Journal of Visual Culture

http://vcu.sagepub.com The Imaginary Breeze: Remarks on the Air of the Quattrocento

Georges Didi-Huberman Journal of Visual Culture 2003; 2; 275 DOI: 10.1177/1470412903002003001 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vcu.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/275

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Journal of Visual Culture can be found at: Email Alerts: http://vcu.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://vcu.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Citations http://vcu.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/2/3/275

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

journal of visual culture

The imaginary breeze: remarks on the air of the Quattrocento Georges Didi-Huberman

Abstract

Aby Warburg placed the wind, or air, at the centre of his investigation of the art of the Italian Renaissance. This article investigates how an external cause of the image takes on the role of a figure in Quattrocento painting and sculpture, and becomes foundational for Warburgs understanding of the Pathosformel and of Nachleben.
Key words

air Botticelli dance displacement of affects drapery Renaissance Warburg

The wind does more than just accompany the graceful footsteps and the drapery of the nymphs that populate so many of the Quattrocentos pictures. It is no more a mere accessory of drapery in motion than drapery is itself an accessory of the body in motion. Body, surfaces and air all hang together, like the Three Graces in Botticellis Primavera (see Figure 1): each element in that dialectical dance exists by virtue of its being borne, transported and transformed by the others. The draperies are in the wind as the wind is in the draperies, in the hair, and all around the body: the accessory in motion (bewegtes Beiwerk), as Warburg clearly saw, touches and alters the very being of what it comes into contact with. The wind does more than just pass over things: it transforms, metamorphoses, profoundly touches the things it passes over. Aby Warburg is probably the first Western historian of art to have placed the wind the fluid par excellence at the centre of a major exploration of Renaissance art. In 18889, while he was still a student, Warburg observed the epic wind that blows in Ghibertis reliefs and formulated his first hypotheses about the re-invention of pictorial values (das Malerisch) by the sculptors of the early 15th century

journal of visual culture Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com Vol 2(3): 275-289 [1470-4129(200312)2:3;275-289;038435]

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

276

journal of visual culture 2(3)

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

Figure 1 Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c. 14825 (detail: the Three Graces), tempera grassa on wood. Florence, Uffizi Gallery. 1990 Photo SCALA, Florence courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali. These images, protected by copyright and by watermark, are for reference purposes only. The downloading, reproduction, copy, publication or distribution of any of the images appearing on this website are forbidden by law.

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze

277

(Warburg, 18889; Warburg, 1889, see Ghelardi, 2001[18889]: 7418).1 Later, by shifting his focus from the still beauty of Venus to the turbulent edges of her body to hair, draperies, and breaths of air Warburg, contra Winckelmann and his immobile goddesses, was to re-invent our entire way of seeing Antiquity and the Renaissance, placing bodily motion and the displacement of affects at the centre of our perception (Warburg, 1998[1893]).2 In his 1893 thesis on Botticelli, Warburg soon sought adequate expression for this phenomenon, which had not previously been studied by the historical sciences but which, of course, had been grasped by certain artists, poets and philosophers. This is why, at the beginning of the chapter on Botticellis Primavera, Warburg cited some lines alluding to the wind written by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This is also why he borrowed the superb expression imaginary breeze (in French in his text: brise imaginaire), probably from some romantic poet (Warburg, 1998[1893]: 20, 26).3 In the same spirit, he entitled the concluding chapter of his thesis with an enigmatic and enticing expression: The external cause of the image (die uere Veranlassung der Bilder) (pp. 4555). Why, then, was the wind which merely stirs the draperies and hair of a number of, mainly female, figures in Renaissance painting elevated to the status of a cause, motive or impetus (as the term Veranlassung suggests) for the entire picture? Because, from the start, Warburg recognized in the wind a formal means of expression or Pathosformel, as he was later to call it. The imaginary breeze causes the hair of Botticellis Venus or the clothes of Donatellos princess to flutter freely without apparent cause (pp. 20, 30). For the artists of the Quattrocento, mobilizing air had become a tool or rather, a fundamental vehicle for conveying pathos. Warburg wanted to analyse both the formulaic aspects of this vehicle, with their potential for repetition, and its dynamic aspects, with their liberating potential (pp. 545). The wind causes all that it touches to quiver or stir, to be moved or convulsed. It first sends a quiver through space: the graceful hereness of the princess recoiling in fear is reached by the elsewhere of a violent combat carried out in her name, which exhales its intensity in her direction. Here, then, the entire space is moved by the wind. But the passage of air also sends a quiver through time: Warburg discovered why, during the Renaissance, a sense of surface mobility in the figures (die uere Beweglichkeit der Gestalten) was thought to be an essential trait ... and a criterion for any successful influence of antique art (ein Kriterium des Einflusses der Antike) (p. 19). He also noted, among the artists of the Quattrocento, the tendency ... to turn to the arts of the ancient world whenever life was to be embodied in outward motion (p. 22). Finally, Warburg showed that the now of the Florentine servant-girl in the historia by Ghirlandaio was affected by the then of the Nymph copied from Roman sarcophagi (Warburg, 1998[1893]: 1736). The air also sends a quiver through bodies. The servant-girl draped in a statues robe only divulges her appearance by virtue of the transitory energy of an apparition. Her state is nothing but a flux in the picture she bursts into. It is as if the wind that carries her, causing her dress to swirl, was a required accessory for her corporeality a corporeality which is drastically altered and intensified in Ghirlandaios fresco. Yet, with this intensification, the air in motion imparts pathos to the body of the servant, whose face is so closed and impassive, as in Botticelli.

