Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art Author(s): Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl Reviewed work(s): Source: Metropolitan Museum Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Mar., 1933), pp. 228-280 Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522803 . Accessed: 31/01/2012 05:44

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http://www.jstor.org CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART1 By ERWIN PANOFSKY AND FRITZ SAXL

The earliestItalian writers about the history of ropeancountries it was inconceivablethat a art, such for instance as Ghiberti, Alberti, and classicalmythological subject should be repre- especially Giorgio Vasari, thought that classi- sentedwithin the limits of the classicalstyle, cal art was overthrown at the beginning of the as it was in Raphael'spicture of Jupiterand Christian era and that it did not revive until, Venus in the ceiling of the Villa Farnesina during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (fig. i). Although there are monumentsof in Italy, it served as the foundation of what is Byzantine art, such as the so-calledrosette usually called the Renaissance.The reasons for casketswith reliefsof the Laborsof Hercules this overthrow, as those writers saw it, were and other similar themes (fig. 2),2 which, in the invasions of barbarousraces and the hos- so far as they representclassical subject matter tility of the early Christianpriests and scholars. in classical(or at leastpseudo-classical) forms, In thinking as they did the early writers are comparableto Raphael'sfresco, we find were both right and wrong. They were wrong nothing that is comparableto them in the in so far as the Renaissancewas connected with Westerncountries during the "high"Middle the Middle Ages by innumerable links, many Ages.Even in the Veniceof the dugento,close- of them being implicit in the very name Mid- ly connectedas it was with Byzantium,an an- dle Ages, which is a Renaissanceterm based on tique relief of Herculescould not be imitat- the old Italianconception of culturalevolution. ed withoutchanging its mythologicalsubject Classical conceptions survived throughout the (figs. 4, 5). The lion's skin was replacedby a Middle Ages-literary, philosophical,scientific, flutteringdrapery, the boarbecame a stag,the and artistic-and they were especially strong terrifiedEuristheus was left out, and the hero after the time of Charlemagne, under whose was madeto standupon a vanquisheddragon. reign there had been a deliberate classical re- As the humansoul was often symbolizedby a vival in almost every cultural field. The early stag, the resultof these changeswas that the writers were right in so far as the artisticforms classicalhero had been transformedinto the under which the classicalconceptions persisted Saviourconquering evil and saving the souls during the Middle Ages were utterly different of the Faithful.From this examplewe learn from our present ideas of antiquity, which did that mediaevalWestern art was unable, or, not come into existenceuntil the "Renaissance" what comesto the samething, was unwilling, in its true sense of the "rebirth"of antiquity to retaina classicalprototype without destroy- as a well-defined historical phenomenon. ing eitherits originalform, or, as here,its orig- During the Middle Ages in the western Eu- inal meaning.

1 This article is a revised version of a lecture de- 2 Still, Goldschmidt and Weitzmann in their recent livered for the first time to the teaching staff and stu- publication of these caskets pointed out that the By- dents of the Department of Fine Arts of Princeton zantine ivory carvers were far from really understand- University. It resulted, however, from the common ing the subject matter of the classical groups and fig- endeavor of the two authors, who in their research ures, which they generally used as mere ornaments, were assisted by the Hamburg students of art history. finally transforming all the figures into putti, as is the Furthermore I feel indebted to Mrs. Margaret Barr case in our figure 2 (Goldschmidt and Weitzmann, for her participation in the English wording. E. P. fig. 35). As for figure 3, compare note 26.

228 CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 229

One of the essentialcharacteristics of the classicalthought continuedthrough the post- westernEuropean mind seemsto be the way classicalera. To this end he built up a library in which it destroysthings and then reinte- devoted exclusivelyto that subject.In doing grates them on a new basis-breaking with this, so far from confininghimself to what is traditiononly to returnto it from an entirely usuallycalled art history- for thatwould have new point of view- and thus produces"reviv- madehis researchimpossible - he foundit nec- als" in the true sense of the word. Byzantine essaryto branchout into manyfields until then art,on the contrary,never having lost its con- untouchedby art historians.His library,there-

FIG. I. VENUS IMPLORING JUPITER, BY RAPHAEL VILLA FARNESINA, ROME nectionwith antiquity,was incapableof find- fore, embraces the history of religions as well ing its way to what we may call a modern as that of literature, science, philosophy, law, style. Since the fourteenthand fifteenthcen- and what we may generally call superstition, turiesit has contenteditself with mere assimi- together with their various streams of tradi- lation of the Westernattainment to its own tion. In the present essay it will be our en- traditionof evolution. deavor, while examining a single problem, to Thus we can see that what may be called demonstrate the methods of research devel- the problem of "renaissancephenomena" is oped by Aby Warburg and his followers. one of the centralproblems in the historyof Our problem, then, is the role of classical Europeanculture. With this as his pointof de- mythology in mediaeval art. In examining it parturethe late ProfessorAby Warburgof we shall pay no attention to the innumerable Hamburgconceived the fruitfulidea of direct- examples, like the Venetian relief we have ing his scientificresearch at the way in which mentioned, in which a classical mythological '

230 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

figurehas been deprivedof its originalmean- of a complicatedevolution, and in earlytimes ing and investedwith another.3We shall, on was unknown. Primitiveman naturallysin- the contrary,consider the way in which medi- gled out someof the more easilyrecognizable aevalartists represented classical mythological groupsof starsin orderto get his bearingson figuresas such. In doing this it will be neces- land and sea,and, to rememberthem, he gave saryfor us to distinguishsharply between two them the namesof certainterrestrial objects - differenttraditions of work. In one, which we animalsor tools or human beings without myth- shall refer to as the "representationaltradi- ologicalconnotation- such as the Bear,the Hy- tion," the mediaevalartist had before him a ades,the Wain,etc. The primitiveOriental peo- seriesof versionsof his particularsubject which plesdid thisand so did thepre-Homeric Greeks. had come down to him as integralunities of The importantthing, however,was that the subjectmatter and form.In the other,to be re- Greeksdid not confinethemselves to this. Just as terrestrial such 4 :1;...;::. .,_; .'e *:..; . : . .. they "mythologized" objects ' ' . ' . _.. T :. ,:. :"..' -- ' iI;' s as trees,springs, and mountains,so they gradu- ally investedthe constellationswith mytholog-

o'h.

' E .;Srr`llr=i.,. ', .... FIG. 3. ORPHEUS, FROM BIBL. NAT. MS. COISLIN 239 BYZANTINE, XII CENTURY FIG. 2. HERCULES FIGHTING THE LION FROM A ROSETTE CASKET ical meanings. As early a poet as Homer speaks BYZANTINE, XI CENTURY MUSEO NAZIONALE, FLORENCE of mighty Orion and Bootes. This practice increased until, by the sixth ferred to as the "literary"or "textualtradi- and fifth centuries B.c., a considerablenumber tion,"the mediaevalartist had beforehim only of the constellations had been mythologized. a literarytext describinga mythologicalsub- An example of this is the group of constella- ject, for the illustrationof which he had to tions associatedwith the myth of Andromeda, work out new typesor formshaving no visual namely Andromeda herself, Cepheus her fa- connectionwith thoseof classicaltimes. 3 Even if we do not count the fundamental phenom- enon that Early Christian art borrowed its leading types from antique models (assimilating Christ to Ro- Our first problemis to find specimensof the man emperors, Alexandrian shepherds, Greek philos- representationaltradition. We find them, ob- ophers, or Hellenistic Orpheuses and developing the of the from the of classical viously enough, in representationsof astro- types Evangelists portraits authors), individual transformations analogous to that nomicaland astrologicalsubjects. For the mod- observed in the Venetian Hercules are much too fre- ern man it is a matterof courseto speakof the quent to be enumerated. A few interesting cases were constellationsas Andromeda,Perseus, Orion, discussed by Schlosser in "Heidnische Elemente in der christlichen Kunst des Altertums," etc., since we have come to identify the various originally ap- pearing as a supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung, groupsof starswith certainmythological fig- October 26, 27, 31, I894, nos. 248, 249, 25I, and re- ures.This practicehas comeabout as the result printed in Praludien, 1927, pp. 9 ff. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 23I ther,Cassiopeia her mother,Perseus her rescu- manifestedthemselves. The rationalpower of er, and Cetusher dragon.Other constellations, scientificsystematization is shown by the very however,were still called simply the Balance aim of Eudoxos'swork. The irrationalpower or the Swan,and that which we know as Her- of mythicalimagination is shown by his no- culeswas still calledEngonasin, the Kneeling menclature.These same tendenciesare shown Man. In passing,it is worth noting that the again by the fact that when about a century signs of the zodiac were not connectedwith laterAratos, a Hellenisticpoet, used the cata- mythologicalideas until ratherlate. logueof Eudoxosfor a purelypoetical descrip-

FIG. 4. HERCULES CARRYING THE CALEDONIAN BOAR FIG. 5. ALLEGORY OF SALVATION ANTIQUE RELIEF SET IN THE WALL OF XIII CENTURY RELIEF SET IN THE WALL OF ST. MARK S CHURCH, VENICE ST. MARK S CHURCH, VENICE

This was the state of affairs when Eudoxos tion of the firmament,Hipparchos, whose ideas of Knidos, a Greek astronomer of the fourth about the procession of the equinoxes brought century B.C., drew up a catalogue of the con- about a new epoch in the study of astronomy, stellations which was meant to be as complete not content with furiously criticizing Aratos, as possible. He did this for purely scientific went on scientifically to perfect the catalogue purposes,but he could not help calling the con- so that it became a solid basis for astronomical stellations by their mythological names in so observationin the modern sense of the word. far as they had them. He says, for example, Aratos, in his elegant poem, often alluded to "beneath the tail of the Little Bear there are the stories of the constellations,and, whenever the feet of Cepheus, forming an equilateral they had them, to their mythological mean- triangle with the point of the aforesaid tail." ings. He confined himself, however, to the Thus in the treatiseof Eudoxosthe two princi- names and stories as given by Eudoxos, and pal tendencies and capacitiesof Greek thought never went on to mythologize on his own ac- 232 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES count. Sometimeshe franklysaid he was not he interpretedmost acutely] is very big and able to give more than a mere description,as thereforeis dividedinto two separatesigns, one when he wrotethat "not far from it [the Drag- of which is calledthe Balance." on] there revolvesa figure that resemblesa Thus the poem of Eratosthenesturned out hard-workingman, bent on his knees and to be a didacticpoem on mythologyrather spreadingout his arms, but nobody knows than one on astronomy,and it is a significant what he is tryingto do and thus they call him fact that one of his numerousfollowers, an simplythe 'KneelingMan.'" Augustanpoet named Hyginus, whose chief This intermediaryphase is illustratedby the work is the Fabulae,was originallya mythog- FarneseGlobe (fig. 6),4 the most famousclas- rapherin the narrowersense of the word. sicalastronomical representation that has come The transformationof the firmamentinto a down to us. With the exceptionof the figure rendezvousof mythologicalfigures was very of Atlas,which was addedin the Renaissance, importantfor the representationalevolution. it is a Romancopy of a Greekoriginal. The Therewere at leasttwo reasonsfor this. First- Greekoriginal must have been ratherclosely ly, the adulatoryscholars and poets, bustling connectedwith the poem of Aratos,for in the aboutthe variousHellenistic courts, were given FarneseGlobe the constellations,both those courageto inventnew constellationsto please that have been mythologizedand those that theirpatrons. Thus it happenedthat imagina- havenot, correspondto the descriptionsin the ryconstellations actually invaded the astronom- poem. Orion and Perseus,for example, are ical pictures,e.g., the Hair of Berenice.Kalli- characterizedby their mythologicalattributes machosin his delightfulpoem told how Bere- (Perseusis representedwith his sword and nice, the Queen of Egypt, had sacrificedher Medusa'shead), but the KneelingMan is still hair to Venus so that the goddessmight pro- nothingbut a kneelingman, withoutthe club tect the queen'shusband during a war. The or the lion'sskin of Hercules,and the constel- astronomerroyal promptly discovered that the lation Eridanusis only a simple river repre- hair had been transformedinto a constella- sentedas a curvedribbon. tion,which although previously unknown was In the Hellenisticliterature, however, the thereafterrepresented in many an astronomi- processof mythologizationwent much fur- cal picture.6Secondly, and much moreimpor- ther. Eratosthenes(284-204 B.C.) completed the tant, once all the constellationshad been iden- work which the previousgeneration had left tified with well-known mythological figures unfinished.He wrote a poem called Cataster- such as Hercules or Eridanus,which were rep- isms in which eachof the constellationsis giv- resented in innumerable reliefs and en a mythologicalmeaning that is explainedin that had nothing to do with astronomy, the a long-windedcommentary. He interpretedthe artists who illustrated the astronomical writ- Kneeling Man as Herculesfighting with the ings could not help rememberingand arbitrari- dragonof the Hesperides.He even mytholo- ly making use of these non-astronomicaltypes. gized the signs of the zodiac,connecting the Thus after the constellation the Dragon had Bull with the Rapeof Europa,and identifying the Lion with the NemeanLion. He said that 4 Cf. Boll, Sitzungsber. d. bayr. Akad. d. Wiss., Phil- the Crabwas sent out by Junoto bite the heel os.-philol. Classe, 1899, pp. iio fi.; Thiele, Antike of Herculeswhen he the The Himmelsbilder. fought Hydra. 5 Scaleswas the one for which Eratosthenes Cf. Ovid Met. II. I96: "Scorpius . . . Porrigit in only spatium signorum membra duorum." and so he 6 found no mythologicalexplanation, Cf. Pfeiffer, Philologus, vol. LXXVII, part 2, pp. terselysaid, "The sign of the Scorpion[which I79 ff. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 233 beeninterpreted as the dragonof the Hesperi- a Byzantine manuscript of the fifteenth cen- des, these artistsadded a tree to the constella- tury (Cod. Vat. graec. o187) obviously copied tion Hercules,because this tree was held to be from a ninth-century prototype (such as Cod. an integralpart of the story.Also the constel- Vat. graec. I29I), which in its turn derived lation Eridanuswas visualizedin the usual from a late antique prototype. It is a curious form of a reclining river god with urn and kind of projection.The northern and southern reed,instead of as a plainuninteresting ribbon. hemispheres are not represented in two sepa- Thus what had originallybeen a scientific rate drawings, divided by a horizontal section astronomicaltreatise by degrees developed through the equator or the ecliptic, but the into a kind of semi-mythologicalpicture book, whole globe is flattened out, so to speak, into which usually began with representationsof one panorama, consisting of five concentric

FIG. 6. THE FARNESE GLOBE, FROM AN XVIII CENTURY ENGRAVING the celestialglobe as a whole and continued circles.The inner circle representsthe north- with full-sizedpictures of the single constella- ern arctic circle, then follows the northern tions.Often mere pictorial enthusiasm so much tropic, then the equator,then the southern prevailedover scientificinterest that the stars tropic,and finallythe southernarctic, the con- which originallyconstituted the basesof the stellationsof which appear,of course,in a gro- figureswere replaced by an arbitraryamassing tesquedistortion. of dots,and sometimes they were entirely omit- The painterwho was commissionedto de- ted. pict the constellationsin a hemisphericaldome The prototype(or ratherthe prototypes)of in KuseirCAmra, a castlebuilt by an Arabian these illustratedmanuscripts, usually called princein the eighth century(fig. 7), executed "Aratea,"must have been establishedas early his commissionby simply enlarginga minia- as in the latercenturies of the RomanEmpire, turelike this. To us this Arabianmonument is becausethey were imitatedin earlyByzantine interestingfor two reasons:firstly, because it and early Islamicart as well as by the Caro- shows the transmissionof the antique astro- lingian illuminators.Figure 8, for example, nomicalpictures to the Islamicworld; second- showsa representationof the celestialglobe in ly, becauseit revealsa most essentialdifference 234 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES betweenmediaeval and modernprinciples of not contentwith a mereplanimetrical scheme decoration.A modernpainter representing the of the celestialspheres, represented the firma- constellationsin a dome would try to suggest ment as it can be seen. Insteadof designing to the spectatorthe actualaspect of the firma- completecelestial maps, these paintersrepre- ment, that is to say, he would show in the sented only those constellationswhich were dome those constellationswhich a spectator visibleat Florenceat a certainday and hour, could reallysee in the sky.7The authorof the and thereby,from an aestheticpoint of view, Kuseir CAmrafresco, however, did not even identifiedthe stone hemisphereof the.dome

!ri ,;? r Zt -??? ;??:?'

