The men who made Florence the richest city in Europe;
the bankers and wool merchants, the pious realists;
lived in grim, defensive houses, strong enough
to withstand party feuds and popular riots.
They don't in any way foreshadow the extraordinary episode
in the history of civilisation known as the Renaissance.
There seems to be no reason why suddenly, out of the dark streets
and forbidding stone facades, there arose a building
as light and delicate as the Pazzi Chapel.
By its rhythms and proportions, and its open, welcoming character,
it totally contradicts the dark, Gothic style that preceded it
and, to some extent, still surrounds it.
What has happened?
The answer is contained in one sentence
by the old Greek philosopher Protagoras:
"Man is the measure of all things."
The building in front of which I am standing, the Pazzi Chapel,
built in about 1430 by the great architect Brunellesco,
has rightly been described as the architecture of humanism.
His friend, and fellow architect, Leon Battista Alberti
addressed Man in these words:
"To you is given a body more graceful than other animals,
"to you power of apt and various movements,
"to you most sharp and delicate senses,
"to you wit, reason, memory, like an immortal god."
Well, it's certainly incorrect to say that we are more
graceful than other animals, and we don't feel much like
immortal gods at the moment. But in 1400, the Florentines did.
There's no better instance of how a burst of civilisation
depends on confidence than the Florentine state of mind
in the early 15th century.
(Gloria)
Where did it come from, this light, economical style,
which is unlike anything before or since?
I think that it really was the invention of an individual,
... of Brunellesco.
But of course, an architectural style can't take root
unless it satisfies some need of the time.
And Brunellesco's style satisfied the need
of the clear-headed, bright-minded men
who appeared on the Florentine scene at the moment
when the discipline of trade and banking,
in its most austere form, was beginning to be relaxed.
And life; the full use of the human faculties,
became more important than making money.
People sometimes feel disappointed the first time
they see the famous beginnings of Renaissance architecture;
... the Pazzi Chapel, the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo; ...
because they seem so small. Well, so they are,
after the great monuments of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.
They don't try to impress us, or crush us by size and weight,
as all God-directed architecture does.
Everything is adjusted to the scale of reasonable human necessity.
They're intended to make each individual
more conscious of his powers as a complete
moral and intellectual being.
"The dignity of man." Today those words die on our lips.
But in 15th-century Florence, their meaning
was still fresh and invigorating.
One of the second generation of humanists, named Manetti,
wrote a book entitled: "On the Dignity and Excellence of Man".
And this is the concept that Brunellesco's friends were making visible.
(In Tempore Passionis)
The grandest of all these testimonies to the dignity of man
is by Masaccio, in the series of frescoes he painted
in the church of the Carmine.
Two of them represent the apostles Peter and Paul
performing acts of mercy. As St Peter moves gravely
through the streets, his shadow cures the sick,
including this noble old man, more like a bishop than a beggar.
And in the balancing fresco, Peter and his disciples give alms
to a poor woman who is one of the great sculptural creations in painting.
What characters they are. Morally and intellectually,
men of weight, ... ... the least frivolous of men,
infinitely remote from the gay courtiers of Jean de Berry,
who were only thirty years older.
They have that air of contained vitality and confidence
that one often finds in the founding fathers of a civilisation.
Those that come first to my mind are the Egyptians
of the first four dynasties.
The most famous group in the series represents
the Story of the Tribute Money.
And the heads of the apostles seem to reflect
the high seriousness of the Florentine republic.
It was directed by a group of the most intelligent individuals
who have ever been elected to power by a democratic government.
The Florentine chancellors were scholars,
believers in the studia humanitatis,
in which learning could be used to achieve a happy life;
believers in the application of free intelligence to public affairs;
believers, above all, in Florence.
The second and greatest of these humanist chancellors,
Leonardo Bruni compared the civic virtues of republican Florence
with those of republican Rome.
Later, he went even further and compared her to Athens
in the age of Pericles, which wasn't far wrong.
