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Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art
Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art
Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art
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Church, Oxford, Oxford, 1914, 53) lists the drawing as "Italian School
1525-75." The inscribed attribution to Leonardoon the mount is of course
wrong, although it is perhapsnot meaningless. Leonardoarrivedin Rome in
December of 1513, and it is becoming clearer that his importance for events
in Rome in the years immediately following was greater than Vasarihas led
us to believe. See K. Weil-Garris Posner, "Raphael's 'Transfiguration'and
the Legacy of Leonardo,"Art Quarterly,xxxv, 1972, 343-371.
4 Lanciani, "Raccolta," 108-110, including the contract of the sale and
Giulio's testament dated 29 April 1524. Lanciani also gathered available
evidence for Giovanni Ciampolini, a friend of Poliziano. See also H. Egger,
CodexEscurialensis,Ein Skizzenbuchaus der WerkstattDomenicoGhirlandaios,
Vienna, 1909, 135-36.
5 Lanciani, "Raccolta," 101-07; Lanciani did not identify the Discobolos
fragment, but rather offered it as a partial clarification of the history of the
Torso Belvedere, with which he argued it had become confused. On the
Renaissance history of the Torso Belvedere see also P. P. Bober, Drawings
after the Antique by Amico Aspertini. Sketchbooksin the British Museum,
London, 1957, 19, n. 1, with bibliography. P. Barocchi, ed., Scrittid'artedel
cinquecento, Milan-Naples, 1971, I, 27, states that the Torso Belvedere
(called Hercules in the Renaissance when it was not called the Torso) was
found in the time of Alexander VI and remained in the PalazzoColonna in
PiazzaSS. Apostoli until moved by Clement VII.
sculpture.5
The story persists that the Torso Belvedere was not found
until about the same time as the Laocoon or the Apollo
Belvedere largely because it exerted no influence upon
Renaissance art until the early cinquecento, when, as the
well-known art-historicalstory goes, Michelangelo perceived
the realizationof his own aims in it-so much so that it came
to be called Michelangelo's Torso-and magnified his
conception of the human figure accordingly. I would like to
suggest, however,that the TorsoBelvedereneed not have gone
unnoticed in the decades before its "discovery" by
Michelangelo, but that it representedan alternative that the
earlier Renaissance-and most especially its major writer,
Leon Battista Alberti-consciously and with good reason
rejected; and when Michelangelo did turn appreciative eyes
upon the TorsoBelvederehe did so not in isolation but rather
as a major participant in a reorientation of dominant Early
Renaissance critical ideals. In this important instance, then,
crucial change in Italian Renaissance art was not the result
simply of the chance rediscoveryof notable antique sculpture;
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8 The Discobolosas a type seems to have been identified only late in the 18th
der ClassischenAltertumswiscentury. See Pauly-Wissowa,Real-Encyclopiidie
senschaft,xvi, I, Stuttgart, 1933, 1127. It was identified by Carlo Fea on the
basis of the descriptions of Lucian (trans. A. M. Harmon, London-New
York, 1921, iII, 346-47) and Quintilian. Gems (see A. Furtwingler, Die
antikenGemmen, Leipzig-Berlin, 1900, XLIV,n. 26) show the Discobolosfrom
the side. Celio Calcagnini's "In statuam discoboli" (in G. B. Pigna,
Carminum Libri Quattuor, Venice, 1553, 199-200) describes the figure as
bent down to the right rather than to the left, and may be based on Lucian's
text.
9 L. Steinberg, "Salviati's Beheadingof St. Johnthe Baptist," Art News, LXX,
1972, 46-47.
337
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338
THE
ART
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3 BaccioBandinelli,studyfora Massacre
of theInnocents.
Florence,Uffizi,GabinettoDisegnie Stampe
4 Myron,Discobolos.Rome, Museo
NazionaledelleTerme(afterHanfmann,
ClassicalSculpture,
ill. 115)
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CONTRAPPOSTO
339
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ir;N
of Brunelleschi's
rightforeground
competitionrelief(Fig. 8).
This extremecontrapposto-asymbolof license, as we shall
5 Michelangelo,BrazenSerpent(detail). Rome,Vatican,Sistine
Chapel(photo:Alinari)
AWi
.
