Download Humanist History as Moral Philosophy and the Secular Immortality of

Renaissance Humanism Part 2
Humanist History as Moral Philosophy and the Secular Immortality of Fame
(also see my more general essay on Humanism)
Robert Baldwin
Associate Professor of Art History
Connecticut College
New London, CT 06320
[email protected]
(This essay was written in 1990 and is revised annually.)
Humanist History as Moral Philosophy
From its start in the mid-fourteenth century, humanists placed new value on history as a worthy
subject in modern education. In part, they were inspired by the rich historical writing of classical
antiquity including Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Sallust, Caesar, Curtius, Livy, Suetonius,
Xenophon, Plutarch, and Tacitus, among many others. More importantly, they were inspired by
the focus of classical historians on politics, morality, and broad social issues, the very focus of
humanist culture.
From the late fourteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the most common rationale advanced for
studying history was the examination of a "universal" human nature with respect to morality and
politics. Humanist history was largely moral and political philosophy extending itself through
time and geared toward the exercise of moral and political virtue in the present. Historical
knowledge would allow urban elites, from republican citizens to lofty princes, to govern with
greater wisdom and prudence. As the civic humanist and historian, Bruni, noted, in his essay on
education,
First amongst such studies I place History; a subject which must not on any account
be neglected by one who aspires to true cultivation. For it is our duty to understand the
origins of our own history and its development; and the achievements of Peoples and of
Kings.
For the careful study of the past enlarges our foresight in contemporary affairs and
affords to citizens and to monarchs lessons of incitement or warning in the ordering of
public policy. From History, also, we draw our store of examples of moral precepts. 1
With its focus on living figures from the past, humanist history claimed for itself a "natural"
truth, that is, a wisdom grounded in the study of human nature. Since humanism defined human
nature as universal and unchanging, the moral and political lessons from the classical past were
directly applicable to modern problems and circumstances. In his Discourses on Livy (III.43), a
commentary on Livy's history of Rome, the great Florentine civic humanist and republican
statesman, Machiavelli, described this universal human nature and used it to justify the study of
history in a chapter entitled, "That Men Born in One Province Display Almost the Same Nature
in Every Age".
Prudent men are in the habit of saying, neither by chance nor without reason, that
anyone wishing to see what is to be must consider what has been: all the things of this
world in every era have their counterparts in ancient times. This occurs since these
actions are carried out by men who have and have always had the same passions, which,
of necessity, must give rise to the same results. It is true that their actions are more
effective at one time in this province than in that, and at another, in that rather than this
one, according to the form of the education from which these peoples have derived their
way of living. Understanding future affairs through past ones is also facilitated by
observing how a nation over a lengthy period of time keeps the same customs, being
either continuously avaricious or continuously deceitful, or having some other similar
vice or virtue. ... 2
Repeated in discussions of history through the eighteenth century, 3 this view explains the
common features shared by history and more imaginary forms of literature such as tragedy.
For Renaissance humanists, and thus, for most educated elites in Italy after 1400, history offered
a school of life, a moral guidebook, a grand series of "true" lessons, a rich compendia of "living"
heroes and villains to be emulated and shunned like the figures in Plutarch’s Lives of the
Illustrious Greeks and Romans. The pictorial equivalent of these histories of great men and
women were Renaissance cycles of paintings of heroes and a few heroines such as those painted
by Castagno (Villa Carducci), Perugino (Cambio), Joos de Ghent (for Fegerico da Montefeltro),
Ghirlandaio (Palazzo Vecchio), and Mantegna, (Roman emperors in the Camera degli Sposi). 4
History also offered Renaissance civic and courtly patrons new ways to celebrate themselves, to
define roots in a glorious antiquity, and to define political and ethnic geographies such as
empires, kingdoms, and "nations" or "peoples". Imperial, monarchical, and aristocratic patrons
commissioned histories imbedding themselves in a glorious imperial past of one kind or another
with special reference to the Roman empire or the Hellenic empire of Alexander the Great. By
1475, most Italian Renaissance princes were celebrated in these humanist histories and epic
poems (historical poetry).