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

278

journal of visual culture 2(3)

The air, then, also sends a quiver through souls, and its invisible atmospheric displacement an outward cause serves as a fluid index for the displacement of affects, for inward causes. Even before seeking any confirmation in the written sources, this can be ascertained simply by looking at the right-hand side of Primavera: the Nymph Chloris is held by the wind (Zephyr incarnate) by virtue of being moved by him (for she is still fleeing him) and, at the same time, by being affectively moved by him (for she is already producing flowers, the fruit of their sexual union, from her mouth). As Andr Chastel (1978: 393405) has successfully shown through his reading of Marsilio Ficino and of Vasari, the notion of aria was frequently called upon in the Renaissance to define what Vasari termed a cosa mirabile e occulta di natura: the quality of a place that is enigmatically effective on the dispositions of the soul, through the agency of a subtle affection of bodies. Along with this contextualist theory of the affects, Renaissance men adopted an entire psychology of the air in order to justify (among other things) certain mysteries of the psychology of art, such as when Vasari tried to explain why, paradoxically, the Roman air was better suited to Michelangelos Florentine genius (pp. 393405). The theoretical underpinnings of this mysterious form of aerial determinism, of course, remain to be worked out.4 In the visual arts specifically, it is easy to see that the motion of the air is integral to the figurative concerns of both painters and sculptors of the Quattrocento. Concerning the intellectual training of the artist, Lorenzo Ghiberti (1998[c. 1447]: I, 2, 8: 48) wanted to place knowledge of atmospheric and celestial things (climata, astrologia) at the same level as knowledge of corporeal and medical objects (notomia, medicina). Further on, in his Commentarii, Ghiberti discusses the model of ancient works of art from the perspective of air sculpted into draperies (in the ymagini togate anticamente), of air painted by Apelles as almost living breaths (gente paiono che spirino) or in the form of a variety of atmospheric phenomena (I, 6, 9; I, 8, 10; I, 8, 15: 56, 72, 75). Ghiberti, therefore, clearly suggests that air in motion should, by all accounts, be included in the figurative concerns of modern art. In this spirit, he mentions Ambrogio Lorenzettis frescos at Siena (now lost), which show hail falling hard ... wind blowing furiously, trees bowing down to the ground and some of them breaking (con venti meravigliosi... piegare gli alberi insino in terra e quale spezzarsi); before mentioning his own reliefs for the northern door of the Baptistry in Florence, which show, among other things, the people [of Moses] at the foot of the mountain, stricken with horror by the earthquakes, lightning and claps of thunder (2000[c. 1447]: II, 4; II, 8: 878, 96). * In none of these examples is air that natural element which we breathe without even being aware of it. It is a supernatural substance, stirred by the effect of some extraordinary event. In Giotto, the wings of the devils put to flight by Saint Francis make a tumult in the blueness of the sky, while the angels wings make the entire space above the dead Christ tremble.5 In the Scrovegni chapel, an aerodynamic angel traverses the Dream of Joachim, the angels lower body nothing but a trail of