.
6 RossoFiorentino,MosesandtheDaughters
of Jethro(detail).
Florence,Uffizi(photo:Alinari)
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CONTRAPPOSTO
1
:I:
::-
Al
8 FilippoBrunelleschi,Sacrifice
of Isaac
(detail). Florence, Bargello (photo:
Alinari-Art ReferenceBureau)
Oi
21
9 LorenzoGhiberti,Sacrifice
of
Isaac(detail).Florence,Bargello
(photo:Alinari-Art Reference
Bureau)
341
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342
THE
ART
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with its use in his major Classical sources. Pliny uses it in the
sense of invention, and it is said of Timanthes (whom Alberti
praises for showing Menelaus with his face covered in a
painting of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia) that howevergreat the
painter's art might be, his ingenium surpasses it, clearly
suggesting that ingenium is opposed to (or at least separate
from) art and that it is the power to invent.27 Quintilian's
inclusion of ingeniumamong those qualities beyond art (i.e.,
beyond instruction) is both consistent with Alberti'susageand
an indication of why he treats the idea as he does.28 In a
period of youthful confidence and vigorous creative activity
such as the early Florentinequattrocento, Alberti'sinsistence
upon ars as opposed to ingenium may well have had an
immediate polemical purpose, of a piece with his rejection of
extreme contrapposto,aimed at artists who, buoyedby a sense
of freedom and awareof participation in momentous change,
looked to no other authority than their own native force of
imagination and talent. Alberti, on the other hand, took on
the task of makingpainting a liberalart and, to that extent, of
bridling license. Later on, when the art was established on a
more truly neo-Classical course-a course set largely by
Alberti-the question could be put in other terms. The
painter "who begins some work with great enthusiasm, and
then when his ardor cooled abandons it in a rough and
unfinished state" reminds us inevitably of Leonardo, more
specifically of the Adorationof the Magi and the beginning of
the High Renaissance style. To follow this transformation
would lead us away from our purpose, and it may be sufficient
to cite one example that clearly shows the point-for-point
inversion of Alberti's critical ideals, an inversion well
advanced by the late quattrocento, which more or less
coincided with what we call Mannerism.
For Alberti, decorum was governedpartly by art and partly
by nature, understood as the intelligible orderof nature. On
both points Alberti had ample grounds for rejecting human
movements simultaneouslyvisible front and rear. Plato called
such coupling of opposing movements "disorderly and
irrational,"and Saint Augustine, applyingsimilarprinciplesto
visible forms, observedthat perceptionrejects certain things,
for example, a figurebending over too far (showing both back
which was often set antithetically, thus sharpening the opposition already
fairly explicit between the ideas in a statement such as Quintilian's. The
two terms together were meant to praise what were by implication mutually
exclusive virtues of the artist, skill and imagination. Baxandall observes
that, given the popularity of the term, simply to praise the art of a writer
was to suggest that he had no ingenium;this could be reversed,of course, and
it would have been little better to say that he had imagination without art.
In any case, Alberti clearly understood ingeniumto be both good and bad,
subject to harmonizing iudicium. Michelangelo would insist on the same
point (G. Vasari, Le vite di Michelangelonelle redazionidel 1550 e del 1568,
ed. P. Barocchi, Milan-Naples, 1962, 1, 128); "Voi avete avuto uno alla
fabrica, che ha un grande ingegno"; Michelangelo responded: "Gli vero,
ma gli ha cattivo giudizio." Vasari himself makes the same opposition in a
significant fashion. After the destruction of the ancient monuments
(Vasari-Milanesi, I, 232) architects had to work "non secondo le regole
dell'arti predette (che non l'avevano), ma secondo la qualitOdegl'ingegni
loro." They achieved little by doing so, as Vasari insisted at length, and in
these terms the great achievement he was chronicling was in large part the
attainment of ars. On ingeniumand iudiciumsee E. R. Curtius, European
Literatureand the LatinMiddleAges, New York, 1963, 296-301.
25
Ibid., 104-05.
26 Ibid.; he warns against excessive
diligence as well.
