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Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art

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Erwin Panofsky; Fritz Saxl

Metropolitan Museum Studies, Vol. 4, No.2. (Mar., 1933), pp. 228-280.

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Tue Nov 28 10:21:41 2006
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 1
By ERWIN PANOFSKY AND FRITZ SAXL

The earliest Italian writers about the history of ropean countries it was inconceivable that a
art, such for instance as Ghiberti, Alberti, and classical mythological subject should be repre-
especially Giorgio Vasari, thought that classi- sented within the limits of the classical styIe,
cal art was overthrown at the beginning of the as it was in Raphael's picture of Jupiter and
Christian era and that it did not revive until, Venus in the ceiling of the Villa Farnesina
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (fig. I). Although there are monuments of
in Italy, it served as the foundation of what is Byzantine art, such as the so-called rosette
usually called the Renaissance. The reasons for caskets with reliefS of the Labors of Hercules
this overthrow, as those writers saw it, were and other similar themes (fig. 2),2 which, in
the invasions of barbarous races and the hos- so far as they represent classical subject matter
tility of the early Christian priests and scholars. in classical (or at least pseudo-classical) forms,
In thinking as they did the early writers are comparable to Raphael's fresco, we find
were both right and wrong. They were wrong nothing that is comparable to them in the
in so far as the Renaissance was connected with Western countries during the "high" Middle
the Middle Ages by innumerable links, many Ages. Even in the Venice of the dugento, close-
of them being implicit in the very name Mid- ly connected as it was with Byzantium, an an-
dle Ages, which is a Renaissance term based on tique relief of Hercules could not be imitat-
the old Italian conception of cultural evolution. ed without changing its mythological subject
Classical conceptions survived throughout the (figs. 4, 5). The lion's skin was replaced by a
Middle Ages-literary, philosophical, scientific, fluttering drapery, the boar became a stag, the
and artistic-and they were especially strong terrified Euristheus was lefi: out, and the hero
after the time of Charlemagne, under whose was made to stand upon a vanquished dragon.
reign there had been a deliberate classical re- As the human soul was often symbolized by a
vival in almost every cultural field. The early stag, the result of these changes was that the
writers were right in so far as the artistic forms classical hero had been transformed into the
under which the classical conceptions persisted Saviour conquering evil and saving the souls
during the Middle Ages were utterly different of the Faithful. From this example we learn
from our present ideas of antiquity, which did that mediaeval Western art was unable, or,
not come into existence until the "Renaissance" what comes to the same thing, was unwilling,
in its true sense of the "rebirth" of antiquity to retain a classical prototype without destroy-
as a well-defined historical phenomenon. ing either its original form, or, as here, its orig-
During the Middle Ages in the western Eu- inal meaning.

1 This article is a revised version of a lecture de- 2 Still, Goldschmidt and Weitzmann in their recent
livered for the first time to the teaching staff and stu- publication of these caskets pointed out that the By-
dents of the Department of Fine Arts of Princeton zantine ivory carvers were far from really understand-
University. It resulted, however, from the common ing the subject matter of the classical groups and fig-
endeavor of the two authors, who in their research ures, which they generally used as mere ornaments,
were assisted by the Hamburg students of art history. finally transforming all the figures into putti, as is the
Furthermore I feel indebted to Mrs. Margaret Barr case in our figure 2 (Goldschmidt and Weitzmann,
for her participation in the English wording. E. P. fig. 3S). As for figure 3, compare note 26.

228
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART

One of the essential characteristics of the classical thought continued through the post-
western European mind seems to be the way classical era. To this end he built up a library
in which it destroys things and then reinte- devoted exclusively to that subject. In doing
grates them on a new basis - breaking with this, so far from confining himself to what is
tradition only to return to it from an entirely usually called art history - for that would have
new point of view - and thus produces "reviv- made his research impossible - he found it nec-
als" in the true sense of the word. Byzantine essary to branch out into many fields until then
art, on the contrary, never having lost its con- untouched by art historians. His library, there-

FIG. I. VENUS IMPLORING JUPITER, BY RAPHAEL


VILLA FARNESINA, ROME

nection with antiquity, was incapable of find- fore, embraces the history of religions as well
ing its way to what we may call a modern as that of literature, science, philosophy, law,
style. Since the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- and what we may generally call superstition,
turies it has contented itself with mere assimi- together with their various streams of tradi-
lation of the Western attainment to its own tion. In the present essay it will be our en-
tradition of evolution. deavor, while examining a single problem, to
Thus we can see that what may be called demonstrate the methods of research devel-
the problem of "renaissance phenomena" is oped by Aby Warburg and his followers.
one of the central problems in the history of Our problem, then, is the role of classical
European culture. With this as his point of de- mythology in mediaeval art. In examining it
parture the late Professor Aby Warburg of we shall pay no attention to the innumerable
Hamburg conceived the fruitful idea of direct- examples, like the Venetian relief we have
ing his scientific research at the way in which mentioned, in which a classical mythological
230 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

figure has been deprived of its original mean- of a complicated evolution, and in early times
ing and invested with another. 3 We shall, on was unknown. Primitive man naturally sin-
the contrary, consider the way in which medi- gled out some of the more easily recognizable
aeval artists represented classical mythological groups of stars in order to get his bearings on
figures as such. In doing this it will be neces- land and sea, and, to remember them, he gave
sary for us to distinguish sharply between two them the names of certain terrestrial objects-
different traditions of work. In one, which we animals or tools or human beings without myth-
shall refer to as the "representational tradi- ological connotation - such as the Bear, the H y-
tion," the mediaeval artist had before him a ades, the Wain, etc. The primitive Oriental peo-
series of versions of his particular subject which ples did this and so did the pre-Homeric Greeks.
had come down to him as integral unities of The important thing, however, was that the
subject matter and form. In the other, to be re- Greeks did not confine themselves to this. Just
as they "mythologized" terrestrial objects such
as trees, springs, and mountains, so they gradu-
ally invested the constellations with mytholog-

FIG. 3. ORPHEUS, FROM BIBL. NAT. MS. COISLIN 239


BYZANTINE, XII CENTURY
FIG. 2. HERCULES FIGHTING THE LION
IVORY CARVING FROM A ROSETTE CASKET
ical meanings. As early a poet as Homer speaks
BYZANTINE, XI CENTURY
MUSEO NAZIONALE, FLORENCE of mighty Orion and Bootes.
This practice increased until, by the sixth
fcerred to as the "1'iterary " or " textua·1 tra d'i- and fifth centuries B. c., a considerable number
tion," the mediaeval artist had before him only of the constellations had been mythologized.
a literary text describing a mythological sub- An example of this is the group of constella-
ject, for the illustration of which he had to tions associated with the myth of Andromeda,
work out new types or forms having no visual namely Andromeda herself, Cepheus her fa-
connection with those of classical times.
3 Even if we do not count the fundamental phenom-

I enon that Early Christian art borrowed its leading


types from antique models (assimilating Christ to Ro-
Our first problem is to find specimens of the man emperors, Alexandrian shepherds, Greek philos-
representational tradition. We find them, ob- ophers, or Hellenistic Orpheuses and developing the
types of the Evangelists from the portraits of classical
viously enough, in representations of astro-
authors), individual transformations analogous to that
nomical and astrological subjects. For the mod- observed in the Venetian Hercules are much too fre-
ern man it is a matter of course to speak of the quent to be enumerated. A few interesting cases were
constellations as Andromeda, Perseus, Orion, discussed by Schlosser in "Heidnische Elemente in
der christlichen Kunst des Altertums," originally ap-
etc., since we have come to identify the various pearing as a supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung,
groups of stars with certain mythological fig- October 26, 27, 31, 1894, nos. 248, 249, 251, and re-
ures. This practice has come about as the result printed in Priiludien, 1927, pp. 9 ff.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART

ther, Cassiopeia her mother, Perseus her rescu- manifested themselves. The rational power of
er, and Cetus her dragon. Other constellations, scientific systematization is shown by the very
however, were still called simply the Balance aim of Eudoxos's work. The irrational power
or the Swan, and that which we know as Her- of mythical imagination is shown by his no-
cules was still called Engonasin, the Kneeling menclature. These same tendencies are shown
Man. In passing, it is worth noting that the again by the fact that when about a century
signs of the zodiac were not connected with later Aratos, a Hellenistic poet, used the cata-
mythological ideas until rather late. logue of Eudoxos for a purely poetical descrip-

FIG. 4. HERCULES CARRYING THE CALEDONIAN BOAR FIG. 5. ALLEGORY OF SALVATION


ANTIQUE RELIEF SET IN THE WALL OF XIII CENTURY RELIEF SET IN THE WALL OF
ST. MARK'S CHURCH, VENICE ST. MARK'S CHURCH, VENICE

This was the state of affairs when Eudoxos tion of the firmament, Hipparchos, whose ideas
of Knidos, a Greek astronomer of the· fourth about the procession of the equinoxes brought
century B.C., drew up a catalogue of the con- about a new epoch in the study of astronomy,
stellations which was meant to be as complete not content with furiously criticizing Aratos,
as possible. He did this for purely scientific went on scientifically to perfect the catalogue
purposes, but he could not help calling -the con- so that it became a solid basis for astronomical
stellations by their mythological names in so observation in the modern sense of the word.
far as they had them. He says, for example, Aratos, in his elegant poem, often alluded to
"beneath the tail of the Little Bear there are the stories of the constellations, and, whenever
the feet of Cepheus, forming an equilateral they had them, to their mythological mean-
triangle with the point of the aforesaid tail." ings. He confined himself, however, to the.
Thus in the treatise of Eudoxos the two princi- names and stories as given by Eudoxos, and
pal tendencies and capacities of Greek thought never went on to mythologize on his own ac-
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

count. Sometimes he frankly said he was not he interpreted most acutely] is very big and
able to give more than a mere description, as therefore is divided into two separate signs, one
when he wrote that "not far from it [the Drag- of which is called the Balance." 5
on] there revolves a figure that resembles a Thus the poem of Eratosthenes turned out
hard-working man, bent on his knees and to be a didactic poem on mythology rather
spreading out his arms, but nobody knows than one on astronomy, and it is a significant
what he is trying to do and thus they call him fact that one of his numerous followers, an
simply the 'Kneeling Man.'" Augustan poet named Hyginus, whose chief
This intermediary phase is illustrated by the work is the Fabulae, was originally a mythog-
Farnese Globe (fig. 6),4 the most famous clas- rapher in the narrower sense of the word.
sical astronomical representation that has come The transformation of the firmament into a
down to us. With the exception of the figure rendezvous of mythological figures was very
of Atlas, which was added in the Renaissance, important for the representational evolution.
it is a Roman copy of a Greek original. The There were at least two reasons for this. First-
Greek original must have been rather closely ly, the adulatory scholars and poets, bustling
connected with the poem of Aratos, for in the about the various Hellenistic courts, were given
Farnese Globe the constellations, both those courage to invent new constellations to please
that have been mythologized and those that their patrons. Thus it happened that imagina-
have not, correspond to the descriptions in the ryconstellations actually invaded the astronom-
poem. Orion and Perseus, for example, are ical pictures, e.g., the Hair of Berenice. Kalli-
characterized by their mythological attributes machos in his delightful poem told how Bere-
(Perseus is represented with his sword and nice, the Queen of Egypt, had sacrificed her
Medusa's head), but the Kneeling Man is still hair to Venus s9 that the goddess might pro-
nothing but a kneeling man, without the club tect the queen's husband during a war. The
or the lion's skin of Hercules, and the constel- astronomer royal promptly discovered that the
lation Eridanus is only a simple river repre- hair had been transformed into a constella-
sented as a curved ribbon. tion, which although previously unknown was
In the Hellenistic literature, however, the thereafter represented in many an astronomi-
process of mythologization went much fur- cal picture. 6 Secondly, and much more impor-
ther. Eratosthenes (284-2°4 B. c.) completed the tant, once all the constellations had been iden-
work which the previous generation had left tified with well-known mythological figures
unfinished. He wrote a poem called Cataster- such as Hercules or Eridanus, which were rep-
isms in which each of the constellations is giv- resented in innumerable reliefS and paintings
en a mythological meaning that is explained in that had nothing to do with astronomy, the
a long-winded commentary. He interpreted the artists who illustrated the astronomical writ-
Kneeling Man as Hercules fighting with the ings could not help remembering and arbitrari-
dragon of the Hesperides. He even mytholo- ly making use of these non-astronomical types.
gized the signs of the zodiac, connecting the Thus after the constellation the Dragon had
Bull with the Rape of Europa, and identifying
the Lion with the Nemean Lion. He said that 4 Cf. Boll, Sitzungsber. d. bayr. Akad. d. Wiss., Phil-
the Crab was sent out by Juno to bite the heel os.-philol. Classe, 1899, pp. 110 if; Thiele, Antike
of Hercules when he fought the Hydra. The Himmelsbilder.
5 Cf. Ovid Met. II. 196: "Scorpius ... Porrigit in
Scales was the only one for which Eratosthenes spatium signorum membra duorum."
found no mythological explanation, and so he 6 C( Pfeiffer, Philologus, vol. LXXVII, part 2, pp.

tersely said, "The sign of the Scorpion [which 179 if.


CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 233

been interpreted as the dragon of the Hesperi- a Byzantine manuscript of the fifteenth cen-
des, these artists added a tree to the constella- tury (Cod. Vat. graec. 1087) obviously copied
tion Hercules, because this tree was held to be from a ninth-century prototype (such as Cod.
an integral part of the story. Also the constel- Vat. graec. 1291), which in its turn derived
lation Eridanus was visualized in the usual from a late antique prototype. It is a curious
form of a reclining river god with urn and kind of projection. The northern and southern
reed, instead of as a plain uninteresting ribbon. hemispheres are not represented in two sepa-
Thus what had originally been a scientific rate drawings, divided by a horizontal section
astronomical treatise by degrees developed through the equator or the ecliptic, but the
into a kind of semi-mythological picture book, whole globe is flattened out, so to speak, into
which usually began with representations of one panorama, consisting of five concentric

FIG. 6. THE FARNESE GLOBE, FROM AN XVIII CENTURY ENGRAVING

the celestial globe as a whole and continued circles. The inner circle represents the north-
with full-sized pictures of the single constella- ern arctic circle, then follows the northern
tions. Often mere pictorial enthusiasm so much tropic, then the equator, then the southern
prevailed over scientific interest that the stars tropic, and finally the southern arctic, the con-
which originally constituted the bases of the stellations of which appear, of course, in a gro-
figures were replaced by an arbitrary amassing tesque distortion.
of dots, and sometimes they were entirely omit- The painter who was commissioned to de-
ted. pict the constellations in a hemispherical dome
The prototype (or rather the prototypes) of in ~useir CAmra, a castle built by an Arabian
these illustrated manuscripts, usually called prince in the eighth century (fig.7),executed
"Aratea," must have been established as early his commission by simply enlarging a minia-
as in the later centuries of the Roman Empire, ture like this. To us this Arabian monument is
because they were imitated in early Byzantine interesting for two reasons: firstly, because it
and early Islamic art as well as by the Caro- shows the transmission of the antique astro-
lingian illuminators. Figure 8, for example, nomical pictures to the Islamic world ~ second-
shows a representation of the celestial globe in ly, because it reveals a most essential difference
234 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

between mediaeval and modern principles of not content with a mere planimetrical scheme
decoration. A modern painter representing the of the celestial spheres, represented the firma-
constellations in a dome would try to suggest ment as it can be seen. Instead of designing
to the spectator the actual aspect of the firma- complete celestial maps, these painters repre-
ment, that is to say, he would show in the sented only those constellations which were
dome those constellations which a spectator visible at Florence at a certain day and hour,
could really see in the sky.7 The author of the and thereby, from an aesthetic point of view,
~useir CAmra fresco, however, did not even identified the stone hemisphere of the. dome

FIG. 7. THE FIRMAMENT AS REPRESENTED IN THE DOME


OF THE VIII CENTURY ~USEIR (AMRA. RECONSTRUCTION BY F. SAXL

think of that and simply transposed to the ceil- with the immaterial hemisphere of the firma-
. ing the conventional and extremely unrealistic ment. Thus these early Florentine frescoes are
celestial maps shown in the illuminated manu- the first specimens of what we usually call the
scripts. s
The requirements of the modern mind are " This contention can be proved by Lodovico Seitz's
met for the first time in the second quarter of frescoes in the dome of the so-called Torre di Leone
XIII in the Vatican, mentioned by Zola in his famous
the fifteenth century, that is to say, at a time
novel Rome: although the painter intended to glorify
when perspective had been acknowledged as a the Pope by putting the constellation of the Lion (the
requirement of artistic representation, in two celestial coat of arms of "Papa Lione") in a place as
monuments at Florence. The painters of the conspicuous as possible and even distinguished it by
fifteen electric bulbs, he could not but adapt the whole
frescoes in the smaller dome of the Pazzi of his composition to the actual aspect of the firma-
Chapel and of the somewhat earlier fresco in ment as visible at Rome.
the Sagrestia Vecchia·of San Lorenzo (fig. 9), s Cf. Sax!, in Creswell, part I, pp. 289 ff.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 235

"illusionistic" principle in the decoration of a The Carolingian Renaissance differed from


ceiling, in that they suggest to the beholder a the "Rinascimento" of the fifteenth century in
prospect into the open air. We only need to many respects. Where the latter was based on
replace the astronomical sky, filled with stars, the irresistible feeling of the whole people

FIG. 8. CELESTIAL MAP, FROM COD. VAT. GRAEC. 1087. BYZANTINE, XV CENTURY

by a meteorological and theological sky filled and was brought forth in popular political and
with clouds and heavenly beings, and we have spiritual excitement, the earlier was the result
"illusionistic" decorations of the kind created of the deliberate efforts of a few distinguished
by Mantegna, Correggio (fig. 10), and the men, and thus was not so much a "revival" as
baroque painters. a series of improvements in art, literature, cal-
Now that we have looked at the Byzantine ligraphy, administration, etc. Because of this
tradition as it had been transmitted to the we should do better if we called it, as its con-
Arabian East, let us come back to the Middle temporaries did, a "renovation" rather than a
Ages in western Europe. renaissance. It is our opinion, however, that the
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

more modern theory, according to which the minators endeavored to copy the illustrations
efforts of Charlemagne and his collaborators in the ancient astronomical picture books, of
resulted in little more than a continuation of which we have explained the development.
Merovingian tendencies, is even less correct They conscientiously, and sometimes most suc-
than the traditional conception of the Caro- cessfully, imitated their prototypes in style and
lingian movement as being a renaissance. We technique as well as in mythological subject
must not forget that it is chiefly due to the de- matter. Thus, for example, the miniatures in
liberate endeavors of the Carolingian leaders the Codex Leydensis Vossianus lat. 79 (c£ fig.

FIG. 9. THE FIRMAMENT AS REPRESENTED IN THE DOME OF THE SAGRESTIA


VECCHIA OF SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE. ABOUT 1440

and to the diligence of their scribes, who sys- 22) and, still more eloquently, those in the
tematically copied the profane writers of an- magnificent Harley MS. 647 (c£ fig. I I), which
tiquity, that we today have the opportunity of have hitherto been totally disregarded by the
reading such classical poets as Horace and Ovid art historians, impress us as being closer in
and such classical scientists as Pliny and Vitru- spirit to the Pompeian frescoes than anything
vius. In the same spirit the Carolingian illu- else made in the West in mediaeval times. 9

9 The Leydensis Vossianus (a more complete copy of preuss. Kunstsamml., vo!. XXIII, part 2, pp. 88 ff.),
this manuscript is to be found in Boulogne-sur-Mer, while Professor Morey of Princeton rather believes it
Bib!. Municipale, Cod. 188; tenth century) was edited to be connected with the school of St.-Denis. The
in extenso by Thiele. As for its origin, Byvanck (pp. Harley MS. 647, the miniatures of which strike us as
65 ff.) seems to agree with Swarzenski, who attribut- the most classical elaboration of mediaeval Western
ed it to the school of Reims (Jahrbuch d. konig1. painting, in our opinion was executed in a continen-
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 237

During the following centuries, in the peri- union, classical subject matter and classical
od generally referred to as the high Middle form were separated.
Ages, the illuminators ceased their faithful imi- Let us illustrate this evolution by taking the
tation of classical models and developed a new constellation Hercules as an example. In the
and independent manner of seeing things. Farnese Globe it had not yet become Hercules
Transforming the ancient prototypes in such a and was still the simple Kneeling Man (En-

FIG. 10. THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST, BY CORREGGIO


CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA, PARMA

way that they became almost unrecognizable, gonasin) without any mythological attributes
they decomposed the representational tradition (fig. 13).Inthe Carolingian manuscripts, which
of mythological figures. Figures which were were derived from later antique prototypes,
meant to represent Orion or Andromeda no Hercules is usually shown in mythological full
longer looked like the Orion or Andromeda dress with club and lion's skin. The pictorial
of classical times. Thus, like the unfortunate style often conforms closely to the classical
lovers in a moving picture who await their re- models (Cod. Vat. Reg. lat. 309, ninth century,
previously in St.-Denis; c£ fig~ 12).10 In the
tal, not an English, scriptorium about the middle of
the ninth century. ing and not very well-known specimen of this kind- is
10 Cf. Saxl, Verzeichnis, part I, pp. 59 ff. An interest- to be found in the e1eventh-century Kronungsmantel
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

high Middle Ages, however, and especially Library (M.384) shows this decomposition
after the beginning of the twelfth century, carried still further. In it we see a "late Gothic"
Hercules becomes either Romanesque or Goth- Hercules, not dressed as a knight in armor, as
ic - that is to say, the classical origin of the fig- in other late mediaeval manuscripts, but clad
ure becomes less and less recognizable as the in bathing trunks. He approaches a tree, which,
figure is assimilated to the types most common as we have seen, does not exist in the classical
in high mediaeval Christian art. Thus a Hercu- representation of the constellation, and his
les of the twelfth century, such for example as lion's skin has developed into a complete lion
that in Bodl. MS. 614 (fig. IS) hardly differs that accompanies him like a peaceable dog.
from a Romanesque Saint Michael fighting the Only one detail shows what has happened:
dragon or a decorative figure on a contempo- Hercules is armed with a scimitar instead of a
rary capital.l l This decomposition of the classi- club. As the scimitar is an Oriental weapon it
cal type was not the result of any increasing suggests that the painter of this fifteenth-cen-
tury miniature, which in all other respects is
only a peculiarly degenerate descendant of the
widespread Western tradition, had been influ-
enced by representations deriving from the
Arabian East.
Upon examining some manuscripts execut-
ed about the middle of the thirteenth century,
that is to say, at the time when the Western
decomposition of the classical representations
had reached its culminating point, we find a
Hercules (Paris, Bibl. de l'Arsenal, MS. 1036;

FIG. II. THE CONSTELLATION ERIDANUS fig. 17)12 which looks very much like a figure
FROM BRIT. MUS., HARLEY MS. 647
MIDDLE OF THE IX CENTURY
out of the Arabian Nights. He wears a skull
cap and his costume has been almost literally
respect for the scientific and true position of copied from an Arabian gown. His lion's skin
the stars (which were still placed as arbitrarily has been omitted and his club has been re-
as ever) but was due to a purely stylistic and placed by a scimitar - obviously because neith-
intellectual evolution. er the skin nor the club meant anything to
A miniature (fig. 16) in a fifteenth-century an Arabian artist unacquainted with classical
German manuscript in The Pierpont Morgan mythology. On the other hand, the pose of

of the German emperors (preserved in the Bamberg manuscript in the fourteenth century, which, in our
Cathedral), which realizes the ancient idea of the opinion, is much too late, in view of the style of the
"Cosmic Mantle" (cf. Eisler, Welten mantel und Him- miniatures as well as of the paleographical character
melszelt) by embroidering a celestial map on a semi- of the script. As for its origin, the curious mixture of
circular cloth (cf. fig. 14)' Arabic figures and decidedly Western ornament a
11 Further references will be given in Saxl, Verzeich- priori suggests southern Italy. Moreover, we learn
nis, part III (in preparation). Of course, there are a from an entry referring to the catalogue of the stars
number of manuscripts which follow the antique pro- that this catalogue was revised at Palermo by means
totypes in a more conservative way, such as Cod. Vat. of the instruments of King Roger of Sicily. A manu-
Reg. lat. 123 (Saxl, Verzeichnis, part I, pp. 45 ff.; script closely connected with Bib!. de l'Arsenal, MS.
eleventh, not twelfth, century) or Cod. Matritensis A. 1°36, although much more distant from the Arabic
16 (early twelfth century). This group, however, is prototype, is preserved in the Berlin Kupferstich-
less important for the history of stylistic evolution. kabinett (Cod. Hamilton 556; cf. Wescher, pp. 80 ff.,
12 Cf. Martin, vo!. II, pp. 247 ff. Martin dates this with several funny mistakes).
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 239

Hercules is much more faithful to the correct did not go through the complicated evolutions
form than in even the best of the Carolingian of mediaeval Western art. Thus, when the time
manuscripts, the. stars are characterized accord- came, in the thirteenth century, for the West
ing to their sizes, and they are marked by num- to take over the Arabic illustrations, it again
bers referring to a scientific text. assimilated classical conceptions, but this time
For an explanation of this it is necessary to from a totally different angle. The Carolingian
remember that during the twelfth and thir- assimilation had been an absorption of figures
teenth centuries the West had become more which while classical both in style and in myth-
and more familiar with the scientific literature ological meaning were already fairly devoid of
of the Arabs, which in its turn was based on scientific exactness. The assimilation of the
Greek sources. It is common knowledge that Arabic types, on the contrary, was an absorp-
at this time acquaintance with the greater part tion of knowledge which was classical in sub-
of the works of Aristotle as well as with Greek

I", ("O.J ,
.
I.,o,-h...,n Ylllf

FIG. 12. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES


FROM COD. VAT. REG. LAT. 309. IX CENTURY FIG. 13. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES (ENGONASIN )
FROM THE FARNESE GLOBE

natural science came through Arabic sources.