As I've said before, all the great ages of civilisation
have seen themselves as part of history,
both as heirs and as transmitters.
And on Bruni's tomb, in the church of Santa Croce,
are inscribed the words: "History is in mourning."
Bruni and his friends had derived these ideals
from the authors of Greece and Rome.
Now, much as one would like to say something new
about the Renaissance the old belief that it was largely based
on the study of antique literature, remains true.
Of course, the Middle Ages derived much more
from classical antiquity than used to be supposed.
But their sources were limited, their texts corrupt,
and their interpretations often fanciful.
Almost the first man to read classical authors with real insight
was the poet Petrarch, that complex figure of the 14th century,
that false dawn of humanism,
whose love of opposites, ... ... of fame and solitude,
of nature and politics, of rhetoric and self-revelation,
makes us think of him as the first modern man,
until we begin to read his works.
Petrarch never learned Greek,
but his younger contemporary Boccaccio did,
and so there entered into Florentine thought, a new regenerative force,
and a new example. The first thirty years
of the 15th century was the heroic age of scholarship,
when unknown works by the greatest writers of antiquity,
... Tacitus, Plato, Cicero, ... and a dozen others,
were discovered in monastic libraries,
where they had lain since they were copied in the Dark Ages.
And it was to house these precious texts,
any one of which might contain some new revelation,
that Cosimo de' Medici built the library of San Marco.
It looks to us peaceful and remote, but the first studies
that took place there were not remote from life at all.
It was the humanist equivalent of the Cavendish Laboratory.
The manuscripts unpacked and studied under these harmonious vaults
could alter the course of history, with an explosion,
not of matter, but of mind.
(Ave Verum Corpus Natum)
Next to the Pazzi Chapel are the cloisters of Santa Croce,
also built by Brunellesco some years later.
I said that the Gothic cathedrals were hymns to divine light.
These cloisters with their round arches,
"running races in their mirth",
happily celebrate the light of human intelligence.
And sitting in them, I found it quite easy to believe in man.
When I first came here, nearly 50 years ago, I felt:
"This is my true centre".
Well, twice it seemed that they were lost.
Once, at the end of the German occupation,
and once when the floods came and there were fishes swimming
where my feet are, in the ambulatory.
But so far, the forces of destruction have been defeated.
Clarity, economy, elegance. These are the qualities
that give distinction to a mathematical theorem.
And no doubt, early Renaissance architecture is based on
a passion for mathematics, particularly for geometry.
Of course, Gothic architects had designed on a geometrical basis,
but it had been of immense complexity,
as elaborate and as logical as scholastic philosophy.
Nothing could be more geometrical than the Florentine Baptistry,
which is one of the earliest buildings in the city.
But the Renaissance added to this tradition of design
all sorts of philosophical notions, including the idea
that these forms must be applicable to the human body.
That each, so to say, guaranteed the perfection of the other.
There are dozens of drawings and engravings
to demonstrate this proposition, of which the most famous
is by Leonardo da Vinci.
Mathematically, I'm afraid it's really a cheat.
But aesthetically, it has some meaning, because
the symmetry of the human body, and the relation
of one part of it to another, do influence
our sense of normal proportion.
And philosophically, it contains the germ of an idea
which might save us if we could really believe it.
That through proportion, we can reconcile the two parts of our being,
the physical and the intellectual.
The same approach was applied to painting, in the system
known as perspective, by which it was thought
that by mathematical calculation, one could render on a flat surface
the precise position of a figure in space.
And this too seems to have been invented by Brunellesco.
But we can see it best in the works of his two friends
Ghiberti and Donatello, whose low-relief sculpture
is really a kind of painting.
Ghiberti's "Jacob and Esau" on the famous Baptistry doors
shows perspective used to achieve a spatial harmony
that has almost a musical effect.
(Music For Maximilian)
Donatello's relief of St Anthony of Padua curing a boy's leg
shows the other use of perspective:
to heighten emotion by a more intense awareness of space.
