Chapter Twelve

Ut Pictura Poesis1

That many emblematists were very much aware of the fact that their printed works realised the Horatian ut pictura poesis is clear from their titles, for example: Barthélemy Aneau, Picta poesis, ut pictura poesis erit (1552) Mathias Holtzwart, Emblemata tyrocinia: sive picta poesis Latino Germanica (1581) Daniel Mannasser, Poesia tacens, Pictura loquens, quibus Occasio arrepta, neglecta delineatur, decantatur (1630) Daniel Stolcius, Viridarium chymicum figuris cupro incis[i]s adornatum, et poeticis picturis illustratum (1624)2 Another title, modeled after the fiction of the time, especially the He- catommithi, is the Hecatomographie (1540) of Gilles Corrozet (1510–1568) with its “cent figures & histoires”.3 An often quoted statement by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538–1600) is that and painting are sister arts. Even before him, however, the Scipione Ammirato (1538–1600) emphasized the same close rela- tionship in his Il Rota, ovvero dell’Imprese (1562), declaring that the two arts were born simultaneously. This sibling relationship is developed by Christoforo Giarda (1595–1649), who writes in his Bibliothecae Alexandri- nae icones symbolicae (1626) that poetry is “a careful emulatory picture of nature”, and that painters, seeing how perfectly the poets imitate nature, strive to surpass them. Painters and poets in the last analysis emulate their common parentage, namely nature: the former with lines, figures,

1 For several interesting articles on that topic see Word & Image. Volume I, Number 1 (January–March 1985).—Cf. also Mario Praz, “Ut Pictura Poesis”, in: Praz, Mnemosyne: The Parallel Between and the Visual Arts. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1970, pp. 3–27; Thomas Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting: ’s Poetics and the Rise of the Modern Artist. New Haven / London: Yale UP, 2005, pp. 27–33; William G. Howard, “Ut pictura poesis”, PMLA 24 (1909), 40–123. 2 Robert J. Clements, Picta Poesis: Literary and Humanistic Theory in Renaissance Emblem Books. Temi & Testi, 6. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1960, p. 175. 3 On the general context cf. Vuilleumier Laurent, La Raison des figures sym- boliques à la Renaissance et à l’âge classique: Etudes sur les fondements philosophiques, théologiques et rhétoriques de l’image. Genève: Droz, 2000. 90 chapter twelve and shadows, the latter with arguments, words, and rhetorical figures. Giarda continues: The painter thinks himself victorious because he subjects things to the eyes and rather often deceives them; the poet claims to be the winner because he expresses things to minds, and often sweeps them up in deceits.4 Painting imitates bodies, poetry not only bodies but minds as well. The visual arts are bold, yet poetry is bolder. On this point he quotes the begin- ning of Horace’s Ars Poetica, in which the author rejects the composite figure of the grotesque.5 When Joachim du Bellay (1522–1560) offers ironic criticism of poor translators in La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoise (1527), he also assigns a significant role to enargeia and the rhetoric of the image. He does so in two successive chapters: in chapter 5 entitled “Que les Traduc- tions ne sont suffisantes pour donner perfection à la Langue Francoyse” and in chapter 6 entitled “Des mauvais Traducteurs, et de ne traduyre les Poëtes”: eloquution (dy je) par la quelle principalement un orateur est jugé plus excellent, & un genre de dire meilleur que l’autre: comme celle dont est apellée la mesme eloquence: & dont la vertu gist aux motz propres, usitez & non aliénes du commun usaige de parler, aux methaphores, alegories, com- paraisons, similitudes, energies, & tant d’autres figures & ornemens, sans les quelz tout oraison & poëme sont nudz, manques & debiles: je ne croyray jamais qu’on puisse bien apprendre tout cela des traducteurs, pour ce qu’il est impossible de le rendre avecques la mesme grace dont l’autheur en a usé: d’autant que chacune Langue a je ne scay quoy propre seulement à elle, dont si vous efforcez exprimer le naif en une autre Langue, observant la loy de traduyre, qui est n’espacier point hors des limites de l’aucteur, vostre dic- tion sera contrainte, froide, & de mauvaise grace. Et qu’ainsi soit, qu’on me lyse un Demosthene & Homere , un Ciceron & Vergile Francoys, pour voir s’ilz vous engendreront telles affections, voyre ainsi qu’un Prothée vous transformeront en diverses sortes, comme vous sentez, lysant ces aucteurs en leurs Langues. [. . . . .]. Mais que diray-je d’aucuns, vrayement mieux dignes d’estre appellés tra- diteurs que traducteurs? Veu qu’ilz trahissent ceux qu’ilz entreprennent exposer, les frustrant de leur gloire, & par mesme moyen seduysent les

4 Christophorus Giarda, Icones Symbolicae. Milano, 1628, p. 96. Translation by R.J. Cle- ments in: Picta Poesis, p. 176. 5 On the history of the grotesque cf. Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Litera- ture. Tr. U. Weisstein. New York: Columbia UP, 1981 (1963). For the English Renaissance cf. Neil Rhodes, Elizabethan Grotesque. London / Boston: & Kegan Paul, 1980.