelfth, or Olympic Dicourse: On Man's First Conception of

God," in Works, trans. J. W Cohoon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press [Loeb edition], 1939), 2: 67.

23De Hollanda, Four Dialogues, 69.

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