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Ars Simia Naturae: the Animal As Mediator and Alter Ego of the Artist in the Renaissance

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Ars Simia Naturae: the Animal As Mediator and Alter Ego of the Artist in the Renaissance explorations in renaissance culture 43 (2017) 202-231 brill.com/erc Ars simia naturae: The Animal as Mediator and Alter Ego of the Artist in the Renaissance Simona Cohen Tel-Aviv University [email protected] Abstract Past research on animals in Renaissance art has indicated their functions as signifiers of human characteristics. This study demonstrates stages in developments of Renais- sance art that illustrate transitions from anthropocentric to theriocentric approaches in animal symbolism, where animals are perceived and valued in their own right. Tra- ditional negative animal symbolism was not relinquished, but new types of animal depictions have testified to new attitudes. Iconography of the dog and the ape, for example, represents two issues relating to human-animal relationships in the Renais- sance. Changing conceptions of the dog, its function in artistic narrative, as related to the artist, his self-image and awareness of the spectator, are examined. The ape became a metaphor of the universal artist and clever imitator of nature. While late- sixteenth- and seventeenth-century illustrations referring to artistic imitatio were harshly judi- cial, the idea of animals as mediators is demonstrated by the artist who tends not only to empathize with animals but also to identify with them. Keywords animal symbolism – iconography of dogs – iconography of monkeys – human-animal relations – self-portraits The early Christian and medieval bestiary tradition promoted the use of ani- mal imagery as metaphors and similes, based primarily on fundamental con- ceptions of human beastliness. In other words, humans and not animals were the ultimate object of the animal images adopted in stereotyped moralistic © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/23526963-04302004Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:46:26AM via free access <UN> Ars simia naturae 203 concepts.1 My past research on animals in medieval and Renaissance art has demonstrated their functions as signifiers of human characteristics and traits.2 Here, I would like to demonstrate developments of Renaissance art that il- lustrate a transition from predominantly anthropocentric to theriocentric approaches in animal depictions, where animals are perceived and valued in their own right.3 This is emphatically not to say that the dominant uses of neg- ative animal symbolism were superseded by new images of a positive nature. Nevertheless, new types of animal depictions testified to new attitudes. The present study will concentrate on the iconography of two exemplary animals, the dog and the monkey, as representatives of two different issues re- lating to human-animal relationships in the Renaissance. Unprecedented con- texts and innovative iconography will first be interpreted to illustrate changing conceptions of the dog, its function in artistic narrative, as related to the artist, his self-image and his awareness of the spectator. These iconographic expres- sions of human-animal interaction and the indicative adoption of animals as artistic mediators have not been discussed in previous scholarly literature. Canine Perspectives An early example of the dog that functions as mediator between the painting and the viewer is Vittore Carpaccio’s Two Venetian Ladies on a Balcony over- looking a canal (ca. 1495) (fig. 1). The ladies are viewed in profile, an angle traditionally adopted to represent feminine modesty,4 as they interact with a child and animals. In contrast to the distracted ladies, the little white dog in the foreground is looking directly at us. His bright red collar decorated with bells, in keeping with late medieval tra- dition, probably conveys fidelity or loyalty, the most praised canine attribute in the Middle Ages. The white dog was also associated with Christian fertility myths.5 This panel painting was assumedly designed as a door or shutter for a piece of domestic furniture planned as a wedding gift for a future bride. It would probably be intended for the intimacy of the bedroom, where the bride 1 Cohen, Animals and cited articles. 2 Cohen, Animals 3–22. 3 Arbel 59–80. 4 Simons 4–30. 5 Cohen, Animals 119–23. explorations in renaissance culture 43 (2017) 202-231Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:46:26AM via free access <UN> 204 Cohen Figure 1 Vittore Carpaccio, Venetian Ladies on a Balcony, tempera and oil on panel, 94 × 63 cm., ca. 1495–1510, Museo Civico Correr, Venice. would note the gaze of the little white dog inviting her to read the didactic messages of exemplary behavior.6 Carpaccio repeated this unusual strategy, involving the spectator, in the alle- gorical painting of The Knight in a Landscape (1510, Museo Thyssen-Bornemis za, Madrid), where a sly-looking dog with a sword above his head peers out at the viewer.7 The association of the dog with treachery and persecution, as illustrat- ed there, was derived from the glosses on Psalms 21 and 22 and from narrative Passion literature. As a rule, participants in Renaissance narrative or religious paintings were conceived to be unaware of the spectator as they interacted in a world to which he had no access. Not long after Carpaccio introduced his enigmatic dogs, the Venetian painter Titian portrayed a young member of the Pesaro family family as a marginal figure in a group painting, the Madonna di Ca’Pesaro (1518, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice). The figure seems more concerned with the viewer facing him than with the Madonna he is supposed 6 Cohen, Animals 131–32. 