The arts of the West hit a turning point in the Renaissance. But inversion in the arts is part of a much larger failure. Part one in a look at centralization and secular transcendence in art and faith.
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Baccio Bandinelli and Vincenzo de' Rossi, Pope Leo X Medici, 1540s, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
The last post looked over the impact of the Renaissance on the arts of the West and the descent to Modernism. After sifting through a wave of genius artists and innovations, we found the biggest single problem in the inversion of the arts is centralization.
This isn't surprising. It’s inherent in the ontology. But it gets even more serious. Because the sort of centralization that lets the arts get jacked doesn't happen without a more profound centralization in Christianity itself.
Giovanni Caccini, Clement VII Medici Crowning Charles V, 1594, Palazzo Vecchio
No, it isn't a conservative homing in on a copy of the constitution. It's the other Medici pope - the one that presided over the devastating Sack of Rome in 1527 - crowning the emperor whose troops did the sacking.
There is literally nothing in scripture that either calls for or predicts this specific arrangement. And whether it fits the arbitrary definition of a made-up word like "caesaropapism is beyond irrelevant. Ladies and gentlemen, the "vicars of Christ"...
This post has to pull a few things together. Centralization in the arts was the working topic, but looking at the later Middle Ages outside of Italy made us realize we need to consider the medieval papacy more closely. And that raised massive category errors in the nature of medieval Christianity. Because while the man-made institutional "Church" may promote a Christian message, there is nothing in Jesus' teachings that necessitate this structure. And if the structure isn't ontologically necessary for salvation...
Start with a glance at "Northern Renaissance" art. It looks very different from the contemporary Italians and reflects different cultural concerns. Put aside sub-regional differences for now - just a broad north-south distinction is enough to drive home that this is a different tradition. And why is that? Because art traditionally developed organically in the West. Bottom-up, out of socio-cultural inputs. "Northern" painters reflect their cultural concerns, just like the Italians. The paintings look different because the artists and audience are.
Dieric Bouts, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1455-1460, oil on panel, Louvre Museum
Ugly malformed-looking characters - even for the Holy Family - are typical. No idea why - but it makes even the most sincere devotional picture unpleasant to have to look at. Presumably the melodrama is appealing? The landscape is nice, but if you were looking to drive people from Christianity, these creatures would be a good start.
Regardless of our assessment, this is a very different cultural projection from the ideals of beauty in Donatello or Botticelli.
Hieronymous Bosch, Ecce Homo,1480-1490. oil on panel, Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum
Here, ugly characters correspond with their ethical bent - physical ugliness as moral ugliness.
Two important consideration - the enhanced emotion is a sign of religious disquiet and anxiety that will lead to the Reformation. The late medieval Church had lost the ability to attend to collective spiritual needs.
The other is the focus on the local environment. Bosch included a nice Netherlandish setting for a Gospel scene. This facilitates identification.
Joachim Patinir, The Flight into Egypt, 1516-1517, oil on panel, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp
This emphasis on contemporary life carries into new genres of painting. Landscape and still-life develop in the north before they do in Italy.
Pretty easy to see that these artists are operating in a different frame of reference. The media are close enough - northern oil paint will predominate in Italy too. And the subjects are Christian in both. But one major factor is the lack of the classical humanist tradition in northern art.
Italian Renaissance art looks to harmonize Classical humanism and Christianity in various ways. It comes from the old Greco-Roman idealization that was more of a presence in Italy - even before the humanists are actively digging it up. This means that the Italians wind up putting value on human material beauty that the Northerners don't. This humanistic aesthetic is obviously different from the ethereal International Gothic beauty that still lingered in the North. Northers art shows a starker contrast between the fallen world and divine beauty. There's no room for the metaphysics of microcosm like the Pythagorean harmonies of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man. Man not only isn't "the measure", his creation in God's image is lost in the degeneracy of the fall.
Hans Memling, The Last Judgment, 1466-1473, oil on panel, National Museum
The figures are eye-bleach ugly but the cosmic setting is glorious. Phantasmagoric even. The discrepency between our abasement and the glory of Creation - not the continuity - is what comes through.
The people have the presence of invertebrate tube worms - all the best to show the diametric ontological opposition between fallen humanity and the glory of God. Note the Gothic grace in the angel, but complete lack of Classical contrapposto. Even the elect look weak and ugly. And look how relative few are on the saved side. Anti-humanism but Christian realism.
Note that the ugliness isn't lack of talent. This is a very technically accomplished painting. It's the metaphysics.
Memling's techne comes through in the two wings showing Heaven and Hell. Handling of space and architecture match his color. The lack of the humanistic is easier to see when it doesn't seem like the artist's limitations. So much of this "Northern Renaissance" is just ugly hack-work - it's important to be attentive to the quality.
And if we aren't distracted by crappy artists, the positive qualities shine. Note how extreme the difference in options is. And how much larger a percentage are Hell-bound. This in a society where the vast vast majority were nominally Christian.
Stick to competent Northern artists like Memling for simplicity. What comes through is a stark awareness of the fallen nature of humanity and the pointlessness of trying to rectify it ourselves. Even with a really really good version of Cicero.
This vision not compatable with classical idealism of the human form. Worldly perfection - even as a potential - is utterly alien. The bleakness comes from the graphic realization of a narrow gate - even in a nominally Christian culture. Attention to the social history of religion indicates that the melodrama - the emotional intensity and fear - is the sign of a larger cultural anxiety over damnation.
Dieric Bouts, Mater Dolorosa/Ecce Homo (diptych), after 1450
These are supposed to be Mary and Jesus, not mutant cosplayers. The exaggerated red eyes signify "weeping" and not a viral infection.
Imagine staring mindlessly at this in lieu of Logos then wondering why God seems to bring no consolation.
The sourthern church corrupted by turning to classical pagan humanism. The Northern church corrupted by confusing representation and reality then sinking into idolatry instead of faith. Anyone surprised that all the gory pictures, fake relics, statue worship, and the rest didn't fill the void?
Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Man of sorrows, 1485-1495, oil on wood panel, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht
How about a psycho-sexual exploration of homoerotic sado-masochism claiming to be "Christian"? Guess what? This mosntrosity didn't set religious anxieties to rest. How could it? There's no Logos here.
As always, organic art expresses culture and the art of the Northern Renaissance shows steady, mounting religious anxiety and disorder. An overwhelming need to figuratively touch. A sign that the existing religious structures no longer satified spiritual needs. Sounds familiar - will get back to it.