I don't known why, I always feel there's something alarming
about an empty amphitheatre,
which suits the drama of this particular subject.
The Florentines were extremely proud of this invention,
which they thought, wrongly as it turned out, was unknown to antiquity.
But has it anything to do with civilisation?
Well, when it was first invented, I think it had.
The belief that one could represent man in a real setting,
and calculate his position, and arrange figures
in a demonstrably harmonious order.
This belief, expressed symbolically,
a new idea about man's place in the scheme of things,
and man's control over his own destiny.
As an aid to realism, perspective is of no importance.
The realistic painters of Flanders got on very well without it.
But as a symbol, it means something.
And it's as a symbol that it passes into the decorative arts
of the early Renaissance and one finds it
as the principal theme of those wooden inlays
in paneled rooms or choir stalls, which are
a repertoire of Renaissance symbolism.
Perspective was concerned with the representation of towns,
if only because it was by the paved floor and receding arcade
that the system could be shown to advantage.
And in the 15th century, painters did a number of pictures of
ideal towns, which are both architectural harmonies
and the perfect setting for social man.
Alberti describes, in his great book on building,
the necessity of a public square where young men may be diverted
from the mischievousness and folly natural to their age.
And, under handsome porticoes,
old men may spend the heat of the day
and be mutually serviceable to one another.
I think that Piero della Francesca, who derived so much from Alberti,
may well have had this, and similar passages in mind,
when he painted this, the most harmonious of all ideal cities.
The early Florentine Renaissance was an urban culture,
bourgeois, properly so-called.
Men spent their time in the streets and squares, and in the shops.
A good Florentine, says one of their moralists,
"sta sempre a bottega" ... ... is always in the shop.
And these shops were completely public.
You can see in this engraving, how a craftsman's workshop
was open to the street so that passers-by
could see what was being done, and rival artists
make scathing comments.
The Renaissance historian of art, Vasari,
when he asked himself, why it was in Florence more than elsewhere
that men became perfect in the arts,
gave as his first answer: "The spirit of criticism,
"the air of Florence making minds naturally free
"and not content with mediocrity."
And this harsh, outspoken criticism
meant that there was no gap of incomprehension
between the intelligent patron and the artist.
Our contemporary attitude of pretending to
understand works of art, in order not to appear philistines,
would have seemed absurd to the Florentines.
They were a tough lot.
Many people since Bruni in 1428 have compared them
with the Athenians, but the Florentines were more realistic.
Whereas the Athenians loved philosophical argument,
the Florentines were chiefly interested in making money,
and playing appalling practical jokes on stupid men.
However, they had a good deal in common with the Greeks.
They were curious, they were extremely intelligent,
and they had, to a supreme degree,
the power of making their thoughts visible.
I hesitate to pronounce the much-abused word "beauty",
but I can't think of a substitute.
Like the Athenians, the Florentines loved beauty.
This is a constant source of surprise to anyone who knows them.
But as Walter Pater said of Michelangelo,
"Out of the strong, came forth sweetness."
Donatello paid an even more direct tribute
to the antique concept of beauty, in his bronze David.
The body is almost disturbingly physical, and the head is derived
from that of the great male beauty of the ancient world:
the emperor Hadrian's beloved Antinous,
although with a sharper Florentine accent
that makes it far more attractive.
Donatello's David stands in the hall of the Bargello,
once a court of justice and a prison,
now a museum, but still quite a good place
to get the flavour of 15th-century Florence.
Because it not only contains great works of Florentine imagination,
like the David, but also the portraits of famous Florentines.
There were a few likenesses of individuals in the 14th century;
Dante, Petrarch, Charles V of France,
Jean de Berry, ... ... but they were exceptional.
As a rule, medieval people were presented to the eye
as figures that symbolised their status.
The painter of the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella,
although he included so much lively detail,
made his popes, kings and bishops into stereotypes.
