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Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order ca. 1400–1600
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Figure 19.1 ALBRECHT DÜRER, Knight, Death, and the Devil, 1513. Engraving, 95⁄8 � 71⁄2 in. Dürer’s engraving is remarkable for its wealth of microscopic detail. Objects in the real world— the horse, the dog, and the lizard—are depicted as precisely as those imagined: the devil and the horned demon.
“Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage?” Erasmus
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The Temper of Reform
Science and Technology
CHAPTER 19 Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order 1
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1450, in the city of Mainz, the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1400–ca. 1468) perfected a printing press that made it possible to fabricate books more cheaply, more rapidly, and in greater numbers than ever before (Figure 19.2). As information became a commodity for mass pro- duction, vast areas of knowledge—heretofore the exclusive domain of the monastery, the Church, and the universi- ty—became available to the public. The printing press facilitated the rise of popular education and encouraged individuals to form their own opinions by reading for themselves. It accelerated the growing interest in vernacu- lar literature, which in turn enhanced national and indi- vidual self-consciousness. Print technology proved to be the single most important factor in the success of the Protestant Reformation, as it brought the complaints of Church reformers to the attention of all literate folk.
By the sixteenth century, the old medieval order was crumbling.
Classical humanism and the influence of Italian Renaissance
artist–scientists were spreading throughout Northern Europe (Map
19.1). European exploration and expansion were promoting a
broader world-view and new markets for trade. The rise of a glob-
al economy with vast opportunities for material wealth was
inevitable. Europe’s population grew from 69 million in 1500 to 188
million in 1600. As European nation-states tried to strengthen their
international influence, political rivalry intensified. The “super-
powers”—Spain, under the Hapsburg ruler Philip II (1527–1598)
and England, under Elizabeth I (1533–1603)—contended for
advantage in Atlantic shipping and trade. In order to resist the
encroachment of Europe’s stronger nation-states, the weaker ones
formed balance-of-power alliances that often provoked war. The
new order took Europe on an irreversibly modern course.
While political and commercial factors worked to transform
the West, the event that most effectively destroyed the old
medieval order was the Protestant Reformation. In the wake of
Protestantism, the unity of European Christendom would disap-
pear forever. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the Northern
Renaissance, endorsed by middle-class patrons and Christian
humanists, assumed a religious direction that set it apart from
Italy’s Classical revival. Its literary giants, from Erasmus to
Shakespeare, and its visual artists, Flemish and German, shared
little of the idealism of their Italian Renaissance counterparts.
Their concern for the realities of human folly and for the fate
of the Christian soul launched a message of protest and a plea
for church reform expedited by way of the newly perfected
printing press.
The Impact of Technology In the transition from medieval to early modern times, technology played a crucial role. Gunpowder, the light cannon, and other military devices made warfare more impersonal and ultimately more deadly. At the same time, Western advances in navigation, shipbuilding, and mar- itime instrumentation propelled Europe into a dominant position in the world.
Just as the musket and the cannon transformed the his- tory of European warfare, so the technology of mechanical printing revolutionized learning and communication. Block printing originated in China in the ninth century and movable type in the eleventh, but print technology did not reach Western Europe until the fifteenth century. By
1320 paper adopted for use in Europe (having long been in use in China)
1450 the Dutch devise the first firearm small enough to be carried by a single person
1451 Nicolas of Cusa (German) uses concave lenses to amend nearsightedness
1454 Johannes Gutenberg (German) prints the Bible with movable metal type
Figure 19.2 An early sixteenth-century woodcut of a printer at work.
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Oxford Amsterdam
Antwerp Brussels
Bruges
Rotterdam London
Hamburg Wittenberg
ErfurtCologne
Worms Mainz
Heidelberg
Prague Nuremberg
Posen
Augsburg Vienna
Paris
Tours Bourges
Sens
Rouen Caen
Dijon Basel Constance
Orleans
Toulouse
Saragossa
Avignon
Madrid
Toledo
Seville
Milan
Parma
Genoa Modena
Padua
Pest
Venice
Florence
UrbinoPisa Siena
Lucca
Rome
Naples
Bremen
Canterbury
Zürich
SCOTLAND
ENGLAND
POLAND
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
HUNGARY
SICILY
SARDINIA
CORSICA
FRANCE
SPAIN
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WALES
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PAPAL STATES
VENETIAN REPUBLIC
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Geneva
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Christian Humanism and the Northern Renaissance The new print technology broadcast an old message of reli- gious protest and reform. For two centuries, critics had attacked the wealth, worldliness, and unchecked corrup- tion of the Church of Rome. During the early fifteenth century, the rekindled sparks of lay piety and anticlerical- ism spread throughout the Netherlands, where religious leaders launched the movement known as the devotio moderna (“modern devotion”). Lay Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life, as they were called, organized houses in which they studied and taught Scripture. Living in the manner of Christian monks and nuns, but taking no monastic vows, these lay Christians cultivated a devotion- al lifestyle that fulfilled the ideals of the apostles and the church fathers. They followed the mandate of Thomas a Kempis (1380–1471), himself a Brother of the Common Life and author of the Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ), to put the message of Jesus into daily practice. After the Bible, the Imitatio Christi was the most frequently published book in the Christian West well into modern times.
The devotio moderna spread quickly throughout Northern Europe, harnessing the dominant strains of anti- clericalism, lay piety, and mysticism, even as it coincided with the revival of Classical studies in the newly estab- lished universities of Germany. Although Northern humanists, like their Italian Renaissance counterparts, encouraged learning in Greek and Latin, they were more concerned with the study and translation of Early Christian manuscripts than with the Classical and largely
secular texts that pre- occupied the Italian humanists. This criti- cal reappraisal of reli- gious texts is known as Christian humanism. Christian humanists
studied the Bible and the writings of the church fathers with the same intellectual fervor that the Italian humanists had brought to their examination of Plato and Cicero. The efforts of these Northern scholars gave rise to a rebirth (or renaissance) that focused on the late Classical world and, specifically, on the revival of church life and doctrine as gleaned from Early Christian literature. The Northern Renaissance put Christian humanism at the service of evangelical Christianity.
The leading Christian humanist of the sixteenth centu- ry—often called “the Prince of Humanists”—was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536; Figure 19.3). Schooled among the Brothers of the Common Life and learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, Erasmus was a superb scholar and a prolific writer (see Reading 19.2). The first humanist to make extensive use of the printing press, he once dared a famous publisher to print his words as fast as he could write them. Erasmus was a fervent Neoclassicist— he held that almost everything worth knowing was set forth in Greek and Latin. He was also a devout Christian. Advocating a return to the basic teachings of Christ, he criticized the Church and all Christians whose faith had been jaded by slavish adherence to dogma and ritual. Using four different Greek manuscripts of the Gospels, he pro- duced a critical edition of the New Testament that correct- ed Jerome’s mistranslations of key passages. Erasmus’ New Testament became the source of most sixteenth-century German and English vernacular translations of this central text of Christian humanism.
Map 19.1 Renaissance Europe, ca. 1500.
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The Protestant Reformation
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priesthood. Inspired by the words of Saint Paul, “the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17), Luther argued that sal- vation could be attained only by faith in the validity of Christ’s sacrifice: human beings were saved by the unearned gift of God’s grace, not by their good works on earth. The purchase of indulgences, the veneration of relics, making pilgrimages, and seeking the intercession of the saints were useless, because only the grace of God could save the Christian soul. Justified by faith alone, Christians should assume full responsibility for their own actions and intentions.
In 1517, in pointed criticism of Church abuses, Luther posted on the door of the collegiate church at Wittenberg a list of ninety-five issues he intended for dispute with the leaders of the Church of Rome. The Ninety-Five Theses, which took the confrontational tone of the sample below, were put to press and circulated throughout Europe:
27 They are wrong who say that the soul flies out of Purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles. 32 Those who believe that, through letters of pardon [indulgences], they are made sure of their own salvation will be eternally damned along with their teachers. 37 Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has a share in all the benefits of Christ and of the Church, given by God, even without letters of pardon. 43 Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons. 44 Because by works of charity, charity increases,
During the sixteenth century, papal extravagance and immorality reached new heights, and Church reform became an urgent public issue. In the territories of Germany, loosely united under the leadership of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V (1500–1558), the voices of protest were more strident than anywhere else in Europe. Across Germany, the sale of indulgences (see chapter 15) for the benefit of the Church of Rome—specifically for the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s Cathedral—provoked harsh criticism, especially by those who saw the luxuries of the papacy as a betrayal of apostolic ideals. As with most movements of religious reform, it fell to one individual to galvanize popular sentiment. In 1505, Martin Luther (1483–1546), the son of a rural coal miner, abandoned his legal studies to become an Augustinian monk (Figure 19.4). Thereafter, as a doctor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, he spoke out against the Church. His inflammatory sermons and essays offered radical remedies to what he called “the misery and wretchedness of Christendom.”
Luther was convinced of the inherent sinfulness of humankind, but he took issue with the traditional medieval view—as promulgated, for instance, in Everyman —that salvation was earned through the performance of good works and grace mediated by the Church and its
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Figure 19.3 ALBRECHT DÜRER, Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1526. Engraving, 93⁄4 � 71⁄2 in. The Latin inscription at the top of the engraving reports that Dürer executed the portrait from life. The Greek inscription below reads, “The better image [is found] in his writings.” The artist wrote to his friend that he felt the portrait was not a striking likeness.
Figure 19.4 LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1533. Panel, 8 � 53⁄4 in.
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and the man becomes better; while by means of pardons, he does not become better, but only freer from punishment. 45 Christians should be taught that he who sees any one in need, and, passing him by, gives money for pardons, is not purchasing for himself the indulgences of the Pope but the anger of God. 49 Christians should be taught that the Pope’s pardons are useful if they do not put their trust in them, but most hurtful if through them they lose the fear of God. 50 Christians should be taught that if the Pope were acquainted with the exactions of the Preachers of pardons, he would prefer that the Basilica of St. Peter should be burnt to ashes rather than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep. 54 Wrong is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is spent on pardons than on it. 62 The true treasure of the Church is the Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God. 66 The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men. 67 Those indulgences which the preachers loudly proclaim to be the greatest graces, are seen to be truly such as regards the promotion of gain. 68 Yet they are in reality most insignificant when compared to the grace of God and the piety of the cross. 86 . . . why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the single Basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with that of poor believers? . . .
Luther did not set out to destroy Catholicism, but rather, to reform it. Gradually he extended his criticism of Church abuses to criticism of church doctrine. For instance, because he found justification in Scripture for only two Roman Catholic sacraments—baptism and Holy Communion—he rejected the other five. He attacked monasticism and clerical celibacy. (Luther himself married and fathered six children.) Luther’s boldest challenge to the old medieval order, however, was his unwillingness to accept the pope as the ultimate source of religious author- ity. Denying that the pope was the spiritual heir to Saint Peter, he claimed that the head of the Church, like any other human being, was subject to error and correction. Christians, argued Luther, were collectively a priesthood of believers; they were “consecrated as priests by baptism.” The ultimate source of authority in matters of faith and doctrine was Scripture, as interpreted by the individual Christian. To encourage the reading of the Bible among his followers, Luther translated the Old and New Testaments into German.
Luther’s assertions were revolutionary because they defied both church dogma and the authority of the Church
of Rome. In 1520, Pope Leo X issued an edict excommuni- cating the outspoken reformer. Luther promptly burned the edict in the presence of his students at the University of Wittenberg. The following year, he was summoned to the city of Worms in order to appear before the Diet—the German parliamentary council. Charged with heresy, Luther stubbornly refused to back down, concluding, “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us. On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” Luther’s confrontational temperament and down-to-earth style are captured in this excerpt from his Address to the German Nobility, a call for religious reform written shortly before the Diet of Worms and circulated widely in a print- ed edition.
From Luther’s Address to the German Nobility (1520)
It has been devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and 1 monks are called the spiritual estate; princes, lords, artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate. This is an artful lie and hypocritical device, but let no one be made afraid by it, and that for this reason: that all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul says (1 Cor.: 12), we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, one Gospel, one faith, and 10 are all Christians alike; for baptism, Gospel, and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people.
As for the unction by a pope or a bishop, tonsure, ordination, consecration, and clothes differing from those of laymen—all this may make a hypocrite or an anointed puppet, but never a Christian or a spiritual man. Thus we are all consecrated as priests by baptism. . . .
And to put the matter even more plainly, if a little company of pious Christian laymen were taken prisoners and carried away to a desert, and had not among them a 20 priest consecrated by a bishop, and were there to agree to elect one of them, born in wedlock or not, and were to order him to baptise, to celebrate the mass, to absolve, and to preach, this man would as truly be a priest, as if all the bishops and all the popes had consecrated him. That is why in cases of necessity every man can baptise and absolve, which would not be possible if we were not all priests. . . .
[Members of the Church of Rome] alone pretend to be considered masters of the Scriptures; although they learn 30 nothing of them all their life. They assume authority, and juggle before us with impudent words, saying that the Pope cannot err in matters of faith, whether he be evil or good, albeit they cannot prove it by a single letter. That is why the canon law contains so many heretical and unchristian, nay unnatural, laws. . . .
And though they say that this authority was given to St. Peter when the keys were given to him, it is plain enough that the keys were not given to St. Peter alone,
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Q Which of Luther’s assertions would the Church of Rome have found heretical? Why?
Q Which aspects of this selection might be called anti-authoritarian? Which might be called democratic?
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landholding aristocracy. The result was full-scale war, the so-called “Peasant Revolts,” that resulted in the bloody defeat of thousands of peasants. Although Luther con- demned the violence and brutality of the Peasant Revolts, social unrest and ideological warfare had only just begun. His denunciation of the lower-class rebels brought many of the German princes to his side; and some used their new religious allegiance as an excuse to seize and usurp church properties and revenues within their own domains. As the floodgates of dissent opened wide, civil wars broke out between German princes who were faithful to Rome and those who called themselves Lutheran. The wars lasted for some twenty-five years, until, under the terms of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, it was agreed that each German prince should have the right to choose the religion to be practiced within his own domain. Nevertheless, religious wars resumed in the late sixteenth century and devastated German lands for almost a century.
Calvin All of Europe was affected by Luther’s break with the Church. The Lutheran insistence that enlightened Christians could arrive at truth by way of Scripture led reformers everywhere to interpret the Bible for themselves. The result was the birth of many new Protestant sects, each based on its own interpretation of Scripture. In the inde- pendent city of Geneva, Switzerland, the French theolo- gian John Calvin (1509–1564) set up a government in which elected officials, using the Bible as the supreme law, ruled the community. Calvin held that Christians were predestined from birth for either salvation or damnation, a circumstance that made good works irrelevant. The “Doctrine of Predestination” encouraged Calvinists to glorify God by living an upright life, one that required abstention from dancing, gambling, swearing, drunken- ness, and from all forms of public display. For, although one’s status was known only by God, Christians might manifest that they were among the “elect” by a show of moral rectitude. Finally, since Calvin taught that wealth was a sign of God’s favor, Calvinists extolled the “work ethic” as consistent with the divine will.
The Anabaptists In nearby Zürich, a radical wing of Protestantism emerged: the Anabaptists (given this name by those who opposed their practice of “rebaptizing” adult Christians) rejected all seven of the sacraments (including infant baptism) as sources of God’s grace. Placing total emphasis on Christian conscience and the voluntary acceptance of Christ, the Anabaptists called for the abolition of the Mass and the complete separation of Church and state: holding individ- ual responsibility and personal liberty as fundamental ideals, they were among the first Westerners to offer reli- gious sanction for political disobedience. Many Anabaptist reformers met death at the hands of local governments— the men were burned at the stake and the women were usually drowned. English offshoots of the Anabaptists— the Baptists and the Quakers—would come to follow
but to the whole community. Besides, the keys were not 40 ordained for doctrine or authority, but for sin, to bind or loose; and what they claim besides this from the keys is mere invention. . . .
Only consider the matter. They must needs acknowledge that there are pious Christians among us that have the true faith, spirit, understanding, word, and mind of Christ: why then should we reject their word and understanding, and follow a pope who has neither understanding nor spirit? Surely this were to deny our whole faith and the Christian Church. . . . 50
Therefore when need requires, and the Pope is a cause of offence to Christendom, in these cases whoever can best do so, as a faithful member of the whole body, must do what he can to procure a true free council. This no one can do so well as the temporal authorities, especially since they are fellow-Christians, fellow-priests, sharing one spirit and one power in all things, . . . Would it not be most unnatural, if a fire were to break out in a city, and every one were to keep still and let it burn on and on, whatever might be burnt, simply because they had not the mayor’s 60 authority, or because the fire perchance broke out at the mayor’s house? Is not every citizen bound in this case to rouse and call in the rest? How much more should this be done in the spiritual city of Christ, if a fire of offence breaks out, either at the Pope’s government or wherever it may! The like happens if an enemy attacks a town. The first to rouse up the rest earns glory and thanks. Why then should not he earn glory that decries the coming of our enemies from hell and rouses and summons all Christians?
But as for their boasts of their authority, that no one 70 must oppose it, this is idle talk. No one in Christendom has any authority to do harm, or to forbid others to prevent harm being done. There is no authority in the Church but for reformation. Therefore if the Pope wished to use his power to prevent the calling of a free council, so as to prevent the reformation of the Church, we must not respect him or his power; and if he should begin to excommunicate and fulminate, we must despise this as the doings of a madman, and, trusting in God, excommunicate and repel him as best we may. 80
The Spread of Protestantism Luther’s criticism constituted an open revolt against the institution that for centuries had governed the lives of Western Christians. With the aid of the printing press, his “protestant” sermons and letters circulated throughout Europe. His defense of Christian conscience worked to jus- tify protest against all forms of dominion. In 1524, under the banner of Christian liberty, German commoners insti- gated a series of violent uprisings against the oppressive
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Anabaptist precepts, including the rejection of religious ritual (and imagery) and a fundamentalist approach to Scripture.
The Anglican Church In England, the Tudor monarch Henry VIII (1491–1547) broke with the Roman Catholic Church and established a church under his own leadership. Political expediency col- ored the king’s motives: Henry was determined to leave England with a male heir, but when eighteen years of mar- riage to Catherine of Aragon produced only one heir (a daughter), he attempted to annul the marriage and take a new wife. The pope refused, prompting the king—former- ly a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church—to break with Rome. In 1526, Henry VIII declared himself head of the Church in England. In 1536, with the support of Parliament, he closed all Christian monasteries and sold church lands, accumulating vast revenues for the royal treasury. His actions led to years of dispute and hostility between Roman Catholics and Anglicans (members of the new English Church). By the mid-sixteenth century, the consequences of Luther’s protests were evident: the reli- gious unity of Western Christendom was shattered forever. Social and political upheaval had become the order of the day.
Music and the Reformation Since the Reformation clearly dominated the religious and social history of the sixteenth century, it also touched, directly or indirectly, all forms of artistic endeavor, includ- ing music. Luther himself was a student of music, an active performer, and an admirer of Josquin des Prez (see chapter 17). Emphasizing music as a source of religious instruction, he encouraged the writing of hymnals and reorganized the German Mass to include both congregational and profes- sional singing. Luther held that all religious texts should be sung in German, so that the faithful might understand their message. The text, according to Luther, should be both comprehensible and appealing.
Luther’s favorite music was the chorale, a congregation- al hymn that served to enhance the spirit of Protestant worship. Chorales, written in German, drew on Latin hymns and German folk tunes. They were characterized by monophonic clarity and simplicity, features that encour- aged performance by untrained congregations. The most famous Lutheran chorale (the melody of which may not have originated with Luther) is “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”)—a hymn that has been called “the anthem of the Reformation.” Luther’s chorales had a major influence on religious music for cen- turies. And although in the hands of later composers the chorale became a complex polyphonic vehicle for voices and instruments, at its inception it was performed with all voices singing the same words at the same time. It was thus an ideal medium for the communal expression of Protestant piety.
Other Protestant sects, such as the Anabaptists and the Calvinists, regarded music as a potentially dangerous
distraction to the faithful. In many sixteenth-century churches, the organ was dismantled and sung portions of the service edited or deleted. Calvin, however, who encouraged devotional recitation of psalms in the home, revised church services to include the congregational singing of psalms in the vernacular.
Jan van Eyck Prior to the Reformation, in the cities of Northern Europe, a growing middle class joined princely rulers and the Church to encourage the arts. In addition to traditional religious subjects, middle-class patrons commissioned por- traits that—like those painted by Italian Renaissance artists (see chapter 17)—recorded their physical appear- ance and brought attention to their earthly achievements. Fifteenth-century Northern artists, unlike their Italian counterparts, were relatively unfamiliar with Greco- Roman culture; many of them moved in the direction of detailed Realism, already evident in the manuscript illumi- nations of the Limbourg brothers (see Figure 15.13).
The pioneer of Northern Realism was the Flemish artist Jan van Ecyk (ca. 1380–1441). Jan, whom we met in chapter 17, was reputed to have perfected the art of oil painting (see Figure 17.12). His application of thin glazes of colored pigments bound with linseed oil achieved the impression of dense, atmospheric space, and simulated the naturalistic effects of light reflecting off the surfaces of objects. Such effects were almost impossible to achieve in fresco or tempera. While Jan lacked any knowledge of the system of linear perspective popularized in Florence, he achieved an extraordinary level of realism both in the miniatures he executed for religious manuscripts and in his panel paintings.
Jan’s full-length double portrait of 1434 was the first painting in Western art that portrayed a secular couple in a domestic interior (Figure 19.5). The painting has long been the subject of debate among scholars who have ques- tioned its original purpose, as well as the identity of the sit- ters. Most likely, however, it is a visual document recording the marriage of Giovanni Nicolas Arnolfini (an Italian merchant who represented the Medici bank in Bruges), and his Flemish bride, Jeanne Cenami. Clearly, the couple are in the process of making a vow, witness the raised right hand of the richly dressed Arnolfini; their hands are joined, a gesture traditionally associated with engagement or marriage. Behind the couple, an inscription on the back wall of the chamber reads “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic” (“Jan van Eyck was here”); this testimonial is reiterated by the presence of two figures, probably the artist himself and a second observer, whose painted reflections are seen in the convex mirror below the inscription.
This Lutheran chorale inspired Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata No. 80, an excerpt from which may be heard on CD Two, as Music Listening Selection 4.
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Jan’s consummate mastery of minute, realistic details— from the ruffles on the young woman’s headcovering to the whiskers of the monkey-faced dog—demonstrate the artist’s determination to capture the immediacy of the physical world. This love of physical detail, typical of Northern painting, sets it apart from that of most Italian Renaissance art. Also typical of the Northern sensibility is the way in which these details “speak” to the greater mean- ing of the painting: the burning candle (traditionally car- ried to the marriage ceremony by the bride) suggests the all-seeing presence of Christ; the ripening fruit lying on and near the window sill both symbolizes fecundity and alludes to the union of the First Couple in the Garden of Eden; the small dog represents fidelity; the carved image on the chairback near the bed represents Saint Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth. The physical objects in this domestic interior, recreated in loving detail, suggest a world of material comfort and pleasure; but they also make symbolic reference to a higher, spiritual order. In this effort to reconcile the world of the spirit with that of the flesh, Jan anticipated the unique character of Northern Renaissance art.
Bosch The generation of Flemish artists that followed Jan van Eyck produced one of the most enigmatic figures of the Northern Renaissance: Hieronymus Bosch (1460–1516). Little is known about Bosch’s life, and the exact meaning of some of his works is much dis- puted. His career spanned the decades of the High Renaissance in Italy, but comparison of his paintings with those of Raphael or Michelangelo underscores the enormous difference between Italian Renaissance art and that of the European North: whereas Raphael and Michelangelo elevated the natural nobility of the individual, Bosch detailed the fallibility of humankind, its moral struggle, and its apocalyptic destiny. Bosch’s Death and the Miser (Figure 19.6), for instance, belongs to the tradition of the memento mori (discussed in chapter 12), which works to warn the beholder of the inevitability of death. The painting also shows the influence of popular fifteenth-century handbooks on the art of dying (the ars moriendi), designed to remind Christians that they must choose between sin- ful pleasures and the way of Christ. As Death looms on the threshold, the miser, unable to resist worldly temptations even in his last min- utes of life, reaches for the bag of gold
offered to him by a demon. In the foreground, Bosch depicts the miser storing gold in his money chest while clutching his rosary. Symbols of worldly power—a helmet, sword, and shield—allude to earthly follies. The depiction of such still-life objects to symbolize vanity, transience, or decay would become a genre in itself among seventeenth-century Flemish artists.
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Figure 19.5 JAN VAN EYCK, Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride, 1434. Tempera and oil on panel, 321⁄4 � 231⁄2 in.
Figure 19.6 HIERONYMUS BOSCH, Death and the Miser, ca. 1485–1490. Oil on oak, 3 ft. 5⁄8in. � 121⁄8 in.
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Bosch’s most famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights (Figure 19.7) was executed around 1510, the very time that Raphael was painting The School of Athens. In the central panel of the triptych, Bosch depicts a cos- mic landscape in which youthful nudes cavort in a vari- ety of erotic and playful pastimes. The terrain, filled with oversized flora, real and imagined animals and birds, and strangely shaped vessels, is similar to that of the panel on
the left, where God is shown creating Adam and Eve. In the right wing of the triptych, Hell is pic- tured as a dark and sulfurous inferno where the damned are tormented by an assortment of terri- fying creatures who inflict on sinners punish- ments appropriate to their sins—the greedy hoarder of gold (on the lower right) excretes coins into a pothole, while the nude nearby, fon-
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dled by demons, is punished for the sin of lust. When the wings of the altarpiece are closed, one sees an image of God hover- ing above a huge transparent globe: the planet Earth in the process of creation.
The Garden of Earthly Delights has been described by some as an exposition on the decadent behavior of the descendants of Adam and Eve, but its distance from conventional religious iconography has made it the subject of endless scholarly interpretation. Bosch,
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Figure 19.7 HIERONYMUS BOSCH, The Creation of Eve: The Garden of Earthly Delights: Hell (triptych), ca. 1510–1515. Oil on wood, 7 ft. 25⁄8 in. � 6 ft. 43⁄4 in. Bosch probably painted this moralizing work for lay patrons. Many of its individual images would have been recognized as references to the Seven Deadly Sins, for instance: the bagpipe (a symbol of Lust) that sits on a disk crowning the Tree-Man (upper center) and the man who is forced to disgorge his food (symbolic of Gluttony) depicted beneath the enthroned frog (lower right).
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a Roman Catholic, clearly drew his imagery from a variety of medieval and contemporary sources, including the Bible, popular proverbs, marginal grotesques in illuminated manu- scripts, pilgrimage badges, and the popular pseudosciences of his time: astrology, the study of the influence of heavenly bodies on human affairs (the precursor of astronomy); and alchemy, the art of transmuting base metals into gold (the precursor of chemistry). The egg-shaped vessels, beakers, and transparent tubes that appear in all parts of the triptych were commonly used in alchemical transmutation. The process may have been familiar to Bosch as symbolic of creation and destruction, and, more specifically, as a metaphor for the bib- lical Creation and Fall.
Regardless of whether one interprets Bosch’s “Garden” as a theater of perversity or a stage for innocent procre- ation, it is clear that the artist transformed standard Christian iconography to suit his imagination. Commissioned not by the Church, but by a private patron, he may have felt free to do so. The result is a moralizing commentary on the varieties of human folly afflicting crea- tures hopeful of Christian salvation.
Printmaking The Protestant Reformation cast its long shadow upon the religious art of the North. Protestants rejected the tradi- tional imagery of medieval piety, along with church relics
The age of Christian humanism witnessed the rise of religious fanaticism, the most dramatic evidence of which is the witch hunts that infested Renaissance Europe and Reformation Germany. While belief in witches dates back to humankind’s earliest societies, the practice of persecuting witches did not begin until the late fourteenth century. Based in the medieval practice of finding evidence of the supernatural in natural phenomena, and fueled by the popular Christian belief that the devil is actively engaged in human affairs, the first massive persecutions occurred at the end of the fifteenth century, reaching their peak approximately 100 years later. Among Northern European artists, witches and witchcraft became favorite subjects (Figure 19.8).
In 1484, two German theologians published the Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer), an encyclopedia that described the nature of witches, their collusion with the devil, and the ways in which they might be recognized and punished. Its authors reiterated the traditional claim that women—by nature more feeble than men—were dangerously susceptible to the devil’s temptation. As a result, they became the primary victims of the mass hysteria that prevailed during the so-called “age of humanism.” Women—particularly those who were single, old, or eccentric—constituted four-fifths of the roughly 70,000 witches put to death between the years 1400 and 1700. Females who served as midwives might be accused of causing infant deaths or deformities; others were condemned as witches at the onset of local drought or disease. One recent study suggests that witches were blamed for the sharp drops in temperature that devastated sixteenth-century crops and left many Europeans starving.
The persecution of witches may be seen as an instrument of post-Reformation religious oppression, or as the intensification of antifemale sentiment in an age when women had become more visible politically and commercially. Nevertheless, the witchcraft hysteria of the early Modern Era dramatizes the troubling gap between humanism and religious fanaticism.
Figure 19.8 HANS BALDUNG (“Grien”), Witches, 1510. Chiaroscuro woodcut, 157⁄8 � 101⁄4 in. Three witches, sitting under the branches of a dead tree, perform a black Mass. One lifts the chalice, while another mocks the Host by elevating the body of a dead toad. An airborne witch rides backward on a goat, a symbol of the devil.
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CHAPTER 19 Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order 11
and sacred images, which they associated with superstition and idolatry. Protestant iconoclasts stripped the stained glass from cathedral windows, shattered religious sculpture, whitewashed church frescoes, and destroyed altarpieces. At the same time, however, the voices of reform encouraged the proliferation of private devotional art, particularly that which illustrated biblical themes. In the production of portable, devotional images, the technology of printmak- ing played a major role. Just as movable type had facilitat- ed the dissemination of the printed word, so the technology of the print made devotional subjects available more cheaply and in greater numbers than ever before.
The two new printmaking processes of the fifteenth century were woodcut, the technique of cutting away all parts of a design on a wood surface except those that will be inked and transferred to paper (Figure 19.9), and engraving (Figure 19.10), the process by which lines are incised on a metal (usually copper) plate that is inked and run through a printing press. Books with printed illustra- tions became cheap alternatives to the hand-illuminated manuscripts that were prohibitively expensive to all but wealthy patrons.
Dürer The unassailed leader in Northern Renaissance print- making and one of the finest graphic artists of all time was Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg (1471–1528). Dürer earned international fame for his woodcuts and metal engravings. His mastery of the laws of linear perspective and human anatomy and his investigations into Classical principles of proportions (enhanced by two trips to Italy) equaled those of the best Italian Renaissance artist– scientists. In the genre of portraiture, Dürer was the match of Raphael but, unlike Raphael, he recorded the features of his sitters with little idealization. His portrait engraving of Erasmus (see Figure 19.3) captures the concentrated intel- ligence of the Prince of Humanists.
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Figure 19.11 ALBRECHT DÜRER, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, ca. 1496. Woodcut, 151⁄2 � 11 in.
Figure 19.9 Woodcut. A relief printing process created by lines cut into the plank surface of wood. The raised portions of the block are inked and transferred by pressure to the paper by hand or with a printing press.
Figure 19.10 Engraving. An intaglio method of printing. The cutting tool, a burin or graver, is used to cut lines in the surface of metal plates. (a) A cross section of an engraved plate showing burrs (ridges) produced by scratching a burin into the surface of a metal plate; (b) the burrs are removed and ink is wiped over the surface and forced into the scratches. The plate is then wiped clean, leaving ink deposits in the scratches; the ink is forced from the plate onto paper under pressure in a special press.
Dürer brought to the art of his day a desire to convey the spiritual message of Scripture. His series of woodcuts illustrating the last book of the New Testament, The Revelation According to Saint John (also called the “Apocalypse”), reveals the extent to which he achieved his purpose. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—one of fifteen woodcuts in the series—brings to life the terrifying events described in Revelation 6.1–8 (Figure 19.11). Amidst billowing clouds, Death (in the foreground), Famine (carrying a pair of scales), War (brandishing a sword), and Pestilence (drawing his bow) sweep down upon humankind; their victims fall beneath the horses’ hooves, or, as with the bishop in the lower left, are devoured by infernal monsters. Dürer’s image seems a grim prophecy of the coming age, in which five million people would die in religious wars.
Dürer was a humanist in his own right and a great admirer of both the moderate Erasmus and the zealous Luther. In one of his most memorable engravings, Knight, Death, and the Devil, he depicted the Christian soul in the allegorical guise of a medieval knight (see Figure 19.1), a figure made famous in a treatise by Erasmus entitled Handbook for the Militant Christian (1504). The knight, the
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medieval symbol of fortitude and courage, advances against a dark and brooding landscape. Accompanied by his loyal dog, he marches forward, ignoring his fearsome compan- ions: Death, who rides a pale horse and carries an hour- glass, and the devil, a shaggy, cross-eyed, and horned demon. Here is the visual counterpart for Erasmus’ message that the Christian must hold to the path of virtue, and in spite of “all of those spooks and phantoms” that come upon him, he must “look not behind.” The knight’s dignified bearing (probably inspired by heroic equestrian statues Dürer had seen in Italy) contrasts sharply with the bestial and cankerous features of his forbidding escorts. In the tra- dition of Jan van Eyck, but with a precision facilitated by the new medium of metal engraving, Dürer records every leaf and pebble, hair and wrinkle; and yet the final effect is not a mere piling up of minutiae but, like nature itself, an astonishing amalgam of organically related elements.
In addition to his numerous woodcuts and engravings, Dürer produced hundreds of paintings: portraits and large- scale religious subjects. His interest in the natural world inspired the first landscapes in Western art (Figure 19.12). These detailed panoramic views of the countryside, execut- ed in watercolor during his frequent travels to Italy and elsewhere, were independent works, not mere studies for larger, more formal subjects. To such landscapes, as well as
to his meticulously detailed renderings of plants, animals, and birds, Dürer brought the eye of a scientific naturalist and a spirit of curiosity not unlike that of his Italian con- temporary, Leonardo da Vinci.
Grünewald Dürer’s German contemporary Matthias Gothardt Neithardt, better known as “Grünewald” (1460–1428) did not share his Classically inspired aesthetic ideals, nor his quest for realistic representation. The few paintings and drawings left by Grünewald (as compared with the hun- dreds of works left by Dürer) do not tell us whether the artist was Catholic or Protestant. In their spiritual intensi- ty and emotional subjectivity, however, they are among the most striking devotional works of the Northern Renaissance.
Grünewald’s landmark work, the Isenheim Altarpiece, was designed to provide solace to the victims of disease and especially plague at the Hospital of Saint Anthony in Isenheim, near Colmar, France (Figure 19.13). Like the Imitatio Christi, which taught Christians to seek identifica- tion with Jesus, this multipaneled altarpiece reminded its beholders of their kinship with the suffering Jesus, depict- ed in the central panel. Following the tradition of the devotional German Pietà (see Figure 15.10), Grünewald
Figure 19.12 ALBRECHT DÜRER, Wire Drawing Mill, undated. Watercolor, 111⁄4 � 163⁄4 in.
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made use of expressive exaggeration and painfully precise detail: the agonized body of Jesus is lengthened to empha- size its weight as it hangs from the bowed cross, the flesh putrefies with clotted blood and angry thorns, the fingers convulse and curl, while the feet—broken and bruised— contort in a spasm of pain. Grünewald reinforces the mood of lamentation by placing the scene in a darkened landscape. He exaggerates the gestures of the attending figures, including that of John the Baptist, whose oversized finger points to the prophetic Latin inscription that explains his mystical presence: “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Cranach and Holbein The German cities of the sixteenth century produced some of the finest draftsmen in the history of Western art. Dürer’s contemporary, Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), was a highly acclaimed court painter at Wittenberg and, like Dürer, a convert to the Protestant reform. In 1522 he produced the woodcuts for the first German edition of the New Testament. Although he also worked for Catholic patrons, he painted and engraved
numerous portraits of Protestant leaders, the most notable of whom was his friend Martin Luther, whose likeness he recreated several times. In the portrait illustrated in Figure 19.4, Cranach exercised his skills as a master draftsman, capturing both the authoritative silhouette and the confi- dent demeanor of the famous reformer.
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), celebrated as the greatest of the German portraitists, was born in Augsburg, but spent much of his life in Switzerland, France, and England. His woodcut series of the Dance of Death (see Figure 15.5) brought him renown as a drafts- man and printmaker. With a letter of introduction from his friend Erasmus, Holbein traveled to England to paint the family of Sir Thomas More (see Figure 19.16)—Western Europe’s first domestic group portrait (it survives only in drawings and copies). On a later trip to England, Holbein became the favorite of King Henry VIII, whose likeness he captured along with portraits of Henry’s current and prospective wives. In common with Dürer and Cranach, Holbein was a master of line. All three artists manifested the integration of brilliant draftsmanship and precise, real- istic detail that characterizes the art of the Northern
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Figure 19.13 MATTHIAS GRÜNEWALD, Isenheim Altarpiece, ca. 1510–1515. Oil on panel, central panel 8 ft. � 10 ft. 1 in. The opened wings of the altarpiece show Saint Sebastian (left) and Saint Anthony (right), both protectors against disease and plague. Those afflicted with disease (including leprosy, syphilis, and poisoning caused by ergot, a cereal fungus), were able to contemplate the altarpiece daily in the hospital chapel.
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Renaissance. Holbein, however, was unique in his minimal use of line to evoke a penetrating sense of the sitter’s per- sonality. So lifelike are some of Holbein’s portraits that modern scholars have suggested he made use of technical aids, such as the camera lucida, in their preparation (see chapter 17, Exploring Issues).
Brueghel The career of the last great sixteenth-century Flemish painter, Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525–1569), followed the careers of most other Northern Renaissance masters by a generation. Like Dürer, Brueghel had traveled to Italy and absorbed its Classical culture; his style, however, would remain relatively independent of Italian influence. Closer in temperament to Bosch, he was deeply concerned with human folly, especially as it was manifested in the everyday life of his Flemish neighbors. Among his early works were crowded panoramas depicting themes of human pride and religious strife. Brueghel’s Triumph of Death may be read as an indictment of the brutal wars that plagued sixteenth- century Europe (Figure 19.14). In a cosmic landscape that resembles the setting of a Last Judgment or a Boschlike underworld, Brueghel depicts throngs of skeletons relent- lessly slaughtering all ranks of men and women. The armies of the dead are without mercy. In the left foreground, a car- dinal collapses in the arms of a skeleton; in the left corner,
an emperor relinquishes his hoards of gold; on the right, death interrupts the pleasure of gamblers and lovers. Some of the living are crushed beneath the wheels of a death cart, others are hanged from scaffolds or subjected to tor- ture. Brueghel’s apocalyptic vision transforms the late medieval Dance of Death into a universal holocaust.
Many of Brueghel’s best-known works were inspired by biblical parables or local proverbs, popular expressions of universal truths concerning human behavior. In his draw- ings, engravings, and paintings, Brueghel rendered these as visual narratives set in the Flemish countryside. His treatment of the details of rustic life, which earned him the title “Peasant Brueghel,” and his landscapes illustrat- ing the labors appropriate to each season, were the culmi- nation of a tradition begun in the innovative miniatures of the Limbourg brothers (see Figure 15.13). However, Brueghel’s genre paintings (representations of the every- day life of ordinary folk) were not small-scale illustrations, but monumental (and sometimes allegorical) transcrip- tions of rural activities. The Wedding Dance (Figure 19.15) depicts peasant revelry in a country setting whose earthi- ness is reinforced by rich tones of russet, tan, and muddy green. At the very top of the panel the bride and groom sit before an improvised dais, while the villagers cavort to the music of the bagpipe (right foreground). Although Brueghel’s figures are clumsy and often ill-proportioned,
Figure 19.14 PIETER BRUEGHEL THE ELDER, Triumph of Death, ca. 1562–1564. Oil on panel, 3 ft. 10 in. � 5 ft. 33⁄4 in.
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they share an ennobling vitality. In Brueghel’s art, as in that of other Northern Renaissance painters, we discover an unvarnished perception of human beings in mundane and unheroic circumstances—a sharp contrast to the idealized conception of humankind found in the art of Renaissance Italy.
Erasmus: The Praise of Folly European literature of the sixteenth century was marked by heightened individualism and a progressive inclination to clear away the last remnants of medieval orthodoxy. It was, in many ways, a literature of protest and reform, and one whose dominant themes reflect the tension between medieval and modern ideas. European writers were espe- cially concerned with the discrepancies between the noble ideals of Classical humanism and the ignoble realities of human behavior. Religious rivalries and the horrors of war, witch hunts, and religious persecution all seemed to contradict the optimistic view that the Renaissance had inaugurated a more enlightened phase of human self- consciousness. Satire, a literary genre that conveys the contradictions between real and ideal situations, was
especially popular during the sixteenth century. By means of satiric irony, Northern Renaissance writers held up prevailing abuses to ridicule, thus implying the need for reform.
The learned treatises and letters of Erasmus won him the respect of scholars throughout Europe; but his single most popular work was The Praise of Folly, a satiric oration attacking a wide variety of human foibles, including greed, intellectual pomposity, and pride. The Praise of Folly went through more than two dozen editions in Erasmus’ lifetime, and influenced other humanists, including his lifelong
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1540 the Swiss physician Paracelsus (Philippus van Hohenheim) pioneers the use of chemistry for medical purposes
1543 Copernicus (Polish) publishes On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, announc- ing his heliocentric theory
1553 Michael Servetus (Spanish) describes the pulmonary circulation of the blood
Figure 19.15 PIETER BRUEGHEL THE ELDER, The Wedding Dance, 1566. Oil on panel, 3 ft. 11 in. � 5 ft. 2 in.
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friend and colleague Thomas More, to whom it was dedi- cated (in Latin, moria means “folly”).
A short excerpt from The Praise of Folly offers some idea of Erasmus’ keen wit as applied to a typical Northern Renaissance theme: the vast gulf between human fallibili- ty and human perfectibility. The reading opens with the image of the world as a stage, a favorite metaphor of six- teenth-century painters and poets—not the least of whom was William Shakespeare. Dame Folly, the allegorical fig- ure who is the speaker in the piece, compares life to a com- edy in which the players assume various roles: in the course of the drama (she observes), one may come to play the parts of both servant and king. She then describes each of a number of roles (or disciplines), such as medicine, law, and so on, in terms of its affinity with folly. Erasmus’ most searing words were reserved for theologians and church dignitaries, but his insights expose more generally (and timelessly) the frailties of all human beings.
From Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly (1511)
Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of 1 comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows; yet this play is put on in no other way. . . .
[The disciplines] that approach nearest to common 10 sense, that is, to folly, are held in highest esteem. Theologians are starved, naturalists find cold comfort, astrologers are mocked, and logicians are slighted. . . . Within the profession of medicine, furthermore, so far as any member is eminently unlearned, impudent, or careless, he is valued the more, even in the chambers of belted earls. For medicine, especially as now practiced by many, is but a subdivision of the art of flattery, no less truly than is rhetoric. Lawyers have the next place after doctors, and I do not know but that they should 20 have first place; with great unanimity the philosophers— not that I would say such a thing myself—are wont to ridicule the law as an ass. Yet great matters and little matters alike are settled by the arbitrament of these asses. They gather goodly freeholds with broad acres, while the theologian, after poring over chestfuls of the great corpus of divinity, gnaws on bitter beans, at the same time manfully waging war against lice and fleas. As those arts are more successful which have the greatest affinity with folly, so those people are by far the happiest 30 who enjoy the privilege of avoiding all contact with the learned disciplines, and who follow nature as their only guide, since she is in no respect wanting, except as a mortal wishes to transgress the limits set for his status. Nature hates counterfeits; and that which is innocent of art gets along far the more prosperously.
What need we say about practitioners in the arts? Self- love is the hallmark of them all. You will find that they would sooner give up their paternal acres than any piece of their poor talents. Take particularly actors, singers, 40 orators, and poets; the more unskilled one of them is, the more insolent he will be in his self-satisfaction, the more he will blow himself up. . . . Thus the worst art pleases the most people, for the simple reason that the larger part of mankind, as I said before, is subject to folly. If, therefore, the less skilled man is more pleasing both in his own eyes and in the wondering gaze of the many, what reason is there that he should prefer sound discipline and true skill? In the first place, these will cost him a great outlay; in the second place, they will 50 make him more affected and meticulous; and finally, they will please far fewer of his audience. . . .
