Turinbaar
10th November 2011, 05:32
Modern history is plagued by a very ancient question about the essence of Humanity. On one side of the debate there are those who define humanism as a religious ideal of infinite spiritual and moral potential, and on the other there are those who define it as a method of understanding the harmonious relationship between nature and man through direct observation of this inherent unity. In the pre-enlightenment eras, this dialectic has produced breathtaking works of art, such as the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci and The Last Judgment of Christ by Michelangelo. In our day it takes form in opposing movements seeking to shape the very composition of society, codified in literature by the philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Hegel. The search for the essence of humanism, exemplified artistically by the naturalism of Leonardo Da Vinci and the idealism of Michelangelo, which registers marvelously in their work and can be understood by careful study of the arts, the historical conditions and the artists themselves, finds resonance today in the modern humanist dialectic, and their iconic paintings serve as a medium through which this debate may continue, and perhaps finally resolve.
Of all the works by Leonardo Da Vinci, his most prized and labored was the little portrait known as the Mona Lisa. He loved it so much he refused to hand it over to its commissioner, and took it to France, where he worked on it until he died. It is an encapsulation of Da Vinci’s humanist method, which was based on the newly resurrected scientific wisdom of the ancient Greek and Roman atomist philosophers like Lucretius, and stressed an intimate investigation of the natural world and the reflections of its forms in the human body, with the ultimate goal of being able to manipulate these forms on canvas with infinite breadth and subtlety. He makes reference to Lucretius’ sole surviving work, “De Rerum Natura,” a poem thought to be heretical by the authorities for its denial of supernatural intervention in the worldly order, in his now famous notebooks (Da Vinci literary works pg. 450). This commitment to science produced a conspicuous feature of Da Vinci’s humanist method, which is the absence of religion as an integral part of its make-up. Indeed among his notes there is a humorous story of a zealous priest who sprinkled holy water onto an artist’s painting, claiming that those who sew the seeds of the Lord through sanctimonious deed shall reap his reward a hundredfold in the hereafter, and as the preacher left the studio a shower of water fell on him from a bucket held by the artist in the above window, who proclaimed that the intrusive cleric had just reaped what he had sewn (Leonardo’s Notebooks pg. 306). The dogmas of Christianity were superfluous to his vision, and so were left out of his most beloved creation.
The painting depicts a simple woman sitting proudly but elegantly in a tetrahedron composition. Her face is round, and betrays in its reserved expression an intensely mysterious character, best articulated through her eyes and the subtle smile at the edges of her lips. The proportions of her head conform to the phi ratio, a universally occurring proportion that is also applied in the foundation of the Parthenon. The painting is done in oil, a new medium making its debut in High Renaissance Italy at the time. Her pose creates a sense of gravity, counterbalanced by an intense radiance emanating from her eyes. To her back, Da Vinci, shows the viewer a dreamscape, flowing into the distance with rivers and jagged hills, and faded by his characteristic sfumato technique, which serves as a demonstration of the essential power of creation in the mind, a power made ever more brilliant by the mind’s intuitive relation with the real world. It is this essential power of creation, accessible to the conscious observer, that a later student of Lucretius, Karl Marx, spoke of in the introduction to his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, when he said: “criticism of religion has plucked the flowers from the chain, not so that man may wear the chain without consolation, but so that he may break the chain and cull the living flower.” To the secularists, such as Marx, and to the preceding artwork of that manifestation of humanism such as the Mona Lisa, Christianity responds in the direct and opposite manner by asserting that the abandonment of religion is necessarily the abolition of humanism in art and society.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, in addition to being a pious Catholic, adhered to a movement in philosophy known as Neo-Platonism, which held as an axiom the limitless spiritual and moral capacity of humanity as an ideal to be strived towards and that art is the product of this ideal (Gardeners pg 500). He fused this ancient philosophy with his Christianity by asserting this ideal as a necessary component of humanity’s essence as a creation of an infinite and absolute Diety. This form of Christian Humanism, caught the attention of the Vatican, which, under Pope Paul III, sought to aggrandize itself aesthetically and politically, and picked Michelangelo to paint the massive fresco altarpiece of the Sistine Chapel known as the Last Judgment of Christ. The work is so distinct from all others of the High Renaissance that it is considered among the first works of a new movement in art, known as Mannerism. Those who followed in his footsteps would stress stylization and dynamism, as well as consciously reject naturalism in their works. The Last Judgment’s iconography is an encapsulation of Michelangelo’s humanist ideal, and finds modern codification in the Christian Humanism of Friedrich Hegel.