As we have learned from the dome of ~useir ject and method but was hidden behind entire-
(Amra, the Arabs were acquainted with Greek ly non-classical images most of which bore un-
astronomical ideas as early as the eighth cen- intelligible Arabic names.
tury. Moreover, they preserved and developed This assimilation from Arabic sources took
the Greek astronomical figures. This, however, place through two focal points: Spain and
they did in a way quite different from that southern Italy, especially Sicily. Our figure 17
which was followed in the West. The Arabs is taken from a Sicilian manuscript in which
did not care so much for the pictures as such, the style of an Arabic prototype was imitated
and, in the proverbial sense of the phrase, the with an almost archaeological faithfulness that
mythological meanings were Greek to them, was extremely rare and perbaps unique in the
but they endeavored to preserve and even to Middle Ages. The Spanish group may be ex-
perfect the scientific precision of their models. emplified by the Hercules (fig. 18) from the
They kept the stars in their correct astronom- Cod. Vat. lat. 8174, which is a copy of a manu-
ical positions, and where they changed the fig- script executed for the famous King Alphonso
ures and the accessories they did it by oriental- the Wise and is distinguished by the fact that
izing them, but in such a way that the repre- the images of the constellations are placed in
sentations remained essentially unaltered and roundels, about each of which are radiating
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

sectors filled with a thorough scientific expla- scientific and m ythological antiquity, classical
nation of the several stars in the constellation. 13 meaning and classical form. This process may
The degenerate Western types persisted and be regarded as a general characteristic of what
sometimes, as in the Morgan manuscript, inter- we know as the Renaissance movement.
bred with Oriental types. Nevertheless, in spite This evolution could be illustrated by many
of their lack of mythological appurtenances, more examples but we shall confine ourselves
the astronomically correct Oriental types, such to that of Perseus. In the ninth-century Leyden
as that of the Hercules we have just examined, manuscript (Cod. Leydensis Vossianus lat. 79)
served as models for many Western manu- Perseus appears as a beautiful classical figure
scripts. They were followed in an interesting (fig. 22). He runs gracefully and except for a
fifteenth-century manuscript (Cod. Vind. S4IS; billowing drapery is almost entirely naked. At
fig. 19) that in its turn became the model upon his heels he has the wings lent to him by Mer-
cury. In his right hand he brandishes a sword
and in his left he bears the head of Medusa
with its snake locks and with blood dripping
from its throat.
We shall pass over the gradual degeneration
of this image in the mediaeval Western tradi-
tion, and come immediately to its treatment in
the Italo-Arabic manuscript in the Arsenal (fig.
23). Here, not only has the pose of the Greek
hero been changed to agree with the true posi-
tions of the stars but he is clad in Oriental cos-
FIG. 14. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES
FROM THE XI CENTURY "KRONUNGSMANTEL"
tume (c£ fig. 24A). The most striking change,
BAMBERG CATHEDRAL however, is that the head of a bearded male
demon has taken the place of Medusa's head.
which Durer based his two woodcuts of the The Arabian illustrators, who were ignorant
celestial globe (B.ISI [fig. 201 and B.IS2). In of the classical myth, completely misunder-
figure 2IA-C we have juxtaposed Durer's Her- stood Medusa's head and interpreted its terri-
cules with a detail from Cod. Vind. S41S and an
original Arabic miniature. In this Arabic min- 13 C[ Saxl, Verzeichnis, part I, p. 95.
14:C[ Saxl, Verzeichnis, part II, pp. 35 if, ISO if The
iature Hercules is even more fantastic than in
two woodcuts resulted fron1 the united endeavor of
Cod. Vat. lat. 8174 or Bibl. de l'Arsenal, MS. no less than three persons : Durer, who did the defini-
1036, for he wears a turban and carries a kind tive drawing, Georg Heinfogel, who stellas posuit, and
of sickle. And now we can see how Durer Johannes Stabius, who was responsible for the general
arrangement of the celestial maps (ordinavit). Stabius
achieved "the happy end of the story." 14 Al- was a professor in history and astronomy at the U ni-
though he kept fairly close to the orientalized versity of Vienna, and, since the Cod. Vind. 5415 was
image in the fifteenth-century Western manu- owned by a Viennese patrician as early as the fif-
teenth century, it is beyond doubt that this codex was
script, he none the less reverted to the classical
the actual prototype of the two Durer woodcuts. The
conception of Hercules by giving him a mus- humanistic modifications mentioned in our text are
cular body and the correct facial type with curls all the more remarkable since a celestial globe of 1480
and a manly beard, and especially by returning preserved in Cracow (c[ Anzeiger d. Akad. d. Wiss.
in Krakau, 1892, pp. r08 if), very similar to the
to the hero his lion's skin and club. Thus in his
\Tienna miniatures in every respect, also shows the
woodcut Durer achieved a reintegration of the Hercules provided with a scimitar and the Perseus
classical type by bringing together again both carrying the bearded demon's head.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 24 1

fying expression as a demoniacal quality and cination of astrological beliefs, once they be-
the drops or streams of blood as a beard. Thus came known through the intermediary of the
they transformed Medusa into a demon and Arabs, was so irresistible that even great Chris-
even called that part of the constellation Per- tian theologians like William of Auvergne
seus by the name of Ra's al Ghiil, i.e., "Head (Gulielmus Parisiensis) and Thomas Aquinas
of the Demon." And this is why we all speak were obliged to compromise with it. Good
of the star Algol in that constellation. Catholics no longer shrank from arranging
The Vienna miniature that was used as a their entire lives in accordance with the stars,
model by Durer also follows the Arabic tradi- even down to their clothes and their most mi-
tion, even in so far as Perseus is labeled with its nute daily occupations. The very calendars
Arabic name and the bearded head is called which precede Christian prayer books still usu-
"Caput Algol" (fig. 248). Here again Durer,
while keeping to his prototype in every other
respect, endeavored to restore the classical idea
by adding wings to the heels of Perseus, replac-
ing the demon's head by that of a Gorgon with
snakes for hair, and changing the inscription
"Caput Algol" to "Caput Meduse" (fig. 24C) .15

The assimilation of Arabic knowledge brought


to the Western countries not only a new con-
ception of astronomy, medicine, and other nat-
ural sciences, but also a knowledge of astrol-
ogy, which until the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries was almost unknown, or at least was FIG. 15. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES
not practised in the West. The belief that the FROM BODL. MS. 614. XII CENTURY

stars had power to determine destiny and char-


acter, although consistent with the polytheistic ally include a representation of a human figure
system of late antique paganism and with the indicating the influence of the signs of the
fatalism of Islam, was originally considered to zodiac on the various parts of the body.16
be incompatible with the essential principles This revival of astrological beliefs gave add-
of the Christian religion. Nevertheless, the fas- ed importance to a kind of star, or perhaps
astral divinity, which previously had notplayed
15 C( Saxl, Verzeichnis, part II, loco cit. Curiously a great role in the strictly astronomical man-
enough, Diirer's Medusa head strikingly resembles the uscripts. Nevertheless, the planets, for it is of
well-known Gorgoneion type of Greek archaic art,
as for example in the famous Gorgoneion from the
these that we are speaking, are of even greater
Acropolis (Athens, Museum) and the Perseus metope importance for our purposes than the constella-
from temple C of Se1inus (Museo nazionale, Pa- tions. 17 The deities of the constellations, such
lermo) and on the archaic coins of Neopolis in Mace- as Hercules or Perseus, belonged to what Tasso
donia and several other cities. In fact it is quite pos-
sible that Diirer had an opportunity of seeing a speci- called "la plebe degli dei" (the lower class of
men of this kind, for we know that Wilibald Pirck- the gods) whereas the deities of the planets
heimer, his best friend and adviser in humanioribus, were identified with the really "big shots,"
owned a considerable collection of Greek and Roman
such as Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury. These
coins.
16 Cf. Boll and Bezold, p. 54, and passim, pis. X, XI. deities of the movable planets, endowed with
17 Cf. Saxl, Islam, vol. III, pp. 151 ff. all the might of powerful gods, were capable
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

19
of fighting, opposing, or assisting one another, non-classical characteristics and attributes. Ac-
and were regarded as the true rulers of man- cording to the Arabic texts and pictures Venus
kind. They determined the physical constitu- is a lovely young woman carrying flowers, Ju-
tion, the character, the destiny, and even the piter is a distinguished and learned gentleman,
calling of the newborn child. "Man," as an and Mercury, who carries a book, often has a
astrological text puts it, "is a child of his halo, which distinguishes him as a kind of
PIanet. " holy priest or dervish.
In astronomical manuscripts of the kind we It is interesting to find that these planetary
have so far been dealing with, the representa- figures were transmitted to the West in a way
tions of the planets were limited to series of quite different from that which was followed
busts such as those we see on Roman coins, to by the figures of the constellations. As we
which were sometimes added maps of their have pointed out, the Arabic pictures of such
orbits. In these maps the deities of the single constellations as Hercules and Perseus were
planets, who were also the deities of the days connected by a representational tradition with
of the week, were represented according to both the classical prototypes and their Western
their classical types. Thus, for instance, in the derivations. The Arabian planets, on the other
Leyden manuscript, the small-sized figures of hand, were not directly derived from classical
the planets (c£ fig. 26) exactly repeat the fig- types and were so incomprehensible to the
ures appearing in the famous "chronograph of Western mediaeval illuminators that they did
the year 354," which in their turn conform to not attempt to copy or imitate them. Anyone
the types developed in the usual Greek and can see that the Arabian planets, as represent-
Roman representations of the Olympic deities ed, for example, in the Bodleian MS. Or. 133
(fig. 25).18 (fig. 28), have no possible connection with tIle
In the astrological manuscripts, however, we classical figures. They seem Arabian, or even
find images so entirely different that they can- somewhat Indian, while the figures in the
not be explained as mere degenerations or Scotus manuscripts appear to be fourteenth-
Oriental transformations of classical pictures, century Giottesque personages in contempora-
but must be recognized as complete innova- ry costumes and poses. Scotus, who was trained
tions. Michael Scotus (died 1234), the court in Spain and lived in Sicily, had enjoyed par-
astrologer of the Emperor Frederic II, first ticularly good opportunities of becoming fa-
gave a thorough description of these new im- miliar with the elaborations of the Arabian
ages. The earliest illustrations of them that are astrologers, and his book was inspired by Ara-
known to exist in manuscript form are those bic sources, both literary and representational. 20
in Cod. Monac. lat. 10268 (fig. 27), of about In spite of this, however, it is evident that the
the middle of the fourteenth century. Jupiter,
for instance, is a distinguished gentleman who 18 C[ Strzygowski, lahrbuch d. kaiserl. archiiol. Inst.,
is seated before a table and carries gloves, upon 1888, supplement 1. Similar types of planets (slightly
which the text lays great emphasis; Venus is a degenerated, however, and provided with clothes) oc-
lovely young lady in a contemporary costume cur in Cod. Vat. Reg. lat. 123 (Saxl, Verzeichnis,
part I, pI. V).
who holds a rose to her face; and, to crown it 19 C[ Saxl, Islam, lac. cit. As for the flower of Venus,
all, Mercury is a bishop holding a crosier and see Cod. Cracov. 793 DD36, fo1. 382 .
a book. The derivation of these types from the 20 Still, Scotus's descriptions of the planetarian divini-
ties reveal his acquaintance with a peculiar type of
East is proved by the fact that the Arabian Western literature of which we shall speak below (p.
writers and illustrators gave to the planetary 253), namely, the writings of the mediaeval mythog-
divinities these same unwonted and distinctly raphers. This is proved, for instance, by his descrip-

.."
• •
.'.
FIG. 16. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES FIG. 17. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES
FROM MORGAN LIBRARY, MS. M.384 FROM BIBL. DE L'ARSENAL, MS. 1°36
XV CENTURY XIII CENTURY

11
'l, \lorA ,'rli(jIt'tt.
.
t1cru·cUAcRtill"n". oyr"'J' 9""" ''''''/,01111''''' r"",. qudl< «f alm•• <Ilr
.,_It"'.'''........ dIU, "lUI" ro"o·"1a ~",r. mt <It" fmtllo fl( ,.II,mu «f gon"fl.t\l r.Rnt/lO eft ~
"'.'na.....
If tbl>lllJ(o '1\ldt:1I1"..·• r....... .r....
fllJl,m\l ,pfi... t" In "'.Ah'I''''.' ...1>tI~ .>IrAq",!'

FIG. 18. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES, FROM COD. VAT. LAT. 8174
COPY OF A MANUSCRIPT EXECUTED FOR KING ALPHONSO THE WISE OF SPAIN
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

artists who illustrated his astrological text in- as late as in the fourth century B. c. Thus Plato
stead of imitating Arabic images used contem- does not yet connect the planets with any dei-
porary European figures. Thus we can under- ties, calling the planet Saturn, for example,
stand how their trecento figures came to have simply Phainon, "the glaring star." Moreover,
such peculiar attitudes. it should be remembered that the old Babylo-
As the Arabic figures obviously are not de- nian conceptions of Ishtar, Marduk, and Nir-
rived from Greek or Roman types, it is neces- gal were much more deeply rooted in the Ori-
sary to find out where the Arabs got them. The ental mind than the classical conceptions of

FIG. 19. CELESTIAL MAP, FROM COD. VIND. 5415. BEFORE 1464

answer is a rather surprising one. They were Venus, Jupiter, and Mars, which had subse-
derived in part from ancient Babylon. We must quently taken their place. We can even trace
not forget that originally the worship of the the channels by which these Oriental concep-
planets was neither Greek nor Roman, but tions were transmitted to the mediaeval Ara-
Babylonian, and was transmitted to the West bian astrologers and artists. 21 Both the repre-

tion of Saturn, whom he asserts to be an old man, ham's glauco had been occasionally misread as galea-
having capillos canos and galeam in capite. Now the tum ("caput galeatum amictu coorpertum habebat,"
"Mythographus III" (most probably identical with the fourteenth-century author says), it is most probable
Alexander Neckham, died 1217) describes Saturn as that Scotus's galea (which henceforth became a typical
"senem canum, caput glauco amictu coorpertum ha- feature of the image of Saturn in astrological illus-
bentem" (Bode, pp. 153 ff.; c£ Liebeschiitz, p. 58). tration, although it cannot be accounted for by any
Since we learn from a fourteenth-century treatise de- astrological source prior to Scotus) also derives from
riving from Mythographus III (the passage in ques- a misreading of Neckham's description.
tion is quoted by Liebeschiitz, loco cit.) that Neck- 21 C£ Saxl, Islam, loco cit.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 245

sentation of Mercury as a priestly man with a deities as the chairman, so to speak, of an as-
book and a halo and the representation of sembly of other persons arranged in horizontal
Jupiter as a distinguished scholar can be traced series. There are seven of these other persons
back more easily to the conceptions of the Bab- in each series, but our illustration actually in-
ylonian deities Nebo and Marduk than to those cludes only three of them (the four others be-
of the classical deities Hermes-Mercury and ing represented on the opposite page). These