And now I see that it is not only in individual men that nature has implanted self-love. She implants a kind of it as a common possession in the various races, and even cities. By this token the English claim, besides a few other things, good looks, music, and the best eating as their special properties. The Scots flatter themselves on the score of high birth and royal blood, not to mention their dialectical skill. Frenchmen have taken all politeness for 60 their province; though the Parisians, brushing all others aside, also award themselves the prize for knowledge of theology. The Italians usurp belles lettres and eloquence; and they all flatter themselves upon the fact that they alone, of all mortal men, are not barbarians. In this particular point of happiness the Romans stand highest, still dreaming pleasantly of ancient Rome. The Venetians are blessed with a belief in their own nobility. The Greeks, as well as being the founders of the learned disciplines, vaunt themselves upon their titles to the famous heroes of 70 old. The Turks, and that whole rabble of the truly barbarous, claim praise for their religion, laughing at Christians as superstitious. . . .
[Next come] the scientists, reverenced for their beards and the fur on their gowns, who teach that they alone are wise while the rest of mortal men flit about as shadows. How pleasantly they dote, indeed, while they construct their numberless worlds, and measure the sun, moon, stars, and spheres as with thumb and line. They assign causes for lightning, winds, eclipses, and other 80 inexplicable things, never hesitating a whit, as if they were privy to the secrets of nature, artificer of things, or as if they visited us fresh from the council of the gods. Yet all the while nature is laughing grandly at them and their conjectures. For to prove that they have good intelligence of nothing, this is a sufficient argument: they can never explain why they disagree with each other on every subject. Thus knowing nothing in general, they profess to know all things in particular; though they are ignorant even of themselves, and on occasion do not see the ditch or the 90 stone lying across their path, because many of them are blear-eyed or absent-minded; yet they proclaim that they perceive ideas, universals, forms without matter. . . .
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Q What disciplines does Dame Folly single out as having “the greatest affinity with folly”?
Q How does Erasmus attack the religious community of his day?
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Perhaps it were better to pass over the theologians in silence, [for] they may attack me with six hundred arguments, in squadrons, and drive me to make a recantation; which if I refuse, they will straightway proclaim me an heretic. By this thunderbolt they are wont to terrify any toward whom they are ill-disposed.
They are happy in their self-love, and as if they already 100 inhabited the third heaven they look down from a height on all other mortal men as on creatures that crawl on the ground, and they come near to pitying them. They are protected by a wall of scholastic definitions, arguments, corollaries, implicit and explicit propositions; . . . they explain as pleases them the most arcane matters, such as by what method the world was founded and set in order, through what conduits original sin has been passed down along the generations, by what means, in what measure, and how long the perfect Christ was in the Virgin’s womb, 110 and how accidents subsist in the Eucharist without their subject.
But those are hackneyed. Here are questions worthy of the great and (as some call them) illuminated theologians, questions to make them prick up their ears—if ever they chance upon them. Whether divine generation took place at a particular time? Whether there are several sonships in Christ? Whether this is a possible proposition: God the Father hates the Son? Whether God could have taken upon Himself the likeness of a woman? Or of a devil? Of an 120 ass? Of a gourd? Of a piece of flint? Then how would that gourd have preached, performed miracles, or been crucified?. . . .
Coming nearest to these in felicity are the men who generally call themselves ”the religious“ and ”monks“— utterly false names both, since most of them keep as far away as they can from religion and no people are more in evidence in every sort of place. . . . For one thing, they reckon it the highest degree of piety to have no contact with literature, and hence they see to it that they do not 130 know how to read. For another, when with asinine voices they bray out in church those psalms they have learned, by rote rather than by heart, they are convinced that they are anointing God’s ears with the blandest of oil. Some of them make a good profit from their dirtiness and mendicancy, collecting their food from door to door with importunate bellowing; nay, there is not an inn, public conveyance, or ship where they do not intrude, to the great disadvantage of the other common beggars. Yet according to their account, by their very dirtiness, 140 ignorance, these delightful fellows are representing to us the lives of the apostles.
More’s Utopia In England Erasmus’ friend, the scholar and statesman Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), served as chancellor to King Henry VIII at the time of Henry’s break with the Catholic Church (Figure 19.16). Like Erasmus, More was a Christian humanist and a man of conscience. He denounced the evils of acquisitive capitalism and religious fanaticism and championed religious tolerance and Christian charity. Unwilling to compromise his conviction as a Roman Catholic, he opposed the actions of the king and was executed for treason in 1535.
In 1516, More completed his classic political satire on European statecraft and society, a work entitled Utopia (the Greek word meaning both “no place” and “a good place”). More’s Utopia, the first literary description of an ideal state since Plato’s Republic, was inspired, in part, by accounts of wondrous lands reported by sailors returning from the “New World” across the Atlantic (see chapter 18). More’s fiction- al island (“discovered” by a fictional explorer–narrator) is a socialistic state in which goods and property are shared, war and personal vanities are held in contempt, learning is available to all citizens (except slaves), and freedom of
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Figure 19.16 HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER, Sir Thomas More, ca. 1530. Oil on panel, 291⁄2 � 231⁄4 in. In his attention to minute detail and textural contrast—fur collar, velvet sleeves, gold chain, and Tudor rose pendant—Holbein refined the tradition of realistic portraiture initiated by Jan van Eyck (compare Jan’s self-portrait, Figure 17.12).
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religion is absolute. Work, while essential to moral and communal well-being, is limited to six hours a day. In this ideal commonwealth, natural reason, benevolence, and scorn for material wealth ensure social harmony.
More’s society differs from Plato’s in that More gives to each individual, rather than to society’s guardians, full responsibility for the establishment of social justice. Written as both a social critique and a satire, More draws the implicit contrast between his own corrupt Christian society and that of his ideal community. Although his Utopians are not Christians, they are guided by Christian principles of morality and charity. They have little use, for instance, for precious metals, jewels, and the “trifles” that drive men to war.
From More’s Utopia (1516)
[As] to their manner of living in society, the oldest man 1 of every family . . . is its governor. Wives serve their husbands, and children their parents, and always the younger serves the elder. Every city is divided into four equal parts, and in the middle of each there is a marketplace: what is brought thither, and manufactured by the several families, is carried from thence to houses appointed for that purpose, in which all things of a sort are laid by themselves; and there every father goes and takes whatsoever he or his family stand in need of, 10 without either paying for it or leaving anything in exchange. There is no reason for giving a denial to any person, since there is such plenty of everything among them; and there is no danger of a man’s asking for more than he needs; they have no inducements to do this, since they are sure that they shall always be supplied. It is the fear of want that makes any of the whole race of animals either greedy or ravenous; but besides fear, there is in man a pride that makes him fancy it a particular glory to excel others in pomp and excess. But by the 20 laws of the Utopians, there is no room for this. . . .
[Since the Utopians] have no use for money among themselves, but keep it as a provision against events which seldom happen, and between which there are generally long intervening intervals, they value it no farther than it deserves, that is, in proportion to its use. So that it is plain they must prefer iron either to gold or silver; for men can no more live without iron than without fire or water, but nature has marked out no use for the other metals so essential and not easily to be 30 dispensed with. The folly of men has enhanced the value of gold and silver, because of their scarcity. Whereas, on the contrary, it is their opinion that nature, as an indulgent parent, has freely given us all the best things in great abundance, such as water and earth, but has laid up and hid from us the things that are vain and useless. . . .
. . . They eat and drink out of vessels of earth, or glass, which make an agreeable appearance though formed of brittle materials: while they make their chamber-pots 40
and close-stools1 of gold and silver, and that not only in their public halls, but in their private houses: of the same metals they likewise make chains and fetters for their slaves; to some [slaves], as a badge of infamy, they hang an ear-ring of gold, and [they] make others wear a chain or coronet of the same metal; and thus they take care, by all possible means, to render gold and silver of no esteem. And from hence it is that while other nations part with their gold and silver as unwillingly as if one tore out their bowels, those of Utopia would look on 50 their giving in all they possess of those [metals] but as the parting with a trifle, or as we would esteem the loss of a penny. They find pearls on their coast, and diamonds and carbuncles on their rocks; they do not look after them, but, if they find them by chance, they polish them, and with them they adorn their children, who are delighted with them, and glory in them during their childhood; but when they grow to years, and see that none but children use such baubles, they of their own accord, without being bid by their parents, lay 60 them aside; and would be as much ashamed to use them afterward as children among us, when they come to years, are of their puppets and other toys. . . .
They detest war as a very brutal thing; and which, to the reproach of human nature, is more practiced by men than by any sort of beasts. They, in opposition to the sentiments of almost all other nations, think that there is nothing more inglorious than that glory that is gained by war. And therefore though they accustom themselves daily to military exercises and the discipline of war—in which not 70 only their men but their women likewise are trained up, that in cases of necessity they may not be quite useless— yet they do not rashly engage in war, unless it be either to defend themselves, or their friends, from any unjust aggressors; or out of good-nature or in compassion assist an oppressed nation in shaking off the yoke of tyranny. They indeed help their friends, not only in defensive, but also in offensive wars; but they never do that unless they had been consulted before the breach was made, and being satisfied with the grounds on which 80 they went, they had found that all demands of reparation were rejected, so that a war was unavoidable. . . .
If they agree to a truce, they observe it so religiously that no provocations will make them break it. They never lay their enemies’ country waste nor burn their corn, and even in their marches they take all possible care that neither horse nor foot may tread it down, for they do not know but that they may have for it themselves. They hurt no man whom they find disarmed, unless he is a spy. When a town is surrendered to them, they take it into their protection; 90 and when they carry a place by storm, they never plunder it, but put those only to the sword that opposed the rendering of it up, and make the rest of the garrison slaves, but for the other inhabitants, they do them no hurt; and if
1 A covered chamber pot set in a stool.
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Q What sort of social organization does More set forth in his Utopia?
Q How would you describe More’s views on precious metals and on war?
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any of them had advised a surrender, they give them good rewards out of the estates of those that they condemn, and distribute the rest among their auxiliary troops, but they themselves take no share of the spoil.
Cervantes: Don Quixote While Erasmus and More wrote primarily in Latin—Utopia was not translated into English until 1551—other European writers preferred the vernacular. The language of everyday speech was favored for such literary genres as the medieval romance (see chapter 11) and the more realistic and satiric picaresque novel, which emerged as a popular form of literary entertainment in sixteenth-century Spain. Narrated by the hero, the picaresque novel recounted the comic misadventures of a picaro (“rogue”). Its structure—a series of episodes converging on a single theme—anticipat- ed the emergence of the novel in Western literature.
As a genre, the novel, a large-scale prose narrative, had its origins in eleventh-century Japan, with Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji. However, in the West, the first such work in this genre was Don Quixote, written in two volumes (over a decade apart) by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). Don Quixote resembles the picaresque novel in its episodic structure and in its satiric treatment of Spanish society, but the psychological complexity of its hero and the profundity of its underlying theme—the conflict between reality and the ideal—set it apart from the picaresque.
The fifty-year-old Alonso Quixado, who assumes the title of a nobleman, Don Quixote de la Mancha, sets out to roam the world as a knight errant, defending the ideals glo- rified in medieval books of chivalry. (Cervantes himself had fought in the last of the crusades against the Muslim Turks.) Seeking to bring honor to himself and his imaginary ladylove, he pursues a long series of adventures in which he repeatedly misperceives the ordinary for the sublime: he attacks a flock of sheep as a hostile army, advances on a group of windmills that he mistakes for giants. (The expres- sion “tilting at windmills” has come to represent the futili- ty of self-deluding action.) The hero’s eternal optimism is measured against the practical realism of his potbellied side- kick, Sancho Panza, who tries to expose the Don’s illusions of grandeur. In the end, the don laments in self-reflection that the world “is nothing but schemes and plots.”
Cervantes’ masterpiece, Don Quixote attacks outworn medieval values, especially as they reflect sixteenth-centu- ry Spanish society. In Spain, on the eve of the early Modern Era, New World wealth was transforming the rela- tionship between peasants and aristocrats; the tribunal of Catholic orthodoxy known as the Inquisition worked to expel the large populations of Jews and Muslims that had powerfully influenced earlier Iberian culture. While the novel emerged from this context of transformation and
(often misguided) reform, it left a timeless, universal message, captured in the English word “quixotic,” which means “foolishly idealistic” or “impractical.”
From Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605–1615)
The great success won by our brave Don Quijote1 in his dreadful, unimaginable encounter with two windmills, plus other honorable events well worth remembering
Just then, they came upon thirty or forty windmills, 1 which (as it happens) stand in the fields of Montiel, and as soon as Don Quijote saw them he said to his squire:
“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and to kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the 10 face of the earth.”
“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza. “The ones you can see over there,” answered his
master, “with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long.”
“Now look, your grace,” said Sancho, “what you see over there aren’t giants, but windmills, and what seem to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone.”
“Obviously,” replied Don Quijote, “you don’t know 20 much about adventures. Those are giants—and if you’re frightened, take yourself away from here and say your prayers, while I go charging into savage and unequal combat with them.”
Saying which, he spurred his horse, Rocinante, paying no attention to the shouts of Sancho Panza, his squire, warning him that without any question it was windmills and not giants he was going to attack. So utterly convinced was he they were giants, indeed, that he neither heard Sancho’s cries nor noticed, close as he 30 was, what they really were, but charged on, crying:
“Flee not, oh cowards and dastardly creatures, for he who attacks you is a knight alone and unaccompanied.”
Just then the wind blew up a bit, and the great sails began to stir, which Don Quijote saw and cried out:
“Even should you shake more arms than the giant Briareus himself, you’ll still have to deal with me.”
As he said this, he entrusted himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea, imploring her to help and sustain him at such a critical moment, and then, with his shield 40 held high and his spear braced in its socket, and Rocinante at a full gallop, he charged directly at the first windmill he came to, just as a sudden swift gust of wind sent its sail swinging hard around, smashing the spear to bits and sweeping up the knight and his horse, tumbling
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1 A variant spelling of Quixote is Quijote, as in this excerpt.
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them all battered and bruised to the ground. Sancho Panza came rushing to his aid, as fast as his donkey could run, but when he got to his master found him unable to move, such a blow had he been given by the falling horse. 50
“God help me!” said Sancho. “Didn’t I tell your grace to be careful what you did, that these were just windmills, and anyone who could ignore that had to have windmills in his head?”
“Silence, Sancho, my friend,” answered Don Quijote. “Even more than other things, war is subject to perpetual change. What’s more, I think the truth is that the same Frestón the magician, who stole away my room and my books, transformed these giants into windmills, in order to deprive me of the glory of vanquishing them, so bitter 60 is his hatred of me. But in the end, his evil tricks will have little power against my good sword.”
“God’s will be done,” answered Sancho Panza. Then, helping his master to his feet, he got him back
up on Rocinante, whose shoulder was half dislocated. After which, discussing the adventure they’d just experienced, they followed the road toward Lápice Pass, for there, said Don Quijote, they couldn’t fail to find adventures of all kinds, it being a well-traveled highway. But having lost his lance, he went along very sorrowfully, 70 as he admitted to his squire, saying:
“I remember having read that a certain Spanish knight named Diego Pérez de Vargas, having lost his sword while fighting in a lost cause, pulled a thick bough, or a stem, off an oak tree, and did such things with it, that day, clubbing down so many Moors that ever afterwards they nicknamed him Machuca [Clubber], and indeed from that day on he and all his descendants bore the name Vargas y Machuca. I tell you this because, the first oak tree I come to, I plan to pull off a branch like that, 80 one every bit as good as the huge stick I can see in my mind, and I propose to perform such deeds with it that you’ll be thinking yourself blessed, having the opportunity to witness them, and being a living witness to events that might otherwise be unbelievable.”
“It’s in God’s hands,” said Sancho. “I believe everything is exactly the way your grace says it is. But maybe you could sit a little straighter, because you seem to be leaning to one side, which must be because of the great fall you took.” 90
“True,” answered Don Quijote, “and if I don’t say anything about the pain it’s because knights errant are never supposed to complain about a wound, even if their guts are leaking through it.”
“If that’s how it’s supposed to be,” replied Sancho, “I’ve got nothing to say. But Lord knows I’d rather your grace told me, any time something hurts you. Me, I’ve got to groan, even if it’s the smallest little pain, unless that rule about knights errant not complaining includes squires, too.” 100
Don Quijote couldn’t help laughing at his squire’s simplicity, and cheerfully assured him he could certainly complain any time he felt like it, voluntarily or
involuntarily, since in all his reading about knighthood and chivalry he’d never once come across anything to the contrary. Sancho said he thought it was dinner-time. His master replied that, for the moment, he himself had no need of food, but Sancho should eat whenever he wanted to. Granted this permission, Sancho made himself as comfortable as he could while jogging along on his 110 donkey and, taking out of his saddlebags what he had put in them, began eating as he rode, falling back a good bit behind his master, and from time to time tilting up his wineskin with a pleasure so intense that the fanciest barman in Málaga might have envied him. And as he rode along like this, gulping quietly away, none of the promises his master had made were on his mind, nor did he feel in the least troubled or afflicted—in fact, he was thoroughly relaxed about this adventure-hunting business, no matter how dangerous it was supposed 120 to be.
In the end, they spent that night sleeping in a wood, and Don Quijote pulled a dry branch from one of the trees, to serve him, more or less, as a lance, fitting onto it the spearhead he’d taken off the broken one. Nor did Don Quijote sleep, that whole night long, meditating on his lady Dulcinea—in order to fulfill what he’d read in his books, namely, that knights always spent long nights out in the woods and other uninhabited places, not sleeping, but happily mulling over memories of their 130 ladies. Which wasn’t the case for Sancho Panza: with his stomach full, and not just with chicory water, his dreams swept him away, nor would he have bothered waking up, for all the sunlight shining full on his face, or the birds singing—brightly, loudly greeting the coming of the new day—if his master hadn’t called to him. He got up and, patting his wineskin, found it a lot flatter than it had been the night before, which grieved his heart, since it didn’t look as if they’d be making up the shortage any time soon. Don Quijote had no interest in breakfast, 140 since, as we have said, he had been sustaining himself with delightful memories. They returned to the road leading to Lápice Pass, which they could see by about three that afternoon.
“Here,” said Don Quijote as soon as he saw it, “here, brother Sancho Panza, we can get our hands up to the elbows in adventures. But let me warn you: even if you see me experiencing the greatest dangers in the world, never draw your sword to defend me, unless of course you see that those who insult me are mere rabble, people 150 of low birth, in which case you may be permitted to help me. But if they’re knights, the laws of knighthood make it absolutely illegal, without exception, for you to help me, unless you yourself have been ordained a knight.”
“Don’t worry, your grace,” answered Sancho Panza. “You’ll find me completely obedient about this, especially since I’m a very peaceful man—I don’t like getting myself into quarrels and fights. On the other hand, when it comes to someone laying a hand on me, I won’t pay much attention to those laws, because whether 160 they’re divine or human they permit any man to defend
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himself when anyone hurts him.” “To be sure,” answered Don Quijote. “But when it
comes to helping me against other knights, you must restrain your natural vigor.”
“And that’s what I’ll do,” replied Sancho. “I’ll observe this rule just as carefully as I keep the Sabbath.”
Rabelais and Montaigne Another master of vernacular prose, the French humanist François Rabelais (1495–1553), mocked the obsolete val- ues of European society. Rabelais drew upon his experi- ences as a monk, a student of law, a physician, and a specialist in human affairs to produce Gargantua and Pantagruel, an irreverent satire filled with biting allusions to contemporary institutions and customs. The world of the two imaginary giants, Gargantua and Pantagruel, is one of fraud and folly drawn to fantastic dimensions. It is blighted by the absurdities of war, the evils of law and medicine, and the failure of Scholastic education. To remedy the last, Rabelais advocates education based on experience and action, rather than rote memorization. In the imaginary abbey of Thélème, the modern version of a medieval monastery, he pictures a coeducational com- mune in which well-bred men and women are encouraged to live as they please. Gargantua and Pantagruel proclaims Rabelais’ faith in the ability of educated individuals to fol- low their best instincts for establishing a society free from religious prejudice, petty abuse, and selfish desire.
The French humanist Michel de Montaigne (1533– 1592) was neither a satirist nor a reformer, but an educat- ed aristocrat who believed in the paramount importance of cultivating good judgment. Trained in Latin, Montaigne was one of the leading proponents of Classical learning in Renaissance France. He earned universal acclaim as the “father” of the personal essay, a short piece of expository prose that examines a single subject or idea. The essay— the word comes from the French essayer (“to try”)—is a vehicle for probing or “trying out” ideas.
Montaigne regarded his ninety-four vernacular French essays as studies in autobiographical reflection—in them, he confessed, he portrayed himself. Addressing such sub- jects as virtue, friendship, old age, education, and idleness, he examined certain fundamentally humanistic ideas: that contradiction is a characteristically human trait, that self- examination is the essence of true education, that educa- tion should enable us to live more harmoniously, and that skepticism and open-mindedness are sound alternatives to dogmatic opinion. Like Rabelais, Montaigne defended a kind of teaching that posed questions rather than provided answers. In his essay on the education of children, he crit- icized teachers who might pour information into students’ ears “as though they were pouring water into a funnel” and then demand that students repeat that information instead of exercising original thought.
Reflecting on the European response to overseas expan- sion (see chapter 18), Montaigne examined the ways in which behavior and belief vary from culture to culture. In his essay On Cannibals, a portion of which appears below, he weighted the reports of “New World” barbarism and savagery against the morals and manners of “cultured” Europeans. War, which he calls the “human disease,” he finds less vile among “barbarians” than among Europeans, whose warfare is motivated by colonial expansion. Balancing his own views with those of Classical Latin writers, whom he quotes freely throughout his essays, Montaigne questions the superiority of any one culture over another. Montaigne’s essays, an expression of rea- soned inquiry into human values, constitute the literary high-water mark of the French Renaissance.
From Montaigne’s On Cannibals (1580)
I had with me for a long time a man who had lived for 1 ten or twelve years in that other world which has been discovered in our century, in the place where Villegaignon landed, and which he called Antarctic France.1 This discovery of a boundless country seems worthy of consideration. I don’t know if I can guarantee that some other such discovery will not be made in the future, so many personages greater than ourselves having been mistaken about this one. I am afraid we have eyes bigger than our stomachs, and more curiosity than capacity. We 10 embrace everything, but we clasp only wind. . . .
This man I had was a simple, crude fellow—a character fit to bear true witness; for clever people observe more things and more curiously, but they interpret them; and to lend weight and conviction to their interpretation, they cannot help altering history a little. They never show you things as they are, but bend and disguise them according to the way they have seen them; and to give credence to their judgment and attract you to it, they are prone to add
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1556 Georg Agricola (German) publishes On the Principles of Mining
1571 Ambroise Paré (French) publishes five treatises on surgery
1587 Conrad Gesner (Swiss) completes his Historiae Animalum, the first zoological encyclopedia
1596 Sir John Harington (English) invents the “water closet,” providing indoor toilet facilities
1 La France antartique was the French term for South America. In 1555, Nicolaus Durard de Villegaignon founded a colony on an island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The colony collapsed some years later, and many of those who had lived there returned to France.
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something to their matter, to stretch it out and amplify it. 20 We need a man either very honest, or so simple that he has not the stuff to build up false inventions and give them plausibility; and wedded to no theory. Such was my man; and besides this, he at various times brought sailors and merchants, whom he had known on that trip, to see me. So I content myself with his information, without inquiring what the cosmographers say about it.
We ought to have topographers who would give us an exact account of the places where they have been. But because they have over us the advantage of having seen 30 Palestine, they want to enjoy the privilege of telling us news about all the rest of the world. I would like everyone to write what he knows, and as much as he knows, not only in this, but in all other subjects; for a man may have some special knowledge and experience of the nature of a river or a fountain, who in other matters knows only what everybody knows. However, to circulate this little scrap of knowledge, he will undertake to write the whole of physics. From this vice spring many great abuses.
Now to return to my subject, I think there is nothing 40 barbarous and savage in that nation, from what I have been told, except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. There is always the perfect religion, perfect government, the perfect and accomplished manners in all things. Those people are wild, just as we call wild the fruits that Nature has produced by herself and in her normal course; whereas really it is those that we have 50 changed artificially and led astray from the common order, that we should rather call wild. The former retain alive and vigorous their genuine, their most useful and natural, virtues and properties, which we have debased in the latter in adapting them to gratify our corrupted taste. And yet for all that, the savor and delicacy of some uncultivated fruits of those countries is quite as excellent, even to our taste, as that of our own. It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of 60 her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her. Yet wherever her purity shines forth, she wonderfully puts to shame our vain and frivolous attempts
Ivy comes readier without our care; In lonely caves the arbutus grows more fair; No art with artless bird song can compare.
Propertius
All our efforts cannot even succeed in reproducing the nest of the tiniest little bird, its contexture, its beauty and convenience; or even the web of the puny spider. All 70 things, say Plato, are produced by nature, by fortune, or by art; the greatest and most beautiful by one or the other of the first two, the least and most imperfect by the last.
These nations, then, seem to me barbarous in this sense, that they have been fashioned very little by the human mind, and are still very close to their original
naturalness. The laws of nature still rule them, very little corrupted by ours, and they are in such a state of purity that I am sometimes vexed that they were unknown earlier, in the days when there were men able to judge them 80 better than we. I am sorry that Lycurgus2 and Plato did not know of them; for it seems to me that what we actually see in these nations surpasses not only all the pictures in which poets have idealized the golden age and all their inventions in imagining a happy state of man, but also the conceptions and the very desire of philosophy. They could not imagine a naturalness so pure and simple as we see by experience; nor could they believe that our society could be maintained with so little artifice and human solder. This is a nation, I should say to Plato, in which there is no sort of 90 traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name for a magistrate or for political superiority, no custom of servitude, no riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupations but leisure ones, no care for any but common kinship, no clothes, no agriculture, no metal, no use of wine or wheat. The very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, belittling, pardon—unheard of. How far from this perfection would he find the republic that he imagined:
Men fresh sprung from the gods 100 Seneca
. . . . . . . . . .
They have their wars with the nations beyond the mountains, further inland, to which they go quite naked, with no other arms than bows or wooden swords ending in a sharp point, in the manner of the tongues of our boar spears. It is astonishing what firmness they show in their combats, which never end but in slaughter and bloodshed; for as to routs and terror, they know nothing of either.
Each man brings back as his trophy the head of the enemy he has killed, and sets it up at the entrance to his 110 dwelling. After they have treated their prisoners well for a long time with all the hospitality they can think of, each man who has a prisoner calls a great assembly of his acquaintances. He ties a rope to one of the prisoner’s arms, by the end of which he holds him, a few steps away, for fear of being hurt, and gives his dearest friend the other arm to hold in the same way; and these two, in the presence of the whole assembly, kill him with their swords. This done, they roast him and eat him in common and send some pieces to the absent friends. This is not, as people think, 120 for nourishment, as of old the Scythians used to do; it is to betoken an extreme revenge.3 And the proof of this came when they saw the Portuguese, who had joined forces with their adversaries, inflict a different kind of death on them when they took them prisoner, which was to bury them up to the waist, shoot the rest of their body full of arrows, and
2 The legendary lawgiver of ancient Sparta. 3 Montaigne overlooks the fact that ritual cannibalism might also
involve the will to consume the power of the opponent, especially if he were a formidable opponent.
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Q “Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice,” writes Montaigne. What illustrations does he offer? Does this claim hold true in our own day and age?
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afterward hang them. They thought that these people from the other world, being men who had sown the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors and were much greater masters than themselves in every sort of wickedness, did 130 not adopt this sort of vengeance without some reason, and that it must be more painful than their own; so they began to give up their old method and to follow this one.
I am not sorry that we notice the barbarous horror of such acts, but I am heartily sorry that, judging their faults rightly, we should be so blind as to our own. I think there is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead; and in tearing by tortures and the rack a body still full of feeling, in roasting a man bit by bit, in having him bitten and mangled by dogs and swine (as we have not 140 only read but seen within fresh memory, not among ancient enemies, but among neighbors and fellow citizens, and what is worse, on the pretext of piety and religion), than in roasting and eating him after he is dead.
Indeed, Chrysippus and Zeno, heads of the Stoic sect, thought there was nothing wrong in using our carcasses for any purpose in case of need, and getting nourishment from them; just as our ancestors, when besieged by Caesar in the city of Alésia, resolved to relieve their famine by eating old men, women, and other people useless for fighting. 150
The Gascons once, ‘tis said, their life renewed By eating of such food.
Juvenal
And physicians do not fear to use human flesh in all sorts of ways for our health, applying it either inwardly or outwardly. But there never was any opinion so disordered as to excuse treachery, disloyalty, tyranny, and cruelty, which are our ordinary vices.
So we may well call these people barbarians, in respect of the rules of reason, but not in respect of ourselves, who 160 surpass them in every kind of barbarity.
Their warfare is wholly noble and generous, and as excusable and beautiful as this human disease can be; its only basis among them is their rivalry in valor. They are not fighting for the conquest of new lands, for they still enjoy that natural abundance that provides them without toil and trouble with all necessary things in such profusion that they have no wish to enlarge their boundaries. They are still in that happy state of desiring only as much as their natural needs demand; any thing beyond that is superfluous to them. 170
Figure 19.17 DROESHOUT, first Folio edition portrait of William Shakespeare, 1623.
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No assessment of the early Modern Era would be complete without some consideration of the literary giant of the age: William Shakespeare (1564–1616; Figure 19.17). A poet of unparalleled genius, Shakespeare emerged during the golden age of England under the rule of Elizabeth I (1533–1603). He produced thirty-seven plays—comedies, tragedies, romances, and histories—as well as 154 sonnets and other poems. These works, generally considered to be the greatest examples of English literature, have exer- cised an enormous influence on the evolution of the English language and the development of the Western literary tradition.*
Little is known about Shakespeare’s early life and formal education. He grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon in the English Midlands, married Anne Hathaway (eight years his senior), with whom he had three children, and moved to London sometime before 1585. In London, a city of some 80,000 inhabitants, he formed an acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Company (also called “the King’s Men”), in which he was shareholder, actor, and playwright. Like fif- teenth-century Florence, sixteenth-century London (and especially the queen’s court) supported a galaxy of artists, musicians, and writers who enjoyed a mutually stimulating interchange of ideas. Shakespeare’s theater company per- formed at the court of Elizabeth I and that of her successor James I (1566–1625). But its main activities took place in the Globe, one of a handful of playhouses built just outside London’s city limits—along with brothels and taverns, the- aters were generally relegated to the suburbs.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets While Shakespeare is best known for his plays, he also wrote some of the most beautiful sonnets ever produced in the English language. Indebted to Petrarch, Shakespeare nevertheless devised most of his own sonnets in a form that would come to be called “the English sonnet”: quatrains (four-line stanzas) with alternate rhymes, followed by a concluding couplet. Shakespeare’s sonnets employ—and occasionally mock—such traditional Petrarchan themes as the blind devotion of the unfortunate lover, the value of friendship, and love’s enslaving power. Some, like Sonnet 18, reflect the typically Renaissance (and Classical) con- cern for immortality achieved through art and love. In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare contrives an extended metaphor: like the summer day, his beloved will fade and die. But, exclaims the poet, she will remain eternal in and through the sonnet; for, so long as the poem survives, so will the object of its inspiration remain alive. Stripped of senti- ment, Sonnet 116 states the unchanging nature of love; Shakespeare exalts the “marriage of true minds” that most Renaissance humanists perceived as only possible among men. Sonnet 130, on the other hand, pokes fun at the lit- erary conventions of the Petrarchan love sonnet. Satirizing
the fair-haired, red-lipped heroine as object of desire, Shakespeare celebrates the real—though somewhat ordi- nary—features of his beloved.
From Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 1 Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease1 hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye2 of heaven shines, 5 And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines,3
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; 4
But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, 10 Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.5
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this6 and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds 1 Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Nor bends with the remover to remove.7
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark,8 5 That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.9
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rose lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; 10 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.10
If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Sonnet 130
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; 1 Coral is far more red than her lips’ red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, 5 But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight
* The complete works of Shakespeare are available at the following website: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/works.html
1 Allotted time. 2 The sun. 3 Beautiful thing from beauty. 4 Stripped of beauty. 5 Your fame will grow as time elapses. 6 The sonnet itself. 7 Changes as the beloved changes. 8 Sea mark, an aid to navigation. 9 Whose value is beyond estimation. 10 Endures to the very Day of Judgment.
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Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound: 10 I grant I never saw a goddess go,— My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
The Elizabethan Stage In the centuries following the fall of Rome, the Church condemned all forms of pagan display, including the performance of comedies and tragedies. Tragedy, in the sense that it was defined by Aristotle (“the imitation of an action” involving “some great error” made by an extraor- dinary man), was philosophically incompatible with the medieval world-view, which held that all events were pre-
determined by God. If redemption was the goal of Christian life, there was no place for literary tragedy in the Christian cosmos. (Hence Dante’s famous journey, though far from humorous, was called a “comedy” in acknowledgment of its “happy” ending in Paradise.) Elizabethan poets revived sec- ular drama, adapting Classical and medieval texts to the writing of contemporary plays. While the context and the characters of such plays might be Christian, the plot and the dramatic action were secular in focus and in spirit.
The rebirth of secular drama, Renaissance England’s most original contribution to the humanistic tradition, unfolded during an era of high confidence. In 1588, the English navy defeated a Spanish fleet of 130 ships known as the “Invincible Armada.” The victory gave clear advantage to England as the dominant commercial power in the Atlantic. The routing of the Spanish Armada was a victory as well for the partisans of Protestantism over Catholicism. It encouraged a sense of national pride that found its coun- terpart in a revival of interest in English history and its the- atrical recreation. It also contributed to a renewed spirit of confidence in the ambitious policies of the “Protestant Queen,” Elizabeth I (Figure 19.18). In its wake followed a period of high prosperity, commercial expansion, and cul- tural vitality, all of which converged in London.
Figure 19.18 GEORGE GOWER, “Armada” Portrait of Elizabeth I, ca. 1588. Oil on panel, 3 ft. 6 in. � 4 ft. 5 in. Bedecked with jewels, the queen rests her hand on the globe, an allusion to its circumnavigation by her vice-admiral, Sir Francis Drake. In the background at the right, the Spanish Armada sinks into the Atlantic amidst the “Protestant winds” of a fierce storm.
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Elizabethan London played host to groups of traveling actors (or “strolling players”) who performed in public spaces or for generous patrons. In the late sixteenth centu- ry, a number of playhouses were built along the Thames River across from the city of London. Begun in 1599, the Globe, which held between 2,000 and 3,000 spectators, offered all levels of society access to professional theater (Figure 19.19). The open-air structure consisted of three tiers of galleries and standing room for commoners (known as “groundlings”) at the cost of only a penny—one-sixth of the price of a seat in the covered gallery. The projecting, rectangular stage, some 40 feet wide, included balconies (for musicians and special scenes such as required in Romeo and Juliet), exits to dressing areas, and a trapdoor (used for rising spirits and for burial scenes, such as required in Hamlet). Stage props were basic, but costumes were favored, and essential for the male actors who played the female roles—women were not permitted on the public stage. Performances were held in the afternoon and adver- tised by flying a flag above the theater roof. A globe, the signature logo, embellished the theater, along with a sign that read “Totus mundus agit histrionem” (loosely, “All the World’s a Stage”). The bustling crowd that attended the theater—some of whom stood through two or more hours of performance—often ate and drank as they enjoyed the
most cosmopolitan entertainment of their time. A recon- struction of the Globe playhouse, located on the south bank of the Thames River, opened in 1997.
Shakespeare’s Plays In Shakespeare’s time, theater ranked below poetry as a literary genre. As popular entertainment, however, Shakespeare’s plays earned high acclaim in London’s the- atrical community. Thanks to the availability of printed editions, the Bard of Stratford was familiar with the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Plautus and Terence. He knew the popular medieval morality plays that addressed the contest between good and evil, as well as the popular improvisational form of Italian comic theater known as the commedia dell’arte, which made use of stock or stereotypical characters. All of these resources came to shape the texture of his plays. For his plots, Shakespeare drew largely on Classical history, medieval chronicles, and contemporary romances.
Like Machiavelli, Shakespeare was an avid reader of ancient and medieval history, as well as a keen observer of his own complex age; but the stories his sources provided became mere springboards for the exploration of human nature. His history plays, such as Henry V and Richard III, celebrate England’s medieval past and its rise to power
Figure 19.19 Globe playhouse, London, 1599–1613. Architectural reconstruction by C. WALTER HODGES, 1948.
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under the Tudors. The concerns of these plays, however, are not exclusively historical; rather, they explore the ways in which individuals behave under pressure: the weight of kingly responsibilities on mere humans and the difficulties of reconciling royal obligations and human aspirations.
Shakespeare’s comedies, which constitute about one- half of his plays, deal with such popular themes as the battle of the sexes, rivalry among lovers, and mistaken identities. But here too, in such plays as Much Ado About Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well, and The Taming of the Shrew, it is Shakespeare’s characters—their motivations exposed, their weaknesses and strengths laid bare—that command our attention.
It is in the tragedies, and especially the tragedies of his mature career—Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear— that Shakespeare achieved the concentration of thought and language that have made him the greatest English playwright of all time. Human flaws and failings—jealousy, greed, ambition, insecurity, and self-deception—give sub- stance to most of Shakespeare’s plays, but in these last tragedies they become definitive: they drive the action of the play. They are, in short, immediate evidence of the playwright’s efforts to probe the psychological forces that motivate human action.
No discussion of Shakespeare’s plays can substitute for the experience of live performance. Yet, in focusing on two of the late tragedies, Hamlet and Othello, it is possible to isolate Shakespeare’s principal contributions to the humanistic tradition. These lie in the areas of character development and in the brilliance of the language with which characters are brought to life. Despite occasional passages in prose and rhymed verse, Shakespeare’s plays were written in blank verse. This verse form was popular among Renaissance writers because, like Classical poetry, it was unrhymed, and it closely approximated the rhythms of vernacular speech. In Shakespeare’s hands, the English language took on a breadth of expression and a majesty of eloquence that has rarely been matched to this day.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet Hamlet, the world’s most quoted play, belongs to the popu- lar Renaissance genre of revenge tragedy; the story itself came to Shakespeare from the history of medieval Denmark. Hamlet, the young heir to the Danish throne, learns that his uncle has murdered his father and married his mother in order to assume the throne; the burden of avenging his father falls squarely on his shoulders. The arc of the play follows Hamlet’s inability to take action—his melancholic lack of resolve that, in due course, results in the deaths of his mother (Gertrude), his betrothed (Ophelia), her father (Polonius), the king (Claudius), and, finally, Hamlet himself.
Shakespeare’s protagonist differs from the heroes of ancient and medieval times: Hamlet lacks the sense of obli- gation to country and community, the religious loyalties, and the clearly defined spiritual values that impassioned Gilgamesh, Achilles, and Roland. He represents a new, more modern personality, afflicted by a self-questioning and
brooding skepticism. Though sunk in melancholy, he shares Pico della Mirandola’s view (see Reading 16.4) that human nature is freely self-formed by human beings themselves. Hamlet marvels, “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and mov- ing how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals.” Nevertheless he concludes on a note of utter skepticism, “And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” (Act II, ii, ll. 303–309). It is in the oral examination of his innermost thoughts—the soliloquy—that Hamlet most fully reveals himself. He ques- tions the motives for meaningful action and the impulses that prevent him from action; at the same time, he contem- plates the futility of all human action.
From Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1602)
Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, lords.
King: And can you by no drift of conference 1 Get from him why he puts on this confusion, Grating so harshly all his days of quiet With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
Rosencrantz: He does confess he feels himself distracted, But from what cause ’a will by no means speak.
Guildenstern: Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, But with a crafty madness keeps aloof When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state.
Queen: Did he receive you well? 10 Rosencrantz: Most like a gentleman. Guildenstern: But with much forcing of his disposition. Rosencrantz: Niggard of question, but of our demands
Most free in his reply. Queen: Did you assay him
To any pastime? Rosencrantz: Madam, it so fell out that certain players
We o’erraught on the way. Of these we told him, And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it. They are here about the court, And, as I think, they have already order 20 This night to play before him.
Polonius: ’Tis most true, And he beseeched me to entreat Your Majesties To hear and see the matter.
King: With all my heart, and it doth much content me To hear him so inclined. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge
III.1. Location: The castle. 1 drift of conference directing of conversation 7 forward willing Sounded questioned 12 disposition inclination 13 Niggard stingy question conversation 14 assay try to win 17 o’erraught overtook 26 edge incitement
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And drive his purpose into these delights. Rosencrantz: We shall, my lord.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. King: Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, That he, as ’twere by accident, may here 30 Affront Ophelia. Her father and myself, lawful espials, Will so bestow ourselves that seeing, unseen, We may of their encounter frankly judge, And gather by him, as he is behaved, If ’t be th’ affliction of his love or no That thus he suffers for.
Queen: I shall obey you. And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish That your good beauties be the happy cause Of Hamlet’s wildness. So shall I hope your virtues 40 Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your honors.
Ophelia: Madam, I wish it may. [Exit Queen.]
Polonius: Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves. [To Ophelia.] Read on this
book, [giving her a book] That show of such an exercise may color Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this— ’Tis too much proved—that with devotion’s visage And pious action we do sugar o’er The devil himself.
King [aside]: O, ’tis too true! 50 How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden!
Polonius: I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord. [The King and Polonius withdraw.]
Enter Hamlet. [Ophelia pretends to read a book.] Hamlet: To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles 60 And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. ’Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life. 70 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn 80 No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.—Soft you now, The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in thy orisons 90 Be all my sins remembered.
Ophelia: Good my lord, How does your honor for this many a day?
Hamlet: I humbly thank you; well, well, well. Ophelia: My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longèd long to redeliver. I pray you, now receive them. [She offers tokens.]
Hamlet: No, not I, I never gave you aught. Ophelia: My honored lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, 100 Take these again, for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord. [She gives tokens.]
Hamlet: Ha, ha! Are you honest? Ophelia: My lord? Hamlet: Are you fair? Ophelia: What means your lordship? Hamlet: That if you be honest and fair, your honesty
should admit no discourse to your beauty.
68 shuffled sloughed, cast Coil turmoil 69 respect consideration 70 of . . . life so long-lived, something we willingly endure for so long (alsosuggesting that long life is itself a calamity) 72 contumely insolent abuse 73 disprized unvalued 74 office officialdom spurns insults 75 of . . . takes receives from unworthy persons 76 quietus acquittance; here, death 77 a bare bodkin a mere dagger, unsheathed fardels burdens 80 bourn frontier, boundary-Pic credit 85 native hue natural color, complexion 86 cast tinge, shade of color 87 pitch height (as of a falcon’s flight) moment importance 88 regard respect, consideration currents courses 89 Soft you i.e., wait a minute, gently 90 orisons prayers 104 honest (1) truthful (2) chaste 106 fair (1) beautiful (2) just, honorable 108 your honesty your chastity 109 discourse to familiar dealings with
29 closely privately 31 Affront confront, meet 32 espials spies 41 wonted accustomed 43 Gracious Your Grace (i.e., the king) 44 bestow conceal 45 exercise religious exercise (The book she reads is one of devotion) color give a plausible appearance to 46 loneliness being alone 47 too much proved too often shown to be true, too often practiced 53 to compared to the thing i.e., the cosmetic 56 s.d. withdraw (The king and Polonius may retire behind an arras. The stage directions specify that they “enter” again near the end of the scene.) 59 slings missiles 66 rub (Literally, an obstacle in the game of bowls)
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Q What profound question does Hamlet address in his soliloquy?
Q What conclusion does Ophelia reach at the end of her conversation with Hamlet?
CHAPTER 19 Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order 29
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Ophelia: Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce 110 than with honesty?
Hamlet: Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives if proof. I did love you once.
Ophelia: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Hamlet: You should not have believed me, for virtue
cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. 120
Ophelia: I was the more deceived. Hamlet: Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. 130 Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?
Ophelia: At home, my lord. Hamlet: Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may
play the fool nowhere but in ’s own house. Farewell. Ophelia: O, help him, you sweet heavens! Hamlet: If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you 140 make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.
Ophelia: Heavenly powers, restore him! Hamlet: I have heard of your paintings too, well
enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on ’t; it hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriage. Those that are married already—all but 150 one—shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. Exit.
Ophelia: O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue,
sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mold of form, Th’ observed of all observers, quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason 160 Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh, That unmatched form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me, T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Enter King and Polonius. King: Love? His affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood, And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger; which for to prevent, 170 I have in quick determination Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England For the demand of our neglected tribute. Haply the seas and countries different With variable objects shall expel This something-settled matter in his heart, Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. What think you on ’t?
Polonius: It shall do well. But yet do I believe The origin and commencement of his grief 180 Sprung from neglected love.—How now, Ophelia? You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said; We heard it all.—My lord, do as you please, But, if you hold it fit, after the play
Let his queen-mother all alone entreat him To show his grief. Let her be round with him; And I’ll be placed, so please you, in the ear Of all their conference. If she find him not, To England send him, or confine him where Your wisdom best shall think.
