Abstract
This paper discusses the quotation frequency and reference strategies of Leon Battista Alberti, Federico Borromeo, and Gabriele Paleotti. These three Catholic art theoreticians of Early Modern period engaged Classical texts as the point of reference and expertly manipulated the Classical sources to provide contextual arguments in the formation of their own artistic theories. Alberti, Borromeo, and Paleotti directly alluded or referred to Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Xenophon, Strabo, Aulus Gellius, and other Classical sources rather extensively. This can be noticed from various quotation strategies applied in Alberti, Borromeo, and Paleotti treatises and by statistical data on quotation frequency in Alberti’s De pictura, Paleotti’s Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane, and Borromeo’s De pictura sacra.
Highlights
Bracciolini stumbled on full text of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, Vitruvius’ De architectura, as well as Cicero’s Pro Sexto Roscio (Woodward 1906, 25–27). These were only a few of Classical texts that formed the base of the new Renaissance Humanist education
We conventionally regard the Early modern period as the reclaimer of the Classical tradition, still I argue that in most art theory treatises of the Early modern period the Classical texts were skilfully manipulated as rhetorical instruments to provide contextual arguments and to demonstrate the artistic progress in the historical perspective
In 1582, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti published a treatise Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane outlining this aesthetic variation of visual arts in the mindset of Catholic Church
Summary
The perfect specimen revealing the epoch’s approach to Antiquity as historical context could be Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura published in 1439. 1.18: Timanthes mihi videri solet, qui pictor, ut aiunt, Cyclopem dormientem parva in tabella pingens fecit iuxta satyros pollicem dormientis amplectentes ut ea satyrorum commensuratione dormiens multo maximus videretur They say that he represented on a small panel a Cyclops asleep, and put in next to him some satyrs embracing his thumb, so that the sleeping figure appeared very large in proportion to the satyrs”, Cf. Plin. A reference to Plutarch is made to show the opposite effect: Plu tarch writes that Agesilaus did not consent to and even forbade the making of any kind of his image due to his unimposing presence7 This whole discourse on the nobleness of art serves as an epitome of how Alberti reuses Antiquity for his rhetoric argumentation and provides a background to establish a reliable aesthetic criterion. I posit that Alberti did a magnificent job connecting Classical and Humanist ideas with Renaissance artistic practice, devising a consistent aesthetic theory in which Antiquity functions as a point of historical perspective
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