Republican patrons, magistrates, and historians, in turn, invented republican classical traditions,
historical parallels, and ancestors for modern republics and republican heroes. One example was
the Roman republican history developed for Florence in Bruni's Panegyric on Florence. Bruni's
successor as chancellor of Florence, Poggio, wrote a long history of Florence in the 1440s.
"National" histories began appearing in the sixteenth century. In his Oration in Praise of
Germany (1501) given to the emperor, Maximilian I, the German humanist, Bebel, praised
Maximilian as an historian writing a glorious history of Germany and compared him to Julius
Caesar as a patron of arts and letters. 5 In 1561, the Florentine historian and political philosopher,
Francesco Guicciardini, published a bestselling History of Italy. Its frequent reprintings between
1561-1600 with editions in every major European language shows how humanist historical
culture spread rapidly across sixteenth-century Europe.
Humanist World History: Cosmic Cycles and Linear Time
Classical writers generally saw time in circular terms in conjunction with the cycles of the
planets and stars, the seasons, and the alternation of night and day. At times, they described
human history as a cycle of four progressive or declining ages which tended to revert back to the
beginning. The four stages were wilderness, pastoral, agriculture, and city. In primitivist
histories, mankind declined from a perfect, wilderness existence to a modern world of urban
corruption and alienation from nature. The best example of this appears in the beginning of
Ovid's Metamorphoses where the modern emperor Augustus brings back the lost Golden Age. In
progressivist accounts, the stages advance from a savage wilderness to one of urban civilization,
technological mastery, and high culture. Progessivist histories also followed cyclical patterns
with their warnings of civilizations foundering and collapsing in corruption and returning to the
first stage. See, for example, Polybius' Rise of the Roman Empire where he generalizes political
history as a series of cycles imbedded in larger cosmic or natural time. 6
In sharp contrast, early Christian writers defined time as strictly linear, moving forward in an
unbroken line from Creation until the end of human existence in Apocalypse, Last Judgment, and
the eternities of heaven and hell. History and time were strictly subordinated to a Christian deity.
Even when medieval writers divided human time into ages, they used a Christian scheme of three
periods: life before Christ (the Jewish and pagan world), life during the time of Christ (New
Testament), and life after Christ (the age of organized Christianity).
While this medieval Christian "historical" thinking continued in Renaissance church culture, it
was largely supplanted elsewhere by a new humanist history geared not toward Christ but
towards a new terrestrial sense of time. For humanists, history divided into three very different
periods unrelated to religion: a classical period of light and civilization which declined in later
antiquity, a medieval period of supposed darkness and ignorance, and a modern humanist period
of renewed civilization.
Classical cyclical and progressive linear time both reappeared in Renaissance humanism. In part,
cyclical ideas of history were necessary for Renaissance humanists to justify humanism as a
whole. After all, humanism extolled classical civilization as an exemplary "Golden Age" useful
for guiding the modern age. This was already clear in the critique of medieval linear time late
advanced by the late fourteenth-century Florentine civic humanist, Salutati.
… You would not, I am sure, deny that very many of the processes of Nature move in
periodic cycles. The fourfold change of the twelve months follows the course of every
year. We see first the beginnings of new birth renewed in the germinating earth; then
with various changes we see these beginnings, warmed by the summer heat, shaping
themselves into the abundance of the coming fruit; then, when they are ripe for the birth
they give each its fruit in due season, and, by as much as they were warmed by the
summer's heat, they are tempered by the autumn coolness; finally, in the depth of winter
they are all drawn up into the bosom of the all-producing earth to return once more to
their beginnings when the frost gives way to the warmth of spring.
The same thing is plainly to be seen in the course of human affairs if one turns
carefully the page of history; for, though nothing returns in precisely the same form, yet
we see daily some image of the past renewed. ... 7
Cyclical history also appealed to humanists for other reasons. By imbedding the rise and fall of
regimes and changes in social morality within the larger cycles of nature, humanists struggled to
order the chaotic power struggles and reversals of fortune which plagued Europe in the fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. One of the most influential statements of this thinking came
at the beginning of book five of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories.