Their status would have been recognised all over the Gothic world.
But these proudly individual characters
wished to record for posterity exactly what they were like.
In fact, many of these busts are done from actual death masks,
which even great artists like Donatello
didn't hesitate to incorporate in their work.
Of course, this bronze relief isn't at all a death mask.
It's the self-portrait of that character
who so often flits in and out of the programme,
the architect and universal man Leon Battista Alberti.
What a face! Proud and alert,
like a willful intelligent racehorse.
Among other things, Alberti wrote an autobiography,
and as we should expect, he is not inhibited by false modesty.
He tells us how the strongest horses trembled under him,
how he could throw further and jump higher
and work harder than any man.
He describes how he conquered every weakness because:
"A man can do all things if he will."
It could be the motto of the early Renaissance.
And it's reflected in the heads of Renaissance heroes
as they have come down to us in their memorials.
In Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua.
Of course, these heads are so much idealised
as to be, in our sense, scarcely portraits at all.
Realistic portraiture, the use of the accidents
of each individual face to reveal inner life,
wasn't a Florentine or even an Italian invention.
It was invented in Flanders, and came to
an immediate perfection in the work of Jan van Eyck.
No-one has looked at a human face with a more dispassionate eye
and recorded his findings with a more delicate hand.
But in fact, many of his sitters were Italians.
Albergati, the cardinal who employed Alberti as secretary.
And Arnolfini, a member of the international world
of the wool trade, banking, papal diplomacy.
And perhaps it was only in such a society
that these evolved and subtle characters
could have accepted the revelation of their personalities.
Van Eyck's exploration of personality extended beyond the face.
He shows people in their setting and lovingly records
the details of Arnolfini's daily life.
His wooden pattens for walking the muddy streets of Bruges;
his little dog of nameless breed;
his wife's elaborate sleeve;
his own fur-lined cloak;
... and convex mirror.
And above all, his splendid brass chandelier.
And by a miracle that defies the laws of artistry,
he was able to show them to us enveloped in daylight,
as real as if it had been observed by Vermeer of Delft.
This sensibility to atmosphere, the Florentines never attempted.
They were a sculpture-minded people.
But in their portrait busts, they came to achieve
an almost Flemish realism.
How like these Florentine worthies are, to the
confident faces that we see in Victorian photographs.
This is the professional man, a doctor,
his face lined with the wisdom of experience.
In fact, he was Donatello's doctor, and saved his life.
And this is a businessman called Pietro Mellini.
A character in one of Alberti's dialoges says:
"A man cannot set his hand to more liberal work
"than making money, for what we sell is our labour
"the goods are merely transferred."
Yes, that was really written in 1434, not in 1850.
And, contrariwise, if you dressed Mellini in 19th-century clothes,
he would look perfectly convincing.
But this atmosphere of liberal materialism
is less than half the story.
After the middle of the 15th century, the intellectual life of Florence
took a new direction, very different from the
robust civic humanism of the 1430s.
Florence had ceased to be a republic in anything but name,
and for almost 30 years, it was virtually ruled by
that extraordinary character Lorenzo de' Medici.
His father and grandfather had prepared the way for him
by their activities as bankers. He himself was no financier
he lost a great part of the family fortune,
but he was a politician of genius,
who could distinguish between the reality of power
and its outward trappings.
The frontispiece of his book of poems shows him
in the streets of Florence, dressed as a simple citizen,
surrounded by girls who are singing his ballads.
What a contrast is this modest printed page
to the rich manuscripts of the Duke of Berry.
In fact, Lorenzo was a good poet, and a most admirable
patron of other poets, also of scholars and philosophers.
But he wasn't much interested in the visual arts,
and the paintings by which his period is remembered
were commissioned by his cousin Lorenzino.
And it was for Lorenzino that Botticelli painted the works
in which the Florentine sense of beauty appears
in its most evolved and peculiar form;
"The Spring" and "The Birth Of Venus".
