Culture of the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century (Translation of Famous Works)

Author: Jacob Burckhardt
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1979-07-01
Features: In the spring of 1853, Burckhardt revisited Italy and began writing The Art of Italy in the Renaissance, aiming to introduce the readers to the profound "enjoyment" of art he had experienced during his numerous travels to Italy. The book is rich in personal emotion in its descriptions of Italy, particularly Rome. On the very next page, it leads the readers to the sea, with the shimmering surface visible through the colonnade of the Temple of Neptune. On the last page, the author discusses his own "nostalgia," longing for the "unforgettable" Rome. This nostalgia occasionally falls into a dormant state but never disappears. The book records his direct impressions of everything he saw, from classical antiquity to 18th-century art. When describing these works, he deliberately avoids discussing their historical context to preserve the readers' appreciation of art. He believed, for example, that when early Christian art, we must judge it solely by the standards of artistic quality, refusing to be swayed by the "pessimistic impression" that stems from the prejudice that the Church utilized products of completely different civilizations—pagan ones—in these works, and that "in our imagination, we even unconsciously envision the Church as surrounded by a mysterious aura." When discussing the Ducal Palace in Venice, Burckhardt explicitly pointed out that if we could forget the "various historical and poetic prejudices that occupy our imagination," we would have to admit that, apart from the beauty of its superstructure, the overall proportions of the palace are unsatisfactory. However, as Professor Haskell has demonstrated, while Burckhardt successfully wrote The Art of Italy in the Renaissance as a book that appreciates the essence of art, his insights into art became the fundamental ideas of his masterpiece, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. In other words, he transformed the concepts of the art world into those of politics and culture. In The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, although Burckhardt avoided discussing art, he often mentioned Vasari in the footnotes. This indicates that in his attitude toward the 15th century, Burckhardt inherited more from the tradition of Vasari. Before Burckhardt planned to write The Art of Italy in the Renaissance, the painting of 15th-century Italy had already attracted admiration. But to a large extent, this was a rebellion against traditional standards of value. Traditionally, as Michelangelo firmly believed, Renaissance works of the 16th century were the pinnacle of European art. However, Leo, Pausinian, and Ruskin, among others, discovered that some paintings from 15th-century Italy exhibited a childlike innocence and an ardent spiritual value, qualities that were still visible in the early works of Raphael. After the 15th century, as art succumbed to the pedantry, corruption, and materialism of academies, this precious quality disappeared. Burckhardt's perspective was unique—he did not so much praise 15th-century painting as adopt Vasari's theory that it was a stage toward the more perfect creations of the 16th century. This perfection was ultimately embodied in the late masterpieces of Raphael. Thus, Burckhardt's attitude was more indebted to Vasari than to his modern predecessors and contemporaries. We can almost interpret Burckhardt's artistic ideas through his Renaissance ideas. In The Art of Italy in the Renaissance, Burckhardt wrote that in the early 15th century, a new spirit emerged. Painting, though still primarily serving the Church, had "transcended the Church's demands" and presented "a picture of the real world." Artists became devoted to studying and reproducing the external forms of things, gradually taking over the portrayal of figures and their surroundings (realism). The conceptual treatment of facial expressions and clothing had given way to accurate and naturalistic representation. Beauty, which had long been regarded as the primary attribute of divinity, disappeared in the pursuit of accuracy, evolving into a form of beauty that belonged solely to this world. In this sense, art gave the Church less than it demanded, because only with absolute control could the religious elements in art flourish and survive: any concession to the secular, even the smallest one, such as observing the structure of clothing or showing interest in the correct spatial arrangement of figures, would inevitably break the spell of religion. Here, Burckhardt implied that the rise of naturalism was the result of the Church relaxing its control over artists, which gave artists the opportunity to realize their personal ambitions and express their individuality. Clearly, this conclusion became the basic view of Burckhardt's analysis of the political situation during the Italian Renaissance. We remember that at the beginning of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Burckhardt emphasized that it was precisely because the emperors and popes were weak—that is, they had lost the ability to monopolize power—that Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries gave rise to those tyrants. Similar to the political situation, Florence was the first to be impacted by the new artistic trends. Perugino, Raphael's teacher, was originally part of the Florentine school. Later, under the pressure of competition, he returned to his hometown of Perugia, abandoning everything he had learned in Florence. To meet the public's religious demands, he produced countless repetitive and mechanical images. However, when Raphael was commissioned to complete his teacher's works, he did not seek inspiration from Perugino's more pious early works. He never rested on his achievements but pursued novelty and higher artistic expression throughout his life, driven by a moral spirit. "This moral quality would certainly have remained with him until his old age. If we consider his extraordinary creativity in his last few years, we can imagine how much irreparable loss his early death brought us." In his study of architecture, Burckhardt's perspective was also unconventional. Kugler and German historians had always disparaged Renaissance architecture of the 15th and 16th centuries, believing that it lacked the "organic style" of ancient Greece, especially German architecture; it was merely a patchwork of various classical styles and offered no useful reference for contemporary designers. Burckhardt was initially deeply influenced by such prejudices but later, through multiple visits to Italy and on-site research, overcame them and reevaluated Renaissance architecture with fresh eyes. He acknowledged that the architecture of this period had not yet reached an "organic" level but had established excellent models. In any case, eclecticism was not its defining feature. He wrote: "We can distinguish two true periods of the Renaissance. The first period spans from 1420 to 1500, which we call the exploratory period. The second period begins in 1540, marking the golden age of modern architecture, where in its greatest buildings, a special