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Material Gazes and Flying Images in Marsilio Ficino and Michelangelo

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Material Gazes and Flying Images in Marsilio Ficino and Michelangelo MATERIAL GAZES AND FLYING IMAGES IN MARSILIO FICINO AND MICHELANGELO Berthold Hub Theories of Vision in Antiquity Theories of vision in antiquity can be broadly divided into two groups: \ rstly, theories that assume that, from the surfaces of all objects, there is a constant and rapid stream of ne layers of atoms, material images – a kind of double – that is released as if in thin coats and ows to the eyes and is absorbed by them. This conception is assumed by Dem- ocritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and other representatives of the atomistic philosophy. Secondly, theories that assume there are material rays which, conversely, stream out from the eyes and meet the objects in the \ eld of vision. These theories include not only the visual-ray cone of mathematicians such as Euclid and Ptolemy, but also the ery rays of the Pythagoreans, Plato’s synaugia (radiating together) of inner and outer \ re, and the visual ray consisting of a mixture of pneuma and air in the Stoic tradition, which was adopted by Galen’s school of medicine.1 Common to all of these theories is the way in which vision is regarded as a haptic process – i.e., the basic assumption that vision requires physi- cal contact between the viewer and the object being viewed. Extramis- sion and intromission theories differ in this respect only in the way in which they answer the question of which side the movement leading to physical contact starts from. The fact that physical contact is involved is immediately evident in the atomistic view, which assumes the exis- tence of an atomic and thus material double of the objects that meet the eye in an unchanged order. However, the extramission theory also assumes physical contact. Its visual rays are in no sense mere geometric abstractions intended to allow questions of perspective to be analysed. Instead, they involve physical entities. These entities are of a material 1 See in particular Lindberg D.C., Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: 1976) and Simon G., Le Regard, l’être et l’apparence dans l’optique de l’antiquité (Paris: 1988). 94 berthold hub (more or less ery) nature, extend spatially, continue in straight lines, and are de ected by an obstacle such as a mirror, or interrupted by an obstacle such as water.2 From Heron of Alexandria to Ptolemy, the re] exion of the visual ray is compared with the rebound of a missile, and this conception needs to be taken literally.3 However, the visual ray emitted by the eye is not only of a material nature, but is equipped in addition with a facility for sensation – and thus with sensation that takes place outside the body. The expression ‘outside the body’ is not really accurate, as the visual ray can only be regarded as a kind of excrescence from the body, an ephemeral organ that is capable of feeling the objects in the visual eld even at the great- est distance and extension. As early as Hipparchus, there is an explicit comparison with the hand: the ends of the rays emitted by the eyes touch the bodies in the external world in the way that hands do, and then return to the eye.4 The pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata declare that ‘what is seen is seen through the contact (touching) of the visual rays.’5 Apuleius reports the assumption by numerous philosophers that ‘our visual rays [. .] as soon as they fall on a solid, shining and smooth body, spring back at the same angle that they enter to the face from which they emanated, and in this way depict what they touch and see externally within the mirror.’6 Ptolemy holds a similar view, according to which ‘objects are apprehended (as) concave by means of the surfaces of convex bases (de ned by impinging visual rays), whereas objects are apprehended (as convex) by means of the surfaces of concave bases, just as such objects are perceived by touch, convex ones being appre- hended through the concavity of the encircling hand, and concave 2 See, for example, Damianus, Optics 12: ‘That we see what we see through our visual ray either meeting objects directly or being interrupted and re] ected, or passing through a medium and being interrupted thereby.’ In Damianos Schrift über Optik. Mit Auszügen aus Geminos, Greek-German edition, ed. R. Schöne (Berlin: 1897) 5; cf. also Cleomedes, Caelestia II.6; Apuleius, Apologia 15; Ptolemy, Optics III.3 and more often; Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis VII.5; and the citations given in the following footnote. 3 Heron of Alexandria, Catoptrics 2–3; Ptolemy, Optics II.20 and III.19; also III.22–64; cf., for example, Pseudo-Aristotle, Problemata XVI.13. 4 Aetius, Placita philosophorum IV.13.9–10, in Diels H. – Kranz W., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: 19031) 28 A 48. 5 Pseudo-Aristotle, Problemata III.10 872 b. 6 Apologia 15; Apuleius of Madauros, Pro se de magia (Apologia), ed. V. Hunink, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: 1997) 46–47..
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