^ . -. . ..

FIG. 7. THE FIRMAMENT AS REPRESENTED IN THE DOME OF THE VIII CENTURY KUSEIR CAMRA. RECONSTRUCTION BY F. SAXL

thinkof thatand simplytransposed to the ceil- with the immaterialhemisphere of the firma- ing the conventionaland extremelyunrealistic ment. Thus theseearly Florentine frescoes are celestialmaps shown in the illuminatedmanu- the firstspecimens of what we usuallycall the scripts.8 ' The requirermentsof the modernmind are This contentioncan be provedby LodovicoSeitz's met for the first time in the secondquarter of frescoesin the dome of the so-calledTorre di Leone the fifteenth that is to at a time XIII in the Vatican,mentioned by Zola in his famous century, say, novel Rome: the intendedto when had been as a although painter glorify perspective acknowledged the Pope by putting the constellationof the Lion (the requirementof artisticrepresentation, in two celestialcoat of arms of "PapaLione") in a place as monumentsat Florence.The paintersof the conspicuousas possibleand even distinguishedit by frescoesin the smaller dome of the Pazzi fifteenelectric bulbs, he could not but adaptthe whole of his compositionto the actual aspect of the firma- Chapeland of the somewhatearlier fresco in ment as visible at Rome. 8 the SagrestiaVecchia of San Lorenzo(fig. 9), Cf. Saxl, in Creswell, part I, pp. 289 ff. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 235

"illusionistic"principle in the decorationof a The Carolingian Renaissance differed from ceiling, in that they suggestto the beholdera the "Rinascimento"of the fifteenth century in prospectinto the open air. We only need to many respects.Where the latter was based on replacethe astronomicalsky, filled with stars, the irresistible feeling of the whole people

-,''. .- ::: ~:::' .X- -

_f, i"/ ..' "":',_-. _ X

.*. 4.:. ,', X' y4

R''' . ..-.,, , . ,- _ . :) ,-1.-.., ,,. ~ . ' .2'~< . . *I -'" . ~ ,. ? ) ? - .. ...

Ageswestern ii'n Europe.

~J,,,' '~- ~ - . ,.' , - ~'"

FIG. 8. CELESTIAL MAP, FROMVA:' COD.

withclouds and heavenly beings, and we have IO), and the bywithMantegna, clouds andCorreggio heavenly beings,(fig. and wehave. < byMantegna, Correggio (fig. ), and the!' F~~~~~~~~~~~IG.8EETA AP RMC A

FIG.. CELESTIAL MAP, FROM COD. VA T. GRAEC. IO87. BYZANTINE, XV CENTURY

and was broughtforth in popularpolitical and spiritualexcitement, the earlierwas the result of the deliberateefforts of a few distinguished men, and thus was not so much a "revival"as a seriesof improvementsin art,literature, cal- ligraphy,administration, etc. Becauseof this we shoulddo betterif we calledit, as its con- Arabian East, let us come back to the Middle temporariesdid, a "renovation"rather than a Agesin westernEurope. renaissance.It is ouropinion, however, that the 236 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES more moderntheory, according to which the minatorsendeavored to copy the illustrations effortsof Charlemagneand his collaborators in the ancientastronomical picture books, of resultedin little more than a continuationof which we have explained the development. Merovingiantendencies, is even less correct They conscientiously,and sometimesmost suc- than the traditionalconception of the Caro- cessfully,imitated their prototypes in styleand lingian movementas being a renaissance.We techniqueas well as in mythologicalsubject must not forgetthat it is chieflydue to the de- matter.Thus, for example,the miniaturesin liberateendeavors of the Carolingianleaders the CodexLeydensis Vossianus lat. 79 (cf. fig.

FIG. 9. THE FIRMAMENT AS REPRESENTED IN THE DOME OF THE SAGRESTIA VECCHIA OF SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE. ABOUT I440

and to the diligenceof their scribes,who sys- 22) and, still more eloquently,those in the tematicallycopied the profanewriters of an- magnificentHarley MS. 647 (cf. fig. Ii), which tiquity,that we todayhave the opportunityof have hithertobeen totally disregardedby the readingsuch classical poets as Horaceand Ovid art historians,impress us as being closer in and suchclassical scientists as Pliny and Vitru- spiritto the Pompeianfrescoes than anything vius. In the same spirit the Carolingianillu- else made in the West in mediaevaltimes.9

9 The Leydensis Vossianus (a more complete copy of preuss. Kunstsamml., vol. XXIII, part 2, pp. 88 if.), this manuscript is to be found in Boulogne-sur-Mer, while Professor Morey of Princeton rather believes it Bibl. Municipale, Cod. i88; tenth century) was edited to be connected with the school of St.-Denis. The in extenso by Thiele. As for its origin, Byvanck (pp. Harley MS. 647, the miniatures of which strike us as 65 f.) seems to agree with Swarzenski, who attribut- the most classical elaboration of mediaeval Western ed it to the school of Reims (Jahrbuch d. k6nigl. , in our opinion was executed in a continen- CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 237

During the following centuries,in the peri- union, classical subject matter and classical od generallyreferred to as the high Middle form were separated. Ages,the illuminatorsceased their faithful imi- Let us illustrate this evolution by taking the tationof classicalmodels and developeda new constellation Hercules as an example. In the and independentmanner of seeing things. Farnese Globe it had not yet become Hercules Transformingthe ancientprototypes in such a and was still the simple Kneeling Man (En-

FIG. 10. THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST, BY CORREGGIO CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA, PARMA way that they becamealmost unrecognizable, gonasin) without any mythologicalattributes theydecomposed the representationaltradition (fig. 3). In the Carolingian manuscripts, which of mythologicalfigures. Figures which were were derived from later antique prototypes, meant to representOrion or Andromedano Hercules is usually shown in mythological full longer looked like the Orion or Andromeda dress with club and lion's skin. The pictorial of classicaltimes. Thus, like the unfortunate style often conforms closely to the classical loversin a movingpicture who awaittheir re- models (Cod. Vat. Reg. lat. 309, ninth century, in St.-Denis; cf. In the Lt-,1 . d,ion C-Al-h,, -,.lI:.IIL . 4' ..t +L-, .:A! ^ Lr previously fig. 12).10 Lai, n11UL anll 11ll1s1n, scrplLUloUlr aUUUL L11neIIIUUlCc Ui the ninth century. ing and not very well-known specimen of this kind is 10 Cf. Saxl, Verzeichnis, part I, pp. 59 if. An interest- to be found in the eleventh-century Krdnungsmantel 238 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES high Middle Ages, however, and especially Library (M.384) shows this decomposition after the beginning of the twelfth century, carriedstill further. In it we see a "late Gothic" Hercules becomes either Romanesque or Goth- Hercules, not dressed as a knight in armor, as ic - that is to say, the classicalorigin of the fig- in other late mediaeval manuscripts, but clad ure becomes less and less recognizable as the in bathing trunks. He approachesa tree, which, figure is assimilatedto the types most common as we have seen, does not exist in the classical in high mediaeval Christianart. Thus a Hercu- representation of the constellation, and his les of the twelfth century, such for example as lion's skin has developed into a complete lion that in Bodl. MS. 614 (fig. 15) hardly differs that accompanies him like a peaceable dog. from a Romanesque Saint Michael fighting the Only one detail shows what has happened: dragon or a decorative figure on a contempo- Hercules is armed with a scimitar instead of a rary capital.ll This decomposition of the classi- club. As the scimitar is an Oriental weapon it cal type was not the result of any increasing suggests that the painter of this fifteenth-cen- tury miniature, which in all other respects is only a peculiarly degenerate descendant of the widespread Westetn tradition, had been influ- .. ;, . enced by representations deriving from the Arabian East. Upon examining some manuscripts execut- at L*,.....:,,,:.;;.7'."tit ed about the middle of the thirteenth century, that is to say, at the time when the Western decomposition of the classical representations had reached its culminating point, we find a Hercules (Paris, Bibl. de l'Arsenal, MS. 1036; FIG. II. THE CONSTELLATION ERIDANUS fig. I7)12 which looks very much like a figure FROM BRIT. MUS., HARLEY MS. 647 out of the Arabian He wears a skull MIDDLE OF THE IX CENTURY Nights. cap and his costume has been almost literally respectfor the scientificand true positionof copied from an Arabian gown. His lion's skin the stars(which were still placedas arbitrarily has been omitted and his club has been re- as ever) but was due to a purelystylistic and placed by a scimitar- obviously because neith- intellectualevolution. er the skin nor the club meant anything to A miniature(fig. i6) in a fifteenth-century an Arabian artist unacquainted with classical Germanmanuscript in The PierpontMorgan mythology. On the other hand, the pose of of the German emperors (preserved in the Bamberg manuscriptin the fourteenthcentury, which, in our Cathedral), which realizes the ancient idea of the opinion,is muchtoo late,in view of the styleof the "Cosmic Mantle" (cf. Eisler, Weltenmantel und Him- miniaturesas well as of the paleographicalcharacter melszelt) by embroidering a celestial map on a semi- of the script.As for its origin,the curiousmixture of circular cloth (cf. fig. 14). Arabicfigures and decidedlyWestern ornament a 11 Further references will be given in Saxl, Verzeich- priori suggests southern Italy. Moreover, we learn nis, part III (in preparation). Of course, there are a froman entryreferring to the catalogueof the stars number of manuscripts which follow the antique pro- thatthis cataloguewas revisedat Palermoby means totypes in a more conservative way, such as Cod. Vat. of the instrumentsof KingRoger of Sicily.A manu- Reg. lat. 123 (Saxl, Verzeichnis, part I, pp. 45 ff.; scriptclosely connected with Bibl.de l'Arsenal,MS. eleventh, not twelfth, century) or Cod. Matritensis A. 1036, although much more distant from the i6 (early twelfth century). This group, however, is prototype,is preservedin the Berlin Kupferstich- less important for the history of stylistic evolution. kabinett(Cod. Hamilton 556; cf. Wescher,pp. 80 if., 12 Cf. Martin, vol. II, pp. 247 ff. Martin dates this withseveral funny mistakes). CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 239

Herculesis much more faithfulto the correct did not go throughthe complicatedevolutions form than in even the best of the Carolingian of mediaevalWestern art. Thus, when the time manuscripts,the starsare characterized accord- came, in the thirteenthcentury, for the West ing to theirsizes, and theyare marked by num- to take over the Arabicillustrations, it again bersreferring to a scientifictext. assimilatedclassical conceptions, but this time For an explanationof this it is necessaryto froma totallydifferent angle. The Carolingian rememberthat during the twelfth and thir- assimilationhad been an absorptionof figures teenth centuriesthe West had become more whichwhile classicalboth in styleand in myth- and morefamiliar with the scientificliterature ologicalmeaning were already fairly devoid of of the ,which in its turn was basedon scientific exactness.The assimilationof the Greek sources.It is common knowledgethat Arabictypes, on the contrary,was an absorp- at this time acquaintancewith the greaterpart tion of knowledgewhich was classicalin sub- of the worksof Aristotleas well as with Greek