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze

279

air; while the Baptism of Christ takes place under a tremendous breath (spiritus) of divine grace. In countless Crucifixions from the Trecento to Raphael and beyond, the air is saturated with the vibrations of wings or draperies agitated by angels or seraphim. Wherever there are supernatural struggles, the entire atmosphere is astir and tormented, such as in Ucellos Saint George, in deluges, or agonistic visions. Warburg spoke all the more legitimately of an imaginary breeze, for in Primavera the supernatural power of Zephyrs breath went hand in hand with a personified representation of the wind. The air, then, also appears as an allegorical fluid. It recuperates an entire tradition, which stretches back to Antiquity and remains uninterrupted in the Middle Ages (see Raff, 19789: 71218). Mercury himself, on the left in Primavera, has close affinities with the wind; he is the god of prodigious speeds through the atmosphere, the god who cleaves the air (see Roscher, 1878). Several years before Botticellis painted Zephyrs in the Birth of Venus and in Primavera, Liberale da Verona had designed the illuminated initials for Siennese liturgical books in the turbulent form of a representation of the North Wind (Del Bravo, 1967: 20, xxxviii; Gilbert, 1981: 21721; Eberhardt, 1983: 6676). At the same time, a number of images included puffs, breaths or blasts of air as allegorical elements in their own right. From the Leonello dEstes medal, with its sail swelling in the wind, to the Leon Battista Albertis occhio alato, from the Tales of Fortune Pinturicchio of Siena to various Allegories of the Passion, artists developed an entire use value for air in the domain of allegory. Its pedigree had already been established in the Trecento, with Giottos famous grisailles at Padua with Hope and especially with Inconstancy, who spins in the wind like a weathervane and with the Allegories of the Liberal Arts by Andrea da Firenze at Santa Maria Novella. In the 1450s, Agostino di Duccio set out to cover the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini with his extraordinary, vibrant reliefs in which everything winds and water, hair and draperies, nature and allegory tends toward a strangely stylized fluidity. His Euterpe, the Muse of feasts and dithyrambs, already seems to wear windswept drapery with an extreme degree of mannerism, although she is still reminiscent of a (somewhat enlarged) medieval ivory (Warburg, 1998[1893]: 12; Pointner, 1909: 25111; Campigli, 1999: 2744). To the contemporary eye, the most striking feature of most of these imaginary breezes or winds is their spatial incoherence. Paolo Uccello may well have designed his Deluge with rigorous unity of perspective, yet he did not hesitate to divide his wind in two, so that the trees on the left are almost uprooted by the storm while Noahs draperies on the right do not quiver in the least. The cloud in Saint George is as theatrical as the dragons cave (see Francastel, 1967; Damisch, 1992: 1006). In the Karlsruhe Adoration, the wind filling the boats sails seems not to reach the rather sculptural, almost metallic palm-tree in the foreground. Elsewhere, supernatural breaths of wind leave natural things unfazed, as witnessed by the trees that remain impassive despite the unfurling of angelic wings in Benozzo Gozzoli, or in Botticelli.6 In Primavera, Floras step raises a breeze that is immediately refuted by the steps of Chloris beside her. As for Ghirlandaios Ninfa fiorentina, much admired by Warburg, the wind that almost carries the nymph is conspicuously one that she brings along, as if for herself alone. What does this imply, if not that air only constitutes a means

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

280

journal of visual culture 2(3)

of figuration to the extent that it is a local fluid? It is a particular movement or a trembling, a particular disturbance of surfaces, a symptom, an index of strangeness that affects a single body and, by the same token, signals itself as a spiritus, a bearer of thoughts and the movements of the affects. If Renaissance painting continues to divide the air (there will never be a breeze in Giorgiones Tempest), it is not because it is archaic or partial and incoherent in its representation of atmospheric phenomena, as some art historians have affirmed (Rostworowski, 1973: 1330). It is because, for Renaissance man, the aria follows so closely upon bodily movements that she air being feminine to the Italian ear becomes the subtle symptom, almost invisible in her fluidity, of the movements of the anima. * The De pictura clearly suggests this dialectic. In the same way that, for Alberti, movements of the body make visible movements of the soul (motus animi ex motibus corporis cognoscuntur), the movements of surfaces, and primarily of the light, flowing surfaces of draperies, make visible the movements of the air (Alberti, 1435: II, 41). Yet, a genuine dialectic is involved here; that is, a dance in the round like that of the Three Graces in Primavera (see Figure 1): just as the perturbations of the soul (animi perturbationes) find expression in bodily gestures, those gestures have to be accompanied, prolonged and adorned by perturbations of surfaces, the surfaces of draperies and hair moved by the wind: Finally, each persons bodily movements, in keeping with dignity, should be related to the emotions you wish to express. And the greatest emotions must be expressed by the most powerful physical indications (maximarum animi perturbationum maximae in membris significationes adsint necesse est). This rule concerning movements is common to all living creatures (in omni animante) ... Now I must speak of the way in which inanimate things move, since I believe all the movements I mentioned are necessary in painting also in relation to them. The movements of hair and manes and branches and leaves and clothing are very pleasing when represented in painting (et capillorum et iubarum et ramorum et frondium et vestium motus in pictura expressi delectant) ... in the folds of garments care should be taken that, just as the branches of a tree emanate in all directions from the trunk, so folds should issue from a fold (sic ex plica succedant plicae), like branches. In these too all the movements (omnes motus) should be done in such a way that in no garment is there any part in which similar movements are not to be found. Since by nature clothes are heavy and do not make curves at all, as they tend always to fall straight down to the ground it will be a good idea, when we wish clothing to have movement (pannos motibus aptos esse) to have in the corner of the picture (ad historiae angulum), the face of the West or South Wind blowing between the clouds and moving all the clothing before it. The pleasing result will be that those sides of the bodies the wind strikes will appear under the covering of the clothes almost as if they were naked, since the clothes are made to adhere to the body by the force of the wind (sub panni velamento prope nuda appareant); on the other sides the clothing blown about by the wind will wave appropriately up in the air. (II, 445; Grayson, 1975: 801)

