Richard Woodfield, 'Representational Meaning' more

Representational Meaning* Richard Woodfield I am aware that Professor Kuczynska has a deep and abiding interest in Florentine Neo-Platonism and the Italian Renaissance. I am also sensitive to the fact that one of the central preoccupations of the early founders of the international congresses on aesthetics, Max Dessoir in particular, was to achieve a working relationship between aesthetics and the sciences of the arts. Early in the twentieth century there were fusions of interest in linguistics and the philosophy of language. In Vienna, through the role played by Julius von Schlosser in leading the Second Institute of Art History at the university, students were encouraged to make connections between the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce, the linguistics of Karl Vossler and the practice of art history. Ernst Gombrich was a student of Schlosser’s and he rebelled, turning instead to Karl Bühler who was, inter alia, a critic of Edmund Husserl and a distinguished psychologist, philosopher and linguistician in his own right. Bühler founded a novel approach to semiotics that Gombrich later applied to visual imagery in his famous book Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. While philosophers have read that book they have not also read his very important collection of essays Symbolic Images, which also applies Bühler’s key notion of the principle of abstractive relevance to the historical study of images. Symbolic Images also contains a rejoinder to Erwin Panofsky’s Studies in Iconology which includes, en passant, discussions of the role of Neo-Platonism in symbolic thought. While it would be a tall order to deal with this in intensive detail, my contribution to Professor Kuczynska’s festschrift will be a short review of the issues at stake. Buhler’s ‘Organonmodell der Sprache’ distinguished between three central functions of speech, which Gombrich transferred across to the visual image: appeal (Appell), expression (Ausdruck) and representation (Darstellung). An image’s appeal creates an expectation which is then expressed through a representation. The first question that must be addressed to any image is what is its primary function? Under what terms does it ‘call’ to its spectator? What mental set must the spectator assume to render the image intelligible? Panofsky had assumed that there was simply no problem. In the three levels of interpretation proposed in the theoretical introduction to Studies in Iconology he had distinguished between the pre-iconographic, iconographic and iconological strata of interpretation. Under this scheme, looking at a figurative image was precisely like looking at the natural world, though mediated through the artist’s use of style. Looking at The Last Supper, at the most basic level one sees thirteen men seated around a table. But, Gombrich argues in the introduction to Symbolic Images, this already takes too much for granted: "(m)ore is altogether involved in the interpretation of representational conventions than literally 'meets the eye'."1 Any analysis of the figurative arts needs to be critically self1 * Published in Iwony Lorenc (ed.), Odłamki, Pozbitych, Luster: rozprawy z filozofii kultury sztuki I etsetyki ofiarowane Pani Profesor Alicji Kuczyńskiej, Uniwersytet Warszawski: Wydzial Filozofii I Socjologii 2005, 275-286. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning conscious of the nature of the object under scrutiny. Unfortunately Gombrich passes over this problem too quickly for its full weight to make itself felt: look at Eros in Piccadilly, is it a youth or a giant? One cannot read the figure’s scale from its representation. Bang! Point made and on to another subject. For Gombrich the whole problem is so stunningly obvious that he didn’t feel it merited any further consideration. To anyone familiar with the iconoclastic controversy, the point is obvious: after all, wasn’t the whole debate centred on how one was to take the ontological status of the image of God? Wasn’t the problem whether such an image was at all possible? Didn’t the iconoclasts, and their biblical predecessors, argue that a picture of a god was nothing at all but wood, mud and pigment? Pursuing the problem a little further, looking at Albert Gilbert's statue of Eros in Piccadilly, one is entitled to ask whether the ornamental monsters around the base are representations or decorations. If they are decorations does one look at them differently from the way in which one would if they were representations and if one did what would be the difference? Presumably they would simply be regarded as interlocking motifs having no more than formal relationships; there would be nothing else to weave them together. They would carry no individually expressive weight. The difference between a decoration and a representation may be demonstrated by taking a different example, from Gombrich's essay ‘The Evidence of Images’.2 Having identified a statuette as Hercules as a Christian Knight, a distinguished art historian offered the following characterisation: The eyes gaze into the distance, they stand in a face that bears the marks of hard experiences. This man is no longer a wild adventurer, he is sensitive to the sufferings destiny has laid upon him; it is with sorrow that he awaits the next test, though he is sure that he will win through in the end.3 What that historian did not know was that the statuette was one of a set of armorial bearings on a wardrobe. Armorial bearings, like heraldic figures generally, carry no expressive weight and in this case the figure was what is called a canting device, it was a visual pun alluding to one of the Venetian doges. Looking at that figure is no different from looking at the Lions placed outside Nottingham’s Council House: they are simply visual metaphoric devices to establish its status as a building worthy of protection. They become rather amusing overblown metaphors when placed outside ordinary citizens’ houses and carry rather more rhetorical muscle outside the Duke of Devonshire’s residence Chatsworth. But in no case would a decorative lion create a lionly expressive effect of the type seen in one of Delacroix’s paintings. Dickens caricatured the Victorian attitude towards decoration in Hard Times, by having a government officer ask some schoolchildren whether they would use a carpet having a representation of flowers on it. "The girl who says she would because she is fond of flowers is sternly asked whether in that case 'she would put tables and chairs upon them ‘Aims and Limits of Iconology’, Symbolic Images, London 1972, p. 3. 