FIG. 20. CELESTIAL MAP, BY DURER. WOODCUT B.ISI, DATED ISIS

Zeus-Jupiter. Thus these odd images of the persons are the "Children of the Planets" and
planets, which sprang up in the thirteenth and they typify the various callings suitable for men
fourteenth centuries and completely supplant- who were born under the influence of their
ed the classical types of the Carolingian Aratea several planets. The children of Mercury, for
manuscripts, may be regarded as being not instance, are particularly gifted in painting,
merely deviations from the classical tradition, writing, and every kind of subtle craftsman-
but new mediaeval elaborations of ancient Ori- ship.
ental conceptions. Their further development "Synoptical tables" such as these gave rise
IS curIous. to a particular group of representations 22 which
The miniature from the Bodleian MS. Or. 22C£ Lippmann, Die sieben Planeten; Hauber, Pla-
133 (fig. 28) represents each of the planetary netenkinderbilder und Sternbilder; Saxl, Verzeichnis,
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

play rather an important role in the secular and heterogeneous coordination of the Arabs
iconography of the later Middle Ages. In the into an intuitive and homogeneous unity: some
so-called Salone at Padua, for example, there of the professions were done ·away with, and
are mural paintings of this kind, which have the planet and its remaining children were
been dated by local writers in the beginning of placed in a unified pictorial space in order to
the fourteenth century and have even been at- suggest a kind of congenial mental atmos-
tributed to Giotto. In their present state, how- phere. This development seems to proceed
ever, they are in the style of about 1420, the from the Epttre d'Othea of Christine de Pisan,
year in which the building was damaged by a learned lady attached to the royal court at
fire. They illustrate the influence of the planets Paris, who had inherited from her father, an
upon callings, characters, and physiological Italian physician and astrologer, a knowledge
of astrological theories as well as an inclina-
tion to visualize them in pictures. Thus in the
illustrations to her book the children of Mars
are pulled together into a battlepiece, and the
children of Mercury are all scholars or philoso-
phers in discussion, while the planetary deity
is seated on a rainbow in Heaven (fig. 31). It
is obvious that the scheme of the composition
has been assimilated to those of religious rep-
resentations, such as the Last Judgment, some
scenes from the Apocalypse, and the Descent
of the Holy Ghost. The last of these especially
is comparable to the pictures of the planets'
children, as in each a celestial emanation gov-
erns the minds and behavior of human beings
subject to an influence, in the literal sense of
FIG. 21A. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES
FROM PARIS, COD. ARAB. 5°36 that word (fig. 32).23
Having been assimilated to a type that was
conditions. Our figure 29 shows some of the familiar to the popular mind, this composi-
children of Saturn, who are subject to rheu- tional scheme was universally accepted. It was
matism and melancholy, and are fitted to be developed by Northern art into a more com-
farmers, shear grinders, leather dressers, stone plex and amusing type which, with some im-
carvers, carpenters, gardeners, and anchorites. provements, was copied by the Florentine en-
While the figures as such do not differ from gravers. The later fifteenth-century composi-
the usual types of Western fifteenth-century tions differed from the illustrations to the poem
art, their arrangement shows the Oriental ori- by Christine de Pisan in an intensification of
gin of the general conception, for it is still in the feeling for perspective and an unprejudiced
the scientific tabular form of the Arabic man- observation of everyday life, so that they be-
uscripts. came genre pictures in which were depicted
The realism of Northern fifteenth-century slices of human life and habits as ruled by one
art, however, tried to bring the rationalistic or another of the planetary deities. Thus the
part II, pp. 67 ff., and Kunstchronik, n. s. vol. XXX, turen, part 2, pI. 5. As for the Apocalypse, instructive
pp. 1013 ff.; Panofsky and Saxl, pp. 121 ff. specimens were recently published by Neuss, especial-
23 C£ Bamberg, Staatl. Bibl., Mitte/a/ter/iche Minia- ly figs. 98, 101, 190.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 247

picture of the children of Jupiter developed "late Gothic" in type, but at the same time the
into a portrayal of fashionable life, while that position of his arm, his fluttering drapery, and
of the children of Saturn became a portrayal his backward turning movement are obviously
of the poor and miserable, such as unfortunate imitated from the classical prototype (fig. 33B).
peasants, beggars, cripples, and criminals. The It is as i£ thanks to the humanistic movement
planetary deity is represented in various ways. of the fifteenth century, some Northern artists
Sometimes he is enthroned. Sometimes he is a had suddenly become aware that it was incon-
naked standing figure. In Italian pictures, in
accord with Petrarch's Trion/i, the planet gen-
erally drives a chariot. In the German pictures
he often appears on horseback, as though at a
tournament. A good example of this is to be
found in the delightful drawing of about 1490
by the Master of the House Book (fig. 30), in
which the aged Mercury is seen riding a richly
caparisoned horse, while he governs and pro-
tects a series of incidents which are all con-
nected with the idea of the more or less. "fine" FIG.2IB. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES
arts. These incidents all display a most won- FROM COD. VIND. 5415
derful sense of humor. The celestial Virgin
(one of the signs of the zodiac belonging to
Mercury) looks in her mirror and arranges her
hair~ a teacher flogs his unfortunate pupil, the
sculptor's wife to her husband's chagrin offers
a goblet to his journeyman, and the painter is
interrupted and presumably pleased by the visit
of a charming young lady.24 It is a little diffi-
cult to realize that this colorful picture is men-
tally connected ·with a classical mythological
figure.
About the same time that the Master of the
House Book made his drawing a curious thing FIG. 21 C. THE CONSTELLATION HERCULES
FROM DURER'S WOODCUT B.151
happened. In some German manuscripts of
Michael Scotus's astrological treatises the ab-
surdly non-classical figures were replaced by gruous to represent a classical deity, such as
others which impress us as being much more Mercury or Mars, in so non-classical a man-
akin to the Greek and Roman representations ner as was usual in late mediaeval illustrations
of the corresponding deities. In fact, they were and had started what we may call a pseudo-
imitated from a Carolingian copy of the chron- Renaissance on the basis of the Carolingian
ograph of 354, as is shown, for instance, by the manuscripts, which at that time were practi-
Darmstadt MS. 266. Thus, if we look at Mars cally the only sources upon which they could
(fig. 33A) in that manuscript we see that his draw for their classical prototypes. Although
shield, his facial type, and his proportions are this movement did not completely do away
24 C( Bossert and Storck, Das mittelalterliche Haus- with non-classical representations, it is never-
buch, and the references given in note 22 above. theless a rather important sy~ptom of the gen-
248 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

eral mental evolution. Representations of the ever, we are greatly disappointed: of Ovid, it
planets such as those in the Darmstadt and seems, no illustrated manuscripts have been
other manuscripts 25 are by no means excep- preserved, and the two illustrated Vatican Vir-
tional, as we shall see at once. They certainly gils, as far as we know, were never copied dur-
prepared the way for the definitive reintegra- ing the Middle Ages. There are, however, two
tion of the genuine classical types in the six- species of monuments in which we find what
teenth century on the basis of actual antique we are searching for: firstly, a limited number
reliefs and statues, as exemplified by a German of Biblical representations in which classical
woodcut of about 1520 (fig. 34), which repre- mythological figures were inserted for special
sents a Roman Mercury that had been excavat- reasons; and, secondly, the illustrations in the
ed at Augsburgtwenty years earlier. mediaeval forerunners of our modern encyclo-
pedias, which endeavored to gather together
the fragments of classical scientific literature
and usually dealt with the pagan divinities in
a particular chapter, "De diis gentium" or the
like.26
As for the Biblical representations, we limit
ourselves to reminding our readers of the Car-
olingian crucifixions representing Sun and
Moon a:s well as Oceanus and Tellus in ac-
cordance with classical iconography. Oceanus
is rendered as a reclining figure very similar to
the Eridanuses which we mentioned before.

26 There is, of course, a lot of theological literature


mentioning the pagan deities, mostly for polemic rea-
sons, so lhat we encounter, for instance, a Coronation
FIG. 22. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS
of Proserpine in the Legenda aurea (cf. Huard, in
FROM COD. LEYDENSIS VOSSIANUS LAT. 79 Les Tresors des bibliotheques de France, vol. III, fasc.
IX CENTURY 9, pp. 25 ff.)-not counting the manuscripts of Saint
Augustine's Civitas Dei (Laborde, Les Manuscrits
de la Cite de Dieu) or the innumerable representa-
II tions of martyrdoms in which a pagan idol is made to
Now, when looking about for further medi- stand upon a column. However, in Western art these
aeval representations qf classical divinities con- mythological images are not connected - or at most
in a very general way - with genuine classical types,
nected with antiquity by what we have called while in Byzantine theological manuscripts we find
the representational tradition, we turn, in the some surprising specimens of true representational
first place, to the manuscripts of the great clas- tradition. Thus in a twelfth-century Greek manuscript
of the Sermons of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (Paris,
sical poets, such as Virgil and Ovid. Here, how- Bibl. Nat., MS. Coislin 239; cf. Omont, pI. CXVIII)
25 Planets similar to those in the Darmstadt MS. 266 there can be seen small representations of Orpheus,
are also to be found in several other Scotus manu- Isis, Venus, and so forth. In part these are but loosely
scripts (Cod. Vat. Pal. lat. 1370, dated 1472; cf. Sax!, connected with classical models, so that nearly the
Verzeichnis, part I, pp. 20 ff., fig. 29; Salzburg, same type of "pagan idol" was used for Cybele as for
Studienbibliothek, Cod. V 2 G 81/83, not mentioned Hecate. On the other hand, the picture of Orpheus
in Tietze's Die i/luminiet"ten Handschrifien in Salz- unmistakably derives from genuine classical represen-
burg). The connection between these figures and the tations of this particular subject (fig. 3) except that
types of the chronograph of 354 was observed by our he is provided with a halo, owing to the fact that, in
friend Dr. E. Breitenbach of the Municipal Library at Early Christian art, Christ had already been assimilat-
Frankfort. ed to the Orpheus type.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART

Tellus is a half-naked woman carrying a cor- way that the figures of Hercules, Eridanus,
nucopia and nursing two snakes. The maker and Perseus did, so that in the high Roman-
of the famous Munich ivory 27 illustrated in esque crucifixions, such as the well-known re-
figure 35 even goes so far as to show in two lief called Externsteine, executed in 1115, the

FIG. 23. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS FIG. 24A. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS
FROM BIBL. DE L'ARSENAL, MS. 1036 FROM PARIS, COD. ARAB. 5036

FIG. 24B. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS FIG. 24C. THE CONSTELLATION PERSEUS
FROM COD. VIND. 5415 FROM DURER'S WOODCUT B.151

medallions the quadriga of Sol and the biga Sun and the Moon are impersonated by very
of Luna drawn by two oxen, both of them different figures, unmistakably Romanesque
most faithfully following genuine classical pro- in every' respect, and the personifications of
totypes. These motives, however, during the Oceanus and Tellus are entirely eliminated
following centuries degenerate in the same (fig. 36).
In the encyclopedias the classical types are
27 Goldschmidt and Weitzmann, vol. I, p. 41. given up even more abruptly. As we are not
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

acquainted with illustrated manuscripts of (Hrabanus reads "Virga, qua serpentes divi-
the first mediaeval encyclopedia, the Etymol- dit," that is, "a staff by means of which he cuts
ogiae by Isidore of Seville, we must have re- snakes to pieces" instead of "Virga, quae ser- .
course to the daboration of his Carolingian pentes dividit," that is, "a staff which separates
follower Hrabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda in two snakes"). The general types, however, in-
Hesse. The original ninth-century manuscript dubitably derive from genuine classical models.
of his De rerum natura (subsequently called . Proof of this is provided by the goblet of Bac-
De universo) has not yet been discovered, but chus, which is not mentioned in the text, and
we possess a rather clumsy copy executed about consequently must have been taken over from
1023 in Monte Cassino and preserved there to a visual model. The very misunderstandings
our own time. In it (book XV, chapter 6) confirm the fact that the illustrations of the
original manuscript were connected with an-
tiquity by a representational tradition. Thus

FIG. 25. MERCURY, FROM THE "CHRONOGRAPH


FIG. 26. MERCURY

OF THE YEAR 354." RENAISSANCE COPY


FROM COD. LEYDENSIS VOSSIANUS LAT. 79
IN THE BIBLIOTECA BARBERINA, ROME

the lion's skin of Hercules, which is not men-


we find the whole pantheon of pagan deities tioned in the text, has developed into a living
(fig. 37), and when we juxtapose these im- animal peeping over the hero's shoulder. The
ages with classical reliefs and statues, we real- snake winding itself round his right leg seems
ize at once that they are connected with antiq- to be taken over from a representation of his
uity by true representational tradition (per- fight with the Hydra. 29
haps through the intermediary of illustrated
Isidore manuscripts), in spite of the fact that 28 Amelli, Miniature sacre e profizne dell' anna 1023
they impress us at first glance as rather strange- illustranti l'Enciclopedia medioevale di Rabano Mau-
100king.28 Some of their details can be ac- ro; Goldschmidt, V ortrage der Bibl. Warburg, vol.
III, pp. 215 ff.; Lehmann, Sitzungsber. d. bayr. Akad.
counted for only by the indications of.the text.
d. Wiss., Philosoph.-philol. Klasse, 1927, part 2, espe-
Thus, for example, the jar that Pluto carries is cially p. 14, note 3·
to be explained by the fact that the text derives 29 Other "visual" misinterpretations, however, are not

his Latin name Orcus from orca, which means due to the Carolingian illuminator, but to the elev-
enth-century copyist who executed the Montecassinen-
"urn"; and that Mercury kills a snake with a sis. Between the legs of Mercury, for instance, there
long staff obviously results from a misreading flutters a bird which can be accounted for only by a'
of the textual description of the caduceus misinterpretation of the traditional foot wings, which
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART

Now, characteristically enough, these Hra- only are these images clumsy and partly in-
banus pictures sink into oblivion for many correct, as the Hrabanus illustrations were, but
centuries and are replaced (just as happened they are actual travesties, because in them mere
with the pictures of the planets) by mytholog- textual descriptions were translated into the

FIG. 27. SATURN, JUPITER, VENUS, MARS, AND MERCURY


FROM COD. MONAC. LAT. 10268. XIV CENTURY

ical images which, standing in no represen- immediate language of contemporary medi-


tational tradition whatever, must have been aeval art.
drawn exclusively from literary sources. Not The later Greek philosophers, particularly
the Stoics, inclining towards a dissolution of
the artist believed to belong to a complete bird. As this the religious reality of the pagan gods, had in-
mistake does not occur in a fifteenth-century manu-
script copied from another prototype (see fig. 42), we
terpreted them as mere personifications either
learn from it that the Carolingian original was per- of natural forces or of moral qualities. In the
fectly correct in this respect. last centuries of the Roman Empire this tend-
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

ency increased so greatly that the classical were either illusions or malignant demons, the
Homeric or Olympian deities had become not pagan world itself had become so estranged
so much the objects of pious worship as the sub- from those deities that the learned Roman writ-
jects of didactic allegorical poetry and scholar- ers felt entitled to "moralize" them in a purely