King: It shall be so. 190 Madness in great ones must not unwatched go. Exeunt.
110–111 commerce dealings, intercourse 114 his its 115 sometime formerly a paradox a view opposite to commonly held opinion the time the present age 119 inoculate graft, be engrafted to 119–120 but . . . it that we do not still have about us a taste of the old stock, i.e., retain our sinfulness 122 nunnery convent (with possibly an awareness that the word was also used derisively to denote a brothel) 123 indifferent honest reasonably virtuous 126 beck command 140 monsters (An illusion to the horns of a cuckold) you i.e., you women 146 jig dance amble move coyly 147 you nickname . . .creatures i.e., you give trendy names to things in place of their God-given names 147–148 make . . . ignorance i.e., excuse your affectation on the grounds of pretended ignorance 148 on ‘t of it
155 expectancy hope rose ornament 156 The glass . . . form the mirror of true self-fashioning and the pattern of courtly behavior 157 Th’ observed . . . observers i.e., the center of attention and honorin the court 159 music musical, sweetly uttered 162 blown blooming 163 Blasted withered ecstasy madness 165 affections emotions, feelings 168 sits on brood sits like a bird on a nest, about to hatch mischief (line 169) 169 doubt fear disclose disclosure, hatching 172 set it down resolved 173 For . . . of to demand 175 variable objects various sights and surroundings to divert him 176 This something . . . heart the strange matter settled in his heart 177 still continually 178 From . . . himself out of his matural manner 185 queen-mother queen and mother 186 round blunt 188 find him not fails to discover what is troubling him
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Shakespeare’s Othello The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice was based on a story from a collection of tales published in Italy in the sixteenth century. The life of the handsome and distin- guished Othello, an African soldier whose leadership in the Venetian wars against the Turks has brought him heroic esteem, takes a tragic turn when his ensign Iago beguiles him into thinking that his beautiful wife Desdemona has betrayed him with another man. Enraged with jealousy, Othello destroys the person he loves most in the world, his wife; and, in the unbearable grief of his error, he takes his own life as well. While Othello’s jealousy is the flaw that brings about his doom, it is Iago whose unmitigated evil drives the action of the plot. Conniving Iago is the Machiavellian villain, “a demi-devil,” as he is called in the play. In contrast, Desdemona is the paragon of virtue and beauty. Such characters hark back to the allegorical figures in medieval morality plays, but Shakespeare transforms these figures into complex personalities, allowing them full freedom to falter and fail through their own actions.
That Shakespeare made a black man the hero of one of his tragedies is significant, since his treatment of the char- acter seems to have challenged Elizabethan stereotypes. Medieval and Renaissance literature described anyone who was black as vengeful, hot-blooded, and evil, black being the color traditionally associated with the devil. But in Shakespeare’s play, the Moor (the Elizabethan name for any African) is unwitting, ingenuous, and pure, while Iago, the white man who confounds him, is the personification of evil. Perhaps more significant than this irony is Shakespeare’s implication that underlying the most untainted acts of heroism and the purest emotions of love is the dark possibility of misguided action that leads to self- defeat. Shakespeare’s plays generally preach no explicit moral; rather, they suggest that, in a universe in which order and disorder coexist, human choices play a vital and poten- tially destructive part. The nihilism that darkens The Tragedy of Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet was unthinkable before the Modern Era.
From Shakespeare’s Othello (1604)
Othello, Act IV, Scene III Enter Othello, Lodovico, Desdemona, Emilia, and Attendants.
Lodovico: I do beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further. 1 Othello: O, pardon me; ’twill do me good to walk. Lodovico: Madam, good night. I humbly thank your
ladyship. Desdemona: Your honor is most welcome. Othello: Will you walk, sir?
O, Desdemona! Desdemona: My lord? Othello: Get you to bed on th’ instant; I will be return’d
forthwith. Dismiss your attendant there. Look ’t be done.
Desdemona: I will, my lord. Exit [Othello, with Lodovico and Attendants].
Emilia: How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did. 10 Desdemona: He says he will return incontinent,
And hath commanded me to go to bed, And bade me to dismiss you.
Emilia: Dismiss me? Desdemona: It was his bidding; therefore, good Emilia,
Give me my nightly wearing, and adieu. We must not now displease him.
Emilia: I would you had never seen him! Desdemona: So would not I. My love doth so approve him,
That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns— Prithee unpin me—have grace and favor in them. 20
[Emilia prepares Desdemona for bed.] Emilia: I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed. Desdemona: All’s one. Good faith, how foolish are our
minds! If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me In one of those same sheets.
Emilia: Come, come, you talk. Desdemona: My mother had a maid call’d Barbary.
She was in love, and he she lov’d prov’d mad And did forsake her. She had a song of “Willow,” An old thing ’twas, but it express’d her fortune, And she died singing it. That song tonight Will not go from my mind; I have much to do 30 But to go hang my head all at one side And sing it like poor Barbary. Prithee, dispatch.
Emilia: Shall I go fetch your nightgown? Desdemona: No, unpin me here.
This Lodovico is a proper man. Emilia: A very handsome man. Desdemona: He speaks well. Emilia: I know a lady in Venice would have walk’d barefoot
to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip. Desdemona [Singing]:
“The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow; 40
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow.
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur’d her moans; Sing willow, willow, willow;
Her salt tears fell from her, and soft’ned the stones”— Lay by these.
[Singing]: “Sing willow, willow, willow”— Prithee, hie thee; he’ll come anon.
[Singing] “Sing all a green willow must be my garland. Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve”— 50
Nay, that’s not next.—Hark! Who is ’t that knocks? Emilia: It’s the wind. Desdemona [Singing]
“I call’d my love false love; but what said he then? Sing willow, willow, willow;
IV.iii Location: The citadel. 11 incontinent immediately
19 stubbornness roughness checks rebukes 26 mad wild, i.e., faithless 30–31 I. . . hang I can scarcely keep myself from hanging 48 hie thee hurry
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Q How do Emilia’s views on women as wives compare with those of Desdemona?
Chronology
Glossary
CHAPTER 19 Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order 31
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If I court moe women, you’ll couch with moe men”— So, get thee gone; good night. Mine eyes do itch; Doth that bode weeping?
Emilia: ’Tis neither here nor there. Desdemona: I have heard it said so. O, these men, these
men! Dost thou in conscience think—tell me, Emilia— That there be women do abuse their husbands 60 In such gross kind?
Emilia: There be some such, no question. Desdemona: Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world? Emilia: Why, would not you? Desdemona: No, by this heavenly light! Emilia: Nor I neither by this heavenly light; I might do
’t as well i’ th’ dark. Desdemona: Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the
world? Emilia: The world’s a huge thing. It is a great price
For a small vice. Desdemona: Good troth, I think thou wouldst not. Emilia: By my troth, I think I should; and undo ’t when I
had done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint- 70 ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty exhibition; but, for all the whole world—’ud’s pity, who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for ’t.
Desdemona: Beshrew me if I would do such a wrong for the whole world.
Emilia: Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’ th’ world; and
having the world for your labor, ’tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right. 80
Desdemona: I do not think there is any such woman. Emilia: Yes, a dozen; and as many to th’ vantage as
would store the world they play’d for. But I do think it is their husbands’ faults If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties, And pour our treasures into foreign laps, Or else break out in peevish jealousies, Throwing restraint upon us? Or say they strike us, Or scant our former having in despite? Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace, Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know 90 Their wives have sense like them. They see, and smell, And have their palates both for sweet and sour, As husbands have. What is it that they do When they change us for others? Is it sport? I think it is. And doth affection breed it? I think it doth. Is ’t frailty that thus errs? It is so too. And have not we affections, Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have? Then let them use us well; else let them know, The ills we do, their ills instruct us so. 100
Desdemona: Good night, good night. God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend! Exeunt.
1450 Gutenberg perfects the printing press 1517 Luther posts the Ninety-Five Theses 1524 German Peasant Revolts 1526 Henry VIII establishes the Anglican Church 1588 England defeats the Spanish Armada
70–71 joint-ring a ring made in separate halves 71 lawn fine linen 72 exhibition gift 73 ‘ud’s i.e., God’s 82 to th’ vantage in addition, to boot store populate 85 pour . . . laps i.e., are unfaithful, give what is rightfully ours (semen) to other women 88 scant . . . despite reduce our allowance to spite us 89 have galls i.e., are capable of resenting injury and insult 91 sense physical sense 101 uses habit, practice 102 Not . . . mend i.e., not to learn bad conduct from others’ badness (as Emilia has suggested women learn from men), but to mend my ways by perceiving what badness is, making spiritual benefit out of evil and adversity
blank verse unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, that is, lines consisting of ten syllables each with accents on every second syllable
chorale a congregational hymn, first sung in the Lutheran church
couplet two successive lines of verse with similar end-rhymes
engraving the process by which lines are incised on a metal plate, then inked and printed; see Figure 19.10
essay a short piece of expository prose that examines a single subject
genre painting art depicting scenes from everyday life; not to be confused with “genre,” a term used to designate a particular category in literature or art, such as the essay (in literature) and portraiture (in painting)
picaresque novel a prose genre that narrates the comic misadventures of a roguish hero
quatrain a four-line stanza
woodcut a relief printing process by which all parts of a design are cut away except those that will be inked and printed; see Figure 19.9
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The Temper of Reform • The printing press facilitated the rise of popular education and
encouraged individuals to form their own opinions by reading for themselves. The new print technology would be essential to the success of the Protestant Reformation.
• The Netherlandish religious movement known as the devotio moderna harnessed the dominant strains of anticlericalism, lay piety, and mysticism, even as it coincided with the revival of Classical studies in Northern Europe.
• Erasmus, the leading Christian humanist, led the critical study of the Bible and writings of the church fathers. Northern humanists brought to their efforts the same intellectual fervor that the Italian humanists had applied to their examination of Plato and Cicero.
The Protestant Reformation • Across Germany, the sale of indulgences to benefit of the
Church of Rome provoked harsh criticism, especially by those who saw the luxuries of the papacy as a betrayal of apostolic ideals.
• Martin Luther was the voice of the Protestant Reformation. In his sermons and essays he criticized the worldliness of the Church and bemoaned “the misery and wretchedness of Christendom.”
• Luther’s greatest attempt at reforming the Catholic Church came in the form of his Ninety-Five Theses (1517), which listed his grievances against the Church and called for reform based on scriptural precedent.
• Luther’s teachings, with the aid of the printing press, circulated throughout Europe, giving rise to other Protestant sects, including Calvinism and Anabaptism, and, in England, the Anglican Church.
• The Lutheran chorale became the vehicle of Protestant piety.
Northern Renaissance Art • Even before the North felt the impact of the Italian Renaissance,
Netherlandish artists initiated a painting style rich in realistic detail. Jan van Eyck’s pioneering use of thin oil glazes captured the naturalistic effects of light on objects that, while tangible, also functioned as sacred symbols.
• The paintings of Hieronymus Bosch infused traditional religious subjects with a unique combination of moralizing motifs drawn
from illuminated manuscripts, pilgrimage badges, and the popular pseudo-sciences: astrology and alchemy.
• The Protestant Reformation, which rejected relics and sacred images as reflections of superstition and idolatry, favored devotional, and especially biblical, subjects. The two new graphic techniques, woodcutting and engraving, facilitated the mass production of devotional images that functioned as book illustrations and individual prints.
• A growing middle class provided patronage for portraiture, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life, subjects that were pursued by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein, and Pieter Brueghel. Nevertheless, deeply felt religious sentiment persisted in many Northern artworks, such as Matthias Grünewald’s rivetingly expressive Isenheim Altarpiece.
Sixteenth-Century Literature • Northern Renaissance writers took a generally skeptical and
pessimistic view of human nature. Erasmus, More, and Rabelais lampooned individual and societal failings and described the ruling influence of folly in all aspects of human conduct.
• In France, Montaigne devised the essay as an intimate form of rational reflection, while in Spain Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote, wittily attacked feudal values and outmoded ideals.
• Northern Renaissance literature was, in many ways, a literature of protest and reform, and one whose dominant themes reflect the tension between medieval and modern ideas.
Shakespeare • Shakespeare emerged during the golden age of England, which
flourished under the rule of Elizabeth I. He produced thirty-seven plays—comedies, tragedies, romances, and histories—as well as 154 sonnets and other poems. His work, along with that of other Northern artists and writers, brought the West to the threshold of modernity.
• The most powerful form of literary expression to evolve in the late sixteenth century was secular drama. In the hands of William Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama became the ideal vehicle for exposing the psychological forces that motivate human behavior.
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Summary of the Renaissance and the Reformation
34 SUMMARY OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION
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The following paragraphs provide an overview of the Renaissance
and Reformation, the two movements that ushered in the modern
era in the West. This summary of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
culture (dealt with in detail in Book 3) offers some background to
the materials contained in Books 4, 5, and 6, which deal with the
modern era in a global context.
Classical Humanism The effort to recover, edit, and study ancient Greek and Latin manuscripts, a movement known as Classical human- ism, first occurred in fourteenth-century Italy, where it marked the beginnings of the Renaissance. This revival of Greco-Roman culture was to spread throughout Western Europe over the following 300 years. Petrarch, the father of humanism, provided the model for Renaissance scholar- ship and education. He promoted the study of the classic Greek and Latin writers, especially Cicero, encouraged textual criticism, and wrote introspective and passionate sonnets that were revered and imitated for centuries to come.
The city of Florence was the unrivaled center of Classical humanism in the first 150 years of the Renaissance. A thriving commercial and financial center dominated by a well-to-do middle class, Florence found political and cultural leadership in such wealthy and sophisticated families as the Medici. Classical humanism helped to cultivate a sense of civic pride, a new respect for oral and written eloquence, and a set of personal values that sustained the ambitions of the rising merchant class.
Fifteenth-century humanists carried on Petrarch’s quest to recover the Classical past. Ficino translated the entire body of Plato’s writings, while Pico’s investigations in Hebrew and Arabic led him to believe that the world’s great minds shared a single, universal truth. Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man proclaimed the centrality of humankind and defended the unlimited freedom of the individual within the universal scheme.
Renaissance humanists cultivated the idea of the good life. Following Alberti’s maxim, “A man can do anything he wants,” they applied the moral precepts of the Classical past to such contemporary pursuits as diplomacy, politics, and the arts. While Petrarch and his peers were concerned primarily with the recovery of Classical manuscripts and the production of critical editions, Alberti, Castiglione, and Machiavelli infused scholarship with action. Allying their scrutiny of the past with an empirical study of the present, they fostered a heroic ideal of the individual that surpassed all Classical models. For Alberti, wealth and authority proceeded from the exercise of virtù; for Castiglione, the superior breed of human being was l’uomo
universale, the well-rounded person; for Machiavelli, only a ruthless master of power politics could ensure the survival of the state. Alberti, Castiglione, and Machiavelli were representative of the larger group of Renaissance human- ists who envisioned self-knowledge and individualism as crucial to success in the secular world. Their views shaped the modern character of the humanistic tradition in the European West.
Renaissance Artists The artists of the Renaissance brought a scientific curiosi- ty to the study of the natural world and untiringly investi- gated its operations. Such Early Renaissance artists as Donatello, Pollaiuolo, Masaccio, and Brunelleschi studied the mechanics of the human body, the effects of light on material substances, and the physical appearance of objects in three-dimensional space. At the same time, Renaissance artists were masters of invention: they perfected the tech- nique of oil painting, formulated the laws of perspective, and applied the principles of Classical art to the represen- tation of Christian and contemporary subjects. Patronized by a wealthy middle class, they revived such this-worldly genres as portraiture and gave new attention to the nude body as an object of natural beauty.
The art of the High Renaissance marks the culmina- tion of a hundred-year effort to wed the techniques of naturalistic representation to Classical ideals of proportion and order. Leonardo da Vinci, the quintessential artist– scientist, tried to reconcile empirical experience with abstract principles of design. The compositions of Raphael, with their monumental scale and unity of design, became standards by which Western paintings would be judged for centuries. The multitalented Michelangelo brought a heroic idealism to the treatment of traditional Christian and Classical themes. In Venice, Titian’s painterly han- dling of the reclining female nude represented a new and more sensuous naturalism. The centrally planned buildings of Bramante and Palladio realized the architectural ideals of harmony, balance, and clarity pursued in the Early Renaissance by Brunelleschi and Alberti.
The Renaissance produced an equally splendid flower- ing in music, especially among Franco-Flemish composers. Secular compositions began to outnumber religious ones. The techniques of imitation and word painting infused both religious and secular music with homogeneity and increased expressiveness. Printed sheet music helped to popularize the madrigal and other secular, vernacular song forms. Instrumental music and dance now emerged as independent genres. Like their Classical predecessors, Renaissance artists placed human concerns and feelings at the center of their creative efforts. A spirit of optimism, combined with intellectual curiosity and increasing world- liness, fueled the early modern era in the West.
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Shattering the Old Order: Protest and Reform The sixteenth century was a time of rapid change marked by growing secularism, advancing technology, and European overseas expansion. It was also an age of profound religious and social upheaval. Northern humanists led by Erasmus of Rotterdam studied early Christian literature and urged a return to the teachings of Jesus and the early church fathers. Demands for Church reform went hand in hand with the revival of early Christian writings to culminate in the Protestant Reformation.
Aided by Gutenberg’s printing press, Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Church of Rome. He held that Scripture was the sole basis for religious interpreta- tion and emphasized the idea of salvation through faith in God’s grace rather than through good works. As Lutheranism and other Protestant sects proliferated throughout Europe, the unity of medieval Christendom was shattered.
The music and the art of the Northern Renaissance reflect the mood of religious reform. In music, the Lutheran chorale became the vehicle of Protestant piety. In art, the increasing demand for illustrated devotional literature and private devotional art stimulated the produc- tion of woodcuts and metal engravings. The works of Dürer and Grünewald exhibit the Northern Renaissance passion for realistic detail and graphic expression, while the fantas- tic imagery of Hieronymus Bosch suggests a pessimistic and typically Northern concern with sin and death. Bosch’s preoccupation with the palpable forces of evil found its counterpart in the witch hunts of the sixteenth century. In painting, too, such secular subjects as portraiture, land- scapes, and scenes of everyday life mirrored the tastes of a
growing middle-class audience for an unidealized record of the visual world.
Northern Renaissance writers took a generally skeptical and pessimistic view of human nature. Erasmus, More, and Rabelais lampooned individual and societal failings and described the ruling influence of folly in all aspects of human conduct. In France, Montaigne devised the essay as an intimate form of rational reflection. In Spain, Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote, wittily attacked outmoded feudal values and ideals. The most powerful form of literary expression to evolve in the late sixteenth century, however, was secular drama. In the hands of William Shakespeare, the play became the ideal vehicle for recon- ciling personality and circumstance. Shakespeare’s tragedies (as opposed, for instance, to Montaigne’s essays) reveal the human condition through overt action, rather than through private reflection.
By the end of the sixteenth century, national loyalties, religious fanaticism, and commercial rivalries for control of trade with Africa, Asia, and the Americas had splintered the European community. These conditions rendered ever more complex the society of the West. And yet, on the threshold of modernity, the challenges to the human con- dition—economic survival, communality, self-knowledge, and the inevitability of death—were no less pressing than they had been 2000 years earlier. If the technology of the sixteenth century offered greater control over nature than ever before, it also provided more devastating weapons of war and mass destruction. In the centuries to come, the humanistic tradition would be shaped and reshaped by changing historical circumstances that would put the West in a position of increasing world dominance.
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20 The Catholic Reformation and the Baroque Style 37
21 Absolute Power and the Aristocratic Style 60
22 The Baroque in the Protestant North 97
23 The Scientific Revolution and the New Learning 112
24 The Enlightenment: The Promise of Reason 133
25 The Limits of Reason 152
26 Eighteenth-Century Art, Music, and Society 175
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Figure 20.1 CARAVAGGIO, The Supper at Emmaus, ca. 1600. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 7 in. � 6 ft. 51⁄2 in. As Jesus raises his hand to bless the bread and wine, his two disciples recognize him as the Christ. Caravaggio dispenses with the traditional halo, but enshrouds Jesus with a dark shadow. Bread, fowl, and fruit are recreated in vivid realistic detail.
“So sweet are the colloquies of love which pass between the soul and God …” Saint Teresa of Avila
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The early modern era, often called the Age of the Baroque, was a
time of deep contradictions. In the West, fervent, even mystical,
religious sentiment vied with dramatic advances in science and
scientific methods of investigation. Newly developed theories of
constitutional government contended with firmly entrenched
claims to monarchy. The rising wealth of a small segment of the
population came to contrast with widespread poverty and old
aristocratic privilege. Overseas exploration and travel produced a
broader and more accurate geographic perception of the planet.
All of these phenomena provided the context for the emergence
of the style known as “the Baroque.” Characterized by theatrical
expressiveness and spatial grandeur, the Baroque became the
hallmark of an age of vigorous expansion, fueled by the human
ambition to master nature on a colossal scale. In Italy, it mirrored
the religious fervor of the Catholic Reformation. In France and
elsewhere among authoritarian regimes, it worked to glorify royal
wealth and majesty. In Northern Europe, it conveyed the self-
reflective spirit of Protestant devotionalism. Throughout the
West, it embraced the new, dynamic view of the universe as set
forth by proponents of the Scientific Revolution. Each of these
aspects of the Baroque will be examined in the following chap-
ters, beginning with its earliest phase during the advent of the
Catholic Reformation.
The Protestant Reformation cre- ated a religious upheaval unlike any other in the history of Western Christendom. Luther’s criticism of the Roman Catholic
Church had encouraged religious devotion free of papal authority and had prepared the way for the rise of other Protestant sects (see chapter 19). The rival religious beliefs that fragmented Western Europe quickly accelerated into armed combat. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which ended with the establishment of Protestantism throughout most of Northern Europe, caused the death of some five million Christians. During the sixteenth century, as Protestant sects began to lure increasing numbers of Christians away from Roman Catholicism, the Church launched an evangelical campaign to win back to Catholicism those who had strayed to Protestantism, a movement known as the Counter-Reformation. Even earlier, however, the Church had begun an internal pro- gram of papal and monastic reform, known as the Catholic Reformation. These two interdependent movements
ultimately produced a renewed Catholicism that empha- sized a return to the original ideals of the Church, ensuring its survival in the modern world.
Loyola and the Jesuits The impetus for renewal came largely from fervent Spanish Catholics, the most notable of whom was Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556). A soldier in the army of King Charles I of Spain (the Holy Roman emperor Charles V; 1500–1558), Loyola brought to Catholicism the same iron will he had exercised on the battlefield. After his right leg was frac- tured by a French cannonball at the siege of Pamplona, Loyola became a religious teacher and a hermit, traveling lame and barefoot to Jerusalem in an effort to convert Muslims to Christianity. In the 1530s he founded the Society of Jesus, the most important of the many new monastic orders associated with the Catholic Reformation. The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, followed Loyola in calling for a militant return to fundamental Catholic dogma and the strict enforcement of traditional church teachings. In addition to the monastic vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, the Jesuits took an oath of allegiance to the pope, whom they served as soldiers of Christ.
Under Loyola’s leadership, the Jesuit order became the most influential missionary society of early modern times. Rigorously trained, its members acted as preachers, confes- sors, and teachers—leaders in educational reform and moral discipline. Throughout Europe, members of the newly formed order worked as missionaries to win back those who had strayed from “Mother Church.” The Jesuits were fairly successful in stamping out Protestantism in much of France, southern Germany, and other parts of Europe. But their reach extended further: as pioneers in learning the languages and customs of India, China, and Japan, the Jesuits were the prime intermediaries between Europe and Asia from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. In the Americas, which became prime targets for Jesuit activity, missionaries mastered Native American tribal lan- guages and proceeded to convert thousands to Roman Catholicism. Their success in Mexico and Central and South America stamped these parts of the world with a dis- tinctive cultural character.
The Jesuit order was a fascinating amalgam of two elements: mysticism and militant religious zeal. The first emphasized the personal and intuitive experience of God, while the second involved an attitude of unquestioned submission to the Church as the absolute source of truth. These two aspects of Jesuit training—mysticism and militancy—are reflected in Loyola’s influential handbook, the Spiritual Exercises. In his introductory observations, Loyola explains that the spiritual exercises should do for the soul what physical exercise does for the body. As aids to the development of perfect spiritual discipline, these devotional exercises—each of which should occupy a full hour’s time—engage the body in perfecting the soul. In the Fifth Exercise, a meditation on Hell, each of the five sens- es is summoned to heighten the mystical experience:
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READING 20.1
Q What is meant by “the true attitude of mind?” What by “the church militant?”
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FIRST POINT: This will be to see in imagination the vast fires, and the souls enclosed, as it were, in bodies of fire.
SECOND POINT: To hear the wailing, the howling, cries, and blasphemies against Christ our Lord and against His saints.
THIRD POINT: With the sense of smell to perceive the smoke, the sulphur, the filth, and corruption.
FOURTH POINT: To taste the bitterness of tears, sadness, and remorse of conscience.
FIFTH POINT: With the sense of touch to feel the flames which envelop and burn the souls.
Loyola also insists on an unswerving commitment to traditional church teachings. Among his “rules for think- ing with the Church” is the admonition that Christians put aside all judgments of their own and remain obedient to the “holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.”
From Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (1548)
The following rules should be observed to foster the true attitude of mind we ought to have in the church militant. 1 We must put aside all judgment of our own, and keep the mind
ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.
2 We should praise sacramental confession, the yearly reception of the Most Blessed Sacrament, and praise more highly monthly reception, and still more weekly Communion, provided requisite and proper dispositions are present.
3 We ought to praise the frequent hearing of Mass, the singing of hymns, psalmody, and long prayers whether in the church or outside; likewise, the hours arranged at fixed times for the whole Divine Office, for every kind of prayer, and for the canonical hours.1
5 We must praise highly religious life, virginity, and continency; and matrimony ought not be praised as much as any of these.
5 We should praise vows of religion, obedience, poverty, chastity, and vows to perform other works . . . conducive to perfection. . . .
6 We should show our esteem for the relics of the saints by venerating them and praying to the saints. We should praise visits to the Station Churches,2 pilgrimages, indulgences, jubilees,3 crusade indults,4 and the lighting of candles in churches.
7 We must praise the regulations of the Church with regard to
fast and abstinence. . . . We should praise works of penance, not only those that are interior but also those that are exterior.
8 We ought to praise not only the building and adornment of churches, but also images and veneration of them according to the subject they represent.
9 Finally, we must praise all the commandments of the Church, and be on the alert to find reasons to defend them, and by no means in order to criticize them. . . .
13 If we wish to proceed securely in all things, we must hold fast to the following principle: What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines. For I must be convinced that in Christ our Lord, the bridegroom, and in His spouse the Church, only one Spirit holds sway, which governs and rules for the salvation of souls. For it is by the same Spirit and Lord who gave the Ten Commandments that our holy Mother Church is ruled and governed.
The Council of Trent Loyola’s affirmation of Roman Catholic doctrine anticipat- ed the actions of the Council of Trent, the general church council that met between 1545 and 1563 to make doctri- nal, ecclesiastical, and spiritual reforms. The Council of Trent reconfirmed all seven of the sacraments. It reassert- ed the basic tenets of Catholicism, including all theologi- cal matters that had been challenged by the Protestants. It set clear guidelines for the elimination of abuses among members of the clergy, emphasized preaching to the uned- ucated laity, and encouraged the regeneration of intellec- tual life within Catholic monasteries. Church leaders revived the activities of the Inquisition—the special court authorized to try and convict heretics (see chapter 12) and established the Index Expurgatorius, a list of books judged heretical and therefore forbidden to Catholic readers. Finally, the council approved a number of new religious orders, including the Jesuits, the Capuchins (an offshoot of the Franciscans notable as preachers and ministers to the poor), and the Ursulines (an order of females devoted to educating girls).
Over the course of more than ten years, Church reform- ers supported a broadly based Catholicism that emphasized the return to a personal relationship with Christ. At the same time, they encouraged an intuitive, even mystical, embrace of Mother Church. Although the Church of Rome would never again reassume the universal authority it had enjoyed during the Middle Ages, both its internal reforms and its efforts to rekindle the faith restored its dig- nity in the minds and hearts of its followers.
The evangelical activities of the Jesuits and other religious orders were widespread, but not uniformly successful. In China, where European traders were regarded as “ocean devils,” the Catholic missionaries developed a cordial
1 The eight times of the day appointed for special devotions; see chapters 9 and 15.
2 Churches with images representing the stages of Christ’s Passion. 3 A time of special solemnity, ordinarily every twenty-five years,
proclaimed by the pope; also, special indulgences granted during that time. The jubilee principle is based on a biblical injunction to free slaves, return land to its original owners, and leave fields untilled once every fifty years (Leviticus 25).
4 Church indulgences granted to Christian crusaders.
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Mexico, the faithful pay homage to the Madonna, who is shown standing on a crescent moon, surrounded by a coro- na of sunrays and angels bearing the colors of the Mexican flag. The votive figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe was enthusiastically promoted by the Jesuits beginning in the late sixteenth century, and her widespread popularity as protectress of Mexico has persisted even into modern times: in 1910, she was made an honorary general of the Mexican Revolution.
The ideals of the Catholic Reformation infused the arts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In literature, there appeared a new emphasis on heightened spirituality and on personal visionary experience. Like the Reformation itself, a number of its greatest mystics came from Spain. Juan de Yepes Alvarez, better known as Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591), left some of the finest religious poetry in the corpus of Spanish literature. His Dark Night of the Soul (1585) describes the journey of the soul from its bodily prison to spiritual union with God. A Carmelite priest and
relationship with the intellectual classes and succeeded in converting a number of Chinese scholars. By the eighteenth century, however, disputes between the Jesuits and the Dominicans over the veneration of Confucius (aggravated by papal condemnation of Confucian rites in 1744) weakened Catholic influence.
In Japan, the first Jesuit missionaries, admirers of Tokugawa culture (see chapter 21), diligently mastered the Japanese language and culture. While the Jesuits intro- duced the Japanese to European styles of painting and music, the Portuguese (and thereafter, Dutch and English) merchants brought commercial interests to Japan (see chapter 18), thus clouding the evangelical aims of the Jesuits with European material ambitions. The Jesuit efforts at conversion were also frustrated by rival Franciscan missionaries. Over time, the Jesuits fell into dis- favor with Japanese Buddhists, who came to view all Christians as potentially subversive to the traditional social order. By 1606, following decades of disruption caused by European efforts to win trading privileges in Japan, the Japanese outlawed Christianity. In 1624, follow- ing a wave of brutal persecutions of both European Christians and Japanese converts to Catholicism, the country expelled almost all Western foreigners from Japanese soil.
Christian evangelism in the Americas proved to be far more successful. In sixteenth-century Mexico, where Spanish political authority went largely unchallenged, Catholicism went hand in hand with colonization. The arrival of the Jesuits in 1571 followed that of the Augustinians, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans in a vast program of Christianization. Just as the convergence of Europeans and Native Americans came to produce a unique new “Latin American” population, so the blend of European Catholic and native religious traditions pro- duced a creolized Mexican culture. A formidable example of this phenomenon, and one that testifies to the powerful religious impact of Catholicism, is the Miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In 1531, ten years after the conquest of Mexico by Cortés, on the site of a former shrine to the Aztec mother-goddess, the Virgin Mary appeared before a simple Mexican peasant named Juan Diego. Speaking in the native Aztec tongue, she asked that a church honoring her be built on that site. When the local bishop asked for a sign to prove the truth of Juan’s story, the Virgin instruct- ed the peasant to gather roses (blooming miraculously in winter) and deliver them to the bishop. As the roses were unloaded from Juan’s cloak, the image of the Virgin was found imprinted on the fabric.
The legend of this miraculous apparition, commemorat- ed in hundreds of carved and painted images (Figure 20.2), became the basis for the most important religious cult in Mexican history: the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The colonial cult of Guadalupe worships the Virgin in the tra- ditional medieval guise of mother, intercessor, and protec- tor, but it also exalts her as the symbol of Mexican national consciousness. At her shrine—the goal of thousands of pil- grims each year—and at hundreds of chapels throughout
Figure 20.2 The Virgin of Guadalupe, 1746. Oil on wood. The cloak of Juan Diego bears the imprint of the Virgin surrounded by an illumined mandorla and the roses that miraculously fell before the bishop. The basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City remains the second most frequently visited religious shrine in the world.
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READING 20.2
Q Which strikes you as more effective: the written or the visual version of Saint Teresa’s vision? Why so?
READING 20.3
Q What is the nature of the love that Crashaw describes?
Q Which images in this poem contribute to its erotic undertone?
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friar, Saint John worked to eliminate moral laxity and restore absolute poverty in the monasteries. His efforts at establishing new Carmelite houses in Spain were shared by the Carmelite nun, Teresa of Avila.
Teresa of Avila The early life of Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) was spent founding religious houses and defending the Carmelite practice of going without shoes (as an expression of humil- ity). Traveling all over Spain, she became notorious as “the roving nun.” It was not until she was almost forty years old that her life as a visionary began. Teresa’s visions describe her firsthand experience of frequent visitations by Jesus Christ over a two-year period. Like the twelfth-century mystic, Hildegard of Bingen (see chapter 12), Teresa embraced the intuitive knowledge of God. But unlike Hildegard, whose writings engage natural and supernatural details, Teresa’s experience is physical (and explicitly sen- sory). Her love is the longing for oneness with God. In the Visions physical suffering evokes psychic bliss; and her union with the divine, as illustrated in the following excerpt, is couched in the language of erotic desire and ful- fillment. As the Lord’s flaming arrow is withdrawn from her body, Teresa is left “completely afire.”
From Saint Teresa’s Visions (1611)
It pleased the Lord that I should sometimes see the following 1 vision. I would see beside me, on my left hand, an angel in bodily form—a type of vision which I am not in the habit of seeing, except very rarely. Though I often see representations of angels, my visions of them are of the type which I first mentioned. It pleased the Lord that I should see this angel in the following way. He was not tall, but short, and very beautiful, his face so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest types of angel who seem to be all afire. They must be those who are called cherubim: they do not tell me their names 10 but I am well aware that there is a great difference between certain angels and others, and between these and others still, of a kind that I could not possibly explain. In his hands I sawa long golden spear and at the end of the iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it and he left me completely afire with a great love for God. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by this intense pain 20 that one can never wish to lose it, nor will one’s soul be content with anything less than God. It is not bodily pain, but spiritual, though the body has a share in it—indeed, a great share. So sweet are the colloquies of love which pass between the soul and God that if anyone thinks I am lying I beseech God, in His goodness, to give him the same experience. …
Crashaw The language of religious ecstasy also infused the poetry of the English Catholic Richard Crashaw (1613–1649). Born into a Protestant family, Crashaw converted to Catholicism early in life. His religious poems, written in Latin and English, reflect the dual influence of Loyola’s meditations and Teresa’s visions. At least two of his most lyrical pieces are dedicated to Saint Teresa: A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the Admirable Saint Teresa and The Flaming Heart, upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa, as She Is Usually Expressed with a Seraphim beside Her. The latter poem suggests that Crashaw was familiar with Bernini’s sculpted version of Teresa’s vision before it was publicly unveiled in Rome (Figure 20.3). Representative of this visionary sensibility, the last sixteen lines of The Flaming Heart, reproduced in Reading 20.3, are rhapsodic in their intense expression of personal emotion. Erasing boundaries between erotic and spiritual love, Crashaw pleads that Teresa ravish his soul, even as she has been ravished by God.
From Crashaw’s The Flaming Heart (1652)
O thou undaunted daughter of desires! By all thou dower of lights and fires; By all the eagle in thee, all the dove; By all thy lives and deaths of love; By thy large draughts of intellectual day, And by thy thirsts of love more large than they; By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire, By thy last morning’s draught of liquid fire; By the full kingdom of that final kiss That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His; By all the heavens thou hast in Him, Fair sister of the seraphim, By all of Him we have in thee; Leave nothing of myself in me! Let me so read thy life that I Unto all life of mine may die.
Mannerist Painting in Italy The religious zeal of the Catholic reformers inspired a tremendous surge of artistic activity, especially in Italy and Spain. In Venice and Rome, the centers of Italian cultural life, the clarity and order of High Renaissance art gave way to the visual eccentricities of Mannerism (from the Italian maniera, meaning “style”). Coined in the twentieth
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Figure 20.3 GIANLORENZO BERNINI, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1645–1652. Marble, height of group 11 ft. 6 in.
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century, the term “mannerism” describes an art more focused on style than content. Flourishing between ca. 1520 and 1610, and characterized by virtuosity in execu- tion, artificiality, and affectation, the style became a vehi- cle for the spiritual upheavals of its time. Mannerist artists brought a new level of psychological intensity (bordering on disquiet) to visual expression. Their works mirrored the
self-conscious spirituality and deep insecurities generated by Europe’s religious wars and political rivalries.
The Mannerist style is already evident in The Last Judgment painted by the sixty-year-old Michelangelo on the east wall of the Sistine Chapel (Figure 20.4). Between 1534 and 1541, only a few years after the armies of the Holy Roman Empire had sacked the city of Rome, Michelangelo
Figure 20.4 MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI, The Last Judgment (after restoration), 1536–1540. Fresco, 48 � 44 ft. Below the athletic figure of Christ sits Saint Bartholomew, who suffered martyrdom by being flayed alive. He holds a knife and his own flayed skin, on which some scholars see a self-portrait of Michelangelo.
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returned to the chapel whose ceiling he had painted some twenty years earlier with the optimistic vision of salvation. Now, in a mood of brooding pessimism, he filled the altar wall with agonized, writhing figures that press dramatically against one another. Surrounding the wrathful Christ are the Christian saints and martyrs, who carry the instru- ments of their torture, and throngs of the resurrected— originally depicted nude but in 1564, in the wake of
Catholic reform, draped to hide their genitals. Michelangelo has replaced the Classically proportioned figures, calm balance, and spatial clarity of High Renaissance painting with a more troubled and turbulent vision of salvation.
The traits of the Mannerist style can be seen best in the Madonna of the Long Neck (Figure 20.5) by Parmigianino (1503–1540). In this work, the traditional subject of
Madonna and Child is given a new mood of theatricality (compare Raphael’s Alba Madonna; see chapter 17). Perched precariously above a courtyard adorned with a col- umn that supports no super- structure, the unnaturally elongated Mother of God— her spidery fingers affectedly touching her chest—gazes at the oversized Christ Child, who seems to slip lifelessly off her lap. Onlookers crowd into the space from the left, while a small figure (perhaps a prophet) at the bottom right corner of the canvas draws our eye into distant space. Cool coloring and an overall smoky hue make the painting seem even more contrived and arti- ficial, yet, by its very con- trivance, unforgettable.
Figure 20.5 PARMIGIANINO, Madonna of the Long Neck, 1534–1540. Oil on panel, 7 ft. 1 in. � 4 ft. 4 in.
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Figure 20.6 JACOPO TINTORETTO, The Last Supper, 1592–1594. Oil on canvas, 12 ft. � 18 ft. 8 in. Pictured against a concentrated burst of light at the upper end of the table, the Savior is pictured distributing the bread and wine to his disciples.
The degree to which the Mannerists rejected the guiding principles of High Renaissance painting is nowhere better illustrated than in a comparison between The Last Supper (Figure 20.6) by the Venetian artist Jacopo Tintoretto (1518–1594) and the fresco of the same subject by Leonardo da Vinci (see chapter 17) executed approximately a century earlier (Figure 20.7). In his rendering of the sacred event, Tintoretto renounces the symmetry and geometric clarity of Leonardo’s composition. The receding lines of the table and the floor in Tintoretto’s painting place the viewer above the scene and draw the eye toward a vanishing point that lies in a distant and uncertain space beyond the canvas. The even texture of Leonardo’s fresco gives way in Tintoretto’s canvas to vaporous contrasts of dark and light, produced by a smoking oil lamp. Clouds of angels flutter spectrally at the ceiling, and phosphorescent halos seem to electrify the agitated figures of the apostles. While Leonardo focuses on the human element of the Last Supper—the moment when Jesus acknowledges his impending betrayal—
Tintoretto illustrates the miraculous moment when Jesus initiates the sacrament by which the bread and wine become his flesh and blood. Yet, in a move toward greater naturalism, he sets the miracle amidst the ordinary activities of household servants, who occupy the entire right-hand portion of the picture
Figure 20.7 LEONARDO DA VINCI, Last Supper, ca. 1485–1498. Oil and tempera on plaster, 15 ft. 11⁄8 in. � 28 ft. 101⁄2 in.
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Mannerist Painting in Spain The Mannerist passion for pictorial intensity was most vividly realized in the paintings of Domenikos Theotokopoulos, generally known (because of his Greek origins) as El Greco (1541–1614). Born in Crete, his early career was spent in Venice and Rome, but in the 1570s, he settled in Spain, where he remained—serving the Church and the Spanish king Philip II—until his death. El Greco preferred the expressive grace of Tintoretto to the more muscular vitality of Michelangelo. With the inward eye of a mystic, he produced visionary canvases marked by bold distortions of form, dissonant colors, and a daring handling of space. His elongated and flamelike figures, often high- lighted by ghostly whites and yellow-grays, seem to radiate halos of light—auras that symbolize the luminous power of divine revelation. The Agony in the Garden, the scene of Jesus’ final submission to the divine will, takes place in a moonlit landscape in which clouds, rocks, and fabrics bil- low and swell with mysterious energy (Figure 20.8). Below the tempestuous sky, Judas (the small figure on the lower right) leads the arresting officers to the Garden of Gethsemane. The sleeping apostles, tucked away in a
cocoonlike shelter, violate rational space: they are too small in relation to the oversized image of Jesus and the angel who hovers above. El Greco’s ambiguous spatial fields, which often include multiple vanishing points, his acrid greens and acid yellows, and his “painterly” tech- niques—his brushstrokes remain engagingly visible on the surface of the canvas—all contribute to the creation of a highly personal style that captured the mystical fervor of the new Catholicism.
The Baroque style, which flourished between roughly 1600 and 1750, brought heightened naturalism and a new level of emotionalism to Western art. Derived from the Portuguese word barocco, which describes the irregularly shaped pearls often featured in ornamental European dec- oration, the term baroque is associated with such features as ornateness, spatial grandeur, and theatrical flamboyance. In painting, the Baroque is characterized by asymmetric compositions, strong contrasts of light and dark, vigorous brushwork, and bold, illusionistic effects. Baroque sculptors
Figure 20.8 EL GRECO, The Agony in the Garden, ca. 1585–1586. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 1 in. � 9 ft. 1 in.
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engaged light and space to convey physical energy and dra- matic movement. A synthesis of the arts—painting, sculp- ture, and architecture—promoted the ambitions of rulers and the religious beliefs of Catholics and Protestants.
Baroque Painting in Italy The Baroque style originated in Italy and came to domi- nate artistic production throughout Europe and in those parts of the Americas colonized by Spain. Baroque artists worked to increase the dramatic expressiveness of religious subject matter in order to give viewers the sense that they were participating in the action of the scene. They copied nature faithfully and without idealization. Such was the ambition of the north Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio (1571–1610). The leading Italian painter of the seventeenth century, Caravaggio flouted Renaissance artistic conventions, even as he flout- ed the law—he was arrested for violent acts that ranged from throwing a plate of artichokes in the face of a tavern keeper to armed assault and murder. Having killed a tennis opponent in 1606, he was forced to flee Rome. In his paint- ings, Caravaggio renounced the grand style of the High Renaissance, which called for dignity, decorum, and the idealization of figures and setting. He recreated the Christian narrative as though its major events were occur- ring in the local taverns and streets of sixteenth- century Italy. Caravaggio dramatized these events with strong contrasts of light and
dark that give his figures a sculptural presence. A golden light bathes Christ and his disciples in The Supper at Emmaus (see Figure 20.1); Caravaggio “spotlights” Jesus at the moment when, raising his hand to bless the bread, he is recognized as the Christ (Luke 24:30–31). Caravaggio commands our attention by means of explicit theatrical gestures and by the use of a perspective device known as foreshortening: Christ’s right arm, painted at a right angle to the picture plane, seems to project sharply outward, as if to bless the viewer as well as the bread. At the moment of recognition, the disciple at the right flings his arms out- ward along a diagonal axis that draws the viewer into the composition, while the figure at the left grips the arm of his chair as though to rise in astonishment. Unlike the vision- ary El Greco, Caravaggio brings sacred subjects down to earth with an almost cameralike naturalism. Where El Greco’s saints and martyrs are ethereal, Caravaggio’s are solid, substantive, and often ordinary. Their strong physical presence and frank homeliness transform biblical miracles into human narratives—a bold repudiation of Italian Renaissance conventions of beauty.