The first point to address though is the art. Before getting into the failure of the medieval Church, just consider the difference in appearance. Northern and Southern art look so different because they reflect the very different environments. Since they are organic expressions of culture, they don't show the same things in the same ways. You can see the cultural differences.
Hans Memling, Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, 1485, oil on wood panel, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg
Consider this mysterious piece from Memling. Six panels that had once been organized in back-to-back pairs in an eschatological allegory.
The problem is that they were divided up sometime before the 20th century. Now no one knows exactly how they were configured, the exact purpose, or even if there were more pieces to it. And not knowing how these were assembled prevents us from looking at complex interactions between them. But the picture types are all common in the late medieval North. And the general gist is easy enough to grasp from the subjects.
First the vivid eschatological poles. Color and form ramp up the emotional impact. There isn't anything so lurid in the Italian mainstream.
Satan's ribbon reads "there is no redemption in Hell".
Cautionary panels share similar arrangements. This may be intentional to make a connection between sin and death. Note the prominent genitalia. The sin looks like Vanity. Death's ribbon reads "This is the end of Man; I am like mud clay and I return to dust and ashes".
A momento mori and a coat-of-arms. The text around the skull reads "for I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Job 19: 25-26. The unknown family's motto - "no good without effort".
These are obvious enough as symbols that we can get the point without the exact order. The bottom ones encourages the client to keep working and remember that death is coming. The middle two caution against vanity and remind again that death is coming. The top two are the outcomes - why it matters. Intense, visceral - and totally unclassical. Even the nude isn't a Classical Venus type. And neither she nor Death are in contrapposto.
A few years later this Florentine master painted his only Roman frescos. According to Infogalactic, the Medici introduced Lippi to the client - a Cardinal from another powerful aristocratic family. This shows Lippi was connected and employed at the highest levels. But he was of that Botticelli and Perugino generation that got insta-eclipsed by Raphael & Co. The point - Italian contemporary of Memling of comparable status in the Roman-Florentine axis.
Filippino Lippi, Carafa Chapel, around 1488-1493, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome
Compare to the Memling. Other than being Christian paintings...
The emphasis on Classical architecture stands out. Roman arch and decorations.
The Annunciation is framed with Classical columns to mark off an altarpiece. The desire to "see" the holy subject is there - Cardinal Carafa is included. He prays and looks on with St. Dominic as a guide.
The style so different though. Even with Carafa there, the classicism and graceful figures are less luridly visceral than Memling. More "artful".
Memling had no concern for the classical histories of Alberti and the Roman humanists. Just as Lippi didn't try and max out the confusion between image and subject. You watch Carafa visualize - you aren't figuratively there. The aesthetic gets in the way. The Northern works look to break that distance and make the relationship with the painting as immediate and emotional as possible. So that you respond as if the Jesus or Mary were really present.
This ties into Medieval visualization practices. Keep in mind that we are limited to what survives in the historical record, but it does seem that medieval devotion gets more image-centric. Or more vision-centric, since it isn't limited to physical images. The term that gets used is "affective piety". Here's the Infogalactic definition - it's sound, but the article includes lots of academic nonsense projection . Take a look at the link if interested and see if you can spot the onto-epistemological poverty.
Affective piety - highly emotional devotion to the humanity of Jesus, particularly in his infancy and his death, and to the joys and sorrows of the Virgin Mary. It was a major influence on many varieties of devotional literature in late-medieval Europe... This practice of prayer, reading, and meditation was often cultivated through visualization and concentration on vivid images of scenes from the Bible, Saints' Lives, Virgin Mary, Christ and religious symbols, feeling from the result. These images could be either conjured up in people's minds when they read or heard poetry and other pieces of religious literature, or they could gaze on manuscript illuminations and other pieces of art as they prayed and meditated on the scenes depicted. In either case, this style of affective meditation asked the "viewer" to engage with the scene as if she or he were physically present and to stir up feelings of love, fear, grief, and/or repentance"
Here's 14th-century Englihs mystic Richard Rolle in his Meditation on the Passion from the same article.
Ah, Lord, your sorrow--why was it not my death? Now they lead you forth as naked as a worm, with torturers around you and armed knights. The press of the crowd was incredibly intense as they threw things and harried you so shamefully, kicking at you as if you had been a dog. I see in my soul how ruefully you walk, your body so bloody, so raw and blistered. The crown on your head is so sharp, and your hair, blown in the wind, is all matted with blood. Your lovely face is so pale and swollen with the blows and the beatings, and covered with spittle and phlegm. And down runs your blood; it horrifies me to see it.
The first problem is obvious. Rolle isn't "seeing" the Passion. He's picturing a subjective impression of an impossibly distant historical event shaped by his experiences in 14th-century England. It is projection by definition. Is it wrong to pray this way? Who knows? But what is dangerous is elevating subjective emotion to the subject of prayer. Devotion is affective and moving by nature. But that is a consequence of connecting with Logos, not the point. So not inherently wrong, but removing obstacles to replacing objective Truth with personal appeal. The path opens to the self-deifying inversion of placing man-made structure ontologically prior to Jesus. The actual Christian Logos.
Richard the Hermit (Richard Rolle) and The Desert of Religion, 1425, ink and pigments on vellum, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VI
According to the link above, The Desert of Religion' is a anonymous northern English poem that uses a forest as an allegory of virtue and vice. This version pairs devotional figures and verses with. Here's Richard the Hermit (Richard Rolle) with the initials of Jesus angels.
Richard's subjective material focus isn't inherently inverted. Like any material thing it is looking through the darkling glass at the valley of shadow. That is, proceeding empirically in an entropic world defined by limits of discernment. The application depends on the applier - are reader and culture Logos-facing, or is do what thou wilt more the game?
Again - it isn't that affective piety is necessarily evil. It's that pedestalizing subjective imagination displaces objective Truth as devotional front and center. Once the dopamine is involved, spiritual fulfillment becomes like chasing the dragon. And without an objective focus, this can go sideways in a hurry.
Rohan Hours, Lamentation of the Virgin, 1435, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, M.S. Latin 9471, f. 135
It's apparent in this borderline blasphemous filth. Whatever these demons are, the relationship to "Christianity" is tangential. And personifying God the Father as a drippy cuck actually is idolatrous by any measure. No wonder iconoclasm happened.
The "Church" clearly wasn't satisfying the people. But the answer was to double down on the "affective piety". It's a medieval version of a religion based on muh feels. The people were sincere in their Christian faith. But Muhfeelsianity doesn't have anything to stop the subjective dragon-chasing from inverting.