FIG. 28. THE SEVEN PLANETS AND THEIR CHILDREN


FROM BODL. MS. OR. 133. ARABIC, XIV CENTURY

ly investigations. While this was happening allegorical manner. Martianus Capella wrote
the true religious feelings of the pagan peoples his long-winded novel, The Marriage of Mer-
concentrated more and more on exotic mys- cury and Philology, the very title of which elo-
teries, such as those of the cults of Mithras, Isis, quently proves what we may call the "allegor-
and Orpheus. While the early Christian Fa- ical secularization" of the Olympian divinities.
thers endeavored to prove that the pagan gods Another important work of this kind is the
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 253

Saturnalia of Macrobius. Fulgentius in his raphers were illustrated. These illustrations ac-
Mitologiae interpreted Hercules as a personi- tually determined the general mediaeval con-
fication of virtue, and the three feet of the ception of the classical mythological figures.
Delphic tripod as symbols of present, past, and Because they were drawn immediately from
future. In the famous commentary of Servius the descriptions in the text, they impress us
on Virgil's Aeneid, which was three times as almost as deliberate caricatures, although of
long as the poem itself and perhaps more in- course they are meant quite seriously. When a
tensely studied, the myth of Hercules and At- modern man thinks of the Laocoon and the
las is explained by the assumption that Hercu- Three Graces, his mind unconsciously visual-
les was an astrologer who learned his discipline izes the Vatican group and the innumerable

FIG. 29. THE CHILDREN OF SATURN. MURAL PAINTING IN THE SO-CALLED SALONE
AT PADUA, ABOUT 1420

from Atlas, and so forth, ad infinitum. classical renditions of the Graces. The medi-
Now this mass of rather dry late antique lit- aeval illuminator, however, had nothing in his
erature was the foundation of what we might mind but a mere textual description or (in case
call mediaeval mythography. Mediaeval writ- he had some predecessors) other mediaeval il-
ers gathered together the various statements of lustrations developed from it. As a result of
the late antique authors, commenting upon the this the Laocoon who makes the sacrifice be-
texts and even upon the commentaries, in comes a wild and bald old priest who attacks
order to justify as well as to facilitate the read- the little bull with what should be an ax, while
ing of classical Roman literature. From the the two little boys float around at the bottom
end of the eleventh century or the beginning of the picture and the sea snakes appear brisk-
of the twelfth throughout the following cen- ly in a pool of water (Cod. Vat. lat. 2761; fig.
turies, the works of these mediaeval mythog- 38).30
30Cf. Forster, Jahrbuch d.konigl. preuss. Kunstamml.,
Thus an illuminator of about IIOO, in illus-
vol. XXVII, pp. 156 ff.; also Goldschmidt, Vortriige trating Remigius's commentary upon Martia-
der Bibl. Warburg, vol. I, pp. 42 ff. nus Capella (Cod. Monac.lat. 14271; fig. 39),
254 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

represented Saturn in a manner so extremely assimilated it to the eagle inspiring Saint John
different from the classical one that he looks or the dove of the Holy Ghost inspiring Saint
rather like one of the saints in the celebrated Gregory, is provided with a dainty halo. Apol-
altar frontal given to the Basel Cathedral by lo, finally, riaes in a rustic cart and holds the
Henry II,nowin the Musee de Cluny at Paris. 31 Three Graces in a nosegay. This funny detail

FIG. 30. THE CHILDREN OF MERCURY. PEN DRAWING BY THE MASTER


OF THE HOUSE BOOK, ABOUT 1490. WOLFEGG CASTLE, AUSTRIA

Because the texts speak of a caput velaturn, the is a very instructive example of what we are
"covered head," which in the classical period endeavoring to make clear. In classical Greek
was rendered by bringing a fold of the mantle sculpture there was a type of Apollo that held
over the head, is here rendered by a floating in his hand a small replica of the famous group
veil, which stands out at the sides with charac- of the Three Graces, much as the world-
teristic billows. Jupiter looks like an enthroned renowned Jupiter by Pheidias held in his hand
mediaeval king, and his prophetical raven a small figure of Victory. Such a statue was
(corvus, according to Cicero's De divinatione 31 C( Saxl, Verzeichnis, part I, pp. 108, 110; idem,
I. 12), because the illuminator unconsciously Repertorium f. Kunstwiss., vol. XLIII, pp. 220 ff.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 255

indexed by Pausanias, the author of the an- raphy formerly called the My th ographus ter-
tique traveler's guidebook for tourists through tius. The story of this text is curious enough.
Greece, and his description was taken over by In the fourteenth century it was used by Boc-
the late antique writer Macrobius, mentioned caccio for his famous Genealogia deorum, in
above. 32 By him the motive was handed down which, however, he surpassed the mediaeval
to the ninth-century author whose treatise was mythographer by reverting to the genuine an-
illustrated by our illuminator. This unfortunate tique sources and carefully collating them with
man, absolutely ignorant of the classical group each other, so that, for example, he is in a posi-
of the Three Graces, as well as of the classical tion to enumerate five different Venuses and

FIG.3I. THE CHILDREN OF MERCURY FIG. 32. THE COMMUNITY OF THE FAITHFUL
FROM A MANUSCRIPT BY CHRISTINE DE PISAN INSPIRED WITH THE HOLY GHOST
BIBL. NAT., MS. FR. 606. EARLY XV CENTURY FROM COD. BAMBERG, MS. LAT. 5. EARLY XI CENTURY

quadriga solis, was expected to illustrate a no less than thirty-one labors of Hercules.
text which said that Apollo, the divinity of the Even Petrarch drew from the English com-
sun, was to ride in a chariot drawn by four pendium for the description of the sculptural
horses and was to hold the Three Graces in his representations of classical divinities which
hand. were admired by Scipio in the palace of the
Characteristically enough, the focal point of African king Syphax. 33 Petrarch turned Alex-
this mediaeval mythography was a region fair- ander Neckham's rough mediaeval Latin into
ly remote from direct Mediterranean tradition: the most beautiful Latin hexameters, omitted
northern France and England. About 1200, the whole moralistic explanation, and drama-
the rather well-known English scholar Alex- tized the description according to the dynamic
ander Neckham (died 1217) composed the principles of classical poetry (compare Neck-
conclusive compendium of mediaeval mythog- ham's "unde et Argum dicitur occidisse quod
32 C( Overbeck, vol. III, book 5, pp. 17 ff. astuti fures ... negotiatores, saepe etiam sapi-
33 Petrarch, Africa, book III. entissimos viros ... desipiant et defraudant"
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

with Petrarch's "Curvo cadit Argus ab ense"). a general moralistic way, but were quite defi-
It is'a memorable fact that the most distin- nitely related to the Christian faith, so that, for
guished poet of the Italian trecento was obliged instance, Pyramus was interpreted as Christ,
Thisbe as the human soul, and the lion as Evil
defiling its garments. The best-known docu-
ment for this tendency is the French at/ide
moralise, in which all the Metamorphoses
are interpreted in a Christian manner. Petrus
Berchorius (Pierre Bersuire), a French theo-

FIG. 33A. MARS, FROM THE DARMSTADT MS. 266


MIDDLE OF THE XV CENTURY

FIG. 34. MERCURY. WOODCUT FROM CONRAD PEUTINGER


"INSCRIPTIONES VETUSTAE ROMANORUM ET EORUM
FRAGMENTA IN AUGUSTA VINDELICORUM ••• ."
MAINZ, 1520

logian and a friend of Petrarch's, composed a


new moralized Ovid, not in French verse but
in Latin prose, and provided it with an intro-
duction in which he explained the pagan di-
vinities so often mentioned in the following
FIG. 33B. MARS, FROM THE text. Thus he in his turn used the. descriptions
"CHRONOGRAPH OF THE YEAR 354" of Petrarch, but he endowed them again with
complicated moralistic explanations. In accord-
to have recourse to an English compendium of ance with the increase of astrological thought
about·l-2oo in order to glean information about and the strengthening of belief in it, he em-
the gods of his own ancestors. phasized the identity of the seven greatest di-
Meanwhile, in the Northern countries, a vinities with the seven planets and arranged
further step in the moralization of classical their hierarchy in the same sequence as the ce-
mythology had been taken: the figures of an- lestial spheres. As his introduction, except for
cient mythology were not only interpreted in its long-winded explanations, was capable of
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 257

being very useful to artists who wished to rep- beholder and the other two did not. But the
resent the pagan gods, the whole thing was classical composition itself had been forgotten,
summarized and its explanations were again and therefore the Grace with her back turned
deleted in the curious Albricus sive Libel/us de is no longer shown in the middle. No medi-
imaginibus deorum, a kind of popular medi- aeval artist could imagine that the reason for
aeval handbook of classical mythology for edu- the positions in the classical group had origi-
cational and pictorial purposes.34 nally been a mere aesthetic one, for in the
This Albricus was illustrated in a fine Italian mythological literature they were explained by

FIG. 35. THE CRUCIFIXION FIG. 36. THE CRUCIFIXION


CAROLINGIAN IVORY CARVING ROMANESQUE STONE RELIEF CALLED EXTERNSTEINE
STAATSBIBLIOTHEK, MUNICH ABOUT 1115

manuscript executed about 14.20 in northern an allegory, according to which a favor con-
Italy (Cod. Vat. Reg. 1290). Figure 40 shows ferred (the Gra~e with her back turned stands
Venus and Mercury from this manuscript, both for the departing favor) will be returned two-
of whom are independent of any classical pro- fold. So it did not matter whether or not the
totypes. The Three Graces in the picture of Grace whose back was turned was in the mid-
the birth of Venus are most amusing. All that dle. Mercury is represented with a great many
had remained in the textual tradition of the attributes, partly masculine, partly feminine.
famous classical representations of the Graces He carries a caduceus, a distaff, a lance, and an
was the fact that one turned her back to the instrument intended to be a curved sword, and
he plays a flute. Towards him flies the cock
34 C( Liebeschiitz"(who gives an instructive survey of
the development of allegorical mythology throughout
sacred especially to him, and on the right are
the Middle Ages); Panofsky, Hercules am Scheide- shown a merchant and a thief who is cutting
wege, pp. I I if. the former's purse. On the ground lies the
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

many-eyed Argus with his head cut off.35 This with fig. 37).37 They are of course transformed
strange image of Mercury developed in full according to the style of the period (as had
accord with the general stylistic evolution of happened in· the above-mentioned fifteenth-
late mediaeval art. In a Flemish manuscript of century Scotus manuscript), but they unmis-
Bersuire's of about 1480, which is connected takably renew the representational tradition so
with the two printed editions of Bruges and long supplanted by a literary tradition, and
Paris (Copenhagen, Thottske Slg. 399; fig. thus prepare for the definitive rediscovery of
42)/6 Mercury looks like a gallant young dan- the classical types.
dy, as he was often represented in secular With the exception of the astrological rep-
Northern fifteenth-century art, and poor Ar- resentations, which had a tradition of their
gus resembles the wounded man in the par- own, the images established by Bersuire and
able of the Good Samaritan. Albricus, in spite of their apparent absurdity,
were the leading types for a long time.
Whenever they needed a Jupiter or a Saturn
the painters and engravers had recourse to this
tradition, even in the Italian quattrocento (for
we may recall the factthat the Reginensis 1290
was executed in Italy about 1420). In Italy the
way back to the classical original did not pass
through a Carolingian intermezzo, but led im-
mediately to the genuine sources. In at least
one case, however, we meet with an archaic
intermezzo instead of the Carolingian one.
About the middle of the fifteenth century,
Cyriacus of Ancona, perhaps the first archae-
ologist and epigrapher in the modern sense of
FIG. 37. VULCAN, PLUTO, BACCHUS, AND MERCURY the word, went to Greece, and he brought back
FROM A COpy OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HRABANUS
MAURUS. MONTE CASSINO. ABOUT 1023
with him a picture of Mercury which he had
copied from an archaic relief of the early fifth
Just before this time a thing we have ob- century B. c. (Bodl. MS. Can. lat. misc. 280;
served in the astrological representations hap- fig. 44)' It depicted the Hermes Sphenopogon
pened also in the mythological ones: the Caro- ("Bearded Hermes"), clad in a fluttering chla-
lingian prototypes, forgotten for so many cen- mys and stretching out his left hand, while hold-
turies, again emerged for a short period. About ing the caduceus in his right in a horizontal
1430 the original manuscript of the Hrabanus position (fig. 45). We can easily conceive that,
Maurus Encyclopedia, which had obviously to a mind accustomed to the Albricus pictures,
been preserved in Fulda, was copied by a local access to this rather fantastic archaic figure was
illuminator, and in this copy (Cod. Vat. Pal. much easier than access to the classical type in
lat. 291) we rediscover the images we found in the narrower sense of the word. In fact the
the Monte Cassino manuscript (compare fig. 41 genuine antique, but not properly classical,

35 Cf. Liebeschiitz, pI. XVIII; also Saxl, Verzeichnis, pp. 58 If., and Oud Holland, vol. XXXIX, pp. 149 If.;
part I, p. ix, and Repertorium f Kunstwiss., vol. also Sant, Le Commentaire de Copenhague de I'Ovide
XLIII, pp. 246 If. moralise.
36 Cf. Henkel, De Houtsneden van Mansion's Ovide 37 Cf. Lehmann, Sitzungsber. d. bayr. Akad. d. Wiss.,
moraJise; idem, Vortriige d. Bibl. Warburg, vol. VI, Philosoph.-philol. Klasse, 1927, part 2, pp. 13 If.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 259

type discovered by Cyriacus of Ancona was im- carvings adorning sixteenth-century houses in
mediately introduced into the Albricus scheme. Germany.38
Thus the series of the "Tarocchi" (a set of en- The Italian cinquecento, however, generally
graved playing cards executed in northern Italy disapproved of the archaizing Cyriacus type
about 1465) shows a picture of Mercury (fig. and reestablished the classical one, so that by
46) which follows the description of Albricus 1515 the classical appearance of the antiquedi-
with regard to the iconographical accessories vinities had become a matter of course for the
(note the flute, the cock, and the head of Ar- Italian artists. A genius such as Raphael had,
gus), while the type of the main figure obvi- so to speak, a free command of classical syntax
ously derives from the Hermes Sphenopogon without limiting himself to a classical vocabu-
imported by Cyriacus of Ancona. In this form lary. Thus the Mercury in the ceiling of the
Mercury wandered back to the Northern coun- Villa Farnesina, who displays his beauty in the