Caravaggio composed traditional religious subjects with unprecedented theatrical power and daring. In The Crucifixion of Saint Peter (Figure 20.9), he arranged the figures in a tense, off-centered pinwheel that captures the
Figure 20.9 CARAVAGGIO, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1601. Oil on canvas, 7 ft. 6 in. � 5 ft. 9 in. While Caravaggio gives the saint a powerful body, he renders the face with an expression of vulnerability. Note how the highlighted areas of the composition seem to form the spokes of a wheel.
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eccentricity of Saint Peter’s torment (he was crucified upside down). By placing these large, vigorously modeled figures up against the picture plane, he reduced the psycho- logical distance between the viewer and the subject. Staged against a darkened background, the action seems to take place within the viewer’s space—a space whose cruel light reveals such banal details as the executioner’s dirty feet. True to the ideals of the Catholic Reformation, Caravaggio’s paintings appealed to the senses rather than to the intellect. They also introduced into European art a new and vigorously lifelike realization of the natural world— one that daringly mingled the sacred and the profane.
Caravaggio’s powerful style had considerable impact throughout Europe; however, his most talented follower was also Italian. Born in Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) was the daughter of a highly esteemed painter, himself a follower of Caravaggio. Artemisia was trained by her father, but soon outstripped him in technical proficien- cy and imagination. Since women were not permitted to draw from nude male models, they rarely painted large-scale canvases with biblical, historical, or mythologi- cal themes that usually required nude figures; instead, their efforts were confined to the genres of portrait painting and still life (see chapter 23). Gentileschi’s paintings, however, challenged tradition. Her powerful rendering of Judith slaying Holofernes (Figure 20.10), which compares in size
and impact with Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of Saint Peter (see Figure 20.9), illustrates the decapitation of an Assyrian general and enemy of Israel at the hands of a clever Hebrew widow. A story found in the Apocrypha (the noncanonical books of the Bible), the slaying of the tyrannical Holofernes was a favorite Renaissance allegory for liberty and reli- gious defiance. Gentileschi brought to this subject the dramatic techniques of Caravaggio: realistically conceived figures, stark contrasts of light and dark, and a composition that brings the viewer painfully close to the event. She invested her subject with fierce intensity—the foreshortened body of the vic- tim and the pinwheel arrangement of human limbs forces the eye to focus on the gruesome action of the swordblade as it severs head from neck in a shower of blood.
Gentileschi’s favorite subjects were biblical hero- ines—she painted the Judith story some seven times. The violence she brought to these depictions may be said to reflect a personal sense of victimiza- tion: at the age of eighteen, she was raped by her drawing teacher and (during the sensational trial of her assailant) subjected to torture as a test of the truth of her testimony.
Apocrypha, Book of Judith, 12:16–20; 13:1–10
Holofernes’ heart was ravished with [Judith] and his passion was aroused, for he had been waiting for an opportunity to seduce her from the day he first saw her. 17So Holofernes said to her, “Have a drink and be merry with us!” 18Judith said, “I will gladly drink, my lord, because today is the greatest day in my whole life.” 19Then she took what her maid had prepared and ate and drank before him. 20Holofernes was greatly pleased with her, and drank a great quantity of wine, much more than he had ever drunk in any one day since he was born. 1When evening came, his slaves quickly withdrew. . . . They went to bed, for they all were weary because the banquet had lasted so long. 2But Judith was left alone in the tent, with Holofernes stretched out on his bed, for he was dead drunk. . . . 4Then Judith, standing beside his bed, said in her heart, “O Lord God of all might, look in this hour on the work of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem. 5Now indeed is the time to help your heritage and to carry out my design to destroy the enemies who have risen up against us.” 6She went up to the bedpost near Holofernes’ head, and took down his sword that hung there. 7She came close to his bed, took hold of the hair of his head, and said, “Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel!” 8Then she struck his neck twice with all her might, and cut off his head. 9Next she rolled his body off the bed and pulled down the canopy from the posts. Soon afterward she went out and gave Holofernes’ head to her maid, 10who placed it in her food bag.
Figure 20.10 ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, Judith Slaying Holofernes, ca. 1614–1620. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 61⁄3 in. � 5 ft. 4 in.
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Baroque Sculpture in Italy Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), Caravaggio’s contem- porary, brought the theatrical spirit of Baroque painting to Italian architecture and sculpture. A man of remarkable technical virtuosity, Bernini was the chief architect of seventeenth-century Rome, as well as one of its leading sculptors. Under Bernini’s direction, Rome became the “city of fountains,” a phenomenon facilitated by the early seventeenth-century revival of the old Roman aqueducts. Richly adorned with dolphins, mermaids, and tritons, the fountain—its waters dancing and sparkling in the shifting wind and light—was the favorite ornamental device of the Baroque era (Figure 20.11).
Just as Caravaggio reshaped the tradition of Renaissance painting by way of pictorial illusionism, so Bernini chal- lenged Renaissance sculptural tradition by investing it with a virtuosic naturalism and dramatic movement. He was determined, as he himself confessed, to “render the marble flexible.” His life-sized marble sculpture of David (Figure 20.12) portrays this favorite biblical personality in a man- ner that recreates the very action of his assault on Goliath. In contrast with the languid and effeminate David of Donatello (see Figure 17.2) or the Classically posed hero of Michelangelo (see Figure 17.33), Bernini’s David appears in mid-action, stretching the slingshot behind him as he pre- pares to launch the rock at his adversary: his torso twists
Figure 20.11 GIANLORENZO BERNINI, Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1648–1651. Travertine and marble. Piazza Navona, Rome.
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vigorously at the waist, his face contorts with fierce determination, and his muscles strain with tense energy. The viewer, occupying the space “implied” by David’s explosive action, is drawn unwittingly into the visual narrative.
Bernini’s most important contribution to Baroque reli- gious sculpture was his multimedia masterpiece The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (see Figure 20.3), executed between 1645 and 1652 for the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome (Figure 20.13). Bringing to life Saint Teresa’s autobiographical description of divine seduction (see Reading 20.2). Bernini depicts the swooning saint with head sunk back and eyes half closed. A smiling angel, resembling a teenage cupid, gently lifts her bodice to with- draw the flaming arrow of divine love. Bold illusionism heightens the theatrical effect: the angel’s marble draperies flutter and billow with tense energy, while Teresa’s slack
and heavy gown accents her ecstatic surrender. Teresa reclines on a marble cloud, which floats in heavenly space; the uncertain juxtaposition of the saint and the cloud below her suggests the experience of levita-
tion described in her vision. Sweetness and eroticism dominate this extraordinary image.
But Bernini’s conception goes beyond the medium of sculpture to achieve an unparalleled degree of the- atrical illusionism. He situates Teresa beneath a colonnaded marble canopy from which gilded wooden rays appear to cast heaven’s supernatural
light. Real light entering through the glazed yellow panes of a concealed window above the chapel bathes the saint in a golden glow—an effect comparable to the spotlighting in a Caravaggio painting. From the ceiling of the chapel a host of angels both painted and sculpted in stucco (a light, pliable plaster) miraculously descends from the heavens. Agate and dark green marble walls provide a somber setting for the gleaming white and gold central image. On either side of the chapel, the members of the Cornaro family (executed in marble) behold Teresa’s ecstasy from behind prayer desks that resemble theater boxes. These life-sized figures extend the supernatural space of the chapel and rein- force the viewer’s role as witness to an actual event. It is no coincidence that Bernini’s illusionistic tour de force appeared contemporaneously with the birth of opera in Italy, for both share the Baroque affection for dramatic expression on a monumental scale.
Baroque Architecture in Italy The city of Rome carries the stamp of
Bernini’s flamboyant style. Commissioned to complete the piazza (the broad public space in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica), Bernini designed a trapezoidal space that opens out to a larger oval—the two shapes form, per- haps symbolically, a keyhole. Bernini’s
courtyard is bounded by a spectacular colonnade that incorporates 284 Doric
columns (each 39 feet high) as well as ninety-six
Figure 20.12 GIANLORENZO BERNINI, David, 1623. Marble, 5 ft. 7 in.
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statues of saints (each 15 feet tall). In a manner consistent with the ecumenical breadth of Jesuit evangelism, the gigantic pincerlike arms of the colonnade reach out to embrace an area that can accommodate more than 250,000 people (Figure 20.14)—a vast proscenium on which devo- tional activities of the Church of Rome are staged to this day. The Saint Peter’s of Bernini’s time was the locus of papal authority; then, as now, popes used the cen- tral balcony of the basilica to impart the tra- ditional blessing: “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the city and to the world”). The proportions of Bernini’s colonnade are symbolic of the Baroque preference for the grandiose, a preference equally apparent in the artist’s spectacular setting for the Throne of Saint Peter and in the immense bronze canopy (baldacchino) he raised over the high altar of the basilica (Figure 20.15).
As with Saint Peter’s, Italian Baroque churches were designed to reflect the mysti- cal and evangelical ideals of the Catholic Reformation. Il Gesù (the Church of Jesus) in Rome was the mother church of the Jesuit order and the model for hundreds of Counter- Reformation churches built throughout Europe and Latin America. Designed by Giacomo da Vignola (1507–1573), Il Gesù bears the typical features of the Baroque
Figure 20.14 GIANLORENZO BERNINI, aerial view of colonnade and piazza of Saint Peter’s, Rome, begun 1656. Travertine, longitudinal axis approx. 800 ft. Copper engraving by Giovanni Piranesi, 1750. The enormous piazza in front of the east façade of Saint Peter’s can accommodate more than 250,000 people.
Figure 20.13 Anonymous, Cornaro Chapel, ca. 1644. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 61⁄4 in. � 3 ft. 111⁄4 in.
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church interior: a broad Latin cross nave with domed cross- ing and deeply recessed chapels (Figure 20.16). Lacking side aisles, the 60-foot-wide nave allowed a large congrega- tion to assemble close enough to the high altar and the pul- pit to see the ceremony and hear the sermon. The wide nave also provided ample space for elaborate religious pro- cessions. Il Gesù’s interior, with its magnificent altarpiece dedicated to Ignatius Loyola, exemplifies the Baroque inclination to synthesize various media, such as painted stucco, bronze, and precious stones, in the interest of achieving sumptuous and ornate effects.
The most daring of the Italian Baroque architects was Francesco Borromini (1599–1667). Borromini designed
Figure 20.15 (opposite) GIANLORENZO BERNINI, Baldacchino (canopy) ca. 1624–1633. Bronze with gilding, height 93 ft. 6 in. The four pillars of the baldacchino represent the columns of the Temple of Solomon, entwined by the Eucharist vines (symbolizing the New Testament). Decorative and symbolic details—vines, tassels, banners, and angelic figures—are all cast in bronze.
Figure 20.16 GIACOMO DA VIGNOLA, interior of II Gesù, Rome, 1568–1573. Length approx. 240 ft.
The exterior façade of Il Gesù, completed by Giacomo della Porta (Figure 20.17) looks back to Alberti’s two-story façade of Santa Maria Novella (Figure 20.18). A comparison of the two provides insight into the differences between Renaissance and Baroque
Figure 20.18 LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI, façade of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, completed 1470. Width approx. 117 ft.
architectural styles. In contrast with the elegant linearity of the Florentine model, della Porta’s façade is deeply carved, almost sculptural in its presence. Like a Caravaggio painting, it exploits dramatic contrasts of light and dark, of shallow and deep space. Pairs of pilasters and engaged Corinthian columns project from the surface, giving it weight and definition. Theatrical effect is heightened by niches bearing life-sized sculptures, by contrasting pediments (round and triangular), and by an ornate cartouche (oval tablet) over the central doorway and in the gable. While Alberti’s façade was conceived in two dimensions, Il Gesù’s was conceived in three. It inspired decades of imitation and architectural embellishment.
Figure 20.17 GIACOMO DA VIGNOLA and GIACOMO DELLA PORTA, façade of II Gesù, Rome, ca. 1575–1584. Height 105 ft., width 115 ft.
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the small monastic church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (Saint Charles at the Four Fountains; Figure 20.19) to fit a narrow site at the intersection of two Roman streets. Rejecting the sobriety of Classical design, he combined convex and concave units to produce a sense of fluid, undulating movement. The façade consists of an assortment of deeply cut decorative elements: monumental Corinthian columns, a scrolled gable over the doorway, and life-sized angels that support a cartouche at the roofline. Borromini’s aversion to the circle and the square—the “perfect” shapes of Renaissance architecture—extends to the interior of San Carlo, which is oval in plan. The dome, also oval, is lit by hidden windows that allow light to flood the interior. Carved with geometric motifs that diminish in size toward the apex, the shal- low cupola appears to recede deep into space (Figure 20.20). Such inventive illusionism, accented by dynamic spatial contrasts, charac- terized Roman Baroque church architecture at its best.
Baroque illusionism went further still, as artists turned houses of God into theaters for sacred drama. Such is the case with the church of Sant’Ignazio in Rome. Its barrel-vaulted ceil- ing bears a breathtaking trompe l’oeil vision of Saint Ignatius’ apotheosis—his elevation to divine status (Figure 20.21). A master of the techniques of linear perspective and dramatic foreshortening, the Jesuit architect and sculp- tor Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709) made the ceil- ing above the clerestory appear to open up, so that the viewer gazes “through” the roof into the heavens that receive the levitating body of the saint. Pozzo’s cosmic rendering—one of the first of many illusionistic ceilings found in sev- enteenth- and eighteenth-century European churches and palaces—may be taken to reflect a new perception of the physical world inspired, in part, by European geographic exploration and discovery. Indeed, Pozzo underlines the global ambitions of Roman Catholic evangelism by adding at the four cor- ners of the ceiling the allegorical figures of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. The vast, illusionistic spatial fields of Italian Baroque frescoes also may be seen as a response to the new astronomy of the Scientific Revolution, which advanced a view of the universe as spa- tially infinite and dynamic rather than finite and static (see chapter 23). Whatever its inspi- ration, the spatial illusionism of Baroque paint- ing and architecture gave apocalyptic grandeur to Catholic Reformation ideals.
Figure 20.19 FRANCESCO BORROMINI, façade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1667. Length 52 ft., width 34 ft., width of façade 38 ft.
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In an effort to rid sacred music of secular influence, the Council of Trent condemned the practice—common since the Late Middle Ages—of borrowing popular melodies for religious texts. It also banned complex polyphony that tended to obscure the sacred text: the function of music was to serve the text. The most notable representative of the Roman school of musical composition, Giovanni di Palestrina (1525–1594) took these recommendations as strict guidelines: his more than 100 polyphonic Masses and 450 motets feature clarity of text, skillful counterpoint, and regular rhythms. The a cappella lines of Palestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass flow with the smooth grace of a Mannerist
Figure 20.20 FRANCESCO BORROMINI, interior of dome, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, ca. 1638. Width approx. 52 ft. A dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit, appears in the triangle at the apex of the dome, which is lit by partially hidden windows at its base.
painting. Often called “the music of mystic serenity,” Palestrina’s compositions embody the conservative and contemplative side of the Catholic Reformation.
In the religious compositions of Palestrina’s Spanish contemporary Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611), there is a brooding but fervent mystical intensity. Like El Greco, his colleague at the court of Philip II, Victoria brought pas- sion and drama to religious themes. Recognizing that the Council of Trent had forbidden Palestrina to compose sec- ular music, Victoria wrote not one note of secular song.
The Genius of Gabrieli At the turn of the sixteenth century, the opulent city of Venice was the center of European religious musical activity.
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Giovanni Gabrieli (1555–1612), principal organist at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Venice and one of the most influential composers of his time, ushered in a dramatic new style of polychoral and instrumental religious music. Abandoning the a cappella style favored in Rome, he created works that brought together two or more choruses, solo instruments, and instrumental ensembles. The last often included cornets (an early type of trumpet) and trombones, commonly used in Venetian ritual street processions (see Figure 17.39).
At Saint Mark’s, where two organs were positioned on either side of the chancel (the space for clergy and choir surrounding the altar), Gabrieli stationed—on balconies high above the nave—instrumental groups and up to four separate voice choirs. The alternating bodies of sound, glo- riously enhanced by the basilica’s acoustics, produced a wide range of musical dynamics (degrees of loudness and softness), and rich, dramatic effects not unlike those achieved by the contrasts of light and shadow found in Baroque painting. Echo effects created by alternating voic- es and the use of unseen (offstage) voices achieved a degree of musical illusionism comparable to the pictorial illusion- ism of Baroque art. The motet In ecclesiis illustrates the style of opposing or contrasting sonorities, known as con- certato, that would become basic to the music of the Baroque era.
Gabrieli was among the first composers to specify an instrument for each part of a musical composition, a talent that earned him the title, “the father of orchestration.” He was also one of the first composers to write into his scores the words piano (soft) and forte (loud) to govern the dynam- ics of the piece. Gabrieli is also credited with exploring a type of musical organization that would come to dominate Baroque music: tonality based on the melodic and harmon- ic vocabulary of the major–minor key system. Tonality refers to the arrangement of a musical composition around a central note, called the “tonic” or “home tone” (usually designated as the “key” of a given composition). A keynote or tonic can be built on any of the twelve tones of the chro- matic scale (the seven white and five black keys of the piano keyboard). In Baroque music—as in most music writ- ten to this day—all of the tones in the composition relate to the home tone. Tonality provided Baroque composers with a way of achieving dramatic focus in a piece of music—much in the way that light served Baroque painters to achieve dramatic focus in their compositions.
Monteverdi and the Birth of Opera The first master of Baroque music-drama and the greatest Italian composer of the early seventeenth century was Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). Monteverdi served the court of Mantua until he became chapel master of Saint Mark’s in Venice in 1621, a post he held for the rest of his life. During his long career, he wrote various kinds of religious music, as well as ballets, madrigals, and operas.
Like Gabrieli, Monteverdi discarded the intimate dimen- sions of Renaissance chamber music and cultivated an expansive, dramatic style, marked by vivid contrasts of tex- ture and color. His compositions reflect a typically Baroque effort to imbue music with a vocal expressiveness that reflected the emotional charge of poetry. “The [written] text,” declared Monteverdi, “should be the master of the music, not the servant.” Monteverdi linked “affections” or specific emotional states with appropriate sounds: anger, for instance, with the high voice register, moderation with the middle voice register, and humility with the low voice register. While the union of music and speech character- ized almost all his religious music and smaller secular pieces, it was essential to the effectiveness of his operas.
Opera—a form of theater that combined music, drama, dance, and the visual arts—was the quintessential musical genre of the Baroque era. Born in Italy, it emerged out of Renaissance efforts to revive the music-drama of ancient Greek theater. While humanist composers had no idea what Greek music sounded like, they sought to imitate the ancient unity of music and poetry. The earliest perform- ances of Western opera resembled the Renaissance masque, a form of musical entertainment that included dance and poetry, along with rich costumes and scenery. Baroque operas were more musically complex, however, and more dramatically cohesive than most Renaissance masques. The first opera house was built in Venice in 1637, and by 1700 Italy was home to seventeen more such houses, a measure of the vast popularity of the new genre. By the end of the seventeenth century, Italian courts and public the- aters boasted all of the essential features of the modern the- ater: the picture-frame stage, the horseshoe-shaped auditorium, and tiers of galleries or boxes (Figure 20.22). Resplendent with life-sized sculptures and illusionistic fres- coes, some of these opera houses are aesthetically indistin- guishable from Italian Baroque church interiors (see Figures 20.13 and 20.16).
Orfeo, composed in 1607 for the duke of Mantua, was Monteverdi’s first opera and one of the first full-length operas in music history. The libretto (literally, “little book”) or text of the opera was written by Alessandro Striggio and based on a Classical theme—the descent of Orpheus, the Greek poet-musician, to Hades. Orfeo required an orchestra of more than three dozen instru- ments, including keyboard instruments, ten viols, three trombones, and four trumpets. The instrumentalists opened the performance with the overture, an orchestral introduction. They also accompanied the vocal line, which consisted of arias (elaborate solo songs or duets) alternat- ing with recitatives (passages spoken or recited to sparse chordal accompaniment). The aria tended to develop a character’s feelings or state of mind, while the recitative served to narrate the action of the story or to heighten its dramatic effect.
Figure 20.21 (opposite) ANDREA POZZO, Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius, 1691. Fresco.
See Music Listening Selections at end of chapter.��
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Monteverdi believed that opera should convey the full range of human passions. To that end, he exploited the technique of word painting (the manipulation of music to con- vey the content of the text) popularized by the High Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez (see chapter 17). He engaged this device to reflect the emotional states of his characters, and to convey poetic images: a high tone for words like stele (stars) and sole (sun), a low tone for morte (death). He employed abrupt changes of key to emphasize shifts in mood and action. And he introduced such novel and expressive instrumental effects as pizzicato, the technique of plucking rather than bowing a stringed instrument. Integrating music, drama, and visual display, Italian opera became the ideal expression of the Baroque sensibility and the object of imitation throughout Western Europe.
The Catholic Reformation • In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic
Church launched a reform movement known as the Catholic Reformation.
• Under the leadership of Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuit order became the most influential missionary society of early modern times. Members of the newly formed order worked as missionaries to win back those who had strayed from the “Mother Church.”
• Between 1545 and 1563 the Council of Trent undertook papal and monastic reforms that eliminated corruption and restored Catholicism to many parts of Europe.
Catholicism’s Global Reach • Addressing the passions rather than the intellect, the arts
broadcast the visionary message of Catholic reform to a vast audience that extended from Europe to Asia and the Americas.
• In China, where European traders were regarded as “ocean devils,” Catholic missionaries developed a cordial relationship with the intellectual classes and succeeded in converting a number of Chinese scholars.
• Not all conversion attempts were successful. In 1624, Japan expelled almost all Western foreigners, after a wave of brutal persecutions of both European Christians and Japanese converts to Catholicism.
• Christian evangelism in the Americas proved to be far more successful. In sixteenth-century Latin America, where Spanish
Figure 20.22 PIETRO DOMENICO OLIVIER, The Teatro Regio, Turin, painting of the opening night, 26 December 1740. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 21⁄2 in. � 3 ft. 87⁄8 in. Five tiers of boxes are fitted into the sides of the proscenium, one even perched over the semicircular pediment. Note the orches- tra, without a conductor; the girls distributing refreshments; and the armed guard protecting against disorder.
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aria an elaborate solo song or duet, usually with instrumental accompaniment, performed as part of an opera or other dramatic musical composition
cartouche an oval tablet or medallion, usually containing an inscription or heraldic device
chancel the space for clergy and choir surrounding the altar in a church
chromatic scale a series of twelve tones represented by the seven white and five black keys of the piano keyboard; see also Glossary, chapter 5, “scale”
concertato (Italian, concerto = “opposing” or “competing”) an early Baroque style in which voices or instruments of different rather than similar natures are used in an opposing or contrasting manner
cornet (French, cornett; German, Kornett; Spanish, cururucho) an early type of trumpet
dynamics the degree of loudness or softness in music
foreshortening a perspective device by which figures or objects appear to recede or project into space
libretto (Italian, “little book“) the words of an opera or other textual musical composition
overture an instrumental introduction to a longer musical piece, such as an opera
piazza (Italian) a broad, open public space
pizzicato (Italian) the technique of plucking (with the fingers) rather than bowing a stringed instrument
polychoral music written for two or more choruses, performed both in turn and together
recitative a textual passage recited to sparse chordal accompaniment; a rhythmically free vocal style popular in seventeenth-century opera
stucco a light, pliable plaster made of gypsum, sand, water, and ground marble
tonality the use of a central note, called the tonic, around which all other tonal material of a composition is organized, and to which the music returns for a sense of rest and finality
political authority was largely unchallenged, Catholicism went hand in hand with colonization.
Literature and the Catholic Reformation • The arts of the seventeenth century reflected the religious
intensity of the Catholic Reformation. In literature, there appeared a new emphasis on heightened spirituality and on personal visionary experience acquired by way of the senses.
• The writings of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila set the tone for a new, more mystical Catholicism.
• The English Catholic Richard Crashaw wrote rhapsodic lyrics that fused sensual and spiritual yearnings.
The Visual Arts and the Catholic Reformation • The Mannerist paintings of Parmigianino, Tintoretto, and El
Greco mirrored the climate of insecurity in religiously divided and politically turbulent Europe.
• Mannerism anticipated the Baroque style by its use of figural distortions, irrational space, bizarre colors, and its general disregard for the “rules” of Renaissance painting.
The Baroque Style • The Baroque style brought new levels of naturalism and
emotionalism to Western art. It featured dynamic contrasts of light and dark, an expanded sense of space, and the theatrical staging of the subject matter.
• Caravaggio and Gentileschi explored a variety of illusionistic techniques to draw the spectator into the space and action of the pictorial representation.
• Bernini challenged sculptural tradition by combining illusionism, naturalism, and implied movement. He brought a flamboyant
style to the city of Rome, both in his fountain sculptures and in his designs for Italian Baroque churches.
• Italy’s Catholic churches became ornate settings for the performance of ritual. Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and Pozzo’s ceiling for the church of Saint Ignatius achieved new heights of illusionistic theatricality.
Baroque Music • Rome and Venice were fountainheads for Italian Baroque music.
Palestrina’s polyphonic Masses and motets emphasized clarity of text and calm sublimity.
• Gabrieli’s richly orchestrated polychoral compositions initiated the concertato style that would become a major feature of Baroque music.
• The most important development in seventeenth-century European music was the birth of opera as a genre. Borrowing themes from Classical mythology and history, Monteverdi integrated text and music to create the new art of music-drama.
• In its synthesis of all forms of performance—music, literature, and the visual arts—Italian opera became the supreme expression of the theatrical exuberance and vitality of the Baroque style.
CD Two Selection 1 Gabrieli, Motet, “In Ecclesiis,” excerpt, 1615.
CD Two Selection 2 Monteverdi, Orfeo, aria: “In questo prato adorno,” 1607.
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Figure 21.1 DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor ), 1656. Oil on canvas, 10 ft. 5 in. � 9 ft. This unusual aristocratic group portrait depicts the royal family of Spain: King Philip IV and Queen Mariana are shown reflected in the mirror at the back of the room, while their daughter the Infanta Margarita stands at the center, surrounded by two maids of honor, a dwarf, and other court figures.
“Virtue would not go nearly so far if vanity did not keep her company.” La Rochefoucauld
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L O O K I N G A H E A D The Aristocratic Style in Europe
Science and Technology
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The European state system had its beginnings in the early modern
era. The first half of the seventeenth century witnessed the Thirty
Years’ War (1618–1648), a devastating religious conflict involving
most of the European powers. In 1648, by the terms of the Treaty
of Westphalia, the principle of national sovereignty was firmly
established. By that principle, each European state would exer-
cise independent and supreme authority over its own territories
and inhabitants. In France a long tradition of absolutism prevailed.
Absolutism made the claim that rulers held their power directly
from God. During the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth
century, divine-right kings exercised unlimited power within the
individual nation-states of Europe. But the term “absolutism” is
equally appropriate to describe the type of authority exercised in
many of the states that prospered outside Europe. The rulers of
the three great Muslim empires that flourished between ca. 1550
and 1750—Ottoman, Safavid, and Mogul—held power as divine-
right monarchs, exercising unlimited control over vast territories.
So too did the Ming and Qing emperors of China, and the
Tokugawa rulers in Japan.
Absolute rulers maintained their authority by controlling a cen-
tralized bureaucracy and a standing army. They pursued econom-
ic policies designed to maximize the wealth of the state. In
Western Europe, the mightiest of such potentates was the French
king Louis XIV (1638–1715). During the nearly three-quarters of a
century that he occupied the throne, he dictated the political, eco-
nomic, and cultural policies of the country. Under his guidance,
France assumed a position of political and military leadership in
the West. By his hand, the grandeur of the Baroque style was
invested with Classical features. The so-called Classical Baroque
style would become the hallmark of French absolutism. It also
impressed its stamp on the rest of Europe, and, somewhat later,
on an emergent American culture. While absolutist states beyond
the West did not share the Classical aspects of the Baroque style,
their rulers manifested a typically Baroque taste for ornate the-
atricality and opulent grandeur. No less than in Louis’ France, the
aristocratic style that characterized the arts of absolutist regimes
outside Europe was an expression of the majesty of the ruler and
the wealth and power of the state.
Louis XIV and French Absolutism Like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt and in the tradition of his medieval ancestors, Louis XIV governed France as the direct representative of God on earth (Figure 21.2). Neither the Church, nor the nobility, nor the will of his subjects limited his power. During his seventy-two years on the throne, the Estates General, France’s representative assembly, was never once called into session. As absolute monarch, Louis brought France to a position of political and military preeminence among the European nation- states. He challenged the power of the feudal nobility and placed the Church under the authority of the state, thus centralizing all authority in his own hands. By exempting the nobility and upper middle class from taxation and offering them important positions at court, he turned potential opponents into supporters. Even if Louis never uttered the famous words attributed to him, “I am the state,” he surely operated according to that precept. To dis- tinguish his unrivaled authority, he took as his official insignia the image of the Classical sun god Apollo and referred to himself as le roi soleil (“the Sun King”).
As ruler of France, Louis was one of the world’s most influential figures. Under his leadership, the center of artis- tic patronage and productivity shifted from Italy to France. French culture in all of its forms—from art and architec- ture to fashions and fine cuisine—came to dominate European tastes, a condition that prevailed until well into the early twentieth century. Although Louis was not an intellectual, he was shrewd and ambitious. He chose first- rate advisers to execute his policies and financed those policies with money from taxes that fell primarily upon the backs of French peasants. Vast amounts of money were spent to make France the undisputed military leader of Western Europe. But Louis, who instinctively recognized the propaganda value of the arts, also used the French treasury to glorify himself and his office. His extravagances left France in a woeful financial condition, one that con- tributed to the outbreak of the revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. Incapable of foreseeing these circum- stances, Louis cultivated the arts as an adjunct to majesty.
Versailles: Symbol of Royal Absolutism Architecture played a vital role in the vocabulary of absolute power. The French royal family traditionally resided in Paris, at the palace known as the Louvre. But Louis, who detested Paris, moved his capital to a spot from
1657 the first fountain pens are manufactured in Paris 1688 the French army introduces bayonets attached
to muskets 1698 champagne is invented in France
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Figure 21.2 HYACINTHE RIGAUD, Portrait of Louis XIV, 1701. Oil on canvas, 9 ft. 1 in. � 6 ft. 4 in.
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court finally established itself in the apartments of this magnificent unfortified château (castle). More than a royal residence, Versailles was—in its size and splendor—the symbol of Louis’ supremacy over the landed aristocracy, the provincial governments, the urban councils, and the Estates General.
The wooded site that constituted the village of Versailles, almost half the size of Paris, was connected to the old capital by a grand boulevard that (following the path of the sun) ran from the king’s bedroom—where most state business was transacted—to the Avenue de Paris. Even a cursory examination of the plan of Versailles, laid out by the French architect Louis Le Vau (1612–1670), reveals esteem for the rules of symmetry, clarity, and geo- metric regularity (Figure 21.3). These principles, in com- bination with a taste for spatial grandeur, dramatic contrast, and theatrical display, were the distinguishing features of the Classical Baroque style.
Shaped like a winged horseshoe, the almost 2000-foot- long palace—best viewed in its entirety from the air—was the focus of an immense complex of parks, lakes, and forest (Figure 21.4). Its central building was designed by Le Vau, while the two additional wings were added by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646–1708). Three levels of vertically aligned windows march across the palace façade like sol- diers in a formal procession (Figure 21.5). Porches bearing
which he might more directly control the nobility and keep them dependent upon him for honors and financial favors. Early in his career he commissioned a massive renovation of his father’s hunting lodge at the village of Versailles, some 12 miles from Paris. It took 36,000 workers and near- ly twenty years to build Versailles, but, in 1682, the French
63Volume2
Figure 21.3 LOUIS LE VAU, plan of Versailles.
lone column signifying fortitude
silk stockings, lace cravat, and wig: hallmarks of upperclass wealth
two royal scepters: staff with fleur-de- lis and “main de justice” (hand of justice), emblems of authority high-heeled shoes
designed by Louis XIV to enhance his heightfleur-de-lis(“lilyflower”)
heraldic symbol of the French monarchy
brocaded curtains theatrically framing the king and the royal throne
ermine-lined coronation robe
crown, and sword of state symbolizing royal authority
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freestanding Corinthian columns accent the second level, and ornamental statues at the roofline help to relieve the monotonous horizontality of the roofline. In its total effect, the palace is dignified and commanding, a synthesis of Classical and Palladian elements. Its calm nobility pro- vides a striking contrast to the robust theatricality of most Italian Baroque structures (see Figures 20.17 and 20.19).
The grandeur and majesty of Versailles made it the model for hundreds of palace-estates and city planning projects in both Europe and America for the following
two centuries. Le Vau’s façade became the prototype for the remodeled royal palace in Paris, the Louvre. Designed by Claude Perrault (1613–1688), the east façade of the Louvre echoes the basic Classical Baroque features of Louis’ residence at Versailles: strong rectilinear organiza- tion, paired Corinthian columns, and a gabled entrance that provides dramatic focus (Figure 21.6).
The palace at Versailles housed Louis’ family, his royal mistresses (one of whom bore him nine children), and hun- dreds of members of the French nobility whose presence
Figure 21.4 ISIDORE-LAURENT DEROY, the park and palace of Versailles, France, nineteenth century.
Figure 21.5 LOUIS LE VAU and JULES HARDOUIN-MANSART, Parterre du Midi, Palace of Versailles, 1669–1685.
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square miles of gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre with the same compelling sense of order that Le Vau brought to the architecture. The great park featured an array of hedges clipped into geometric shapes (see Figure 21.5), sparkling fountains (that favorite of all Baroque mechanical devices), artificial lakes (Figure 21.7), grottoes, a zoo, theaters, and outdoor “rooms” for private gatherings and clandestine meetings. When in bloom, the gardens—some planted with over four million tulip bulbs, which Louis imported annually from Holland—were a
was politically useful to Louis. Life at the court of the Sun King was both formal and public—a small army of servants, courtiers, ministers, and pet animals constantly surrounded Louis. All behavior was dictated by protocol. Rank at court determined where one sat at the dinner table and whether one or both panels of Versailles’ “French doors” were to be opened upon entering.
Flanking the palace were barracks for honor guards, lodgings for more than 1500 servants, kennels, greenhous- es, and an orangery with over 2000 orange trees. Over 7
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Figure 21.6 CLAUDE PERRAULT, LOUIS LE VAU, and CHARLES LE BRUN, east façade of the Louvre, Paris, 1667–1670. Louis XIV had originally commissioned Bernini to design the new Louvre. However, upon finding Bernini’s design too ornate, he transferred the commission to his own architects, thus establishing the Classical Baroque as a major feature of the aristocratic style.
Figure 21.7 Ornamental Lake and Fountain of Latone, Versailles. A bronze sculpture of the Roman river god adorns the lake.
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spectacular sight. They embellished the long walkways that radiate from the central building. On the garden side of the palace, artificial pools reflected sculptures whose subject matter glorified the majesty of the king (see Figure 21.7). Itself a kind of outdoor theater, the royal palace provided the ideal backdrop for the ballets, operas, and plays that were regular features of court life (Figure 21.8).
If the exterior of Versailles symbolized royal grandeur, the interior publicized princely self-indulgence (Figure 21.9). Though now shorn of many of their original furnishings, Versailles’ sumptuous salons (drawing rooms) still testify to Louis’ success at cultivating French trades in such luxury items as crafted silver, clocks, lace, brocades, porcelain, and fine glass. During the seventeenth century, the silk industry reached its peak, French carpets competed with those of Turkey and Persia, the art of marquetry (inlaid wood) rivaled that of Italy, and the tapestries produced
at the Gobelins factory in Paris outclassed those woven in Flanders. Versailles’ salons were adorned with illusionistic frescoes, gilded stucco moldings, crystal chandeliers, and huge, ornate mirrors. The rooms housed some of the most lavish objets d’art (art objects) in Western history, all of which, it is sobering to recall, were enjoyed at a time when the peasant majority of the French population lived in one- room, thatch-roofed houses filled with coarse wooden furni- ture. Equally sobering is the fact that despite its splendor the palace lacked any kind of indoor plumbing. Servants carried out the slops, but the unpleasant odor of human waste was difficult to mask, even with the finest French perfumes.
Each of Versailles’ rooms illustrates a specific theme: the Salon de Venus was decorated by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690) with ceiling paintings portraying the influ- ence of love on various kings in history. In the Salon de la Guerre (Drawing Room of War) an idealized, equestrian
Figure 21.8 JEAN LE PAUTRE, Marble Court, Versailles. Engraving showing a performance of Lully’s Alceste, 1674.
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Louis, carved in low-relief marble, is shown receiving the victor’s crown (Figure 21.10)—though, in fact, Louis him- self rarely took part in combat. The most splendid interior space, however, is the 240-foot-long Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors; Figure 21.11), which once connected the royal apartments with the chapel. Embellished with glori- ous frescoes, marble pilasters, and gilded bronze capitals, and furnished with ornate candelabra and bejeweled trees (the latter have since disappeared), the hall features a wall of seventeen mirrored arcades that face an equal number of high-arched windows opening onto the garden. Framing this opulent royal passageway, mirrors and windows set up a brilliant counterpoint of image and reflection. Mirrors were to Versailles what fountains were to Rome: vehicles for the theatrical display of changing light in unbounded space.
Louis as Patron of the Arts At the center of his court, Louis was the arbiter of fashion and manners. Within his dining salons, linen napkins came into use, forks replaced fingers for eating, and elaborate dishes were served to suit the royal palate. Graced with an
eye for beauty and a passion for aggrandizement, Louis increased the number of paintings in the French royal col- lection from the 200 he inherited upon his accession to the throne to the 2000 he left at his death. These paintings formed the basis of the permanent collection at the Louvre, now a world-renowned art museum.
On a grander scale, Louis dictated the standards for all forms of artistic production. Following in the tradition of his father, Louis XIII (1601–1643), who had instituted the French Royal Academy of Language and Literature in 1635, he created and subsidized government-sponsored institutions in the arts, appointing his personal favorites to oversee each. In 1648, at the age of ten, Louis founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture; in 1661 he established the Academy of Dance; in 1666, the Academy of Sciences; in 1669, the Academy of Music; and in 1671, the Academy of Architecture. The creation of the acade- mies was a symptom of royal efforts to fix standards, but Louis also had something more personal in mind: he is said to have told a group of academicians, “Gentlemen, I entrust to you the most precious thing on earth—my fame.” His trust was well placed, for the academies, which
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Figure 21.9 Apartment of the Queen/Salon of the Nobles, Versailles. Length 31 ft.; width 32 ft.; height 24 ft. 8 in.
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brought glory to the king, also set standards that would govern the arts for at least two centuries. These standards were inspired by the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. Thus Neoclassicism—the revival of Classical style and sub- ject matter—became the accepted style of academic art.
A typical example of the Neoclassical style in sculpture is seen in the work of the French academician François Girardon (1628–1715). Girardon drew on Hellenistic mod- els for the ideally proportioned statues that he arranged in graceful tableaux for the gardens of Versailles. In one such tableau, Girardon’s Neoclassical nymphs are seen enter- taining the sun god Apollo—an obvious reference to Louis as roi soleil (Figure 21.12).
Academic Art: Poussin and Lorrain Girardon’s compositions owed much to the paintings of the leading exponent of French academic art, Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Poussin spent most of his life in Rome, absorbing the heritage of the Classical and Renaissance past. He revered the High Renaissance master Raphael as
the leading proponent of the Classical style; and, like most Neoclassicists, he shared Raphael’s esteem for lofty subjects drawn from Greco-Roman mythology and Christian leg- end. In an influential treatise on painting, Poussin formal- ized the rules that would govern academic art for centuries. Enshrined in the works of Raphael and expounded in the aesthetic theories of seventeenth-century Italian painters, these rules would come to characterize the Grand Manner in Western art: artists should choose only serious and ele- vated subjects (such as battles, heroic actions, and miracu- lous events) drawn from Classical or Christian history, and reject crude, bizarre, and ordinary subject matter. As to the manner of representation, artists should make the physical action suit the mood of the narrative, avoiding, at all cost, the gross aspects of ordinary existence and any type of exaggeration. They should present their subjects clearly and evenly in harmonious compositions that were free of irrelevant and sordid details. Restraint, moderation, and decorum—that is, propriety and good taste—should govern all aspects of pictorial representation.
Figure 21.10 JULES HARDOUIN-MANSART, Salon de la Guerre (Drawing Room of War), Versailles. Length and width 33 ft. 8 in; height 37 ft. 9 in. The stucco relief by Antoine Coysevox shows a larger-than-life equestrian image of Louis XIV. It is framed by panels of colored marble, mirrors, bronze and gilded sculptures, and ceiling frescoes painted by Le Brun.
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Figure 21.11 JULES HARDOUIN-MANSART and CHARLES LE BRUN, Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors), Versailles, ca. 1680. Length 240 ft. The opulence of Louis’ court is exemplified in this hall, which functioned as a reception space for official state occasions. Thirty scenes of Louis’ achievements were painted by Le Brun’s studio on canvas and then attached to the ceiling. A $16 million, three-year renovation of the hall was completed in 2007.
Figure 21.12 FRANÇOIS GIRARDON, Apollo Attended by the Nymphs, ca. 1666–1672. Marble, life- sized. Louis XIV entrusted this sculptor with important commissions for the gardens of Versailles. Modeling the central figure on the famous Hellenistic Apollo Belvedere (see Figures 5.31 and 26.16), Girardon contributed to the propaganda that linked the Greek sun god with the French king.
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Poussin’s paintings were faithful to the dictates of the academic style. His Arcadian Shepherds, completed in 1639, transports us to the idyllic region in ancient Greece known as Arcadia, a place where men and women were said to live in perfect harmony with nature (Figure 21.13). Here, three shepherds have come upon an ancient tomb, a symbol of death; on the right, the stately muse of histo- ry meditates upon the tomb’s inscription, “Et in Arcadia Ego” (“I [death] also dwell in Arcadia”)—that is, death reigns even in this most perfect of places. Poussin’s moral allegory, at once a pastoral elegy and a memento mori, instructs us that death is universal. Cool, bright colors and even lighting enhance the elegiac mood, while sharp con- tours and the sure use of line provide absolute clarity of design. But the real power of the painting lies in its rigor- ous composition. Poussin arrived at this composition by arranging and rearranging miniature wax models of his fig- ures within a small rectangular box. He then posed these figures—statuesque, heroically proportioned, and ideal- ized—so that their gestures served to narrate the story. All of the elements in the painting, from the muse’s feet (which parallel the horizontal picture plane) to the trees in the landscape and at the right edge of the tomb (which
parallel the vertical picture plane) contribute to the geometry of the composition.
Despite the grand theatricality of Poussin’s paintings, order dominates spontaneity. Both in form and in content, they are intellectual; they appeal to the mind rather than to the senses. In contrast to such Italian Baroque painters as Caravaggio, whose works he detested, Poussin advanced the aesthetics of Neoclassicism.
Poussin and his contemporary, Claude Gellée (1600– 1682), known as Claude Lorrain, were responsible for pop- ularizing the genre known as the “ideal landscape,” a land- scape painted in the high-minded, idealized style usually found in traditional moral subjects. For such paintings, academic artists made careful renderings of the countryside around Rome. They then returned to the studio to assem- ble and combine the contents of their sketches according to the Classical ideals of balance and clarity. Lorrain’s land- scapes, characterized by haunting qualities of light, were tranquil settings for lofty mythological or biblical subjects (Figure 21.14). Unlike the Dutch landscape painters, who rendered nature with forthright Realism (see Figure 23.10), academic artists imposed a preconceived, rationalized order upon the natural world.
Figure 21.13 NICOLAS POUSSIN, Arcadian Shepherds, 1638–1639. Oil on canvas, 331⁄2 � 475⁄8 in. Poussin’s Classical compositions were an inspiration to the late nineteenth-century artist, Paul Cézanne, who had a copy of this painting in his study.
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The Aristocratic Portrait The Baroque was the great period of aristocratic portraiture. Commissioned by the hundreds by Louis XIV and the mem- bers of his court, aristocratic portraits differ dramatically from the portraits of Dürer and Holbein (see chapter 19). Whereas these artists investigated the personalities of their sitters, bringing to their portraits a combination of psycho- logical intimacy and forthrightness, French artists were con- cerned primarily with outward appearance. The classic example of French aristocratic portraiture is the image of Louis XIV shown at the beginning of this chapter (see Figure 21.2), painted in 1701 by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743). Rigaud shows the sixty-three-year-old monarch in his coro- nation garments, with the royal paraphernalia: the scepter, the crown (on the cushion at the left), and the sword of state. He wears ermine-lined coronation robes, silk stock- ings, a lace cravat, a well-manicured wig, and high-heeled shoes (which he himself designed to compensate for his short stature)—all but the first were fashionable hallmarks of upper-class wealth. Louis’ mannered pose, which harks back to Classical models, reflects self-conscious pride in sta- tus. Symbolic devices enhance the themes of authority and regality: satin curtains theatrically frame the king, and a lone
column compositionally and metaphorically underscores his fortitude. Such devices would become standard conventions in European and American portraits of the eighteenth cen- tury (see Figure 26.23).