7 Interpretation of this painting is discussed in Cohen, Animals 79–81. See Marrow 167–81. Regarding the animal/sin theme, see Cohen, Animals 135–64. explorations in renaissance Downloadedculture from 43 Brill.com10/04/2021 (2017) 202-231 06:46:26AM via free access <UN> Ars simia naturae 205 to be worshipping in the Frari altarpiece. This idea may originate with Alberti, who suggested that contact between the viewer and the painting may be en- hanced by representing someone in the painting who signals to the spectator what is happening.8 But the case of the animal, as the only participant to show awareness of the spectator, is of particular interest. This and other innovative aspects of the animal depictions that first appear primarily, though not exclu- sively, in Venetian art of the early sixteenth century, raise questions not only of animal symbolism, but also regarding conceptions of animal intuition, in- telligence and communication, and human identification with animals. These issues, as reflected in relevant illustrations, will be discussed below. In Carpaccio’s Vision of St. Augustine, or St. Augustine in his Study (ca. 1502, Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice) (fig. 2), the alert dog is aware of, or is actually sharing, a spiritual, metaphysical event. Saint Augustine, in the process of writing a letter to Saint Jerome, is interrupted by the sound of Jerome’s dying message.9 Both the dog and the saint see the light from the window—the holy vision. The little dog is no longer sleeping, as in artistic precedents of the scholar in his study, but is shown to participate in the prophetic visionary experience. At the same time, Renaissance humanists were reviving classical sources that Figure 2 Vittore Carpaccio, St. Augustine in his Study, oil on canvas, 141 × 211 cm., ca. 1502, Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice. 8 Alberti, On Painting and Sculpture, paragraphs 40 and 41; Land 12–14, 76–77. 9 Roberts 283–97 and Fortini Brown 507–37, esp. 513–14. explorations in renaissance culture 43 (2017) 202-231Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:46:26AM via free access <UN> 206 Cohen illustrated or debated issues of animal intelligence and the superiority of ani- mal instincts and senses.10 The revival of classical literature was a salient factor in the promotion of positive conceptions of the canine character and faculties. The late antique Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, known from the early fifteenth century in manu- scripts and published by Aldus Manutius in Venice (1505), was considered an authoritative source of ancient Egyptian wisdom.11 Among the interpretations assigned to the canine hieroglyph was that of “sacred scribe” and “prophet.” Piero Valeriano in his Hieroglyphica (1556) would continue to promote the im- age of the dog’s prophetic and intuitive abilities.12 The dog was increasingly cast in an authoritative role, attesting to miraculous and supernatural events by virtue of its superior perception. The third century philosopher Sextus Empiricus introduced the figure of the inquisitive dog stalking his prey on the crossroads in his Outlines of Pyr- rhonism.13 He stated that animals experience different sense impressions than humans and that there are many cases in which animals reveal themselves to be superior to man himself. Luciano Floridi has shown that the works of Sextus Empiricus were rediscovered, translated into Latin and published during the Renaissance. A Latin translation of his Outlines of Pyrrhonism was published in Paris in 1562; a complete Latin translation by Gentian Hervet titled Adver- sus mathematicus followed, in Paris, in 1569, and the Greek text was published in 1621. The issue of the investigative dog was also promoted by Aelian’s On Animals,14 which Conrad Gesner translated into Latin as De natura animalium (1550). It reads as follows: If even animals know how to reason deductively, understand dialectic, and how to choose one thing in preference to another, we shall be justi- fied in asserting that in all subjects Nature is an instructress without a rival. For example, this was told me by one who had some experience in dialectic and to some degree was a devotee of the chase. There was a 10 Contributions to scholarship in this field were made by Reuterswärd, Höltgen, Papy, Baumlin and Watson. 11 Horapollo, Hieroglyphica. 12 Valeriano, Hieroglyphica. 13 Floridi; on later Renaissance influences of Sextus Empiricus and the school of skepticism, see Fudge 114–22.
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