Medieval religious visualization is a far-out subject that most moderns know little about. As the Infogalactic link shows, the "academic" version is littered with Philosopher's Names and postmodern projection. Click for a comparatively non-masturbatory example. The pretense seems to be that quote-mining random medieval sources for "visuality" - an unnecessary jargon word that means assumptions about sight - proves "seeing" had a different meaning in the Middle Ages...
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The reality is that medievals weren't ontologically gelded, so most everything they did was more profound. They recognized that the world reflected ontological foundations - like how we noted that entropic physical processes materially trace the metaphysical damage of the Fall. Secularist midwits live in Flatland, so they prefer one-dimensional projections off random quotations. And puzzling why no one gives two fucks about the modern "humanities". It's not a question of medieval "Christianity". It's the modern beast system.
Without Logos, theorizing about medieval sight can only matter to career-advancement in a mouse utopia. Think about it from a spiritual discernment and a cognitive scope perspective.
More bluntly, what sort of confessional it it to burn six figures for the privilege of hearing these guys lie about Logos? How can a secularist midwit even grasp the breadth of field?
Student loan dollars at work.
The reality isn't that "sight changed". That's bio-physical processing. What changed is the degree of inversion in the storytelling level of history - where lies and projection bear sterile fruit. It's not the problem with the sources - texts and pictures are what they are. It's that in post-enlightenment nonsense world, self-fluffing replaced metaphysical discernment.
What was happening is that Christians were expressing the connection to Logos differently. In increasingly vivid and sometimes weird ways. This is the dissatisfaction with conventional religion mentioned earlier. With a visceral desire to get closer to - to touch - the humanity of Jesus and Mary. On top of that, the propensity for allegory and figurative thinking piles up extra significance.
The Boucicaut Master, Arma Christi, from the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut, 1405-1408
The Arma Christi is a form of shorthand to help with visualization in Passion meditations. Like a mnemonic stations of the cross. The reader can systematically tick through each affront.
Note the disembodied side wound at the bottom. The wounds of Christ - source of the precious Holy Blood - is ground zero for affective devotion and visualization. Retards note the resemblance to female genitalia because they know less about artistic conventions and devotional literature than a tapeworm.
Full-page grisaille miniature of the Five Wounds of Christ from a 15th-century Dutch Book of Hours. Walters Art Museum Ms. W.165, fol. 110v.
For non-retards who are interested, here's a roughly contemporary devotional image of all five wounds. It's from Holland not France, but late Gothic stylistic similarities are visible in both. When you're stupid, you project fables from one picture. Better to keep until you've acquired some breadth of knowledge.
This one puts the wounds in the positions that they appear on the crucified corpus.
The disembodied wounds are bizarre to modern eyes - even ones with more ontological perspicacity than fruit flies. But they are perfectly consistent with the intensification of focused visualization. We can find plenty of evidence that Jesus' wounds and blood were expected to be subjects of adoration and devotion. Things like abstracting them from the picture is how we know what the changing religious attitudes were.
Go back earlier in the Middle Ages...
Manuscript Leaf with the Crucifixion, from a Parisian Missal, around 1270–80, tempera and gold on parchment
Easy to make out the earlier Gothic style from the 15th-century versions. The Crucifixion with Mary and John the Evangelist on either side was a formation going back to earlier Christianity. So is the tiny Golgotha beneath the Cross - usually with a skull to represent triumph over death. This one has a tiny Adam collecting the blood in a chalice like the kind used for the Eucharist.
The Feast of the Corpus Christi was made up in the 13th century - prior to that it wasn't a necessary addendum to salvation. This is part of an overall explosion of interest in the Host.
In this Italian version from about a century later angels gather the blood in chalices and the Magdalene appears to kiss the wounds while embracing the Cross. What she is doing in the picture is what affective piety strives to reprodice in the imagination.
The mounting obsession with the Eucharist isn't surprising. The idea of the Real Presence was almost too good to be true for a society fixated on getting as close as possible to the sacred.
The Bleeding Host of Dijon, from the Hours of Ogier Bénigne, around 1470-1480, MS. W.291, f.17v, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
The doctrine of transubstantiation is as old as Christianity. The word was only coined in the 12th century, but unlike later inventions like "papal infallibility", this one goes back to Paul - “for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:26-27).
What changed in the later Middle Ages was the prominence in art, writing, and devotion. The feast of the Corpus Christi is an indicator - so are the endless processions of Host miracles that suddenly begin appearing. It's as if after 1000 years of obliviousness Christians woke up to what was on their altars. What changed wasn't the Host. It was the attitude towards and interest in it.
Vision of St Bernard, 14th century, ink and colored washes on paper. Museum Schnütgen, Cologne
The medieval legend that St. Bernard was embraced by a Crucifix is itself part of that visualization approach. But the rain of blood is pure late medieval visceral corporeal devotion.
You can tell it isn't literal because the saint and him nun companion have no blood on them. It's an internal process of "seeing" and embracing.
This selection from the late 15th-century Antidotarius animae by Nicolaus Salicetus pirports to repeat Bernard's devotions on the five wounds.
Wounds of blood-red ruby droplets,
Driven deep-set as in goblets:
These inscribe upon my heartbeat,
Make my joining to you replete
At every moment loving you.
Whoso comes to you to drink deep
And embraces these your pierced feet,
Healed of want, departs from this source
Granted grace of lasting recourse;
With kisses wets your feet anew.”
Meanwhile, here's the Bernard visualization with a different saint a century later.
Anonymous, The Crucifixion with St Bridget in Adoration 1495-1510, The British Museum
This one includes the Golgotha skull. Note once again that the blood does not touch or stain the saint physically. The idea is deep inward empathy.
The permutations of the sacred blood are only one part of this late medieval move towards visual, corporeal piety. What we call a desire to get closer to sacred things. It's common in devotional literature - like Rolle, or 14th-15th century English mystic Margery Kempe. Here's her reaction to a Palm Sunday service - from her autobiographical Book of Margery Kempe, Book I, part II, lines 4368-4377
Many yerys on Palme Sonday, as this creatur was at the processyon wyth other
good pepyl in the chirch yerd and beheld how the preystys dedyn her observawnce,
how thei knelyd to the sacrament and the pepil also, it semyd to hir gostly sygth as thei
sche had ben that tyme in Jerusalem and seen owr Lord in hys manhod receyvyd of
the pepil as he was whil he went her in erth. Than had sche so meche swetnes and
devocyon that sche myth not beryn it, but cryid, wept, and sobbyd ful boistowsly.