Velázquez, Rubens, and van Dyck While the aristocratic phase of the Baroque style was initiated in France, it came to flourish in many other European courts. In Spain, Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), court painter to King Philip IV (1605–1665), became that country’s most prestigious artist. Velázquez excelled at mod- eling forms so that they conveyed the powerful presence of real objects in atmospheric space. For the Spanish court, Velázquez painted a variety of Classical and Christian sub- jects, but his greatest enterprise was the informal group por- trait known as Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor; see Figure 21.1). In this painting, Velázquez depicted himself at his easel, alongside the members of the royal court: the infanta (the five-year-old daughter of the king), her maids of honor, her dwarf, a mastiff hound, and the royal escorts. In the background is a mirror that reflects the images of the king and queen of Spain—presumably the subjects of the large canvas Velázquez shows himself painting in the left foreground. Superficially, this is a group portrait of the kind
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Figure 21.14 CLAUDE LORRAIN (CLAUDE GELLÉE), The Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah (The Mill), 1642. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 11 in. � 6 ft. 5 in. The protagonists in the biblical story are barely visible in this idealized landscape. Featuring shepherds and their flocks, such scenes were often called “elevated pastorals.”
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commissioned by wealthy patrons since the Renaissance. The addition of a mirror that reflects the presence of two figures outside the painting is, indeed, reminiscent of Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini portrait (see Figure 19.5). However, Velázquez’s composition is far more complex, for, although the painting is a record of the royal household (its original title was Family of Philip IV), it departs from traditional group portraits by minimizing its purported subject: the king and queen. Almost all the subjects in the painting, including the painter himself, are shown gazing at the royal couple, who must be standing outside the picture space in the very spot occupied by the viewer. Velázquez has expanded the spatial field, inviting the beholder into the picture space as if he or she were, in fact, the subject of the painting. His witty invention or “conceit” provokes a visu- al dialogue between the perceived and the perceiver.
A contemporary of Velázquez, the internationally renowned Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–
1640) established his reputation in the courts of Europe. Fluent in six languages, he traveled widely as a diplomat and art dealer for royal patrons in Italy, England, and France. He also headed a large studio workshop that trained scores of assistants to help fulfill his many commis- sions—a total lifetime production of some 1800 paintings. For the Luxembourg Palace of Paris, Rubens and his studio executed twenty-one monumental canvases that glorified Marie de’ Medici, Louis XIV’s grandmother, and her late husband, King Henry IV of France. Like Poussin, Rubens studied in Italy and was familiar with both Classical and High Renaissance art. Rubens deeply admired the flamboy- ant colorists Titian and Tintoretto, and he developed a style that, in contrast with Poussin’s, was painterly in its brushwork and dynamic in composition.
One of Rubens’ most memorable canvases, the Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (Figure 21.15), depicts the abduction of two mortal women by the mythic heroes
Figure 21.15 PETER PAUL RUBENS, Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, ca. 1618. Oil on canvas, 7 ft. 3 in. � 6 ft. 10 in. The twin sons of Zeus and Leda, Castor and Polydeuces (called the “Dioscuri,” or “Sons of Zeus”) were popular heroes revered as brave horsemen by both the Greeks and the Romans. Their abduction of two women bethrothed to their cousins provoked a battle in which Castor was killed. When his brother asked Zeus to let him die as well, Zeus granted them immortality.
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Castor and Pollux. Rubens’ conception of the Classical story explodes with vigor: pressing against the picture plane are the fleshy bodies of the nude maidens, their limbs arranged in the pattern of a slowly revolving pinwheel. The masterful paintstrokes exploit sensuous contrasts of luminous pink flesh, burnished armor, gleaming satins, and dense horsehide. Probably commissioned to commemorate the double marriage of Louis XIII of France to a Spanish princess and Philip IV of Spain to a French princess (and, thus, to celebrate the diplomatic alliance of France and Spain), the painting carries a subtext of (male) power over (female) privilege—and, by extension, of political abso- lutism. Images of subjugation by force, whether in the form of lion hunts (as in ancient Assyrian reliefs; see chapter 1) or in paintings and sculptures depicting mythological sto- ries of rape, were metaphors for the sovereign authority of the ruler over his subjects, hence a veiled expression of political absolutism.
In England, the most accomplished advocate of the aris- tocratic style was the Flemish master Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). Born in Antwerp, van Dyck had been an assistant to Rubens and may have worked with him on the Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. Unwilling to compete with Rubens, he moved to Genoa and then to London, where he became court painter to King Charles I of England (1600–1649). Van Dyck’s many commissioned portraits of European aristocrats are striking for their pol- ished elegance and poise, features that are especially evi- dent in his equestrian portrait of Charles I (see Figure 22.2). In this painting, van Dyck shows the king, who was actually short and undistinguished-looking, as handsome and regal. The combination of fluid composition and nat- uralistic detail, and the shimmering vitality of the brush- work, make this one of the most memorable examples of aristocratic Baroque portraiture.
The court at Versailles was the setting for an extraordinary outpouring of music, theater, and dance. To provide musi- cal entertainments for state dinners, balls, and operatic performances, Louis established a permanent orchestra, the first in European history. Its director, the Italian-born (but French-educated) Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), also headed the French Academy of Music. Often called the “father of French opera,” Lully oversaw all phases of musi- cal performance, from writing scores and conducting the orchestra to training the chorus and staging operatic pro- ductions. Many of Lully’s operas were based on themes from Classical mythology. Their semidivine heroes, proto- types of the king himself, flattered Louis’ image as ruler.
Lully’s operas shared the pomp and splendor of Le Brun’s frescoes, the strict clarity of Poussin’s paintings, and the formal correctness of Classical drama. Though Lully’s com- positions were generally lacking in spontaneity and warmth of feeling, they were faithful to the Neoclassical unity of words and music. Lully modified the music of the
recitative to follow precisely and with great clarity the inflections of the spoken word. He also introduced to opera the “French overture,” an instrumental form that featured contrasts between a slow first part in homophonic texture and a fast, contrapuntal second part. Under Lully’s leader- ship, French opera also developed its most characteristic feature: the inclusion of formal dance.
At the court of Louis XIV, dancing and fencing were the touchstones of aristocratic grace. All members of the upper class were expected to perform the basic court dances, including the very popular minuet, and the courtier who could not dance was judged rude and inept. Like his father, Louis XIII, who had commissioned and participated in extravagantly expensive ballets, Louis XIV was a superb dancer. Dressed as the sun, he danced the lead in the 1653 performance of the Ballet de la Nuit (Figure 21.16). Of lasting significance was Louis’ contribution to the birth of professional dance and the transformation of court dance into an independent artform. During the late seventeenth century, French ballet masters of the Royal Academy of Dance established rules for the five positions that have
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Figure 21.16 King Louis XIV as the sun in the 1653 Ballet de la Nuit.
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READING 21.1
Q What is the effect of brevity in these maxims? Q Which of these maxims might apply to the
characters in Reading 21.2 (Molière)?
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become the basis for classical dance. Clarity, balance, and proportion, along with studied technique—elements char- acteristic of Classicism in general—became the ideals of the classical ballet.
By 1685 female dancers were permitted to join the previously all-male French dance ensembles in staged per- formances. And in 1700 Raoul Auget Feuillet published a system of abstract symbols for recording specific dance steps and movements, thus facilitating the art of choreog- raphy. Ballet, itself a metaphor for the strict etiquette and ceremonial grace of court life, enriched all aspects of the French theater. However, since classical ballet demanded a rigorous attention to proper form, it soon became too spe- cialized for any but professionals to perform, and so there developed the gap between performer and audience that exists to this day in the art of dance.
In literature, as with most forms of artistic expression in seventeenth-century France, Neoclassical precepts of form and content held sway. French writers addressed questions of human dignity and morality in a language that was clear, polished, and precise. Their prose is marked by refinement, good taste, and the concentrated presentation of ideas.
One literary genre that typified the Neoclassical spirit was the maxim. A maxim is a short, concise, and often witty saying, usually drawn from experience and offering some practical advice. Witty sayings that distilled wisdom into a few words were popular in many cultures, including those of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Africans. But in seventeenth-century France, the cautionary or moralizing aphorism was exalted as the ideal means of teaching good sense and decorum. Terse and lean, the maxim exalted pre- cision of language and thought. France’s greatest maxim writer was François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), a nobleman who had participated in a revolt against Louis XIV early in his reign. Withdrawing from court society, La Rochefoucauld wrote with a cynicism that reflected his conviction that self-interest, hypocrisy, and greed motivat- ed the behavior of most human beings—including and especially the aristocrats of his day. As the following maxims illustrate, however, La Rochefoucauld’s insights into human behavior apply equally well to individuals of all social classes and to any age.
From La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims (1664)
Truth does less good in the world than its appearances do harm.
Love of justice in most men is only a fear of encountering injustice.
We often do good that we may do harm with impunity.
As it is the mark of great minds to convey much in few words, so small minds are skilled at talking at length and saying little.
Virtue would not go nearly so far if vanity did not keep her company.
We confess to small faults to create the impression that we have no great ones.
To be rational is not to use reason by chance, but to recognize it, distinguish it, appreciate it.
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
We are never so happy or so unhappy as we imagine we are.
Our minds are lazier than our bodies.
Quarrels would not last long were the wrong all on one side.
Like La Rochefoucauld’s maxims, but on a larger scale, French drama reflected Neoclassical restraint, cool objec- tivity, and common sense. The leading French tragedian of the seventeenth century, Jean Racine (1639–1699), wrote plays that treated high-minded themes in an elevated lan- guage. Racine added to Aristotle’s unities of action and time (see chapter 4) a strict unity of place, thus manifest- ing his abiding commitment to verisimilitude. In the play Phèdre (1677), itself based on Greek models, Racine explored the conflict between human passions (Phaedra’s “unnatural” infatuation with her stepson) and human rea- son (Phaedra’s sense of duty as the wife of Theseus, king of Athens). As in all of Racine’s tragedies, Phèdre illustrates the disastrous consequences of emotional indulgence—a weakness especially peculiar to Racine’s female characters. Indeed, while Racine created some of the most dramatic female roles in Neoclassical theater, he usually pictured women as weak, irrational, and cruel.
Molière’s Human Comedy Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–1673), whose stage name was Molière, was France’s leading comic dramatist. The son of a wealthy upholsterer, he abandoned a career in law in favor of acting and play writing. He learned much from the commedia dell’arte, a form of improvised Italian street theater that depended on buffoonery, slapstick humor, and pantomime. Molière’s plays involve simple story lines that bring to life the comic foibles of such stock characters as the miser, the hypochondriac, the hypocrite, the mis- anthrope, and the would-be gentleman. The last of these is the subject of one of Molière’s last plays, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Tradesman Turned Gentleman). The plot involves a wealthy tradesman (Monsieur Jourdain) who, aspiring to nobility, hires a variety of tutors to school him in the trappings of upper-class respectability. The play’s fabric of deceit and self-deception is complicated by Jourdain’s refusal to accept his daughter’s choice of a partner, the handsome but poor Cléonte. Only after Cléonte appears disguised as the son of the Grand Turk does the unwitting merchant bless the betrothal.
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Essentially a farce or comedy of manners, Molière’s play (like La Rochefoucauld’s maxims) holds up to ridicule the fundamental flaws of human behavior, which might be corrected by applying the Classical norms of reason and moderation. By contrasting incidents of hypocrisy, pomposity, and greed with the solid, good sense demon- strated, for instance, by Mr. Jourdain’s wife, Molière probes the excesses of passion and vanity that enfeeble human dignity. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was designed as a comédie-ballet, a dramatic performance that incorporated interludes of song and dance (in a manner similar to mod- ern musical comedy). Lully provided the music, choreo- graphed the ballet, and directed the entire production, which, like many other of Molière’s plays, was well received by the king and his court, a court that lavishly and regularly received the ambassadors of “exotic” countries, such as Turkey.
But even beyond Versailles, Molière’s hilarious comedy had wide appeal. French aristocrats, convinced that they were above imitation, embraced the play. So did upper- middle-class patrons who, while claiming an increasingly prominent place in the social order, refused to see them- selves as merchants longing to be aristocrats. Women found themselves endowed in Molière’s play with confi- dence and guile, while servants discovered themselves invested with admirable common sense. The comedy, for all its farce, reflected the emerging class structure of early modern European society, with its firmly drawn lines between sexes and classes.
In Act II, Scene XIV of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Mr. Jourdain—himself descended from shopkeepers—refuses to allow his daughter to marry anyone other than a gentle- man. To prevent her from marrying “below” her, he boasts, “I have riches enough for my daughter; all I need is honors, so I shall make her a marquise.” To this, his wife exclaims, “’Tis a thing to which I shall never consent. Your marriages with people above you are always subject to wretched vex- ations. I don’t want my daughter to have a husband that can reproach her with her parents, and children that will be ashamed to call me grandma. If she should come to call on me in her fine lady’s equipage, and fail by chance to bow to any of the neighbors, they would be sure to say a hun- dred ill-natured things. . . . I don’t want all this cackle, and, in a word, I want a man who shall be beholden to me for my daughter, and to whom I can say: ‘Sit down there, son- in-law, and have dinner with me.’” Mr. Jourdain snaps back, “Those are the sentiments of a petty soul, willing to stay forever in a mean station. Don’t talk back to me any more. My daughter shall be a marquise, in spite of all the world, and if you provoke me, I’ll make her a duchess.”
With unparalleled comic wit, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme captured the spirit of the seventeenth century—its class tensions and social contradictions, along with its ambitions and high expectations. Yet, for all its value as a mirror of a particular time and place, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is uni- versal and timeless. Portions of the first and second acts offer a representative sampling of Molière’s rollicking exposition of human nature.
From Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670)
The scene is at Paris
ACT I Overture, played by a full orchestra; in the middle of the stage the Music-Master’s Scholar, seated at a table, is composing the air for a serenade which Mr. Jourdain has ordered.
Scene I Music-Master, Dancing-Master, Three Singers, Two Violinists, Four Dancers
Music-Master (To the singers): Here, step inside, and wait 1 until he comes. Dancing-Master (To the dancers): And you too, this way. Music-Master (To his scholar): Is it finished? Scholar: Yes. Music-Master: Let’s see . . . That’s good. Dancing-Master: Is it something new? Music-Master: Yes, ‘tis the air for a serenade which I have
had him compose, while waiting for our gentleman to wake up. Dancing-Master: May I see it? 10
Music-Master: You shall hear it, with the words, when he comes. He won’t be long. Dancing-Master: You and I have no lack of occupation now. Music-Master: That’s true. We have found a man here who
is just what we both needed. He’s a nice little source of income for us, this Mr. Jourdain, with his visions of nobility and gallantry that he has got into his noddle. And ‘twould be a fine thing for your dancing and my music if everybody were like him. Dancing-Master: No, no, not quite; I could wish, for his 20
sake, that he had some true understanding of the good things we bring him. Music-Master: ‘Tis true he understands them ill, but he
pays for them well; and that is what the arts need most nowadays. Dancing-Master: For my part, I’ll own, I must be fed
somewhat on fame. I am sensitive to applause, and I feel that in all the fine arts ‘tis a grievous torture to show one’s talents before fools, and to endure the barbarous judgments of a dunce upon our compositions. There’s great pleasure, I tell you, 30 in working for people who are capable of feeling the refinements of art, who know how to give a flattering
75Volume2
Characters Mr. Jourdain Mrs. Jourdain, his wife Lucile, his daughter Cléonte, suitor of Lucile Dorimene, a marquise Dorante, a count, in love with
Dorimene Nicole, servant to
Mr. Jourdain Coveille, valet to Cléonte A Music-Master
His Scholar A Dancing-Master A Fencing-Master A Philosophy-Master A Master-Tailor A Journeyman-Tailor Two lackeys Musicians, Dancers, Cooks, Journeymen-Tailors, and other characters to dance in the interludes
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reception to the beauties of your work, and recompense your toil by titillating praise. Yes, the most agreeable reward possible for what we do, is to see it understood, to see it caressed by applause that honors us. Nothing else, methinks, can pay us so well for all our labors; and enlightened praise gives exquisite delight.
Music-Master: I grant you that, and I relish it as you do. There is surely nothing more gratifying than such praise as you 40 speak of; but man cannot live on applause. Mere praise won’t buy you an estate; it takes something more solid. And the best way to praise, is to praise with open hands. Our fellow, to be sure, is a man of little wit, who discourses at random about anything and everything, and never applauds but at the wrong time. But his money sets right the errors of his mind; there is judgment in his purse; his praises pass current; and this ignorant shopkeeper is worth more to us, as you very well see, than the enlightened lord who introduced us to his house. Dancing-Master: There is some truth in what you say; but 50
methinks you set too much store by money; and self-interest is something so base that no gentleman should ever show a leaning towards it. Music-Master: Yet I haven’t seen you refuse the money our
fellow offers you. Dancing-Master: Certainly not; but neither do I find
therein all my happiness; and I could still wish that with his wealth he had good taste to boot. Music-Master: I could wish so too; and ‘tis to that end that
we are both working, as best we may. But in case, he gives. 60 us the means to make ourselves known in the world; he shall pay for others, and others shall praise for him. Dancing-Master: Here he comes.
[Act I, Scene II: Mr. Jourdain converses with his music- and dancing-masters, who dispute as to which is the more important art: music or dance. A dialogue in music, written by the music-master, follows, then a ballet choreographed by the dancing-master.
Act II, Scene I: Mr. Jourdain dances the minuet for the dancing-master, and then learns how to make a “proper” bow.]
ACT II, Scene II Mr. Jourdain, Music-Master, Dancing-Master, Lackey
Lackey: Sir, here is your fencing-master. 1 Mr. Jourdain: Tell him to come in and give me my lesson
here. (To the music-master and dancing-master) I want you to see me perform.
Scene III Mr. Jourdain, Fencing-Master, Music-Master, Dancing-Master, a Lackey with two foils
Fencing-Master (Taking the two foils from the lackey and giving one of them to Mr. Jourdain): Now, sir, your salute. The body erect. The weight slightly on the left thigh. The legs not so far apart. The feet in line. The wrist in line with the thigh. The point of your sword in line with your shoulder. The arm not quite so far extended. The left hand on a level 10 with the eye. The left shoulder farther back. Head up. A bold look. Advance. The body steady. Engage my sword in
quart1 and finish the thrust. One, two. Recover. Again, your feet firm. One, two. Retreat. When you thrust, sir, your sword must move first, and your body be held well back, and sideways. One, two. Now, engage my sword in tierce,2 and finish the thrust. Advance. Your body steady. Advance. Now, from that position. One, two. Recover. Again. One, two. Retreat. On guard, sir, on guard (the fencing-master gives him several thrusts), on guard. 20 Mr. Jourdain: Well? Music-Master: You do wonders. Fencing-Master: I’ve told you already: the whole secret of
arms consists in two things only: hitting and not being hit. And as I proved to you the other day by demonstrative logic, it is impossible that you should be hit if you know how to turn aside your adversary’s sword from the line of your body; and that depends merely on a slight movement of the wrist, inwards or outwards.
Mr. Jourdain: So, then, without any courage, one may be 30 sure of killing his man and not being killed? Fencing-Master: Certainly. Didn’t you see the
demonstration of it? Mr. Jourdain: Yes. Fencing-Master: And by this you may see how highly our
profession should be esteemed in the State; and how far the science of arms excels all other sciences that are of no use, like dancing, music . . . Dancing-Master: Softly, Mr. Swordsman; don’t speak
disrespectfully of dancing. 40 Music-Master: Learn, pray, to appreciate better the
excellences of music. Fencing-Master: You are absurd fellows, to think of
comparing your sciences with mine. Music-Master: Just see the man of consequence! Dancing-Master: The ridiculous animal, with his padded
stomacher!3
Fencing-Master: My little dancing-master, I will make you dance to a tune of my own, and you, little songster, I will make you sing out lustily. 50 Dancing-Master: Mr. Ironmonger,4 I’ll teach you your own
trade. Mr. Jourdain (To the dancing-master): Are you mad, to pick a
quarrel with him, when he knows tierce and quart and can kill a man by demonstrative logic? Dancing-Master: A fig for his demonstrative logic, and his
tierce and his quart. Mr. Jourdain (To the dancing-master): Softly, I tell you. Fencing-Master (To the dancing-master): What, little
Master Impudence! 60 Mr. Jourdain: Hey! my dear fencing-master. Dancing-Master (To the fencing-master): What, you great
cart-horse! Mr. Jourdain: Hey, my dear dancing-master. Fencing-Master: If I once fall upon you . . .
1 A defensive posture in the art of fencing. 2 Another fencing posture. 3 Protection used in fencing. 4 A dealer in hardware.
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Mr. Jourdain (To the fencing-master): Gently. Dancing-Master: If I once lay hands on you . . . Mr. Jourdain (To the dancing-master): So, so. Fencing-Master: I will give you such a dressing . . .
Mr. Jourdain (To the fencing-master): I beg you. 70 Dancing-Master: I will give you such a drubbing5 . . . Mr. Jourdain (To the dancing-master): I beseech you . . . Music-Master: Let us teach him manners a little. Mr. Jourdain: Good Heavens! do stop.
Scene IV Professor of Philosophy, Mr. Jourdain, Music-Master, Dancing- Master, Fencing-Master, Lackey
Mr. Jourdain: Oho! Mr. Philosopher, you’ve arrived in the nick of time with your philosophy. Do come and set these people here at peace. The Philosopher: How now? What is the matter, gentlemen? Mr. Jourdain: They have put themselves in a passion about
the precedence of their professions, and even insulted 80 each other and almost come to blows. The Philosopher: O fie, gentlemen! Should a man so lose his
self-control? Have you not read the learned treatise which Seneca composed, Of Anger?6 Is there anything more base or shameful than this passion, which of a man makes a savage beast? Should not reason be mistress of all our emotions? Dancing-Master: How, how, sir! Here he comes and
insults us both, by condemning dancing, which I practice, and music, which is his profession.
The Philosopher: A wise man is above all the insults that 90 can be offered him; and the chief answer which we should make to all offences, is calmness and patience. Fencing-Master: They both have the insolence to think of
comparing their professions with mine! The Philosopher: Should that move you? ‘Tis not for vainglory
and precedence that men should contend; what really distinguishes us from each other is wisdom and virtue. Dancing-Master: I maintain to his face that dancing is a
science which cannot be too highly honored. Music-Master: And I, that music is a science which all 100
ages have reverenced. Fencing-Master: And I maintain, against both of them,
that the science of fencing is the finest and most indispensable of all sciences. The Philosopher: But what then becomes of philosophy? I
think you are all three mighty impertinent to speak with such arrogance before me, and impudently to give the name of science to things which ought not even to be honored with the name of art, and which may best be classed together as pitiful trades, whether of prize-fighters, ballad-mongers, or 110 mountebanks.7
Fencing-Master: Go to, dog of a philosopher. Music-Master: Go to, beggarly pedagogue. Dancing-Master: Go to, past master pedant.
The Philosopher: What, you rascally knaves! . . . (He falls upon them, and they all three belabor him with blows.) Mr. Jourdain: Mr. Philosopher! The Philosopher: Villains! varlets! insolent vermin! Mr. Jourdain: Mr. Philosopher! Fencing-Master: Plague take the beast! Mr. Jourdain: Gentlemen!
The Philosopher: Brazen-faced ruffians! 120 Mr. Jourdain: Mr. Philosopher! Dancing-Master: Deuce take the old pack-mule! Mr. Jourdain: Gentlemen! The Philosopher: Scoundrels! Mr. Jourdain: Mr. Philosopher! Music-Master: Devil take the impertinent puppy! Mr. Jourdain: Gentlemen! The Philosopher: Thieves! vagabonds! rogues! impostors! Mr. Jourdain: Mr. Philosopher! Gentlemen! Mr. Philosopher!
Gentlemen! Mr. Philosopher! 130 (Exit fighting.)
Scene V Mr. Jourdain, Lackey
Mr. Jourdain: Oh! fight as much as you please; I can’t help it, and I won’t go spoil my gown trying to part you. I should be mad to thrust myself among them and get some blow that might do me a mischief.
Scene VI The Philosopher, Mr. Jourdain, Lackey
The Philosopher (Straightening his collar): Now for our lesson. Mr. Jourdain: Oh! sir, I am sorry for the blows you got. The Philosopher: That’s nothing. A philosopher knows how to take things aright; and I shall compose a satire against them 140
in Juvenal’s manner,8 which will cut them up properly. But let that pass. What do you want to learn? Mr. Jourdain: Everything I can; for I have the greatest desire
conceivable to be learned; it throws me in a rage to think that my father and mother did not make me study all the sciences when I was young. The Philosopher: That is a reasonable sentiment; nam,
sine doctrina, vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand that, for of course you know Latin.
Mr. Jourdain: Yes; but play that I don’t know it; and explain 150 what it means. The Philosopher: It means that, without learning, life is
almost an image of death. Mr. Jourdain: That same Latin’s in the right. The Philosopher: Have you not some foundations, some
rudiments of knowledge? Mr. Jourdain: Oh! yes, I can read and write. The Philosopher: Where will you please to have us begin?
Shall I teach you logic? Mr. Jourdain: What may that same logic be? 160
The Philosopher: ‘Tis the science that teaches the three operations of the mind.
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5 A beating. 6 A treatise by the first-century Roman Stoic Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(see chapter 6). 7 Charlatans or quacks. 8 A Roman satirist of the early second century (see chapter 6).
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Mr. Jourdain: And who are they, these three operations of the mind? The Philosopher: The first, the second, and the third. The first
is to conceive aright, by means of the universals; the second, to judge aright, by means of the categories; and the third, to draw deductions aright, by means of the figures: Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton.9
Mr. Jourdain:There’s a pack of crabbed words. This logic 170 doesn’t suit me at all. Let’s learn something else that’s prettier. The Philosopher: Will you learn ethics? Mr. Jourdain: Ethics? The Philosopher: Yes. Mr. Jourdain: What is your ethics about? The Philosopher: It treats of happiness, teaches men to
moderate their passions, and . . . Mr. Jourdain: No; no more of that. I am choleric as the
whole pack of devils, ethics or no ethics; no, sir, I’ll be angry to my heart’s content, whenever I have a mind to it. 180 The Philosopher: Is it physics you want to learn? Mr. Jourdain: And what has this physics to say for itself? The Philosopher: Physics is the science which explains the
principles of natural phenomena, and the properties of bodies; which treats of the nature of the elements, metals, minerals, stones, plants, and animals, and teaches us the causes of all such things as meteors, the rainbow, St. Elmo’s fire,10 comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, winds, and whirlwinds.
Mr. Jourdain: There’s too much jingle-jangle in that, too 190 much hurly-burly. The Philosopher: Then what to do you want me to teach you? Mr. Jourdain: Teach me spelling. The Philosopher: With all my heart. Mr. Jourdain: And afterward, you shall teach me the
almanac, so as to know when there’s a moon, and when there isn’t. The Philosopher: Very well. To follow up your line of
thought logically, and treat this matter in true philosophic 200 fashion, we must begin, according to the proper order of things, by an exact knowledge of the nature of the letters, and the different method of pronouncing each one. And on that head I must tell you that the letters are divided into vowels, so called—vowels—because they express the sounds of the voice alone; and consonants, so called—con-sonants— because they sound with the vowels, and only mark the different articulations of the voice. There are five vowels, or voices: A, E, I, O, U.
Mr. Jourdain: I understand all that. 210 The Philosopher: The vowel A is formed by opening the
mouth wide: A. Mr. Jourdain: A, A. Yes. The Philosopher: The vowel E is formed by lifting the
lower jaw nearer to the upper: A, E.
Mr. Jourdain: A, E; A, E. On my word, ‘tis so. Ah! how fine! The Philosopher: And the vowel I, by bringing the jaws
still nearer together, and stretching the corners of the mouth toward the ears: A, E, I.
Mr. Jourdain: A, E, I, I, I, I. That is true. Science forever! 220 The Philosopher: The vowel O is formed by opening the jaws,
and drawing in the lips at the corners: O. Mr. Jourdain: O, O. Nothing could be more correct: A, E, I, O,
I, O. ‘Tis admirable! I, O; I, O. The Philosopher: The opening of the mouth looks exactly like
a little circle, representing an O. Mr. Jourdain: O, O, O. You are right. O. Ah! What a fine
thing it is to know something! The Philosopher: The vowel U is formed by bringing the teeth
together without letting them quite touch, and thrusting 230 out the lips, at the same time bringing them together without quite shutting them: U. Mr. Jourdain: U, U. Nothing could be truer: U. The Philosopher: Your lips are extended as if you were
pouting; therefore if you wish to make a face at anyone, and mock at him, you have only to say U. Mr. Jourdain: U, U. ‘Tis true. Ah! would I had studied sooner,
to know all that! The Philosopher: To-morrow, we will consider the other
letters, namely the consonants. 240 Mr. Jourdain: Are there just as curious things about them as
about these? The Philosopher: Certainly. The consonant D, for instance, is
pronounced by clapping the tip of the tongue just above the upper teeth: D. Mr. Jourdain: D, D. Yes! Oh! what fine things! what fine
things! The Philosopher: The F, by resting the upper teeth on the
lower lip: F. Mr. Jourdain: F, F. ‘Tis the very truth. Oh! father and mother 250
of me, what a grudge I owe you! The Philosopher: And the R by lifting the tip of the tongue to
the roof of the mouth; so that being grazed by the air, which comes out sharply, it yields to it, yet keeps returning to the same point, and so makes a sort of trilling: R, Ra. Mr. Jourdain: R, R, Ra, R, R, R, R, R, Ra. That is fine. Oh! what
a learned man you are, and how much time I’ve lost! R, R, R, Ra. The Philosopher: I will explain all these curious things to
you thoroughly. 260 Mr. Jourdain: Do, I beg you. But now, I must tell you a
great secret. I am in love with a person of very high rank, and I wish you would help me to write her something in a little love note which I’ll drop at her feet. The Philosopher: Excellent! Mr. Jourdain: ‘Twill be very gallant, will it not? The Philosopher: Surely. Do you want to write to her in
verse? Mr. Jourdain: No, no; none of your verse.
The Philosopher: You want mere prose? 270 Mr. Jourdain: No, I will have neither prose nor verse. The Philosopher: It must needs be one or the other.
9 Part of a series of Latin names used by medieval logicians to help remember the valid forms of syllogisms.
10 Electrical discharges seen by sailors before and after storms at sea and named after the patron saint of sailors.
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Mr. Jourdain: Why? The Philosopher: For this reason, that there is nothing but
prose or verse to express oneself by. Mr. Jourdain: There is nothing but prose or verse? The Philosopher: No, sir. All that is not prose is verse, and all
that is not verse is prose. Mr. Jourdain: But when we talk, what is that, say?
The Philosopher: Prose. 280 Mr. Jourdain: What! When I say: “Nicole, bring me my
slippers and give me my nightcap,” that’s prose? The Philosopher: Yes, sir. Mr. Jourdain: Oh my word, I’ve been speaking prose these
forty years, and never knew it; I am infinitely obliged to you for having informed me of this. Now I want to write to her in a note: Fair Marquise,11 your fair eyes make me die of love; but I want it to be put in gallant fashion, and neatly turned. The Philosopher: Say that the fires of her eyes reduce your
heart to ashes; that night and day you suffer for her all the 290 tortures of a. . . Mr. Jourdain: No, no, no, I want none of all that. I will have
nothing but what I told you: Fair Marquise, your fair eyes make me die of love. The Philosopher: You must enlarge upon the matter a little. Mr. Jourdain: No, I tell you. I’ll have none but those very
words in the note, but put in a fashionable way, arranged as they should be. Pray tell me over the different ways they can be put, so that I may see.
The Philosopher: You can first of all put them as you said: 300 Fair Marquise, your fair eyes make me die of love. Or else: Of love to die me make, fair Marquise, your fair eyes. Or else: Your fair eyes of love me make, fair Marquise, to die. Or else: To die your fair eyes, fair Marquise, of love me make. Or else: Me make your fair eyes die, fair Marquise, of love. Mr. Jourdain: But which of all these ways is the best? The Philosopher: The way you said it: Fair Marquise, your
fair eyes make me die of love. Mr. Jourdain: And yet I never studied, and I did it at the
first try. I thank you with all my heart, and beg you to come 310 again to-morrow early. The Philosopher: I shall not fail to.
Scene VII Mr. Jourdain, Lackey
Mr. Jourdain (To the lackey): What! Haven’t my clothes come yet? Lackey: No, sir. Mr. Jourdain: That cursed tailor makes me wait a long
while, on a day when I’m so busy. I am furious. May the quartan ague12 wring this villain of a tailor unmercifully! To the devil with the tailor! Plague choke the tailor! If I had him here
now, that wretch of a tailor, that dog of a tailor, that scoundrel 320 of a tailor, I’d. . .
Scene VIII Mr. Jourdain, A Master-Tailor; A Journeyman-Tailor, carrying Mr. Jourdain’s suit; Lackey
Mr. Jourdain: Ah! so there you are! I was just going to get angry with you. Master-Tailor: I could not come sooner. I had twenty men at
work on your clothes. Mr. Jourdain: You sent me some silk stockings so tight that
I had dreadful work getting them on, and there are two stitches broke in them already. Master-Tailor: If anything, they will grow only too loose.
Mr. Jourdain: Yes, if I keep on breaking out stitches. And 330 you made me some shoes that pinch horribly. Master-Tailor: Not at all, sir. Mr. Jourdain: What! Not at all? Master-Tailor: No, they do not pinch you. Mr. Jourdain: I tell you they do pinch me. Master-Tailor: You imagine it. Mr. Jourdain: I imagine it because I feel it. A fine way of
talking! Master-Tailor: There, this is one of the very handsomest
and best matched of court costumes. ‘Tis a masterpiece to 340 have invented a suit that is dignified, yet not of black; and I’d give the most cultured tailors six trials and defy them to equal it. Mr. Jourdain: What’s this? You have put the flowers upside
down. Master-Tailor: You didn’t tell me you wanted them right
end up. Mr. Jourdain: Was there any need to tell you that? Master-Tailor: Why, of course. All persons of quality wear
them this way. 350 Mr. Jourdain: Persons of quality wear the flowers upside
down? Master-Tailor: Yes, sir. Mr. Jourdain: Oh! that’s all right then. Master-Tailor: If you wish, I will put them right end up. Mr. Jourdain: No, no. Master-Tailor: You have only to say the word. Mr. Jourdain: No, I tell you; you did rightly. Do you think
the clothes will fit me? Master-Tailor: A pretty question! I defy any painter, with 360
his brush, to make you a closer fit. I have in my shop a fellow that is the greatest genius in the world for setting up a pair of German breeches; and another who is the hero of our age for the cut of a doublet.13
Mr. Jourdain: Are the wig and the feathers just as they should be? Master-Tailor: Everything is just right. Mr. Jourdain (Looking at the tailor’s suit): Ah! ah! Mr.
Tailor here is some of the cloth from my last suit you made me. I know it perfectly. 370 Master-Tailor: The cloth seemed to me so fine that I thought
well to cut a suit for myself out of it.
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11 The wife of a nobleman ranking below a duke and above an earl or count.
12 An intermittent fever. 13 A man’s close-fitting jacket.
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Q How does he treat middle-class aspirations?
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Mr. Jourdain: Yes; but you ought not to have cabbaged14 it out of mine. Master-Tailor: Will you put on your suit? Mr. Jourdain: Yes; let me have it. Master-Tailor: Wait. That is not the way to do things. I have
brought my men with me to dress you to music; clothes such as these must be put on with ceremony. Ho! enter, you fellows.
Scene IX Mr. Jourdain, Master-Tailor, Journeyman-Tailor; Dancers, in the costume of journeymen-tailors; Lackey
Master-Tailor (To his journeymen): Put on the gentleman’s 380 suit, in the style you use for persons of quality.
First Ballet Enter four journeymen-tailors, two of whom pull off Mr. Jourdain’s breeches that he has on for his exercise, and the other two his jacket; then they put on his new suit; and Mr. Jourdain walks about among them, showing off his suit, to see if it is all right. All this to the accompaniment of full orchestra.
Journeyman-Tailor: Noble Sir, please give the tailor’s men something to drink. Mr. Jourdain: What did you call me?
Journeyman-Tailor: Noble Sir. 390 Mr. Jourdain: Noble Sir! That is what it is to dress as a
person of quality! You may go clothed as a tradesman all your days, and nobody will call you Noble Sir. (Giving him money) There, that’s for Noble Sir. Journeyman-Tailor: My Lord, we are greatly obliged to you. Mr. Jourdain: My Lord! Oh! oh! My Lord! Wait, friend; My
Lord deserves something, ‘tis no mean word, My Lord! There, there’s what His Lordship gives you. Journeyman-Tailor: My Lord, we will all go and drink Your
Grace’s health. 400 Mr. Jourdain: Your Grace! Oh! oh! oh! wait; don’t go. Your
Grace, to me! (Aside) Faith, if he goes as far as Your Highness he’ll empty my purse. (Aloud) There, there’s for Your Grace. Journeyman-Tailor: My Lord, we thank you most humbly
for your generosity. Mr. Jourdain: He did well to stop. I was just going to give it
all to him.
Imperial Islam Between 1550 and 1700, three major Islamic empires flour- ished (Map 21.1): the Ottoman Empire, which stretched from Eastern Europe through Anatolia and Syria, across North Africa and into Arabia; the Safavid Empire in Persia
(modern-day Iran); and the Mogul Empire, which succeed- ed in unifying all of India. All three established absolute monarchies that depended on the support of an efficient bureaucracy and a powerful army. As with the kings of France, the rulers of these Muslim empires governed a rigidly stratified society, consisting of a wealthy elite and a large, and often impoverished, agrarian population. And as in early modern Europe, the empires of the Middle East confronted serious religious rifts. The establishment of Islamic authority over non-Muslims, and the militant ani- mosity between Shi’ite and Sunni factions, ignited bitter conflicts not unlike those between Catholics and Protestants in Western Europe.
In the early modern era, both East and West shared a widening global perception that the “Old World” would never again live in isolation. Fueled by curiosity and com- mercial ambition, cross-cultural contacts between Europe and Asia flourished. In the 1700s, ambassadors of the shah (the word means “king”) of Persia and of other Asian potentates were splendidly received at Versailles, while, at the same time, Christian missionaries and official represen- tatives of the European monarchs found their way to Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim lands. France had long main- tained diplomatic ties with the Ottoman Turks; in fact, the French king Francis I (1494–1547) had tried to tip the bal- ance of power against the growing power of the Holy Roman Empire by forging an “unholy” alliance with the great Muslim leader, the sultan Suleiman (1494–1566).
The Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Turks were the successors of the Seljuk Turks, who had converted to Islam in the eleventh centu- ry (see chapter 10). Having conquered Constantinople in 1453, they went on to establish an empire that, under the leadership of Suleiman, became the most powerful in the world. With a standing army of 70,000 and a navy of some 300 ships, Suleiman governed territories that stretched from Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf (see Map 21.1). The Turkish infantry consisted of janissaries, an elite slave force (originally recruited from conquered lands), who eventually came to receive a regular cash salary for their services to the empire. Suleiman’s court, more lavish than that of Louis XIV, supported an army of servants who dressed, bathed, and entertained the ruler, and served his meals on platters of gold and silver. Suleiman’s position as caliph gave him religious authority over all Muslims; and while the Ottoman Sunnis militantly opposed the Shi’ites of Persia, Suleiman’s regime granted religious toleration to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Suleiman’s empire was a model of Muslim absolutism. In the sultan’s hands lay unlimited political and religious authority. Known as the “Lawgiver,” Suleiman oversaw the establishment of a legal code that, while respecting the sharia (Muslim sacred law), fixed specific penalties for rou- tine crimes. He also introduced the concept of a balanced financial budget. State revenues some eighty times those of France permitted Suleiman to undertake an extensive pro- gram of architectural and urban improvement in the great14 Stolen or filched.
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SCOTLAND
DENMARK
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
NORWAY
IRELAND ENGLAND
FRANCE
POLAND
RUSSIA
SPAIN ITALY
EGYPT
ETHIOPIA
ARABIA HINDUSTAN
DECCAN
TIBET
MONGOLIA MANCHURIA
KOREA JAPAN
CHINA
BURMA VIETNAM
LAOS SIAM
INDIA
SW ED
EN
BLACK SEA
R ED
SEA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
ARABIAN SEA
BAY OF
BENGAL
I N D I A N O C E A N
PERSIAN GULF
CASPIAN SEA Beijing
Shanghai
Calcutta
Yangzhou
Delhi
Isfahan Jerusalem
Istanbul
Bucharest
Krakow Paris
Rome
Alexandria
Algiers
Bombay
N ile
Yan
gzi
Himalayan Mountains
Danube
In du
s Ye llo
w
Ganges
Great Wall of China
Key
Ottoman Empire (at its height, 1556)
Mogul Empire (under Shah Jahan)
France (under Louis XIV)
Manchu (early Qing dynasty)
Safavid Empire (under Shah Ismail)
N
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0 1500 miles
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CHAPTER 21 Absolute Power and the Aristocratic Style 81
cities of his empire: Mecca, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. A goldsmith and a poet of some esteem, he ini- tiated a golden age of literature and art. Pomp and luxury characterized Suleiman’s court, and the arts that flourished under his patronage shared with those of seventeenth-cen- tury France a taste for the ornate and a high degree of tech- nical skill (Figure 21.17). Suleiman, whom Europeans called “the Magnificent,” personally oversaw the activities of official court poets, painters, architects, and musicians. He established a model for imperial patronage that ensured the triumph of the aristocratic style not only in Turkish lands but in all parts of his multi-ethnic empire.
The Safavid Empire The Ottoman Empire began to decline after Suleiman’s death. In Persia, where Shi’ite leaders launched a jihad against the reigning Sunnis, the Safavid dynasty rose to power. (By the late seventeenth century, Persia’s popula- tion was solidly Shi’ite and remains so in modern-day Iran.) Under the leadership of Shah Abbas (1557–1628), the multi-ethnic population of Persia was united. A politi- cal pragmatist and a brilliant strategist, Shah Abbas held absolute power over a prosperous empire. Establishing his capital at Isfahan, he commissioned the construction of new mosques, palaces, roads, and bridges. The government
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Map 21.1 Empires in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Note the strategically located capitals: Paris (France), Istanbul (Ottoman), Isfahan (Safavid), Delhi (Mogul), and Beijing (Manchu/Qing).
Figure 21.17 Ceremonial canteen, Ottoman Empire, second half of the sixteenth century. Gold decorated with jade plaques and gems.
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held monopolies in luxury goods, including silk produc- tion, and stimulated trade.
By the year 1600, Persian silk rivaled that of China in European markets. Carpet weaving became a national industry that employed more than 25,000 people in the city of Isfahan alone. Persian tapestries, intricately woven in silk and wool (Figure 21.18), and finely ornamented
ceramics were avidly sought across the world, and Persian manuscripts embellished with brightly printed illustrations came to be imitated throughout Asia.
In the field of architecture, the outstanding monument to Safavid wealth and power was the Imperial Mosque, commissioned by Shah Abbas for the city of Isfahan (Figure 21.19). Completed in 1637, this magnificent structure, flanked by two minarets, encloses a square main hall covered by a splendid dome that rises to 177 feet. The surfaces of the mosque, both inside and out, are covered with colored glazed tiles (compare to the Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon, see Figure 1.11) ornamented with calli- graphic inscriptions and delicate blue and yellow floral motifs. French aristocrats in the service of Louis XIV brought back to France enthusiastic reports of the Imperial Mosque—a fact that has led scholars to detect the influence of Persian art on some of Louis’ more lavish enterprises at Versailles.
The Mogul Empire Muslims had ruled parts of India for almost a thousand years, but it was not until the sixteenth centu- ry that the Muslim dynasty known as the Moguls (the name derives
from “Mongol”) succeeded in uniting all of India (see Map 21.1). Distant cousins of the Safavid princes, the Moguls ruled India as absolute monarchs from 1526 to 1707. They imported Persian culture and language into India in much the same way that Louis XIV brought Italian culture into France. The creators of a culture that blended Muslim, Hindu, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and African traditions, the Moguls encouraged the development of an aristocratic style, which—like that of the Sun King—served as an adjunct to majesty.
