Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

7. In line with all this there grew up what could be called an allegorical literature. As academies like Ficino’s spread to other cities beyond Florence, it became a desirable accomplishment for a courtier to be able to decipher allegories. Books of emblems began to appear in which a mythological device was shown alongside a few lines of verse explaining the meaning and moral of the picture. Venus, for instance, standing with one foot on a tortoise, teaches ‘that woman’s place is in the home and that she should know when to hold her tongue’. See: Peter Watson, Wisdom and Strength: The Biography of a Renaissance Masterpiece, New York: Doubleday, 1989, page 47. The impresa was a parallel innovation: it consisted of an image and text but was devised specifically for an individual, and commemorated either an event in that person’s life, or some trait or character. It did not appear in book form but as a medallion or sculpture or bas relief, the latter as often as not on the ceiling of the distinguished person’s bedroom so that he could reflect on its message as he went to sleep. There was also an array of popular manuals which appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century, such as The History of the Gods (1548) by Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, and The Images of the Gods (1556) by Natale Conti. Conti explains best the purpose of these works: that from the earliest times – first in Egypt, then in Greece – thinkers deliberately concealed the great truths of science and philosophy under the veil of myth in order to withdraw them from vulgar profanation. He therefore organised his own book according to what he thought were the hidden messages to be revealed: the secrets of nature, the lessons of morality, and so on. Jean Seznec sums up the spirit of the times when he says that allegories came to be regarded as a means of ‘rendering thought visible’. Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press/Bollingen Series, 1972/1995.

8. Umberto Eco (translated by Hugh Bredin), Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986/2002, pages 116–117.

9. Ibid., page 114.

10. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., pages 180–181.

11. Dorothy Koenigsberger, Renaissance Man and Creative Thinking, Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979, page 236.

12. Burckhardt, Op. cit., page 102.

13. Koenigsberger, Op. cit., page 13.

14. Ibid., pages 19–21.

15. Ibid., page 22. See also Brucker, Op. cit., page 240.

16. Burke, Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy, Op. cit., pages 51–52.

17. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., pages 113–114.

18. Burke, Op. cit., pages 51–52.

19. Ibid., pages 55–56. Brucker, Op. cit., page 243, says Brunelleschi also ‘learned some mathematics’.

20. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., pages 32–35.

21. Ibid., page 33.

22. Koenigsberger, Op. cit., page 31.

23. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., page 81.

24. Ibid., page 72.

25. One particular aspect of the effect of humanism on art was the notion of ekphrasis, the recreation of classical painting based on ancient written accounts of works which the classical authors had seen but were now lost. In the same way, Renaissance artists emulated ancient artists. For example, Pliny recounts a famous story about the trompe l’oeil qualities of the grapes in a painting by Zeuxis that were so lifelike the birds mistook them for real grapes and flew down to peck at them. Likewise, Filarete paraphrased an anecdote about Giotto and Cimabue: ‘And we read of Giotto that as a beginner he painted flies, and his master Cimabue was so taken in that he believed they were alive and started to chase after them with a rag.’ Ibid., page 148.

26. Burke, Op. cit., illustration facing page 148.

27. Ibid.

28. In fact, nothing came of this approach.

29. Watson, Op. cit., page 31.

30. Barnes, Op. cit., page 929.

31. Ibid., page 931.

32. Yehudi Menuhin and Curtis W. Davis, The Music of Man, London: Methuen, 1979, page 83.

33. Ibid., page 83.

34. Ibid., page 84.

35. Al-Farabi thought the rabab most closely matched the voice. Anthony Baines (editor), Musical Instruments Through the Ages, London: Penguin, 1961, page 216.