Sche had many an holy thowt of owr Lordys passyon and beheld hym in hir gostly
syght as verily as he had ben aforn hir in hir bodily syght. Therfor myth sche not
wythstondyn wepyng and sobbyng, but sche must nedys wepyn, cryin, and sobbyn
whan sche beheld hir Savyowr suffyr so gret peynys for hir lofe.
Pilgrimage also gains intensity in later Middle Ages - it ties into the cults of the Virgin and other saints and relics. We've come across it in the Romanesque architecture post - as a way for information to travel. But it also corresponds with this same mounting desire for visceral religious contact. The idea of visiting sacred sites is as old as Christianity - older if we consider other traditions. The purpose is to intensify religious commitment. A voyage breaks the patterns and distraction of regular life and puts full attention on faith. Planning and a degree of sacrifice are needed - especially for a long one. Traveling as a group strengthens bonds. It was a big part of medieval Christian society. It was even good for the economy. But things change towards the end of the era...
Michael Ostendorfer, The Pilgrimage to the "Fair Virgin" in Regensburg, around 1520, woodcut print, Coburg Fortress
Check the date - Reformation era. Once the Reformation happened, everyone doubled down on their arbitrary doctrinal interpretations of scripture. The medieval Church had some flexibility - it had to to accommodate everyone. But once Christendom split how you did your Christianity mattered like never before.
This print shows ecstatic pilgrims genuflecting to a miracle-working statue of a "Fair Virgin" - a type of Marian image. Copies of this image were sold as souvenirs. It was good for the economy. But not so good in other ways. Protestant iconoclasm is usually discussed in terms of dueling scriptures. But dryly parsing out if non-idolatrous images are theologically possible is totally different from peasant response to the "magic statue". This has nothing to do with fine distinctions of veneration. This is confusion between the image and the subject - idolatry by any definition. Iconoclasm was radical surgery.
The problem was that the Church had become so corrupt and drunk on worldly glory that this kind of confusion was actively encouraged. We mentioned that the print was sold as a souvenir to the same idolators rolling around on the ground. Not that this matters at all, but the Band sides with Basil of Nyssa and Gregory the Great on images - ok if used for education and inspiration. But not only was no one teaching this, they were cashing in on the abuse.
Albrecht Altdorfer, The Beautiful Virgin of Regensburg, 1519-1520, woodcut printed from six blocks in red, green, blue, light orange, brown, and black, National Gallery of Art
Altdorfer was a major German artist. He was on city council and designed tokens and souvenirs for pilgrims. This is a higher end one.
It gets better. Regensburg really took off when a papal indulgence was offered for undertaking the pilgrimage. Historically, indulgences are exhibit A for medieval secular transcendence. The Early Christian root concept had to do with reducing penance for apostasy and other transgressions. Worldly repentance. But sometime in the 11th century, this switched to remission of sin after death. Then once the term "Purgatory" was invented and a system-chart made up, the two were linked. The indulgence is time off Purgatory. Of course no one is saying "worship the statue". It's all predicated on the popular theology. But the manic group response was known. It's a double game between saying and what's happening that is familiar among the political class today.
Regensburg indulgence, 1465, ink on parchment, Kislak Center for Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Ms. Oversize 28
Indulgence issued on behalf of a group of cardinals to visitors to the church of the Virgin Mary and Saint Catherine in Fronberg in the Bavarian diocese of Regensburg.
Indulgences were typical of the medieval Church's creeping secular power grab. Things like the "treasury of merits" are not so much contradictory to scripture but external.
The problem is a form of bogus argumentation that is endemic in the beast system. Call it the post-facto justification. This is when Biblical passages - or any other isolated data point - are cherry-picked and "interpreted" to justify a pre-existing desire. Suddenly the Church just happens to discover the thing most useful for the current agenda. None of this is Biblical or Patristic for that matter. More importantly, none of this is necessitated by scripture of the Fathers. It was fabricated after the fact to justify something that may or may not be viable morally.
Then there's the abuse.
Israhel van Meckenem, The Mass of Saint Gregory, 1490s, engraving
Van Meckenem was the most prolific engraver of the 15th century, but his life remains mysterious. That's not why we're sharing the print.
This one has an unauthorized indulgence of 20,000 years off Purgatory - each time certain prayers were said before the image. Firstly, the Church did not offer indulgences of that length. Or for praying in front of prints. The whole absurd notion of converting the afterlife into a quantifiable economy probably corresponds with the rise of international banking. But who knows. The point is that a spurious and historically-tracable alteration in the Church opened the door for widespread corruption. Not to mention a massive and legitimate target for Protestant critics that had little to do with core dogma.
The statue that the "pilgrims" are genuflecting to is a Fair Virgin type. Christian sculpture reappeared on altars late in the first millennium - first crucifixes then Madonnas. Smaller ones coulld be processed as well, like this 14th century alabaster in the British Museum
Carrying these around was a way to get people fired up. The statue brought the subjects a little closer. But they also created more opportunities for identity confusion. When miracles are credited to the statues, the simple can confuse them even more easily.
Then there are the reliquaries. The original idea was to give the saintly fragments more impressive containers. But the appearance of body part reliquaries muddies the issue. Pilgrims and other worshippers venerated relics as material connections to the departed saints. The theology of intercession was another medieval invention that tied into the economy of pilgrimage and indulgence. Venerating a relic in a gold box is easy to distinguish. Venerating a statue with a relic in it is a little different.
Reliquary Bust of St. Baudime, 1146-78, copper-gilt over walnut core, ivory, and horn, Mairie de Saint-Nectaire, France; Arm Reliquary of the Apostles, 1180, Gilt silver, champlevé enamel, oak, Cleveland Museum of Art
Having these glowing on the alter and holding the sacred relics that the pilgrims are venerating brings the sacred "closer". It also opens the path to identity confusion. Note how the face tries to create a link.
It's not like they get less potentially idolatrous.
Reliquary bust of a companion of Saint Ursula, 1520–30, oak, polychromed and gilt on plaster ground; glass opening for relic, Metropolitan Museum of Art
So related impulses - visualization of the sacred and the visceral desire to get close to it - reveal the extra-doctrinal excess of late medieval Christianity. It was a major factor in the appeal of the Reformation as a sluicing of the stables. Of course, being fallen, the solution created more problems than it solved, but that comes later.
From the perspective of the arts of the West, religious anxiety and affective piety shape the oil painting revolution in late medieval Flemish art. The visceral realism and lurid phantasmagorias help cross historical distance and fire up the emotions.