Usually provinces go most of the time, in the changes they make, from order to disorder
and then pass again from disorder to order, for worldly things are not allowed by nature
to stand still. As soon as they reach their ultimate perfection, having no further to rise,
they must descend, and similarly, once they have descended and through their disorders
arrived at the ultimate depth, since they cannot descend further, of necessity they must
rise. Thus they are always descending from good to bad and rising from bad to good. For
virtue gives birth to quiet, quiet to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin; and
similarly, from ruin, order is born, from order, virtue; and from virtue, glory and good
fortune. Whence it has been observed by the prudent that letters come after arms and
that, in provinces and cities, captains arise before philosophers. For as good and ordered
armies give birth to victories and victories to quiet, the strength of well-armed spirits
cannot be corrupted by a more honorable leisure than that of letters, nor can leisure
enter into well-instituted cities with a greater and more dangerous deceit than this one.
This was best understood by Cato when the philosophers Diogenes and Carneades, sent
by Athens as spokesmen to the Senate, came to Rome. When he saw how the Roman youth
was beginning to follow them about with admiration, and since he recognized the evil
that could result to the fatherland from this honorable leisure, he saw to it that no
philosopher could be accepted in Rome. Thus, provinces comes by these means to ruin;
when they have arrived there and men have become wise from their afflictions, they
return, as was said, to order unless they remain suffocated by an extraordinary force.
These causes, first through the ancient Tuscans and then the Romans, have made Italy
sometimes happy, sometimes wretched. 8
The appeal of circular time in no way diminished the appeal of linear time for Renaissance
humanists. But here too, we see an important shift from medieval notions of linear time. Drawing
on more optimistic classical notions of linear time as human progress and improvement,
Renaissance humanists refashioned medieval linear time from an Augustinian sacred history
moving from Creation to Last Judgment to a more terrestrial view of history where the past
culminated triumphantly in modern knowledge and virtue and continued to move into a glowing
future. 9 Humanism even managed to imbed linear time in nature by comparing the rise of
civilizations to the linear stages of organic growth in trees, animals, and human life.
Turning away from medieval sacred time and drawing on a variety of classical ideas,
Renaissance humanism managed to combine circular and linear time. For example, the return to
the beginning - classical antiquity - was also a historical step forward out of the "dark ages"
toward a glorious, unfolding future. And when humanists hailed princes for restoring a lost
golden age of civilization, peace, and prosperity, they usually praised a golden age which
surpassed its predecessors.
Painting as History: Image Cycles of Great Men
From the early fifteenth century, humanist princes and magistrates in Italy began commissioning
cycles of paintings and tapestries on the great historical figures of classical antiquity. Princely
patrons favored rulers and world conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Caesar, Augustus, and
Constantine. A Dutch artist painted a series of portraits of famous men for the study of the
humanist duke of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro while Mantegna painted a cycle of busts of
Roman emperors on the ceiling of the main reception room of the Duke of Mantua, Ludovico
Gonzaga. Burgher patrons and the magistrates of republican city states like Florence
commissioned cycles of republican heroes who stood up to princely tyranny. One such example
was Ghirlandaio's cycle in the town hall of Florence, the Palazzo Vecchio.
By the mid-sixteenth century, classical political history became an important new subject in
European art at the highest levels of court and civic patronage. Other cycles of famous people
from classical history focused on intellectuals like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and Homer. Among
these was Raphael's famous School of Athens and Parnassus painted around 1508-1510 on the
walls of the private library of Pope Julius II. Such cycles of great thinkers continued into the
seventeenth century and included, among many examples, Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating
the Bust of Homer.
Renaissance patrons also commissioned cycles of paintings and tapestries on figures who
occupied a place in history and myth, in that exalted realm of early history where heroes
interacted with the gods and realized glorious destinies guided by divine providence. Of these,
none was more important than the story of the Trojan prince, Aeneas. According to Roman
legend, Aeneas was the grandson of Venus. When the Greeks destroyed Troy at the end of the
Trojan war, Aeneas fled the burning city carrying his old father, Anchises, on his back, and
accompanied by his son. After a series of maritime adventures sailing the Trojan fleet around the
Mediterranean, Aeneas started a new settlement at the mouth of the Tiber River in what is now
Italy. Marrying into the local Latin tribe, the Trojans took on a new identity. His descendants
included Romulus and Remus, fathered by Mars, who grew up to found Rome and led that town
to early political power in central Italy.