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze

281

Here, in the space of a few lines, Alberti traces the full circle of our dialectical sequence: movements of the soul, movements of the body, movements of surfaces and movements of air have, indeed, become indissociable by the time he concludes his reasoning. In fact, Alberti here defines nothing less than the field of animation proper to painting. The principal flaw of painting namely, that it is an inanimate surface that merely bears a semblance to animate things becomes prodigious once all of the movements in a painting function with the same level of effectiveness. Whether they are mechanical or organic, subsidiary or essential, local disturbances or disturbances globally propagated throughout the picture, they all conspire to animate the image. When this occurs, iconographic hierarchies become relativised: in painting, it is always possible that a piece of fabric in motion will be more lively than the movement of a head. Furthermore, throughout other passages of the De pictura, Alberti put forward a quasi-animistic theory of painted objects (II, 25). Everything in a painting is dead, nothing really moves; yet, everything is invoked there under the quasi-magical aspect of things and beings that move in order to form a historia and to move (movere) the viewer in turn. Alberti insists, then, that this power of animation should incorporate the field of accessories in motion: hair, manes (think, once again, of Donatellos Saint George), branches, foliage, or draperies. It is fascinating to observe the extent to which Alberti enters into the fractal intimacy of these surfaces in motion, to which he assigns a common morphology. Multiple folds emanate from a single fold like leaves grow from the twig, the twigs from the branch and the branches from the trunk; but, in addition, each local fold reproduces the global structure, each detail of the movement contains the totality of possible movements. Such reflection approaches a form of Naturphilosophie or a dynamics of fluids. Except from the outset, Alberti re-affirms the fictional nature of all these graceful surface movements, of which Primavera provides such an impressive inventory. Even during the Quattrocento, a woman in a dressing gown would not produce the animation of fabric that Botticellis Three Graces produce: only the painter can defy gravity and intensify the natural configurations of movement, whether or not he justifies this by Zephyr blowing out of the corner of the painting as a mythological detour. This brings us to the issue of the power of air over visible things. This is why Albertis text concludes on the subject of fabrics plastered to the limbs by the wind: the wind reveals nudity, motion and the intimacy of bodies. It moves surfaces and fabrics only in order to make visible as if by contact a set of gestures invisibly ordered by the movements of the soul. In the painting, then, aria, spiritus, and anima are derived from the same imaginary breeze. Warburg, of course, cited the Alberti passage in his 1893 thesis; it played a crucial role in illuminating the concept of accessories in motion (Warburg, 1998[1893]: 1011). The passage is discussed from the point of view of a dialectical tension between two terms: the anthropomorphic imagination (anthropomorphistische Phantasie), from which both animism and empathy proceed, and differential reflection (vergleichende Reflexion): This rule of Albertis shows both imagination and reflection in equal proportions. On the one hand, he is glad to see hair and garments in marked

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

282

journal of visual culture 2(3)

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

SCALA Picture Library

Figure 2 Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 14845 (detail: Zephyr, Flora and Spring), tempera magra on canvas. Florence, Uffizi Gallery. 1990 Photo SCALA, Florence courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali. These images, protected by copyright and by watermark, are for reference purposes only. The downloading, reproduction, copy, publication or distribution of any of the images appearing on this website are forbidden by law.

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze

283

movement, and he gives rein to his fancy, attributing organic life to inanimate accessory forms; at such moments he sees snakes tangling, flames licking, or the branches of a tree. On the other hand, however, Alberti expressly insists that he set his accessory forms in motion only where the wind really might have caused such motion. This cannot be done, however, without one concession to the imagination: the youthful human heads that the painter is to show blowing in order to account for the motion of hair and garments, are no more and no less than a compromise between anthropomorphic imagination and differential reflection (vergleichende Reflexion). (pp. 1112) Can the historical context, and the sources of this emphasis on hair and draperies blowing in the wind, be situated with more precision? After Warburg, some authors have linked this aspect of Albertis aesthetics to Botticellis mythological paintings. The connection is facilitated by the fact that the De pictura conjures up a clear image of the Three Graces represented in antiquity as laughing and holding hands, adorned with loose and transparent clothes (soluta et perlucida veste ornatas) (Alberti, 1435: III, 54; see Michel, 1930: 4389; Rosand, 1987: 15663). When Alberti (1435) calls for hair ... to tie itself in a knot (vertantur), to wave upwards in the air (undent in aera) like flames, to weave like serpents (serpant) beneath other hair and sometimes lift on one side and another (attollant) on each side (II, 45: 81), he is alluding to a typology of the seven movements (septimus movendi modus) presented some lines further up, and recognizable as directly borrowed from Quintilians Institutio oratoria (II, 43; XI, 3).7 However, commentators are silent when it comes to the supposed direct source of Albertis injunction to make hair and drapery float in the wind.8 This is probably because the injunction was issued in response to several determinants. The three major concepts enumerated in Warburgs Vorbemerkung in 1893 the survival of antiquity, the pathos formulae and empathy respond rigorously to those determinants. For painting to affirm its humanistic vocation and its ability to compose figures allantica, draperies and hair had first to undulate in the air (undent in aera).9 Next, this figurative tool had to demonstrate its pathetic force, its ability to illustrate the historia with greater clarity and to improve its composition.10 The illustrious examples that Alberti calls upon in this respect Giottos Navicella, the Calumny by Apelles bring into play the physical force of the wind, the pathetic movements of bodies, and the moral values of these things, visible in the various protagonists of these paintings (Alberti, 1435: II, 42; III, 534).11 Finally, all this animation of the figures had to produce effects on, and affects in, the eye: it had to move the viewer. This effect is termed movere in ancient rhetoric and in the interpretation of that tradition at the time of Alberti; it is called Einfhlung in the new aesthetics of Aby Warburgs time.12 The story will touch the souls of the viewers (animos ... spectantium movebit historia) when the men painted display very visibly the movements of their soul, so that the man or woman weeping in the painting will be able to invite (invitet) the viewer to weep with him (Alberti, 1435: II, 412). This famous injunction by Alberti once again borrows a known principle from classical eloquence, according to which the very clarity (evidentia) of an argument is conveyed through the