Jan van Eyck, Madonna in the Church, around 1438, oil on oak wood, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Take a moment with this unusual picture. Van Eyck's oil detail and realism hide how strange the arrangement is. First of all, look at the size of the Madonna. She'd be about 12-15' tall relative to the architecture. Plus the Assumption was over 1000 years before the invention of Gothic architecture. And why is she wearing a giant jeweled golden crown of the sort favored by early medieval Germanic kings and emperors?
Despite the surface realism, this scene is nor understood to be material real. It's visionary. A visualization. Picture the Madonna in a contemporary church with the stature and accoutrements that a late medieval person would recognize as status markers.
Details provide more information. Note the angels singing behind the choirs screen. It's the visionary qualities that make Flemish art ambiguous. There is no way to determine conclusively if Mary and the angels are visualized in a terrestrial church or if a Gothic church building is being used as a metaphor to visualize Heaven.
The premise that a church is an image of heavenly splendor is a medieval commonplace. Remember Abbot Suger?
A hanging crucifix of the kind that was ubiquitous by the 1400s. Note how the stained glass over the window echoes Mary's crown. Subtle connection between Infancy of Jesus and the Passion - the proleptic passion theme seen before.
The overlap of literal and figurative meanings makes late medieval Flemish painting impossible to conclusively resolve.
There's the crown. Note the inclusion of a Madonna and Child statue of the Madonna in the background. The same sort of statue that we mentioned in relation to pilgrimage.
The statue is supposed to call the actual Madonna and Child to mind. The vivid imaginative participation that makes it easy to confuse representations and reality.
It is an enigmatic picture. Many think it was part of a diptych - a patched pair of paintings that work together on a larger message. No companion piece by Van Eyck survives, but there are copies with the prayerful donor or purchaser of the picture included. The problem is that the Madonna in the Church copies are relatively close, the donors are configured very differently. This makes it intreguing but not conclusive.
Jan Gossaert, Madonna in the Church, St. Anthony with a Donor, around 1510, oil painting, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
Here's one of the copies. It includes the donor and patron saint in adoration. In which case the visionary Madonna is in his - or maybe their depending on the status of the saint - imaginations.
How about the Holy Face of St. Veronica fame? Before the Shroud of Turin first registered on popular consciousness in the 14th century, the Veil of Veronica or Sudarium was the most prominent miraculous image of Christ's visage. The legend held that the likeness was mystically transferred when the saint wiped the suffering Jesus' face on the way to Calvary. Unlike the Shroud, the Veil has not survived intact, so there is no way to see if the same materially inexplicable characteristics apply to it as well. But because it was known much earlier, it has an impact on the medieval mindset that the Shroud couldn't.
Lucas van Leyden, Bearing of the Cross with St. Veronica, 1510s, oil on panel, National Museum in Warsaw
It wasn't the only miraculous likeness - a number of icons claimed divine origin. We'll stick the the Veil as an example - just remember it's not unique in medieval imaginations.
And like anything that brings God physically closer, the Veronica became more and more popular.
It turns up in manuscripts
Dirc van Delf, The Veil of Veronica, Walters manuscript W.171, between 1400 and 1404, ink and pigments on parchment, Walters Art Museum
Master of Guillebert de Mets, Saint Veronica Displaying the Sudarium, about 1450 - 1455, tempera colors, gold leaf, and ink on parchment, Getty Center
Four Veronica pilgrim badges in a Cistercian psalter, 1465, Ms. Thott 117, 8, f.1v, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen
The Veronica was kept in Rome and was a popular pilgrim attraction. Here are some printed tokens of the kind that would be given. Proof of indulgence perhaps. It is all connected.
Alexander Bening, Master of the First Prayerbook of Maximillian, and others, Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain f.184r, 1500, ink, tempera, and gold on vellum, Cleveland Museum of Art
It all comes together right here. An illumination from a royal prayer book covered in pilgrim tokens. Including a small Vera Icon.
The intense desire to see God was present in Italy as well - the Vera Icon was there after all. Likewise other miraculous images like the old Lateran Palace image in the Sancta Sanctorum. According to legend, the Apostle Luke was a painter, so a number of images were credited to him. This one was said to be completed by angels making it an acheiropoieta - image not made by man. The Vera Icon is obviously one as well.
Acheiropoieta lateranensis, repainted face on silk and silver casing from the 12th century, Sancta Sanctorum, Rome
Only traces of the original pigment remain and the body is totally covered in silver. It was carried in procession from at least the time of Pope Sergius I (687–701).
It was customary to process it to meet the Salus Populi Romani - a Madonna also connected to Luke - on the Feast of the Assumption. More confusion between representation and reality.
The difference - at least in what we can actually see - is in the overall intensity. The ultra-realistic depictions, lurid settings, gouts of blood, burning desire to get close, see, touch God. The art shows that this is like a pressure cooker building through the late Middle Ages. What this "means" is another matter and a tad beyond a post. Christian art is always iffy. The question hinges on the definitions of idolatry and graven imagery. The medieval Church took the position that they were just visual texts - for teaching and encouragement, not worship. The more self-consciously arty, the easier this is to maintain. The classical and humanist traditions in Italy may have player a role. Or maybe the historical record we've consulted is skewed. More later.
Fra Angelico, Christ Crowned with Thorns, 1450s, Duomo (Livorno)
Fra Angelico was a leading Florentine painter from the generation after Masaccio. This doesn't look Northers, but it isn't Classical either and is clearly trying for maximum emotional impact. The unnatural use of red adds a bloody cast and stimulates emotional response.
One obvious conclusion is that the religious structure was out of alignment with the religious needs of the people. We need a statue, then a more realistic statue, then one that moves among us, then one that works miracles and bleeds, and so on. This isn't a theological judgment, because there were multiple pathways out. But the need for any pathway indicates that the status quo was failing.
For now we're dealing with centralization in the arts. This has less to do with what they look like than with what they are. The Northern pictures here do look really different from the Italian ones we've examined. That's because healthy art expresses organic culture. The Christian cultures of north and south were different so the art was too. It was even different between sub-regions.
If the arts are de-centralized, one set of liars
can't monopolize all the traditions.
The arts of the West combine technical skill and logos in a material form. If we’re ontological rigorous, this means something super-material via the material. The abstract rules apply to the former - the material part is organic tradition. Rules, but with no pretense of universality. But ontological distinctions are beyond most people, so they confuse them together and blunder along. Only ignoring reality doesn't mean it changes - it's why culture keeps degrading. The problem is that you only notice the black mold when the house is wrote off.