27 K. Jex-Blake and E. Sellers, The Elder
Pliny's Chapterson the History of
Art, Chicago, 1968, 116-17. Pliny cites as an example of Timanthes'
ingeniumthe tiny satyrs measuring the thumb of a sleeping Cyclops, a story
Alberti turns to another purpose.
28 Quintilian X. ii. 12: "the
greatest qualities of the orator are beyond all
imitation, by which I mean ingenium, inventio, vis, facilitas and all the
qualities which are independent of art." Alberti also uses ingenium in a
similarly positive sense; for example De Pictura, 72-73: "Maior enim est
ingenii laus in historia quam in colosso." Ingeniumwas therefore double
edged. M. Baxandall (Giotto and the Orators:HumanistObservorsof Painting
in Italy and the Discoveryof PictorialComposition,Oxford, 1971, 15) stresses
the conventional nature in humanist writing of the phrase ars et ingenium,
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343
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345
B. Weinberg,
History,1,71-110.As an
37 On Horaceandhis commentators,
45
46
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Thusepideictic
of his ear.'"49
indulges in a neatness and symmetry of sentences, and is
clauses
comparentur],
thingscontrastedarepaired[contraria
are madeto end in the sameway and with similarsound
50
49
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CONTRAPPOSTO
56
Cicero, De Natura Deorum II. Iviii (trans. H. Rackham, CambridgeLondon, 1967).
57 Alberti, L'Architettura
(De Re Aedificatoria.vi, III,ed. G. Orlandi, Milan,
1966, II, 452, here in the translation of G. Leoni, The Architectureof Leon
Battista Alberti, London, 1726, II, 4). See also Castiglione, Cortegiano,
61-62.
58 Cicero, Orator xliv. 150; also lviii. 198, where it is arguedthat rhetoric is
more difficult than poetry because it has no fixed rules (i.e., meter) but is
subject only to the judgment of the pleasure of the ear.
59 Vasari-Milanesi, Iv, 9.
59a
Vasari-Milanesi, 1, 151.
60 See A. Scaglione, The ClassicalTheoryof Compositionfrom Its Originsto
the Present, Chapel Hill, 1972, 8ff, esp. 31 with bibliography; also on the
early history of the form J. H. Finley, Jr., Thucydides, Cambridge, 1942,
347
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348
terms, pointing to the fusion of the visual and the aural at the root of their
art. Quintilian considered energia-placing one's subject vividly before the
eyes of his audience-to be the highest attainment of rhetorical skill; it was
classed as an ornament and was to be had from the close study of nature
(viii. iii. 61ff.). It was associated especially with the stirring of emotion (vi.
ii. 32ff.). Cicero also associated such visual manifestness with ornament,
but understood it more generally, and it is perhaps this that underlies his
frequent metaphorical treatment of ornament in terms of light and color.
"The style is brilliant if the wordsemployed are chosen for their dignity and
used metaphorically and in exaggeration and adjectivally and in duplication
and synonymously and in harmony with the actual action and the
representationof the facts. For it is this department of oratory which almost
sets the fact before the eyes-for it is the sense of sight that is most appealed
to, although it is nevertheless possible for the rest of the senses and also
most of all the mind itself to be affected. But the things that weresaid about
the clear style all apply to the brilliant style, for brilliance is worth
considerably more than the clearness above mentioned. The one helps the
other make us feel that we actually see it before our eyes" (De Partitione
Oratoria vi. 20-1). On such a view ornament is anything but extraneous.
Contrary to modern rhetorical tastes, it is not simply statement that is
finally most truthful; ornament ratherrestoresthe life lost in transformation
of words. It is in some such sense that Leonardo, discussing varieta of
movement, wrotethat "Inthese preceptsofpainting an inquiryis madeasto the
best way of persuadingof the nature of movement, as the oratorspersuadeby
words . . ." (Leonardo da Vinci, Treatiseon Painting,ed. A. P. McMahon,
Princeton, 1956, 385-386). The coupling of pictorial ornatus and energia
will be encountered several times in what follows.
62 Leonardo, Treatise,277 and 456.
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CONTRAPPOSTO
wordsareboth whatCicerocalled
symmetryof corresponding
but clearantithesisin the groups
and
also
a
varied
concinnitas,
of wordsthuscomposed.