FIG. 2 . THE CONTELLATION HERCULES., CONSTELLATION FROM OD. VAT. HERCULESNTURY FROM COD. VAT. REG. LAT. IX CENTURY 309. FIG. 13. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES (ENGONASIN) FROM THE FARNESE GLOBE

natural science came through Arabic sources. As we have learned from the dome of Kuseir jectand methodbut washidden behind entire- CAmra,the Arabs were acquainted with Greek ly non-classicalimages most of which boreun- astronomical ideas as early as the eighth cen- intelligibleArabic names. tury. Moreover, they preserved and developed This assimilationfrom Arabicsources took the Greek astronomicalfigures. This, however, place through two focal points: Spain and they did in a way quite different from that southernItaly, especially Sicily. Our figure 17 which was followed in the West. The Arabs is taken from a Sicilianmanuscript in which did not care so much for the pictures as such, the style of an Arabicprototype was imitated and, in the proverbial sense of the phrase, the with an almostarchaeological faithfulness that mythological meanings were Greek to them, was extremelyrare and perhapsunique in the but they endeavored to preserve and even to MiddleAges. The Spanishgroup may be ex- perfect the scientific precision of their models. emplifiedby the Hercules (fig. i8) from the They kept the stars in their correct astronom- Cod.Vat. lat. 8174,which is a copyof a manu- ical positions, and where they changed the fig- scriptexecuted for the famousKing Alphonso ures and the accessoriesthey did it by oriental- the Wise and is distinguishedby the fact that izing them, but in such a way that the repre- the imagesof the constellationsare placedin sentations remained essentially unaltered and roundels,about each of which are radiating 240 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES sectorsfilled with a thoroughscientific expla- scientificand mythologicalantiquity, classical nationof the severalstars in the constellation.13meaning and classicalform. This processmay The degenerateWestern types persisted and be regardedas a generalcharacteristic of what sometimes,as in the Morganmanuscript, inter- we know as the Renaissancemovement. bredwith Orientaltypes. Nevertheless, in spite This evolutioncould be illustratedby many of their lack of mythologicalappurtenances, more examplesbut we shall confineourselves the astronomicallycorrect Oriental types, such to thatof Perseus.In the ninth-centuryLeyden as thatof the Herculeswe havejust examined, manuscript(Cod. Leydensis Vossianus lat. 79) served as models for many Western manu- Perseusappears as a beautifulclassical figure scripts.They were followed in an interesting (fig. 22). He runs gracefully and except for a fifteenth-centurymanuscript (Cod.Vind. 5415; billowingdrapery is almostentirely naked. At fig. I9) thatin its turnbecame the modelupon his heelshe has the wings lent to him by Mer- In his hand he brandishesa sword fR.cvr cury. right I$e--I~ and in his left he bearsthe head of Medusa with its snakelocks and with blood dripping fromits throat. We shallpass over the gradualdegeneration of this image in the mediaevalWestern tradi- tion, and comeimmediately to its treatmentin the Italo-Arabicmanuscript in theArsenal (fig. 23). Here,not only has the pose of the Greek herobeen changed to agreewith the trueposi- tionsof the starsbut he is clad in Orientalcos- FIG. 14. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES tume FROM THE XI CENTURY "KRONUNGSMANTEL (cf. fig. 24A). The most striking change, BAMBERG CATHEDRAL however,is that the head of a beardedmale demonhas takenthe place of Medusa'shead. which Diirer basedhis two woodcutsof the The Arabianillustrators, who were ignorant celestial globe (B.i5I [fig. 20] and B.152). In of the classicalmyth, completelymisunder- figure 2IA-c we have juxtaposed Diirer's Her- stood Medusa'shead and interpretedits terri- cules with a detail from Cod.Vind. 5415 and an 13 Arabic miniature. In this Arabic min- Cf. Saxl, Verzeichnis, part I, p. 95. original 14 iature Hercules is even more fantastic than in Cf. Saxl, Verzeichnis, part II, pp. 35 if., I50 ff. The two woodcuts resulted from the united endeavor of Cod. Vat. lat. or Bibl. de MS. 8174 l'Arsenal, no less than three persons: Diirer, who did the defini- Io36, for he wears a and carries a kind tive drawing, Georg Heinfogel, who stellas posuit, and of sickle. And now we can see how Diirer Johannes Stabius, who was responsible for the general of the celestial Stabius achieved "the end of the Al- arrangement maps (ordinavit). happy story."14 was a professor in history and astronomy at the Uni- though he kept fairly close to the orientalized versity of Vienna, and, since the Cod. Vind. 5415 was image in the fifteenth-centuryWestern manu- owned by a Viennese patrician as early as the fif- teenth it is doubt that this codex was script, he none the less reverted to the classical century, beyond the actual prototype of the two Diirer woodcuts. The conception of Hercules by giving him a mus- humanistic modifications mentioned in our text are cular body and the correctfacial type with curls all the more remarkable since a celestial globe of I480 in Cracow d. d. and a beard,and especiallyby returning preserved (cf. Anzeiger Akad. Wiss. manly similar to the to the hero his lion's skin and club. Thus in his in Krakau, 1892, pp. Io8 if.), very Vienna miniatures in every respect, also shows the a of the woodcut Diirer achieved reintegration Hercules provided with a scimitar and the Perseus classical type by bringing together again both carrying the bearded demon's head. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 241

fying expressionas a demoniacalquality and cination of astrologicalbeliefs, once they be- the dropsor streamsof blood as a beard.Thus came known throughthe intermediaryof the they transformedMedusa into a demon and Arabs,was so irresistiblethat even greatChris- even called that part of the constellationPer- tian theologians like William of Auvergne seusby the name of Ra'sal Ghul, i.e., "Head (GulielmusParisiensis) and ThomasAquinas of the Demon."And this is why we all speak were obliged to compromisewith it. Good of the starAlgol in that constellation. Catholicsno longer shrank from arranging The Vienna miniaturethat was used as a their entirelives in accordancewith the stars, model by Direr also follows the Arabictradi- even down to their clothesand their most mi- tion,even in so faras Perseusis labeledwith its nute daily occupations.The very calendars Arabic name and the beardedhead is called which precedeChristian prayer books still usu- "Caput Algol" (fig. 24B). Here again Diirer, while keepingto his prototypein everyother respect,endeavored to restorethe classicalidea by addingwings to the heelsof Perseus,replac- ing the demon'shead by thatof a Gorgonwith snakesfor hair, and changing the inscription "CaputAlgol" to "CaputMeduse" (fig. 24c).15

The assimilationof Arabicknowledge brought to the Westerncountries not only a new con- ceptionof astronomy,medicine, and othernat- ural sciences,but also a knowledge of astrol- ogy, which until the twelfth and thirteenth centurieswas almost or at leastwas unknown, FIG. 15. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES not practisedin the West. The belief that the FROM BODL. MS. 6I4. XII CENTURY starshad powerto determinedestiny and char- acter,although consistent with the polytheistic allyinclude a representationof a humanfigure systemof late antiquepaganism and with the indicatingthe influenceof the signs of the fatalismof Islam,was originallyconsidered to zodiacon the variousparts of the body.16 be incompatiblewith the essentialprinciples This revivalof astrologicalbeliefs gave add- of the Christianreligion. Nevertheless, the fas- ed importanceto a kind of star, or perhaps astraldivinity, which previously had not played 15 Cf. Saxl, Verzeichnis, part II, loc. cit. Curiously a great role in the strictlyastronomical man- enough, Diirer's Medusa head strikingly resembles the uscripts.Nevertheless, the planets,for it is of well-known Gorgoneion type of Greek archaic art, thesethat we are are of even as for example in the famous Gorgoneion from the speaking, greater Acropolis (Athens, Museum) and the Perseus metope importancefor our purposes than the constella- from temple C of Selinus (Museo nazionale, Pa- tions.17The deitiesof the constellations,such lermo) and on the archaic coins of Neopolis in Mace- as Herculesor Perseus, to whatTasso donia and several other cities. In fact it is belonged quite pos- called "la dei" lower classof sible that Diirer had an opportunity of seeing a speci- plebe degli (the men of this kind, for we know that Wilibald Pirck- the gods) whereasthe deities of the planets heimer, his best friend and adviser in humanioribus, were identified with the really "big shots," owned a considerable collection of Greek and Roman such as and These coins. Jupiter,Venus, Mercury. 16 of the movable endowedwith Cf. Boll and Bezold, p. 54, and passim, pls. X, XI. deities planets, 17 Cf. Saxl, Islam, vol. III, pp. 151 ff. all the might of powerfulgods, were capable 242 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES of fighting,opposing, or assistingone another, non-classicalcharacteristics and attributes.19 Ac- and were regardedas the true rulersof man- cordingto the Arabictexts and picturesVenus kind. They determinedthe physicalconstitu- is a lovelyyoung womancarrying flowers, Ju- tion, the character,the destiny,and even the piteris a distinguishedand learnedgentleman, calling of the newborn child. "Man,"as an and Mercury,who carriesa book, often has a astrologicaltext puts it, "is a child of his halo, which distinguisheshim as a kind of planet." holy priestor dervish. In astronomicalmanuscripts of the kind we It is interestingto find that these planetary have so far been dealingwith, the representa- figureswere transmittedto the West in a way tions of the planetswere limited to seriesof quite differentfrom that which was followed bustssuch as thosewe see on Romancoins, to by the figures of the constellations.As we which were sometimesadded maps of their have pointedout, the Arabicpictures of such orbits.In these maps the deitiesof the single constellationsas Herculesand Perseuswere planets,who were also the deitiesof the days connectedby a representationaltradition with of the week, were representedaccording to boththe classicalprototypes and theirWestern their classicaltypes. Thus, for instance,in the derivations.The Arabianplanets, on the other Leydenmanuscript, the small-sizedfigures of hand, were not directlyderived from classical the planets (cf. fig. 26) exactly repeat the fig- types and were so incomprehensibleto the uresappearing in the famous"chronograph of Westernmediaeval illuminators that they did the year354," which in their turn conformto not attemptto copy or imitatethem. Anyone the types developedin the usual Greek and can see that the Arabianplanets, as represent- Romanrepresentations of the Olympicdeities ed, for example,in the BodleianMS. Or. 133 (fig. 25).18 (fig. 28), have no possible connection with the In the astrologicalmanuscripts, however, we classical figures. They seem Arabian, or even find imagesso entirelydifferent that they can- somewhat Indian, while the figures in the not be explained as mere degenerationsor Scotus manuscripts appear to be fourteenth- Orientaltransformations of classicalpictures, century Giottesque personagesin contempora- but must be recognizedas completeinnova- ry costumes and poses. Scotus,who was trained tions. MichaelScotus (died 1234), the court in Spain and lived in Sicily, had enjoyed par- astrologerof the EmperorFrederic II, first ticularly good opportunities of becoming fa- gave a thoroughdescription of thesenew im- miliar with the elaborations of the Arabian ages.The earliestillustrations of them thatare astrologers,and his book was inspired by Ara- known to exist in manuscriptform are those bic sources,both literaryand representational.20 in Cod. Monac.lat. 10268 (fig. 27), of about In spite of this, however, it is evident that the the middleof the fourteenthcentury. Jupiter, for instance,is a who 18 distinguishedgentleman Cf Strzygowski, Jahrbuch d. kaiserl. archdol. Inst., is seatedbefore a tableand carriesgloves, upon i888, supplement I. Similar types of planets (slightly which the text lays greatemphasis; Venus is a degenerated,however, and providedwith clothes) oc- cur in Cod. Vat. lat. Verzeichnis, lovely young lady in a contemporarycostume Reg. 123 (Saxl, to crownit part I, pl. V). who holds a rose to her face; and, 19 Cf. Saxl, Islam, loc. cit. As for the flower of Venus, all, Mercuryis a bishopholding a crosierand see Cod. Cracov. 793 DD36, fol. 382. a book.The derivationof these fromthe 20 Still, Scotus'sdescriptions of the planetariandivini- types with a of East is the fact that the Arabian ties reveal his acquaintance peculiartype proved by Westernliterature of which we shall speak below (p. writersand illustratorsgave to the planetary 253), namely,the writings of the mediaevalmythog- divinitiesthese same unwontedand distinctly raphers.This is proved, for instance,by his descrip- 11:1. ? .1.^..~. ,';|-;U r l.,i in .

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FIG. i6. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES FIG. 17.7. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES FROM MORGAN LIBRARY, MS. M.384 FROM BIBL. DE L ARSENAL, MS. 1036 XV CENTURY XIII CENTURY

. i,*:,, *:._...'- . . . 3 (IAten ot nI Ef fVt AIt A , . ?, ,, ' A A?? ! .A' ?no, " r (i:.-,,? ? m .,r, r t', ,iii pf^W dJtipifiirn 4urAfnefetste 4?io- 4IA upfl4 11t1wT fTeO nstfltf q 'g

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FIG. I8. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES, FROM COD. VAT. LAT. 8174 COPY OF A MANUSCRIPT EXECUTED FOR KING ALPHONSO THE WISE OF SPAIN 244 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES artistswho illustratedhis astrologicaltext in- as late as in the fourth century B. c. Thus steadof imitatingArabic images used contem- does not yet connectthe planetswith any dei- poraryEuropean figures. Thus we can under- ties, calling the planet Saturn,for example, standhow their trecentofigures came to have simplyPhainon, "the glaring star." Moreover, suchpeculiar attitudes. it shouldbe rememberedthat the old Babylo- As the Arabicfigures obviously are not de- nian conceptionsof Ishtar,Marduk, and Nir- rived from Greekor Romantypes, it is neces- gal were much moredeeply rooted in the Ori- saryto find out wherethe Arabsgot them.The ental mind than the classicalconceptions of

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FIGCEESIA:. .$I9 COD,i,'MAP, ?FROM...... FIG~,...C.M..'FO.... : T E.... 4':VIND. B FIG.19- CELESTIALMAP,FROM COD. VIND. 5415' BEFORE 1464 answer is a rather surprising one. They were Venus, Jupiter, and , which had subse- derived in part from ancient Babylon.We must quently taken their place. We can even trace not forget that originally the worship of the the channels by which these Oriental concep- planets was neither Greek nor Roman, but tions were transmitted to the mediaeval Ara- Babylonian, and was transmitted to the West bian astrologers and artists.21Both the repre- tion of Saturn, whom he asserts to be an old man, ham's glauco had been occasionallymisread as galea- having capillos canos and galeam in capite. Now the tum ("caput galeatum amictu coorpertumhabebat," "Mythographus III" (most probably identical with the fourteenth-centuryauthor says), it is most probable Alexander Neckham, died I217) describes Saturn as that Scotus'sgalea (which henceforthbecame a typical "senem canum, caput glauco amictu coorpertum ha- feature of the image of Saturn in astrologicalillus- bentem" (Bode, pp. I53 if.; cf. Liebeschiitz, p. 58). tration, although it cannot be accountedfor by any Since we learn from a fourteenth-century treatise de- astrologicalsource prior to Scotus) also derives from riving from Mythographus III (the passage in ques- a misreadingof Neckham'sdescription. 21 tion is quoted by Liebeschiitz, loc. cit.) that Neck- Cf. Saxl, Islam, loc. cit. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 245 sentationof Mercuryas a priestlyman with a deitiesas the chairman,so to speak,of an as- book and a halo and the representationof semblyof otherpersons arranged in horizontal Jupiteras a distinguishedscholar can be traced series.There are seven of these other persons backmore easily to the conceptionsof the Bab- in each series,but our illustrationactually in- yloniandeities Nebo and Mardukthan to those cludesonly threeof them (the fourothers be- of the classicaldeities Hermes-Mercuryand ing representedon the oppositepage). These