FIG. 38. THE STORY OF LAOCOON, FROM COD. VAT. LAT. 2761. XIV CENTURY

tries and was popularized by numerous en- movement of an ethereal flight, is conceived
gravings and woodcuts. Our figure 43 shows a in a classical spirit without being copied from
woodcut from a Lubeck Calendar of 1519, in a particular classical prototype (fig. 47).
which the Tarocchi Mercury, transmitted to In passing, we should now mention that the
the Hanseatic draftsman through the interme- transmission of the Trojan cycle, which of
diary of Hans Burgkmair's woodcut B.46, was course contained a considerable amount of in-
made the central figure of a planet-children cidental mythology, occurred in a way rather
picture conforming to the usual Northern fif- similar to that of the transmission of the pagan
teenth-century type. This Mercury finally be- mythology as compiled by Neckham, Bersuire,
came a typical figure in the decorative wood- and all the others. One might expect that the
content of the Iliad and other classical poems
38 Cf. Warburg, Jahresber. d. Ges. d. Bucherfreunde would have remained more alive in Italy than
zu Hamburg, 19°8-19°9, pp. 45 if. This article will be in other countries, and have given rise to
reprinted in a comprehensive edition of Warburg's
writings, some of which appeared at rather out-of-
abundant illustrative material. But, on the con-
the-way places. Cf. also Behrendsen, Darstellungen trary, it was a French poet of the twelfth cen-
von Planetengottheiten an und in deutschen Bauten. tury, named Benoit de Sainte-Maure, who com-
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

posed the standard work of the Trojan cycle, This invasion of Italy by the Trojan cycle as
the Roman de Troie. The content of this was a whole, both text and pictures, came chiefly
partly adopted by the author of the later Hls- through her opposite frontiers. Not only, as
toire ancienne/ 9 and, what is more important, was most natural, did it come through north-

FIG. 39. THE P"GAN DIVINITIES, FROM COD. MONAC.l.AT. 14271. ABOUT 1100

was elaborated by mediaeval German poets as ern Italy, which was geographically and cul-
well as by the Italian trecento poet Guido da turally connected with the transalpine coun-
Colonna. Thus the Italian trecento drew its tries at least as closely as with Tuscany and
knowledge of the tribal legend of Italy from Latium, but also it came through southern
France, in the 'Same way'that it drew its knowl- Italy, which was ruled in turn by the Normans,
edge of the Olympian divinities from England. the Hohenstaufens, and the Anjous. Thus as
Moreover, the high mediaeval illustrations of early as about 1100 we are struck by the re-
the Troian cycle were· also worked out in markable artistic relationship between the two
France and subsequently were transformed in
Italy. 39 C£ Meyer, Romania, vol. XIV, pp. I ff.
f ,/ """-

:.1'lJ1) 'I ~ €llLI6~nttl~"~\luf:plt\'~d·tt5" !AUftP.~~9]lt\) lA"Onsu\-n(.,~ Pm~1~;\:-m~:


r - 1,1 1'~~ ;:ubut\. m~t\ -:.. "l-'lt1. lttl.tn, "l' ",Mllt fit4\ ~t1\ "md)<lJ lMl1HA;
• • ... • t'O'\~"1%f "'tt); ~m, ().\IC .\UZ,-Q l'01ir ~llb~lf "l ml,z\ff¢uft SU\~\I>~'Pt~
:t
~ Ct.M.t1\. '7 ""litL"p:ttnt 1¢. \\.OkmnbJ cum.tnb"f"/"'9ttlmw:> ~ 'S'n.r\'~~ ~~'P\mn1"
1lL ~\) elt\f" ,,1Tlt)1lAt1\. i Imbt\t""~ ~\,) ll;xM; "&l)\1\i;"'till tt~ (\fhtb~ u \kr
l1.\tb: 4n"l:.S" 9l nttc ~\a:l)(Hl~t.,6: :ill, ~U(\U. fnnc ~1.fi\f '\", t\b llU.r¢ ~l'Zk :,.f\!.~A \to ~ --
(113 Ul ?t\1\l'ttl; UC%.t&!:at-1 hme "l Cl\lH~ ~h1fil\lf,,{4tuS "fClZC; ctfJ'iIkb<t(- ,.fl\d1t1\ -Z tU'ro
9'tLOr~\leb(lt"2lW U"'" f"'5\tT1U(,\1\t' ~ '1~ tl.:cr
~f~ tll1.ll"toftllli¢§' t\~ "1l\U'f'l1.1Llntll)
t1~t\t" nil ,..,rtA fittlfh'nl ~~Ol.\t-" , -.
'. ~ ~-

,.

FIG. 40. VENUS AND MERCURY, FROM COD. VAT. REG. 1290. ABOUT 1420
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

opposite regions of Italy (as witness the sculp- and heraldic reasons can be located at Naples
tures of Bari and Modena). During the tre- (Brit. Mus., Royal XX.D.I; fig. 50).42 Al-
cento conditions in northern and southern Italy though the miniatures were executed as late as
were analogous in that self-dependent com- about the middle of the fourteenth century
munalism had not yet, as in central Italy, pre- and strikingly resemble the illustrations of a
vailed over dynastic autocracy with its courtly Vitae patrum manuscript datable about 1360,43
life and habits and its delight in pictures and they seem to reflect an unknown prototype
stories dealing with chivalrous exploits. with the curious mixture of Oriental and Occi-
For northern Italy we limit ourselves to ad- dental elements characteristic of Frederician
ducing several manuscripts of Benoit de Sainte- and Manfredian manuscripts, such as the cele-
Maure, written in French but illustrated by il- brated De arte venandi cum avibus and the
luminatofS of Bologna, who were famous for Bible of Manfred,44 which may thus be placed
in the middle of the thirteenth century. This
hypothesis is confirmed by at least two other
manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne (Bibl.
Nat., MS. fro 9685 and Cod. Vat. lat. 5895; figs.
51A and 51B) which were executed in southern
Italy about 1300. In them our hypothetical
French models were translated into a style
which is entirely untouched by the attainments
of the great trecento masters and thus shows
the characteristics of the Manfredian or Fred-
erician period even more clearly than the Nea-
politan manuscript just mentioned. To crown
it all, a manuscript such as Bibl. Nat., MS. fro
FIG. 41. VULCAN, PLUTO, BACCHUS, ANi> MERCURY 1386, while obviously deriving from the former
FROM COD. VAT. PAL. LAT. 291. COpy OF THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HRABANUS MAURUS, ABOUT 1430 ones (compare fig. 52B with figs. 52A and 51A)
so emphatically reverts to pre-Gothic tenden-
their excellence in "quell'arte che luminare e cies that we feel as if it echoed the style of the
chiamata in Parisi" (fig. 49)40 and to a His- twelfth-century Petrus de Ebulo manuscript
toria Troiana by Guido da Colonna, executed preserved at Bern 45 or even of the famous tap-
in the Venetian district about 1380, the hurried estries of Bayeux. Small wonder then that
pen drawings of which foreshadow the char- some of these rather exotic-looking pictures
acteristics of fifteenth-century draftsmanship strike us as almost "early Romanesque."
(Cod. Ambros. H.86 sup.; fig. 48).41 Now, in all these illustrations of the Trojan
For southern Italy we have the good for- legend (from which innumerable later minia-
tune to possess a remarkable Histoire ancienne, tures, as well as prints and woodcuts, were de-
which is also in French but which for stylistic rived) the classical heroes and heroines appear

40 C£ Hermann, pp. 136 ff. The Cod. Petropolitanus 42 C£ Warner and Gilson, vol. II, pp. 375 ff.
(Franz. F. v. XIV. v. 3')' from which our figure 49 is 43 Morgan Library, MS. M, 622. C£ Berenson, pp. 115
taken, may be joined to the two manuscripts men- ff., fig. I I I. .
tioned by Hermann, although it is of an incomparably 44 C£ Erbach-Fuerstenau, especially pis. I, IV, and
higher quality and seems to be more closely connected figs. 8 ff.
with Sienese art. 45 C£ Rota, Petri Ansolini de Ebulo de rebus siculis
41 C£ Toesca, p. 388. carmen, with fine reproductions of the miniatures.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART

as mediaeval knights and ladies. The typical quattrocento, imitation of the antique gradual-
scenes of battle, love-making, and mourning ly reintroduced the classical types - a process
wholly conform to the contemporary types that, in Germany, had been prefigured by mod-
most common in novel illustration and reli- est attempts to revive the pseudo-classical Car-
gious art, as, for example, in figure 50, where olingian types. 47
Hecuba, lamenting over the dead body of
Troilus, is obviously assimilated to the Virgin Now if we ask for the interior reasons of this
lamenting over the dead body of Christ. Cases development, the answer seems obviously to be
like that in which the tomb of Achilles reveals that high mediaeval art, though sometimes
an immediate memory of the late antique obliged to represent classical themes, had no
strigulated sarcophagi (fig. 51) are exception-
al. Here, too, the Renaissance reintegrated the
classical idea. Giulio Romano's murals in the
Palazzo Ducale at Mantua visualize the Trojan
cycle within the limits of a classical style based
not only on the attainments of Raphael but
also on the immediate assimilation of classical
monuments. In the Death of Patroclus (fig.
54), for instance, the artist freely used a Ro-
man relief of the same subject (fig. 55) still
preserved at Mantua. 46

The process we have observed in these many


instances can be expressed in a general formu-
la. Wherever a mythological subject was con-
nected with antiquity by a representational
tradition, its types either sank into oblivion or,
through assimilation to Romanesque and Goth-
ic forms, became unrecognizable. While this FIG. 42. MERCURY, FROM A MS. IN THE COPENHAGEN

went on, they were supplanted by non-classical ROYAL LIBRARY. THOTTSKE SLG. 399. ABOUT 1480
types, either derived from the East or freely in-
vented on the basis of the textual tradition. feeling for classical form. This explanation,
Then, beginning in the second half of the however, is hardly sufficient. Everybody knows

46 Cf. Dollmayr, lahrbuch d. kunsthistorischen Samm- tique but rather classical prototype (as, in spite of the
lungen, vol. XXII, particularly p. 187. Needless to say many vicissitudes of textual and illustrative tradition,
the center group of the composition is identical with has been conclusively explained by Jones and Morey
the famous "Pasquino" group, which also represents in their admirable corpus, The Miniatures of the Man-
Menelaus protecting the body of Patroclus. uscripts of Terence). These mediaeval Terence minia-
47 A similar evolution can be observed in the Terence tures, also, show a gradual "degeneration" of the clas-
illustrations which "are the outstanding example of sical models so that the latest manuscripts, such as
the transmission and transformation of antique style" Bodleianus Auct. F. 2.13 and Turonensis lat. 924, im-
(to speak in the terms of Leslie W. Jones and Charles press us as purely Romanesque work. After them,
R. Morey), in fact unrivaled except by the astronom- however, no illustrations of the comedies are to be
ical illustrations to which we try in this article to call found for about two centuries. As late as the begin-
the attention of art historians. We possess more than ning of the fifteenth century the text was illustrated
twelve illustrated manuscripts of Terence executed be- afresh (a list of manuscripts is given by Jones and
tween 800 and 1200 which all derive from a late an- Morey, p. 225; the most famous specimen is the Te-
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, tany or in England. But it spread farther and
when the classical types of mythol.ogical fig- reached its first point of culmination in Char-
ures were being supplanted by the non-classical tres and Reims.
ones, Christian subjects, especially in the field The facts are too well known to require any
of sculpture, were so markedly assimilated to . particular discussion. We only remind our
classical forms that art historians are now in readers that this proto-Renaissance movement,
the habit of speaking of a proto-Renaissance. too, approached the classical prototypes by de-
It is not by accident that this movement, so grees and not immediately. It began, in such
contrary to the literary activities of those medi- places as Modena and St.-Gilles in Provence, by
aeval mythographers who might appropriately absorbing the illusionism of provincial Roman
be characterized as proto-Humanists,48 found stone sculptures and ivories, while limiting it-
self to the assimilation of single motives such
as heads, animals, draperies, pieces of architec-
ture, and ornamental details. Then, after a By-
zantine intermezzo in Laon, Braisne, Chartres
(transepts), etc., the Gothic artists began to
feel the more essential qualities of antique art,
above all the principle of contraposto. Finally,
at Reims and Pisa, they penetrated to the very
heart of classical art, no longer seeing the epi-
dermis of late antique work, so to speak, but
absorbing some of the fundamental principles
of classical sculpture, so that we can easily un-
derstand why the two figures of the Reims
Visitation (c£ fig. 53), with their easy gyratory
contraposto, for a long time were believed to
FIG. 43. MERCURY AND HIS CHILDREN be sixteenth-century work. 49 Because of all
WOODCUT FROM A LUBECK CALENDAR OF 1519
this, it would be an exaggeration to assert that
PRINTED BY STEPHAN ARNDES
the high Middle Ages were completely blind
its origin in the Mediterranean atmosphere of to the aesthetic qualities of classical art.
southern France and Italy, instead of in Brit- Thus, to speak generally, knowledge of clas-
sical subject matter and appreciation of classi-
rence des Dues, Bib!. de l'Arsenal, l.at. 25), and these
mini~tures are totalIy independent of the classical tra..
cal form were not lacking during the Middle
dition, direcdy illustrating the text in accordance ~ith Ages, but, because of the failure to relate them
the general principles of fifteenth-century art. This is in practice, classical subject matter, especially
also the case .with the first printed edition (VIm,
the mythological stories, completely lost its
1486). Then, about 1492, the Basel publisher Arner..
bach planned another edition of Terence, which never original form, and classical form so lost its orig-
appeared, although 130 woodblocks and nine prints inal subject matter that a Phaedra could be
from lost woodblocks which were prepared for it have used as a Virgin Mary and a Venus as an Eve.
been preserved inthe K\lnstsammlung of Basel. The
astonishing fact is that these illustrations, in which
It was the privilege of the Renaissance again
the young Durer participated, pardy revert to the Car..
olingian prototypes (as was proved by Romer in Jahr.. 48 As for this proto-Humanism, especially flourishing
buch d. preuss. Kunstsamml., vol. XLVIII, pp. 77 ff:, during the twelfth century, we should like to refer our
156 f[), thereby affording a parallel to what could be readers to the splendid researches of Charles H. Has..
observed in the representations of the planets and the kins.
pagan divinities. 49 C£ Lubke, vol. II, p. 458.
FIG. 44. MERCURY, BY CYRIACUS OF ANCONA FIG. 45. MERCURY
BODL. MS. CAN. LAT. MISC. 280 ARCHAIC RELIEF FROM PANTICAPAEUM
MIDDLE OF THE XV CENTURY EARLY V CENTURY B. C.

