HCC Winter 2008
Week 2b: Renaissance Art, Lecture 1: Alberti and the Rhetoric of Painting
I. Wrapping Up Shakespeare: Pyramus and Thisbe
The play that the mechanicals are putting
on: Pyramus and Thisbe
> from the Latin poet Ovid
> source text for Romeo
and Juliet
> the Mechanicals’ staging worries:
::frightening
the ladies
:: how to represent Wall and
Moonshine
Wall: played by Tom Snout the Tinker
Chink: ditto (with his finger and thumb!)
Moonshine: played by Robin Starveling the Tailor
with a lantern
Where’s the humor?
> They could have made props!
> They misjudge the audience’s
imaginative and rational capacities.
The challenge for directors:
> Keep it funny.
> Don’t make all the jokes at the
expense of the Rude Mechanicals.
> Bring it back to the main plot.
What WALLS have
separated our lovers?
= the law of the
father that disallows the woman’s consent, young people’s self-determination
What CHINKS have they discovered?
elopement into
the forest;
holidays as social scripts for experimentation with
courtship
holidays as religious scripts for explorations of
“mystery”
And where’s the MOONSHINE?
Moonshine is the
magic of theatrical art – not just special effects, but our willingness to
enter into the fictional world presented to us. Moonshine is created through the
“constancy” of the performers collaboratively “bodying forth” the imagination
of the poet; and through the “constancy” of the audience willing to witness
“all together” the stories that they see and attribute coherence and meaning to
them.)
II.
Alberti and the Rhetoric of Renaissance Painting
Leon
Battista Alberti, 1404-1472
Alberti was an amateur painter, but not a
professional. Instead, he studied law and classical rhetoric and participated
in the movement of Renaissance humanism, which looked to the classical
tradition of ancient poetry and oratory in order to develop new forms of
secular (non-religious) literature, including political speeches, philosophical
dialogues, and love poetry. Alberti wrote humanist treatises and dialogues on
painting, architecture, the family, law, and cryptography.
My
Thesis: Alberti’s
Rhetoric of Painting
In his treatise Of Painting, Alberti uses classical rhetoric in order to link the
craft of painting to the intellectual work of orators and poets like himself.
Alberti also uses rhetorical theory in order to explain how paintings
communicate their messages to a broad audience of viewers.
(On the audience of paintings, see pp.
66-67.)In his treatise Of Painting,
Alberti transfers ideas from classical rhetoric into the art of painting. His
goal is to present the artist as an intellectual worker rather than a manual
one. Alberti also uses rhetorical theory in order to understand how paintings
communicate their messages to a broad
audience of uneducated as well as educated viewers.
The
Middle Ages: Painting is a handicraft, part of the
guild system.
The
Renaissance: move to transfer the arts from the craft
system to the liberal arts.
The
liberal arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music.
Alberti emphasized the connection between
painting and geometry in Book I, and between painting and rhetoric in Book II.
Notice that literature is not listed as one of the traditional liberal arts. In
the Renaissance, what we call literature -- poetry, novels, plays -- was still part
of rhetoric.
Compare
Alberti and Shakespeare: Recall Shakespeare’s bid to identify
theatrical making with higher forms of intellectual work in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, by distinguishing his play from the craft
tradition represented by the Rude Mechanicals. (Difference between Alberti and
Shakespeare? Shakespeare also acknowledged continuities between theatrical
making and the traditional crafts. Alberti definitely downplays these links. He
does, however, see painting as addressing both educated and less educated
audiences. See Of Painting, p.
66-67.)
Dates and organization of the book:
1435: De Pictura
circulated in Latin
1436: Della Pittura circulated in Italian
Prologue, pp. 39-40:
open letter to painters working in
Book I (not assigned): on perspective
(painting as geometry)
Book II: the three parts of painting (pp. 63-85)
Book III: education of the artist (pp. 89-98)
III.