FIG. 20. CELESTIAL MAP, BY DURER. WOODCUT B.I5I, DATED 5I5

Zeus-Jupiter.Thus these odd images of the personsare the "Childrenof the Planets"and planets,which sprangup in the thirteenthand they typifythe variouscallings suitable for men fourteenthcenturies and completelysupplant- who were born under the influenceof their ed the classicaltypes of the CarolingianAratea severalplanets. The childrenof Mercury,for manuscripts,may be regardedas being not instance,are particularlygifted in painting, merelydeviations from the classicaltradition, writing, and every kind of subtle craftsman- butnew mediaevalelaborations of ancientOri- ship. ental conceptions.Their furtherdevelopment "Synopticaltables" such as these gave rise is curious. to a particulargroup of representations22which The miniaturefrom the BodleianMS. Or. 22 Cf. Lippmann, Die sieben Planeten; Hauber, Pla- I33 (fig. 28) representseach of the planetary netenkinderbilder und Sternbilder; Saxl, Verzeichnis, 246. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES play ratheran importantrole in the secular and heterogeneousco6rdination of the Arabs iconographyof the later MiddleAges. In the into an intuitiveand homogeneous unity: some so-calledSalone at Padua,for example,there of the professionswere done away with, and are muralpaintings of this kind, which have the planet and its remaining children were beendated by localwriters in the beginningof placedin a unified pictorialspace in orderto the fourteenthcentury and have even been at- suggest a kind of congenial mental atmos- tributedto Giotto.In theirpresent state, how- phere. This developmentseems to proceed ever, they are in the style of about I420, the fromthe lpitre d'Otheaof Christinede Pisan, year in which the building was damagedby a learnedlady attachedto the royal court at fire.They illustratethe influenceof the planets Paris,who had inheritedfrom her father,an upon callings, characters,and physiological Italianphysician and astrologer,a knowledge of astrologicaltheories as well as an inclina- tion to visualizethem in pictures.Thus in the illustrationsto her book the childrenof Mars :i:' .'.i."v;'". ': . -4 are pulled togetherinto a battlepiece,and the childrenof Mercuryare all scholarsor philoso- phers in discussion,while the planetarydeity is seated on a rainbow in Heaven (fig. 31). It is obvious that the scheme of the composition * , '- has been assimilated to those of religious rep- resentations,such as the Last Judgment, some scenes from the Apocalypse, and the Descent of the Holy Ghost. The last of these especially is comparable to the pictures of the planets' children, as in each a celestial emanation gov- . . :.: . . .: *...... : .: . ... . :....' .' erns the minds and behavior of human beings to an influence, in the literal sense of FIG. 2IA. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES subject that word FROM PARIS, COD. ARAB. 5036 (fig. 32).23 Having been assimilated to a type that was conditions.Our figure 29 shows some of the familiar to the popular mind, this composi- childrenof Saturn,who are subjectto rheu- tional scheme was universally accepted. It was matism and melancholy,and are fitted to be developed by Northern art into a more com- farmers,shear grinders, leather dressers, stone plex and amusing type which, with some im- carvers,carpenters, gardeners, and anchorites. provements, was copied by the Florentine en- While the figuresas such do not differ from gravers. The later fifteenth-century composi- the usual types of Westernfifteenth-century tions differed from the illustrationsto the poem art,their arrangementshows the Orientalori- by Christine de Pisan in an intensification of gin of the generalconception, for it is still in the feeling for perspectiveand an unprejudiced the scientifictabular form of the Arabicman- observation of everyday life, so that they be- uscripts. came genre pictures in which were depicted The realismof Northern fifteenth-century slices of human life and habits as ruled by one art, however,tried to bring the rationalistic or another of the planetary deities. Thus the part II, pp. 67 if., and Kunstchronik, n. s. vol. XXX, turen, part 2, pl. 5. As for the Apocalypse, instructive pp. 1013 if.; Panofsky and Saxl, pp. 121 ff. specimens were recently published by Neuss, especial- 23 Cf. Bamberg, Staatl. Bibl., Mittelalterliche Minia- ly figs. 98, IoI, I90. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 247 pictureof the childrenof Jupiterdeveloped "late Gothic" in type, but at the same time the into a portrayalof fashionablelife, while that position of his arm, his fluttering drapery,and of the childrenof Saturnbecame a portrayal his backward turning movement are obviously of the poorand miserable,such as unfortunate imitated from the classicalprototype (fig. 33B). peasants,beggars, cripples, and criminals.The It is as if, thanks to the humanistic movement planetarydeity is representedin variousways. of the fifteenth century, some Northern artists Sometimeshe is enthroned.Sometimes he is a had suddenly become aware that it was incon- naked standingfigure. In Italianpictures, in accordwith Petrarch'sTrionfi, the planetgen- erallydrives a .In the Germanpictures he often appearson horseback,as though at a tournament.A good exampleof this is to be foundin the delightfuldrawing of about1490 by the Masterof the House Book (fig. 30), in whichthe agedMercury is seenriding a richly caparisonedhorse, while he governsand pro- tects a series of incidentswhich are all con-

nectedwith the idea of the moreor less "fine" FIG. 2IB. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES arts.These incidentsall displaya most won- FROM COD. VIND. 5415 derful sense of humor. The celestialVirgin (one of the signs of the zodiac belongingto Mercury)looks in hermirror and arranges her hair,a teacherflogs his unfortunatepupil, the sculptor'swife to her husband'schagrin offers a goblet to his journeyman,and the painteris interruptedand presumably pleased by the visit of a charmingyoung lady.24It is a little diffi- cult to realizethat this colorfulpicture is men- tally connectedwith a classicalmythological figure. Aboutthe sametime that the Masterof the HouseBook made his drawinga curiousthing FIG. 2IC. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES FROM DURER'S WOODCUT happened.In some German manuscriptsof B.I5I MichaelScotus's astrological treatises the ab- surdlynon-classical figures were replacedby gruous to representa classicaldeity, such as otherswhich impressus as being much more Mercuryor Mars,in so non-classicala man- akin to the Greekand Romanrepresentations ner as was usualin late mediaevalillustrations of the correspondingdeities. In fact,they were and had startedwhat we may call a pseudo- imitatedfrom a Carolingiancopy of the chron- Renaissanceon the basis of the Carolingian ographof 354,as is shown,for instance,by the manuscripts,which at that time were practi- DarmstadtMS. 266.Thus, if we look at Mars cally the only sourcesupon which they could (fig. 33A) in that manuscript we see that his draw for their classicalprototypes. Although shield,his facialtype, and his proportionsare this movementdid not completelydo away 24 Cf. Bossertand Storck,Das mittelalterlicheHaus- with non-classicalrepresentations, it is never- buch,and the referencesgiven in note 22 above. thelessa ratherimportant symptom of the gen- 248 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES eral mental evolution. Representationsof the ever,we are greatlydisappointed: of Ovid, it planets such as those in the Darmstadt and seems, no illustratedmanuscripts have been other manuscripts25are by no means excep- preserved,and the two illustratedVatican Vir- tional, as we shall see at once. They certainly gils, as faras we know, werenever copied dur- prepared the way for the definitive reintegra- ing the MiddleAges. Thereare, however, two tion of the genuine classical types in the six- speciesof monumentsin which we find what teenth century on the basis of actual antique we are searchingfor: firstly,a limitednumber reliefs and statues,as exemplified by a German of Biblicalrepresentations in which classical woodcut of about 1520 (fig. 34), which repre- mythologicalfigures were insertedfor special sents a Roman Mercurythat had been excavat- reasons;and, secondly,the illustrationsin the ed at Augsburg twenty years earlier. mediaevalforerunners of our modernencyclo- pedias,which endeavoredto gather together the fragmentsof classicalscientific literature and usuallydealt with the pagandivinities in a particularchapter, "De diis gentium"or the like.26 As for the Biblicalrepresentations, we limit ourselvesto remindingour readersof the Car- olingian crucifixionsrepresenting Sun and Moon as well as Oceanusand Tellus in ac- cordancewith classicaliconography. Oceanus is renderedas a recliningfigure very similar to the Eridanuseswhich we mentioned before.

26 There is, of course, a lot of theological literature mentioning the pagan deities, mostly for polemic rea- sons, so that we encounter, for instance, a Coronation of in the aurea Huard, in FIG. 22. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS Proserpine Legenda (cf. Les Tresors des de France, vol. III, fasc. FROM COD. LEYDENSIS VOSSIANUS LAT. 79 bibliotheques IX CENTURY 9, pp. 25 f.)- not counting the manuscripts of Saint Augustine's Civitas Dei (Laborde, Les Manuscrits II de la Cite de Dieu) or the innumerable representa- tions of martyrdoms in which a pagan idol is made to Now, when lookingabout for furthermedi- stand upon a column. However, in Western art these aeval of classicaldivinities con- mythological images are not connected--or at most representations in a - with classical nectedwith what we have called very general way genuine types, antiquityby while in Byzantine theological manuscripts we find the representationaltradition, we turn, in the some surprising specimens of true representational first to the of the clas- tradition. Thus in a twelfth-century Greek manuscript place, manuscripts great of the Sermons of Saint of Nazianzus sical suchas andOvid. Here, how- Gregory (Paris, poets, Virgil Bibl. Nat., MS. Coislin 239; cf. Omont, pl. CXVIII) 25 Planets similar to those in the Darmstadt MS. 266 there can be seen small representations of Orpheus, are also to be found in several other Scotus manu- Isis, Venus, and so forth. In part these are but loosely scripts (Cod. Vat. Pal. lat. 1370, dated I472; cf. Saxl, connected with classical models, so that nearly the for Verzeichnis, part I, pp. 20 if., fig. 29; Salzburg, same type of "pagan idol" was used for Cybele as Studienbibliothek, Cod. V 2 G 81/83, not mentioned . On the other hand, the picture of Orpheus in Tietze's Die illuminierten Handschriften in Salz- unmistakably derives from genuine classical represen- burg). The connection between these figures and the tations of this particular subject (fig. 3) except that in types of the chronograph of 354 was observed by our he is provided with a halo, owing to the fact that, friend Dr. E. Breitenbach of the Municipal Library at Early Christian art, Christ had already been assimilat- Frankfort. ed to the Orpheus type. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 249

Tellus is a half-nakedwoman carryinga cor- way that the figures of Hercules, Eridanus, nucopiaand nursingtwo snakes.The maker and Perseus did, so that in the high Roman- of the famous Munich ivory27illustrated in esque crucifixions, such as the well-known re- figure 35 even goes so far as to show in two lief called Externsteine, executed in III5, the

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FIG. 23. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS FIG. 24A. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS FROM BIBL. DE L'ARSENAL, MS. 1036 FROM PARIS, COD. ARAB. 5036

FIG. 24B. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS FIG. 24C. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS FROM COD. VIND. 5415 FROM DURER'S WOODCUT B.I5I medallionsthe quadrigaof Sol and the biga Sun and the Moon are impersonatedby very of drawn by two oxen, both of them different figures, unmistakablyRomanesque mostfaithfully following genuine classical pro- in every'respect,and the personificationsof totypes.These motives,however, during the Oceanus and Tellus are entirely eliminated following centuriesdegenerate in the same (fig. 36). In the encyclopediasthe classicaltypes are 27 Goldschmidt and Weitzmann, vol. I, p. 41. given up even more abruptly.As we are not 250 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES acquainted with illustrated manuscriptsof (Hrabanusreads "Virga,qua serpentesdivi- the first mediaevalencyclopedia, the Etymol- dit," that is, "a staff by means of which he cuts ogiae by Isidoreof Seville,we must have re- snakesto pieces"instead of "Virga,quae ser- course to the elaborationof his Carolingian pentes dividit," that is, "a staff which separates followerHrabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fuldain two snakes"). The general types, however, in- Hesse.The originalninth-century manuscript dubitablyderive from genuine classicalmodels. of his De rerum natura (subsequently called Proof of this is provided by the goblet of Bac- De universd) has not yet been discovered,but chus, which is not mentioned in the text, and we possessa ratherclumsy copy executed about consequently must have been taken over from 1023 in Monte Cassino and preserved there to a visual model. The very misunderstandings our own time. In it (book XV, chapter 6) confirm the fact that the illustrations of the original manuscript were connected with an- tiquity by a representational tradition. Thus

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...... FIG. 26. MERCURY FIG. 25. MERCURY, FROM THE CHRONOGRAPH FROM COD. LEYDENSIS VOSSIANUS LAT. OF THE YEAR 354." RENAISSANCE COPY 79 IN THE BIBLIOTECA BARBERINA, ROME the lion's skin of Hercules, which is not men- we find the whole pantheonof pagan deities tioned in the text, has developed into a living (fig. 37), and when we juxtaposethese im- animal peeping over the hero's shoulder. The ages with classicalreliefs and statues,we real- snake winding itself round his right leg seems ize at once that they areconnected with antiq- to be taken over from a representation of his uity by true representationaltradition (per- fight with the Hydra.29 haps through the intermediaryof illustrated Isidore in of the fact that manuscripts), spite 28 Amelli, Miniature sacre e profane dell' anno 1023 theyimpress us at firstglance as ratherstrange- illustranti l'Enciclopedia medioevale di Rabano Mau- looking.28Some of their details can be ac- ro; Goldschmidt, Vortrdge der Bibl. Warburg, vol. countedfor only by the indicationsof the text. III, pp. 215 ff.; Lehmann, Sitzungsber. d. bayr. Akad. d. Wiss., Klasse, 2, Thus, for the that Pluto carriesis Philosoph.-philol. 1927, part espe- example, jar cially p. 14, note 3. to be explainedby the factthat the text derives 29 Other "visual" misinterpretations, however, are not his Latinname Orcus from orca, which means due to the Carolingian illuminator, but to the elev- who executed the Montecassinen- "urn";and that Mercurykills a snakewith a enth-century copyist sis. Between the legs of Mercury, for instance, there long staff obviouslyresults from a misreading flutters a bird which can be accounted for only by a' of the textual descriptionof the caduceus misinterpretation of the traditional foot wings, which S S

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 25I

Now, characteristicallyenough, these Hra- only are these images clumsy and partly in- banus pictures sink into oblivion for many correct,as the Hrabanusillustrations were, but centuries and are replaced (just as happened theyare actual travesties, because in themmere with the pictures of the planets) by mytholog- textual descriptionswere translatedinto the

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FIG. 27. SATURN, JUPITER, VENUS, MARS, AND MERCURY FROM COD. MONAC. LAT. 10268. XIV CENTURY ical images which, standing in no represen- immediate language of contemporarymedi- tational traditionwhatever, must have been aevalart. drawn exclusivelyfrom literarysources. Not The later Greek philosophers,particularly the Stoics,inclining towardsa dissolutionof the artistbelieved to belong to a completebird. As this the religiousreality of the pagangods, had in- mistake does not occur in a fifteenth-centurymanu- them as mere either scriptcopied from anotherprototype (see fig. 42), we terpreted personifications learn from it that the Carolingianoriginal was per- of naturalforces or of moral qualities.In the fectly correctin this respect. last centuriesof the RomanEmpire this tend- 252 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES ency increasedso greatly that the classical wereeither illusions or malignantdemons, the Homericor Olympiandeities had becomenot pagan world itself had become so estranged so muchthe objectsof piousworship as the sub- fromthose deities that the learnedRoman writ- jectsof didacticallegorical and scholar- ers felt entitledto "moralize"them in a purely

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FIG. 28. THE SEVEN PLANETS AND THEIR CHILDREN