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

284

journal of visual culture 2(3)

channels of pathos and affect (adfectus), of imagination (phantasia) and amplification: such is the task Quintilian sets for what he calls ornament (ornatus) (VI, 2; VIII, 34). This is how eloquence though an artificial thing, like a painting revolves around the activities of life (opera vitae), [for] each person relates to himself (ad se refert) what he understands, what he recognises (VIII, 3). The air stirred by the draperies of the Three Graces, then, should give birth to a form of moral yearning, an aspiration to dispense grace for each grace dispensed, as the ancient precept taken up by Alberti says (Alberti, 1435: III, 54).13 But it should also give birth more rhythmically, more organically to a desire to dance. It is as if the air stirring those beautiful surfaces, with their white trails and the harmonics of their borders that envelop and intensify the bodies of the Graces, was something like an ornament of the soul. * This should hardly come as a surprise: it is precisely in this way that the men of the Quattrocento explained the essentially figurative nature of dance, with the result that the respective vocabularies of painting and choreography not only matched, but were even interpreted reciprocally. On this point, Warburg wished to develop an intuition of Burckhardts. That intuition concerned the exchange and empathetic interpenetration of movements represented in sculpture and painting, on one hand, and the elements of a life genuinely infused with motion (wirklich bewegten Lebens) in feasts, theatre and dance, on the other. Warburg considered that the latter was an invaluable material when it came to understanding the process of artistic creation (der knstlerisch gestaltende Proze) (Warburg, 1998[1893]: 37). There is no divorce between dance and painting or sculpture, wrote Lucian in antiquity: Quite the contrary, it also seeks to achieve the eurhythmia that characterises those arts (Lucian, De Saltat: 35; quoted by Reinach, 1985[1921]: 359). This constitutive affinity of the visual and gestural arts under the aspect of figuration, which pertains to semiotics, and under the aspect of rhythm, which pertains to dynamics was taken quite literally by the Florentine humanists. This is why the vocabulary of motion in Pollaiuolo (prompto) or of grace in Filippo Lippi (gratioso) is, as Michael Baxandall has shown, directly borrowed from treatises on dance (Baxandall, 1972: 1206, 195212, 2234). In every context, bodily movements along with the accessories that invariably attached to them, were perceived as the indexes of a soul. As such, they were liable to encompass an entire scale of states ranging from decency to obscenity, from parody to the grotesque. Finally, they were perceived as the index of a style, or of a certain technique of composition. The virtue of dance comes from the fact that it is an action which makes spiritual movements visible (una azione dimostrativa di fuori di movimenti spirituali) ... certain graceful movements are there engendered which, being confined as if against their nature, strive as hard as they can to escape and make themselves manifest in the form of active movements (uscire fuori e farsi in atto manifesti) (Ebreo, 1873[c. 1465]): 7). This very general notion perfectly matches Albertis theory of the figuration of

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze

285

gestures in painting. It covers a very broad field that ranges from the moral evaluation of a manner of walking in the street (look at that girl walk and you will know whether you can marry her)14 to the stylistic codifications of representation. In this respect, Ninfa appears as the very embodiment of ambivalence: her winged gait gracefully amplifies the step of an onesta, humble young girl, and this is why she is found in religious contexts, in Lippi or Ghirlandaio, for example. But her gait is also already a dance, already too ornate, too ancient, pagan and sensual: it is Salomes dance, the disonesta young princess par excellence. The same decorum what we called the ornament of the soul further up is susceptible to so many different values that, not surprisingly, it becomes a matter of endless nuance and subtlety. (On this subject, see McGrath, 1977: 8192 [on decency and the grotesque, grace and madness]; Franko, 1986; Padovan, 1987: 59111; Fermor, 1992: 7888.) The most important of these subtleties or choreographic artifices consists in enhancing the natural gesture, in the spatial sense as well as in the dialectical sense. When Ninfa moves forward, her step is enhanced in that it is amplified and intensified; its nature undergoes a complete change as it turns into a whirlwind of returning time: the Nymph or Victory does not so much walk as leap forward. As such, her step disrupts and choreographs the trivial present of the Florentine servant-girl, who no longer merely brings fruit to her mistress from the country but herself becomes something of an offering from the gods of antiquity. This is all made physically perceptible in the ascent of her foot in motion and of her drapery raised by the wind. Alberti (1435) is quite clear on this point: beauty and grace should be sought in all motion (in omni motu venustas et gratia sectanda est). The most lively and graceful (vivaces et gratissimi) movements are those of the limbs rising in the air (aera in altum) (II, 37). Is it surprising, then, that the aria or aere became one of the key concepts of treatises on dance, and of aesthetic writings generally, in the Quattrocento? In Alberti, the Italian word ariosa translates the Latin grata, so that all grace is seen to participate in a certain quality of the air, whether this word is taken to refer to an appearance or to the atmosphere (II, 44; Grayson, 1975[1435]: 789). With Guglielmo Ebreo and Antonio Cornazano, aere specifically designates a moment of grace in the gestures of dance: the brief rising movement executed by the dancer at the beginning of a step. This movement confers an airy presence (aierosa presenza) and another grace that makes these movements pleasurable to the eye (unaltra gratia tal di movimenti che rendati piacera a gli occhi) (cited and commented by Fermor, 1990). This vocabulary, which has been analysed in detail by Sharon Fermor, is as precise as it is fascinating: it describes the grace (gratia) and suavity (soavit) that is, the serene fluidity of all corporeal composition, if this expression may be used to describe choreographic movement (Fermor, 1990: 12035). In the Quattrocento, this vocabulary anticipates all that the following century was to designate as manner (maniera) (see Treves, 1941: 6988; Shearman, 1970: 181221; Summers, 1972; Hazard, 1974). Above all, it defines a framework of intelligibility characterized by an impressive degree of dialectical subtlety. The aere is defined,

