Download Baldwin World History Cosmic Order and Nature in Marmions Adam

Marmion, Adam and Eve in Paradise, 1455-60, from book on the Seven Ages of the
World,
Robert Baldwin
Associate Professor of Art History
Connecticut College
New London, CT 06320
[email protected]
(This essay was written in 2009.)
Three important issues stand out for me in this image, the first tied the book as world
history and the second two to the distinct features of the image, especially its hierarchical
order, on the one hand, and its groundbreaking naturalism, on the other.
I. The Seven Ages as World History
History as we know it was a category if literature invented by the ancient Greek as and
Romans. It died out in the Middle Ages, replaced by different forms of historical writing
such as the chronicle, which focused on local events and family history/genealogy and
world history, which developed highly abstract narratives dividing all history into a few
major periods governed by great rulers or powerful institutions.
World history also looked for overarching principles of time unfolding according to
Divine Providence and culminating in the present with its glorious rulers or institutions.
In that sense, world history could also be called God’s history as it unveiled the master
plan guiding all human affairs. In sharp contrast, the history invented by Greco-Roman
writers and revived in the Renaissance focused on the secular lives of powerful men (and
some women), on their decisions, actions, and consequences in the public sphere of
politics, diplomacy, and warfare, and on the great political, military, economic, and social
developments. Assuming a universal human nature, such history used the past to develop
an edifying arena of virtues and vices and living examples (to emulate and to avoid)
allowing readers a wider range of human experience and thus a shortcut to a superior
judgment, wisdom, flexibility, and practicality. This history, as we still know it, was
largely secular in both its materials and its higher purposes. It avoided the wild historical
leaps, fanciful comparisons and typologies, and focus on a metaphysical deity pulling the
strings. Whereas medieval world history gave most authority and credit to God, classical
and Renaissance history gave almost all the credit as well as the blame to human beings
acting freely as independent agents of their own success and failure. Such historical
writing did not exist in the fifteenth-century North because it came with Italian
Renaissance humanism which arrived only after 1480 and didn’t really take hold in the
curriculum until after 1500.
With its universalizing temporal dimension – the history of all time and human existence
– and its subordination of the major epochs to rulers or institutions - world history
appealed to rulers and church officials in the Middle Ages. (Along with many other forms
of medieval culture like chivalry, world history continued into the Renaissance,
invariably mingling with newer humanist forms of history and blurring the differences
between classical and Renaissance history, on the one hand, and medieval historical
writing, on the other. For more on this, see the reading “Baldwin, Humanism History”.)
Unlike classical circular time, Medieval Christian time was linear, following the Biblical
model which runs from Creation to end of time in Apocalypse. Medieval time was not
haphazard as everything important followed God’s plan for the unfolding of human
existence. This teleological approach to time allowed medieval writers to create elaborate
connections between different periods so that all important events foreshadowed later
developments just as all later occurrences were connected to earlier prophesies and
happenings. Here medieval world history borrowed on the early Christian idea that
everything in the New Testament was prophesized in the Old Testament and that all
previous history, Jewish and pagan, culminated in a triumphant Christianity which
replaced earlier religions.
With all time divided into seven ages, this book exemplifies Medieval world history.
Most Medieval world history divided time into some mathematically appealing schema
such as three, four, six, seven, or twelve periods. Church culture often divided time into
three periods – everything before Christ under the Jewish or pagan law, the period during
Christ’s life, and everything after Christ’s life until the end of time, that is, the period of
the Church. Three periods went well with the Trinity. Four periods went well with the
four seasons. Seven periods connected with the seven planets. And twelve periods
connected with the twelve astrological signs and months. While each world history
offered its own version of these mathematical schemas, all of them affirmed a
metaphysical idea of time unfolding purposefully according to God’s plan.
Thus our manuscript illumination illustrates the first period in world history – the perfect
origins of life before the Fall when the world was still obediently under the control of
God the Father. He appears here in the celestial sphere, enthroned and ruling. His
presence exemplifies the politics of Medieval (and Renaissance) world history, with each
epoch placed securely under the government of a powerful ruler or institution.
To see world history here in visual terms, we should compare the unfolding of a linear,
universal, all-encompassing time to Marmion’s handling of space which descends in
every widening, cosmic circles from God’s celestial throne. Just as God presides over all
time, so his visual power unfolds in ever-widening circles throughout the spherical
cosmos like solar rays from the rising-setting sun over a natural landscape (as seen here).