Cicero often made the point that by such formalmeans
ordercouldbe achievedwithoutevidentartifice.As we have
is to separatethe mechanics
seen, the effectof sucharguments
of the periodfromsimpleembellishment,to extendthe proper
usefulnessof such stylisticmeans, and to root eloquencein
aurium.It wasthe
intelligentperceptionitself, in the iudicium
ideaof the consonanceof the natureof soundandthe nature
of perceptionthat Augustinedevelopedto arguethat both
participatedin a higherunifyingprinciple,finallyallowing
Alberti to call concinnitasa principleessentialboth to the
mindand to nature.67Forourpurposes,it is sufficientto say
that Cicero'sstatement furtherestablishedantithesis as a
generalcompositionaldevice, ratherthan a specificembellishment,whichof courseit mayalsobe. And withthis ideain
mind we may now better understandCicero'sinaequabilis
asa formof the epideictic,rhetoric
varietas,whichhe regarded
intended for the delight of a cultured audience through
Oratoria
Cicerowrotethat
artificialmeans.In hisDe Partitione
in speechesthe purposeof whichis to givepleasurethereare
several modes of arrangement. . . chronological ..
in classes;or we ascendfromsmallerto larger
arrangement
or . . . with inaequabilis
varietas,intertwiningsmallmatters
with greatones, simple with complicated,obscurewith
clear [obscuradilucidis],cheerfulwith gloomy,incredible
with probable,all of the methodsfallingunderthe headof
embellishment[exornatio].68
in
Both antithesisin rhetoricand its offspring,contrapposto
painting,couldbe usedin a numberof ways.Sometimesit was
an embellishmentin a simplesense,one
a mereamplification,
figureamongmany.Butthe importanceandpersistenceof the
rhetoricalform no doubt owes in largepart to its broader
significance,its alsobeingable to be compositional,essential
level
to the structureof a unitof meaning.On a compositional
it could be ornate (as in Cicero'sinaequabilis
varietas)or, as
Aristotle described, it could simply be a means to clear
presentation.One way or the other it addedbrillianceand
67 Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria v (pp. 816-17).
Ix,
68 Cicero, De PartitioneOratoria iv. 12. See also S. Speroni, Dialogo della
rhetorica,Venice, 1596 (here from Barocchi, Scritti, 1, 262): "Che si come ii
dipintore et il poeta, due artefici all'oratore sembianti, per diletto di noi
fanno versi et imagini di diverse maniere: quali orribili, quai piacevoli, quai
dolenti e quai lieti; cost il buono oratore non solamente con le facezie, con
gli ornamenti e co'numeri, ed amore, ma ad ira, ad odio et ad invidia
movendo, suol dilettar gli ascoltanti." There were of course bounds to such
things, and Leonardo (see C. Pedretti, Leonardoda Vincion Painting,A Lost
[BookLibroA. ], London, 1965, 60, n. 58) expandsAlberti's principle that the
istoria should "move the soul" of the viewer (and states his own principle
that paintings are visible all at once) to deny the possibility that paintings
can embody simultaneously opposing emotions. "Convenienze de parti delle
istorie non misterai i malincoliosi e lacrimosi e piangenti colli allegri e
ridenti, imperocche la Natura da che colli piangenti si lacrimi e colli ridenti
si allegri, e si separa li loro risi e pianti." Confusion of opposites was also a
conventional way of describing chaos, and it was fairly common to speak of
close opposites as ugly. See for example Alberti, De Pictura, 72-73, where it
is said that the surfaces, which are the building blocks of the istoria, must be
composed with concinnitas et gratia. Faces that have some surfaces large,
others small, some protruding, others hollow, are ugly. Faces in which
pleasing lights pass gradually into agreeable shadows (amena lumina in
umbrassuavesdefluant) will be beautiful.