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

286

journal of visual culture 2(3)

first of all, as an intensification of presence that authors like to describe as very human (umanissima). Secondly, it is considered in the light of an intensification of form. This gives rise to an entire vocabulary of undulation (ondeggiare); as if bodies, in their airy motions, were capable of assuming the images of waves, blasts of air, or draperies lifted by a breeze. In 1455, Antonio Cornazano (1915[1455]) insistently claimed that the ondeggiare is a rhythmic quality that goes well beyond mere conformity of steps to music. He held that it concerns the totality of the form created by upward motion, producing undulation, ornamentation and the flowing of the dancer and the space as a whole.15 Dancing is not merely a matter of executing a number of more or less beautiful movements, it involves the bodys recreation of a certain air, which the accessory of drapery serves to emphasize; and, along with all of this, the recreation of a certain soul, which must be signified by the gestures. Let us look, once again, at our Botticellian Grace. Through a movement of ondeggiare, the dancer of the Quattrocento ornaments the air and reciprocally grants visible fluidity to the anima or fantasia seeking outward expression. Form and intensity combine in these graceful movements and subtle elevations of the aere. We can now understand why this corporeal velocity (prestezza corporale), as Domenico da Piacenza put it, falls under the category of phantoms (fantasmata) such as it was defined by Italian choreographers: in the suspense of immobility and motion, the dancer must suddenly become a phantasmal shadow (ombra phantasmatica) (Fermor, 1990: 467; see also Castelli, 1987: 3557.) She then escapes gravity and the earthly condition; she becomes a semblance of the ancient gods, an airy creature of dreams and after-life, a revenant: an embodiment of Nachleben. Translated by John Zeimbekis, translation revised by Vivian Rehberg Notes
1. Warburg (1889) was recently published with a commentary by Ghelardi (2001[18889]). 2. The authoritative edition of Warburg (1893) is edited by Bing and Rougemont, see Warburg (1998[1893]). 3. The verses from Rossetti are as follows: What mystery here is read / Of homage or of hope? But how command / Dead Springs to answer? And how question here / These mummers of that wind-withered New Year? I have not been able to find the expression brise imaginaire in either Taine or Eugne Mntz. 4. The elements of a psycho-physiology of the air in the Renaissance are to be found in Thorndike (1934: III, 2457, 3278, 514, 528, 5568, etc; IV, 58, 137, 293, 318, 380, 505, etc.) 5. In the frescos of Assisi and Padua. 6. The former in the Medici-Riccardi Palace (Florence, 1459), the latter in the Mystical Nativity (1501) in London. 7. On the rhetorical and poetical aspects of the De pictura, see Gilbert, 19435: 87106; Spencer, 1957: 2644; Baxandall, 1971: 12139; Wright, 1984: 5271.. 8. In the edition by H. Janitschek, which was used by Warburg (Alberti, 1877), as well as in the more recent edition by Grayson (1975), paragraphs 44 and 45 of Book II are not annotated. 9. On Alberti and the Antique, see Grayson (1998: 3141); Locher (1999: 75107); Michel (2000: 37987).

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze 10. On Albertis concept of historia, see Galantic (1969: 2366); Patz (1986: 26987); Greenstein (1990: 27399); Hope (2001: 25167). 11. On Giottos Navicella, see Khren-Jansen (1993). On the Calumny of Apelles see Cast (1981) and Massing (1990). 12. On the concept of movere in Alberti, see Cameron (19756: 258); Zllner (1977: 2339). 13. The reference is obviously to Seneca, De beneficiis, IIII, 24. 14. This is the essence of a letter sent by a Florentine lady to her son in 1465; see Macinghi negli Strozzi, 1877: 4589. 15. Anchora nel danzare non solamente sobserva la misura de gli suoni, ma une misura la quale non musicale, anzi fore di tutte quelle, che un misurare laere nel levamento dellondeggiare, cio che sempre salzi a un modo; ch altrimenti si romperia misura. Londeggiare non altro che uno alzamento tardo di tutta la persona e labbassamento presto. (Cornazano, 1915[1455]: 13).