FIG. 46. MERCURY, FROM THE "TAROCCHI" FIG. 47. MERCURY DESCENDING FROM OLYMPUS, BY RAPHAEL
ABOUT 1465 VILLA FARNESINA, ROME
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

to visualize classical subject matter under clas- adherence to orthodox beliefs. In general, how-
sical forms and so to reintegrate these two ever, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance re-
things. This we can easily understand. acted to antiquity in quite different ways. For
There were, of course, certain distinguished the mediaeval mind antiquity was distant, but
scholars, such as Rildebert of Lavardin (the not distant in a historical sense of the word.
author of those famous distichs on the Roman It was no more distant than, for instance, the

FIG. 48. THE CAPTURE OF TENEDOS, FROM COD. AMBROS. H.86 SUP. ABOUT 1380

ruins which for a long time were ~ought to contemporary pagan East, or the world of the
have been composed by a late antique poet),50 fairy tales,so that Villard de Honnecourt could
in whom the mediaeval proto-Humanism was call a· Roman tomb "Ii sepouture d'un sarra-
already tinged with a sensitive feeling for the zin," because to him it meant a pagan monu-
classical past seemingly comparable to quattro- ment rather than an antique one. 51 Because of
cento tendencies, although, in reality, their this, although the Middle Ages used classical
fundamental attitude differed essentially from ideas, literary as well as philosophical and ar-
that of the Renaissance thinkers in its unerring tistic, wherever they could, they were unable to

50 Cf. Schramm, espexially pp. 296 If. 51 Cf. Villard de Honnecourt, pI. XI.
Q cC( P 15t cn
Q C.lrntuaftbomeltnOl(.l.
"'to .mcM Clllt'tll ft Ol\(CfPIOlo.r_iiiiiip1~~"iiJ
~ ccnttnllntaCnCJIU-
Q ell UlIO\I\t ceelle lUI
\1' olltftntrtfil rolt Jmbntll
e ucotUmJIIl'CCtcnqlG.
Q 01 fll\Cr~lIt Cfll!lt\Ul'G.
il' OllCiintbUlIlt CllUlmmn(
\'l'OIlCUm.l C(lllolC lipiDe.
~ J1\O ill molt e((\Cll(03
p ltlll:c'tli Ct C0:1J100

FIG. 49. PARIS AND HELEN MEETING AT THE TEMPLE OF VENUS


FROM LENINGRAD, COD. PETROPOLITANUS, FRANZ. F. V. XIV. V. 3
MIDDLE OF THE XIV CENTURY

tr ~'rnumat'.CDncrl~nlllr
fblit" It CI01l'en p.t1nt' 'lOIlt'Z
mio II mlt;pIcmn~ t" Ie ,otITIC
non q1UCft1'tc,~rn l.rlll
nll!k mkcnlimt"ra.l~m(S
site to \lIeu-.e.trtllUUllt'1(' •
lcnt'mICf~ mozr.Glrmlr
tOUt' 'llolJOitl9 "JnJOllr
fi~ ncqmanr
rOlt: ncuooWuJlr.

FIG. 50. HECUBA EMBRACING THE DEAD BODY OF TROILUS


FROM BRIT. MUS., ROYAL XX.D.I. ABOUT 135°-1360
268 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

see antique culture as a cultural cosmos histor- ly does, the unity of classical form and classical
ically so far removed from them that they could subject matter, actually avoided bringing the
think of it as an integral unity. Thomas Aqui- two together - for we must remember that any
nas assimilated the ideas of Aristotle and melt- combination of what were regarded as two sep-
arate things would have been meaningless to
both the average artist and the average behold-
er. Being familiar with the idea of the Virgin
Mary, mediaeval artists and spectators could
visualize and understand her even when ren-
dered in classical forms. Being familiar with
the game of chess as a characteristic feature of
courtly life, they saw no incongruity in a pic-
ture of Medea playing chess, although they
would not have understood her had she been
represented as the heroine of the drama by
Euripides. Being familiar with the appearance
of mediaeval tombs, they saw nothing odd in
the picture of an up-to-date Thisbe sitting on a
Gothic tombstone with the inscription "Hie
FIG.51A. THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA situs est Ninus Rex," preceded by the usual
FROM BIBL. NAT., MS. FR. 9685. ABOUT 1300
cross (Bib!. Nat., MS. lat. 15158; fig. 56).52 But
they could not have understood a classical
Thisbe sitting by a classical mausoleum.
As in the history of mind visible phenomena
usually appear simultaneously as "causes" and
"effects," so the reintegration of classical myth-
ological subjects achieved in the Renaissance
was an incentive as well as a symptom of the
general evolution which led to the rediscovery
of man as a natural being stripped of his pro-
tecting cover of symbolism and conventional-
ity. For the mediaeval mind such things as
beauty and ugliness, lust and pain, cruelty and
FIG. SIB. THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA fear, love and jealousy were encompassed by so
FROM COD. VAT. LAT. 5895. ABOUT 1300
many transcendental conceptions that all had
moralistic or theological connotations. Beauty
ed them into his scholastic system and the me- appeared either as a symbol of supreme spirit-
diaeval poets abundantly used the classical au- ual virtues or as a means of diabolical tempta-
thors, but no mediaeval mind could think of tion. Thus while Adam, Christ, and the Virgin
what we call classical philology; the artists of Mary had to be beautiful because their beauty
Reims and Pisa assimilated their figures to Ro- was held to be a reflection of the eternal bright-
man statues, but no mediaeval mind could ness infused into the human body by the very
think of what we call classical archaeology. act of creation, the beauty of classical statues
Thus the mediaeval mind, being incapable 52 Reproduced in Lehmann, Pseudo-antike Literatur
of realizing, as the modern mind automatical- des Mitte/a/ters, fig. J 1.
FIG. 52A. THE SACK OF TROY FIG. 52B. THE SACK OF TROY AND THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA
FROM BIBL. NAT., MS. FR. 9685. ABOUT 1300 (RIGHT LOWER CORNER). FROM BIBL. NAT., MS. FR. 1386. EARLY XIV CENTURY
270 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

meant to the mediaeval mind a magica quae- Middle Ages. Where the one considered man
dam persuasio used by the devil in order to as an integral unity of body and soul, the
corrupt the souls of the Faithful. Cruelty was other thought of him as a mere "clod of earth"
considered as a kind of professional quality of not endowed with forces of its own but forci-
pagan executioners or wicked giants, and sen- bly and miraculously united with an immortal
sual love, which was anathematized by the soul ("plenum fuit miraculo, quod tam diversa
commandments of religion and in the medi- et tam divisa ab invicem ad invicem potue-
aeval epics usually entered into a conflict with runt coniungi," as a great mediaeval philos-
feudal loyalty, was either conceived as a warn- opher put it). The formulae of classical art
ing example or sublimated so as to become a were obviously incompatible with that medi-
quasi-metaphysical experience justified by a aeval trend of thought which had developed
profound philosophical theory and ruled by a mere natural functions into quasi-moralistic

GEORG SWARZENSKI. "NICOLO PISANO," PL. 26

FIG. 53. ROMAN FIGURE JUXTAPOSED WITH A VIRGIN BY NICCOLO PISANO (PULPIT OF
THE BAPTISTERY, PISA) AND THE VIRGIN FROM THE VISITATION (REIMS CATHEDRAL)

complicated ceremonial code. Thus mediaeval symptoms (or quasi-iconographical attributes).


art was neither able nor inclined to visualize Wherever classical types or attitudes had sub-
the physical qualities and emotions we have sisted in Christian mediaeval art or had been
just mentioned in the manner of classical art, freshly assimilated, as at Reims or Pisa, they
according to which beauty was a mere func- appeared transformed in such a way that the
tional equilibrium (such as is found in the beholder was not too strongly impressed by the
organization of a perfect animal), pain was a natural qualities and movements as such. In-
mere functional reaction against physical in- stead of identifYing his own sensations with
jury, and love was either a mere functional en- the functional experiences of the beings repre-
joyment of physical pleasure or a mere func- sented, such as organic equilibrium, pleasure,
tional suffering from unappeased physical ap- or pain, he conceived the expressions of the fig-
petites. ures chiefly as indications of spiritual princi-
The admirable artistic formulae by which ples, good or evil, holy or infernal. The formal
these qualities and passions had been expressed motives inherited from antiquity were de-
in the classical style had resulted from a con- prived of their functional immediacy in order
ception of man very different from that of the that they might embody non-classical mean-
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 27 1

ings. To that end they were so attenuated and were replaced by fashionable knights and dam-
"spiritualized" (by either inorganic exaggera- sels whose behavior and appearance conformed
tion or inorganic· torpescence) that they be- to the canon of mediaeval social life. Thus the
came congenial to the current religious and reunion of classical form and classical subject
moral ideas. After all is said, even the Virgin of matter as achieved by the Renaissance speaks

FIG. 54. THE DEATH OF ·PATROCLUS, BY GIULIO ROMANO. PALAZ.ZO DUCALE, MANTUA

FIG. 55. THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS. ROMAN RELIEF. MUSEO STATUARIO, MANTUA

Reims, in spite of its classical appearance, re- eloquently of the rehabilitation or even re-
mains a "Gothic" figure endowed with a more- discovery of a purely "human" vitality - both
than-physical beauty. In a similar way, the sen- structural and emotional- which, if not exact-
sual pathos of the passionate scenes of antique ly disapproved of, had been shoved aside for
mythology and secular poetry was transposed many centuries. "Quae ergo compositio mem-
into the atmosphere of courtly manners and brorum," Gianozzo Manetti says, "quae con-
conventionalized sentiments, so that heathen formatio lineamentorum, quae figura, quae
divinities and heroes mad with love or cruelty species quam humana pulchrior aut esse aut
272 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

excogitari potest? Quod cum illi veteres sapi- values were felt to be based in natural forces
entissimique homines animadverterent, deos in just as mere vital qualities were held to be en-
humana se specie confiteri audebant." 53 And nobled by their connection with the immortal
Leonardo Bruni, while emphatically disapprov- soul. "Only men can laugh and shed tears,"
ing of those who unrestrainedly indulge in Marsilio Ficino says, "because in them the
luxury and sensual gratification, still does not mental emotion rules the body ... , from
shrink from asserting that puritanic asceticism which we learn that our body, compared to
is something "insensible" and "inhuman": "... that of other animals, contains a minimum of
earth ... and a maximum of subtle elements
so that it is capable of being the receptacle of
the celestial soul." 55 But even this moderate at-
tempt to do justice both to "pagan" vitalism
and to "Christian" spiritualism meant an un-
mistakable alienation from the moral system
of the Middle Ages. Thus it could happen (al-
though this is an entirely exceptional case) that
a radical thinker such as Leonardo da Vinci
ventured so far as to destroy the very founda-
tion of mediaeval ethics by proving the fact
that what the Middle Ages had considered as
"mortal sins" in reality had to be regarded as
the positive principles of natural life. "Lussuria
[note Leonardo's deliberate use of the termini
technici of mediaeval moral theology!] ecausa
della gieneratione. Gola emantenimento della
vita, paura over timore e prolungamento di
vita e salvamento dello strumento."56
As for the rediscovery of vital beauty, lll-
53 Manetti, p. 55; c£ Gentile, pp. III if. ("II concetto
dell' uomo nel Rinascimento"); Ruggiero, part 3, vol.
I, pp. 140 if.
FIG. 56. THE STORY OF PYRAMUS AND THISBE
54 Bruni, vol. II, p. 140.
FROM BIBL. NAT., MS. LAT. 15158. DATED 1289
55 Ficinus, book I, p. 208: "Hinc accidit rursus, ut
solus homo rideat, solus et lachrymetur, ex eo quod
ab omnibus penitus abstinere, et omnem om- animi motus plurimum in corpus habent imperium.
nino voluptatem refugere, est quasi insensibili- . . . Ideo corpus nostrum si ad caetera animalia com·
paretur, quam minimum terrae, et illud quidem sub·
tas quaedam et inhumanitas, si et vina et epulas tile possidet, sublimiorum elementorum quamplur.
et convivium et omnem jocunditatem refugiat, imum, quocirca coelestis est animae receptaculum."
qualem ego ne amicum quidem habere ve- 56 Richter (ed.), no. 842. While Manetti (p. 161)
lim." 54 did not go so far as that, he endeavored to justify cer-
tain vices such as envy, anger, ambition, and the crav-
However, this new emphasis on the physical ing for worldly power, by asserting that they were
qualities of man did not lead to a purely ma- nothing but undesirable results of the same forces
terialistic conception; rather it enriched the which are the foundation of the dignity of man ("nam
qui sese ita dignuIh factum fuisse considerat, ut cun-
feeling for the nobility of the human soul ctis rebus creatis praeesse ac dominari videatur, pro-
which now was believed to form a specifically fecto non modo ab aliis superari non patietur, quod est
"personal" unity with the body. Thus moral invidiae, sed potius caeteros excellere vel maxime con-
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 273

stances are abundant and known to all. We tation, appear inexpressive. Europa, clad in the
should merely like to adduce one of the fres- costume of the fourteenth century, sits on her
coes executed about 1470 by Francesco Cossa inoffensive little bull like a young lady taking
in the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara (fig. 57), a morning ride, and her companions, similarly
because it shows most eloquently the fascina- dressed, form a quiet little group of spectators.
tion of classical beauty. The picture which rep- Of course they are all meant to be anguished
resents the Triumph of Venus follows the com- and to cry out, but they don't cry out, or at
positional scheme of the pictures of the plan- least they don't convince us that they do; and
et's children and the iconographical arrange- they don't convince us that they do because the
ments of the mediaeval mythographers, such art of that time lacked any immediate means
as we find in Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum. of expressing what was considered a merely