In this mythical history, Troy was more then just an ancestor kingdom for Rome in a universal
court history of great kingdoms and empires linked by Divine Providence. In some sense, Troy
was an early version of Rome before it became Rome, with bloodlines flowing directly from
Trojan kings to later Roman kings and emperors, all descended from the Gods through Aeneas
(and Romulus, the son of Mars). In the universal or world histories favored by rulers and
Catholic church officials since the Renaissance, the decline of the kingdom of Troy was less a
disaster than a divinely ordained prelude necessary for the rise of Rome as the greatest empire in
history and the touchstone of all later Western kingdoms, empires, and nations aspiring to
greatness. If this was already true to some extent in the Middle Ages, the story of Aeneas and the
Troy-Rome narrative remained the most important foundation story for European monarchs,
emperors, and popes from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. 10 Needless to say, it enjoyed
special favor in the cultural patronage of high nobles and church officials in Renaissance and
Baroque Rome.
The Renaissance revival of classical historical values also gave new life to other classical heroes
who founded great cities or empires such as Hercules and Alexander the Great. Every cycle of
tapestries, paintings, or prints celebrating the great historical figures of classical antiquity had its
own moral and political lessons, its own targeted audiences, and its own particular agenda
grounded in local politics. Yet they all shared in the new humanist culture of history and fame.
For all their backward looking imagery, they were geared toward defining the virtues of modern
patrons, families, institutions, states, and cities and to "writing" them into a permanent and
glorious place in a new historical culture.
In so far as classical history entered European art at the highest social and political levels and
appeared in works of the greatest scale and sumptuousness in the most prominent buildings and
reception rooms, Renaissance art offered more than a passive reflection of the new humanist
culture of history. By making history a permanent part of the material fabric of elite social,
political, and cultural life, Renaissance art itself played a major role in defining and circulating
the new historical values.
The Secular Immortality of Fame
In so far as history preserved for later audiences the best and worst of human nature, humanist
history fueled a new sense of fame achieved through heroic worldly achievements and through
supreme heights of virtue, generally externalized in some outer action. For many humanists,
history offered a new kind of secular or terrestrial immortality, the immortality of fame. Here
they drew on the rich historical culture of classical antiquity which frequently extolled the
immortal fame won by the greatest public figures: athletes, rulers, warriors, explorers, founders
of cities, and so on. Some women were occasionally included in these catalogues, usually for
displaying extreme versions of traditional female virtues tied to the private sphere.
Renaissance humanists also drew on classical ideas of the human mind as divine, as an eternal,
celestial reality untouched by worldly disasters and death. To the extent that educated human
beings lived the life of the mind and contributed to it, they could achieve a secular immortality
through intellectual and cultural life. As the poet Horace wrote, "Art ensures, life is short" (Ars
longa, vita brevis est).
With its downgrading of worldly goals, achievements, and pleasures, medieval Christian culture
ridiculed this classical culture of human fame, heroic accomplishment, and timeless intellect. In
contrast to classical comments on the mind's triumph over death, medieval Christian writers
loved to speak of the triumph of death over all worldly accomplishment and ambition, all wealth,
power, beauty, and fame. This was particularly prominent in early Christian writing and in later
monastic attacks on all "vainglory". Though medieval court culture continued elements of
classical history and fame, it was largely overshadowed by this monastic hostility to worldly
feats. All this took on greater urgency after the great Black Death of 1348 which killed one third
of Europe and brought a heightened sense of penitence. In the wake of the Black Death, late
medieval culture produced a rash of texts and images on the Triumph of Death and related
themes. 11 Another late medieval image of death's power was the humorous "Dance of Death"
where death mockingly carried away people from every station and occupation, high and low,
triumphing over all.
In sharp contrast to such late medieval values, Italian humanists began defending fame as a
noble, worthwhile goal. For the early Florentine humanist and educator, Vergerio, the higher life
of the mind found in the new humanist curriculum was inseparable from a new sense of heroic
virtue and enduring fame.