Maarten van Heemskerck, The Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, around 1536-1537, oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Pure post-Renaissance Mannerism from a Dutch admirer of Michelangelo. The body types and landscape show the Northern roots but the nudity and Classical poses are pure centralized theory. And an answer to whether ugly Northern figures stay ugly with an Italian gloss...
Time for some hard truth. We are fallen material creatures looking through a glass darkly from a valley of death. Biblical metaphors - if you prefer the de-moralized synonyms try limits of discernment and entropy. We are intrinsically incapable of grasping what scripture signifies qua itself. So it's past time
to ditch the mental training wheels, stop mistaking signifiers for things, and start internalizing reality.
Every word is heard differently because every hearer has a unique set of connotative references. No two readers have the same experience - even with exactly the same text. It's like a qualitative version of quantitative uncertainty in lab work - every reckoning is slightly off. That's before we get into translations...
Talisman cross, Merovingian, 6th-7th century, niello silver, with magical signs and incantation very close to "Abracadabra"
Magic words only matter if you are a sorcerer. They're the definition of idolatry. Of worshipping a figuration.
Our natural state of subjective, finite indeterminacy means we can never get it "right" - not as far as perfecting ourselves. If we could, grace is unnecessary. So a degree of uncertainty is ontologically necessary. Like a qualitative version of uncertainty in measurement. Concepts, remember. Not signifiers. Every human is different - if God demanded abstract-level perfect certainty, only Jesus would be saved.
The natures of human perception and cognition make it a process of refinement. Of orientation towards logos and the fruits that affirm it. Imperfectly measured growth is still growth. Are you honestly doing your best? If you have a sinful nature, is every day a little better? Forget about doctrinal specifics for the moment - we are told God knows our hearts. And He clearly knows our fallen imperfect natures because He puts such weight on repentance. That IS the self-improvement process. Hold on to this idea - there are implications.
The important thing historically is that conscious ontological savvy wasn't necessary in the traditional West. We started the post by observing that that is a high floor and salvation is offered to all. The three traditional pillars of the West took care of it. They are complementary and Logos-facing. Default basic life set more or less on the right ontological path. It was up to the individual to follow, but that's not new.
This graphic shows how the three pillars align with the ontological hierarchy. Click for the post where this was worked out with an earlier version of the graphic.
This fit was one of the things that made us aware our earliest observations were on the right path. The nations of the West are material, historical things. The Classical heritage is the foundation of the abstract reasoning needed for morality, law, science – any inductive or deductive process. And Christianity offers an account of the ultimate reality in an applicable form for our limited intellects. Since salvation is what really matters, the faith part is sufficient if church dogma is sound.
But when the Modern West de-moralized, the default ontology no longer pointed the right way. The default path would be secular transcendence, materialism, death. Inverted "churches" - "churchianity" to borrow an excellent coinage again - are a major part of the problem.
There is nothing "Christian" about this demonology. Great haircuts though...
Start with something obvious.
Any “church” is an attempt to solve an ontological puzzle. How does the timeless actually manifest in the temporal? This isn't a rhetorical question. We know material reality is uncertain and too limited for abstractions. Historical time keeps changing. With each year the Gospels are more distant.
The Healing of a Bleeding Woman, Rome, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, early 4th century
This depiction of Jesus as a Roman patrician conveyed his leadership to a contemporary audience. Look how different he looks compared to the pictures we are used to seeing.
Here's the reality - Jesus didn't dress like this either.
Even the most staunch literalists don't dress in the robes, togas, and loincloths that were common dress in Biblical times. There's absolutely nothing intrinsically "Biblical" about dressing like 19th-century European farmers either - modesty and lack of ostentation, but no closer to Jesus' wardrobe than a priest's alb.
It's a costume. A uniform. A human social identity that signifies belonging to a community with a set of religious beliefs. There is no Scriptural necessity for costuming. Modesty and virtue? Yes. But still waiting on the commandment to wear Lamont Cranston's hat.
See how easy it is to confuse the arbitrary signifier with the metaphysical meaning?
Material reality adapts and we are material and temporally determined. But those changes must remain compatible with the higher Truth. How to do that is the moral reasoning and tradition part. The Amish costume isn't scripturally necessary, but it isn't immoral either. It's compatible. A material-level social custom that dosen't challenge or even problematize alignment with Logos.
The problem is when the material-level conventions abandon moral reasoning for purely human concerns. The Amish could dress like medieval peasants or Mao's Red Guards and be equally sympatico with Christian modesty and morality on a purely abstract level. They couldn't switch to bikinis and ass-less chaps. Or garments made by slave labor. This is how the material aligns with the abstract - compatibility. Like Tolkien's applicability that we often use in interpretative posts. Not the same, but in alignment with Truth. It's something the binary-thinking of postmodernism totally missed...
Uh-oh. It seems that that much ballyhooed postmodern reveal that symbols are arbitrary is completely and utterly irrelevant to whether the sentiment is more or less truthful. In fact, using the arbitrariness of the sign to comment on veracity of meaning is like thinking a lightbulb manufacturer determines the properties of light.
There is a kind of NPC thinking that lives on the corner of appeal to authority and limited cognition. You can sum it up like this. Accepting the terms of the beast system is an intelligence test among other things. You need to have no functioning memory or the ability to recognize self-contradiction in real time but enough synaptic activity to connect costumed figures on a glowing screen with the concept of reliable knowledge production. Not a substantive connection - just an association. Flack in white labcoat means "Truth" just as red octagon means "stop".
Like this openly mendacious, corrupt midget freak. The only "truth" in his disgusting slimetrail of a career is the correlation between internal and external hideousness. The only catch is that his believers are worse. Your visceral reaction to this creature is a litmus test of moral and intellectual health.
A society worthy of existing would have done away with the entire NIH-related resource-squandering fake narrative generation machine. Obviously health matters. But this fraudulent abomination was unfit for purpose from the jump. The Orwellian fiction is just the mature form.
The terminal problem - the sign of the Fall - is the number of people who lack even the discernment to see through something this self-evidently evil and dishonest. It's like a boat full of chud automatons that insist on drilling holes in the hull. That which can't continue won't.
The collective suicide around "health" is the most obvious manifestation, but stupid people fellating liars because "status" is a critical inversion of modernity in general. Consider "publication" and other hubs of beast fiction production. Liars put other liars in books and stupid people accept the content a priori. Even better if an affected midwit can poorly summarize it from a lectern. So long as the books are products of beast corporations. When the reality is that the globalist publication means the books are a priori false - at least in come capacity.
Liars will say things as patently false as words not being able to express transcendence means truth is relative. Other liars will disseminate it.