In the earlier of them, "The Spring", the subject is derived from Ovid,
but this classical inspiration is given a new complexity
by memories of the Middle Ages.
The pagan divinities sway before a background of leaves,
like a Gothic tapestry.
What a marvelous feat of the imagination.
As for the heads, they're a discovery of beauty that means
much more to us than the full, smooth oval of antiquity.
(Ecca La Primavera)
The subject of Botticelli's other great allegory, The Birth Of Venus,
is taken from a contemporary poet, Poliziano.
(Tres Douce Regard)
Poliziano was part of a group of subtle Florentines who were
inspired by the late Greek philosophers known as neo-Platonists.
It was their hope they might reconcile
these pagan philosophers with Christianity
And so, Botticelli's Venus,
not at all the amorous strumpet of paganism,
is pale and withdrawn, and dissolves into
his image of the Virgin Mary.
The discovery of the individual was made in early 15th-century Florence.
Nothing can alter that fact.
But in the last quarter of the century, the Renaissance
owed quite as much to the small courts of Northern Italy,
Ferrara, Mantua, and above all Urbino,
this small and rather remote town
on the eastern perimeter of the Apennines.
It could be argued that life in the court of Urbino
was one of the high watermarks of Western civilisation.
The reason is that this court and its dominions
were protected from the surrounding ruffians
by Federigo Montefeltro, the first Duke of Urbino,
the greatest general of his day,
who was also a humane and intelligent man.
And the town itself, with its soft pink bricks,
so different from the harsh stones of Florence,
seems to reflect the same feeling of humanity.
It's small enough for a good ruler
to know all the inhabitants, and listen to their troubles.
Which, in fact, is exactly what Duke Federigo did.
His palace began as a fortress, built on an impregnable rock.
And only when he'd fought his way to security
could he afford to give it the sweet and delicate details
which make it one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in the world.
The Palace of Urbino has a style of its own.
The arcaded courtyard, where I'm standing now,
isn't speedy and springy like Brunellesco's cloister,
but calm and timeless.
And the rooms are light and airy, and so perfectly-proportioned
that it exhilarates one to walk through them.
In fact, I think the interior is the most beautiful in the world.
And the only palace I can go round without feeling
oppressed and exhausted.
(Se Me Grato)
Curiously enough, we don't know the name of the architect
who was responsible for this masterpiece.
A famous fortress builder named Laurana
did the substructure, but he left Urbino long before
the lived-in part of the palace was begun.
But the painter Piero della Francesca
was there at exactly the date when it was being decorated.
And, personally, I believe that he was responsible for its style.
The architecture in this picture by Piero, which is in Urbino,
shows exactly the same kind of delicate detail
one finds round the doors and windows of the palace,
and it was painted ten years earlier.
However, I think that the noble proportions,
and the whole sense of space, must reflect the character
of the Duke himself.
His biographer, named Vespasiano da Bisticci
refers again and again to the Duke's humanity.
He asked the Duke: "What is necessary in ruling a kingdom?"
The Duke replied: "Essere umano" ... "To be human."
Whoever invented the style, this is the spirit
that permeates the Palace of Urbino.
As a part of civilisation,
the Palace of Urbino extended beyond the 15th century.
The great architect of the High Renaissance, Bramante,
was a native of Urbino. He may even have worked
on the palace when it was being completed.
The court painter was a silly old creature named Giovanni Santi,
the sort of obliging mediocrity who's always welcome in courts,
even in the court of Urbino. No doubt the ladies,
when they were in need of a design for embroidery,
used to say: "Let's send for dear old Mr Santi."
And when he came, he brought with him his beautiful little son...
... Raffaello.
And so, Raphael, one of the
civilising forces of the Western imagination,
found his earliest impressions of harmony and proportion,
and good manners, in the court of Urbino.
Good manners, that was another product of Urbino.
In common with other Italian courts, Ferrara and Mantua,
young men went there to finish their education.