The founder of the Mogul Empire, Akbar (1542–1605), came to the throne at the age of thirteen. Establishing an integrated state in north India, he laid the foundations for a luxurious court style that his son and grandson would per- petuate. India’s most dynamic ruler since Emperor Asoka of the third century B.C.E., Akbar ruled over a court consist- ing of thousands of courtiers, servants, wives, and concu- bines. He exercised political control over feudal noblemen and court officials who, unlike their French counterparts, received paid salaries. Amidst the primarily Hindu popula- tion, the Muslim ruler pursued a policy of religious tolera- tion. So as not to offend India’s Hindus, he became a vegetarian and gave up hunting, his favorite sport. Akbar’s religious pluralism reflected his personal quest for a synthe- sis of faiths. Dedicated to “divine monotheism,” he brought learned representatives of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and other religions to his court, to debate with Muslim the- ologians. He also made every effort to rid India of its out- moded traditions, such as the immolation of wives on their husbands’ funeral pyres. Despite Akbar’s reforms, however, the lower classes and especially the peasants were taxed heavily (as was also the case in France under Louis XIV) to finance the luxuries of the upper-class elite.
Figure 21.18 Kirman shrub rug, Persia, seventeenth century. Silk and wool, 10 ft. 1 in. � 4 ft. 7 in. Court carpets were among the most magnificent products of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Persia. This one features flowering trees and bushes that evoke the Qur’anic Garden of Paradise.
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In the seventeenth century, the Moguls governed the wealthiest state in the world, a state whose revenues were ten times greater than those of France. Akbar commissioned magnificent works of music, poetry, paint- ing, and architecture—the tangible expressions of princely affluence and taste. As in Louis’ court, most of these exqui- site objects were designed for secular, not liturgical, use. A state studio of more than 100 artists working under Persian masters created a library of more than 24,000 illuminated manuscripts, the contents of which ranged from love poet- ry to Hindu epics and religious tales. One notable Mogul innovation was the practice of recording and illustrating
Figure 21.19 Imperial Mosque, Isfahan, Iran, 1637. Surface decorated with colored glazed tiles, height of dome 177 ft. The Imperial Mosque, which dates back to the eighth century, was enlarged and renovated by numerous Muslim rulers. The Safavids were instrumental in making Shia Islam the official religion in Persia.
1717 inoculation against smallpox is introduced in Europe (from Ottoman Turkey)
1736 expansion of the Indian shipbuilding industry in Bombay
1780 a European version of Chinese silk-reeling machines is introduced in Bengal
1781 Turkish methods for producing high-quality cloth are copied in England
1790 India uses military rockets based on Ottoman technology in warfare
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first-hand accounts of specific historical events. A minia- ture celebrating the birth of Akbar’s son, Nurud-din Salim Jahangir, shows courtiers rejoicing: dancers sway to the rhythms of a lively musical ensemble while bread and alms are distributed outside the palace gate (Figure 21.20). Such miniatures reveal the brilliant union of delicate line, rich color, and strong surface patterns—features that also dominate Asian carpet designs. The absence of Western perspective gives the scene a flat, decorative quality.
The Arts of the Mogul Court Under the rule of Akbar’s son Jahangir (ruled 1605–1627), aristocratic court portraiture came into fashion in India. The new genre reflects the influence of European painting, which had been eagerly embraced by the Moguls, and sug- gests the gradual relaxation of Muslim prohibition against the representation of the human figure. Relatively small in comparison with the aristocratic portraits executed by Rigaud or van Dyck (see Figures 21.2, 22.2), the painted likeness of Jahangir (the name means “world seizer”) fea- tured in a small picture album glorifies the monarch in an
international context (Figure 21.21). The artist Bichitr (fl. 1625), whose self- portrait appears in the lower left corner, shows the shah enthroned atop an elabo- rate hourglass throne, a reference to the brevity of life and to Jahangir’s declining health. Jahangir welcomes a Sufi (a Muslim mystic), who stands in the com- pany of a Turkish dignitary and the European King James I of England. While the latter invites the viewer into the scene, the turbaned Turk makes a gesture of submission to Jahangir. Yet Jahangir looks directly at the Sufi, who presents him with a book, perhaps a copy of the Qur’an. Four Western-style angels frame the scene: the upper two seem to lament the impermanence of worldly power, while the bottom two inscribe the base of the hourglass with the prayer, “O Shah, may the span of your life be a thou- sand years.” Just as Louis XIV assumed the guise of the Sun King, so Jahangir— as notorious for his overconsumption of wine and opium as Louis was for fine food and sex—is apotheosized by a huge halo consisting of the sun and the moon. The miniature, an allegorical statement of the superiority of spiritual over secular power, is also an amalgam of Western and Eastern styles and motifs. Western- style illusionistic portraits are framed by an Eastern carpet-like background; the upper two angels are reminiscent of cherubs in Italian Renaissance paintings and the halo is clearly inspired by Hindu and Buddhist art. This little hybrid mas- terpiece anticipates a global perspective that will overtake the world in the cen- turies to come.
Well before the seventeenth century, Mogul rulers had initiated the tradition of building huge ceremonial and admin- istrative complexes, veritable cities in themselves. Such complexes symbolized Muslim wealth and authority in India, but, as in France, they were also political
Figure 21.20 Rejoicing at the Birth of Prince Salim in 1569. Manuscript illustration from the Akbar-Nama.
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manifestations of the cult of royalty. Akbar had personally overseen the construction of a palace complex near Agra, which, comparable with Versailles, featured an elaborate residence sur- rounded by courtyards and mosques, as well as by formal gardens and fountains watered by means of artificial conduits. The garden, a this- worldly counterpart of the Qur’anic Garden of Paradise (see chapter 10) and a welcome refuge from India’s intense heat, was a characteristic feature of the Mogul palace complex.
Inspired by the elaborate ceremonial centers built by his father and his grandfather, Shah Jahan (1627–1666) commissioned the most sumptuous of all Mogul palaces, the Shahjahanabad (present-day Old Delhi). The red sandstone walls of the Shahjahanabad (nicknamed the “Red Fort”) enclosed a palatial residence of white marble, flanked by magnifi- cent gardens, public and private audience halls, courtyards, pavilions, baths, and the largest mosque in India (Figure 21.22). The Red Fort’s 3:4 rectangular plan was bisected by an axis that led through successive courts to the public audi- ence hall, a pattern that anticipated the rigid symmetry of Versailles (compare Figure 21.3).
The hot Indian climate inclined Mogul architects to open up interior space by means of foliated arcades (see chapter 10) and latticed screens through which breezes might blow uninterrupted (Figure 21.23). These graceful architectural features distinguish the shah’s palace at the Red Fort. The most ornate of all Mogul interiors, Shah Jahan’s audience hall consists of white marble arcades and ceilings decorated with geometric and floral patterns
Figure 21.22 Anonymous Delhi artist, The Red Fort, ca. 1820. The building dates from the Shah Jahan period, after 1638.
Figure 21.21 (above) Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings, from the Leningrad Album of Bichitr, seventeenth century. Color and gold, 10 � 71⁄8 in. The inscrip- tions above the halo hail Jahangir as “Light of the Faith.” King James I looks out at us to acknowledge our participation in the scene.
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popular in Mogul embroidery, a craft traditionally domi- nated by women. The rich designs consist of inlaid pre- cious and semiprecious stones (pietra dura), a type of mosaic work that the Moguls had borrowed from Italy. At the center of the hall, the shah sat on the prized Peacock Throne, fashioned in solid gold and studded with emeralds, rubies, diamonds, and pearls. Above the throne (which served imperial India until it was plundered by Persian war- riors in 1732) was a canopy on which stood two gold pea- cocks, and above the canopy, around the ceiling of the hall, were inscribed the words, “If there is a paradise on the face of the earth, It is this, oh! it is this, oh! it is this.”
Surpassing the splendor of the palace at Delhi (badly damaged by the British army during the nineteenth cen- tury) is Shah Jahan’s most magnificent gift to world archi- tecture: the Taj Mahal (Figure 21.24). Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum to honor the memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal (the name means “light of the world”). When Mumtaz died giving birth to their four- teenth child, her husband, legend has it, was inconsolable. He directed his architects to construct alongside the Jumna River a glorious tomb, a twin to one he planned for himself on the adjoining riverbank. Fabricated in cream- colored marble, the Taj rises majestically above a tree- lined pool that mirrors its elegant silhouette so that the
mausoleum seems to be floating in air. Although the indi- vidual elements of the structure—slender minarets, bul- bous domes, and octagonal base—recall Byzantine and Persian prototypes (see Figure 21.19), its total effect is unique: shadowy voids and bright solids play against one another on the surface of the exterior, while delicate pat- terns of light and dark animate the latticed marble screens and exquisitely carved walls of the interior. The garden complex, divided into quadrants by waterways and broad footpaths, is an earthly recreation of the Muslim Garden of Paradise. The Taj Mahal is the product of some 20,000 West Asian builders and craftsmen working under the direction of a Persian architect. It is a brilliant fusion of the best aspects of Byzantine, Muslim, and Hindu tradi- tions and, hence, an emblem of Islamic cohesion. But it is also an extravagant expression of conjugal devotion and, to generations of Western visitors, an eloquent tribute to romantic love.
The Decline of the Islamic Empires As these pages suggest, during the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries the aristocratic courts of Islam ruled vast parts of Asia, including India and the Near East (see Map 21.1). By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the great empires of the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Moguls
Figure 21.23 Foliated arcades and perforated monolithic screens in the Red Fort (Shahjahanabad), Delhi, Shah Jahan period, after 1638.
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were either destroyed or in fatal decline. India came under the rule of Great Britain and parts of the Ottoman Empire were lost to the control of other European powers. While the Islamic empires had depended on the West for modern weapons, they could not compete with the West’s rapidly advancing commercialism and military technology. Conservative Muslim elements vigorously resisted all aspects of Western culture, including Western science and Christian learning. Threatened by the culture of the Christian West, some Muslim clerics even opposed the printing of books. Movements of Muslim revivalism would grow more militant in the following centuries, as Islam— once the imperial leader of the Asian world—struggled against European colonialism and the inevitable forces of Modernism.
The Ming Dynasty From the earliest days of Chinese history, Chinese emperors—the “Sons of Heaven”—ruled on earth by divine authority, or, as the Chinese called it, “the Mandate of
Heaven” (see chapter 3). In theory, all of China’s emperors were absolute rulers. Nevertheless, over the centuries, their power was frequently contested by feudal lords, military generals, and government officials. In 1368, native Chinese rebels drove out the last of the Mongol rulers and
established the Ming dynasty, which ruled China until 1644. The Ming dynasty governed the largest and most sophisticated empire on earth, an empire of some 120 mil- lion people. In the highly centralized Chinese state, Ming emperors oversaw a bureaucracy that included offices of finance, laws, military affairs, and public works. They rebuilt the Great Wall (see chapter 7) and revived the ancient Chinese tradition of the examination system, which had been suspended by the Mongols. By the seven- teenth century, however, the Ming had become autocrats who, like the foreigners they had displaced, took all power into their own hands. They transformed the civil service into a nonhereditary bureaucracy that did not dare to threaten the emperor’s authority. The rigid court protocol that developed around the imperial rulers of the late Ming dynasty symbolized this shift toward autocracy. Officials, for instance, knelt in the presence of the emperor, who, as the Son of Heaven, sat on an elevated throne in the cen- ter of the imperial precinct.
The Qing Dynasty Beset by court corruption and popular revolts, the Ming fell prey to the invading hordes of East Asians (descen- dants of Mongols, Turks, and other tribes) known as the Manchu. Under the rule of the Manchu, who established the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), the conditions of imperial autocracy intensified. As a symbol of submission, every Chinese male was required to adopt the Manchu hairstyle, by which one shaved the front of the head and wore a plaited pigtail at the back. Qing rulers retained the admin- istrative traditions of their predecessors, but government posts were often sold rather than earned by merit. When
Figure 21.24 Taj Mahal, Agra, India, 1623–1643.
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the Qing dynasty reached its zenith—during the very last years that Louis XIV ruled France—it governed the largest, most populous, and one of the most unified states in the world (see Map 21.1). Despite internal peace, uprisings were common. They reflected the discontent of peasant masses beset by high taxes and rents and periodic famines. Like the lower classes of France and India, Chinese villagers and urban workers supported the luxuries of royal princes, government officials, and large landholders, who (as in
France and India) were themselves exempt from taxation. The early Manchu rulers imitated their predeces- sors as royal sponsors of art and architecture. Like Louis XIV and Shah Jahan, the Chinese emperor and his huge retinue resided in an impressive ceremonial complex (Figure 21.25). This metropolis, the symbol of entrenched absolutism and the majesty of the ruler, was known as the Forbidden City—so-called because of its inaccessibility to ordinary Chinese citizens until 1925.
Figure 21.25 XU YANG, Bird‘s-Eye View of the Capital, 1770. Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 8 ft. 41⁄4 in. � 7 ft. 8 in. Commissioned in 1406, the Forbidden City was first occupied by the Ming court in 1421. It is said to have held 9,999 separate rooms; nine, an auspicious number, symbolizes the union of the five elements and the four cosmological directions.
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The Forbidden City Comparable in size and conception to Versailles in the West and to the Mogul palaces of India, the Forbidden City—a walled complex of palaces, tombs, and gardens located in Beijing—was the most elaborate imperial mon- ument of the Ming and Qing eras. Construction on the imperial palace began under fifteenth-century Ming emperors and was continued by the Manchus. For almost 500 years, this vast ceremonial complex—which, like Versailles, is now a park and museum—was the administra- tive center of China and the home of no fewer than twen- ty-four Ming and Qing emperors, their families, and the members of their courts. By the eighteenth century, some 9000 people, including guards, concubines, and domestic servants, resided within the complex.
Inside the 10-foot-high walls of the Forbidden City are royal meeting halls, grand avenues, broad courtyards, government offices, mansions of princes and dignitaries, artificial lakes, lush gardens, spacious temples, theaters, a library, and a printing house (Figure 21.26). Entering from the south, one passes under the majestic, five-towered entranceway through a succession of courtyards and gates reminiscent of the intriguing nests of boxes at which Chinese artisans excel. At the heart of the rectangular complex, one proceeds up the three-tiered stone terrace (Figure 21.27), into the Hall of Supreme Harmony (approximately 200 by 100 feet), where the Sons of Heaven sat enthroned, and beyond, to the imperial living quarters at the rear of the complex. Fragrant gardens, watered by fountains and artificial pools, once graced the private quar- ters of the royal officials.
1 Gate of Divine Pride 2 Pavilion of Imperial Peace 3 Imperial Garden 4 Palace of Earthly Tranquility
5 Hall of Union 6 Palace of Heavenly Purity 7 Gate of Heavenly Purity 8 Hall of the Preservation
of Harmony 9 Hall of Perfect Harmony
10 Hall of Supreme Harmony 11 Gate of Supreme
Harmony 12 Meridian Gate 13 Kitchens 14 Gardens 15 Former Imperial Printing House 16 Flower Gate 17 Palace of the Culture
of the Mind 18 Hall of the Worship of
the Ancestors 19 Pavilion of Arrows 20 Imperial Library 21 Palace of Culture 22 Palace of Peace and Longevity 23 Nine Dragon Screen
Figure 21.26 Plan of the imperial palace, Forbidden City, Beijing, China.
Figure 21.27 Three-tiered stone terrace and Hall of Supreme Harmony, Forbidden City, Beijing, China, Ming dynasty. Hall approx. 200 � 100 ft. Number 10 in Figure 21.26, the largest throne hall in the complex, is positioned centrally on the 2-mile-long ceremonial axis.
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During the seventeenth century, courtyard gardening itself developed into a fine art. Often flanked by a cov- ered walkway from which it could be viewed, the Chinese garden was an arrangement of seemingly random (but actually carefully placed) rocks, plants, and trees—a miniature version of the natural world. Like the Chinese land- scape scroll, the garden was an object of gentle contemplation, designed to be enjoyed progressively. The garden, with its winding, narrow paths, delicate ferns, and sheltering bamboos, has become a hallmark of East Asian culture.
The Forbidden City was the nucleus of imperial power and the symbol of Chinese absolutism. Laid out with a gridiron regularity that rivaled Mogul and French palatial complexes, the arrangement of buildings, courtyards, gates, and terraces was uniquely Chinese. It adhered to the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui, the arrangement of the physical environ- ment in accordance with specific cos- mological principles (see chapter 7). Lined up along the cosmic north–south axis, buildings are symmetrical, with square foundations symbolizing Earth, and yellow-tiled roofs symbolizing Heaven. (As the Son of Heaven, the emperor was expected to keep the two in bal- ance.) Palace doors face the “good” southerly direction, while rear walls, facing North, are closed to the cold winds and the attacks of northern barbarians. The Forbidden City, however, also reflects the ceremonial dimension of royal absolutism. The sizes and functions of the buildings were determined by a strict protocol based on rank, age, and gender. During the Ming Era, for instance, imperial legislation prescribed nine rooms for the emperor, seven for a prince, five for a court official, and three for an ordinary citizen.
Most of the buildings of the Forbidden City are no more than a single story high, their walls serving only as screens that divide interior space. What the Chinese sacrificed in monumentality, however, they recovered in ornamental splendor and in the creation of an architecture that achieved harmony with (rather than dominance over) nature. Chinese architects preserved such traditional fea- tures as the rectangular hall with fully exposed wooden rafters and the pitched roof with projecting eaves and glazed yellow tiles—the latter symbolic of the mantle of heaven. Bronze lions and gilded dragons (symbols of royal power) guard the great halls and entrances. In the Forbidden City Chinese court culture promoted a lavish aristocratic style that enhanced the majesty of the ruler.
The Arts of the Ming and Qing Courts The Ming and Qing emperors were great patrons of the arts. They encour- aged the traditional schools of land- scape painting and oversaw the production of such luxury items as inlaid bronze vessels, carved ivories and jades, lacquerware, embroidered silk, and painted ceramics. Chinese porcelains had been much sought after since the seventh century; by the sev- enteenth century they were world famous, so much so that in the West the word “Ming” became synonymous with porcelain. (More generally, the word “china” has come to signify fine ceramics and tableware.)
Qing artists used bright colors more freely than in earlier times. Vessels with solid color glazes of ox-blood red and peach-blossom pink (Figure 21.28) alternated with colorful landscapes filled with songbirds, flowering trees, human figures, and mythical animals. One Qing bowl ornamented with a rich five-color palette shows a group of elegantly attired men, women, and servants in a luxurious interior (Figure 21.29). As this delightful scene sug- gests, neither in the porcelains nor in the paintings of this period did the
Chinese develop any interest in the kinds of heroic and moralizing themes that dominated Baroque art in the West. This difference notwithstanding, imperial tastes dictated the style of aristocratic art in China every bit as much as the royal academies of France influenced seventeenth-century French style. By 1680, there were over thirty official palace workshops serving the imperial court. Out of these work- shops poured precious works of art: gem-encrusted jewelry,
Figure 21.28 Flower vase, Qing dynasty. Chinese pottery, “peach-bloom” glaze, height 73⁄4 in.
Figure 21.29 Famille verte, Qing dynasty, early eighteenth century. Foliated porcelain bowl, diameter 61⁄2 in.
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carved wood and lacquerware, painted enamels, cloisonné vessels (Figure 21.30), intricate jade carvings, and heavily embroidered silk and gold textiles (Figure 21.31). Many of these objects found their way into Europe, where they inspired chinoiserie, a style reflecting the influence of Chinese art and a taste for Chinese items that, in the 1700s, developed into something of a mania.
From China, by way of the Dutch, tea (“the Chinese drink”) came into use in England, often smuggled into the country to avoid the high import tax. The fashionable tea service became the object of imitation in the West, most notably in the blue and white wares of Delft, Holland. Cultural exchange between East and West, however, was mutual: delegations of Jesuits, who arrived in China in 1601, introduced the rules of linear perspective to Chinese art, even as they transmitted to Europe (often by means of prints and engravings) a knowledge of Chinese techniques and goods. And French prints in turn prompted early Manchu rulers to build a Chinese version of Versailles, complete with fountains, at the imperial summer palace northwest of Beijing.
Figure 21.30 (above) Incense burner in the shape of a li (tripod), Ming dynasty, fifteenth or possibly early sixteenth century. Cloisonné enamel, diameter 71⁄2 in.
Figure 21.31 (below) Manchu-style man’s jifu (semiformal court robe), Qing dynasty, second quarter of the eighteenth century. Silk and gold leaf over lacquered paper strips, 4 ft. 43⁄4 in � 6 ft. 21⁄3 in. The dragon, an age-old symbol of the emperor’s supreme power, is the dominant motif on this robe. In the Hall of Supreme Harmony the emperor sat on the Dragon Throne. Some additional 13,000 dragon images adorn the walls, ceilings, and other parts of the building.
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Chinese Literature and the Theater Arts Ming and Qing rulers worked hard to preserve China’s rich literary heritage. Under Ming patronage, a group of 2000 scholars began the enormous task of collecting and copying the most famous of China’s literary and historical works. The Manchu contemporary of Louis XIV, Emperor Kangxi (1662–1722), hired 15,000 calligraphers and 360 editors to compile a vast assortment of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a thirty-six-volume anthology of the Chinese classics (Figure 21.32). Increasing numbers of literate middle-class men and women in China’s growing cities demanded print- ed books for everyday use. These included almanacs, guides to letter writing, short stories, collections of proverbs and maxims, chronicles, ballads, and romances.
Novels, long works of fiction in the colloquial style, had emerged as early as the twelfth century in China and even earlier in Japan (see chapter 14); but in the Ming and Qing eras, this literary genre became ever more popular. The typical Chinese novel recounted historical events and often made fun of religious and secular authorities. In the early eighteenth century, Cao Xueqin produced China’s greatest novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone). This 4000-page work, which was to become the most popular example of Chinese fiction, is a love story involving two aristocratic Beijing families. Filled with realistic detail as well as fantastic dream sequences, the novel provides a fascinating picture of upper-class Qing society.
Plots drawn from popular novels such as The Dream of the Red Chamber provided the themes for staged perform- ances, which always included mime, dance, and vocal and instrumental music. This type of theatrical performance— which Westerners might call “opera”—was the only form of drama that existed in China prior to the twentieth cen- tury (when, imitating Western drama, Chinese writers began to produce exclusively spoken plays). In the Chinese theater, performers were exclusively male, and male actors played the parts of such stock characters as the coquette or the virtuous maid. Since troupes of players moved from city to city, elaborate costumes and stage scenery were minimal. Chinese theater made use of conventional props to indi- cate setting or circumstance: a chair might represent a mountain, a whip might signify that the actor was on horseback, and a black cloth might be used to indicate that a character was invisible. Colors symbolized conventional character types: red represented loyalty and dignity, white symbolized villainy or treachery, and so on. During the Ming Era, when sumptuous costumes and masklike make- up became popular, such earlier stage symbols and conven- tions were still preserved. Indeed, to this day, Chinese theater retains many traditional, highly stylized features.
Despite the differences in their origins, Chinese and European opera developed during the same era—the sev- enteenth century. By the late eighteenth century the first permanent Chinese opera company emerged in the capital city of Beijing. Chinese opera shunned the dramatic con- trasts in texture and timbre that characterize Western opera (and Western music in general). While early
European operas borrowed themes from Greco-Roman mythology and biblical history—themes that might glorify a royal patron or flatter upper-class tastes—Chinese operas mainly drew on a traditional repertory of love stories, social events, and the adventures of folk heroes. Such operas often featured stock characters resembling those of Molière’s plays, and, like Molière’s plays, they had wide and lasting popularity.
By the seventeenth century, feudal Japan had taken the direction of a unified and centralized state led by members of the Tokugawa dynasty (1600–1868). In contrast to China, whose aristocracy consisted of a scholarly elite recruited through civil service examinations, Japan’s aris- tocracy consisted of a warrior elite (the samurai) recruited in battle (see chapter 14). The Tokugawa shogun (general- in-chief) demanded that his feudal lords attend his court in Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Here he enforced court eti- quette as faithfully as he solidified political and economic control. Unique to Japan was its self-enforced isolation from the West (see chapter 20). In the 1630s, Tokugawa rulers initiated a policy of national seclusion. Determined
Figure 21.32 UNKNOWN ARTIST, portrait of Emperor Kangxi reading. Kangxi, a Confucian scholar who ruled China for sixty years, is shown seated against a background of string-bound books that made up part of his library. He is said to have introduced Western technology and Western musical instruments into China.
See Music Listening Selection 14, CD One, an excerpt from a Chinese opera described in chapter 14.
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to maintain internal stability and peace, they expelled for- eigners and forbade citizens to travel abroad, thus sealing off Japan from the outside world.
While a large segment of Japan’s peasantry led barely subsistent lives, the pleasure-loving court at Edo (a city of one million people by the year 1700) and the rising com- mercial classes of the towns enjoyed one of the most cre- ative periods in Japanese history. In the Tokugawa court, the traditional Japanese decorative style reached new heights. Luxury items included multipaneled screens (used to divide interior space), hand-painted scrolls, ceramics (including the decorative porcelains known as “Imari ware”), and lacquer boxes used for the tea ceremony. Japan’s aristocratic style is best represented in its brightly painted multifold screens, adorned with stylized flowers, birds, or landscape motifs. In the large six-paneled screen by Ogata Korin (ca. 1658–1716), pictured in Figure 21.33, bold, decorative shapes and the subtle balance of figure and ground (positive and negative space) achieve an astonish- ing purity of design. Such screens unite simplicity and lux- ury (the ground of the screen is gold leaf) with an elegance that distinguishes the Japanese court style at its best.
The Floating World Parallel with the flowering of the aristocratic style in Tokugawa Japan was the rise of popular culture and popular artforms. The new merchant class that occupied Japan’s growing commercial cities demanded a variety of lively (and bawdy) entertainments. In the so-called “floating world” (ukiyo)—“floating” because Japan’s middle class was not bound by aristocratic proprieties—theaters and broth- els provided leisure-time pleasures. Ukiyo was described by one of Japan’s first professional writers, Asai Ryoi (1612–1691), in his Tales of the Floating World (ca. 1665):
Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow,
the cherry blossoms and the maples, singing songs, drinking wine, and diverting ourselves in just floating, floating, caring not a whit for the poverty staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the current: this is what we call ukiyo.
From the floating world of the Edo district came a new type of staged performance known as kabuki. The kabuki stage provided an alternative to Japan’s oldest form of theater, Nō drama (see chapter 14), whose traditional literary subjects, stylized movements, and use of masks had much in common with ancient Greek theater. In its late-fifteenth-century ori- gins, kabuki (literally, “song-dance-art”) was a female per- formance genre. But in 1629, some twenty years after its first appearance, the Japanese government issued an edict that forbade women to appear on stage. Thereafter, male actors wearing elaborate costumes, wigs, and make-up assumed all kabuki roles. Kabuki plays featured dance, song, and mime. Their plots, drawn from history, myth, puppet plays and daily life, often involved tales of romance marked by violent passions and “love suicides.” Action took place on a revolving stage that featured a long ramp leading from the audience to the rear of the stage (Figure 21.34). Elegant backdrops and scenic effects embellished the action. Three to five plays might be performed in a single day, interrupted by intervals that allowed the audience to visit local teahouses and restaurants.
Woodcut prints celebrating celebrity actors and famous courtesans (some depicted in sexually explicit acts) became one of Japan’s most popular genres (Figure 21.35). Mass-produced and therefore inexpensive, ukiyo-e (“pic- tures of the floating world”) were purchased by Edo patrons as souvenirs, much as people today collect posters of famous personalities. Executed in black and white, and (by 1750) colored either by hand or with inked blocks, wood- cut prints exemplify Japanese virtuosity in calligraphic
Figure 21.33 OGATA KORIN, Irises at Yatsuhashi, from the Tale of Ise (Ise Monogatari), Edo period. One of a pair of six-paneled screens, ink and color and gilded paper, with black lacquered frames, each screen 4 ft. 11 in � 11 ft. 3in.
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design. They share with Korin’s screens the typically Japanese mastery of simplicity, elegance, and control.
The Way of Tea and Zen A classic expression of Japanese culture is the ritual tea ceremony—a unique synthesis of art, theater, and every- day ritual. Introduced into Japan from China during the
ninth century, strongly caffeinated tea served as an aid to Buddhist med- itation. By the sixteenth century the Way of Tea (as the practice of tea- drinking is called) was closely associ- ated with Zen Buddhism, a strand of Buddhism that seeks spiritual enlightenment through intuitive illu- mination (see chapter 8). With the cultivation of better types of tea plants, tea-drinking became widely practiced in Japanese society, gradu- ally establishing itself among samurai warriors and wealthy merchants. The
four-hour tea ceremony is choreographed according to a strict set of rules and formal etiquette. An intimate ritual, incorporating the arts of ceramics, textiles, and flower- arranging, it remains a paradigm of the cultivated life.
Typical of Zen monastic practice, tea and the etiquette of tea-drinking coincided with a revival of Zen painting among eighteenth-century artist–monks. Zen calligraphers did not consider their paintings as works of art, but, rather, as acts of meditation involving intense concentration and focus. Absence of detail invited the beholder to complete the painting, and thus partake of the meditative process. One of the greatest Zen masters was Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768), whose magnificent ink scrolls are noted for their vigorous yet subtle brushwork. In Two Blind Men Crossing a Log Bridge (Figure 21.36), Hakuin illustrates his vision of the precarious nature of the human journey to spiritual enlightenment: two monks, one with his sandals hanging on his staff, make their way unsteadily across the narrow bridge. The figures, like the Japanese characters that record the accompanying poem (in the upper left cor- ner), come to life by way of confident, calligraphic brush- strokes. Hakuin’s poem reads:
Both inner life and the floating world outside us Are like the blind man’s round log bridge— An enlightened mind is the best guide.
In their improvisational spirit, the ink scrolls of the Zen master differ from the deliberately stylized Edo screens. Yet, both share the Japanese preference for refinement and utmost simplicity.
Controlled simplicity is a major feature of Tokugawa lyric verse forms, the most notable of which is the haiku. The haiku—a seventeen-syllable poem arranged in three lines of 5/7/5/ syllables—depends for its effectiveness on the absence of detail and the pairing of contrasting images. The unexpected contrast does not describe a condition or event, but rather evokes a mood or emotion. Much like the art of the Zen calligrapher, the haiku creates a provocative void between what is stated and what is left unsaid. In this void there lies an implied “truth,” one that aims to close the gap between the world of things and the world of feel- ings. Witness the following five compositions by Japan’s most famous haiku poet and Zen monk, Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694):
Figure 21.35 TOSHUSAI SHARAKU (below), Bust Portrait of the Actor Segawa Tomisaburo as Yadorigi, the Wife of Ogishi Kurando, 1794–1795. Woodblock print, 141⁄2 � 91⁄4 in. Photograph.
Figure 21.34 MASANOBU (?) (above), Kabuki stage, ca. 1740. Colored woodblock print.
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The Aristocratic Style in Europe • As absolute monarch, Louis XIV brought France to a position of
political and military preeminence among the European nation- states. He challenged the power of the nobility and the Church, centralizing authority in his own hands.
• Under Louis’ leadership, the center of artistic patronage and productivity shifted from Italy to France. French culture in all its forms—from art and architecture to fashions and fine cuisine— came to dominate European tastes.
• Louis recognized the propaganda value of the arts. Using the French treasury, he made the arts an adjunct to royalty. His extravagances left France in a woeful financial condition.
• At Versailles, Louis’ newly constructed palace emerged as an amalgam of Greco-Roman subject matter, Classical principles of design, and Baroque theatricality. Luxury, grandeur, and technical refinement became the vehicles of French royal authority and the hallmarks of aristocratic elitism.
• Louis was the arbiter of fashion and manners. He dictated the
Figure 21.36 HAKUIN EKAKU, Two Blind Men Crossing a Log Bridge, Edo Period (1615–1868). Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 111⁄16 � 33 in.
1520–1566 Suleiman rules Ottoman Empire 1556–1605 Akbar rules Mogul Empire 1588–1629 Shah Abbas rules Safavid Empire (Persia) 1600–1868 Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan 1607–1627 Jahangir rules Mogul Empire 1627–1666 Shah Jahan rules Mogul Empire 1643–1715 Louis XIV rules France 1661–1722 Kangxi (Qing dynasty) rules China
The beginning of all art a song when planting a rice field
in the country’s inmost part.
◆
The first day of the year: thoughts come—and there is loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.
◆
Oh, these spring days! A nameless little mountain,
wrapped in morning haze!
◆
I’d like enough drinks to put me to sleep—on stones
covered with pinks.
◆
Leaning upon staves and white-haired—a whole family
visiting the graves.
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chinoiserie European imitation of Chinese art, architecture, and decorative motifs; also any objects that reflect such imitation
choreography the art of composing, arranging, and/or notating dance movements
comédie-ballet (French) a dramatic performance that
features interludes of song and dance
haiku a light verse form consisting of seventeen syllables (three lines of five, seven, and five)
kabuki (Japanese, “song-dance art”) a popular form of Japanese drama
marquetry a decorative technique in which patterns are created on a wooden surface by means of inlaid wood, shell, or ivory maxim a short, concise, and often witty saying objet d’art (French) art object pietra dura (Italian, “hard stone”) an ornamental technique
involving inlaid precious and semiprecious stones salon (French, “drawing room”) an elegant apartment or drawing room
shah (Persian) king sharia the body of Muslim law based on the Qur’an and the Hadith sultan a Muslim ruler
standards for all forms of artistic production, and created government-sponsored academies in the arts, appointing his personal favorites to each.
• In Spain, Diego Velázquez, court painter to King Philip IV, became the country’s most prestigious artist, thanks to aristocratic portraits that conveyed the powerful presence of real objects in atmospheric space.
• The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens established his reputation in the courts of Europe. His large studio supported scores of assistants who helped to fulfill his many commissions. As court painter to King Charles I of England, Anthony van Dyck produced elegant, idealized portraits of his patrons.
Music and Dance at the Court of Louis XIV • The court at Versailles was the setting for music, theater, and
dance. To provide musical entertainments for state dinners, balls, and operatic performances, Louis established a permanent orchestra. Its director, the Italian-born Jean-Baptiste Lully, headed the French Academy of Music.
• Lully introduced to opera the “French overture.” Under his leadership, French opera also developed its most characteristic feature: the inclusion of formal dance.
• Of lasting significance was Louis’ contribution to the birth of professional dance and the transformation of court dance into an independent artform.
Seventeenth-Century French Literature • François de La Rochefoucauld wrote maxims that reflect the
self-interest, hypocrisy, and greed of human beings—including and especially the aristocrats of his day.
• French drama reflected the Neoclassical effort to restrain passionate feeling by means of cool objectivity and common sense. The French tragedian Jean Racine added unity of place to Aristotle’s unities of action and time.
• France’s leading comic playwright, Molière, brought to life the comic foibles of such stock characters as the miser, the hypochondriac, the hypocrite, the misanthrope, and the would-be gentleman. He learned much from the Italian commedia dell’arte, which incorporated buffoonery, slapstick humor, and pantomime.
Absolute Power and the Aristocratic Style beyond Europe • In Southwest Asia, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman established a
pattern of princely patronage that was imitated by Muslim rulers for at least two centuries.
• The Persian Shah Abbas and the Mogul rulers of India were great patrons of the arts and commissioned some of the most magnificent monuments in architectural history.
• Like Versailles in France, the Imperial Mosque in Isfahan, the Red Fort in Old Delhi, and the Taj Mahal in Agra epitomize the wealth, absolute authority, and artistic vision of a privileged minority.
Absolute Power and the Aristocratic Style in China • The imperial complex at the Forbidden City in Beijing stands as a
symbol of the absolutism of China’s Ming and Qing emperors. • Imperial patronage of the arts supported the production of
porcelain, cloisonné, brocades, and woven textiles, many of which found their way to Europe.
• Under the emperor Kangxi, China’s literary and historical writings were compiled and anthologized. Chinese fiction, in the form of the novel, and Chinese opera appealed to growing numbers of the public.
Absolute Power and the Aristocratic Style in Japan • The Tokugawa dynasty created a unified central state over
which the shogun assumed political and economic control. After 1630, the Japanese expelled foreigners and sealed themselves off from the world.
• In Japanese multipaneled screens, painted scrolls, lacquerware, and ceramics the decorative tradition in the arts reached new heights of sophistication and refinement.
• Woodcut prints popularized the pleasures of Edo’s “floating world” and celebrated the actors of Japan’s popular kabuki plays.
• Tea and the etiquette of tea-drinking, associated with Zen Buddhist culture, came to define the Japanese way of life.
• The verse form known as haiku reflects the controlled simplicity of Zen expression.
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“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” John Donne
Figure 22.1 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, detail of Christ Preaching (“The Hundred-Guilder Print”), ca. 1648–1650. A group of Pharisees stands at the right hand of the preaching Jesus. One turns away from the preacher, a second is lost in thought, while a third, bathed in the light that surrounds the Christ, listens in rapt attention.
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The Rise of the English Commonwealth
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In Northern Europe, where Protestant loyalties remained strong,
there emerged a phase of the Baroque that differed perceptibly
from other expressions of that style. The largely middle class pop-
ulations of England and the Netherlands had little use for the
aristocratic Baroque style that glorified absolutist France. The
Protestant North also resisted the kinds of florid religious display
that characterized the Baroque style of the Catholic Reformation
in Italy, Spain, and parts of the Americas.
In contrast with the ornate church interiors of Italy, Northern
houses of worship were stripped of ornamentation. In England,
the Netherlands, and northern Germany, where Protestants were
committed to private devotion rather than public ritual, the Bible
exercised an especially significant influence. The Northern
Baroque style emphasized personal piety and private devotion. It
reflected the spirit of Pietism, a seventeenth-century German
religious movement, and the ideals of the Puritans, English
Protestants who advocated a “purity” of worship, doctrine, and
morality. To both of these movements, as to the arts of the
European North, the Bible was prized as the means of cultivating
the “inner light.”
In England, Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) was succeeded by the first Stuart monarch, James I (1566–1625). A Scot, and a committed proponent of absolute monarchy, James claimed, “There are no privileges and immunities which can stand against a divinely appointed King.” His son, Charles I (1600–1649; Figure 22.2), shared his father’s view that kings held a God-given right to rule. Charles alienated Parliament by governing for more than a decade without its approval. He antagonized the growing number of Puritans, who demanded Church reform and greater strictness in reli- gious observance). Allying with antiroyalist factions, most- ly of the emergent middle class, the Puritans constituted a powerful political group. With their support, leaders in Parliament raised an army to oppose King Charles, ultimate- ly defeating the royalist forces in a civil war that lasted from 1642 to 1648 and executing the king in 1649 on charges of treason. The government that followed this civil war, led by the Puritan general Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), was known as the “Commonwealth.”
Bearing the hallmarks of a republic, the new government issued a written constitution that proposed the formation of a national legislature elected by universal manhood suffrage. The Commonwealth, however, was unable to survive. A sorely reduced Parliament abolished many offices of state, and a newly formed one, which proved inept, was dissolved
by Cromwell. The “Protector of the Realm” took on the role of a dictator, alienating many segments of English soci- ety. When Cromwell died, the monarchy was restored with Charles I’s son, Prince Charles (1635–1685), returning from exile to become king. Charles II’s successor, James II (1633–1701), came to power in 1685; but when he con- verted to Catholicism two years later, and attempted to fill a new Parliament with his Catholic supporters, the opposi- tion rebelled.
In 1688, the English expelled the king and offered the crown to William of Orange, ruler of the Netherlands, and his wife Mary, the Protestant daughter of James II. Following the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, Parliament enacted a Bill of Rights prohibiting the king from suspending parlia- mentary laws or interfering with the ordinary course of jus- tice. The Bill of Rights was followed by the Toleration Act of 1689, which guaranteed freedom of worship to non- Anglican sects. By 1689, Parliament’s authority to limit the power of the English monarch was firmly established. The “bloodless revolution” reestablished constitutional monar- chy and won a victory for popular sovereignty.
These dramatic political developments, so closely tied to religious issues, occurred in the years following one of the most influential cultural events of the seventeenth century: the new English translation of the Bible. Recruited by James I of England, a committee of about fifty scholars had begun the work of translation in 1604. Drawing on a num- ber of earlier English translations of Scripture, they pro- duced an English-language edition of the Old and New Testaments that would have a shaping influence on the English language and on all subsequent English literature. Published in 1611, the “authorized” edition of Scripture came about in part as a response to the problems that Puritan factions of the Anglican Church detected in earli- er translations of the Bible. While this version was not actually authorized by any ministerial body, it quickly became the official Bible of the Church of England (and of most English-speaking Protestant sects). As the product of the decades that also witnessed the last works of William Shakespeare, it reflects the moment when the English lan- guage reached its peak in eloquence.
The new translation of Scripture preserved the spiritual fervor of the Old Testament Hebrew and the narrative vigor of the New Testament Greek. Some appreciation of these qualities may be gleaned from comparing the two fol- lowing translations. The first, a sixteenth-century transla- tion based on Saint Jerome’s Latin Vulgate edition and published in the city of Douay in France in 1609, lacks the concise language, the poetic imagery, and the lyrical rhythms of the King James version (the second example), which, though deeply indebted to a number of sixteenth- century English translations, drew directly on manuscripts written in the original Hebrew.
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Figure 22.2 ANTHONY VAN DYCK, Charles I on Horseback, ca. 1638. Oil on canvas, 12 ft. � 9 ft. 7in.
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READING 22.2
Q What three metaphors are invoked in Meditation 17?
READING 22.1
Q What aspects of the King James version of the Twenty-Third Psalm make this translation memorable?
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Baroque terms—as part of a vast, cosmic plan. His image of human beings as “chapters” in the larger “book” of God’s design is an example of Donne’s affection for unusual, extended metaphors. The tolling bell that figures so pow- erfully in the last lines makes reference to an age-old tradi- tion (perpetuated at Saint Paul’s) of ringing the church bells to announce the death of a parishioner.
From Donne’s Meditation 17 (1623) All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man 1 dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand 5 is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all. . . . No man is an 10 island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send 15 to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Donne’s poetry was as unconventional as his prose: both abound in “conceits,” that is, elaborate metaphors that compare two apparently dissimilar objects or emotions, often with the intention of shocking or surprising. In that the conceits of Donne (and other seventeenth-century writers) borrowed words and images from the new science (see chapter 23), critics called these devices and the poet- ry they embellished “metaphysical.” Metaphysical poetry reflects the Baroque affection for dramatic contrast, for frequent and unexpected shifts of viewpoint, and for the dramatic synthesis of discordant images. These features are apparent in some of Donne’s finest works, including the group of religious poems known as the Holy Sonnets.
In the first of the following two sonnets, Donne address- es Death as an imaginary person, regarded by some as “mighty and dreadful.” Donne mocks Death as being noth- ing more than a slave who keeps bad company (“poison, war, and sickness”). He teases his adversary for being less potent than pleasurable sleep. And in the final lines of the sonnet, he arrives at the brilliant paradox that Death itself shall die—in the eternal life afforded by Christianity.
In the second sonnet, Donne compares himself to a fortress that has been seized by the enemies of the Lord. Donne describes Reason as the ruler (“Your viceroy in me”) who has failed to defend the fortress. He pleads with God to “ravish” and “imprison” him. The poem abounds in intriguing paradoxes that link sinfulness with deliverance, conquest with liberation, and imprisonment with freedom.
The Twenty-Third Psalm
From the Douay Bible (1609)
Our Lord ruleth me, and nothing shall be wanting to me; in place of pasture there he hath placed me.
Upon the water of refection he hath brought me up; he hath converted my soul.
He hath conducted me upon the paths of justice, for his name. For although I shall walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I
will not fear evils; because thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. Thou hast prepared in my sight a table against them that
trouble me. Thou hast fatted my head with oil, and my chalice inebriating,
how goodly is it! And thy mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And that I may dwell in the house of our Lord in longitude
of days.
From the King James Bible (1611)
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me
beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
John Donne One of the most eloquent voices of religious devotionalism in the Protestant North was that of the poet John Donne (1571–1631). Born and raised as a Roman Catholic, Donne studied at Oxford and Cambridge, but he renounced Catholicism when he was in his twenties. He traveled widely, entered Parliament in 1601, and converted to Anglicanism fourteen years later, soon becoming a priest of the Church of England.
A formidable preacher as well as a man of great intellec- tual prowess, Donne wrote eloquent sermons that challenged the parishioners at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London (Figure 22.3), where he acted as dean. At Saint Paul’s, Donne developed the sermon as a vehicle for philosophic meditation. In Meditation 17 (an excerpt from which follows), Donne pictures humankind—in typically
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Donne’s unexpected juxtapositions and paradoxical images are typical of English metaphysical poetry, but his rejection of conventional poetic language in favor of a conversation- al tone (much celebrated by modern poets) represents a revolutionary development in European literature.