The moral burden falls on you to recognize the truth and reject the liars. Or follow them to their ultimate fate.
If you aren't gullible, it's easy to see why relativism is popular while being so self-evidently wrong. There are two main components. It does contain an element of truth, but framed in a way to make the conclusions false. The problem isn't that human activity is subjective - it is. The problem is how this subjectivity is interpreted ontologically. The other component - the false conclusions are built on earlier lies that also exploited greed and stupidity to replace reality. It's a form of pre-selection for mental deficiency.
"The arbitrariness of the sign" is only noteworthy if you were stupid enough to have believed the alternative.
And once you get jumping from one simplistic fake worldview to the next, you've abandoned that which distinguishes us from beasts or demons. It's all arbitrary in material reality. That is true. Languages, customs, symbols - the forms are organic cultural expressions that then change over time. They're complicated because they also condition the thoughts and beliefs of those raised in them. But it's still arbitrary - just a more complex organic process of communication and identity-formation than any of the "models" recognize..
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The Virgin Adoring the Host, 1852, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ingres doesn't "have to" paint in the manner of Raphael. It's an arbitrary model that does not impact what truth-value his message has. But he learns to paint this way organically. It's how he was trained in the environment he came out of.
Arbitrary and naturally taken up. See why the liar-huffing binary-thinking idiot masses are befuddled?
There is no ur-language. Maybe Adamic speech before the Fall, but nothing postlapsarian. It's impossible. And since we are culturally determined and think in inherited arbitrary systems, there is no "natural" consciousness. Even the environment we are born into is arbitrary. Meaning natural as in without arbitrary elements - not natural as organic processes. Like truth-value, the arbitrariness of the sign is orthogonal to organic growth and development processes.
Consider the same sentence in different number systems.
All four express exactly the same quantity relation. But the numerals are completely different. They are arbitrary and true.
If any were written as equaling four, it would be false. Regardless of the symbolic vocabulary. Arbitrary and false.
These are the sort of things that are obvious when you think about them, but the beast effectively clouds the mind with wave after wave of false premises.
What is natural is organic engagement with the culture where we're born in medias res [click for a post that deals with this and a lot more on cognitive processes]. Arbitrary and naturally-occurring aspects alike. We can assess the honesty of arbitrary signifiers.
Which is why it was so important for the beast system to declare that referential meaning was impossible. Whether idiotic "structuralism" in language or "art for art's sake in painting". Lies, but lies may as well be true if the institutions of culture insist on imposing them. And if you pretend words and pictures don't mean things, the arbitrariness is the point. The end in itself.
That was the point...
Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, oil on canvas, Manchester Art Gallery; Attributed to Georges Braque, Abstract Painting of Woman, early 20th century, oil on canvas, private
Neither of these are actual women. They're oil paint on canvas - equally un-living depictions. Both feature nude bodies, so propriety is comparable.
Yet no one has any trouble telling which better reflects the power of female beauty. Equally "arbitrary" fabrications. And diametrically opposed relations to the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Your reaction is indicative of your own psycho-moral health.
And enter moral relativism. A beast system ur-lie that can't happen without claiming arbitrariness and truth-value are somehow connected. Like believing that your musical choices control the weather. Because one is arbitrary and one is objective. The only relationship they can have is based in how well one reflects the other.
Materially it is all relative. All representational systems are arbitrary human creations with discreet moments when they appeared in time. But ontologically, all representational systems are also relative to something. And that can be assessed, at least in theory. But the lie has one big advantage - if there is no Truth - only subjective impulses - you can do what you want. Consider these statements...
There is no human expression that captures Truth fully. Human expressions are arbitrary. Therefore all arbitrary traditions are equally meaningless.
There is no human expression that captures Truth fully. Human expressions are arbitrary. Therefore some arbitrary traditions do it better than others.
Hence the moral reasoning we go on about. It's the only way to align arbitrary human behaviors with objective Logos-based morality. Enter the Church. More later.
Art can't withstand de-moralization - the removal of Logos and the flawed search for the truth - because it is Logos-facing by definition. It could stagger on past the removal of Christianity with abstract beauties and sensory allure. But these wither on the vine without the objective foundation.
Georges Braque, Woman Carrying a Basket of Fruit, around 1923, oil on canvas, private
More hideousness from Picasso's rent boy. It's amazing how fast degenerative evil takes hold when Logos is removed. A nd note that it isn't the nudity that's the problem. It's the beauty of the nude forms.
Remember that the fallen world has active and passive elements. The passive tendency towards entropy and decay can take some time. Active evil bundles human tendencies towards greed, vanity, lust, and the other sins hiding under the obsecene mantra of do what thou wilt to destroy truth and beauty for Sorathic sludge. Taste in art is a more potent indicator of moral and psychic health than even physiognomy. Two reliable objective indicators that trigger the beast into a frenzy of denial.
The process of centralization that begins in the Renaissance confuses the abstract and the material. Be ontologically rigorous. The material part is culturally conditioned - it is subjective. The abstract part is the logos - it's objective. The arts of the West express abstract truths in material form. It's the coexistence of opposites that make this hard for the idiot masses to grasp and easy for liars to distort.
Here's the graphic - it's clearer in when visualized.
In terms of the ontological hierarchy, art is connecting levels of reality. Abstract content with material execution. Without the logos - it's alluring at best, with Braque-level monstrousness as the floor. Without the technical skill, it's a philosophy statement.
But it gets more complicated because the different levels of ontology mean different modes of epistemology to understand them.
That is the core problem – vertical Logos makes it clear that epistemology changes with ontology. The Band tends to overstate the ontological part – we even call it "ontological hierarchy" not onto-epistemological hierarchy – for the sake of concision. But it is an essential point of the hierarchy that the two move in step. This is the sourve of the endemic category errors with secular transcencdence - because ontological distinctions are compressed into Flatland, epistemological approaches are routinely applied to things they don't apply to. The "knowledge" being as useful as checking your tire pressure with an anatomy textbook.
The "objectivity" in art is abstract. That means not material. Which means not present directly to the senses. We can’t see logos qua itself – if we could there is no need for the art.
James Thomas Linnell, A May Morning, 19th century, oil on canvas, private
Non-famous painting from an English artist shows a moment in history. There are techniques worked out by generations of masters, including the royal academies of Europe. The woman and child resemble a classical Madonna and child in pose and stature despite their humble attire.
But the primacy of family, the connection between organic culture and ancestral lands, the bounty that is available to us, and the unified beauty of Creation are all truths that align with objective Truth. They are how reality is. Style and circumstance are material - they vary with time and place. But the underlying logos is constant.