FROM BODL. MS. OR. 133. ARABIC, XIV CENTURY ly investigations. While this was happening allegorical manner. Martianus Capella wrote the true religious feelings of the pagan peoples his long-winded novel, The Marriage of Mer- concentrated more and more on exotic mys- cury and Philology, the very title of which elo- teries,such as those of the cults of Mithras,Isis, quently proves what we may call the "allegor- and Orpheus. While the early Christian Fa- ical secularization"of the Olympian divinities. thers endeavored to prove that the pagan gods Another important work of this kind is the CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 253

Saturnalia of Macrobius. Fulgentius in his rapherswere illustrated. These illustrationsac- Mitologiae interpreted Hercules as a personi- tually determinedthe generalmediaeval con- fication of virtue, and the three feet of the ception of the classicalmythological figures. Delphic tripod as symbols of present, past, and Becausethey were drawn immediatelyfrom future. In the famous commentary of Servius the descriptionsin the text, they impressus on Virgil's , which was three times as almost as deliberatecaricatures, although of long as the poem itself and perhaps more in- coursethey are meantquite seriously.When a tensely studied, the myth of Hercules and At- modernman thinks of the Laocoonand the las is explained by the assumption that Hercu- Three Graces,his mind unconsciouslyvisual- les was an astrologerwho learned his discipline izes the Vaticangroup and the innumerable

I ...CHR..ML. THT....IN I. P O. -L

FIG. 29. THE CHILDREN OF SATURN. MURAL PAINTING IN THE SO-CALLED SALONE AT PADUA, ABOUT 1420 from Atlas, and so forth, ad infinitum. classical renditions of the Graces. The medi- Now this mass of rather dry late antique lit- aeval illuminator, however, had nothing in his erature was the foundation of what we might mind but a mere textual description or (in case call mediaeval mythography. Mediaeval writ- he had some predecessors) other mediaeval il- ers gathered together the various statementsof lustrations developed from it. As a result of the late antique authors,commenting upon the this the Laoco6n who makes the sacrifice be- texts and even upon the commentaries, in comes a wild and bald old priest who attacks order to justify as well as to facilitate the read- the little bull with what should be an ax, while ing of classical Roman literature. From the the two little boys float around at the bottom end of the eleventh century or the beginning of the picture and the sea snakes appear brisk- of the twelfth throughout the following cen- ly in a pool of water (Cod. Vat. lat. 276I; fig. turies, the works of these mediaeval mythog- 38).30 Thus an illuminator of about IIoo, in illus- 30 Cf. Forster, Jahrbuch d. konigl. preuss. Kunstamml., Martia- vol. XXVII, pp. 156 f.; also Goldschmidt, Vortrdge trating Remigius's commentary upon der Bibl. Warburg, vol. I, pp. 42 if. nus Capella (Cod. Monac. lat. 1427I; fig. 39), 254 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES representedSaturn in a mannerso extremely assimilatedit to the eagle inspiringSaint John differentfrom the classicalone that he looks or the dove of the Holy Ghostinspiring Saint ratherlike one of the saintsin the celebrated Gregory,is providedwith a daintyhalo. Apol- altar frontalgiven to the Basel Cathedralby lo, finally,rides in a rusticcart and holds the HenryII, now in the Museede Clunyat Paris.31 Three Gracesin a nosegay.This funny detail

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FIG. THE CHILDREN OF MERCI JU 30. 4( OF THE HOUSE BOOK, ABOUT I 49

Becausethe textsspeak of a caputvelatum, the is a very instructiveexample of:what we are "coveredhead," which in the classicalperiod endeavoringto make clear.In classicalGreek was renderedby bringinga fold of the mantle sculpturethere was a type of Apollo that held over the head, is here renderedby a floating in his handa smallreplica of the famousgroup veil, which standsout at the sideswith charac- of the Three Graces, much as the world- teristicbillows. Jupiter looks like an enthroned renownedJupiter by Pheidiasheld in his hand mediaeval king, and his propheticalraven a small figure of Victory.Such a statuewas (corvus,according to Cicero'sDe divinatione 31 Cf. Saxl, Verzeichnis,part I, pp. io8, Io; idem, I. 12), becausethe illuminatorunconsciously Repertorium f. Kunstwiss., vol. XLIII, pp. 220 ff. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 255 indexed by Pausanias,the author of the an- raphy formerly called the Mythographus ter- tique traveler'sguidebook for touriststhrough tius. The story of this text is curious enough. Greece,and his descriptionwas takenover by In the fourteenth century it was used by Boc- the late antiquewriter Macrobius, mentioned caccio for his famous Genealogia deorum, in above.32By him the motivewas handeddown which, however, he surpassed the mediaeval to the ninth-centuryauthor whose treatisewas mythographer by reverting to the genuine an- illustratedby ourilluminator.This unfortunate tique sources and carefullycollating them with man,absolutely ignorant of the classicalgroup each other, so that, for example, he is in a posi- of the ThreeGraces, as well as of the classical tion to enumerate five different Venuses and

FIG. 31. THE CHILDREN OF MERCURY FIG. 32. THE COMMUNITY OF THE FAITHFUL FROM A MANUSCRIPT BY CHRISTINE DE PISAN INSPIRED WITH THE HOLY GHOST BIBL. NAT., MS. FR. 606. EARLY XV CENTURY FROM COD. BAMBERG, MS. LAT. 5. EARLY XI CENTURY solis, was expected to illustrate a no less than thirty-onelabors of Hercules. text which said that Apollo, the divinity of the Even Petrarchdrew from the English com- sun, was to ride in a chariot drawn by four pendiumfor the descriptionof the sculptural horses and was to hold the Three Graces in his representationsof classical divinities which hand. were admiredby Scipio in the palaceof the Characteristicallyenough, the focal point of Africanking Syphax.33Petrarch turned Alex- this mediaeval mythography was a region fair- anderNeckham's rough mediaevalLatin into ly remote from direct Mediterraneantradition: the most beautifulLatin hexameters,omitted northern France and England. About 1200, the whole moralisticexplanation, and drama- the rather well-known English scholar Alex- tized the descriptionaccording to the dynamic ander Neckham (died I217) composed the principlesof classicalpoetry (compareNeck- conclusive compendium of mediaeval mythog- ham's"unde et Argum dicituroccidisse quod 32 etiam Cf. Overbeck, vol. III, book 5, pp. 17 if. astutifures . . . negotiatores,saepe sapi- 33 Petrarch, Africa, book III. entissimosviros . .. desipiantet defraudant" 256 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES with Petrarch's"Curvo cadit Argus ab ense"). a generalmoralistic way, but were quite defi- It is a memorable fact that the most distin- nitelyrelated to the Christianfaith, so that,for guished poet of the Italian trecentowas obliged instance,Pyramus was interpretedas Christ, Thisbeas the humansoul, and the lion as Evil ;t: its The best-knowndocu- d} -a 't a. defiling garments. ,i Ht{., 51 l1f-. b; nnrt; n .siX ment for this tendencyis the French Ovide *^^?C 3S;r;4ni moralise, in which all the Metamorphoses are interpretedin a Christianmanner. Petrus Berchorius(Pierre Bersuire),a French theo-

I t t-f- pf 6c sS3; ra ? A -roitf;dsc

FIG. 33A. MARS, FROM THE DARMSTADT MS. 266 MIDDLE OF THE XV CENTURY

FIG. 34. MERCURY. WOODCUT FROM CONRAD PEUTINGER "INSCRIPTIONES VETUSTAE ROMANORUM ET EORUM FRAGMENTA IN AUGUSTA VINDELICORUM.... MAINZ, 1520

logian and a friendof Petrarch's,composed a new moralizedOvid, not in Frenchverse but in prose,and providedit with an intro- ductionin which he explainedthe pagan di- vinities so often mentionedin the following Thus he in his turn used the FIG. 33B. MARS, FROM THE text. descriptions "CHRONOGRAPH OF THE YEAR 354" of Petrarch,but he endowedthem againwith complicatedmoralistic explanations. In accord- to have recourseto an English compendium of ance with the increaseof astrologicalthought about 1.200 in order to glean information about and the strengtheningof belief in it, he em- the gods of his own ancestors. phasizedthe identityof the sevengreatest di- Meanwhile, in the Northern countries, a vinities with the seven planetsand arranged further step in the moralization of classical theirhierarchy in the samesequence as the ce- mythology had been taken: the figures of an- lestialspheres. As his introduction,except for cient mythology were not only interpreted in its long-windedexplanations, was capableof CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 257 being very usefulto artistswho wishedto rep- beholderand the other two did not. But the resent the pagan gods, the whole thing was classicalcomposition itself had beenforgotten, summarizedand its explanationswere again and thereforethe Gracewith her back turned deletedin the curiousAlbricus sive Libellusde is no longer shown in the middle. No medi- imaginibusdeorum, a kind of popularmedi- aeval artistcould imagine that the reasonfor aevalhandbook of classicalmythology for edu- the positionsin the classicalgroup had origi- cationaland pictorialpurposes.34 nally been a mere aestheticone, for in the This Albricuswas illustratedin a fine Italian mythologicalliterature they were explained by

FIG. 35. THE CRUCIFIXION FIG. 36. THE CRUCIFIXION CAROLINGIAN IVORY CARVING ROMANESQUE STONE RELIEF CALLED EXTERNSTEINE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK, MUNICH ABOUT III5 manuscriptexecuted about I42o in northern an allegory,according to which a favor con- Italy (Cod. Vat. Reg. I290). Figure 40 shows ferred(the Gracewith her backturned stands Venusand Mercuryfrom this manuscript,both for the departingfavor) will be returnedtwo- of whom are independentof any classicalpro- fold. So it did not matterwhether or not the totypes.The Three Gracesin the pictureof Gracewhose back was turnedwas in the mid- the birthof Venus aremost amusing.All that dle. Mercuryis representedwith a greatmany had remainedin the textual traditionof the attributes,partly masculine,partly feminine. famousclassical representations of the Graces He carriesa caduceus,a distaff,a lance,and an was the fact that one turnedher back to the instrumentintended to be a curvedsword, and he a flute. Towardshim flies the cock 34 Cf. Liebeschiitz an instructive plays (who gives surveyof sacred to and on the are the developmentof allegoricalmythology throughout especially him, right the Middle Ages); Panofsky,Hercules am Scheide- shown a merchantand a thief who is cutting wege, pp. ii if. the former'spurse. On the ground lies the 258 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

- many-eyedArgus with his head cut off.35This with fig. 37).37They are of course transformed strangeimage of Mercurydeveloped in full according to the style of the period (as had accordwith the generalstylistic evolution of happened in the above-mentioned fifteenth- late mediaevalart. In a Flemishmanuscript of century Scotus manuscript), but they unmis- Bersuire'sof about 148o,which is connected takably renew the representationaltradition so with the two printed editionsof Brugesand long supplanted by a literary tradition, and Paris (Copenhagen,Thottske Slg. 399; fig. thus prepare for the definitive rediscovery of 42),36Mercury looks like a gallantyoung dan- the classical types. dy, as he was often representedin secular With the exception of the astrological rep- Northernfifteenth-century art, and poor Ar- resentations, which had a tradition of their gus resemblesthe wounded man in the par- own, the images established by Bersuire and able of the Good Samaritan. Albricus, in spite of their apparent absurdity, were the leading types for a long time. Whenever they needed a Jupiteror a Saturn the painters and engravershad recourseto this tradition, even in the Italian quattrocento (for we may recall the fact that the Reginensis 1290 was executed in Italy about I420). In Italy the way back to the classical original did not pass through a Carolingian intermezzo, but led im- mediately to the genuine sources. In at least one case, however, we meet with an archaic intermezzo instead of the Carolingian one. About the middle of the fifteenth century, Cyriacus of Ancona, perhaps the first archae- ologist and epigrapher in the modern sense of FIG. 37. VULCAN, PLUTO, BACCHUS, AND MERCURY the word, went to Greece, and he brought back FROM A COPY OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HRABANUS with him a of which he had MAURUS. MONTE CASSINO. ABOUT 1023 picture Mercury copied from an archaic relief of the early fifth Just before this time a thing we have ob- century B.C. (Bodl. MS. Can. lat. misc. 280; servedin the astrologicalrepresentations hap- fig. 44). It depicted the Hermes Sphenopogon penedalso in the mythologicalones: the Caro- ("Bearded Hermes"), clad in a fluttering chla- lingian prototypes,forgotten for so many cen- mys and stretchingout his left hand, while hold- turies,again emerged for a shortperiod. About ing the caduceus in his right in a horizontal 1430 the originalmanuscript of the Hrabanus position (fig. 45). We can easily conceive that, Maurus Encyclopedia,which had obviously to a mind accustomed to the Albricus pictures, beenpreserved in Fulda,was copiedby a local accessto this rather fantasticarchaic figure was illuminator,and in this copy (Cod. Vat. Pal. much easier than access to the classical type in lat. 291) we rediscoverthe imageswe foundin the narrower sense of the word. In fact the the MonteCassino manuscript (compare fig. 41 genuine antique, but not properly classical,

35 Cf. Liebeschiitz, pl. XVIII; also Saxl, Verzeichnis, pp. 58 f., and Oud Holland, vol. XXXIX, pp. 149 if.; part I, p. ix, and Repertorium f. Kunstwiss., vol. also Sant, Le Commentaire de Copenhague de l'Ovide XLIII, pp. 246 ff. moralise. 36 Cf. Henkel, De Houtsneden van Mansion's Ovide 37 Cf. Lehmann, Sitzungsber. d. bayr. Akad. d. Wiss., moralise'; idem, Vortrage d. Bibl. Warburg, vol. VI, Philosoph.-philol. Klasse, 1927, part 2, pp. 13 if. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 259 type discoveredby Cyriacusof Ancona was im- carvingsadorning sixteenth-century houses in mediately introduced into the Albricus scheme. Germany.38 Thus the series of the "Tarocchi"(a set of en- The Italiancinquecento, however, generally graved playing cards executed in northern Italy disapprovedof the archaizingCyriacus type about 1465) shows a picture of Mercury (fig. and reestablishedthe classicalone, so that by 46) which follows the description of Albricus I5I5 the classicalappearance of the antiquedi- with regard to the iconographical accessories vinitieshad becomea matterof coursefor the (note the flute, the cock, and the head of Ar- Italianartists. A genius such as Raphaelhad, gus), while the type of the main figure obvi- so to speak,a freecommand of classicalsyntax ously derives from the Hermes Sphenopogon withoutlimiting himself to a classicalvocabu- imported by Cyriacusof Ancona. In this form lary. Thus the Mercuryin the ceiling of the Mercurywandered back to the Northern coun- Villa Farnesina,who displayshis beautyin the