Of
Painting, Book II: The rhetoric of painting
Alberti divides painting into three parts or
stages:
1) line: drawing (Italian disegno)
2) composition: overall
organization of the painting, expressed by an underpainting
or blocking in of the drawing with dark colors. Composition is closely linked
to what Alberti calls istoria, the
narrative content of the painting. Composition refers to the overall structure
of the painting, including its spatial organization understood abstractly (use
of perspective, symmetrical or assymetrical
arrangement, etc.) Istoria refers to
the story told by the painting: its subject matter or theme. Both for Alberti
concern the overall unity of the work of art, and are not sharply distinguished
in his writing. If you want to distinguish them, think of “composition” as more
abstract, and “istoria” as involving content or meaning.
3) color: added last in Florentine painting, after
the drawing and the underpainting.
Ethos,
logos and pathos – the building blocks of rhetoric, translated into Renaissance
painting
Logos = istoria,
the narrative argument of the painting
Ethos = the dignity and appropriateness of
the human figures in the painting
Pathos = facial expressions, hand gestures,
and bodily poses and movements
A. Istoria
“I say composition is that rule in painting
by which the parts fit together in the painted work. The greatest work of the
painter is the istoria. Bodies are part
of the istoria, members are parts of the bodies, planes
are parts of the members.”
(p. 70; also, p. 72)
istoria:
> story, history, narrative, plot
> what the painting is about; its
content; the story it’s telling
> compare to logos
in rhetoric: the istoria is the
“argument” of the painting.
> “the greatest work of the painter”: a
plea for the painter as humanist, an intellectual whose work resembles that of a
poet, rhetorician, or historian
In a good istoria, all the details support the story:
“Bodies ought to harmonize together in the
istoria in both size and function. It would be
absurd for one who paints the Centaurs fighting after the banquet to leave a
vase of wine still standing.”
(p. 75)
Alberti observes (and recommends!) that Renaissance
paintings often include a commentator figure, who instructs the viwers how to react to the events depicted. The commentator
often exists at the threshold of the world of the picture and the world of the
viewers. The commentator figure is like a classical orator, who instructs his
listeners in the proper reaction to the events or arguments he recounts. In
addition to classical rhetoric, Renaissance painters would also have drawn on
the figure of the priest or preacher from church, and on masters of ceremony
from sacred theatre (mystery plays) and pageantry.
“In an istoria,
I like to see someone who admonishes and points out to us what is happening
there ...” (p. 78)
Visual
check: Find the commentator in this painting by Domenico
Ghirlandaio:
B. Ethos
“Again we ought to say that in composition
the members ought to have certain things in common. It would be absurd if the
hands of Helen or of Iphigenia were old and gnarled, or if Nestor’s breast were
youthful and his neck smooth... All the members ought to conform to a certain appropriateness...
In the composition of members we ought to follow what I have said about size,
function, kind and colour. Then everything has its dignity.” (p. 74)
According to
Alberti, human figures should be depicted in a manner appropriate to their age,
gender, social class, and function in the story. This emphasis on the
appropriateness of characters to their narrative situation parallels the
rhetorical idea of ethos or character. The orator should use his character to
lend further authority to his argument, and his argument should not exceed or
contradict his attributes as a speaker. “Dignity”
is another word for appropriateness in Alberti’s vocabulary. To be dignified,
according to Alberti, is to act in a manner appropriate to one’s age, sex, and
social role. With this definition in mind, in what sense are the following
drawings by Leonardo da Vinci “dignified” or
“appropriate” in Alberti’s sense?
C. Pathos
“The istoria
will move the soul of the beholder when each man painted there clearly shows
the movement of his own soul. It happens in nature that nothing more than
herself is found capable of things like herself; we weep with the weeping,
laugh with the laughing, and grieve with the grieving.” (p. 77)
Alberti suggests that the painter depict
inner feeling or pathos through external expression, including facial
expressions, gesture, and bodily pose and movement. What emotions do you think
the following painting by Michelangelo is meant to express?
What are some of the ways in which the painter
Giotto represents grief in this painting?
In addition to classical rhetoric and oratory,
Renaissance painters also looked to
preaching (in church) and to theatre and dance for gestures that they could use
to represent emotion or pathos.