450. Depicting What Cannot Be Depicted: Philosophy and Two Renaissance Artworks
To celebrate reaching 450 episodes, Peter looks at the philosophical resonance of two famous artworks from the turn of the 16th century: Dürer’s Self-Portrait and Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel.
Themes:
• J.A. Connor, The Last Judgment: Michelangelo and the Death of the Renaissance (New York: 2009).
• C. De Tolnay, Michelangelo II: the Sistine Ceiling (Princeton: 1949).
• P. Doorly, “Dürer’s Melencolia I: Plato’s Abandoned Search for the Beautiful,” Art Bulletin 86 (2004), 255-76.
• C. Gilbert, Michelangelo: On and Off the Sistine Ceiling (Princeton: 1994).
• M.B. Hall, “Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: Resurrection of the Body and Predestination,” Art Bulletin 58 (1976), 85-92.
• A. Hayum, “Dürer’s Portrait of Erasmus and the Ars Typographorum,” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985), 650-87.
• R. King, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (London: 2002).
• J.L. Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: 1996).
• E. Panofsky, “The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo,” in E. Panovsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (London: 1967).
• C. Seymour (ed.), Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (London: 1972).
• V. Shrimplin-Evangelidis, “Sun-Symbolism and Cosmology in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment,” Sixteenth Century Journal 21 (1990), 607-44.
• L. Silver and J. Chipps-Smith (eds), The Essential Dürer (Philadelphia: 2010).
• M.A. Sullivan, “Alter Apelles: Dürer’s 1500 Self-Portrait,” Renaissance Quarterly 68 (2015), 1161-91.
Comments
Two things
1. Isn't it a little ironic to have platonic artists? People who tried to embody Platonic philosophy in imagery? An image of an image, in Plato's view?
2. One idea that is similar to what you said in the episode but you didn't say explicitly at least is that, couldn't the Jesus self-portrait also be an expression of Imago Dei? He made himself an image of god? That would make the painting less heretical, no?
In reply to Two things by Andrew
Imago dei
Nice points! Yes that irony about Platonism and imagery goes way back - in fact to Republic book 10. We also talked about it when we did Iconoclasm if you remember that.
And I agree about imago Dei, I guess this is really what lies behind the interpretation of the painting as Dürer just trying to show the divinity in each human... though one might argue that if you are going to do that it would be less immodest to choose a different human to embody the idea than yourself!
Sun symbolism, cosmology and Michaelangelo
I am sure you know about this, since you seem to hint at it. Namely that there is a recent paper suggesting that the placing of Christ in the center of the universe was the result of the documented interest both the pope and Michelangelo had at that time in the recently published theories of Copernicus, which if true shows that the pre-Counter Reformation Church church was much more open to new ideas than it later would be. Copernicus presented his ideas as speculative, which Galileo declined to do. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011IAUS..260..333S/abstract
In reply to Sun symbolism, cosmology and Michaelangelo by Ellen Harold
Copernicus and Michelangelo
Yes, I actually have a paper by the same authors, arguing for that thesis, in the "further reading" above - though it seems to be not the same article? I guess I found it only somewhat convincing but still interesting.
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