287

References
Alberti, L.B. (1435) De Pictura. Alberti, L.B. (1877) Kleinere kunsttheoretische Schriften, ed. H. Janitschek. Vienna: Braumller. Baxandall, M. (1971) Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Baxandall, M. (1972) Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cameron, E. (19756) The Depictional Semiotic of Albertis On Painting, Art Journal XXXV(1): 258. Campigli, M. (1999) Luce e marmo: Agostino di Duccio. Florence: Olschki. Cast, D. (1981) The Calumny of Apelles: A Study in the Humanist Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Castelli, P. (1987) Il moto aristotelico e la ilicita scienza: Guglielmo Ebreo e la speculaziona sulla danza nel XV secolo in Mesura et arte del danzare, in P. Castelli, M. Mingardi and M. Padovan (eds) Guglielmo Ebreo da Pearo e la danza nelle corti italiane del XV secolo, pp. 59111. Pesaro: Palazzo Lazzarini-Pucelle Editori. Chastel, A. (1978) Laria: thorie du milieu de la Renaissance, in Fables, formes, figures, pp. 393405. Paris: Flammarion. Cornazano, A. (1915[1455]) Libro dellarte del danzare, ed. C. Mazzi, La Bibliofilia XVII: 13. Damisch, H. (1992) Thorie du nuage. Pour une histoire de la peinture. Paris: Le Seuil. Del Bravo, C. (1967) Liberale da Verona. Florence: Il Fiorno. Eberhardt, H.J. (1983) Die Miniaturen von Liberale da Verona, Girolama da Cremona und Venturino da Milano in der Chorb chern des Doms von Siena. Dokumentation, Attribution, Chronologie. Munich: Frei Universitt Wasmuth. Ebreo, G. (1873[c.1465]) Trattato dellarte del ballo, ed. F. Zambrini, p. 7. Bologna: Romagnoli. Fermor, S.E. (1990) Studies in the Depiction of the Moving Figure in Italian Renaissance Art, Art Criticism and Dance Theory, PhD thesis, Warburg Institute, London. Fermor, S.E. (1992) Decorum in Figural Movement: The Dance as Measure and Metaphor in Decorum in Renaissance Narrative Art, eds. F. Ames-Lewis and A. Bednarek, pp. 7888. London: Birkbeck College. Francastel, P. (1967) La figure et le lieu: lordre visuel du Quattrocento. Paris: Gallimard. Franko, M. (1986) The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography (c. 14161589). Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications.

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

288

journal of visual culture 2(3) Galantic, I. (1969) The Sources of Leon Battista Albertis Theory of Painting, pp. 2366, PhD thesis, Harvard University, CA. Ghelardi, M. (ed.) (2001[18889]) Lo svilouppo del pittorico nei rilievi di Ghiberti: Un seminaro inedito di Aby Warburg, in K. Bergdolt and G. Bonsanti (eds) Opere e giorni: Studi su mille anni di arte europea dedicati a Max Seidel, pp. 7418. Venice: Marsilio. Ghiberti, L. (1998[c. 1447]) I commentarii, ed. L. Bartoli. Florence: Giunti. Ghiberti, L. (2000[c. 1447]) Art moderne. Second Livre des Comentarii, trans. G. Bongiorno, pp. 46, 82. Paris: LInsulaire. Gilbert, C.E. (19435 ) Antique Frameworks for Renaissance Art Theory: Alberty and Pino, Marysas 3: 87106. Gilbert, C.G. (1981) Liberale da Veronas Picture of the North in Ars auro prior. Studia Ionni Bialostocki sexagenario dicata, pp. 21721. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo. Grayson, C. (ed.) (1975[1435]) Alberti: De pictura. Bari: Laterza. Grayson, C. (1998) Alberti e antichi, Albertiana I: 3141. Greenstein, Jack M.M. (1990) Alberti on Historia: A Renaissance View of the Structure of Significance in Narrative Painting, Viator 21: 27399. Hazard, M.E. (1974) The Anatomy of Liveliness as a Concept in Renaissance Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXXIII(4): 40718. Hope, C. (2001) The Structure and Purpose of De Pictura, in L. Chivani, G. Ferlisi and M.V. Grassi (eds) Leon Battista Alberti e il Quattrocento. Studi in onore de Cecil Grayson e Ernst Gombrich, pp. 25167. Florence: Olschki. Khren-Jansen, H. (1993) Giottos Navicella. Bildtradition, Deutung, Rezeptiongeschicte. Worms: Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft. Locher, H. (1999) Leon Battista Albertis Erfindug des Gem ldes aus dem Geist der Antike, in K. Forster and H. Locher (eds) Theorie der Praxis: Leon Battista Alberti als Humanist und Theoretiker der bildenden Knste, pp. 75107. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Macinghi negli Strozzi, A. (1877) Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. C. Guasti, pp. 4589. Florence: Sasoni. Massing, J-M.M. (1990) Du texte limage: la Calomnie dAppelle et son iconographie. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg. McGrath, R.L. (1977) The Dance as Pictorial Metaphor, Gazette des Beaux Arts LXXXIX: 8192. Michel, P.H. (1930) Un idal humain au XVe sicle: la pense de L.B. Alberti. Paris: Belles Lettres. Michel, A. (2000) Alberti et l esthtique des Anciens, in F. Furlan, P. Laurens and Sylvain Matton (eds) Leon Battista Alberti. Actes du congrs international de Paris, Vol. I, pp. 37987. Turin: Aragno-Vrin. Padovan, M. (1987) La danza alle corti italiane del XV secolo: arte figurative e fonti storiche, in P. Castelli, M. Mingardi and M. Padovan (eds) Mesura et arte del danzare. Guglielmo Ebreo da Pearo e la danza nelle corti italiane del XV secolo, pp. 59111. Pesaro: Palazzo Lazzarini-Pucelle Editori. Patz, K. (1986) Zum Begriff der Historia in L.B. Albertis De pictura, Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte XLIX(3): 26987. Pointner, A. (1909) Die Werke des florentinischen Bildhauers Agostino d Antonio di Duccio, pp. 25111. Strasbourg: Heitz. Quintilian (197580[c. 90 AD]) De Institution oratoria libri, XI, 3, 105, trans. J. Cousin. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Raff, T. (19789) Die Ikonographie der mittelalterlichen Windpersonifikationen, Aachen Kunstbltter XLVIII: 71218. Reinach, A. (1985[1921]) Textes grecs et latins relatifs: l histoire de la peinture ancienne. Paris: Macula.