They learned to read the classics, to walk gracefully, speak quietly,
play games without cheating or kicking each other on the shins.
In short, to behave like gentlemen.
Under Federigo's son and successor, Guidobaldo,
the notion of a gentleman was given classic expression
in a book called: "Il Cortegiano" ... "The Courtier"
by Baldassare Castiglione.
It had an immense influence.
The Emperor Charles V had only three books beside his bed;
The Bible, Machiavelli's "Prince", and Castiglione's "Courtier."
For over 100 years, it formed everybody's notion of good manners.
Actually, it's very much more than a handbook of polite behaviour,
because Castiglione's ideal of a gentleman
is based on real human values.
He mustn't hurt people's feelings,
or make them feel inferior by showing off.
He must be easy and natural.
Just as Castiglione himself appears to be in his portrait by Raphael.
And he mustn't be a mere worldling.
The "Cortegiano" ends with a moving discourse on the subject of love.
Just as Botticelli's "Spring"
unites the tapestry world of the Middle Ages with pagan mythology,
so Castiglione's "Courtier" unites the medieval concept of chivalry
with the ideal love of Plato.
(L'amor Donna)
There's no doubt that the court of Urbino,
under both Federigo and Guidobaldo,
was a high point in the history of civilisation.
And the same is true, in a lesser degree, of the court of Mantua.
The palace of Mantua lacks the exhilarating lightness
and lucidity of the palace of Urbino.
But it contains one room, in which
more than anywhere else, perhaps, one can get an idea
of civilised life in an Italian court.
It's the room decorated by the court painter Andrea Mantegna.
Birds and cherubs, ...and people
look down from an imaginary hole in the roof.
A new use of perspective.
(Suite No 1 pavane)
Then come painted busts of Roman emperors.
But the scene below isn't at all archaeological.
It shows the Gonzaga family as large as life.
Also their dogs...
..their courtiers...
..their old retainers...
and one of their celebrated dwarfs.
In spite of the formidable frontality of the Marchioness,
the spirit of the whole group is extremely natural.
The little girl asks if she may eat an apple,
but her mother is interested to know what news
the Marquess has just received from his secretary.
In fact it is good news; their son has been made a cardinal.
And in another scene, the Marquess goes to greet him
accompanied by his dogs, and his younger sons.
What an agreeably informal reception.
One of the younger children holds his hand,
and the little boy takes the hand of his elder brother.
It's still without the odious pomposity
that was to grow up in Europe during the next century
and reach its zenith at Versailles.
I'm bound to say, even Mantegna has not been able to make
the newly-created Cardinal look like a very spiritual type.
Which reminds one of the obvious fact,
that this kind of social organisation depended entirely
on the individual characters of the rulers.
In one state is Sigismondo Malatesta, the Wolf of Rimini,
who did things that even the most advanced theatrical producer
would hesitate to put on the stage.
In a neighbouring state, Federigo Montefeltro,
the God-fearing father of his people.
And yet both of them employed Alberti
and both were painted by Piero della Francesca.
Federigo was a lover of books, who made the palace of Urbino
into one of the finest libraries in Italy.
But when he read them, he left his armour on ... and he needed to.
This was one of the weaknesses of Renaissance civilisation.
And the other, no less obviously,
was that it depended on a very small minority.
Even in republican Florence, the Renaissance
touched relatively few people.
And in places like Urbino and Mantua,
it was practically confined to the court.
This is contrary to our modern sense of equality.
But one can't help wondering how far civilisation
would have evolved, if it had been entirely dependent
on the popular will.
W. B. Yeats actually used the example of Urbino
when he addressed a poem to a wealthy man
who promised a subscription to the Dublin gallery,
"if it were proved that the people wanted pictures."
He said: "And Guidobaldo,
"when he made that mirror school of courtesy
"where wit and beauty learned their trade
"upon Urbino's windy hill,
"had sent no runners to and fro
"that he might learn the shepherds' will."