All legitimate works of art – no matter how different – share objective truth value. That’s what distinguishes them from other pictures. What we see – the material part – is material. It can take as many shapes and forms as there are peoples. There needs to be skill, but the terms are culturally dependent. There are no “rules” to techne beyond basic aesthetic responses. General preference for harmony, symmetry – the usual Renaissance stuff. But that shows up beyond the West too. It’s a human thing.
The Renaissance begins the dance of material “rules”. That there is a timeless, objective way to organize paint streaks on a piece of cloth.
Sassoferrato, Madonna In Prayer, 1638-1652, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria
Note how closely this artist follows Raphael. Despite being almost a century and a half later. Then consider that Raphael never imitated artists from the 1350s. What changed? Imitating canonical masters as some sort of rule stifles organic cultural churn.
This isn't a criticism of Sassoferrato. It's obvious that his rule-following didn't impede his ability to create beauty. Because he is still subordinating his arbitrary human rules to higher Logos. But it moves the idea of higher truth from the abstract where it belongs into secular transcendent Flatland.
There are only two possibilities - though they can coexist in unknown percentages.
It is a lovely picture...
Secular transcendence infected art the same way it did everything else. The general pattern is that the world is fallen. More specifically, there are two tendencies that we see again and again. They aren't mutually exclusive - they usually overlap. But they are different enough in the core to make a distinction.
Functional retardation. This is when some cocktail of animal fear, animal greed, de-moralization, total immersion in beast media, and self-fellating faith in the self-evident falsehoods of secular transcendence cripple ostensibly sane people mentally. Belief in endless Progress! in a finite setting is one. But the cloud of obscene, anti-human, dyscivilizational crime around the "pandemic" is a more recent desire. A heartfelt prayer that every single ambulatory cadaver that volunteered for poison injections receive the full measure of Judgment that they have coming.
John Martin, The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, 1852, oil on canvas, Laing Art Gallery
Self-deifying lies. Many hell-bound materialists sincerely believe the contradictory lies of the beast system because they're "empowering". They realize that their parasitism and illogic have long-term consequences, but don't care since "they won't be here". Their only motivation - "do what thou wilt". Their only "logic" - flip-flopping sophistry and selective memory to avoid criticism and possibly guilt for their degeneracy. The problem here is that this garbage provides the necessary cover for beast predation. They are accessories.
The downstream consequences of genetic alterations are unpredictable in specific but well-known in general. Cancers, sterility, shortened life span, susceptibility to variant illnesses... the list goes on. A fair price for the venal cowardice and complicity in obvious evil to anyone not enslaved by beastial impulse.
Here's the cartoonist's site. We don't link to Facebook.
The two overlap. The self-defiers include the actively wicked and the more passively venal. The former group hates and attacks God. The latter pretends He isn't real, as long as they can dodge hard ontological questions. So the second group are self-deifying liars who are also functionally retarded. It's where idiot assholery crosses into evil.
Simply note the lack of consistency in the official story. That's also a proxy intelligence test. You have to remember what you believed two weeks ago - a high bar for much of the shambling pre-deceased with their degrading genomes and petrie-dish masks.
How does this fit art? Start with the structural category error. The top-down misapplication of abstract claims to bottom-up empirical practices. To believe the designated freaks experts in lieu of empirical observation and logic means internalizing ontological inversion. Replacing your relationship to reality with magical thinking. In the case of non-"vaccines", it's inverting the relationship between the mouthpiece and the empirical data. It's how you get proxy intelligence tests like hearing "medical authorities" making unqualified and untested claims about the long-term safety of untested mutagens. The thing is, we've seen this before. And we're seeing it again.
Unlike the "trust science!" morons, the Band actually reads primary sources. It lets us cross-check the liars. And while it's true most published science isn't replicable, it does cut out the middle men. Here's the latest from establishment shill The Lancet on not-vaccine efficacy. It's what you'd expect...
If you're too stupid and lazy to read, keep your piehole shut.
There's no getting to this point without centralization. There has to be a self-declared "authority"" with a monopoly - or near-monopoly - on the public dialog. In Medicine! it's the psycho-sexual fetishization of lazy poseurs in white coats. In Art! the fraudulent beast puppets were "critics" and other theorists. But this is a modern pathology. The degenerate corrupt structures had to develop over time to get to a point where they could replace reason and observation. And for this, mass communication tech was necessary.
The preliminary work - the creation of "disciplines" or "fields" under central control - came much sooner. The beast centralization in art was the mix of aristocratic monopoly on resources and the rise of the humanist-critic.
Title page to the first edition of Vasari's Lives (Le vite e piu eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550.
Alberti is the first real Renaissance treatise writer, but Vasari is the author who charts the future course. We've mentioned him a lot - this is the first version of his Lives. The expanded version came out 18 years later.
The Florentine patriotism and Medici sycophancy are front and center. There's a dedication to Duke Cosimo I de'Medici on the inside. You can actually see it - the marriage of the aristocratic monopoly on resources and the rise of the humanist-critic
The next time you're stuck listening to a fraud spew lies across a communication channel - whatever the subject - recognize that it isn't new or isolated. It's the centralization and inversion pattern that defines modernity.
This is what we needed to identity in the Renaissance for our arts of the West journey – we are ready to move on again. But before we can, there is a larger contextual issue coming out of the Renaissance and late Middle Ages that has to be addressed. A fundamental conflict in the founding of the West that comes to a head in the Renaissance Papacy and Reformation.
The Church.
Manno di Bandino, Boniface VIII around 1300 Embossed copper, bronze, height 235 cm Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna
Just one of the vicar of Christ's idols prior to declaring himself supreme ruler of everything, being attacked and beaten by French forces, and dying not much later. Shortly after that, the Holy See just moved to Avignon for a while.
We will avoid the tiresome Protestant-Catholic squabbling by considering the pre-Reformation Church as a historical and political entity. Because that it what it is. We are well aware that all churches create written products called "theology". These are meditations on the nature of God that are written in particular times and reflect the shading of contemporary ideology but pretend to reveal ultimate reality. Retroactive backforming extraordinaire.
This is a topic we haven't really delved into, but the Rome of Alexander VI and Julius II makes it unavoidable. No way to make sense of the Sistine Chapel or the Raphael Rooms unless we lay out the difference between Christianity and "Church".
To be continued.
Gianfrancesco Penni or Giulio Romano, The Donation of Constantine, 1520–1524, fresco, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