From Donne’s Holy Sonnets (1610) Death be not proud, though some have called thee 1 Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, 5 Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, 10 And poppy1, or charms2 can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke; why swell’st3 thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
—– ◆ –—
Figure 22.3 CHRISTOPHER WREN, west façade of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, 1675–1710. Width approx. 90 ft.
1 Opium. 2 Sleeping potion. 3 Puff with pride.
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READING 22.4
Q Why might these sonnets be called “metaphysical?”
Q Is faith, in the second sonnet, a matter of knowledge or belief?
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Milton was already fifty years old when he resolved to compose a modern epic that rivaled the majesty of the clas- sic works of Homer and Virgil. At the outset, he considered various themes, one of which was the story of King Arthur. But he settled instead on a Christian subject that allowed him to examine an issue particularly dear to his Protestant sensibilities: the meaning of evil in a universe created by a benevolent God. The twelve books of Paradise Lost retell the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, beginning with the activities of the rebellious archangel Satan and culminat- ing in the expulsion of the First Parents from Paradise. The poem concludes with the angel Michael’s explanation to Adam of how fallen Man, through Christ, will recover immortality. This august theme, rooted in biblical history, permitted Milton to explore questions of human knowledge, freedom, and morality and, ultimately, to “justify the ways of God to Men.”
Central in this cosmic drama is the figure of Satan, who is painted larger than life. Milton vividly recounts the demon’s passage from Hell to Earth and the fall of the rebel angels—a lengthy account that was probably inspired by the English Civil War. The titanic Satan is a metaphor for the Puritan conception of evil in the world. Less vividly drawn, Adam is an expression of Protestant pessimism—a figure who, for all his majesty, is incapable of holding on to Paradise. Paradise Lost may be considered a Christian para- ble of the human condition. In its cosmic scope and verbal exuberance, it is also a mirror of the Baroque imagination.
The language of Paradise Lost is intentionally lofty; it is designed to convey epic breadth and to narrate (as Milton promised) “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.” Like Shakespeare, Milton chose to write in blank verse: unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with accents on every second syllable. This device allowed Milton to carry the thread of a single thought past the end of the line, thereby grouping ideas in rich verse paragraphs. The following excerpts convey some sense of the power and majesty of Milton’s verse. In the first twenty-six lines of Book I, Milton announces the subject of the poem: the loss of humankind’s spiritual innocence. The second excerpt, also from Book I, relates the manner in which Satan tears him- self from Hell’s burning lake and proudly assumes his place as ruler of the fallen legions. In the third excerpt (from Book IX), Adam resolves to stand with his beloved partner, Eve, by eating the Forbidden Fruit. Milton’s description of Eve and her “fatal trespass” (l. 71) perpetuated the misog- ynistic trope of flawed womankind well into the late nine- teenth century. Finally, in the passage from Book XII, Adam hears the angel Michael’s prophetic description of humankind’s destiny and prepares to leave Paradise.
From Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) Book I Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit 1 Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man1
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You 15 As yet but knock, breath, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town to another due, Labour to admit You, but oh! to no end; 20 Reason, Your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love You, and would be loved fain,4
But am betrothed unto Your enemy. Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, 25 Take me to You, imprison me, for I Except You enthrall me, never shall be free; Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.
The Genius of John Milton John Milton (1608–1674) was a devout Puritan and a defender of the Cromwellian Commonwealth that col- lapsed in 1658. His career as a humanist and poet began at Cambridge University and continued throughout his eleven-year tenure as secretary to the English Council of State. Though shy and retiring, Milton became a political activist and a persistent defender of religious, political, and intellectual freedom. He challenged English society with expository prose essays on a number of controversial subjects. In one pamphlet, he defended divorce between couples who were spiritually and temperamentally incompatible—a subject possibly inspired by his first wife’s unexpected decision to abandon him briefly just after their marriage. In other prose works, Milton opposed Parliament’s effort to control free speech and freedom of the press. “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,” wrote Milton, “but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”
Milton’s verse compositions include lyric poems and elegies, but the greatest of his contributions are his two epic poems: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Milton wrote both of these monumental poems during the last decades of his life, when he was totally blind—a condition he erroneously attributed to long nights of reading. Legend has it that he dictated the poems to his two young daughters. In Paradise Lost Milton created a cosmic (and earth-centered) vision of Heaven, Hell, and Paradise com- parable to that drawn by Dante (see chapter 12) but more philosophic in its concern with the issues of knowledge, sin, and free will. Considered the greatest of modern epics, Paradise Lost is impressive in its vast intellectual sweep, its wide-ranging allusions to history and literature, and its effort to address matters of time, space, and causality.
4 Willingly.
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Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai,2 didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning how the heav’ns and earth Rose out of chaos: or if Sion hill 10 Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook3 that flowed Fast by the oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th’ Aonian mount,4 while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread 20 Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
. . . . . . . . . .
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames Driv’n backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled In billows, leave i’ th’ midst a horrid vale. 30 Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusty air That felt unusual weight, till on dry land He lights, if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, And such appeared in hue; as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus,5 or the shattered side Of thund’ring Etna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire, 40 Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singèd bottom all involved With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate, Both glorying to have escaped the Stygian6 flood As gods, and by their own recovered strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal power.
“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,”
Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat That we must change for heav’n, this mournful gloom 50 For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is sovran7 can dispose and bid What shall be right: farthest from him is best Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail, Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell Receive thy new possessor: one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself 60 Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here may we reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in hell: Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav’n.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Book IX On th’ other side, Adam, soon as he heard 70 The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed,8
Astonied9 stood and blank, while horror chill Ran through his veins, and all his joints relaxed; From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve Down dropped, and all the faded roses shed: Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at length First to himself he inward silence broke.
“O fairest of creation, last and best Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, 80 Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflow’red, and now to death devote?10
Rather how hast thou yielded to transgress The strict forbiddance, how to violate The sacred fruit forbidd’n! some cursèd fraud Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown, And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee Certain my resolution is to die; How can I live without thee, how forgo 90 Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined, To live again in these wild woods forlorn? Should God create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no, I feel The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.”
So having said, as one from sad dismay
1 Christ. 2 As was the case with epic poets of old, Milton here invokes a divine
source of inspiration. Milton’s muse, however, is an abstraction of Judeo-Christian wisdom, identified with the muse that inspired Moses at Mount Horeb (Deut. 4.10) or on Mount Sinai (Exod. 19.20).
3 A spring near Mount Zion in Jerusalem where, in the Hebrew Bible, God spoke to his people.
4 In Greece, the muses were thought to live on Mount Helicon, also known as the “Aonian mountain.”
5 A promontory near the volcanic Mount Etna in Sicily. 6 Referring to the River Styx, in Greek mythology the principal river of
the underworld.
7 Sovereign. 8 Confused, terror-stricken. 9 Stunned. 10 Devoted, doomed.
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Recomforted,11 and after thoughts disturbed 100 Submitting to what seemed remédiless, Thus in calm mood his words to Eve he turned.
“Bold deed thou hast presumed, advent’rous Eve, And peril great provoked, who thus hast dared Had it been only coveting to eye That sacred fruit, sacred to abstinence, Much more to taste it under ban to touch. But past who can recall, or done undo? Not God omnipotent, nor fate; yet so Perhaps thou shalt not die, perhaps the fact12 110 Is not so heinous now, foretasted fruit, Profaned first by the serpent, by him first Made common and unhallowed ere our taste; Nor yet on him found deadly, he yet lives, Lives, as thou saidst, and gains to live as man Higher degree of life, inducement strong To us, as likely tasting to attain Proportional ascent, which cannot be But to be gods, or angels demi-gods. Nor can I think that God, Creator wise, 120 Though threat’ning, will in earnest so destroy Us his prime creatures, dignified so high, Set over all his works, which in our fall, For us created, needs with us must fail, Dependent made; so God shall uncreate, Be frustrate, do, undo, and labor lose, Not well conceived of God, who though his power Creation could repeat, yet would be loath Us to abolish, lest the Adversary Triumph and say; ‘Fickle their state whom God 130 Most favors, who can please him long? Me first He ruined, now mankind; whom will he next?’ Matter of scorn, not to be given the Foe. However I with thee have fixed my lot, Certain to undergo like doom; if death Consort with thee, death is to me as life; So forcible within my heart I feel The bond of nature draw me to my own. My own in thee, for what thou art is mine; Our state cannot be severed, we are one, 140 One flesh: to lose thee were to lose myself.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Book XII
[. . . to the Angel] Adam last replied. “How soon hath thy prediction, seer blest, Measured this transient world, the race of time, Till time stand fixed: beyond is all abyss, Eternity, whose end no eye can reach. Greatly instructed I shall hence depart, Greatly in peace of thought, and have my fill Of knowledge, what this vessel can contain; Beyond which was my folly to aspire. 150
Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best, And love with fear the only God, to walk As in his presence, ever to observe His providence, and on him sole depend, Merciful over all his works, with good Still overcoming evil, and by small Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise By simply meek; that suffering for truth’s sake Is fortitude to highest victory, 160 And to the faithful death the gate of life; Taught this by his example whom I now Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest.”
To whom thus also th’ angel last replied: “This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars Thou knew’st by name, and all th’ ethereal powers, All secrets of the deep, all nature’s works, Or works of God in heav’n, air, earth, or sea, And all the riches of this world enjoy’dst, 170 And all the rule, one empire; only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith, Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love, By name to come called charity, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far. Let us descend now therefore from this top Of speculation; for the hour precise Exacts our parting hence; and see the guards, 180 By me encamped on yonder hill, expect Their motion,13 at whose front a flaming sword, In signal of remove,14 waves fiercely round; We may no longer stay: go, waken Eve; Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed Portending good, and all her spirits composed To meek submission: thou at season fit Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard, Chiefly what may concern her faith to know,
1625 Charles I becomes king of England 1642–1648 English Civil War
1649 Charles I executed 1649–1660 English Commonwealth
1660 Restoration of monarchy 1685 James II becomes king 1688 Glorious Revolution 1689 English Bill of Rights; Toleration Act
11 Comforted, refreshed. 12 Crime, deed.
13 Await their marching orders. 14 Departure.
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Q Describe the appearance and the personality of Satan (Book I).
Q Why does Adam decide to stay with the fallen Eve (Book IX)?
Q What message does the angel give to Adam (Book XII)?
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The great deliverance by her seed to come 190 (For by the Woman’s Seed) on all mankind. That ye may live, which will be many days, Both in one faith unanimous though sad, With cause for evils past, yet much more cheered With meditation on the happy end.”
London at the time of Donne and Milton was a city of vast extremes. England’s commercial activities in India and the Americas made its capital a center for stock exchanges, insurance firms, and joint-stock companies. Yet living amongst the wealthy Londoners, a great number of people remained poor. One-fourth of London’s 250,000 inhabi- tants could neither read nor write; meanwhile, English intellectuals advanced scientific learning. For some time Londoners enjoyed some of the finest libraries and theaters in Western Europe, but, under the Puritan-dominated Parliament of the 1640s, stage plays were suppressed, and many old theaters, including Shakespeare’s Globe, were torn down. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought with it a revived interest in drama and in the con- struction of indoor theaters (as opposed to the open-air theaters of Shakespeare’s time).
In 1666, a devastating fire tore through London and destroyed three-quarters of the city, including 13,000 homes, eighty-seven parish churches, and the cathedral church of Saint Paul’s, where John Donne had served as dean some decades earlier. Following the fire, there was an upsurge of large-scale building activity and a general effort to modernize London. The architect Christopher Wren (1632–1723) played a leading role in this effort. A child prodigy in mathematics, then an experimental scientist and professor of astronomy at London and Oxford, Wren was one of the founding fathers of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Following the Great Fire, Wren prepared designs for the reconstruction of London. Although his plans for new city streets (based on Rome) were rejected, he was commissioned to rebuild more than fifty churches, including Saint Paul’s—the first church in Christendom to be completed during the life- time of its architect.
Wren’s early designs for Saint Paul’s featured the Greek- cross plan that Michelangelo had proposed for Saint Peter’s in Rome (see chapter 17). However, the clergy of Saint Paul’s preferred a Latin-cross structure. The final design was a compromise that combined Classical, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architectural features. Saint Paul’s handsome two-story façade, with its ornate twin
clock towers and its strong surface contrasts of light and dark (see Figure 22.3), looks back to Borromini (see Figure 20.19), but its massive scale and overall design—a large dome set upon a Latin-cross basilica—are reminiscent of Saint Peter’s (see Figure 20.14). As at Saint Peter’s, Wren’s dome, which physically resembles that of Bramante’s Tempietto (see Figure 17.29), is equal in its diameter (102 feet) to the combined width of the nave and side aisles. The dimensions of the cathedral are colossal: 366 feet from ground level to the top of the lantern cross (Saint Peter’s reaches 452 feet).
Wren envisioned a dome that was both impressive from the outside and easily visible from the inside. He came up with an inventive and complex device: two domes, one exterior (made of timber covered with lead) and the other interior (made of light brick), are supported by a third, cone-shaped, middle dome, which is hidden between the other two (Figure 22.4). The monumental silhouette of Wren’s dome, which became the model for the United States capitol, remains an impressive presence on the London skyline. From within the church, there is the equally impressive illusionism of the trompe l’oeil heavens painted on the inner surface of the central cupola. Like Milton’s Paradise Lost, Wren’s Saint Paul’s is a majestic syn- thesis of Classical and Christian traditions, while its huge size, dramatic exterior, and light-filled interior are Baroque in conception and effect.
Figure 22.4 Cross section of Saint Paul’s showing Wren’s three domes.
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Since 1560, when Spain had invaded the Dutch Lowlands, the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands had been engaged in a bitter struggle against the Catholic forces of the Spanish king Philip II. In 1579, after years of bloodshed, the Dutch forced Philip’s armies to withdraw. Two years later, the seven provinces of the north Netherlands declared their independence. By the end of the century the predominant- ly Calvinist Dutch Republic (later called “Holland”) was a self-governing state and one of the most commercially active territories in Western Europe. Dutch shipbuilders produced some of the finest trading vessels on the high seas, while skilled Dutch seamen brought those vessels to all parts of the world. In Amsterdam, as in hundreds of other Dutch towns, merchants and craftspeople shared the responsibilities of local government, profiting handsomely from the smooth-running, primarily maritime, economy.
The autonomous towns of the north Netherlands, many of which supported fine universities, fostered freedom of
thought and a high rate of literacy. Hardworking, thrifty, and independent-minded, the seventeenth-century Dutch enjoyed a degree of independence and material prosperity unmatched elsewhere in the world. Their proletarian tastes, along with a profound appreciation for the physical comforts of home and hearth, inspired their preference for such secular subjects as portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and scenes of domestic life (see chapter 23). Since Calvinism strongly discouraged the use of religious icons, sculpture was uncommon in the Protestant North. But paintings, especially those with scriptural subjects, were favored sources of seventeenth-century moral knowledge and instruction. The Old Testament was particularly popular among the Dutch, who viewed themselves as God’s “chosen” people, elected to triumph over the forces of Catholic Spain.
Rembrandt In this milieu emerged one of the world’s great painters, Rembrandt van Rijn (1609–1669). Born in the city of Leiden, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, the new busi-
ness capital of the Netherlands, in 1631, where he rose to fame as a portraitist (see chapter 23). In his religious works, he often chose subjects that were uncommon in Catholic art, focusing on the human, and even intimately personal, aspects of Old and New Testament stories. Rembrandt’s Anabaptist upbringing, char- acterized by a fundamentalist approach to Scripture and a solemn attention to the role of individual conscience, surely con- tributed to this unique approach. The peo- ple who roamed the streets of Amsterdam, and the Spanish and Jewish refugees he regularly sketched in the city’s ghettos, provided him with a cast of characters who populated his religious paintings. His sym- pathetic and largely unidealized treatment of sacred subject matter captured the spir- it of Protestant devotionalism.
A case in point is Rembrandt’s moving painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son (Figure 22.5). Here, the artist has brought to life the moment when the wayward son of the parable (Luke 15:11–32), having returned home in rags, kneels humbly before his father to beg forgiveness. For theatrical effect, Rembrandt has pulled the figures out of the shadowy depths of the background. The father and son, bathed in golden light, form an off-center triangle balanced
Figure 22.5 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, The Return of the Prodigal Son, ca. 1662–1668. Oil on canvas, 8 ft. 8 in. � 6 ft. 8 in.
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by the sharply lit vertical of the figure on the right. Rich areas of bright impasto (thick layers of pigment) contrast with dark, brooding passages, created by way of thinly brushed layers of oil paint. Rembrandt learned much about theatrical staging from the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio (see chapter 20), but in this simple and restrained composition, he reaches below surface appear- ance to explore the psychological subtleties of the drama.
Rembrandt’s technical virtuosity as a draftsman made him more famous in his own time as a printmaker than as a painter. His medium of choice was etching (Figure 22.6). Like the woodcuts and engravings of his Northern European predecessors Dürer and Holbein (see chapter 19), Rembrandt’s etchings met the demands of middle-class patrons who sought private devotional images that—by comparison with paintings—were inexpensive. A consum- mate and prolific printmaker, Rembrandt used the burin (a steel cutting tool) to develop dramatic contrasts of rich darks and brilliant lights. These talents are evident in one of his most famous prints, Christ Preaching (Figure 22.7)— also known as “The Hundred-Guilder Print,” because it sold at a seventeenth-century auction for the then unimag- inably high price of 100 Dutch guilders. Illustrating the Gospel of Matthew, it depicts Jesus addressing the members of the Jewish community: the sick and the lame (fore- ground), “the little children” (middle left), the ill and infirm (right), and an assembly of Pharisees (far left). With an extraordinary economy of line—no more than a few
deft strokes of the pen—the artist has captured the lot of the poor, the downtrodden, and the aged (see Figure 22.1). So colloquial is Rembrandt’s handling of the biblical story that it seems an event that might have taken place in Rembrandt’s own time and place.
Figure 22.6 Etching is an intaglio printing process. A metal plate is coated with resin (a) then images are scratched through the coating with a burin, or graver (b). Acid is applied, which “eats” or etches the metal exposed by the scratches (c). The resin is then removed and ink is rubbed into the etched lines on the metal plate (d). After the plate is wiped clean, it is pressed onto the paper and the ink-filled lines are deposited on the paper surface. Other intaglio processes include engraving and aquatint.
Figure 22.7 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, Christ Preaching (“The Hundred-Guilder Print”), ca. 1648–1650. Etching, 11 � 151⁄2 in.
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Handel and the English Oratorio If the Protestant North produced memorable art, it also generated great music. The careers of two extraordinary German composers, George Frideric Handel (1685–1756) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), represent the flowering of the Baroque style in Northern European music.
Born in the Lutheran trading city of Halle, Germany, George Frideric Handel was determined to pursue his childhood musical talents. When his father, who intended for him a career in law, refused to provide him with a musi- cal instrument, he smuggled a small clavichord into the attic. After proving himself at the keyboard and as a suc- cessful violinist and composer in the courts of Hamburg, Rome, Paris, Naples, and Venice, he emigrated to London in 1710, becoming a British citizen in 1726. Like many of his contemporaries, Handel began his career as a student of Italian opera. He composed forty-six operas in Italian and four in his native German. He also produced a prodigious number of instrumental works. But it was for his develop- ment of the oratorio that he earned fame among the English, who called him “England’s greatest composer.”
An oratorio is the musical setting of a long sacred or epic text; it is performed in concert by a nar- rator, soloists, chorus, and orchestra (Figure 22.8). Like operas, ora- torios are large in scale and dramatic in intent but, unlike opera, they are
produced without scenery, costumes, or dramatic action. Soloists and chorus assume the roles of the main characters in the narrative. The word “oratorio” refers to a church chapel, and most oratorios are religious in content; howev- er, they were never intended for church services. Rather, they were performed in public concert halls. With the ora- torio came the shift from music written and performed for church or court to music composed for concert halls (or opera houses) and enjoyed by the general public. Appropriately, in the late seventeenth century, public con- certs (and entrance fees) made their first appearance in the social history of music.
In his lifetime, Handel composed more than thirty oratorios. Like the works of Rembrandt and Milton (whose verses he borrowed for the oratorio Samson), Handel’s music brought Scripture to life. The most famous of Handel’s oratorios is Messiah, which was written in the English of the King James Bible. Composed, remarkably enough, in twenty-four days, it was performed for the first time in Dublin in 1742. It received instant acclaim. One of the most moving pieces of choral music ever written, Messiah celebrates the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Unlike most of Handel’s oratorios, it is not a biblical dramatization but rather a collection of verses from the
Old and New Testaments. The first part of the piece recounts Old Testament
prophecies of a Savior, the sec- ond relates the suffering and
death of Jesus, and the
Figure 22.8 Performance of an oratorio; Handel (far right) is conducting. Woodcut.
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third rejoices in the redemption of humankind through Christ’s resurrection.
Messiah is typical of the Baroque sensibility: indeed, the epic proportions of its score and libretto call to mind Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is also Baroque in its style, which features vigorous contrasts of tempo and dynamics and dramatic interaction between participating ensembles— solo voices, chorus, and instruments. A master of theatri- cal effects, Handel made use of word painting and other affective devices throughout the piece. For example, the music for the last words of the sentence, “All we, like sheep, have gone astray,” consists of deliberately divergent melodic lines.
The best-loved choral work in the English language, Messiah has outlasted its age. In many Christian communi- ties, it has become traditional to perform the piece during both the Christmas and Easter seasons. The jubilant “Hallelujah Chorus” (which ends the second of the three parts of the oratorio) still brings audiences to their feet, as it did King George II of England, who introduced this tra- dition by rising from his seat when he first heard it per- formed in London in 1743.
Handel’s Messiah features polyphonic textures at the start of many of the choruses, such as the “For unto us, a Child is born.” Nevertheless, like Handel’s other oratorios, Messiah is essentially homophonic; that is, its musical organization depends on the use of a dominant melody sup- ported by chordal accompaniment. Homophony is the musical opposite of polyphony, the many-voiced texture that characterized most music prior to the seventeenth century. The chords in a homophonic composition serve to support—or, in the visual sense, to “spotlight”—a primary melody. In the seventeenth century, there evolved a form of musical shorthand that allowed musicians to fill in the harmony for the principal melody of a homophonic piece. The figured bass, as this shorthand was called, consisted of a line of music with numbers written below it to indicate the harmony accompanying the primary melody. The use of the figured bass (also called the “continuo,” since it played throughout the piece) was one of the main features of Baroque music.
Bach and Religious Music Johann Sebastian Bach (Figure 22.9) was born in the small town of Eisenach, very near the castle in which Martin Luther—hiding from the wrath of the Roman papacy— had first translated the Bible into German. Unlike the cos- mopolitan Handel, Bach never strayed more than a couple of hundred miles from his birthplace; the last twenty-seven years of his career were spent in nearby Leipzig. Nor did he depart from his Protestant roots: Luther’s teachings and Lutheran hymn tunes were Bach’s major sources of reli- gious inspiration, and the organ—the principal instrument of Protestant church music—was one of his favorite instru- ments. The Germans were the masters of the organ, and Bach was acknowledged to be the finest of organ virtuosi.
He even served as a consultant for the construction of Baroque organs, whose ornately embellished casings made them the glory of many Protestant churches (Figure 22.10). As organ master and choir director of the Lutheran church of Saint Thomas in Leipzig, Bach assumed the responsibility of composing music for each of the Sunday services and for holy days. A pious Lutheran, who, in the course of two marriages, fathered twenty chil- dren (five of whom became notable musicians), Bach humbly dedicated his compositions “to the glory of God.”
Bach’s religious vocal music included such forms as the oratorio, the Mass, and the cantata. The cantata is a multi- movement work with a verse text sung by chorus and soloists and accompanied by a musical instrument or instruments. Like the oratorio, the cantata may be sacred or secular in subject matter and lyric or dramatic in style. Bach’s 195 surviving cantatas are musical commentaries on the daily scriptural lessons of the Lutheran church service. Unparalleled in their florid counterpoint, they were inspired by the simple melodies of Lutheran chorales, with their regular rhythms and rugged melodies. Cantata No. 80 is based on Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” the most important hymn of the Lutheran Church (see chap- ter 19). Its melody unifies the eight movements of the can- tata, which concludes with a four-part setting of the chorale melody, sung in the style of the congregational hymn. Bach drew on Protestant chorales not only for his cantatas but as the basis for many of his instrumental com- positions (see chapter 23), including the 170 organ prel- udes that he composed to precede and set the mood for congregational singing.
Figure 22.9 ELIAS GOTTLOB HAUSSMAN, Johann Sebastian Bach, 1746. Oil on canvas.
See Music Listening Selections at end of chapter.��
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The Rise of the English Commonwealth • Charles I, like his French counterparts, believed kings held a
God-given right to rule. He alienated Parliament and antagonized the growing number of English Puritans until Parliament raised an army and initiated a civil war in 1642.
• After the execution of the king, the English Commonwealth, led
by the Puritan general Oliver Cromwell, bore the hallmarks of a republic.
• Though the monarchy was reestablished after Cromwell’s death, a rebellious Protestant opposition brought about the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Parliament’s authority to limit the power of
110 CHAPTER 22 The Baroque in the Protestant North
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At the apex of Bach’s achievement in vocal music is the Passion According to Saint Matthew, an oratorio written in 1727 for the Good Friday service at the church of Saint Thomas in Leipzig. This majestic work consists of the sung texts of chapters 26 and 27 of Matthew’s Gospel, which describe Christ’s Passion: the events between the Last Supper and the Resurrection. It is written for a double chorus, with soloists who take the parts of Jesus, the disciples, the Pharisees, and other characters in the Gospel account. A solo tenor sings the part of the Evangelist, who narrates the story. A double orchestra and two organs accompany the voices. Alternating with the Gospel verses, passages of commentary (a text written by a local German poet) moralize the narrative and develop the states of minds of the individual “characters.”
The three-and-a-half-hour-long piece con- sists of two parts, the first originally to be sung before the vespers sermon and the second after it. In Bach’s time, the church congregation par- ticipated in the performance of the choral por- tions, thus adding to the sheer volume of sound produced by choirs and orchestras. Performed today in the church or in the concert hall, Bach’s oratorio still conveys the devotional spir- it of the Protestant North. In its imaginative use of Scripture, as well as in its compositional com- plexity, the Passion According to Saint Matthew compares with Rembrandt’s religious paintings, Handel’s Messiah, and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Figure 22.10 GOTTFRIED SILBERMANN, organ in Freiburg Cathedral (Saxony), Germany, 1710–1714.
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Glossary
Music Listening Selections
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burin a steel tool used for engraving and incising
cantata (Italian, cantare � “to sing”) a multimovement composition for voices and instrumental accompaniment; smaller in scale than the oratorio
etching a kind of engraving in which a metal plate is covered with resin, then incised with a burin; acid is applied to “eat”
away the exposed lines, which are inked before the plate is wiped clean and printed; see Figure 22.6
figured bass in Baroque music, the line of music with numbers written below (or above) it to indicate the required harmonies, usually improvised in the form of keyboard chords accompanying the melody; also called “continuo”
homophony a musical texture consisting of a dominant melody supported by chordal accompaniment that is far less important than the melody; compare polyphony (see Glossary, chapter 13)
impasto the thick application of pigment to the surface of a painting
oratorio (Latin, oratorium � “church chapel”) a musical
setting of a long text, either religious or secular, for soloists, chorus, narrator, and orchestra; usually performed without scenery, costumes, or dramatic action
prelude a piece of instrumental music that introduces either a church service or another piece of music
the English monarch was firmly established in 1689 after the passage of the Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act.
The King James Bible • Drawing on a number of earlier English translations of Scripture
made during the sixteenth century, and manuscripts in the original Hebrew, a committee of about fifty scholars produced in 1611 an English-language edition of the Old and New Testaments known as the King James Bible.
• The King James Bible had a shaping influence on the English language and on all subsequent English literature.
English Literature of the Seventeenth Century • Born and raised as a Roman Catholic, John Donne converted to
Anglicanism, becoming a priest of the Church of England. His sermons, developed as philosophical meditations, and his metaphysical sonnets, featured ingenious conceits, extended metaphors, and paradoxical perspectives.
• John Milton, Puritan, humanist, and defender of Cromwell’s Commonwealth, was the most notable English-language poet of the seventeenth century. His verse compositions include lyric poems and elegies; his two epic poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, are considered his greatest contributions to the humanistic tradition.
• Paradise Lost is impressive in its vast intellectual sweep, its wide-ranging allusions to history and literature, and its (typically Baroque) effort to address matters of time, space, and causality.
The London of Christopher Wren • Following the devastating fire that destroyed three-quarters of
London, Christopher Wren, an architect, scientist and professor, and one of the founding fathers of the Royal Society of London, was commissioned to prepare designs for the city’s reconstruction.
• Wren’s design for Saint Paul’s Cathedral was an ingenious combination of Classical, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque
architectural features. Its huge size, dramatic exterior, and light- filled interior had a lasting impact on the field of architecture.
Protestant Devotionalism in the Netherlands • The religious paintings of the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn
represent a visual parallel to the deeply devotional works of Milton and Donne.
• Rembrandt illustrated the contents of Holy Scripture in paintings, drawings, and etchings that were at once realistic, theatrical, and psychologically profound. His bold compositions and inventive use of light recreated sacred events as though they were occurring in his own time and place.
The Music of the Protestant North • German composer George Frideric Handel dramatized scriptural
narrative by means of the oratorio, a new musical form that typified the Baroque taste for rich color and dramatic effect. Handel’s Messiah, an early landmark in homophonic composition, remains one of the most stirring examples of choral music.
• Handel’s Lutheran contemporary, Johann Sebastian Bach, dedicated much of his life to composing music that honored God. His cantatas and preludes employ melodies borrowed largely from Lutheran hymns. His Passion According to Saint Matthew brought religious choral music to new heights of dramatic grandeur.
CD Two Selection 3 Handel, Messiah, “Hallelujah Chorus,” 1742.
CD Two Selection 4 Bach, Cantata No. 80, “Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott” (”A Mighty Fortress is Our God”), Chorale, 1724.
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The Scientific Revolution and the New Learning ca. 1550–1750
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23
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Figure 23.1 JAN VERMEER, The Geographer, ca. 1668. Oil on canvas, 207⁄8 � 181⁄4 in. Vermeer renders the geographer at the moment when he pauses thoughtfully from his work. The painting, enriched by closely observed details, captures the spirit of intellectual inquiry that typified the Age of Science.
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.” Francis Bacon
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While the early modern era was a time of heightened spirituality,
it was also an age of scientific discovery. Between 1550 and
1700, European scientists challenged the model of the universe
that had prevailed from the time of Aristotle to the sixteenth cen-
tury. Advancing the sciences of physics, astronomy, and geology,
they demystified nature, taking it out of the hands of priests and
poets, and putting it into the laboratory. The Scientific Revolution
would have a three-part focus: 1) the exercise of direct observa-
tion and experimentation; 2) the reliance on mathematical verifi-
cation, and 3) the invention of instruments by which to measure
natural phenomena, test hypotheses, and predict the operations
of nature.
The scientists of the early modern era differed from their pred-
ecessors in separating scientia (the Latin word for “knowledge”)
from religious truths. While their forerunners perceived the uni-
verse as the creation of an absolute and eternal God, they
described it as a mechanism that operated according to the laws
of nature. In consort with the new learning, a program of inquiry
focused on inductive and deductive reasoning, they laid the
groundwork for clear and objective thinking, and, ultimately, for
the birth of modern philosophy and modern science.
The alliance of scientific inquiry and critical thinking ushered in
a phase of the Baroque marked by an empirical attention to the
real world; in art, an emphasis on light and space, and an
increased demand for subjects that gave evidence of everyday
experience: landscape, portraiture, still life, and the domestic
interior. Developments in Baroque instrumental music, unique to
this era, met the demands for secular entertainment made by a
growing middle class.
Figure 23.2 Heliocentric (A) and geocentric (B) models of the universe.(A) (B)
The Background The Scientific Revolution was not entirely sudden, nor were its foundations exclusively European. It owed much to a long history of empirical and theoretical inquiry that began in ancient Egypt and was furthered in China, in Hellenistic cities, and across the Muslim world. That histo- ry ranged from the invention of the magnetic compass to the formulation of Euclidian geometry, the birth of algebra, and the science of optics. Beginning with the Renaissance, however, as artist–scientists probed the workings of the vis- ible world, the ambition to control nature by way of practi- cal knowledge gained greater impetus in the West. In the pioneering efforts of Leonardo da Vinci, the empirical thrust of the Scientific Revolution was already initiated. Inspired by Leonardo’s drawings of the human body, partic- ularly those that investigated the internal organs, the Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) published the first accurate analysis of human anatomy. Vesalius’ trea- tise, On the Workings of the Human Body, became the virtu- al bible for seventeenth-century medical science.
A near contemporary of Vesalius, the Swiss alchemist Philippus Ambrosius Paracelsus (1493–1541) anticipated modern chemistry by compounding medical remedies from minerals rather than from botanical substances. At the same time, the Polish physician and astronomer Nicolas Copernicus (1473–1543) published his landmark treatise, On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres (1543). Based solely on mathematical calculations, Copernicus formulat- ed a theory according to which the earth and all the plan- ets circle around the sun. The heliocentric (sun-centered) model of the cosmos (Figure 23.2A) stood in contradic- tion to the geocentric (earth-centered) model advanced by the renowned second-century Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemy. While some earlier astronomers had argued in favor of a sun-centered universe, Ptolemy’s detailed studies popularized the ancient Greek conception of the heavens as a series of concentric crystalline spheres (occupied individually by the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), with Earth at the center (Figure 23.2B)—a cosmos enshrined in Dante’s Divine
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Comedy (see chapter 12). Planetary motion was circular, directed, according to Aristotle, by a first Cause or Unmoved Mover (in the later, Christian view, God). During the 100 years that followed the publication of Copernicus’ treatise, these theories came under close scrutiny.
Kepler The German mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571– 1630) was among the first to make detailed records of plan- etary movements that substantiated the heliocentric theo- ry. Challenging the conventional assumption that the planetary orbits were perfectly circular, Kepler also showed that the five known planets moved around the sun in ellip- tical paths. He argued that the magnetic force emitted by the sun determined their movements and their distances from the sun. Kepler’s new physics advanced the idea of a universe in motion, contradicting the Aristotelian notion of a fixed and unchanging cosmos. It also generated strong opposition in religious circles. The theory of heliocentrici- ty itself conflicted with the Bible—where, for example, the Hebrew hero Joshua is described as making the sun stand still (Joshua 10: 12–13), a miraculous event that could have occurred only if the sun normally moved around the earth. The earth, according to Genesis (1: 9–13), preceded the sun in the Divine Creation. Ultimately, then, the model of the universe defended by Kepler deprived human beings of their central place in the universe; it made humanity seem incidental to God’s plan. Although Catholics and Protestants were at odds on many theologi- cal matters, in defending the inviolable truth of Scripture against the claims of the new science, they were united.
Galileo Kepler’s Italian contemporary Galileo Galilei (1574– 1642) further advanced Kepler’s research—and imperiled his own life by doing so. Galileo’s inquiries into motion and gravity resulted in the formulation of the Law of Falling Bodies, which proclaims that the earth’s gravity attracts all objects—regardless of shape, size, or density— at the same rate of acceleration. (Legend has it that he tested his theory by dropping different-sized weights from the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa.)
In 1608, a Dutch lensmaker invented an instrument that magnified objects seen at a great distance. Intrigued by the device, Galileo went on to perfect it. His telescope literal- ly revealed new worlds. Through its lens, one could see the craters of the moon, the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter, which, Galileo observed, operated exactly like earth’s moon. The telescope turned the heliocentric theory into fact.
Galileo’s discoveries immediately aroused opposition from Catholics and Protestants committed to maintaining orthodox Christian beliefs, especially as set forth in Scripture. The first institutional attack on “the new sci- ence” had occurred in 1600, when the Catholic Inquisition tried, condemned, and publicly executed the Italian astronomer Giordano Bruno, who had asserted that the
universe was infinite and without center. Bruno had also suggested that other solar systems might exist in space. Sixteen years after Bruno was burned at the stake, the Church of Rome issued an edict that condemned Copernican astronomy as “false and contrary to Holy Scripture.” The writings of Copernicus were put on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books. Galileo added to the controversy by making his own findings public, and avail- able to a wider audience because he wrote in Italian rather than in Latin, the traditional language of Western authority.
More inflammatory still was the publication of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Principal Systems of the World (1632), a fictional conversation between a Copernican and the defenders of the old order, one of whom resembled the pope. Earlier in his career, when it had become evident that his gravitational theories contradicted Aristotle, Galileo had been forced to give up his position as mathe- matics professor at the university of Pisa. Now, ill with kid- ney stones and arthritis, he was dragged to Rome and brought before the Inquisition. After a long and unpleasant trial, Church officials, threatening torture, forced the aging astronomer to “admit his errors.”
Legend has it that after publicly denying that the earth moved around the sun, he muttered under his breath, “Eppur si muove” (“But it does move!”). Though con- demned to indefinite imprisonment, Galileo was permitted to reside—under “house arrest”—in a villa outside of Florence. Imprisonment, however, did not daunt his inge- nuity or his sense of awe. On developing the compound microscope, he marveled, “I have observed many tiny ani- mals. . . among which the flea is quite horrible, the gnat and the moth very beautiful; and with great satisfaction I have seen how flies and other little animals can walk attached to mirrors, upside down.” His books banned by the Church, Galileo continued to receive personal visits from eminent figures, including the English poet John Milton.
The Instruments of the New Science The Scientific Revolution produced new instruments for measurement and new procedures for experimentation and analysis. The slide rule, the magnet, the microscope, the mercury barometer, and the air pump (Figure 23.3) were among the many products of the quest to calculate, inves- tigate, and predict the workings of nature. Seventeenth- century scientists investigated the function of the human
1608 Galileo improves the design of Dutch telescopes to obtain three-power magnification
1609 Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen invent the compound microscope
1619 William Harvey accurately traces the circulation of the blood
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Bacon and the Empirical Method One of the most characteristic features of the Scientific Revolution was its advancement of the empirical method. This method of inquiry depends on direct observation and scientific experimentation as the bases from which one arrives at general conclusions. The process that draws on the particulars of sensory evidence for the formulation of gener- al principles (or axioms) is known as inductive reasoning.
The leading advocate for the empirical method was the English scientist and politician Francis Bacon (1561– 1626). In 1620, Bacon published his Novum Organum (“New Method”), an impassioned plea for objectivity and clear thinking and the strongest defense of the empirical method ever written. “Man, being the servant and inter- preter of Nature,” wrote Bacon, “can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of Nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”
eye and explored the genesis and propagation of light, thus advancing the science of optics beyond the frontiers of Islamic and Renaissance scholarship. They accurately described the action of gases and the circulation of the blood. By 1660, with the aid of a more highly powered microscope, they identified protozoa and human blood cells. The mysterious process known to ancient and medieval societies as “generation” was described with some precision, when, between 1665 and 1680, scientists at the university of Leiden made key discoveries concerning human and animal reproduction. Based on William Harvey’s hypothesis that all animals emerge from an egg, and Anton van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopic studies of sper- matozoa, science advanced an accurate theory of reproduc- tion (see Science and Technology boxes).
Before the end of the century, the great minds of the age formulated the branches of higher mathematics known as analytic geometry, trigonometry, and infinitesimal calcu- lus, by means of which modern scientists might analyze the phenomena of space and motion.
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Figure 23.3 JOSEPH WRIGHT, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 115⁄8 in. � 7 ft. 113⁄4 in. Wright was the first Western artist to use scientific experimentation as dramatic subject matter. A vacuum is created by removing air from a glass bowl, which deprives the bird of oxygen. In a manner borrowed from Baroque religious art, Wright uses light to bring attention to the various expressions on the faces of the middle-class family.
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Q How does the notion of an “idol” serve Bacon’s purpose in writing this treatise?
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Bacon argued that human beings might become “the masters and possessors of Nature” only by means of scientific study guided by precise methods. He promoted an objective system of experimentation, tabulation, and record keeping that became the touchstone of modern scientific inquiry.
Unlike earlier humanists, Bacon turned his back on Aristotle and Classical science. A prophet of the new learning, he sought to eliminate errors in reasoning derived from blind adherence to traditional sources of authority and religious belief. Advancing his own strategy for the acquisition of knowledge, Bacon warned against four “false notions” (or Idols, as he called them) that hinder clear and objective thinking.
From Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620)
39 There are four classes of Idols which beset men’s minds. To these for distinction’s sake I have assigned names,—calling the first class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Marketplace; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre.
41 The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
42 The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For every one (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature; owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus1 that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
43 There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Marketplace, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to
the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.
44 Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men’s minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theatre; because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. Nor is it only of the systems now in vogue, or only of the ancient sects and philosophies, that I speak; for many more plays of the same kind may yet be composed and in like artificial manner set forth; seeing that errors the most widely different have nevertheless causes for the most part alike. Neither again do I mean this only of entire systems, but also of many principles and axioms in science, which by tradition, credulity, and negligence have come to be received.
Bacon observes that every culture and every age has “worshiped” the Idols. Idols of the Tribe are deceptive ideas that have their foundations in human nature (such as our natural inclination to accept and believe what we prefer to be true). He points to the fact that human understanding is self-reflective; it functions like a “false mirror,” distorting universal truth. Privately held fallacies (Idols of the Cave), on the other hand, derive from individual education and background. One may assert, for instance, that one or another religion is the true faith, that certain racial or eth- nic groups are superior to others, or that women should be judged by a different set of standards than those applied to men.
The errors resulting from human association and com- munication, the Idols of the Marketplace, arise, according to Bacon, from an “ill or unfit choice of words.” For example: the use of the noun “mankind” to designate all human beings. Finally, Idols of the Theatre are false dogmas perpet- uated by social and political philosophies and institutions. Bacon probably would have regarded “divine-right monar- chy” (see chapter 21) and “separate but equal education” as examples of these. To purge the mind of prejudice and false thinking, one must, argued Bacon, destroy the Idols.
Bacon’s clarion call for objectivity and experimentation inspired the founding in 1645 of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. The first of many such European and American societies for scientific advancement, the Royal Society has, over the centuries, attracted thousands of members. Their achievements have confirmed one nineteenth-century historian’s assessment of Bacon as “the man that moved the minds that moved the world.”
1 A Greek philosopher of ca. 500 B.C.E., who taught that all of nature was in a state of flux.
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Q In what ways do “studies,” according to Bacon, “perfect nature?”
Q What, in his view, are the benefits of reading, verbal discourse, and writing?
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Science versus Religion
CHAPTER 23 The Scientific Revolution and the New Learning 117
While Bacon wrote his scientific treatises in Latin, he used English for essays on law, rhetoric, and intellectual life. In The Advancement of Learning (1605), a sketch of his key ideas concerning methods for acquiring and classifying knowledge, and in the essay Of Studies, Bacon demonstrated the masterful use of prose as a tool for theorizing. Written in the poetic prose of the early seventeenth century, Of Studies describes the ways in which books serve the individual and society at large. In the excerpt that follows, Bacon defends reading as a source of pleasure, but, equally important, as a source of practical knowledge and power.
From Bacon’s Of Studies from Essays (1625)
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their 1 chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best f rom those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for 10 natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; . . . Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. . . . Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great 20 memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he does not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral [philosophy] grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. . . .
Descartes and the Birth of Modern Philosophy Born in France, René Descartes (1596–1650) is regarded as the founder of modern Western philosophy. His writings revived the ancient Greek quest to discover how one knows what one knows, and his methods made the disci- pline of philosophy wholly independent of theology.
Whereas Bacon gave priority to knowledge gained through the senses, Descartes, the supreme rationalist, valued abstract reasoning and mathematical speculation. Descartes did not deny the importance of the senses in the
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1626 Francis Bacon uses snow in experiments to refrigerate chickens
1642 Blaise Pascal invents a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction
1645 Otto von Guericke perfects the air pump 1650 Pascal invents the mercury barometer 1656 Christian Huygens develops the first accurate
pendulum clock 1660 Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers microscopic
protozoa
In an era dominated by fervent spirituality, Bacon demanded a separation of religion and science. “In every age,” he observed, “Natural Philosophy has had a troublesome adversary . . . namely, superstition, and the blind and immoderate zeal of religion.” In Bacon’s time, the term “natural philosophy” (philosophia naturalis), described the objective study of nature and the physical universe. It is to this precursor of the natural sciences that Bacon refers in the Novum Organum:
. . . the corruption of philosophy by a combination of superstition and theology is . . . widespread, and does the greatest harm both to whole philosophies and to their parts. Yet, some of the moderns have, with the greatest frivolity, indulged so far . . . as to try to found a natural philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis and the Book of Job and other sacred writings. . . . It is all the more important to guard against and check this foolishness, for an unhealthy mixture of the divine and the human leads not only to fanciful philosophy but also to heretical religion. The healthy course therefore is to keep a sober mind and give to faith only that which is faith’s.