"We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free man; those studies by
which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education which calls forth,
trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind which ennoble men,
and which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to virtue only. For to a vulgar
temper gain and pleasure are the one aim of existence, to a lofty nature, moral
worth and fame. 12
The connection between fame and the new humanist ideals of civic political and moral
engagement were particularly clear in the vigorous defense of fame advanced by one of the
speakers in Alberti's On the Family (1430-34). Here we see how humanist fame was rooted in
the Renaissance city and in the political, social, and economic ambitions produced by
Renaissance city life.
Lionardo: "So you see, Giannozzo, that the admirable resolve which would make private
honor one's sole rule in life, though noble and generous in itself, may still be not the
proper guide for spirits eager to seek glory. Fame is born not in the midst of private
peace but in public action. Glory springs up in public squares; reputation is nourished by
the voice and judgment of many persons of honor, and in the midst of people. Fame flees
from every solitary and private spot to dwell gladly in the arena, where crowds are
gathered and celebrity is found; there the name is bright and luminous of one who with
hard sweat and assiduous toil for noble ends has projected himself out of silence and
darkness, ignorance, and vice. For these reasons I have never felt that one should object
to a man's seeking out by means of praiseworthy works and studies, but no less by a
devout and careful adherence to good conduct, to gain the favor of some honorable and
well-established citizen."
...
"Also, Giannozzo, it is in the city one learns to be a citizen. There people acquire
valuable knowledge, see many models to teach them the avoidance of evils. As they look
around them they notice how handsome is honor, how lovely is fame, how divine a thing
is glory. There they taste the sweets of praise, of being named and esteemed and admired.
By these wondrous joys the young are awakened to the pursuit of excellence and come to
devote themselves to attempting difficult things worthy of immortality. Such high
advantages may not, perhaps, be found in the country amid logs and clods." 13
Given the new interest in "great" men and women from the classical past as examples and
parallels for the modern age, it is not surprising to find an explosion of portraiture in Renaissance
art. While the expansion of this aesthetic category was rooted in many developments including
the new humanist sense of individual moral freedom, it was profoundly linked to the new culture
of fame. In a certain sense, all Renaissance portraits were an attempt to secure fame through art.
This was especially true for the mass-produced medallion portraits of princes which circulated
throughout Italy and Europe after the 1430s and monumental portraits executed in fresco or
sculpture for public spaces. Examples of the latter include the equestrian portraits of the fifteenth
and sixteenth century: Uccello's Sir John Hawkwood painted on the wall of the Duomo in
Florence (1430s), Donatello's Gattamelata (1445-50) placed by Venice in a conquered Padua,
and Verrochio's Colleoni (1481-8) placed in a small square in Venice. It was also true for all
Renaissance tomb portraits, painted and sculpted, starting with Masaccio's Holy Trinity and
continuing all the way to Michelangelo's Medici Chapel.
In later Renaissance tomb portraits, especially at the highest social levels where humanist fame
was most securely entrenched, we see a remarkable change in the late medieval imagery of death
after 1500. Instead of a triumphant death humbling pious donors praying for salvation to Christ,
we begin to see tomb monuments extolling the heroic worldly deeds and virtues of the deceased
and their secular triumph over death through eternal fame. One example was the relief depicting
Terrestrial Fame from Andrea Riccio's Tomb of Giralomo and Mercantonio della Torre executed
in the late teens. Here the sculptor carved an allegory of the triumph of human mind over death.
Pegasus, the winged horse, appears as a traditional classical image of intellectual glory and
eternal fame, along with a vase inscribed "Virtue," causing a nearby Death to drop his scythe in
defeat.
Fame's triumph over death appeared more explicitly in the tomb portraits of Michelangelo's
Medici Chapel. There, the deceased rose triumphantly in eternal glory above their tombs like the
resurrected Christ in the never-executed fresco toward which they gazed. Their ancient Roman
armor and the "Four Times of Day" placed below them suggested an celestial triumph beyond
time and space, an eternal, "Roman" fame.