FIG. 57. TRIUMPH OF VENUS, BY FRANCESCO COSSA, ABOUT 1470. PALAZZO SCHIFANOIA, FERRARA

But it is to be noted that the Graces, and they "carnal passion." A period accustomed to deny
only, have resumed their classical positions, any autonomy of physical life and to regard
acting under the spell of the reappreciated man as a "mira societas carnis et animae, spi-
antique monuments. 57 ritus vitae et limi terrae" was basically incap-
As for the vital emotions, we shall juxtapose able of expressing appropriately (that is to
two representations of the Rape of Europa. say, functionally) such animal emotions as the
In the first place we will consider the minia- struggling pain of Orpheus slain by the mae-
ture from a fourteenth-century Ovide moralise nads, the sensual excitement of a bull-shaped
(Lyons, Bibl. dela Ville, MS. 742; fig. 58). The god, or the agitation of a girl trying in vain to
landscape is very schematic and the figures, in defend herself from abduction.
so far as they are meant to reveal interior agi- A drawing by Durer copied from an Italian

cupiscet, quod superbiae et ambitionis proprium viti- 57 The problem of the frescoes in the Palazzo Schi-
urn existimatur et creditur"). Although contentions fanoia was resolved by Warburg in Atti del X Con-
such as these impress us as rather innocuous in com- gresso internazionale, pp. 179 if. C£, however, the
parison with the radical sentences of Leonardo, Ma- revised reprint of this article in the new edition of
netti's treatise was put on the Index in 1584. Warburg's writings, referred to in note 35 under Sax!.
274 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

prototype (L. 456, executed about 1495; fig. rustles with the life of aquatici monstriculi, to
59) precisely emphasizes the passionate vitality speak in the terms of another Italian quattro-
lacking in the mediaeval representation. The cento writer, while satyrs hail the abductor. 58
literary source is no longer a text comparing Needless to say, such a reintegration of clas-
the bull to Christ and Europa to the human sical mythology was not so much a humanistic
soul, but the pagan text of Ovid himself as as a human occurrence, a most important ele-
transformed into two delightful stanzas by An- ment of what Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt
gelo Poliziano: "You can admire Jupiter trans- called the "discovery both of the world and
formed into a beautiful white bull by the pow- of man." Moreover, this occurrence allows us
er of love. He dashes away with his sweet ter- an insight into the curious and rather enigmat-
rified load, her beautiful golden hair flutters in ical role which was to be played by antiquity
the wind which blows back her gown, with throughout the following centuries in the mak-
ing of what is deprecatingly called "Classi-
cism," but what in reality is an essential ele-
ment of modern European culture, that deep-
ly rooted conception of antiquity as a worldly
paradise, an ideal realm of unsurpassable beau-
ty, freedom; and happiness.
As we have already pointed out, the Renais-
sance attitude towards antiquity was different
from the mediaeval one in that the Renaissance
had become aware of the "historical distance"
separating the Greeks and Romans from the
contemporary world. This realization of the
intellectual distance between tlie present and
FIG. 58. THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA the past is comparable to the realization of the
FROM LYONS, BIBL. DE LA VILLE, MS. 742 visual distance between the eye and the object,
XIV CENTURY
so that a parallel may be drawn between the
one hand she grasps a horn of the bull, while discovery of the modern "historical system,"
the other clings to his back. She draws up her which was mentioned in the first paragraph of
feet as if she were afraid of the sea, and thus this article, and the invention of modern per-
crouching down with pain and fear she cries spective, both of which were achieved by the
for help in vain. For her sweet companions re- Renaissance. Now, this new attitude (from
mained on the flowery shore, each of them cry- which resulted the apparent paradox that,
ing: 'Oh, Europa, come back!' The whole sea- while so many classical conceptions were fresh-
shore resounds with: 'Europa, come back!' and ly taken over from antique art and thought,
the bull looks round and kisses her feet." many another was deliberately abandoned be-
Durer's drawing actually gives life to this cause it had been handed down, and thereby
sensual description. The crouching position of altered, by mediaeval tradition) automatically
Europa, her fluttering hair, her clothes, blown gave rise to a problem which was to determine
by the wind and revealing her graceful body, the specific character and the further develop-
the gestures of her hands, the furtive move- ment of Western culture. The mediaeval mind,
ment of the bull's head, the seashore scattered being unaware of its historical distance from
over with the lamenting companions - all this 58 Cf. Panofsky, lahrbuch f KUTlStgesch., vol. I, pp.
is visualized, and, even more, the sea itself 43 ff., also published separately.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 275

the antique mentality, was consequently un- ologia Platonica in which he endeavored to
disturbed by the idea that antiquity was a "cul- prove the compatibility of Platonic philosophy
tural cosmos" concentrated about its own cen- with Christian theology. While the masters of
ter of gravity. It was therefore capable of as- Reims, Pisa, etc., could use classical models
similating the classical elements, artistic as well for the images of the saints and the Virgin
as philosophical and scientific, much as a plant without any reflections or scruples, Durer felt
assimilates the elements of the soil and the car- obliged to justify his reestablishment of the

FIG. 59. THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA. PEN DRAWING BY DURER


(L'456), ABOUT 1495. THE ALBERTINA, VIENNA

bonic acid diffused in the atmosphere. The classical proportions in Christian pictures :"The
Renaissance, on the contrary, had to contrive pagan people attributed the utmost beauty to
a deliberate conciliation. their heathen god 'Abblo,''' he says. "Thus we
While Thomas Aquinas could make use of shall use it for Christ the Lord who is the most
Aristotle without discussing or even realizing beautiful man, and just as they represented
the difficulty of harmonizing two mental atti-. Venus as the most beautiful woman, we shall
tudes fundamentally different from each other, chastely display the same features in the image
Marsilio Ficino felt obliged to write a The- of the holy Virgin, mother of God."59

59 Lange and Fuhse, p. 316. Johann Joachim Win- thume angebracht aber ungereimt, wie das Bild der
ckelmann's classicist conscientiousness, of course, em- Theologie ist, in Gestalt der Diana ... , an dem Grab-
phatically disapproved of such a p.£T'aPau&~ d~ dAAo 'YE- male Pabsts Sixtus IV von Ertzt [by Antonio Pol-
V~ : "Einige Kiinstler haben Bilder aus dem Alter- laiuolo] in der St. Peterskirche zu Rom, wovon der
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

Thus Renaissance art and thought are char- On the other hand, the fascination aroused by
acterized by an intrinsic tension, unknown to the classical monuments increased in the same
previous periods, which was to become deci- measure that the secular tendencies in Chris-
sive for the further evolution. 50 As we learn tian art were opposed by the moralists, so that
from many sources, this tension was felt from what had been, a few decades before, an un-
the very beginning, but for a while it was dis- constrained enthusiasm for classical beauty and
guised by that peculiar gift of harmonization vitality became transformed into astrange self-
which we admire in the great masters of the conscious feeling composed of reluctant admi-
so-called High Renaissance, such as Leonardo ration, disquieting scruples, and cool archaeo-
da Vinci, Giorgione, and Raphael. However, logical interest. 51 The fig lea£ an invention of
this beautiful harmony, apparently conciliat- the period in question, is a significant symptom
ing really incompatible things, was able to last of this uneasy attitude which, manifesting it-
only a few decades, and it soon led to a fright- self stylistically in the so-called Mannerism,
ful crisis both in artistic and in intellectual was characterized by a conflict between a re-
life. This crisis broke out in the period of the .newal of mediaeval tendencies and an over-
Counter Reformation, when Giordano Bruno's emphasis upon classical principles. Bronzino's
philosophy and Galileo's scientific research en- Descent into Limbo (fig. 60), for instance, al-
tered into open conflict with the Christian most relapses to the principles of Gothic art in
dogma and the world of the figurative arts that its composition is lacking in spatial per-
was upset by a struggle between the High Ren.. spective and its figures are distorted and inter-
aissance tendencies and what we may call neo- woven with each other so as to form a compli-
mediaevalism. Everybody knows that, under cated, almost two-dimensional pattern, while
Paul IV, the nude figures in Michelangelo's at the same time the figure of Eve is imitated
Last Judgment, being furiously attacked for from an antique statue much more literally
their indecency and irreligion, had to be paint- than any figure of Giorgione's or Raphael's.62
ed over by Daniele da Volterra, and that, in Out of the chaos resulting from the frustrat-
1573, Paolo Veronese was sued for having en- ed attempt to harmonize the humanistic crav..
riched the representation of a Last Supper by ing for freedom both in art and in thought
worldly figures such as clowns and lansque- with the authoritative postulates of the Chris-
nets. The Ovide moralise was put on the In- tian religion, there emerged one sphere which
dex for the very reason for which it was writ- was apparently exempt from this destructive
ten and appreciated, that is to say, because it antinomy: the antique world itsel£ as reinte-
was meant to connect Christian theology with grated by the new reunion of classical thought
pagan mythology. Artists, suffering horribly and feeling with classical form and expression.
from the irresolvable conflict between their In it physical beauty and carnal desires, heroic
faithful devotion to Christian beliefS and their pathos and playful amorousness had never en-
aesthetic admiration for antiquity, sometimes tered into conflict with moral or theological
dolefully repented having made naked images. conceptions, so that what had proved incom-

Grund nicht anders als Uicherlich seyn kann" (Ver- 39 fI; also Saxl, Antike Gotter in der Spatrenaissance,
such einer Allegorie, p. 55). passim.
50 This intrinsic tension characteristic of the Renais- G2 The model was the Venus of Knidos, also used by

sance mentality was analyzed by Warburg in Kunst- Bronzino for the Virgin in his famous H'oly Family
wissenschaftl. Beitrage August Schmarsow gewidmet, in the Uffizi. In the latter case, the head is copied so
pp. 129 if faithfully that Schweitzer was able to identify the in-
51 C£ Schlosser, Kunstliteratur, pp. 378 if; Panofsky, dividual replica, which Bronzino had under his eyes;
Hercules am Scheidewege, pp. 31 if, and Idea, pp. c£ Schweitzer, Roem. Mitt., vol. XXXIII, pp. 45 if
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MEDIAEVAL ART 277
patible with Christian culture appeared all the ary enclave of untroubled beauty and vitality.
more as a perfect harmony in itsel£ As a result There the unrestricted vital feeling, which had
of this the field of .the genuine classical sub- been roused with the reintegration of classical
jects, especially the mythological ones, turned art and therefore was felt to be inconsistent

FIG. 60. THE DESCENT INTO LIMBO, BY BaONZINO


MUSEUM OF SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE

out to be the only place in which the modern with the spirit of the Christian religion, Was
mind could locate a vision of unproblematic "in its proper place," so that while the moral-
or unbroken completeness, and the interpreta- ized Ovid and other Christianizations of classi-
tion of genuine classical subjects both in paint- cal poetry were put on the Index,63 the M eta-
ing and in poetry became for the real world 63 C( Reusch, Die Indices librorum prohibitorum des
of tensions and suppressed emotions a vision- sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. The most authoritative In-
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

morphoses themselves remained free from ob- were no longer named Robin and Jeannette as
jection. in the mediaeval French pastoral poetry, but
Thus, curiously enough, antiquity was poi- Meliseo and Phyllis, Aminta and Sylvia. Thus
son and antidote at the same time. It was the classical past, while it was more and more
poison in so far as the reintegration of antiquity thought of and investigated as a concrete his-
contributed to the fundamental discrepancy in torical phenomenon, simultaneously developed
modern art and thought, and antidote in so far into an enchanting Utopia that was surround-
as the same reintegration of antiquity had ed with a halo of sweet and melancholy resig-
opened the vision of an imaginary kingdom in nation, as in some of the paintings by Nicolas
which this very discrepancy seemed to be har- Poussin and Claude Lorraine. The idea of an-
monized. tiquity developed into a dream of bliss and
The everlasting nostalgia for this imaginary happiness; the classical past became a visionary
kingdom is the main foundation of Classicism. harbor of refuge from every distress. A para-
Enthusiasm for beauty and strength, sensual dise lamented without having been possessed
love and amoeba-like dolce jar niente, and the and longed for without being attainable, it
craving for perfect harmony, in the purely nat- promised an ideal fulfillment to all unappeased
ural sense, concentrated more and more upon desires. From this we can understand why,
the classical sphere, so that the bucolic life be- from the crisis of the Counter Reformation in
came located in Arcadia. The innocent shep- the sixteenth century, when the classicism of
herds and shepherdesses who embodied civil- the Carracci led the way out of Mannerism
ized people's innate desire for nature and peace into the baroque style, down to the crisis of
our own days, which, among other phenom-
dex, that of Pius IV, Trent, 1564 (Reusch, p. 275) ex- ena, has given rise to the classicism of Picasso,
plicitly says: "In Ovidii Metamorphoseos libros com-
mentaria sive enarrationes allegoricae vel tropolo-
almost every artistic and cultural crisis has been
gicae," but does not mention the works of Ovid them- overcome by that recourse to antiquity which
selves. Even licentious writings of classical authors are we know as Classicism.
but scarcely to be found in the Indices.

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