The question of setting religious faith apart from science troubled early modern intellectuals, even as it does many thinkers in our own time. Some might argue that science and religion remain “locked in a death struggle.” Moderates, however, would defend the idea that reason can function alongside faith to reduce suffering, end disease, and—by giving human beings greater power over nature— improve the conditions of everyday life. Nevertheless, where religion and science seem irreconcilable, such as in the case of current stem-cell research that might give humans the power to “compete with God’s creation,” the issue remains widely debated.
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search for truth, but he observed that our senses might deceive us. As an alternative to inductive reasoning, he championed the procedure for investigation called deduc- tive reasoning. The reverse of the inductive method, the deductive process begins with clearly established general premises and moves toward the establishment of particular truths. In the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, the most important of all his philosophic works, Descartes set forth his rules for reasoning: never accept anything as true that you do not clearly know to be true; dissect a problem into as many parts as possible; reason from simple to complex knowledge; and finally, draw complete and exhaustive con- clusions. Descartes began the Discourse by systematically calling everything into doubt. He then proceeded to iden- tify the first thing that he could not doubt—his existence as a thinking individual. This one clear and distinct idea of himself as a “thinking thing,” expressed in the proposition “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”), became Descartes’ “first principle” and the premise for all of his major arguments.
For Descartes, the clear and unbiased mind was the source of all natural understanding. “Except [for] our own thoughts,” he insisted, “there is nothing absolutely in our power.” Having established rational consciousness as the only sure point of departure for knowledge, Descartes proceeded to examine the world. He made a clear distinc- tion between physical and psychical phenomena, that is, between matter and mind, and between body and soul.
According to this dualistic model, the human body operates much like a computer, with the immaterial mind (the software) “informing” the physical components of the body (the hardware). Cartesian dualism, the view that holds the mind (a thinking entity) as distinct from the body, dominated European philosophic thought until the end of the nineteenth century and still has some strong adherents today.
Beyond the domain of philosophy, Descartes earned renown as the father of analytic geometry, the discipline that uses algebra to solve problems of space and motion (Figure 23.4). His program for defining geometric shapes by way of numerical information, presented in an appendix to the Discourse, provided the foundations for the branch of higher mathematics known as calculus.
From Descartes’ Discourse on Method (Part IV) (1637)
. . . I do not know that I ought to tell you of the first meditations 1 there made by me, for they are so metaphysical and so unusual that they may perhaps not be acceptable to everyone. And yet at the same time, in order that one may judge whether the foundations which I have laid are sufficiently secure, I find myself constrained in some measure to refer to them. For a long time I had remarked that it is sometimes requisite in common life to follow opinions which one knows to be most uncertain, exactly as though they were indisputable, as has been said
Figure 23.4 PIERRE LOUIS DUMESNIL THE YOUNGER, Detail of Queen Christina of Sweden and Her Court, 1649. Oil on canvas. Like many other monarchs of the seventeenth century, Queen Christina of Sweden invited scholars and artists to her court. At the right, Descartes is seen explaining his work to his female benefactor; he points to papers that lie among books and measuring instruments.
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Q How does Descartes arrive at his distinction between mind and matter?
Q Why does he conclude that he is “a substance the whole essence or nature of which is to think?”
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above. But because in this case I wished to give myself entirely 10 to the search after Truth, I thought that it was necessary for me to take an apparently opposite course, and to reject as absolutely false everything as to which I could imagine the least ground of doubt, in order to see if afterwards there remained anything in my belief that was entirely certain. Thus, because our senses sometimes deceive us, I wished to suppose that nothing is just as they cause us to imagine it to be; and because there are men who deceive themselves in their reasoning and fall into paralogisms,1 even concerning the simplest matters of geometry, and judging that I was as subject to error as was any 20 other, I rejected as false all the reasons formerly accepted by me as demonstrations. And since all the same thoughts and conceptions which we have while awake may also come to us in sleep, without any of them being at that time true, I resolved to assume that everything that ever entered into my mind was no more true than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately afterwards I noticed that whilst I thus wished to think all things false, it was absolutely essential that the “I” who thought this should be somewhat, and remarking that this truth “I think, therefore I am” was so certain and so assured that all the most 30 extravagant suppositions brought forward by the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I came to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the Philosophy for which I was seeking.
And then, examining attentively that which I was, I saw that I could conceive that I had no body, and that there was no world nor place where I might be; but yet that I could not for all that conceive that I was not. On the contrary, I saw from the very fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things, it very evidently and certainly followed that I was; on the other hand if 40 I had only ceased from thinking, even if all the rest of what I had ever imagined had really existed, I should have no reason for thinking that I had existed. From that I knew that I was a substance the whole essence or nature of which is to think, and that for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this “me,” that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and even if body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is.
After this I considered generally what in a proposition is 50 requisite in order to be true and certain; for since I had just discovered one which I knew to be such, I thought that I ought also to know in what this certainly consisted. And having remarked that there was nothing at all in the statement “I think, therefore I am” which assures me of having thereby made a true assertion, excepting that I see very clearly that to think it is necessary to be, I came to the conclusion that I might assume, as a general rule, that the things which we conceive very clearly and distinctly are all true—remembering, however, that there is some difficulty in ascertaining which are those that we 60 distinctly conceive.
Following upon this, and reflecting on the fact that I doubted, and that consequently my existence was not quite perfect (for I saw clearly that it was a greater perfection to
know than to doubt), I resolved to inquire whence I had learnt to think of anything more perfect than I myself was; and I recognised very clearly that this conception must proceed from some nature which was really more perfect. As to the thoughts which I had of many other things outside of me, like the heavens, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand others, I had 70 not so much difficulty in knowing whence they came, because, remarking nothing in them which seemed to render them superior to me, I could believe that, if they were true, they were dependencies upon my nature, in so far as it possessed some perfection; and if they were not true, that I held them from nought, that is to say, that they were in me because I had something lacking in my nature. But this could not apply to the idea of a Being more perfect than my own, for to hold it from nought would be manifestly impossible; and because it is no less contradictory to say of the more perfect that it is what 80 results from and depends on the less perfect, than to say that there is something which proceeds from nothing, it was equally impossible that I should hold it from myself. In this way it could but follow that it had been placed in me by a Nature which was really more perfect than mine could be, and which even had within itself all the perfections of which I could form any idea—that is to say, to put it in a word, which was God. . . .
Religion and the New Learning The new learning, a composite of scientific method and rational inquiry, presented its own challenge to traditional religion. From “self-evident” propositions, Descartes arrived at conclusions to which empirical confirmation was irrelevant. His rationalism—like Plato’s—involved a process of the mind independent of the senses. Reasoning that the concept of perfection (“something more perfect than myself”) had to proceed from “some Nature which in reality was more perfect,” Descartes “proved” the existence of God as Absolute Substance. Since something cannot proceed from nothing, argued Descartes, the idea of God held by human beings must come from God. Moreover, the idea of Perfection (God) embraces the idea of existence, for, if something is perfect, it must exist.
Raised by Jesuits, Descartes defended the existence of a Supreme Creator, but he shared with many seventeenth-century intellectuals the view that God was neither Caretaker nor personal Redeemer. Instead, Descartes identified God with “the mathematical order of nature.” The idea that God did not interfere with the laws of humanity and nature was central to deism, a “natural” religion based on human reason rather than revelation. Deists purged religion of superstition, myth, and ritual. They viewed God as a master mechanic who had created the universe, then stepped aside and allowed his World- Machine to run unattended.
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1 Fallacious arguments.
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Unlike Bacon, Descartes did not envision any conflict between science and religion. He optimistically concluded that “all our ideas or notions contain in them some truth; for otherwise it could not be that God, who is wholly per- fect and veracious, should have placed them in us.” Like other deists of his time, Descartes held that to follow reason was to follow God.
Spinoza and Pascal In Amsterdam, a city whose reputation for freedom of thought had attracted Descartes—he lived there between 1628 and 1649—the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) addressed the question of the new science versus the old faith. Spinoza posited “a universe ruled only by the cause and effect of natural laws, without purpose or design.” Stripping God of his traditional role as Creator (and consequently finding himself ousted from the local synagogue), he claimed “God exists only philosophically.” God is neither behind, nor beyond, nor separate from nature but, rather, identical with it. Every physical thing, including human beings, is an expression of God in some variation of mind combined with matter. In this pantheis- tic spirit, Spinoza held that the greatest good was the union of the human mind with the whole of nature.
For the French physicist–mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), on the other hand, science and religion were irreconcilable. Having undergone a mystical experience that converted him to devout Roman Catholicism, he believed that the path to God was through the heart rather than through the head. Although reason might yield a true understanding of nature, it could in no way prove God’s existence. We are capable, wrote Pascal, of “certain knowl- edge and of absolute ignorance.” In his collected medita- tions on human nature, called simply Pensées (“Thoughts”), Pascal proposed a wager that challenged the indifference of skeptics: if God does not exist, skeptics lose nothing by believing in him, but if God does exist, they reap eternal life. The spiritual quest for purpose and value in a vast, impersonal universe moved the sharp- minded Pascal to confess: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
Locke and the Culmination of the Empirical Tradition The writings of the English philosopher and physician John Locke (1632–1704) championed the empirical tradition in seventeenth-century thought. Written seventy years after Bacon’s Novum Organum, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) confirmed his predecessor’s thesis that everything one knows derives from sensory experi- ence. According to Locke, the human mind at birth is a tabula rasa (“blank slate”) upon which experience—con- sisting of sensation, followed by reflection—writes the script. There are no innate moral principles or ideas; human knowledge consists only of the progressive accumu- lation of the evidence of the senses.
The implications of Locke’s principles of knowledge moved European and (later) American thought to assume an optimistic view of human destiny. For, if experience
influences human knowledge and behavior, then, surely, improving the social environment will work to perfect the human condition. Locke’s ideas became basic to eigh- teenth-century liberalism, as well as to all ideologies that held that human knowledge, if properly applied, would produce happiness for humankind (see chapter 24).
From Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
Idea is the Object of Thinking.—Every man being conscious 1 to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such as are those expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others. It is in the first place then to be inquired how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already; 10 and I suppose what I have [already] said . . . will be much more easily admitted when I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind; for which I shall appeal to every one’s own observation and experience.
All Ideas come from Sensation or Reflection.—Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless 20 variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do spring.
The Objects of Sensation, one Source of Ideas.—First, our 30 senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them: and thus we come by those ideas we have, of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the 40 understanding, I call Sensation.
The Operations of our Minds, the other Source of them.— Secondly, the other fountain, from which experience furnishes the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of
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Newton’s Scientific Synthesis
The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Art
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ideas, which could not be had from things without; and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our 50 own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other Sensation, so I call this Reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, I would
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be understood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them; by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz., external material things, as the objects of sensation; and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection; are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. . . .
All our Ideas are of the one or the other of these.—The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of 70 any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations.
These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds, which did not come in one of these two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search into 80 his understanding; and then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there, are any other than of the objects of his senses, or of the operations of his mind, considered as objects of his reflection: and how great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in his mind, but what one of these two have imprinted. . . .
The work of the great English astronomer and mathe- matician Isaac Newton (1642–1727) represents the culmi- nating synthesis of seventeenth-century physics and mathematics. A tireless student of the sciences (so intent on his studies that he often forgot to eat), Newton moved the new learning from its foundations in methodical speculation (Copernicus) and empirical confirmation (Galileo) to its apogee in codification.
With the 1687 publication of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy),* commonly known as the Principia, Newton
provided an all-embracing theory of universal gravitation that described every physical movement in the universe— from the operation of the tides to the effects of a planet on its moons. In its 550 pages (written in a mere eighteen months), he proved that nature’s laws applied equally to terrestrial and celestial matter, thus unifying the work of Galileo and Kepler. He described the workings of the phys- ical world with a single proposition that explained the uni- versal force of gravity: “Every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force propositional to the prod- uct of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distances between them” (Book III, Number 7).
The Principia, the fundamentals of which would go unchallenged until the late nineteenth century, proved to be the greatest work of science ever written. It advanced the concept of an orderly universe, one that operated as systematically as a well-oiled machine. Equally important, however, it promoted the optimistic notion that the phys- ical universe was discoverable and knowable by human beings. Thus, it was an empowering force in the evolution of self-awareness. Newton’s shaping influence is best described by his admiring British contemporary, Alexander Pope (see chapter 24): “Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night./ God said, Let Newton be! And All was Light.”
Northern Baroque Painting If the new science engendered a spirit of objective inquiry in philosophy, it also inspired new directions in the visual arts. In the cities of seventeenth-century Holland, where Dutch lensmakers had produced the first telescopes and microscopes, artists paid obsessive attention to the appear- ance of the natural world. In still lifes, portraits, landscape, and scenes of everyday life—all secular subjects—Dutch masters practiced the “art of describing.”** The almost photographic realism of the painting that opens this chap- ter, Jan Vermeer’s The Geographer (see Figure 23.1), is typ- ical of the new “Baconian” attention to the evidence of the
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1666 Isaac Newton uses a prism to analyze light 1671 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz invents a calculating
machine that multiplies and divides 1684 Leibniz publishes his first paper on differential
calculus 1687 Newton publishes his Principia Mathematica
* The term “natural philosophy” meant primarily physics, astronomy, and the science of matter.
** See Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
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senses: from the calipers (a device used to measure dis- tances) held in the geographer’s right hand and the crisp parchment maprolls that lie on the table and floor, to the brocaded chair that stands against the wall, the objects of the real world are described with loving detail. References to Holland’s global outreach, facilitated by its trading com- panies, appear in the inclusion of the handsome globe, the sea chart (so detailed that one can read the name of the manufacturer), and the richly patterned carpet, an import from the East, commonly used in domestic interiors as a table cover or wall-hanging. Vermeer bathes these tangible objects in atmospheric light that pours in from the window, unifying space.
Similar attention to detail is apparent in The Drawing Lesson (Figure 23.5), a delightful genre painting by Jan Steen (1626–1679). The Dutch studio interior is filled with artist’s paraphernalia—canvases, a sketchbook, an easel, pens, paper, and plaster-cast models—as well as by various mundane items: bottles, books, and jugs. Two stu- dents are shown receiving instruction from a drawing mas- ter. The young female gazes with bewildered wonder at the skills of her mentor. Steen’s representation gives evidence of an important phenomenon in seventeenth-century Dutch art: the growing number of women as master
painters. Often excluded from membership in the local guilds, they learned their trade by drawing from plaster-cast reproductions (see Figure 23.5). Forbidden to work from nude male models employed in traditional studio training, they inclined to the painting of portraits and still-life sub- jects. Rachel Ruysch (1664– 1750), the mother of ten chil- dren, produced precisely executed flower pieces for an international circle of patrons. Her works, which reflect the influence of the newly available botanical prints, suggest the close relationship between late seventeenth-century science and art.
One of the most talented of Holland’s female artists was Maria van Oosterwyck (1630–1693). Drawing on the tradi- tion of exacting realism initiated by Jan van Eyck, van Oosterwyck brought a naturalist’s passion for detail to her paintings. Her Still Life of 1668 (Figure 23.6) includes a radiant Dutch tulip, a worn book, a meticulously painted astrological globe, a rotting skull, various insects (including a moth and a microscopically precise fly), a mouse nibbling at some grain, and a wine carafe (left front) that reflects a minute image of the artist. This illusionistic tour de force, while brilliantly decorative, makes symbolic reference to the transience of temporal things. Red wine, exotic flowers, and musical instruments, mark fleeting pleasures and the
brevity of life. The books, entitled Rekeningh (Reckoning) and Self-Stryt (Self-Struggle), underline the need to take account of one’s moral state. Ostensibly a celebration of earthly pleasures, the painting—a type known as vanitas—suggests the corruptibility of worldly goods, the futility of riches, and the inevitability of death.
In addition to still-life subjects, genre paintings (scenes of everyday life and especially family life) were in high demand in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, generating a virtual golden age of Dutch art. The domestic scenes of Pieter de Hooch (1629–1684) show Dutch art to be societal—they are concerned with conviviality and companionship. In one painting, de Hooch uses a spa- cious courtyard filled with cool, bright light as the setting for such ordinary pleasures as pipe-smoking and beer- drinking (Figure 23.7). He captures a mood of domestic intimacy in his lov- ing attention to humble fact: the crumbling brick wall, the gleaming
Figure 23.5 JAN STEEN, The Drawing Lesson, 1665. Oil on canvas, 193⁄8 � 161⁄4 in. Often humorous and anecdotal, Steen’s paintings are usually brilliant in composition. Here, he uses the canvas leaning on the trunk and the lute on the floor to lead our eyes into the scene.
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Figure 23.6 MARIA VAN OOSTERWYCK, Vanitas Still Life, 1668. Oil on canvas, 29 � 35 in.
moth symbolizing corruption and decay
astrological globe implying universality
flowers, skull, and rotting corn: symbols of transience and death
recorder signifying music as a fleeting
pleasure
wine carafe signifying life’s pleasures,
with reflection of the artist in an interior
hourglass symbolizing the passage of time and the inevitability of death
money bag and coins alluding to the futility of riches
fly symbolizing pestilence and misfortune
butterfly: symbol of the immortal soul
books encouraging the need to take account of one’s moral state
mouse symbolizing pestilence
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tankard, the homely matron, and the pudgy child. The strict verticals and horizontals of the compo- sition—established with Cartesian clarity and precision—create a sense of tranquility and order.
Amateur musical performances, one of the major domestic entertainments of the seven- teenth century, are the subject of many Northern Baroque paintings, including de Hooch’s Portrait of a Family Making Music (Figure 23.8). The growing popularity of musical subjects reflects the emphasis on musical education and the rising number of private musical societies in the towns of the Dutch Republic. In the belief that music- listening and music-making were morally edify- ing (and thus more desirable than the all too popular pastime of drinking), many churches required musical recitals before and after services and encouraged instrumental and choral expres- sion among members of the congregation. Holland was a center for the manufacture of musical instruments; the Dutch household pic- tured by de Hooch would have owned the bass viol, recorder, cittern (a type of lute), and violin on which the family performed, their rhythms closely measured by the portly, no-nonsense matron of the house.
Music-making also figures in the delightful painting called The Suitor’s Visit by Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681). The narrative is staged like a
Figure 23.7 (above) PIETER DE HOOCH, A Dutch Courtyard, 1658–1660. Oil on canvas, 263⁄4 � 23 in.
Figure 23.8 (below) PIETER DE HOOCH, Portrait of a Family Making Music, 1663. Oil on canvas, 387⁄8 � 4515⁄16 in.
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scene from a play: a well-dressed gentleman, who has just entered the parlor of a well-to-do middle-class family, bows before a young woman whose coy appre- hension suggests that she is the object of courtship (Figure 23.9). The father and the family dog take note of the tense moment, while a younger woman, absorbed in playing the lute, ignores the interruption. Ter Borch was famous for his virtuosity in painting silk and satin fabrics that subtly gleam from within the shadowy depths of domestic interiors. Equally impres- sive, however, was his ability to invest an inconse- quential social event with intimacy.
Vermeer and Dutch Painting Seventeenth-century Dutch artists developed as a major subject the naturalistic landscape (the very word derives from the Dutch landschap meaning “landform”). In landscape painting as in genre sub- jects, they described nature with a close attention to detail and a sensitivity to atmosphere that rivaled the landscapes of their Northern European predecessors, Dürer and Brueghel (see chapter 19). Unlike their seventeenth-century French contemporaries, Poussin and Claude Lorrain (see chapter 21), Dutch land- scape painters depicted nature unidealized and free of moralizing narratives; they brought to life a sense of place and the vastness of nature itself.
Such is the case with the View of Delft (Figure 23.10), the only landscape painted by the Delft master
Figure 23.10 JAN VERMEER, View of Delft, 1658. Oil on canvas, 3 ft. 23⁄4 in. � 3 ft. 10 in. This cityscape reflects the pride with which Dutch painters and patrons regarded their home towns. Like other urban centers in the Lowlands, Delft was home to some of Europe’s finest mapmakers.
Figure 23.9 GERARD TER BORCH, The Suitor’s Visit, ca. 1658. Oil on canvas, 311⁄2 � 295⁄8 in.
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Jan Vermeer (1632–1675). An innkeeper and an art dealer, who produced fewer than forty canvas- es in his lifetime, Vermeer trans- formed everyday subjects by way of atmospheric space and evanes- cent light. His View of Delft, a top- ographical study of his native city, reveals a typically Dutch affection for the visible world. It also reflects the artist’s delight in the physical effects of light on matter: the silvery surface of the water interrupted by boats and build- ings, the sunlight filtering down to illuminate some segments of the city, while others are clouded into shade. Vermeer lowers the horizon line to give increased attention to the sky—a reflection perhaps of his interest in the new astronomy. While the composi- tion fixes a singular point of view and a precise place, the broad horizon seems to reach beyond the limits of the frame to suggest infi- nite space. Two groups of tiny fig- ures (in the left foreground) invite us to share the view—as beholders and as minor players on the larger stage of nature.
It is likely that Vermeer and other Dutch masters shared an interest in the optical experiments of Galileo and Newton and in the optical devices (such as the camera luci- da; see chapter 17) that facilitated an accurate and detailed depiction of the physical world. Scholars argue that Vermeer, the exemplar in an age of observation, executed his paintings with the aid of a camera obscura (Figure 23.11), an apparatus that anticipated the modern pinhole camera (while lacking the means of capturing the image on film). The blurred contours and small beads of light
that twinkle on the surface of his canvases suggest the use of an optical lens.
Vermeer’s favorite subjects—women playing musical instruments, reading letters, or enjoying the company of suitors—are all depicted on small-sized canvases in an inti- mate interior (possibly that of the artist’s studio). Self- contained and self-possessed, and bathed in atmospheric light, they come to life in a strikingly personal manner. In Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance (Figure 23.12) a woman (perhaps pregnant) stands before a table contem- plating a jeweler’s balance. On the table, strands of pearls twinkle in the light that filters through the curtained win- dow—a compositional strategy used in The Geographer (see Figure 23.1) and in many of Vermeer’s domestic interiors. On the wall behind her is a painting of the Last Judgment. Is this a lofty allegory that makes reference to the final weighing of souls, and the balance between worldly and otherworldly rewards? Or is it simply a delicately rendered record of a domestic activity? Either way, its exquisite inti- macy and meditative tranquility are unique in Dutch art.
Dutch Portraiture The vogue for portraiture in Northern Baroque art reflected the self-conscious materialism of a rising middle class. Like the portraits of wealthy Renaissance
Figure 23.11 A camera obscura; the image formed by the lens and reflected by the mirror on the ground glass is traced by the artist.
Figure 23.12 JAN VERMEER, Woman Holding a Balance, ca. 1664. Oil on canvas, 163⁄4 � 15 in.
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aristocrats (see chapter 17), the painted likeness- es of seventeenth-century Dutch burghers fulfilled the ambition to immortalize one’s worldly self. But in contrast to Italian portraits, the painted images of middle-class Dutch men and women are usually unidealized and often even unflattering. They capture a truth to nature reminiscent of late Roman portraiture (see chapter 6) but surpass even these in their self-scrutiny and probing, self- reflective character.
Two contemporaries, Frans Hals (1581–1666) and Rembrandt van Rijn (the latter introduced in chapter 22), dominated the genre of portraiture in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. Hals was the leading painter of Haarlem and one of the great realists of the Western portrait tradition. His talent lay in capturing the personality and physical pres- ence of his sitters: the jaunty self-confidence of a courtly Dutch soldier, for instance, whose fleeting sideways glance flirts with the viewer (Figure 23.13). A master of the brush, Hals brought his forms to life by means of quick, loose, staccato brushstrokes and impasto highlights. Immediacy, spontaneity, and impulsive movement—features typical of Baroque art—enliven Hals’ portraits.
These qualities also appear in the work of Judith Leyster (1609–1660), a Netherlandish artist from the province of Utrecht, whose canvases until the twentieth century were attributed to her colleague, Frans Hals. Leyster established a workshop in Haarlem and was one of only two females elected to the painters’ guild of that city. Almost all her known paintings date from before her mar- riage at the age of twenty-six. Leyster’s Self- Portrait achieves a sense of informality through the casual manner in which the artist turns away from her canvas as if to greet the viewer (Figure 23.14). The laugh- ing violinist that is the subject of the paint- ing-within-the-painting provides an exuberant counterpoint to Leyster’s robust visage. Leyster’s portrait is a personal com- ment on the role of the artist as muse and artisan. It conveys the self-confidence of a middle-class woman who competed with the best of Holland’s masters.
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Figure 23.13 FRANS HALS, The Laughing Cavalier, 1624. Oil on canvas, 333⁄4 � 27 in.
Figure 23.14 JUDITH LEYSTER, Self-Portrait, ca. 1630. Oil on canvas, 293⁄8 � 257⁄8 in. Shortly after her marriage Leyster moved with her husband to Amsterdam, where she bore and reared at least five children. Though she may have helped her husband, Jan Molenaer, execute his paintings, her own artistic output decreased dramatically.
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Rembrandt’s Portraits Hals’ and Leyster’s portraits are astute records of surface appearance. By comparison, Rembrandt’s portraits are studies of the inner life of his sitters, uncompromising explorations of flesh and blood. A keen observer of human character, Rembrandt became the leading portrait painter in the city of Amsterdam. The commissions he received at the beginning of his career exceeded his ability to fill them. But after a meteoric rise to fame, he saw his fortunes decline. Accumulated debts led to poverty, bankruptcy, and psychological depression—the last compounded by the loss of his beloved wife in 1642.
The history of Rembrandt’s career is mirrored in his self- portraits, some forty of which survive. They are a kind of visual diary, a lifetime record of the artist’s passionate enterprise in self-scrutiny. The Self-Portrait of 1661, with its slackened facial muscles and furrowed brow, engages the viewer with the image of a noble and yet utterly vulnera- ble personality (Figure 23.15). Portraiture of this kind,
which has no equivalent in any non-Western culture, may be considered among the outstanding examples of Northern Baroque art.
Among the most lucrative of Rembrandt’s commissions was the group portrait, a genre that commemorated the achievements of wealthy Dutch families, guild members, and militia officers. Some of these paintings, which measure more than 12 by 14 feet, reflect the Baroque fondness for colossal proportion and theatrical setting. Even in his small- er-sized group portraits, Rembrandt achieved a unity of dra- matic effect typical of the Baroque style. The painting that established Rembrandt’s reputation as a master portraitist, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632), is a case in point (Figure 23.16). Here the artist has eliminated the posed look of the conventional group portrait by staging the scene as a dissection in progress. As in his religious composi- tions (compare Figure 22.5), he manipulates light for dramat- ic purposes: he spotlights the dissected corpse in the
foreground and balances the darker area formed by the figure of the doctor with a triangle created by the brightly lit faces of the students (whose names appear on the piece of paper held by the central figure). These faces bear the force of individual per- sonalities and the spirit of inquisitiveness peculiar to the Age of Science.
Figure 23.15 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, Self-Portrait as Saint Paul, 1661. Oil on canvas, 357⁄8 � 303⁄8 in. As part of their training, Rembrandt’s students copied the master’s self- portraits. Recent scholarship has reduced the number of authentic Rembrandt self-portraits from sixty to around forty.
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Until the sixteenth century, almost all music was written for the voice rather than for musical instruments. Even during the Renaissance, instrumental music was, for the most part, the result of substituting an instrument for a voice in music written for singing or dancing. The seventeenth century marked the rise of music that lacked an extramusical text. Like a mathematical equation or a geometric formula, the instrumental music of the early modern era carried no explicit narrative content—it was neither a vehicle of religious expression nor a means of sup- porting a secular vocalized text. Such music was written without consideration for the content traditionally provid- ed by a set of sung lyrics. The idea of music as an aesthetic exercise, composed for its own sake rather than to serve a religious or communal purpose, was a notable feature of seventeenth-century European culture.
Not surprisingly, the rise of instrumental music was accompanied by improvements in instruments and refine- ments in tuning. Indeed, instrumental music came to dominate musical composition at the very moment that Western musicians were perfecting such stringed instru- ments as the violin, viola, and cello (see Figure 23.8) and such keyboard instruments as the organ and harpsichord (Figure 23.17). By the early eighteenth century, musicians
were adopting the system of tuning known as equal temperament, whereby the octave was divided into twelve half-steps of equal size. The collection of preludes and fugues known as the Well-Tempered [tuned] Clavier (1722– 1742) shows how Bach made use of this uniform system of tuning to create sublime music—he wrote two pieces in every possible key. The new attention to improving instru- ments and systematizing keys mirrored the efforts of scien- tists and philosophers to bring precision and uniformity to the tools and methods of scientific inquiry.
In the seventeenth century, northern Italy was the world center for the manufacture of violins. The Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivari families of Cremona, Italy, estab- lished the techniques of making quality violins that were sought in all of the great courts of Europe. Transmitted from father to son, the construction techniques used to produce these instruments were guarded so secretly that modern violinmakers have never successfully imitated them. Elsewhere, around 1650, earlier instruments were standardized and refined. The ancient double-reed wind instrument known as the shawm, for instance, developed into the modern oboe. While amateur music-making was widespread, professional performance also took a great leap forward, as a new breed of virtuosi inspired the writing of treatises on performance techniques.
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Figure 23.16 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 3 3⁄8 in. � 7 ft. 11⁄4 in. Engaged in a public dissection witnessed by his students, the doctor is shown examining the muscles of the arm and hand of an executed prisoner. The large book in the lower right corner is doubtlessly a copy of Vesalius’ monumental study, On the Workings of the Human Body.
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Three main types of composition—the sonata, the suite, and the concerto—dominated seventeenth-century instrumental music. All three reflect the Baroque taste for dramatic contrasts in tempo and texture. The sonata (from the Italian word for “sounded,” that is, music played and not sung) is a piece written for a few instruments—often no more than one or two. It usually consisted of three movements of contrasting tempo—fast/slow/fast—each based on a song or dance form of the time.
The suite, written for any combination of instruments, is a sequence or series of movements derived from various European court or folk dances—for example, the sara- bande, the pavane, the minuet, and the gigue, or jig. Henry Purcell (1659–1695) in England, François Couperin (1668–1733) in France (see chapter 26), and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) in Germany all contributed to the development of the suite as a musical genre.
Finally, the concerto (from the same root as concertato, which describes opposing or contrasting bodies of sound; see chapter 20) is a composition consisting of two groups of instruments, one small and the other large, playing in “dia- logue.” The typical Baroque concerto, the concerto grosso (“large concerto”) featured several movements, whose number and kind varied considerably.
Vivaldi The leading Italian instrumental composer of the Baroque era was Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), a Roman Catholic priest and the son of a prominent violinist at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. A composer of both sacred music and opera, he earned lasting fame as one of the most influential figures in the history of the concerto grosso. He wrote some
450 concertos, including concerti grossi and solo concertos, the latter mostly for violin. Vivaldi systematized the concerto grosso into a three-movement form (fast/slow/fast) and increased the distinctions between solo and ensemble groups in each movement. He also perfected the form known as ritornello (literally, “return”), which makes use of a returning or recurring musical passage that (alternating with other musical episodes) brings dramatic unity to the composition.
Of the many compositions Vivaldi wrote for solo violin and orchestra, the most glorious is The Four Seasons, a group of four violin concertos, each of which musically describes a single season. Vivaldi intended that this piece be “programmatic,” that is, carry meaning outside of the music itself. As if to ensure that the music duplicate the descriptive power of traditional vocal lines, he added poems at appropriate passages in the score for the instruc- tion of the performers. At the section called “Spring,” for instance, Vivaldi’s verses describe “flowing streams” and “singing birds.” While the music offers listeners the chal- lenge of detecting such extramusical references, its bril- liance lies not in its programmatic innovations but in its vibrant rhythms, its lyrical solos, and its exuberant “dia- logues” between violin and orchestra.
Bach and Instrumental Music Johann Sebastian Bach, whom we met in chapter 22, served as a brilliant church musician for much of his life. However, he was also one of history’s greatest composers of secular music, that is, music with no obvious religious func- tion. Influenced by both Vivaldi’s concertos and the Italian music style that inspired the expressive conjunction of solo and orchestral forms, Bach developed the musical poten- tial of the concerto form more completely than any previ- ous composer. He claimed that his study of Vivaldi had taught him to “think musically,” and endow the creative process with “order, coherence, and proportion.” To the hundreds of concertos produced throughout his lifetime, Bach brought a high degree of rational control, expanding the ritornello sections and bringing solo episodes to new levels of complexity.
The six concertos known as the Brandenburg Concertos were composed over a period of several years. In 1721, Bach sent them to Ludwig Christian, the margrave of Brandenburg, in the hope of securing a position at his court. Though there is no record that these concertos were ever performed during Bach’s lifetime, they were intended for performance by the Brandenburg court orchestra.
The Brandenburg Concertos employ as soloists most of the principal instruments of the Baroque orchestra: violin, oboe, recorder, trumpet, and harpsichord. Bach applied himself to developing rich contrasts of tone and texture between the two “contending” groups of instruments—note especially the massive sound of the orchestra versus the lighter sounds of the small group (consisting of a violin and
Figure 23.17 JOHANNES COUCHET (maker), Flemish Harpsichord-double- banked; compass, four octaves, and a fifth F to C (each keyboard), ca. 1650. Case decorated with carving and gilt gesso work.
See Music Listening Selections at end of chapter.��
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Chronology
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two recorders) in the first movement of the fourth concer- to. Here, tightly drawn webs of counterpoint are spun between upper and lower instrumental parts, while musical lines, driven by an unflagging rhythm and energy, unfold majestically.
In the ten years before his death in 1750, Bach under- took one of the most monumental works of his career—a compelling example of Baroque musical composition that came to be called The Art of Fugue. A fugue (literally “flight”) is a polyphonic composition in which a single musical theme (or subject) is restated in sequential phras- es. As in the more familiar canon known as a “round”—for instance, “Three Blind Mice”—a melody in one voice part is imitated in a succession of other voices, so that melody and repetitions overlap. The musical subject can be arranged to appear backward or inverted (or both), aug- mented (the time value of the notes doubled, so that the melody moves twice as slowly), or diminished (note values halved, so that the melody moves twice as fast). In the hands of a great composer, this form of imitative counter- point weaves a majestic tapestry of sound.
Such is the case with The Art of Fugue, which explores the contrapuntal possibilities of a single musical subject in
eighteen separate compositions. Bach produced this summa of seventeenth-century musical science as a tool for instruc- tion in the writing of fugues, which explores the contrapun- tal possibilities of a single musical subject in eighteen separate compositions. In the last portion of the work he signed his name with a musical motif made up of the letters of his name—B flat, A, C, and B natural (pronounced as an H in German). Even the listener who cannot read music or understand the complexities of Bach’s inventions is struck by their concentrated brilliance. No less than Newton’s codification of the laws of nature, The Art of Fugue is a tri- umphant expression of the Age of Science.
The Scientific Revolution • Following Copernicus, European scientists confirmed the reality
of a heliocentric cosmos that operated according to fixed and understandable laws.
• Johannes Kepler’s inquiries on planetary movements confirmed Copernicus’ theories, and showed that the planets moved around the sun in elliptical paths.
• Galileo formulated the Law of Falling Bodies and used the telescope to confirm empirically the previously theoretical heliocentric universe.
• Between 1600 and 1700, new tools were invented for accurately measuring the physical world; the sciences of physics and astronomy, and the language of higher mathematics, were firmly established.
• The tenets of the new science contradicted scriptural teachings and met with opposition from both Catholics and Protestants.
The New Learning • While scientists demystified nature, the new learning provided a
methodology for more accurately describing and predicting its operations.
• English scientist Francis Bacon, author of the Novum Organum, championed induction and the empirical method, which gave priority to knowledge gained through the senses.
• English philosopher and physician John Locke defended the empirical tradition with the theory that all experience is imprinted on the human mind, a tabula rasa (“blank slate”) at birth.
• Questioning the authority of the inductive method, René Descartes, the father of modern Western philosophy, gave priority to deductive reasoning and mathematical analysis in his Discourse on Method.
• Descartes, along with many other intellectuals of new learning, embraced deism, which identified God as a master mechanic who did not interfere with the laws of nature.
1543 Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus orbium 1619 Kepler formulates three laws of planetary motion 1620 Bacon publishes Novum Organum 1633 Trial of Galileo 1637 Descartes publishes Discourse on Method 1662 Royal Society of London founded
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Cartesian of or relating to René Descartes or his philosophy
concerto (Italian, “opposing” or “competing”) an instrumental composition consisting of one or more solo instruments and a larger group of instruments playing in “dialogue”
concerto grosso a “large concerto,” the typical kind of Baroque concerto, consisting of several movements
deductive reasoning a method of inquiry that begins with clearly established general premises and moves toward the establishment of particular truths
deism a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion based on human reason rather than revelation; deists describe God as Creator, but deny that God interferes with the laws of the universe
dualism the view that holds the mind (a thinking entity) as distinct from the body
equal temperament a system of tuning that originated in the seventeenth century, whereby the octave is divided into twelve half-steps of equal size; since intervals have the same value in all keys, music may be played in any key, and a musician may change from one key to another with complete freedom.
fugue (“flight”) a polyphonic composition in which a theme (or subject) is imitated, restated, and developed by successively entering voice parts
geocentric earth-centered
heliocentric sun-centered
inductive reasoning a method of inquiry that begins with direct observation and experimentation and moves toward the establishment of general conclusions or axioms
movement a major section in a long instrumental composition
ritornello (Italian, “a little return“) in Baroque music, an instrumental section that recurs throughout the movement
sonata an instrumental composition consisting of three movements of contrasting tempo, usually fast/slow/fast; see also Glossary, chapter 26
suite an instrumental composition consisting of a sequence or series of movements derived from court or folk dances
vanitas (Latin, “vanity”) a type of still life consisting of objects that symbolize the brevity of life and the transience of earthly pleasures and achievements
Newton’s Scientific Synthesis • Bridging physics and mathematics, Isaac Newton moved the
new learning from its theoretical and empirical phases to the stage of codification.
• Newton’s Principia promoted the idea of a uniform and intelligible universe that operated as systematically as a well- oiled machine; his monumental work became the basis of modern physics.
The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Art • The Scientific Revolution and the new learning ushered in a
phase of the Baroque style marked by an empirical attention to physical detail and a fascination with light and space.
• An increased demand for such secular subjects as still life, landscape, portraiture, and genre painting reflects the secular preoccupations and growing wealth of middle-class patrons, particularly in Northern Europe.
• The definitive artworks of seventeenth-century Northern Baroque include Vermeer’s View of Delft, the portraits of Rembrandt, Hals, and Leyster, and the genre paintings of de Hooch and ter Borch, which explore the intimate pleasures of house and home.
• Rembrandt’s psychologically penetrating self-portraits are the intimate equivalents of his masterful group portraits.
Baroque Instrumental Music • During the seventeenth century, instrumental music came to
dominate musical composition. String instruments, especially the violin, reached a new level of refinement.
• Keyboard instruments, and musical performance in general, benefited from the development of a uniform system of tuning; treatises on the art of instrumental performance became increasingly popular.
• The seventeenth century saw the rise of wholly instrumental music and of such instrumental forms as the sonata, the suite, and the concerto.
• Vivaldi was the most influential figure in the development of the Baroque concerto, especially the concerto grosso. Bach brought to perfection the art of the fugue in compositions whose complexity and brilliance remain unrivaled. These instrumental forms captured the exuberance of the Baroque spirit and the dynamic intellectualism of the age.
CD Two Selection 5 Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, “Spring,” Concerto in E Major, Op. 8, No. 1, first movement, 1725.
CD Two Selection 6 Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major, first movement, excerpt, 1721.
CD Two Selection 7 Bach, The Art of Fugue, Canon in the 12th, harpsichord, 1749–1750.
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<< /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.5 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize false /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile (None) /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 300 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages false /ColorImageDownsampleType /Average /ColorImageResolution 350 /ColorImageDepth 8 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterColorImages false /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages false /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average /GrayImageResolution 350 /GrayImageDepth 8 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages false /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects true /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly true /PDFXNoTrimBoxError false /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier (CGATS TR 001) /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org) /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU ([Based on 'Regal PDF1.5'] [Based on '[PDF/X-1a:2001]'] Use these settings to create Adobe PDF documents that are to be checked or must conform to PDF/X-1a:2001, an ISO standard for graphic content exchange. For more information on creating PDF/X-1a compliant PDF documents, please refer to the Acrobat User Guide. Created PDF documents can be opened with Acrobat and Adobe Reader 4.0 and later.) >> /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ << /AsReaderSpreads false /CropImagesToFrames false /ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue /FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false /IncludeGuidesGrids false /IncludeNonPrinting false /IncludeSlug false /Namespace [ (Adobe) (InDesign) (4.0) ] /OmitPlacedBitmaps false /OmitPlacedEPS false /OmitPlacedPDF false /SimulateOverprint /Legacy >> << /AddBleedMarks false /AddColorBars false /AddCropMarks true /AddPageInfo true /AddRegMarks false /BleedOffset [ 9 9 9 9 ] /ConvertColors /NoConversion /DestinationProfileName () /DestinationProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /Downsample16BitImages true /FlattenerPreset << /PresetSelector /HighResolution >> /FormElements false /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles false /MarksOffset 9 /MarksWeight 0.250000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> << /AllowImageBreaks true /AllowTableBreaks true /ExpandPage false /HonorBaseURL true /HonorRolloverEffect false /IgnoreHTMLPageBreaks false /IncludeHeaderFooter false /MarginOffset [ 0 0 0 0 ] /MetadataAuthor () /MetadataKeywords () /MetadataSubject () /MetadataTitle () /MetricPageSize [ 0 0 ] /MetricUnit /inch /MobileCompatible 0 /Namespace [ (Adobe) (GoLive) (8.0) ] /OpenZoomToHTMLFontSize false /PageOrientation /Portrait /RemoveBackground false /ShrinkContent true /TreatColorsAs /MainMonitorColors /UseEmbeddedProfiles false /UseHTMLTitleAsMetadata true >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [2400 2400] /PageSize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice
<< /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.5 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize false /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile (None) /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 300 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages false /ColorImageDownsampleType /Average /ColorImageResolution 350 /ColorImageDepth 8 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterColorImages false /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages false /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average /GrayImageResolution 350 /GrayImageDepth 8 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages false /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects true /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly true /PDFXNoTrimBoxError false /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier (CGATS TR 001) /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org) /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU ([Based on 'Regal PDF1.5'] [Based on '[PDF/X-1a:2001]'] Use these settings to create Adobe PDF documents that are to be checked or must conform to PDF/X-1a:2001, an ISO standard for graphic content exchange. For more information on creating PDF/X-1a compliant PDF documents, please refer to the Acrobat User Guide. Created PDF documents can be opened with Acrobat and Adobe Reader 4.0 and later.) >> /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ << /AsReaderSpreads false /CropImagesToFrames false /ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue /FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false /IncludeGuidesGrids false /IncludeNonPrinting false /IncludeSlug false /Namespace [ (Adobe) (InDesign) (4.0) ] /OmitPlacedBitmaps false /OmitPlacedEPS false /OmitPlacedPDF false /SimulateOverprint /Legacy >> << /AddBleedMarks false /AddColorBars false /AddCropMarks true /AddPageInfo true /AddRegMarks false /BleedOffset [ 9 9 9 9 ] /ConvertColors /NoConversion /DestinationProfileName () /DestinationProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /Downsample16BitImages true /FlattenerPreset << /PresetSelector /HighResolution >> /FormElements false /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles false /MarksOffset 9 /MarksWeight 0.250000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> << /AllowImageBreaks true /AllowTableBreaks true /ExpandPage false /HonorBaseURL true /HonorRolloverEffect false /IgnoreHTMLPageBreaks false /IncludeHeaderFooter false /MarginOffset [ 0 0 0 0 ] /MetadataAuthor () /MetadataKeywords () /MetadataSubject () /MetadataTitle () /MetricPageSize [ 0 0 ] /MetricUnit /inch /MobileCompatible 0 /Namespace [ (Adobe) (GoLive) (8.0) ] /OpenZoomToHTMLFontSize false /PageOrientation /Portrait /RemoveBackground false /ShrinkContent true /TreatColorsAs /MainMonitorColors /UseEmbeddedProfiles false /UseHTMLTitleAsMetadata true >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [2400 2400] /PageSize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice