Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant

[Marjorie]

"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"

What are our origins? Where are we now? Where are we headed? Share your thoughts with us!

   Volume Five (The Renaissance)

       
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
 
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
       
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
       
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."

SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC

The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution

In this volume the  term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples. 

In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.

Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.

This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.

Discussion Leader: robby

[Persian]

I've been reading for the past few minutes to catch up with the posts here.  It's certainly a pleasure to be able to return to a much appreciated site!

JEAN - when I read your earlier post about writing a paper on medieval women, I recalled one of my former students at the University of Maryland.  She was a young woman from an Iranian diplomatic family, who was fascinated with women of that period.  We often talked about the various cultural norms in Iran, the USA (and its various regions), as well as the earlier periods and how women were accepted/or not, and their contributions to the societies of their times.

ROBBY - so glad to see the SOC up and running well again.  MAL would certainly be proud to know how well the former posters have rebounded and sped ahead at this new site with your continued leadership.  Whenever I travel up the highway from NC to Washington, DC, I recall MAL as I pass through the Eastern part of NC (her former home area), and recall her funny stories about many years ago when she, too, was at the University of Maryland.

[Gumtree]

Justin Thank you so much for the run-down on Correggio. It surely is a truism that 'the hick with straw between his ears' is the one who leads the way. Leda and the swan has always puzzled me too - but I guess it was a matter of deus ex machina.

[Robby]

The sequence of Antonio's subjects corresponds to the decline ofreligion among the literate classes of Italy in the first quarter of the sixtenth century, and the rise of secular patronage and themes.

His early works, even when painted for private purchasers, told again, and mostly for churches, the Christian story.  The Adoration of the Magi, where the Virgin has the pretty, girlish face that Correggio later confined to subordinate characters  - The Holy Family; The Madonna of St. Francis, still traditional in all its features - The repose on the Return from Egypt, freshly original in composition, coloring, and characterization - La Zingarella, where the Virgin learning fondly over her babe, is drawn with full Correggian grace, and The Madonna Adoring Her Child, which makes the infant the radiant source of the scene's illumination.

His pagan turn came through an odd commission.

In 1518 Giovanna da Piacenza, abbess of the convent of San Paolo in Parma, engaged him to decorate her apartment.  She was a lady of more pedigree than piety.  She chose a theme of the frescoes chaste Diana, goddess of the hunt.  Over the fireplace Correggio portrayed Diana in a splendid chariot.  Above her, in sixteen radial sections converging in the cupola, he painted scenes from classical mythology.  In one a dog, too passionately hugged by a child, expresses with a remarkably pictured eye his fear of being choked with love, and shames by his alert beauty all the human and divine figures scattered about.  From this time forward the human body, mostly nude, became for Correggio the chief element in pictorial decoration, and pagan motives entered into even his Christian themes.

The abbess had converted him from Christianity.

Your comments, please?

Robby

[mabel1015j]

Is "pagan" used in the same context as "secular" in that last statement? I heard someone on tv use the word pagan yesterday and wondered whether it was used in place of secular/non-religious, or does it have a more negative meaning. For me,  who was raised in the a protestant church, pagan meant non-christian, but w/ a witchy/deviltry/uncivilized connotation. I'll have to take a look at what the dictionaries have to say, i have a feeling I might have a "stereotypical" negative meaning in my head that doesn't always fit the statement.................jean

[mabel1015j]

WOW! These are the 3 definitions from Encarta -

1. an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody who does not acknowledge the God of the Bible, Torah, or Koran

 
2. an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody's nonbelief in religion, way of life, or degree of knowledge

 
3. polytheist or pantheist: a follower of an ancient polytheistic or pantheistic religion
 


"Deliberately insults"! I was thinking that from the Christian pulpit it was a statement of "it's not the correct religion" or "it's less sophisticated than Christianity," but i didn't think of it as mean-spirited...............but i guess it is denigrating and therefore insulting....................gives me a new concept to think about..................and you must be polytheistic to be a pagan?.............................I think i kind of had that in my tape in my brain, (the golden calf and all that)  but it wasn't right up there in the conscious, of course, i haven't given it a tho't in the last 4/5 decades...................jean

[Justin]

The Oxford says "pagan" means "heathen." Nothing else. So what is a heathen? The Oxford says "heathen" is not Christian, Jewish, Moslem, or Buddhist- An unenlightened person.

[Brian]

While Wikipedia is not normally my first port of call, I was impressed by the article defining the word "pagan" - - - see what you think!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism

Brian.

[Justin]

Correggio was a seminal artist. He was a precursor for many who came well after him. If   you will use Kiwi's Reply # 111 to find the images, I will make some comparisons that you will find startling. Keep in mind that Correggio lived between 1489 and 1534.

Look first for the Adoration-Nativity scene by C.  The painting is like no other you have seen up till now. Peasants are lined up in the snow. The stable is a stable. It is a town scene. And the painting is done in precisely the style of Pieter Brueghel who lived and painted in Holland 1529-69. Look at the work of Brueghel. If some one will find The Wedding and Banquet or any of the winter scenes by B the similarities will jump out at you.

Last week we talked about Artemisia. The woman artist of the Renaissance. There is a painting by her called Judith and Holofernes in which she and her servant cut off the head of a tyrant conqueror ater spending a night in his bed.  The source for the work is clearly that of Correggio's Judith and Servant. The painting by C was also used as a model by De La Tour in the 1630"s.

There is a painting by C called the three graces. The body modeling is clearly that of Rubens. And more recently the manner of Maillol.

C's illusionistic ceilings are copied to great advantage by Tiepolo who lived and worked between 1690 and 1770.

I hope you can find some of these paintings. Comparison is quite startling. Normally one looks at Rubens and thinks his body compositions are his own and original. Not so. If one looks at the female back studies of Maillol, they are found in C's "Three Graces." The use of light and form in C. appears later in De la Tour and so we can see that art and art forms grow out of what we know and not out of happenstance or one night's wild dreams.  

[Brian]

If you wish to be totally confused on the meaning of "pagan" and "paganism" - - -  go to the previous link on "pagan" in Wikipedia and then click on the "Discussion" button at the top of the page.

Lots of fun but little enlightenment.

Brian.

[Brian]

The Wedding and Banquet.



This the one, Justin?.

Brian.

[mabel1015j]

Well, i guess i had every right to be confused, even the ethnologists are confused.................

ethnologists avoid the term "paganism," with its uncertain and varied meanings

thanks Brian, i hadn't yet read the wikipedia definition

so, Justin, does "pagan" in Durant's description of Corregio's "pagan motives" mean he went to reprentations of secular events? to representations of "country/ordinary" people? nudes? sexuality? or all of the above? Is he a major figure in the transition from religious themes?..............."and an abbess shall lead him"? 

I love The Wedding and the Banquet, the splashes of red and white just catch the eye..................jean

[Brian]

Aristide Maillol - - -



Here's one of Maillol's nudes referred to by Justin.

Brian.

[Brian]

Corregio's "Three Graces" - - -

http://www.iht.com/slideshows/2008/07/24/arts/conway26.php?index=3

Brian.

[JoanK]

Wasn't Correggio one of those depicted in the series on artists done by PBS last year by our old friend Simon Schama?

[Brian]

Joan - - - I think that was Caravaggio, not Corregio 

Brian.

[JoanK]

You're right!

[Justin]

The peasants of the Brueghel wedding are those following the kings in Correggio's Adoration. The correlation is more evident in Brueghel's outdoor winter scenes.

Jean. It cannot be denied. Correggio is a significant figure in the transition from clerical to secular. His "pagan motifs" are wonderfully pagan are they not. Artists, like other craftsmen,design for the market. The Duke of Mantua must have been some cookie. He may have been the model for Verdi's Rigoletto.

Correggio's  Graces are substantial women as are Rubens' and Maillol's. Henri Matisse did six female backs in bronze, each one more abstract than it's predecessor. I think they are at the Tate. Correggio gave inspiration to these fellows. The female backside has always been a favorite topic for artists largely because of the character of the curve. Velasquez did the Rokeby Venus from a model similar to Marilyn Monroe but so many others copied Correggo and provided substance.

[Emily]

Maillol's nude is a good depiction of a woman of child bearing age or one who has already had a child. The hips are wider than the shoulders. She looks healthy with enough body fat to carry a baby to term. Any man interested in having off spring would look upon this form favorably at least until the Twentieth Century.


Somewhere in the middle of that century with the help of science everything changed. Today women with the bodies of young males are considered the beauties. They are taller with the long legs of young males, broader shoulders, narrow hips, small breasts, with pretty faces. A young woman with the body shape of a teenage male can be changed with implants and plastic surgery to man's version of the ideal woman.

Most models have this look. They were selected by clothes designers who are for the most part gay, and the young male body is much more desirable to them than the shorter, fuller figure Maillol model. That look has become the norm in presentation to the public through advertising and film. These 'boy' girls can be made to look like women with breast implants and plastic surgery, and some can bear children with all the advances of science.

Bearing children carries its own hazards though for any one wanting to be filmed in lingerie or a bikini. The hips become broader and the body changes. Of course there is always the option of plastic surgery for those wanting to work the artificial beauty circuit. Most choose not to have a child until their career is ended or never.

With the advances in photography, anyone can be made to look young and vibrant. After the death of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, a photographer showed the picture released by his studio of them in their later years with unlined faces and the look of maturity without the aging process. On the opposite page he had the original photograph untouched, which showed the lined, drooping faces ravaged with age.

We live in an artificial world today, not the real world of Maillol and Reubens.

Emily

 

[Robby]

Makes one to think, Emily.  Isn't the world in which one lives always the "real" world? 

Robby

[Justin]

You make an interesting observation, Emily. Certainly, the ideal shape for women has changed over the centuries and the shift to long limbed-skinny women may have been more recent than we realize. As late as 1900, Renoir was painting women of substance. His Gabriel, a young woman with wide hips and apple breasts, is clearly of the old school.

When custom dress makers were in vogue dresses were made to take advantage of whatever assets were at hand but when ready-mades became the mode the number of variations in dresses had to be limited in order to produce dresses for the lowest cost.  Eventually, sizes were introduced and hems went up and down. Dresses were bought and sold like automobiles with color and style changes inducing sales.

Women who are short,well rounded in the hips, with small breasts find clothes that fit difficult to find. So too do women who are of middle height, wide hips and large breasts. These are gals who represent more than fifty percent of the female market, yet designers seem to ignore them. The Lane Bryant concept has never been fully exploited, it seems to me.

When gals are brides clothes are easy to find but after a few pregnancies dressing becomes more and more difficult.

Men have similar problems with shirts. The short guy who wears belly fat and an enlarged neck with pride has a terrible time with ready-mades. Yet, to return to the age of custom dress making seems absurd except for the very rich.

I don't know about a connection between homosexuality and skinny models. It's certainly possible.

 

[Justin]

Emily: I don't want to add years to your life but you must remember in the thirties when women wore gingham and print dresses that looked like flour sacks. That was really the beginning of one size fits all. In the late thirties bobby sox, saddle shoes and short skirts were popular. Beer jackets were custom made. It was not until post war that Paris designers brought in the "new look". Skirts lengthened and 7th Avenue in Manhattan began to boom.   

[Eloise]

OK then it's about time women are discussed. What else does a woman do except talk about fashion, cosmetics and children? BTW Justin dresses looked anything but flour sacks in the thirties, they wore tight fitting bright colored dresses with crinolines, high heels and hair piled high to go out dancing depending on where she lived, in the country or in the city. But women then looked like women instead of broom handles and didn't try to look like a sack of bones.   

Do you think women had an influence on politics, economy, art? According to Durant, not to mention Ariel who was most likely his secretary and researcher women didn't have anything to do with those, they just decorate. He certainly didn't think that "Women hold up half the sky" as Jean said.

Looking at what women do today I can only think of French President Nicolas Sarkozy who married ex top model/singer Carla Bruni. She mightl have an influence in how the country is run, didn't Napoleon confide in Josephine? NS is thoroughly smitten by Carla and if we judge by past history, she might very well influence his decisions in regard to different areas of government and who is to say the whole European picture but historians will only remember how HE performed during his presidency, not whose influence he was under at the time of his decisions.

[mabel1015j]

Huzzah, Emily! ............ when Reuben was mentioned, i was going to say  '3 cheers for artists who create substantial women, ' but decided i'd let it go.......................

But since you brought us the subject...............my perception is that women lost some of the curves and natural shapes for the first time during the 20's - the flapper look - flat chests and straight dresses w/ out waists or hips. But then, the movies of the 30's, 40's and 50's and the designers of those decades brought us curvy women and - remember - the pointed bras, wide belts and larger hips..............it is a hoot to look at some of the pointed bras in those 50's movies, you could get hurt hugging those women............of course, the bra really only came to fashion during the 30's or 40's. We can remember the busts and cleavage of Monroe, Doris Day, Jayne Mansfield, etc. Then along came Twiggy in the late 60's and rebellion against foundation garments, and layers of clothes, many costume-like fashions showing the curves of the body not at all. From that time until the 90's models got thinner and thinner. Thank goodness for the influence of the ethnics, Browns and Blacks in our muisc and fashion world - Hooray for Jennifer Lopez and now Beyonce, etc ...............altho poor Jessica Simpson still gets lambasted for putting on 5 lbs. I think we have a conflict between the fashion designers, what men REALLY like to see and desire, and what is reality. ......................... ain't popular culture grand?

It's great to look back onto the artists of this time - the popular culture then - and be grateful that the more things change, the more they stay the same - i think someone said that  one time   ......................jean

[Brian]

In case there is anyone who does not know Twiggy 



here she is - - -  not by any means Reubenesque   

Brian.

[Emily]

Robby

Isn't the world in which one lives always the "real" world?

Of course it is Robby. What I meant to convey was that we are just more advanced at creating the 'artificial' and promoting it, than in the time of Maillol.

Emily

 

[Justin]

In recent years women have become more than just the power behind the throne. They stand tall on their own. Women like Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary, Meg Whitman, are power houses who show the capacity to stand strong in a crises,to make decisions of significance when required, and at the same time to love a husband and be soft and feminine.

I have been reading a bio of Agnes de Mille. She,as you know, was a leading choreographer in our time. She compares her work style with that of Jerome Robbins and Georges Balanchine. She said that Balanchine and Robbins designed out side the music but she could not take a step without musical support. She concludes that men can function independently and women need a lead.  Is that a reasonable generalization?

[JoanK]

"that men can function independently and women need a lead.  Is that a reasonable generalization?" BLECHHHH! Get out of the middle ages, Justin!

[mabel1015j]

Really?!? Agnes De Mille said that? I am often amazed at the enigma that some "strong, " seemingly independent, women can be. I remember reading about Dr Josephine Baker - no not that one, the DOCTOR, .............in fact the first woman to earn a medical degree in the U.S. She had gotten herself into and thru a small medical college in upstate N.Y. Having put up w/ jokes by the male students and being turned away from being able to rent a room in the town where people thought it was unbecoming that a woman would want to be a physician. Having accomplished and survived all of the indignities, at graduation she thought it was "inappropriate" for her to walk across the stage to accept her diploma, so she sat in the front row while her brother accepted her diploma for her!?! I guess even the most "rebellious/independent" of us have our boundaries that we just can't push ourselves across. Have you seen that in your reading of SoC?

But that, coming from Agnes DM, surprises me..........................and Justin's question must be TIC or i have misread him for a year.......   ............jean

[Brian]

[and Justin's question must be TIC or i have misread him for a year....... ]  Jean

Tongue in cheek, or FIM (Foot in Mouth)

Let's get back to discussing the Story of Civilization and get away from gender bashing.

Incidentally, my mother's great aunt was the first female surgeon out of Edinburgh medical school, and went out to India to practice.  I passed her amputation saw on to the local museum.

Brian

[Justin]

The DeMille article is in Atlantic monthly, 1956 titled "Rhythm in my Blood. "It appears in the 100 year Jubilee selection of worthy Atlantic Articles.

 There is no question in the dance world that Agnes De Mille is one of the most successful and original choreographers of the twentieth Century. Yet, in comparing her methods to those of Robbins and Balanchine she says, "the men work free and on their own. The woman must wait for the lead." Let me give you a bigger bite. She says," B's rhythmic sense is spacial, Robbins is independent. I, on the  other hand, am totally derivative. I can not move without melody. May there not here be revealed a subtle sexual distinction? The men work free and on their own. The woman must wait for the lead."

She seems to be recognizing a real and natural condition rather than one imposed by social custom. I recall a comment about the dance team of Astaire and Rogers. Ginger had to do everything Fred did plus do it in a long skirt and backwards but Fred gets top billing. Clearly that's custom driven. I think Agnes was beyond that.

I don't think it's a good generalization. Agnes was extrapolating from the particular to the general using a very limited sample of three. Today, one sees it as gender bashing because we have come so far. 

[Robby]

OK, folks, if we are ready to get back to Durant, here it is.

In 1520 Correggio accepted an arduous commission from Parma - to paint frescoes in the cupola and over the tribune and side chapels of a new Benedictine abbey church, San Giovanni Evangelista.

He toiled on this task for four years and in 1523 he moved with his wife and children to  Parma to be nearer his work.  In the dome he represented the Apoltles, seated comfortably in a circle on soft clouds, and fixing their gaze upon a Christ whose foreshortened figure, seen from below, gives an astonishing illusion of distance. 

The splendor of this dome is in the superbly modeled figures of the Apostle, some of them quite nude, rivaling the gods of  Pheidias, and perhaps echoing in their muscular splendor the figures that Michelangelo had painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling twelve years before.  In a spandrel between two arches a powerful St. Ambrose discusses theology with an Apostle John who is as handsome as any Parthenon ephebus.  Luscious youthful forms, theoretically angels, fill the interstices with angelic faces, buttocks, legs, and thighs.

The Greek revival, already old in Humanism and Manutius, is here in full swing in Christian art.

Your comments, please?

Robby

[Justin]

This is the period in which classical things began to pop up out of the soil in Rome and Herculaneum. It is the time when classical manuscripts began to enter Italy from Spain. These long buried elements of Classical antiquity influenced the artists of the day significantly. Correggio is no exception. He along with Michelangelo and others put the new ideas to work in expressing the Christian concepts. The Medici, Lorenzo the Magnifico, founded a school in Rome based upon a Platonistic foundation. Michelangelo along with others studied the classical vision there. Raphael painted an image of the school of Athens for the Vatican on a wall in the Pope's living quarters.

Correggio while isolated in the boonies must also have been exposed to these elements and incorporated them in his religious works.  The classical secular and the clerical merge in this period  and a religion that was born in Hellenic antiquity is forced to adopt the forms of Greek mythology to represent Christian events. Today, we say what goes around comes around and shrug our shoulders. However,in the days of Correggio, when the artist was in control of the iconography, the client got what he gave them. no one wanted to paint over a masterpiece?

[mabel1015j]

Did the artists focus on religious figures and stories because the classical literature had been suppressed for so long, because the church was so often the financial source, or because religion was so inbedded in their lives? I know it probably was a bit of all three, but which was the most influencial?