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FIG. 38. THE STORY OF LAOCOON, FROM COD. VAT. LAT. 276I. XIV CENTURY tries and was popularizedby numerousen- movement of an etherealflight, is conceived gravingsand woodcuts.Our figure 43 showsa in a classicalspirit without being copiedfrom woodcutfrom a LiibeckCalendar of I5I9, in a particularclassical prototype (fig. 47). which the TarocchiMercury, transmitted to In passing,we shouldnow mentionthat the the Hanseaticdraftsman through the interme- transmissionof the Trojan cycle, which of diaryof Hans Burgkmair'swoodcut B.46, was coursecontained a considerableamount of in- made the central figure of a planet-children cidentalmythology, occurred in a way rather pictureconforming to the usualNorthern fif- similarto thatof the transmissionof the pagan teenth-centurytype. This Mercuryfinally be- mythologyas compiledby Neckham,Bersuire, came a typicalfigure in the decorativewood- and all the others.One might expectthat the contentof the and other classicalpoems 38 Cf. Warburg, Jahresber. d. Ges. d. Bicherfreunde would have remainedmore alive in Italy than zu Hamburg, I908-I909, pp. 45 f. This article will be in other countries,and have given rise to reprinted in a comprehensive edition of Warburg's abundantillustrative material. on the con- some of which at rather out-of- But, writings, appeared it was a French of the twelfth cen- the-way places. Cf. also Behrendsen, Darstellungen trary, poet von Planetengottheiten an und in deutschen Bauten. tury,named Benoit de Sainte-Maure,who com- 260 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES posed the standardwork of the Trojancycle, This invasionof Italyby the Trojancycle as the Romande Troie.The contentof this was a whole, both text and pictures,came chiefly partlyadopted by the authorof the laterHis- through her oppositefrontiers. Not only, as toireancienne,39 and, what is moreimportant, was most natural,did it come throughnorth-

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;FIG. 39. THE PAGAN DIVINITIES, FROM COD. MONAC. LAT. .1427. ABOUT IIO FIG. 39. THE PAGAN DIVINITIES, FROM COD. MONAC. LAT. 14271. ABOUT II 00 was elaboratedby mediaevalGerman poets as ern Italy, which was geographicallyand cul- well as by the Italiantrecento poet Guido da turally connectedwith the transalpinecoun- Colonna.Thus the Italian trecentodrew its tries at least as closely as with Tuscany and knowledgeof the triballegend of Italy from Latium, but also it came through southern France,in the sameway that it drewits knowl- Italy,which was ruledin turnby theNormans, edgeof the Olympiandivinities from England. the Hohenstaufens,and the Anjous.Thus as Moreover,the high mediaevalillustrations of early as about IIoo we are struckby the re- the Trojan cycle were also worked out in markableartistic relationship between the two Franceand subsequentlywere transformedin Italy. 39 Cf. Meyer, Romania, vol. XIV, pp. i ff. ;' ( ,i-, m lt c uA.mi; ,e -.t,.t.'a g .' ,!,4, P

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FIG. 40. VENUS AND MERCURY, FROM COD. VAT. REG. 1290. ABOUT 1420 262 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES oppositeregions of Italy (as witnessthe sculp. and heraldicreasons can be locatedat Naples tures of Bari and Modena). During the tre- (Brit. Mus., Royal XX.D.i; fig. 50).42 Al- centoconditions in northernand southern Italy thoughthe miniatureswere executedas late as were analogousin that self-dependentcom- about the middle of the fourteenthcentury munalismhad not yet, as in centralItaly, pre- and strikinglyresemble the illustrationsof a vailedover dynasticautocracy with its courtly Vitaepatrum manuscript datable about I36o,43 life and habitsand its delight in picturesand they seem to reflect an unknown prototype storiesdealing with chivalrousexploits. with the curiousmixture of Orientaland Occi- For northernItaly we limit ourselvesto ad- dental elements characteristicof Frederician ducingseveral manuscripts of Benoitde Sainte- and Manfredianmanuscripts, such as the cele- Maure,written in Frenchbut illustratedby il- bratedDe arte venandicum avibus and the luminatorsof Bologna,who were famousfor Bible of Manfred,44which may thus be placed in the middle of the thirteenthcentury. This hypothesisis confirmedby at least two other manuscriptsof the Histoire ancienne (Bibl. Nat., MS.fr. 9685and Cod.Vat. lat. 5895;figs. 5IA and 51B) which were executed in southern Italy about 1300. In them our hypothetical French models were translatedinto a style which is entirelyuntouched by the attainments of the great trecentomasters and thus shows the characteristicsof the Manfredianor Fred- ericianperiod even moreclearly than the Nea- politanmanuscript just mentioned.To crown it all, a manuscriptsuch as Bibl. Nat., MS. fr. FIG. 41. VULCAN, PLUTO, BACCHUS, AND MERCURY I386,while obviouslyderiving from the former FROM COD. VAT. PAL. LAT. 291. COPY OF THE ones with and ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HRABANUS MAURUS, ABOUT I430 (compare fig. 52B figs. 52A 5IA) so emphaticallyreverts to pre-Gothictenden- their excellencein "quell'arteche luminaree cies that we feel as if it echoedthe styleof the chiamatain Parisi"(fig. 49)40 and to a His- twelfth-centuryPetrus de Ebulo manuscript toria Troianaby Guido da Colonna,executed preservedat Bern45or even of the famoustap- in the Venetiandistrict about I380, the hurried estries of Bayeux. Small wonder then that pen drawings of which foreshadow the char- some of these rather exotic-lookingpictures acteristicsof fifteenth-centurydraftsmanship strikeus as almost"early Romanesque." (Cod. Ambros.H.86 sup.;fig. 48).41 Now, in all theseillustrations of the Trojan For southernItaly we have the good for- legend (from which innumerablelater minia- tuneto possessa remarkableHistoire ancienne, tures,as well as printsand woodcuts,were de- which is also in Frenchbut which for stylistic rived) the classicalheroes and heroinesappear

40 42 Cf. Hermann, pp. 136 f. The Cod. Petropolitanus Cf. Warner and Gilson, vol. II, pp. 375 ff. (Franz. F. v. XIV. v. 3.), from which our figure 49 is 43 Morgan Library, MS. M. 622. Cf. Berenson, pp. 15 taken, may be joined to the two manuscripts men- ff., fig. III. tioned by Hermann, although it is of an incomparably 44Cf. Erbach-Fuerstenau, especially pls. I, IV, and higher quality and seems to be more closely connected figs. 8 f. with Sienese art. 45 Cf. Rota, Petri Ansolini de Ebulo de rebus siculis 41 Cf. Toesca, p. 388. carmen, with fine reproductions of the miniatures. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 263

as mediaevalknights and ladies.The typical quattrocento,imitation of the antiquegradual- scenesof battle,love-making, and mourning ly reintroducedthe classicaltypes-a process wholly conform to the contemporarytypes that,in Germany,had been prefigured by mod- most common in novel illustrationand reli- est attemptsto revivethe pseudo-classicalCar- gious art, as, for example,in figure 50, where olingiantypes.47 Hecuba, lamenting over the dead body of Troilus,is obviouslyassimilated to the Virgin Now if we ask for the interiorreasons of this lamentingover the dead bodyof Christ.Cases development,the answerseems obviously to be like thatin which the tombof Achillesreveals that high mediaevalart, though sometimes an immediate memory of the late antique obliged to representclassical themes, had no strigulatedsarcophagi (fig. 5I) are exception- al. the Renaissance the j 1!11T"' - - Here, too, reintegrated i:j;l;'ii?ii 'jE'jiiiYl,ii(iiiiiiiiii,:'::? '..!i.iBi:c?:?::::I:ccsiiB:. ::?":?:::I classicalidea. Giulio Romano'smurals in the i:-:7 :l?iPPI.II.:r?. ?:? r ::::?:I:I??? PalazzoDucale at Mantuavisualize the Trojan L --9 LJ i. --Y- cyclewithin the limitsof a classicalstyle based not only on the attainmentsof Raphaelbut also on the immediateassimilation of classical monuments.In the Death of Patroclus(fig. 54), for instance,the artistfreely used a Ro- man relief of the same subject(fig. 55) still preservedat Mantua.46

The processwe have observedin these many instancescan be expressedin a generalformu- la. Wherevera mythologicalsubject was con- nected with antiquity by a representational tradition,its typeseither sank into oblivionor, throughassimilation to Romanesqueand Goth- ic forms, becameunrecognizable. While this FIG. 42. MERCURY, FROM A MS. IN THE COPENHAGEN went on, they weresupplanted by non-classical ROYAL LIBRARY. THOTTSKE SLG. 399. ABOUT 1480 types,either derived from the Eastor freelyin- vented on the basis of the textual tradition. feeling for classicalform. This explanation, Then, beginning in the second half of the however,is hardlysufficient. Everybody knows

46 Cf. Dollmayr,Jahrbuch d. kunsthistorischenSamm- tique but ratherclassical prototype (as, in spite of the lungen, vol. XXII, particularlyp. I87. Needless to say many vicissitudesof textual and illustrativetradition, the centergroup of the compositionis identicalwith has been conclusivelyexplained by Jones and Morey the famous "Pasquino"group, which also represents in their admirablecorpus, The Miniaturesof the Man- Menelausprotecting the body of Patroclus. uscriptsof Terence).These mediaevalTerence minia- 47 A similarevolution can be observedin the Terence tures,also, show a gradual"degeneration" of the clas- illustrationswhich "are the outstandingexample of sical models so that the latest manuscripts,such as the transmissionand transformationof antique style" Bodleianus Auct. F. 2. I3 and Turonensis lat. 924, im- (to speakin the termsof Leslie W. Jonesand Charles press us as purely Romanesque work. After them, R. Morey), in fact unrivaledexcept by the astronom- however, no illustrationsof the comedies are to be ical illustrationsto which we try in this articleto call found for about two centuries.As late as the begin- the attentionof art historians.We possessmore than ning of the fifteenth centurythe text was illustrated twelve illustratedmanuscripts of Terenceexecuted be- afresh (a list of manuscriptsis given by Jones and tween 800 and 200o which all derive from a late an- Morey, p. 225; the most famous specimen is the Te- 264 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES that in the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, tany or in England.But it spreadfarther and when the classicaltypes of mythologicalfig- reachedits firstpoint of culminationin Char- ureswere being supplanted by the non-classical tresand Reims. ones, Christiansubjects, especially in the field The factsare too well known to requireany of sculpture,were so markedlyassimilated to particulardiscussion. We only remind our classicalforms that art historiansare now in readersthat this proto-Renaissancemovement, the habit of speakingof a proto-Renaissance.too, approachedthe classicalprototypes by de- It is not by accidentthat this movement,so grees and not immediately.It began, in such contraryto the literaryactivities of thosemedi- placesas Modenaand St.-Gillesin Provence,by aevalmythographers who mightappropriately absorbingthe illusionismof provincialRoman be characterizedas proto-Humanists,48found stonesculptures and ivories,while limiting it- self to the assimilationof single motivessuch as heads,animals, draperies, pieces of architec- ture,and ornamentaldetails. Then, aftera By- zantineintermezzo in Laon,Braisne, Chartres (transepts),etc., the Gothic artistsbegan to feel the moreessential qualities of antiqueart, aboveall the principleof contraposto.Finally, at Reimsand Pisa,they penetratedto the very heartof classicalart, no longerseeing the epi- dermisof late antiquework, so to speak,but absorbingsome of the fundamentalprinciples of classicalsculpture, so that we can easilyun- derstandwhy the two figures of the Reims Visitation(cf. fig. 53), with theireasy gyratory contraposto,for a long time were believedto FIG. 43. MERCURY AND HIS CHILDREN be sixteenth-centurywork.49 Because of all WOODCUT FROM A LUBECK CALENDAR OP 1519 this, it would be an to assertthat PRINTED BY STEPHAN ARNDES exaggeration the high MiddleAges were completelyblind its originin the Mediterraneanatmosphere of to the aestheticqualities of classicalart. southernFrance and Italy,instead of in Brit- Thus,to speakgenerally, knowledge of clas- sical matterand of classi- rence des Bibl. de lat. and these subject appreciation Ducs, l'Arsenal, 25), cal form were not the Middle miniaturesare totallyindependent of the classicaltra- lackingduring dition, directlyillustrating the text in accordancewith Ages,but, because of the failureto relatethem the generalprinciples of fifteenth-centuryart. This is in practice,classical subject matter, especially also the case with the first printed edition (Ulm, the lost its about the Basel Amer- mythologicalstories, completely 1486). Then, 1492, publisher andclassical form so lostits bachplanned another edition of Terence,which never originalform, orig- appeared,although 130 woodblocksand nine prints inal subjectmatter that a Phaedracould be which were for it have fromlost woodblocks prepared used as a VirginMary and a Venusas an Eve. been preservedin the Kunstsammlungof Basel. The It was the of the Renaissance astonishingfact is that these illustrations,in which privilege again the young Diirer participated,partly revert to the Car- 48 olingian prototypes(as was provedby Rbmerin Jahr- As for this proto-Humanism,especially flourishing buch d. preuss.Kunstsamml., vol. XLVIII, pp. 77 f., duringthe twelfth century,we shouldlike to referour 156 if.), therebyaffording a parallelto what could be readersto the splendidresearches of CharlesH. Has- observedin the representationsof the planetsand the kins. pagan divinities. 49 Cf. Liibke, vol. II, p. 458. :.*,~m . ^. M. ,, <, -.. C r- * * v** e' _^Ef^ r 4< r-?,c ,^,., - t *"

@Y_,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~k . .. .s. ?.. .;. _^^S^mh. .kt

s- 1' ^ *44x f U; s *.g* ^ - ^ ^ . .-: ^;

FIG. 44. MERCURY, BY CYRIACUS OF ANCONA FIG. 45. MERCURY BODL. MS. CAN. LAT. MISC. 280 ARCHAIC RELIEF FROM PANTICAPAEUM MIDDLE OF THE XV CENTURY EARLY V CENTURY B. C.

FIG. 46. MERCURY, FROM THE TAROCCHI FIG. 47. MERCURY DESCENDING FROM OLYMPUS, BY RAPHAEL ABOUT I465 VILLA FARNESINA, ROME 266 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES to visualizeclassical subject matter under clas- adherence to orthodox beliefs. In general, how- sical forms and so to reintegratethese two ever, the Middle Ages and the Renaissancere- things.This we can easilyunderstand. acted to antiquity in quite different ways. For There were, of course,certain distinguished the mediaeval mind antiquity was distant, but scholars,such as Hildebertof Lavardin(the not distant in a historical sense of the word. authorof thosefamous distichs on the Roman It was no more distant than, for instance, the

., , . t ." 1i, 44",4-~i " * '' I*^!" ".. ; .:'.. * " i ~i

iwl i -; ? . - ."f.;* -;:^*r ;i * \ i ~I1 i i '. '~ ! ....~ ' . e .. ..'. . *... ? !. ; ,''" ' b '; .' " ' , l : ; ' ..*i - i t. t 1 /!

f " ..r, . ^r^ '. : ^..... ' * t , ' . ' s *,. i*-.! , -,,,l

* ?' i:FI Ir? i .^.. ! -, . FI , : *v ';"- x *. "' Q, ' t *?"t *; .?? r ?,. "' 1 r i , ..,t '," .. C .a?,, ti, c??-- x - * fC, .. s , . .'. . . , .' i i s 1, `3 KI.''

?*?. r

.hl' i/ :?.I r F: 6?i3' ??,. A *. ' f 'r' I?r? ?r * s $ ' 'I . 't _ ' ? ?? ?- .-I i ?- ,,J;ls I .t. 1 1 i ?, ? ?I a rl i i i I,t ? ,, i-L

FIG. 48. THE CAPTURE OF TENEDOS, FROM COD. AMBROS. H.86 SUP. ABOUT I380

ruins which for a long time were thought to contemporarypagan East, or the world of the have been composedby a late antiquepoet),50 fairytales, so thatVillard de Honnecourtcould in whom the mediaevalproto-Humanism was call a Roman tomb "li sepoutured'un sarra- alreadytinged with a sensitivefeeling for the zin," becauseto him it meant a pagan monu- classicallast seeminglycomparable to quattro- ment ratherthan an antiqueone.51 Because of cento tendencies,although, in reality, their this, althoughthe Middle Ages used classical fundamentalattitude differed essentially from ideas,literary as well as philosophicaland ar- thatof the Renaissancethinkers in its unerring tistic,wherever they could, they were unable to

51 50 Cf. Schramm,especially pp. 296 ff. Cf. Villard de Honnecourt,pl. XI. 't* a=ll-? , nliplw . .. 0I cccitupupobt tctlnce. anrtnc GbcSwaperc 111i1m.vcf-m - . Q ctancncift bot .3 z%oclup%1t tcl"" '. x ftfta nt11ft urcfPtola GnGtcnl,lqololtlallcltt, T'ant C e r1la rlfrtln UIti TL 0 t l carall lcrf qatCl lt'at o cUllttoIwll cr CrC lut. e[ cclotrtlrolrmr b:tcf mlntr * o011rcnnt(fatwIt amboun. ietcorxcnumln cc cflqlt Q ot ficrnllt clrc .paIO. ICt i 0 r nitrltcaontntl.l ouo jnir btUlt cil mtiroi: oontIrUalCnlcrlLr tpto. . t TC a iinotrc(CIcpltw ; Co: ?lFlCCCcrtlntn c jlloltTao 11i Corm clfotat1RC Y Incmclnlr t -.t ,.l"IIcClllcn "'C111" r-C .t'CO'. C1i ~~~~Csiid~: ]. gc4riplc .wu

FIG. 49. PARIS AND HELEN MEETING AT THE TEMPLE OF VENUS FROM LENINGRAD, COD. PETROPOLITANUS, FRANZ. F. V. XIV. V. 3 MIDDLE OF THE XIV CENTURY

fh StS9 mlon4ufs:; 4ernumrle llta it.- alam nmulr .aitpoqmwne.wn .uw. m, 4mtwlcnprulcnw - .?. a tww tclai qirmm non qttuai tt $nLfali t mtwewtalWOAnamsl$wlt 4 umitriktal fri rchttm

MuO.tv wwt.w.'itOflArit:lwn:t

* , *ttZtt'-nacaartC.Tfiw pzuaIcOU gnc Jfci.u,mk.g >

FIG. 50. HECUBA EMBRACING THE DEAD BODY OF TROILUS FROM BRIT. MUS., ROYAL XX.D.I. ABOUT 1350-1360 268 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES see antiqueculture as a culturalcosmos histor- ly does,the unityof classicalform and classical icallyso farremoved from them that they could subjectmatter, actually avoided bringing the think of it as an integralunity. Thomas Aqui- two together- for we mustremember that any nas assimilatedthe ideasof Aristotleand melt- combinationof whatwere regarded as two sep- aratethings would have been meaninglessto [t ERrnbbtFdt boththe averageartist and the averagebehold- rn4? ti:trn4? it aoiI a er. familiarwith the idea of the .A , ; .)r e f4~i r* ' Being Virgin Mary, mediaevalartists and spectatorscould visualizeand understandher even when ren- dered in classicalforms. Being familiarwith the game of chessas a characteristicfeature of courtlylife, they saw no incongruityin a pic- ture of Medea playing chess, although they would not have understoodher had she been representedas the heroine of the drama by Euripides.Being familiarwith the appearance of mediaevaltombs, they saw nothing odd in the pictureof an up-to-dateThisbe sitting on a Gothic tombstonewith the inscription"Hic FIG. 5IA. THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA situs est Ninus Rex," precededby the usual FROM BIBL. NAT., MS. FR. 9685. ABOUT I300 cross(Bibl. Nat., MS.lat. 15158;fig. 56).52But they could not have understooda classical Thisbe sitting by a classicalmausoleum. As in the historyof mind visiblephenomena usuallyappear simultaneously as "causes"and "effects,"so the reintegrationof classicalmyth- ological subjectsachieved in the Renaissance was an incentiveas well as a symptomof the generalevolution which led to the rediscovery of man as a naturalbeing strippedof his pro- tecting coverof symbolismand conventional- ity. For the mediaevalmind such things as beautyand ugliness,lust and pain, crueltyand FIG. 5IB. THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA fear,love andjealousy were encompassed by so FROM COD. VAT. LAT. 5895. ABOUT I300 many transcendentalconceptions that all had moralisticor theologicalconnotations. Beauty ed them into his scholasticsystem and the me- appearedeither as a symbolof supremespirit- diaevalpoets abundantly used the classicalau- ual virtuesor as a meansof diabolicaltempta- thors,but no mediaevalmind could think of tion.Thus while Adam,Christ, and the Virgin what we call classicalphilology; the artistsof Maryhad to be beautifulbecause their beauty Reimsand Pisaassimilated their figures to Ro- was held to be a reflectionof the eternalbright- man statues,but no mediaevalmind could ness infusedinto the humanbody by the very think of what we call classicalarchaeology. act of creation,the beautyof classicalstatues Thus the mediaevalmind, being incapable 52 Reproducedin Lehmann, Pseudo-antikeLiteratur of realizing,as the modernmind automatical- des Mittelalters, fig. I 1. FIG. 52A. THE SACK OF TROY FIG. 52B. THE SACK OF TROY AND THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA FROM BIBL. MS. FR. NAT., 9685. ABOUT 1300 (RIGHT LOWER CORNER). FROM BIBL. NAT., MS. FR. 1386. EARLY XIV CENTURY 270 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES meant to the mediaevalmind a magicaquae- Middle Ages. Where the one considered man dam persuasioused by the devil in order to as an integral unity of body and soul, the corruptthe soulsof the Faithful.Cruelty was other thought of him as a mere "clod of earth" consideredas a kind of professionalquality of not endowed with forces of its own but forci- paganexecutioners or wicked giants,and sen- bly and miraculously united with an immortal sual love, which was anathematizedby the soul ("plenum fuit miraculo, quod tam diversa commandmentsof religion and in the medi- et tam divisa ab invicem ad invicem potue- aevalepics usually entered into a conflictwith runt coniungi," as a great mediaeval philos- feudalloyalty, was eitherconceived as a warn- opher put it). The formulae of classical art ing exampleor sublimatedso as to becomea were obviously incompatible with that medi- quasi-metaphysicalexperience justified by a aeval trend of thought which had developed profoundphilosophical theory and ruledby a mere natural functions into quasi-moralistic

| \'

GEORG SWARZENSKI, "NICOLO PISANO," PL. 26

FIG. 53. ROMAN FIGURE JUXTAPOSED WIT] H A VIRGIN BY NICCOLO PISANO (PULPIT OF THE BAPTISTERY, PISA) AND THE VIRGIN ]FROM THE VISITATION (REIMS CATHEDRAL) complicatedceremonial code. Thus mediaeval symptoms(or quasi-iconographicalattributes). art was neitherable nor inclined to visualize Whereverclassical types or attitudeshad sub- the physicalqualities and emotionswe have sistedin Christianmediaeval art or had been just mentionedin the mannerof classicalart, freshlyassimilated, as at Reims or Pisa, they accordingto which beautywas a mere func- appearedtransformed in such a way that the tional equilibrium(such as is found in the beholderwas not too stronglyimpressed by the organizationof a perfectanimal), pain was a naturalqualities and movementsas such. In- mere functionalreaction against physicalin- stead of identifyinghis own sensationswith jury,and love was eithera merefunctional en- the functionalexperiences of the beingsrepre- joymentof physicalpleasure or a mere func- sented,such as organicequilibrium, pleasure, tional sufferingfrom unappeasedphysical ap- or pain,he conceivedthe expressionsof the fig- petites. ures chieflyas indicationsof spiritualprinci- The admirableartistic formulae by which ples,good or evil, holy or infernal.The formal thesequalities and passionshad beenexpressed motives inherited from antiquity were de- in the classicalstyle had resultedfrom a con- privedof their functionalimmediacy in order ceptionof man verydifferent from that of the that they might embody non-classicalmean- CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 271 ings. To that end they were so attenuatedand werereplaced by fashionableknights and dam- "spiritualized"(by eitherinorganic exaggera- selswhose behavior and appearanceconformed tion or inorganictorpescence) that they be- to the canonof mediaevalsocial life. Thus the came congenial to the currentreligious and reunionof classicalform and classicalsubject moralideas. After all is said,even the Virginof matteras achievedby the Renaissancespeaks

FIG. 54. THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS, BY GIULIO ROMANO. PALAZZO DUCALE, MANTUA

FIG. 55. THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS. ROMAN RELIEF. MUSEO STATUARIO, MANTUA

Reims, in spite of its classical appearance,re- eloquently of the rehabilitationor even re- mains a "Gothic"figure endowed with a more- discoveryof a purely "human"vitality-both than-physicalbeauty. In a similar way, the sen- structuraland emotional- which, if not exact- sual pathos of the passionatescenes of antique ly disapprovedof, had been shoved aside for mythology and secular poetry was transposed many centuries."Quae ergo compositiomem- into the atmosphere of courtly manners and brorum,"Gianozzo Manettisays, "quaecon- conventionalized sentiments, so that heathen formatio lineamentorum,quae figura, quae divinities and heroes mad with love or cruelty speciesquam humana pulchrioraut esse aut 272 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES excogitaripotest? Quod cum illi veteressapi- valueswere felt to be basedin naturalforces entissimiquehomines animadverterent, deos in just as merevital qualitieswere held to be en- humanase specie confiteriaudebant."53 And nobledby their connectionwith the immortal LeonardoBruni, while emphaticallydisapprov- soul. "Only men can laugh and shed tears," ing of those who unrestrainedlyindulge in Marsilio Ficino says, "becausein them the luxuryand sensualgratification, still does not mental emotion rules the body . . ., from shrinkfrom asserting that puritanicasceticism which we learn that our body, comparedto is something"insensible" and "inhuman":"... that of otheranimals, contains a minimumof earth . . . and a maximumof subtleelements " ? . S ,;..o I b ?""" "' ., , . ", so that it is capableof being the receptacleof

r the celestialsoul." 55 But even this moderateat- . ?,, .. -.I, ...:. .,*, ...... -. . : tempt to do justiceboth to "pagan"vitalism and to "Christian" meant an un- ? ^/ 't^> ? i spiritualism ' mistakablealienation from the moral :?v~ . ?t - . ,. ~ -:., , : ''\/i , system ... _ ,.^ i .,.,: of the Middle Thus it could : ,*,1? ~ ? ,, Ages. happen(al- . ?i .' ..'. ..' : C?4 i ?:..'. - ' this is an that ? .: ~" V'"' I , t. *i :" though entirelyexceptional case) a radicalthinker such as Leonardoda Vinci .~.~':* :~~~F~, '.? ::3 . ~ ,'t .' X , i . ' : venturedso far as to destroythe very founda- tion of mediaevalethics by proving the fact that what the MiddleAges had consideredas *??v 'T \^' . ,*'!1;<> I "mortalsins" in had to be as *...-x *' , : ' . : , reality regarded '. : . ' ' *:-'~"~'X '^.i.^rj'. -. . i ? 3i ; the positiveprinciples of naturallife. "Lussuria ., - ' *. , :..... '.. ~:.' :.: .....??!...": .' Leonardo'sdeliberate use of the termini ,* , :H ,, / , .- e', [note -,1, \\; '" ^ techniciof mediaevalmoral theology!] e causa della Gola e mantenimentodella :: ,i~._:. , .-:, ,~ .. gieneratione. 1:-.:'.?:,. . '"<" . ,' ...... ~,,~:.,".....~~?-) ; ~;~ ~ ' .' ?..?~ ~c vita, over timore e di ~?.... '.- '...::. . . *:..~.: ..^*b' .:. --~... . paura prolungamento vitae salvamentodello strumento."56 As for the rediscoveryof vital beauty,in- 53 Manetti, p. 55; cf. Gentile, pp. IIi f. ("I1 concetto dell' uomo nel Rinascimento"); Ruggiero, part 3, vol. I, pp. 40 if. FIG. THE STORY OF PYRAMUS AND THISBE 56. 54 Bruni, vol. II, p. 140. FROM BIBL. NAT., MS. LAT. DATED 15158. 1289 55 Ficinus, book I, p. 208: "Hinc accidit rursus, ut solus homo rideat, solus et lachrymetur, ex eo quod ab omnibuspenitus abstinere, et omnem om- animi motus plurimum in corpus habent imperium. nino est insensibili- ... Ideo corpus nostrum si ad caetera animalia com- voluptatemrefugere, quasi minimum et illud sub- tas et inhumanitas,si et vina et paretur, quam terrae, quidem quaedam epulas tile possidet, sublimiorum elementorum quamplur- et conviviumet omnemjocunditatem refugiat, imum, quocirca coelestis est animae receptaculum." qualem ego ne amicum quidem habere ve- 56Richter (ed.), no. 842. While Manetti (p. 161) lim."54 did not go so far as that, he endeavored to justify cer- tain vices such as and the crav- this new on the envy, anger, ambition, However, emphasis physical ing for worldly power, by asserting that they were qualitiesof man did not lead to a purelyma- nothing but undesirable results of the same forces terialisticconception; rather it enriched the which are the foundation of the dignity of man ("nam for the of the human soul qui sese ita dignum factum fuisse considerat, ut cun- feeling nobility ctis rebus creatis ac dominari videatur, which now was believedto form a praeesse pro- specifically fecto non modo ab aliis superari non patietur, quod est "personal"unity with the body. Thus moral invidiae, sed potius caeteros excellere vel maxime con- CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 273

stancesare abundantand known to all. We tation, appearinexpressive. Europa, clad in the shouldmerely like to adduceone of the fres- costume of the fourteenth century, sits on her coes executedabout 1470 by FrancescoCossa inoffensive little bull like a young lady taking in the PalazzoSchifanoia at Ferrara(fig. 57), a morning ride, and her companions, similarly becauseit shows most eloquentlythe fascina- dressed, form a quiet little group of spectators. tion of classicalbeauty. The picturewhich rep- Of course they are all meant to be anguished resentsthe Triumphof Venusfollows the com- and to cry out, but they don't cry out, or at positionalscheme of the picturesof the plan- least they don't convince us that they do; and et's childrenand the iconographicalarrange- they don't convince us that they do because the ments of the mediaevalmythographers, such art of that time lacked any immediate means as we find in Boccaccio'sGenealogia deorum. of expressing what was considered a merely