In his Phenomenology, Hegel describes the essence of humanity as, from its historical outset, abstract and absolute idea, in other words, Divine essence. This form of Christian Humanism synthesizes abstract philosophies ranging from Plato to Buddha. It views the material body of the human is a mere estrangement and alienation of humanity from God, and History as the process of human self-consciousness whereby man, by his own spiritual labor, may in the future return to this ideal abstraction. As Marx reduces it in his 1844 manuscripts, “positing of man=self-consciousness (pg. 152).” This historical movement, according to the Christianity that both Hegel and Michelangelo adhered to, would be consummate when man truly knew himself as a being of divine essence and when Christ returned to annul the estrangement of humanity from its creator. The Last Judgment of Christ depicts this very moment whereupon all contradiction in creation would be annulled and abolished. This annulment that is the resolution to the alienation essential to Hegel’s philosophy, would necessarily abolish the contradiction between the idea of Absolute Justice, and the practice of justice as applied in reality, which is the central theme of Michelangelo’s fresco.
Christ, the judge of mankind, floats central to the composition. His iconic stigmata and side-wounds are clearly visible against a physique that demonstrates the titanic forms that Michelangelo so often produced, as he sought to coax out of material reality the ideals he saw within it. Surrounding him are the apostles, the prophets of old, and the faithful who have been rewarded for their commitment to God by being returned to him. Each of them was prepared by the artist in the wall plaster in a manner likened to an exercise of connect-the-dots. Below him are the damned, who are much smaller and more emaciated looking, lying limp on the ground in great contrast to the suspended figures above, who exhibit some of the key features of Mannerism in their airiness, as well as their bright and slightly sour color pallet. In the heavens, which are painted in the two curved vaults overhead, flying cherub figures carry the symbols of Christian Humanism. On the left, the cross of the Savior, and on the right, a Greek pillar, symbolizing neo-platonic enlightenment. The monumental scale of the piece symbolizes the universal and ultimate consequences implied in the narrative and hints at the greatness that the pious individual can achieve with proper devotion, which is the central tenant of Michelangelo’s humanist ideal.
In a day and age when the contrast between two definitions of the same Humanity has brought about both awe striking and horrendous results, it is increasingly important to understand the nature of the contradiction, in order to discover its resolution. Such discovery requires clarity of vision and words of truth. When one proposes an infinite and absolute abstraction, set apart from reality and necessarily preceding and arbitrating both reality and humanity, as is done by Michelangelo and his decedents in modern philosophy, then one necessarily denigrates what is available to the senses, and creates a fetish out that which is not. This degradation of the sensual world is something one sees manifestly in the self-portrait of Michelangelo, depicted in the Last Judgment as the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew, a testament to the essential antipathy to reality inherent to his work and personality, whereas Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa makes no allowance for religious grandiosity and sado-masochistic appeals of that sort. Such things have no place in a humanism in which man is in harmony with himself and his senses aligned to nature, and the whole of the universe. Careful study of these artworks in relation to the words of humanity’s greatest thinkers has illustrated to the world a clear set of choices as to resolving the question of mankind’s essential nature. Either humanity must understand itself as a being of the world and find his place within the world, or it must reject the world and indeed itself, and seek salvation in the absolution of the divine.