It is interesting that their transition was first a visual change to "classical-like" figures, but still figures from the Bible. Of course, when they were working in church facilities, that makes sense. But did the Medicis or any other individuals commission any purely secular projects? I've seen a lot of artwork from the Renaissance, but at the moment my brain isn't putting it in a time line that helps me understand the tranistion. ........................... jean

[Justin]

Jean: Suppressed is not the right word. Classical material was  "lost" forgotten , in the Dark Ages. Hiidden by time and the soil of centuries. Latin gave way to venaculars like Middle French, and Italian. Greek lasted through the Hellenic period but i doubt a Greek speaker in Tenth  century Byzantium could understand Athenian Greeks. The translators in Spain in this period and later  were very specialized people. The languages just disappeared for lack of use. Dust and dirt covered over the artifacts of the classical period. I have no doubt the "Church" threw on a few shovels full but what was  was gone when the quatrocento dawned.

In art the ideal forms of Greek Byzantium prevailed until Giotto in 1300 changed the way people looked at  human figures displayed on a two dimensional surface. His work was seminal. It was the beginning, a foreshadowing of a return to the figures of classical Greece. Whether there was any classical influence for Giotto at that time is a question worthy of a dissertation. But he did start us on the road back. The road that came to be called the " re- birth", the Renaissance.

The Church was the only game in town for artists for several centurys. They were the builders and the decorators. People were illiterate but could read the story of Catholic Christendom in pictures and in sculpture.. Narrative painting was also one of Giotto's skills and the Church appreciated that talent and made good use of it.

During this same period the Papacy was driven out of Rome and rival popes appeared in France at Avignon. There was constant War between Genoa and Venice which limited safe trade.The truce of Lepanto opened the way for trading with the east and on the Med. and traders were enriched. It was their wealth, traders wealth, that financed the High Renaissance and brought secular patrons to artists.

Secular patrons were only mildly interested in religious imagery and their requests for things to amuse their guests as well as bedroom decoration encouraged the artists to find acceptable means for displaying human attributes in interesting poses. The game started with inconography like St. Sebastien and Bartholemew. It advanced to Dianna the Huntress and the loves of Zeus. After a while even Cardinals began to express an interest in mythological figures. These are the antecedents of modern day pornography. 

 

[Robby]

In 1512 the great cathedral of Parma opened its doors to the young artist Correggio and contracted to pay him a thousand ducats ($12,500) to paint the chapels, apse, choir, and dome.

On this assignment he worked at intervals through eight years, from 1526  until his death.  For the dome he chose the Assumption of the Virgin and shocked many of the cathedral canons by making this culminating picture a whirling panorama of human flesh.  In the center the Virgin, reclinng on the chair, floats up to heaven with arms outstretched to meet her Son.  Around and beneath her a heavenly host of Apostles, disciples, and saints -- magnificent figures worthy of Raphael at his best -- seems to puff her upward and with the breath of adoration.  And supporting her is a choir of angels looking remarkably like healthy boys and girls in all the splendor of youthful nudity.  These are the loveliest adolescent nudes in Italian art.

One of the canons, confused by so many arms and legs, denounced the painting as 'a fricassee of frogs.'  Apparently other members of the chapter were dubious abot this melee of human flesh celebrating a virgin and Correggio's work on the cathedral seems to have been interrupted for a time.

A melee of human flesh?

Robby

[mabel1015j]

You're right Justin, "suppressed" was not the right word.............thanks for the info................jean

[Robby]

Any comments regarding Post 155?

Robby

[Justin]

Re 155: If I must go to heaven let it not be as a frickasee frog.

The Dome painting at Parma may have struck the Canon as amusing but the work was seminal. Two Hundred years later Tiepolo repeated the work all over Europe with more clouds to ride and more legs to view.

[ALF43]

 Didn't Reubens paint it, as well?