The Fame Bestowed by Art and the Elevation of the Writer and the Artist as Historical Agents
One of the chief beneficiaries of the new humanist culture of history and fame were the writers
and artists working to "write" the new history. Eternal fame required humanists, poets, painters,
sculptors, and architects to write heroic virtues and accomplishments into the enduring record of
history. As the Greek epic poet Pindar wrote in one of many self-conscious verses,
"When men are dead and gone, it is only the loud acclaim of praise that surviveth mortals
and revealeth their manner of life to chroniclers and to bards alike" 14
In his On Architecture, the ancient Roman architectural historian, and fame-seeker, Vitruvius,
described three ways for artists to achieve fame: 1) by working for the greatest rulers, 2) by
making art with conspicuous intellectual qualities, or 3) by teaching and writing about art. All
three strategies were adopted by Renaissance artists. 15
From the beginning, Renaissance humanists and poets, and later artists, reminded their audience
that they played a crucial role in writing and preserving history and creating fame. As early as
the mid-fourteenth century, the Italian humanist poet, Boccaccio, insisted that great poetry lasted
much longer than great empires or buildings and that poets "aspire to a glorious fame that shall
endure to the end of time." 16 Poggio extended this to the visual arts in his dialogue, On Nobility,
by having the character Lorenzo de' Medici defend the important role of art in securing fame.
"I agree," Lorenzo replied, "that these qualities [reason, wisdom, virtue] contribute
greatly towards gaining nobility and should be desired by all, for virtue is held to be a
kind of divine thing. Nevertheless, we know that those who have paintings, varied and
elegant sculptures, wealth, and abundance of possessions, or who hold public office and
positions of power, have nobility bestowed on them, even though not noted for their
virtue. We have read that highly intelligent people desired and respected such things.
Even the most learned ancients spent much time and energy collecting sculptures and
paintings. Cicero himself, Varro, Aristotle, and other Greeks and Romans, people
extraordinarily learned in all fields, who displayed their virtues by taking refuge in their
studies, adorned their libraries and gardens with such items in order to ennoble those
places and display their own fame and praiseworthiness. They thought that visible
examples of those who had a zeal for fame and wisdom would help ennoble and excite the
mind. ... the external goods you rejected earlier, such as courtyards filled with statues,
galleries, theaters, public entertainments, hunting, parties, and similar things that bring
us public esteem, should be added to the person worthy of this title. These things make
people famous and bestow nobility. Just as renown is a part of virtue and accompanies
good deeds, so a distinctive name and fame beyond the ordinary arises from this renown
- called nobility. The illustrious deeds and virtues which earned nobility for one
generation are passed on to the next generation, like a light making them more
distinguished and acclaimed. ... If we want future generations to remember and celebrate
our deeds, then the recollection and glory of our parents, like their statues, must shine in
those of us to whom we they wish to bequeath their fame. 17
Though Poggio used the austere civic humanist, Niccolo Niccoli, to rebut such material
expressions of fame, Niccolo nonetheless endorsed the larger culture of fame as the reward of
virtue.
Around the same time as Poggio, the Florentine humanist, architect, art critic and moral writer,
Alberti, offered a more aggressive defense of the lofty role of art in securing fame and in carving
out a serene, inner world of mind safe from the "shipwreck" of worldly disaster.
“There are other activities in which powers of body and mind function together to bring
profit. Such are the occupations of painters, sculptors, musicians, and others like them. ...
[The arts] remain with us and do not go down in shipwrecks but swim away with our
naked selves. They keep us company all our lives and feed and maintain our name and
fame.” 18
By the sixteenth century, some writers debated whether writers and artists were the primary
agents of glory and wondered if any of the heroic acts described in the Iliad or Odyssey would
have been famous if not for the poetic genius of Homer. In short, the new culture of history
opened up new possibilities for Renaissance writers and artists to glorify their own work,
increase a growing self-consciousness of literary and aesthetic effects, and enhance the literary
and visual literacy of educated elites.
Though one Pope Clement VII Medici ordered the death of Michelangelo after he built
fortifications to defend republican Florence against a papal army, Clement quickly rescinded his
decree, knowing Michelangelo was far more valuable alive than dead. Michelangelo himself
suggested the enduring fame conferred by art when he defended his Medici tomb portraits
against the criticism they were not lifelike. In two hundred years, he said, no one would know
what the Medici looked like. The subtext was that his works were more important than any
patrons and had their own higher, aesthetic worth which would outlive the historical reputation
of his patrons. Here, it was the artist who reaped the rewards of fame, not the glorified patron.