Bibliography
Da Vinci, Leonardo, Leonardo’s Notebooks, edited by Anna Suh, Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers 151 west 19th street New York, NY 10011, 2005, page 306
Da Vinci, Leonardo, The Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Volume 2, edited by Jean Paul Richter, Irma Anne Richter, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 188, Fleet Street, London, 1883 page 450
Marx, Karl, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844 in Paris (source and date of transcription is unknown. It was proofed and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005, and corrected by Matthew Carmody in 2009), introduction
Marx, Karl, edited and translated by Martin Milligan, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, New York, 2007. Originally published in English by the Foreign Languages Publishing house, Moscow, 1961, page 152
Kleiner, Fred S., Mamiya, Christin J., Gardener’s Art Throughout the Ages, Thomson Wasworth, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United States. 2006, page 500
Of all the works by Leonardo Da Vinci, his most prized and labored was the little portrait known as the Mona Lisa. He loved it so much he refused to hand it over to its commissioner, and took it to France, where he worked on it until he died. It is an encapsulation of Da Vinci’s humanist method, which was based on the newly resurrected scientific wisdom of the ancient Greek and Roman atomist philosophers like Lucretius, and stressed an intimate investigation of the natural world and the reflections of its forms in the human body, with the ultimate goal of being able to manipulate these forms on canvas with infinite breadth and subtlety. He makes reference to Lucretius’ sole surviving work, “De Rerum Natura,” a poem thought to be heretical by the authorities for its denial of supernatural intervention in the worldly order, in his now famous notebooks (Da Vinci literary works pg. 450). This commitment to science produced a conspicuous feature of Da Vinci’s humanist method, which is the absence of religion as an integral part of its make-up. Indeed among his notes there is a humorous story of a zealous priest who sprinkled holy water onto an artist’s painting, claiming that those who sew the seeds of the Lord through sanctimonious deed shall reap his reward a hundredfold in the hereafter, and as the preacher left the studio a shower of water fell on him from a bucket held by the artist in the above window, who proclaimed that the intrusive cleric had just reaped what he had sewn (Leonardo’s Notebooks pg. 306). The dogmas of Christianity were superfluous to his vision, and so were left out of his most beloved creation.
The painting depicts a simple woman sitting proudly but elegantly in a tetrahedron composition. Her face is round, and betrays in its reserved expression an intensely mysterious character, best articulated through her eyes and the subtle smile at the edges of her lips. The proportions of her head conform to the phi ratio, a universally occurring proportion that is also applied in the foundation of the Parthenon. The painting is done in oil, a new medium making its debut in High Renaissance Italy at the time. Her pose creates a sense of gravity, counterbalanced by an intense radiance emanating from her eyes. To her back, Da Vinci, shows the viewer a dreamscape, flowing into the distance with rivers and jagged hills, and faded by his characteristic sfumato technique, which serves as a demonstration of the essential power of creation in the mind, a power made ever more brilliant by the mind’s intuitive relation with the real world. It is this essential power of creation, accessible to the conscious observer, that a later student of Lucretius, Karl Marx, spoke of in the introduction to his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, when he said: “criticism of religion has plucked the flowers from the chain, not so that man may wear the chain without consolation, but so that he may break the chain and cull the living flower.” To the secularists, such as Marx, and to the preceding artwork of that manifestation of humanism such as the Mona Lisa, Christianity responds in the direct and opposite manner by asserting that the abandonment of religion is necessarily the abolition of humanism in art and society.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, in addition to being a pious Catholic, adhered to a movement in philosophy known as Neo-Platonism, which held as an axiom the limitless spiritual and moral capacity of humanity as an ideal to be strived towards and that art is the product of this ideal (Gardeners pg 500). He fused this ancient philosophy with his Christianity by asserting this ideal as a necessary component of humanity’s essence as a creation of an infinite and absolute Diety. This form of Christian Humanism, caught the attention of the Vatican, which, under Pope Paul III, sought to aggrandize itself aesthetically and politically, and picked Michelangelo to paint the massive fresco altarpiece of the Sistine Chapel known as the Last Judgment of Christ. The work is so distinct from all others of the High Renaissance that it is considered among the first works of a new movement in art, known as Mannerism. Those who followed in his footsteps would stress stylization and dynamism, as well as consciously reject naturalism in their works. The Last Judgment’s iconography is an encapsulation of Michelangelo’s humanist ideal, and finds modern codification in the Christian Humanism of Friedrich Hegel.