349
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concinnitas,the iudicium
by them. Numerositas,
presupposed
auriumwerenot only inherentin senseasCicerohadsaid,but
theywerealso intimationsof a congruitybetweenthe sensing
mind and the order-finally the unity-of its world, and
thereforea sign of grace.72Aristotlehadgroundedthe use of
antithesisin its immediateappeal, in the ease with which
contrarieswererememberedand in their kinshipwith the
forms of logical argument. But for Augustine this same
immediateappeal gave on to transcendentalreality, and
stylistic categoriesthus came to be categoriesof Christian
ontology.In BookxI, chap. 18 of the Cityof God, Augustine
to the taskof accounting
appliesthe antithesismetaphorically
for the existenceof evil in the universe.It will be usefulto
quotethispassagein full,bothbecauseit providesa widerange
of antithesesand alsobecauseit maystandas an exampleof
the kindof meaningthey hadcometo have.
Now God would never create any man, much less any
angel, if he alreadyknewthat he wasdestinedto be evil,
were he not equallyawarehow he was to turn them to
accountin the interestof the goodandtherebyaddlusterto
the successionof the ages as if it werean exquisitepoem
enhancedby whatmightbe calledantitheses.Antitheses,
as they aretermed,areamongthe mostelegantornaments
of style. In Latin they might be called oppositaor, more
Wearenot inthe habitofusingthis
accurately,contraposita.
term, although Latin and indeed the languagesof all
nations employ the same ornaments of style. These
antithesesaregracefullydemonstratedby the apostlePaul
too, in his secondletterto the Corinthians,wherehe says:
"Withthe weaponsof righteousness
for the righthandand
for the left; in honourand dishonour,in ill reputeand in
good repute; treated as imposters,and yet truthful; as
unknown,andyet wellknown;asdying,andbeholdwe live;
as punished,andyet not killed;as sorrowful,
andyet always
as
rejoicing; poor,yetmakingmanyrich;ashavingnothing,
and yet possessing everything." So, just as beauty of
71 Augustine, De Civitate Dei xII. 18 (here The City of God Against the
Pagans, trans. D. S. Wiesen, Cambridge-London, 1968, 495-96). On the
tradition of coincidentiaoppositorumand its transformation by Nicholas
Cusanus see E. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance
Philosophy,Philadelphia, 1972; also R. L. Colie, Paradoxiaepidemica:The
Renaissance Tradition of Paradox, Princeton, 1966, esp. 3-40. Colie is
concerned throughout with paradoxas a mode of thought rather than with
antithesis as a figureof speech.
72
Augustine, De Vera Religione xxx. 55: "In all the arts it is symmetry
(convenientia) that gives pleasure, preserving unity and making the whole
beautiful. Symmetry demands unity and equality, the similarity of like
parts; or the gradedarrangementof parts which are dissimilar. But who can
find absolute equality of similarity in bodily objects? ... True equality and
similitude, true and primal unity, are not perceived by the eye of the flesh or
by any bodily sense, but are known by the mind." And ibid., xliii. 81: "...
the universal form is perfectly identical with the unity from which it
springs, so that all other things, so far as they have being and resemble
unity, are made according to that form."
73 Augustine, De CivitateDei xi. 18 See also Augustine, De OrdineI. 7. E.
Auerbach (Lingualetterarioe publiconella tardaantichitalatinae nel medievo,
Milan, 1960, 76, n. 20) points to the affinity to mystical literature in the
paradox of the Passion (e.g., O passio desiderabilis! O mors admirabilis!
Quid mirabilius, quam quod mors vivificet, vulnera sanent, sanguis album
faciat .. ..) and the antithetical paradox typical of love poetry from
Proven<althrough Petrarchand the Renaissance.
74 Cicero, Oratorxlix. 166-67.
7s Cicero, Pro Cluentio 15 (here The Speeches, trans. H. Grose Hodge,
Cambridge-London, 1943, 236).
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76
Canzoniere ccxv (here Francesco Petrarca, Rime, Trionfie poesie latine,
ed. E Neri, G. Martellotti, E. Bianchi, N. Sapegno, Milan-Naples, 1951,
287). Similarly Michelangelo (Rime, ed. E. N. Girardi, Bari, 1967, 60-61,
n. 104):
351
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352
-44
Af
AWLS-.
10 Raphael, Transfiguration.
Rome, Pinacoteca
Vaticana(photo:Alinari)
11 Raphael,SaintMichael.Paris,Louvre
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CONTRAPPOSTO
Cicero,Oratorlxi. 208.
contrastsof value(chiaroscuro);
see, for example,Vasari-Milanesi,
1,171.
