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Leon Battista Alberti and His Somniatic Troubles Leon Battista Alberti and His Somniatic Troubles The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Jarzombek, Mark. "Leon Battista Alberti and His Somniatic Troubles." Thresholds 43 (January 2015): 102-309 © 2015 The Author As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00060 Publisher MIT Press - Journals Version Final published version Citable link https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122056 Terms of Use Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. LEO N BAT TIS TA ek A b L m o B z E r a R J T I k r A a N M D S H I E S L S B O M U N I A O T I C R T 102 Jarzombek “Because I am so melancholy,” Alberti writes, “it is perhaps suitable to live in that place where men go when they dream.” There, so he adds, “one is permitted to rave in safety and to one’s heart’s content.” With such words, Alberti begins one of the earliest dream journeys of the Renaissance, remarkable in its Bosch- like grottesqueness. Entitled Som- nium and written as part of a larger work called Intercoenales (Table Talks), the dream was one of about two dozen short dialogues that explore a range of issues from family, love, and politics to life itself. Com- piled around 1440, Intercoenales, as the title indicates, was intended to be read inter coenas et pocula, that is, “between food and drink,” in other words as entertainment pieces be- tween the courses of a banquet.1 The dialogues are, however, far from being just entertainment, and Som- nium is certainly one of the strangest if not the darkest of these pieces. Coming from a person who is other- wise known as the epitome of the “The Renaissance Man,” its less than optimistic tone is perhaps a bit puzzling. The dream is, of course, not a real dream, but a literary genre. The fifth century Macrobius codified the different types of dreams in his Commentary on Scipio’s Dream. There are five: insomnium, a 1 The translations used in this artiCle are mine. For the Full EnGlish translation of Intercoenales see: Dinner Pieces, trans. David Marsh (BinGhamton, NY: Medieval and RenaissanCe Texts and Studies, 1987). Jarzombek 103 nightmare; visium, a daydream; visio, of Books. A scholar and a philosopher, a prevision of the future; oraculum, he has just emerged from a type a declaration by a venerable person, of underworld, and tells his story to and finally somnium, a political an acquaintance, Lepidus, whose allegory, which is what we more or name means something like Mr. less have here. By the beginning Charming. Lepidus is the proverbial of the 13 th century, such dreams had man about town. But he is not begun to be used by philosophers, completely devoid of intelligence. At theologians, saints and lay writers. the end of the story, when Lepidus King Henry I of England, for exam- advises Libripeta to “take a bath” and ple, had a somnium in 1130 in which to wash off the stink from the sewer he saw himself attacked by repre- through which he crawled, he is sentatives of different elements implying that Libripeta should wash of society. There is Boccaccio’s Amo- off more than just the stink, perhaps rosa Visone (1342) and Brunetto even the “wisdom learned from the Latini’s Tresoretto (1262). Perhaps sewer” (...cloacarium prudentiam...). most relevant is Roman de la Rose by But it is unlikely that Libripeta can Guillaume de Lorris, composed completely cleanse his mind, for his around 1220, a work known to both discovery of the terrible truth of Dante and Petrarch, which begins life leaves him in a quandary of how with the lover falling asleep at the to proceed with his knowledge. end of a beautiful spring day. His various subsequent experiences Though Libripeta is a character in revolve around the tension between Alberti’s imagination, he is strikingly love and suffering, and between the close to an autobiographical figure. real and the illusory. But Amorosa And this forces us to consider Visone in fifty cantos is far different the words in De pictura where Alberti from Alberti’s short Somnium. Amo- states that “we should paint what rosa Visone is a story of love inter- we see.” Clearly the instructions spersed with didactic lectures that to the painter keeps him focused on charts the “victory” of wisdom, glory, the real and not on the ‘philosophical’ wealth, fortune and love. Somnium, with all its potential for melan- though it does address the futilities cholic despair. The Albertian painter of love, is a social commentary with is, of course, told to learn a little a minimum of allegoricalism. oratory and some mathematics, but he is given one and only one book Alberti’s dreamer is a man called to read, namely De picture itself, thus Libripeta, whose name means Lover entrapping the Albertian artist in a 104 Jarzombek world that allows not a single, and small chapels. In Chapter 4 he dangerous glimpse into the darker even pauses to read some inspiring realities of life. The artist, just and noteworthy inscriptions on like his work, is a necessary illusion. these monuments. Then he describes, Between the philosopher and the in Chapter 5, large watchtowers artist, the one “dreams,” the other just outside the city, testament to the paints; the one knows too much, the city’s strength. At the beginning of other not enough. The disaster the next chapter, he announces: “It that is society thus seems to require is now time to make our entrance a cunning between different types into the city.” Going through the city of knowing. The painter is not just a gates and over bridges and follow- skilled artisan, but an ontological ing the streets, he observes the bus- construct that perpetuates and even tling squares, the protected porti- constructs a type of perspectival coes and the various types of markets. mythology. The painter embraces the Then in Chapter 7 he comes to self-interest of self-deception. public theaters and other places of diversion and amusement along The crisis of mimesis — or perhaps with amphitheaters and public walks. better stated, the crisis that is Finally he comes to the center of the mimesis — becomes even more city, where he sees the senate house, complex when we take into consid- the temple, shady groves and lakes eration the famous treatise De re for swimming and finally — and how aedificatoria. Scholars when studying could it be otherwise — a library. this work have missed a rather important component, a description These two ‘walks,’ the one in Som- in Book 8 of a carefully-planned nium and the other in De re aedifica- journey from the countryside to the toria, seem to be set against each center of town. In Chapters 1 and 2 other. The first one takes place in the of the book, the author is on the underbelly of the city where Libripeta outskirts of the city. Traveling along traverses a large volcanic garbage a highway he views “houses and dump; there he sees things that villas, a fine hill, now a river, now a are thrown away — everything that is spring, now a clearing.” He soon “except stupidity.” The other walk comes upon great and noble sepulch- takes place in a world at peace with ers of important families, and then itself and portrays a society in an upon monuments to the heroes of the untroubled condition. Here too, there city. In Chapter 3 he passes other are precedents, such as that great graveyards with obelisks, pyramids masterpiece of visualization, The Jarzombek 105 Allegory of Good and Bad Government knowledge of good and evil are (1338) by Ambrogio Lorenzett in separate and distinct epistemological the Siena Town Hall. On the one wall realms. The Albertian architect and of the Sala dei Nove the fresco painter have to operate without shows the virtues lined up along with knowing of the truth of social reality. the elegant figures of Justice and Thus, unlike a medieval morality tale, Truth. The city behind them is home and unlike the Sala dei Nove where to busy merchants and to men the two worlds are equipoised, here and women doing their daily tasks. evil does not release itself into the There is a wedding procession, and higher metaphysics of good. It exists maidens can be seen dancing grace- in its own world, meaning that fully. On the other side of the room, Libripeta struggles with the resultant we see an image haunted by the melancholy and its concomitant self-assured presence of the demonic “safety of madness” that will never tyrant holding a dagger in his hand. resolve itself into redemption. The city is in disrepair and to one side As Lepidus so artfully points out, a woman is sawing herself in half. Libripeta will always keep his books “under lock and key.” This means that if we take Alberti’s De pictura and De re aedificatoria Alberti was well aware of the ancient as stand-alone writings, we will come satirist tradition that aimed to expose to the predictable conclusion that the vices of a world. But I would these texts are ‘the first’ such trea- hold that to locate Somnium in that tises on their respective topics context does not go far enough. and that the primary reference is to Somnium evokes an underlying fear, Latin antiquity.
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