The Anxiety of Humanist History and the Continuation of Medieval Death
The rise of a humanist historical culture did not mean the end of traditional medieval values.
Instead, the two clashing cultures existed side by side, each reinforcing the "truth" of the other.
The interplay of the two cultures was productive culturally, in creating new ambiguities,
tensions, and contradictions in late medieval and humanist culture. For example, the rise of a
courtly culture of eternal fame and glory strengthened monastic and burgher critiques of all
vainglory. And the popularization in the sixteenth century of triumph of death and dance of death
imagery helped fuel doubts within humanist culture, especially burgher culture, about the value
of fame and glory. Even the earliest burgher proponents of humanist fame like Alberti displayed
reservations tied to concerns rooted in late medieval culture (and classical critiques of fame).
Thus, the other speaker in Alberti's On the Family expresses doubts about the superiority of
urban life with its ambition and fame vs. the countryside which he associates with a wise and
contented tranquility.
Giannozzo: "I have some doubts, for all that, Lionardo, as to which is better, to bring up
one's children in the country or the city. But let us assess it thus: every situation has its
own natural advantages. In the city are the workshops of great dreams, for such are
governments, constitutions, fame. In the country we find peace, contentment, a free way
of pursuing life and health." 19
Doubts about fame even penetrated into a category of culture most readily associated with the
new humanist fame, Renaissance epic poetry which served to immortalize the most glorious and
heroic deeds of courtly heroes. In Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated (1575), a nymph warns the young
men against the dangers of ambition.
O young men, now while April and May are clothing you in green and blossoming array,
ah let not the deceitful glitter of glory and virtue seduce your tender minds! ... Fools, why
do you cast away the precious gift of your fresh youth, that is so short? Names and idols
without substance are that which the world calls reputation and valor. Fame, that
enchants you prideful mortals with a pleasing sound, and seems so beautiful, is an echo,
a dream, the shadow of a dream, that with every wind is scattered and vanishes away. 20
Since the purpose of Tasso's epic was to immortalize the heroic liberation of Jerusalem from
Turkish armies by Christian knights, the nymph's warning did not mean Tasso was a late
medieval critic of the new humanist culture of heroic ambition and fame. On the contrary, Tasso
was one of its most conspicuous proponents. But because he lived in a world which included an
ongoing late medieval critique of ambition, especially unbridled, reckless ambition (which
classical authors also attacked), Tasso felt it necessary to criticize fame in a poem which
exemplified it. Whether he was protecting himself from external criticism or whether he
harbored personal doubts about fame is difficult to tell. The important point to make here is that
cultural innovations - for example humanist history and fame - invariably produce external
criticism, internal doubts, and cultural ambiguities.
As late as the seventeenth century, when humanist history was a well-established in education
and elite culture, one sees a new interest in allegorical images of "Vanitas," that is, the emptiness
and transience of all worldly pleasure, wealth, accomplishments, and fame. At a time when
humanist history and fame reached a new level of extravagance in court culture, as at Versailles,
vanitas imagery took on new prominence in Baroque religious art and in burgher secular imagery
(as in the Netherlands).
1
2
Pp. 351-352
3
In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), the English Enlightenment
philosopher and historian, David Hume repeated the view that history explored the unchanging,
universal qualities of human nature.
It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all
nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations.
The same motives always produce the same actions. The same events follow from the same
causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit: these passions,
mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the
world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises, which have ever been observed
among mankind. Would you know the sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the Greeks
and Romans? Study well the temper and actions of the French and English: You cannot be much
mistaken in transferring to the former most of the observations which you have made with regard
to the latter. Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of
nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and
universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and
situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and
become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behaviour.
This is quoted in Beth Wright, Painting and History During the French Restoration, Cambridge
University Press, 1997, p. 17, with other similar texts.
4
There was already a late medieval version of this in cycles on the Nine Worthies such as that painted by Jacquerio
in the Castello di Manta.
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6
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8
Also see Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, Series B, no. 114, in Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections
of a Renaissance Statesman, trans. Mario Domandi, ed. Nicolai Rubenstein, Harper and Row, 1965, p. 123
9
10
See David Quint, Epic and Empire, Princeton Un Press, 1993; Richard Waswo, From Virgil to Vietnam,
Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1997
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