The solar theme is underscored in the orange and red spheres surrounding God and the
fiery color of his robes. Understood this way, the formal structures of the image affirm
the fixed politics of world history as a medieval form of court or church culture.
II. The Cosmic Order of the Natural Sphere
Marmion’s image also affirms the Medieval courtly-Christian cosmos as an orderly and
harmonious hierarchy with everything in its proper place. As discussed in class, the
Labors of the Months emerged as a secular theme within church culture, public and
private, including the grand stained glass windows and portals of Gothic cathedrals and
the small illuminations of private prayer books (Books of Hours). Court culture also
patronized this theme in a more secular context after the late 14th century, as did burgher
culture in the mid sixteenth century (Bruegel’s large landscapes).
As with late Medieval and Early Renaissance depictions of the Months, Marmion’s Adam
and Eve in Paradise offers an image of the orderly, harmonious, and hierarchical cosmos
with God the Father in the celestial sphere, Adam and Eve located below in the terrestrial
sphere, and below them, the irrational sphere of beasts and fowl. Putting aside for now
the symbolism of individual animals, we should see how Marmion used them to affirm
the enduring Western idea of a hierarchical universe. Remember that God made Adam
and Eve in his image and immediately gave them dominion over the animal world,
charging Adam in particular to name the beasts.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Gen. 1:26-28).
...
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every
fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
(Genesis 2: 19)
Interestingly, the one animal left out or minimized is the serpent. (Do I see a snake
crawling at Adam’s feet?) As the animal who will upset the natural hierarchy and drag
Adam and Eve down to the level of “bestial” appetites, his apparent absence (or
minimizing) underscores the idyllic qualities of this landscape. Yet all is not perfect for
Adam holds the forbidden fruit and gestures toward Eve.
III. The New Naturalism of the Early Renaissance
Marmion’s Adam and Eve in Paradise is ground breaking in its naturalism as a
landscape, in part through the partial use of one–point perspective. Invented by early
Renaissance artists in Italy around 1410, this new system for making deep, plausible
spaces quickly spread into Northern painting by the 1440s. It was the only innovation of
the early Italian Renaissance which spread North in the fifteenth century. The new Italian
interest in classical art and architectural form arrived only at the end of the fifteenth
century with Dürer and didn’t appear widely until 1515.
Admittedly it is harder to see one-point perspective in a landscape. Its effects are much
more striking with architectural and urban scenes. Nonetheless, one-point perspective
structures the landscape which recedes properly toward a horizon rather than rising
vertically. I also see a new naturalism in the lush topography of the natural setting and in
the inclusion of animals which extended the world of nature with a richer vocabulary of
terrestrial particulars. At the same time, Marmion avoided packing in too many animals,
as seen in some earlier representations, presumably because such crowding would have
ruined the geometric simplicity of his composition. One might even note the accurate
description of all the animals but the lion, which Marmion had never seen.
Lush Landscape, Pastoral Traditions, and Nature’s Beauty as a New Naturalism
While Paradise was always known for its lush beauty, most earlier fifteenth-century
images failed to develop lush or beautiful settings. Here we need to see the beauty of
Marmion’s nature as yet another element in the new naturalism.
It may also be that Marmion borrowed this sensual beauty from a courtly visual tradition
where lush gardens of love and amorous pastoral were more traditionally established and
where amorous couples frequently appeared. Replace the amorous shepherd and
shepherdess with Adam and Eve and the result might look like Marmion’s image.
Despite signs that the artist worked to extend the naturalism of his fifteenth-century
predecessors, the “progress” in this direction remains somewhat limited. The one
architectural motif – the throne of God – shows no one-point perspective either because
Marmion didn’t understand it fully or because he deliberately made the celestial realm
appear flattened and otherworldly. Further examination of the radiating cosmic circles
now makes me retract the comment made in class that these circles are spherical in
accord with one-point perspective. Furthermore, Marmion’s nudes show no interest in
close observation or proper proportion, not to mention the classical nudity beginning to
appear in Italian Renaissance art in the 1460s (Pollaiuolo). Marmion’s Adam and Eve
remain the elongated, Late Gothic stick figures seen everywhere in fifteenth-century
Northern art right through Bosch (d. 1517). His naturalism is most striking, then, in the
world of landscape description, light and color, and landscape perspective.