In his Phenomenology, Hegel describes the essence of humanity as, from its historical outset, abstract and absolute idea, in other words, Divine essence. This form of Christian Humanism synthesizes abstract philosophies ranging from Plato to Buddha. It views the material body of the human is a mere estrangement and alienation of humanity from God, and History as the process of human self-consciousness whereby man, by his own spiritual labor, may in the future return to this ideal abstraction. As Marx reduces it in his 1844 manuscripts, “positing of man=self-consciousness (pg. 152).” This historical movement, according to the Christianity that both Hegel and Michelangelo adhered to, would be consummate when man truly knew himself as a being of divine essence and when Christ returned to annul the estrangement of humanity from its creator. The Last Judgment of Christ depicts this very moment whereupon all contradiction in creation would be annulled and abolished. This annulment that is the resolution to the alienation essential to Hegel’s philosophy, would necessarily abolish the contradiction between the idea of Absolute Justice, and the practice of justice as applied in reality, which is the central theme of Michelangelo’s fresco.
Christ, the judge of mankind, floats central to the composition. His iconic stigmata and side-wounds are clearly visible against a physique that demonstrates the titanic forms that Michelangelo so often produced, as he sought to coax out of material reality the ideals he saw within it. Surrounding him are the apostles, the prophets of old, and the faithful who have been rewarded for their commitment to God by being returned to him. Each of them was prepared by the artist in the wall plaster in a manner likened to an exercise of connect-the-dots. Below him are the damned, who are much smaller and more emaciated looking, lying limp on the ground in great contrast to the suspended figures above, who exhibit some of the key features of Mannerism in their airiness, as well as their bright and slightly sour color pallet. In the heavens, which are painted in the two curved vaults overhead, flying cherub figures carry the symbols of Christian Humanism. On the left, the cross of the Savior, and on the right, a Greek pillar, symbolizing neo-platonic enlightenment. The monumental scale of the piece symbolizes the universal and ultimate consequences implied in the narrative and hints at the greatness that the pious individual can achieve with proper devotion, which is the central tenant of Michelangelo’s humanist ideal.
In a day and age when the contrast between two definitions of the same Humanity has brought about both awe striking and horrendous results, it is increasingly important to understand the nature of the contradiction, in order to discover its resolution. Such discovery requires clarity of vision and words of truth. When one proposes an infinite and absolute abstraction, set apart from reality and necessarily preceding and arbitrating both reality and humanity, as is done by Michelangelo and his decedents in modern philosophy, then one necessarily denigrates what is available to the senses, and creates a fetish out that which is not. This degradation of the sensual world is something one sees manifestly in the self-portrait of Michelangelo, depicted in the Last Judgment as the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew, a testament to the essential antipathy to reality inherent to his work and personality, whereas Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa makes no allowance for religious grandiosity and sado-masochistic appeals of that sort. Such things have no place in a humanism in which man is in harmony with himself and his senses aligned to nature, and the whole of the universe. Careful study of these artworks in relation to the words of humanity’s greatest thinkers has illustrated to the world a clear set of choices as to resolving the question of mankind’s essential nature. Either humanity must understand itself as a being of the world and find his place within the world, or it must reject the world and indeed itself, and seek salvation in the absolution of the divine.
Bibliography
Da Vinci, Leonardo, Leonardo’s Notebooks, edited by Anna Suh, Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers 151 west 19th street New York, NY 10011, 2005, page 306
Da Vinci, Leonardo, The Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Volume 2, edited by Jean Paul Richter, Irma Anne Richter, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 188, Fleet Street, London, 1883 page 450
Marx, Karl, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844 in Paris (source and date of transcription is unknown. It was proofed and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005, and corrected by Matthew Carmody in 2009), introduction
Marx, Karl, edited and translated by Martin Milligan, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, New York, 2007. Originally published in English by the Foreign Languages Publishing house, Moscow, 1961, page 152
Kleiner, Fred S., Mamiya, Christin J., Gardener’s Art Throughout the Ages, Thomson Wasworth, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United States. 2006, page 500