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze Rosand, David (1987) Ekphrasis and the Renaissance of Painting: Observations on Albertis Third Book, in K-L Selig and R. Somerville (eds) Florilegium Columbanium: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller. New York: Italica Press. Roscher, W.H. (1878) Hermes der Windgott. Eine Vorarbeit zu einem Handbuch der Griechischen Mythologie vom vergleichenden Standpunkt. Leipzig: Teubner. Rostworowski, M.M. (1973) Le vent dans le paysage hollandaise du XVIIe sicle, Bulletin du Muse National de Varsovie XIV: 1330. Shearman, John (1970) Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal, Renaissance Art, ed. C. Gilbert, pp. 181221. New York: Harper & Rowe. Spencer, J. (1957) Ut rhetorica pictura: A Study in Quattrocento Theory of Painting, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XX: 2644. Summers, D. (1972) Maniera and Movement: The Figura serpentinata, Art Quarterly XXXV(3): 269301. Thorndike, L. (1934) A History of Magic and Experimental Sciences, Vols IIIIV. New York: Columbia University Press. Treves, M. (1941) Maniera, the History of a Word, Marysas I: 6988. Warburg, A. (18889) Von Nicolo Pisano bis Michelangelo. Vorlesung von Prof. A Schmarsow gehalten im Kunsthistorischen Institut zu Florenz. London: Warburg Institute Archive, III, 32.2, 8 (200 folios). Warburg. A. (1889) Die Entwicklung des Malerischen in den Reliefs des Ghiberti. Entwurf zu einer Kritik des Laokoon an Hand der Kunst des Quattrocento in Florenz. London: Warburg Institute Archive, iii, 33.2, 4 (24 folios). Warburg, A. (1998[1893]) Sandro Botticellis Geburt der Venus und Frhling. Eine Untersuchung ber die Vorstellungen von der Antike in der Italienischen Frhrenaissance, in G. Bing and F. Rougemont (eds) Aby Warburgs Gesammelte Schriften (I-1): Die Erneuerung der heidnischen Antike. Kulturwissenschaftliche Beitr ge zur Geschichte der europischen Renaissance. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Warburg, A. (1998[1914]) Der Eintritt des antikisierenden Idealstils in die Malerei der Frhrenaissance, in G. Bing and F. Rougemont (eds) Aby Warburgs Gesammelte Schriften (I-1): Die Erneuerung der heidnischen Antike. Kulturwissenschaftliche Beitr ge zur Geschichte der europischen Renaissance. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Warburg, A. (1999) The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the Renaissance, ed. K. W. Forster, trans. David Britt. Los Angeles: Getty Information Institute. Wright, D.R.E. (1984) Albertis De pictura: Its Literary Structure and Purpose, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XLVII: 5271. Zllner, F. (1977) Leon Battista Albertis De pictura. Die kunsttheoretische und literarische Legitimierung von Affekt bertragung und Kunstgenuss, Georges-Bloch-Jahrbuch des kunstgeschictlichen Seminars der Universitt Zrich IV: 2339.

289

Georges Didi-Huberman teaches anthropology of images at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His latest publications include: Limage survivante: histoire de lart et temps des fantmes selon Aby Warburg (Editions de Minuit, 2002), Ninfa Moderna: Essai sur le drap tomb (Gallimard: 2002) and Devant le temps: histoire de lart et anachronisme des images (Editions de Minuit, 2000).

Downloaded from http://vcu.sagepub.com by Jose Miranda on October 15, 2008