One may not like courts, I don't much like them myself.
But at a certain stage, it's only in a court
that a man may do something extravagant for its own sake,
because he wants to, because it seems worth doing.
Something like the extraordinary wooden inlays in this study.
And it's sometimes through such willful, superfluous actions
that men discover their powers.
All the same, as one walks through these
splendidly extravagant rooms, one can't help thinking:
"What about the people in the fields?"
All those shepherds who Mr Yeats rightly supposed
that Guidobaldo did not consult on matters of taste and good manners.
Could they not have had a kind of civilisation of their own?
Well, there is such a thing as a civilised countryside.
Looking at the Umbrian landscape with its terraces of vines and olives
and the dark vertical accents of the cypresses,
one has the impression of timeless order.
There must have been a time when it was all forest and swamp;
shapeless, formless.
And to bring order out of chaos is a process of civilisation.
But of this timeless rustic civilisation we have no record beyond
the farmhouses themselves, whose noble proportions
seem to be the basis of Italian architecture.
When Renaissance artists looked at the countryside,
it was not as a place of ploughing and digging
but as a kind of earthly paradise.
This is how it appears
in the first evolved landscape in European painting,
the background of van Eyck's "Adoration of the Lamb".
The foreground is painted with a medieval sharpness of detail,
but our eye, passing over the towers
and dense greenery of laurels and palms
floats into a gleaming distance.
(La déploration de Johannes Ockeghem)
Already, awareness of nature is associated
with the desire to escape, and the hope of a better life.
And such it remained in the work of Giovanni Bellini,
the founder of Venetian painting,
who first used his backgrounds to create a mood,
in which the action or story of the picture can be more vividly felt.
Bellini was a religious painter. His landscapes intensify
the traditional subjects of Christianity.
His pupil, Giorgione, was to extend
the humanisation of landscape to contemporary life.
And in this picture, he has discovered,
or I suppose one should say rediscovered,
one of the comforting illusions of civilised man,
the myth of Arcadia.
Of course, it is only a myth. Our country life isn't at all like this.
Even on a picnic, ants attack the sandwiches
and wasps buzz round the wineglass.
But Giorgione has shown us how fundamentally pagan it is.
This Arcadia is as much a tribute to antiquity
as were the republican virtues of the Florentine humanists.
And as much part of the rediscovery of man.
But in his sensual, rather than his intellectual nature.
With Giorgione's picnic, the balance and enjoyment
of our human faculties seems to achieve perfection.
But in history, all points of supposed perfection
have a hint of menace, and Giorgione himself discovers it
in that mysterious picture known as the "Tempesta".
What on earth is going on?
What is the meaning of this half-naked woman suckling a baby;
this flash of lightning, this broken column?
Nobody knows. Nobody has ever known.
It was described in Giorgione's own time as "a soldier and a gypsy".
Well, whatever it means, it certainly doesn't show
any confidence in the light of human reason.
"A man can do all things if he will."
How naive Alberti's statement seems,
when one thinks of that great bundle of fears and memories
that every individual carries around with him, to say nothing of
the external forces which are totally beyond his control.
Giorgione, the passionate lover of physical beauty,
painted this picture of an old woman and inscribed it
"Col tempo" ... "With time".
One can see that she must once have been a beauty.
It's one of the first masterpieces of a new pessimism;
new, because without the comfort of religion
that was to be given final expression by Hamlet.
The truth is, I suppose, that the civilisation
of the early Renaissance was not broadly enough based.
The few had gone too far away from the many.
Not only in knowledge and intelligence, this they always do,
but in basic assumptions.
When the first two generations of humanists were dead,
their movement had no real weight behind it.
And there was a reaction away from this human scale of values.
Fortunately, they left in sculpture, painting and architecture
their message to every generation
that values reason, clarity, and harmonious proportion,
and believes in the individual.
(La déploration de Johannes Ockeghem)