FIG. 57. TRIUMPH OF VENUS, BY FRANCESCO COSSA, ABOUT 1470. PALAZZO SCHIFANOIA, FERRARA

But it is to be noted that the Graces, and they "carnalpassion." A periodaccustomed to deny only, have resumed their classical positions, any autonomyof physicallife and to regard acting under the spell of the reappreciated man as a "mirasocietas carnis et animae,spi- antique monuments.57 ritus vitae et limi terrae"was basicallyincap- As for the vital emotions, we shall juxtapose able of expressingappropriately (that is to two representations of the Rape of Europa. say,functionally) such animal emotions as the In the first place we will consider the minia- strugglingpain of Orpheusslain by the mae- ture from a fourteenth-centuryOvide moralise nads, the sensualexcitement of a bull-shaped (Lyons, Bibl. de la Ville, MS. 742; fig. 58). The god, or the agitationof a girl tryingin vain to landscape is very schematic and the figures, in defendherself from abduction. so far as they are meant to reveal interior agi- A drawingby Diirercopied from an Italian cupiscet,quod superbiaeet ambitionisproprium viti- 57 The problem of the frescoes in the Palazzo Schi- um existimaturet creditur"). Although contentions fanoia was resolved by Warburg in Atti del X Con- such as these impressus as ratherinnocuous in com- gresso internazionale, pp. 179 ff. Cf., however, the parisonwith the radicalsentences of Leonardo,Ma- revised reprint of this article in the new edition of netti's treatise was put on the Index in 1584. Warburg's writings, referred to in note 35 under Saxl. 274 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES prototype (L. 456, executed about I495; fig. rustles with the life of aquatici monstriculi, to 59) precisely emphasizes the passionatevitality speakin the termsof anotherItalian quattro- lacking in the mediaeval representation.The cento writer,while satyrshail the abductor.58 literary source is no longer a text comparing Needlessto say,such a reintegrationof clas- the bull to Christ and Europa to the human sicalmythology was not so much a humanistic soul, but the pagan text of Ovid himself as as a human occurrence,a most importantele- transformedinto two delightful stanzas by An- ment of what Micheletand JacobBurckhardt gelo Poliziano: "You can admire Jupitertrans- called the "discoveryboth of the world and formed into a beautiful white bull by the pow- of man."Moreover, this occurrenceallows us er of love. He dashes away with his sweet ter- an insightinto the curiousand ratherenigmat- rified load, her beautiful golden hair fluttersin ical role which was to be playedby antiquity the wind which blows back her gown, with throughoutthe followingcenturies in the mak- ing of what is deprecatinglycalled "Classi- cism,"but what in realityis an essentialele- ment of modernEuropean culture, that deep- ly rootedconception of antiquityas a worldly paradise,an idealrealm of unsurpassablebeau- ty, freedom;and happiness. As we have alreadypointed out, the Renais- sanceattitude towards antiquity was different fromthe mediaevalone in thatthe Renaissance had becomeaware of the "historicaldistance" separatingthe Greeksand Romansfrom the contemporaryworld. This realizationof the intellectualdistance between the presentand the is to the realizationof the FIG. 58. THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA past comparable FROM LYONS, BIBL. DE LA VILLE, MS. 742 visualdistance between the eye and the object, XIV CENTURY so that a parallelmay be drawn betweenthe one hand she graspsa horn of the bull, while discoveryof the modern "historicalsystem," the otherclings to his back.She drawsup her which was mentionedin the firstparagraph of feet as if she were afraidof the sea, and thus this article,and the inventionof modernper- crouchingdown with pain and fear she cries spective,both of which were achievedby the for help in vain.For her sweetcompanions re- Renaissance.Now, this new attitude (from mainedon the floweryshore, each of them cry- which resulted the apparent paradox that, ing: 'Oh, Europa,come back!'The whole sea- while so manyclassical conceptions were fresh- shoreresounds with: 'Europa,come back!' and ly taken over from antique art and thought, the bull looksround and kissesher feet." many anotherwas deliberatelyabandoned be- Diirer'sdrawing actuallygives life to this causeit had been handeddown, and thereby sensualdescription. The crouchingposition of altered,by mediaevaltradition) automatically Europa,her flutteringhair, her clothes,blown gaverise to a problemwhich was to determine by the wind and revealingher gracefulbody, the specificcharacter and the furtherdevelop- the gesturesof her hands, the firtive move- mentof Westernculture. The mediaevalmind, ment of the bull'shead, the seashorescattered being unawareof its historicaldistance from over with the - all this 58 lamentingcompanions Cf. Panofsky, Jahrbuch f. Kunstgesch., vol. I, pp. is visualized,and, even more, the sea itself 43 ff., also published separately. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 275

the antique mentality,was consequentlyun- ologia Platonicain which he endeavoredto disturbedby the ideathat antiquity was a "cul- provethe compatibilityof Platonicphilosophy turalcosmos" concentrated about its own cen- with Christiantheology. While the mastersof ter of gravity.It was thereforecapable of as- Reims, Pisa, etc., could use classicalmodels similatingthe classicalelements, artistic as well for the images of the saints and the Virgin as philosophicaland scientific,much as a plant without any reflectionsor scruples,Diirer felt assimilatesthe elementsof the soil and the car- obliged to justify his reestablishmentof the *-w

.c??

* A

- M- .. - ....- /? ,?*.7. :i,- ... c ..:,

FIG. 59. THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA. PEN DRAWING BY DURER (L456), ABOUT 1495. THE ALBERTINA, VIENNA bonic acid diffused in the atmosphere.The classicalproportions in Christianpictures :"The Renaissance,on the contrary,had to contrive pagan people attributedthe utmostbeauty to a deliberateconciliation. theirheathen god 'Abblo,"'he says."Thus we While ThomasAquinas could make use of shalluse it for Christthe Lordwho is the most Aristotlewithout discussingor even realizing beautifulman, and just as they represented the difficultyof harmonizingtwo mentalatti- Venus as the most beautifulwoman, we shall tudesfundamentally different from each other, chastelydisplay the samefeatures in the image MarsilioFicino felt obliged to write a The- of the holy Virgin,mother of God."59

59 Lange and Fuhse, p. 3I6. Johann Joachim Win- thume angebrachtaber ungereimt, wie das Bild der ckelmann's classicist conscientiousness, of course, em- Theologie ist, in Gestaltder ..., an dem Grab- phatically disapproved of such a /ETca/'3w5 ds \Xo ye- male Pabsts Sixtus IV von Ertzt [by Antonio Pol- vos: "Einige Kiinstler haben Bilder aus dem Alter- laiuolo] in der St. Peterskirchezu Rom, wovon der 276 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

Thus Renaissanceart and thoughtare char- On the otherhand, the fascinationaroused by acterizedby an intrinsictension, unknown to the classicalmonuments increased in the same previousperiods, which was to becomedeci- measurethat the seculartendencies in Chris- sive for the furtherevolution.60 As we learn tian art were opposedby the moralists,so that from many sources,this tensionwas felt from what had been, a few decadesbefore, an un- the verybeginning, but for a while it was dis- constrainedenthusiasm for classical beauty and guisedby that peculiargift of harmonization vitalitybecame transformed into a strangeself- which we admirein the great mastersof the consciousfeeling composed of reluctantadmi- so-calledHigh Renaissance,such as Leonardo ration,disquieting scruples, and cool archaeo- da Vinci, Giorgione,and Raphael.However, logicalinterest.61 The fig leaf, an inventionof this beautifulharmony, apparently conciliat- the period in question,is a significantsymptom ing reallyincompatible things, was ableto last of this uneasyattitude which, manifestingit- only a few decades,and it soon led to a fright- self stylisticallyin the so-calledMannerism, ful crisis both in artisticand in intellectual was characterizedby a conflictbetween a re- life. This crisisbroke out in the periodof the newal of mediaevaltendencies and an over- CounterReformation, when GiordanoBruno's emphasisupon classicalprinciples. Bronzino's philosophyand Galileo'sscientific research en- Descentinto Limbo (fig. 60), for instance,al- tered into open conflict with the Christian mostrelapses to the principlesof Gothicart in dogma and the world of the figurativearts that its compositionis lacking in spatialper- was upsetby a strugglebetween the High Ren- spectiveand its figuresare distorted and inter- aissancetendencies and what we may call neo- wovenwith eachother so as to forma compli- mediaevalism.Everybody knows that, under cated, almost two-dimensionalpattern, while Paul IV, the nude figures in Michelangelo's at the sametime the figureof Eve is imitated Last Judgment,being furiouslyattacked for from an antique statue much more literally theirindecency and irreligion,had to be paint- than any figureof Giorgione'sor Raphael's.62 ed over by Daniele da Volterra,and that, in Out of the chaosresulting from the frustrat- 1573,Paolo Veronesewas sued for having en- ed attemptto harmonizethe humanisticcrav- richedthe representationof a Last Supperby ing for freedomboth in art and in thought worldly figures such as clowns and lansque- with the authoritativepostulates of the Chris- nets. The Ovide moralisewas put on the In- tian religion,there emerged one spherewhich dex for the veryreason for which it was writ- was apparentlyexempt from this destructive ten and appreciated,that is to say, becauseit antinomy:the antiqueworld itself, as reinte- was meantto connectChristian theology with gratedby the new reunionof classicalthought pagan mythology.Artists, suffering horribly and feelingwith classicalform and expression. from the irresolvableconflict between their In it physicalbeauty and carnaldesires, heroic faithfuldevotion to Christianbeliefs and their pathosand playfulamorousness had neveren- aestheticadmiration for antiquity,sometimes tered into conflictwith moral or theological dolefullyrepented having made naked images. conceptions,so that what had provedincom-

Grund nicht anders als lacherlich seyn kann" (Ver- 39 fE.;also Saxl, Antike Gotter in der Spdtrenaissance, such einer Allegorie, p. 55). passim. 60 This intrinsic tension characteristic of the Renais- (2 The model was the Venus of Knidos, also used by sance mentality was analyzed by Warburg in Kunst- Bronzino for the Virgin in his famous Holy Family wissenschaftl. Beitrage August Schmarsow gewidmet, in the Uffizi. In the latter case, the head is copied so pp. I29 ff. faithfullythat Schweitzerwas able to identifythe in- 61 Cf. Schlosser, Kunstliteratur, pp. 378 ff.; Panofsky, dividual replica,which Bronzinohad under his eyes; Hercules am Scheidewege, pp. 31 ff., and Idea, pp. cf. Schweitzer,Roem. Mitt., vol. XXXIII, pp. 45 ff. CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 277 patiblewith Christianculture appeared all the ary enclaveof untroubledbeauty and vitality. moreas a perfectharmony in itself.As a result Therethe unrestrictedvital feeling, which had of this the field of the genuine classicalsub- been rousedwith the reintegrationof classical jects,especially the mythologicalones, turned art and thereforewas felt to be inconsistent

FIG. 60. THE DESCENT INTO LIMBO, BY BRONZINO MUSEUM OF SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE out to be the only place in which the modern with the spirit of the Christianreligion, was mind could locate a vision of unproblematic "in its properplace," so that while the moral- or unbrokencompleteness, and the interpreta- ized Ovidand otherChristianizations of classi- tion of genuineclassical subjects both in paint- cal poetrywere put on the Index,63the Meta- ing and in poetrybecame for the real world 63 Cf. Reusch, Die Indices librorum prohibitorum des of tensionsand suppressedemotions a vision- sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. The most authoritative In- 278 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES morphosesthemselves remained free from ob- wereno longernamed Robin and Jeannetteas jection. in the mediaevalFrench pastoral poetry, but Thus, curiouslyenough, antiquity was poi- Meliseoand Phyllis,Aminta and Sylvia.Thus son and antidote at the same time. It was the classicalpast, while it was more and more poisonin so faras thereintegration of antiquity thoughtof and investigatedas a concretehis- contributedto the fundamentaldiscrepancy in toricalphenomenon, simultaneously developed modernart and thought,and antidotein so far into an enchantingUtopia that was surround- as the same reintegrationof antiquity had ed with a halo of sweetand melancholyresig- openedthe visionof an imaginarykingdom in nation,as in someof the paintingsby Nicolas which this verydiscrepancy seemed to be har- Poussinand ClaudeLorraine. The idea of an- monized. tiquity developedinto a dream of bliss and The everlastingnostalgia for this imaginary happiness;the classicalpast became a visionary kingdomis the mainfoundation of Classicism. harborof refugefrom everydistress. A para- Enthusiasmfor beauty and strength,sensual dise lamentedwithout having been possessed love and amoeba-likedolce far niente,and the and longed for without being attainable,it cravingfor perfect harmony, in the purelynat- promisedan idealfulfillment to all unappeased ural sense,concentrated more and more upon desires.From this we can understandwhy, the classicalsphere, so that the bucoliclife be- from the crisisof the CounterReformation in came locatedin Arcadia.The innocentshep- the sixteenthcentury, when the classicismof herds and shepherdesseswho embodiedcivil- the Carracciled the way out of Mannerism ized people'sinnate desire for natureand peace into the baroquestyle, down to the crisisof our own days, which, among other phenom- dex, that of Pius IV, Trent, 1564 (Reusch,p. 275) ex- ena,has given rise to the classicismof Picasso, plicitly says: "In Ovidii Metamorphoseoslibros com- almost artisticand cultural crisis has been mentaria sive enarrationesallegoricae vel tropolo- every gicae,"but does not mentionthe worksof Ovid them- overcomeby that recourseto antiquitywhich selves.Even licentiouswritings of classicalauthors are we know as Classicism. but scarcelyto be found in the Indices.

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