"Questo si fatto piano dal pittore con retto giudizio mantenuto nel mezzo
353
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354
THE
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de la sculpture,de la peintureet
97 A. F61ibien,Des principesde 1'architecture,
des autresarts qui en cdpendent,Paris, 1699, 383, s. v. "contraste."
98 Texts cited by W. Kambartel, Symmetrieund Schbnheit. Ober mbgliche
in der Architekturtheorie
Claude
des neuerenKunstbewusstseins
Voraussetzungen
Perraults,Munich, 1972, 50. Kambartelmistakenly asserts that the concept
of contrast (which he correctly sees as the companion to bilateral
symmetry) firstappearsin 17th-centuryart theory. Rather, as Rogerde Piles
recognizes, it came from the Italian and was, as we have argued, a
fundamental tenet of neo-Classical painting from Alberti onwards.
Kambartel does not consider the rhetorical-poetic basis of contrast (at all
times so closely linked with essential varieti) an omission that greatly
distorts his history. As I shall arguein another place, bilateral symmetryas a
conscious esthetic principle also, .finally, has some of its roots in similar
rhetorical-poetic rather than mathematical principles, as Kambartel has
argued.
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355
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men, infants and old, the depth of the sea to the land,
valleys to mountains;and other similarcounterpositionsare
made, from which not a little charm [vaghezza]is born in
painting; which we also see born of contraries in good
poems. And it is well to consider that, as regardsthe use of
antitheses, the same advice applies to painter and poet.
There follows a rathertedious-but nonetheless instructiveexample of the properuse of antithesis. It must be used with
sprezzatura, and an example of this virtue in practice is
providedfrom a commentaryby TorquatoTassoon a poem by
Giovanni della Casa. These three lines are singled out for
praise:
Anzi il dolce aerpuroe questa luce
Chiara, che'l mondo agli occhi nostri scopre,
Traestitu d'abissioscurie misti
Sprezzaturaconsists in this case in the following: in order to
avoid two antithetical faults, baseness and affection, Della
Casa answeredthe wordspuroand chiarawith the wordsoscuri
and misti, then added the word dolce for which he gave no
counterpart. It is this last slight ruptureof expectation (for
there was no more conventional antithesis that dolcelamaro)
that earns praise for its "judicious disdain." After a less
convincing example of the same thing from Petrarch,Figino
continues.
In the style of dignity and magnificence[Figino throughout
is discoursing on the heroic mode] the too frequent
occurrenceof metaphorand antithesis much diminishesthe
grandeur and majesty of the oration, or poem, just as a
judiciousdisdain of them as explained aboveornamentsand
heightens it. Similarly, if the painter who, when he has
painted an infant, will place an old man next to him; or
next to a man a woman;next to a giant a dwarf,or next to a
beautiful girl an ugly old woman, and next to a white
Scythian a black moor, will make an improperand affected
thing, and he must be clever in his variation of his figures
and contrive to display in his works a noble negligence
rather than a base diligence [a contrapposto itself]. Of
movement I say the same; if wheneverthe occasion arisesto
make a figurestanding upright, or that showsthe breastand
all the fore partsof the body, he alwaysmakesnext to them
a seated figure,or one that shows the shouldersand all the
back, he will be considered without fail an artist who is
affected [affettato]and even ridiculous.106
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357
~??1
~?
......
.....
;h
i?;
i .i
I)
?':L~P~i?-~
p'
,
IF
'?t
?'?n:
?e
'C` ,
?:.
r
i?
Pieve(photo:Alinari)
13 JacopoPontormo,Visitation
(detail).Carmignano,
108
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358
THE
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figureserpentinate,
goodandevil (Figs.10-11).Whateverelse it
might representor signify, Michelangelo'sVictory(Fig. 14)
counterposesyouth and age, and states the main figurein the
The psychomachic
themesforwhich
purestfiguraserpentinata.
the Victory is the conspicuous prototype-Vincenzo Danti's
L'Onoreche vince l'Inganno,for example, or the groupsfrom
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CONTRAPPOSTO
14 Michelangelo, Victory.
Florence, PalazzoVecchio
(photo:Alinari)
359
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360
THE
ART
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361
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