harmony is achieved between fundamental forms and decoration and the strict adherence to true proportions." Here, Burckhardt's view once again clashes with Michelangelo. We remember that Michelangelo regarded Brunelleschi as an isolated genius without successors, who had vainly broken through the medieval fortress to introduce the Renaissance to Italy. Burckhardt disagreed with this assertion, believing that "what Brunelleschi initiated was continued by Michelozzo, and without his Riccardi Palace, Rosellino and Benozzo would not have been able to build their palaces." Indeed, in talent, these architects could not be compared to Brunelleschi, but their buildings demonstrate that at least in its early stage, the Renaissance was an achievement of the 15th century, created by many people with different talents, and Brunelleschi happened to be one of the most outstanding among them. Of course, Burckhardt did not deny the flaws in Renaissance architecture, but unlike Michelangelo, he did not attribute them to the 15th century; he believed these flaws had existed long before. Fortunately, they were merely temporary obstacles on the path to the Renaissance. In 1846, during his visit to Florence, he first encountered Donatello's Magdalene, whose extreme naturalism repelled him. In 1853, when he revisited Florence, his earlier aversion had turned into fear and hatred, which was Burckhardt's reaction to all of Donatello's works. He described the St. John the Baptist (now identified as an early work by Sansovino, created more than half a century after Donatello's death) with such fear: "Too terrible! Like a rough skeleton, leaning forward, if it were loosened, it would fall to the right. The limbs are as if skinned." What was even more frightening was that Donatello's works monopolized all the elements of the new art: it often happens in the history of art that a new stylistic tendency concentrates all the extreme forms in one artist, thereby mercilessly challenging the earlier style. But in this stylistic shift, the novelty and the spirit of rebellion against the past were so completely and unilaterally embodied in one artist—as they were in Donatello—as rare. In some of Donatello's late sculptures, faint echoes of ancient sarcophagi and other antiquities can be seen, but those "characteristic features" that terrified Burckhardt "emerged strikingly among other features," he wrote. Donatello was a great naturalist with a talent for sculpture, who did not recognize any limits to his art. The very fact that things exist, the fact that things have an autonomous nature, enabled him to represent everything in sculpture. For him, the ultimate goal was to give this quality the most severe, rough, and sometimes (if the subject allowed) powerful and magnificent life. When writing The Art of Italy in the Renaissance, Burckhardt's language was naturally more restrained, but his reaction to Donatello held great significance for his later interpretation of Italian society. When describing the "horrible" condottieri in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Burckhardt must have recalled the impressions left by Donatello's sculptures. Donatello ignored artistic conventions, while the condottieri were "the earliest deliberate negation of all moral constraints," their character being "a witness to original sin," while "this sin was also the condition for their greatness—that is, their extreme individualism." Throughout The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, we can read Burckhardt's skeptical attitude toward various forms of power. This attitude was closely tied to his view of Michelangelo. Burckhardt almost hated Michelangelo's works, and even in The Art of Italy in the Renaissance, his comments on the artist read like an accusation of the sins of the Renaissance: he was the embodiment of the future fate of art; his works, the success they enjoyed, contained all the elements needed to define the basic nature of modern art. The characteristic of the three centuries of art was subjectivity, which appeared in Michelangelo under the guise of creativity free from all external constraints, just as in so many great spiritual movements of the 16th century, the emergence of subjectivity was not forced or unconscious but intentional. Here, we should also note that Burckhardt's reactions to Donatello and Michelangelo both revealed how he benefited from Vasari and how he completely rejected Vasari's judgments. For example, it was Vasari who first made the comment that the angels in the lunette of Santa Croce were huddled together out of fear. Burckhardt seized on this. But Vasari praised Donatello with unrestrained enthusiasm, extolling his works as "beautiful, thoughtful, and outstanding," qualities that not only placed him on par with the ancients but, combined with his naturalism, enabled him to inspire Florentine artists to take the decisive step toward the perfection of Michelangelo. While acknowledging Donatello's "great influence," Burckhardt always felt that this influence was somewhat dangerous: "If it were not for the inner tendency toward beauty, the driving force that repeatedly leads art beyond bare naturalism and beyond superficial imitation of classical antiquity—that is, if it were not for the great spirit of 15th-century Italy, the principle of pursuing Donatello would be a fatal fashion." Here, Burckhardt seemed to acknowledge the role of Hegel's spiritual movement, because he had already viewed the "tendency toward beauty" as almost independent of the will and ability of specific artists. Thus, he implied that Donatello, this unruly sculptor, was not a central figure but an marginal one in the process of the Renaissance. He said, yes, Donatello "was not lacking in a sense of beauty, but this sense must give way to character when necessary, and that great Civitelli had 'overcome Donatello's harsh edges,' and thus in the angels of the San Luca Cathedral, he could 'combine the most noble style of the 15th-century style that emerged since Giberti with the aristocratic beauty of fervent piety and youthful vitality.'" In The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Burckhardt made a similar comparison between the rich individuality developed in Florence and the tyrannical individuality in other parts of Italy, but he did not explicitly tell us which one was the characteristic of the Renaissance. As for the origins of the Renaissance, Burckhardt rejected the traditional view that the rebirth of classical antiquity created the Renaissance, a conclusion that stemmed from his early Italian art studies. In The Art of Italy in the Renaissance, although he agreed with Vasari's view that Brunelleschi was the "first to revitalize the life of classical antiquity in architecture," he did not delve deeply into this aspect. When discussing Donatello, he deliberately emphasized his anti-classical features. This was not accidental. In The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Burckhardt explicitly stated that the influence of classical antiquity was only one aspect, and without it, the Renaissance would still have occurred. This conclusion naturally came from his keen observations and extensive research on 15th-century Italian architecture, sculpture, and painting.