Alberti's 'On Painting'

The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy of a man«, was for the Ancients simple enough: that can only be the activity of politics, with its concommitant skill of rhetoric. Consequently, the arts of politics and rhetoric were thoroughly theorised, they were profoundly thought over and written about in a systematical and analytical manner by the most important philosophers of the day. With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts – hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry – and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.

The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy of a man«, was for the Ancients simple enough: that can only be the activity of politics, with its concommitant skill of rhetoric. Consequently, the arts of politics and rhetoric were thoroughly theorised, they were profoundly thought over and written about in a systematical and analytical manner by the most important philosophers of the period. With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts-hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry-and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, nonetheless the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.

T REATISES on art and literature written between the middle of the sixteenth and middle of the eighteenth century nearly always remark on the close relationship between painting and poetry.' The sister arts as they were generally called-and Lomazzo observes that they arrived at a single birth2-differed, it was acknowledged, in means and manner of expression, but were considered almost identical in fundamental nature, in content, and in purpose.3 The saying attributed by Plutarch to Simonides that painting is mute poetry, poetry a speaking picture, was quoted frequently and with enthusiasm; and Horace's famous simile ut pictura poesis-as is painting so is poetry4which the writers on art expected one to read "as is poetry so is painting,"5 was invoked more and more as final sanction for a much closer relationship between the sister arts than Horace himself would probably have approved. So deeply rooted, in fact, was the association of painting with poetry that it is not unusual to find the critics referring in a way that startles the modern reader to poets as painters; and if they do not with equal bluntness call painters poets, at least they are almost unanimous in asserting that painting merits serious consideration as a liberal art only by virtue of its likeness to poetry. In the middle of the sixteenth century Ludovico Dolce is rather more inclusive than the average when he declares that not only poets, but all writers, are painters; that poetry, history, and in short, every composition of learned men (qualunque componimento de'dotti) is painting.' I. In preparing this study I have been particularly indebted to Professor Erwin Panofsky for valuable advice and criticism. Professor Frank J. Mather, Jr., Professor Walter Friedlaender, and Professor Samuel H. Monk of the Department of English, Southwestern College, have also given useful suggestions. Mr Helmut von Erffa, Miss Margot Cutter, Mrs. Katharine Pediconi, and my wife have given generous assistance in various ways.

Painting can only be thought in relation to the image. And yet, with (and within) painting what continues to endure is the image of painting. While this is staged explicitly in, for example, paintings of St. Luke by artists of the Northern Renaissance-e.g., Rogier van der Weyden, Jan Gossaert, and Simon Marmion-the same concerns are also at work within both the practices as well as the contemporaneous writings that define central aspects of the Italian Renaissance. The aim of this paper is to begin an investigation into the process by which painting stages the activity of painting. This forms part of a project whose aim is an investigation of the way philosophy should respond to the essential historicity of art (where the latter is understood philosophically).

One source of interest in doing research on Leon Battista Alberti is to see how a man of multiple talents from the 15th-century elites viewed the world of work, including craftsmanship and manual work in the broadest sense. Numerous references to this broad canvas occur throughout Alberti’s output. Analysis of such passages reveals too multi-faceted a mind to be reduced to one line of interpretation. The author touches on subjects like discipline in learning, the importance of practice and natural aptitude for work, but also on higher concepts like nature’s unattainable perfection eluding the artist, or the basic distinction between art and crafts. Craftsmanship and the mechanical arts emerge in an unusually noble light for the times. Pursuing that line of thought, Alberti sees work as a means of social betterment and personal improvement, thanks especially to the economic independence that only professional know-how can ensure anyone lacking a source of unearned income. The complex perspectives dealt with are the mirror of the author, torn as he was between theory and application, between technical science and philosophy or letters.

The Art Bulletin, 1997

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1999