A More Particular World of Animal Symbolism
To my mind, the only important animal symbolism here is that discussed above in section
II on cosmic hierarchies (God – mankind – animal). To fuss over the individual
symbolism of each animal included by Marmion is to risk getting lost in nit-picky details
and to miss the larger issues. To be sure, the history of art offers images with very
important symbolic details such as Bronzino’s Father Time, Venus and Cupid. But
Marmion’s image is not one of them. While urging you NOT to get sidetracked on petty
symbolic details in this course, let me also explain briefly what these particular animals
probably meant (as best as I can determine). The rabbit was known for fertility and
frequently appeared in fifteenth-century Northern pastoral love scenes, for example the
tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. Placed next to Adam and Eve, the rabbit
presumably refers to the fertile and fruitful nature of Paradise and, more generally, to the
lust which overwhelmed Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit (according to
medieval theology). For the same reason, Dürer later included a rabbit in his 1504
engraving of Adam and Eve.
The swan was an aristocratic bird favored in courtly emblems and heraldry for men and
women and appears as such on the red banner directly above the Duke of Berry and on
his golden salt cellar in the Limbourg Brothers’s January. Here the swan adds to the
courtly beauty and elegance of the whole landscape. (A dirty pig would have been out of
place in Marmion’s luminous and tidy nature.) Although the swan was known for its
heavenly music, musical symbolism does not seem relevant here. Finally, the swan was
associated with aristocratic women for a variety of reasons which you will be discussing
in an upcoming writing assignment. This seems important here given the swan’s
placement next to Eve, the direction of its gaze, and the position of Eve’s left hand which
connects her visually with the swan.
The drinking stag is an icon of Early Christian art tied to Psalm 42 where the soul panting
after the lord is compared to the hart (stag) drinking from the water. This metaphor was
well known in Christian theology and appeared in illustrated manuscripts of the Bible
(especially the Psalms) and in illuminated Books of Prayer such as Jean Colombe’s
miniature of King David in the Duke of Berry’s Trés Riches Heures. Finally, the lion
appears as a tamed beast here, underscoring the perfect harmony of Paradise.
The Western Tradition of Animal Allegory and Nature as a Symbolic System
From classical antiquity through the seventeenth century, natural science, philosophy,
and theology all developed comprehensive allegorical interpretations of the natural
world. That is, writers and artists interpreted the world as a coherent system of
interlocking references, parallels and contrasts, macrocosms and microcosms. Every
animal was thoroughly allegorized in classical natural science in the sense that each was
associated with a rich series of fables and moral qualities. Medieval Christian writers
extended this tradition with a new layer of specifically Christian allegorical significance.
With the rise of vernacular writing in the 12th century, one of the more popular late
medieval vernacular texts were compilations of animal lore called Bestiaries which
broadened and extended animal lore. Even today, we unconsciously assume an
allegorized animal world when we refer to the timid hare, the brave lion, the sly fox, the
lecherous goat, the gluttonous pig, the fearless eagle, the faithful dog, and so on.
Renaissance Naturalism as Allegorical Vision
This leads me to a general point on allegory and naturalism. The rise of a new naturalism
in the Early Renaissance is not the end of “medieval” allegory. On the contrary,
Renaissance naturalism offered a new way to allegorize the world by introducing and
carefully organizing a rich, densely packed field of symbolic details. We have already
seen this in the Labors of the Months where the many details worked to affirm feudal
social and political hierarchies for courtly viewers. The more secular detail and
”observation” in those works, the more true courtly values became simply by imbedding
themselves deeply in a richly “described” empirical world grounded in a seemingly
everyday life.
To better comprehend how naturalism tends to be allegorical (especially between 1300
and 1700 when allegory ruled Western thinking as a principle of nature), we might
remember that naturalism is always selective. And in its selectivity, naturalism creates a
interpreted world skewed toward the values of dominant social groups (patrons and
audiences). In short, artistic naturalism necessarily encodes and disguises (naturalizes)
the shaping values of its audiences. See in this light, all Renaissance (and Baroque)
naturalism is inherently “allegorical” especially if we broaden the term “allegorical” to
include any tendency to impose moral, political, social and religious significance on
earthly things and events.
Modern Science and the End of Allegory as a Ruling Cultural Principle
While some allegorical tendencies continue in modern art and popular imagery, the age
of allegory as a ruling principle of culture lasted until the end of the seventeenth century.
It died in the early to mid eighteenth century as an emerging modern science demolished
most of the earlier, allegorical, astrological, theological, and symbolic interpretations of
the natural world including the fundamental idea that the cosmos was a fixed and stable
hierarchy with noble mind ruling base matter.