2 In C S Singleton (ed.) Interpretation: Theory and Practice, Baltimore, 1969 ‘The Evidence of Images: II. The Priority of Context over Expression’. 3 Ibid, p. 71. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning and have people walking over them with heavy boots'."4 The point is, of course, that the mindlessly officious government officer has missed the point of decoration: the flowers are motifs and as such have no simulatory pretence. Panofsky’s view that a picture forms a kind of stylistic screen through which one sees a depicted view fails to recognise the central fact that the pictorial field's existence is a matter of representational convention.5 From his classic essay on perspective as symbolic form it is clear that he believed that in the past humans saw the world differently and that this was to account for the differences between Egyptian, antique, medieval and renaissance art. It is not at all obvious what we are looking at when we look at a picture of an Egyptian painting. The problem is that not only is a typical image a composite of figurative image and hieroglyph, but the figurative image itself has a complex status. We can, of course, tell hieroglyphic from figurative images out of familiarity with hieroglyphs. We know that a hieroglyphic falcon is pronounced phonetically as om' and means 'in, from, with'. When we see a hieroglyph we read it in conjunction with other hieroglyphs as we read a sentence on a page. Looking at the reproduction of the painting in Rahotep's tomb, I am at a loss as to what I'm looking at. I can see images of people that I know are substitutes for those people, the image of Ra-hotep for the man himself. I know that the point of such depictions was to ensure the eternity of the person. I can also recognise certain images as hieroglyphics but as I can't read hieroglyphics I can make no sense of their relationship to the figurative imagery. According to Frankfort, the figurative imagery should be read “harvesting entails ploughing, sowing and reaping” and “The signs, remarks, names, songs and exclamations which illuminate the action... do not link events or explain their development; they are typical sayings belonging to typical situations”.6 At this level, Gombrich suggested, "picture cycles and hieroglyphs, representations and inscriptions, were far more interchangeable in Egyptians eyes than they are for us.”7 The diagrams in Ra-hoteb’s tomb can either be of things or form words. The hieroglyph for an eye is, in fact, the depiction of an eye and is pronounced 'ir'. So one can either be looking at a substitute for a person or a word for a thing, which in turn demand either scrutiny or reading. We can scrutinise a word without being able to read it and without, indeed, knowing that it is a word. What we disregard when we recognise a word is precisely what we may attend to when we scrutinise it, like its colour or 4 5 Quoted by Gombrich in The Sense of Order, pp. 34-5. I claim no originality for this point. See Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing (1983), p. 236: "What then do we make of the pictorial surface itself! In his seminal essay on iconography and iconology Panofsky clearly evades this question. ... What Panofsky chooses to ignore is that the man is not present but is represented in the picture. In what manner, under what conditions is the man represented in paint on the surface of the canvas? What is needed, and what art historians lack, is a notion of representation.” See also David Summers, ‘Conventions in the History of Art’, New Literary History (13), 1981, p. 111: "Panofsky's direct transferral of an example from life to art must be questioned right at the beginning … this transferral assumes too great a transparency on the part of the work of art, assumes that it is more "realistic" than it actually is or can be." 6 H.A. Groenwegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, London 1951, pp. 33, 34. 7 Art and Illusion, p. 106. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning shape. And when we see a string of words, we read what they have to say rather than attend to their relationships as images. Turning to the image of Ra-hotep himself there is a strong sense in which he was not simply depicted as being there but was, in a real sense, there. One might like to quibble with this distinction and argue that his image is simply a depiction. But this ignores psychological issues. Although we might laugh at such an idea, the photograph of a loved one is not treated simply as a depiction but the person herself; the photograph today has become a kind of surrogate object. If the image of Ra-hotep was his substitute, then it would require the kind of circumspect behaviour not expected towards a mere depiction. In this case, what one did to the image of Ra-hotep one did to Ra-hotep himself. The consequent feeling of relationship that one has with the image must, in some way, colour ones response to it. We do know what the Greeks felt about Egyptian statuary; they wanted to animate it and this was precisely the achievement of Daedalus. Plato's analogy of the figurative with the reflection in a mirror is quite misleading if it is taken literally as, in a sense, Egyptian art is more of a reflection of daily life than the art of the Greeks. The Greek concern was less to imitate the visual world than to simulate it. The most successful simulation was that which offered the spectator an actual view of a possible world. Although there was no lack of recognition of transient appearances before the Greeks8 it was the Greeks who foregrounded their representation in art. Greek art invites projection in a way in which Egyptian art does not. As Gombrich put it: No longer is there any need for that completeness of essentials which belongs to the conceptual style, no longer is there the fear of the casual which dominates the archaic conception of art. The picture of a man on a Greek vase no longer needs a hand or a foot in full view. We know that it is meant as a shadow, a mere record of what the artist saw or might see, and we are quite ready to join in the game and to supplement with our imagination what the real motif undoubtedly possessed.9 The Egyptian artist certainly didn't want his images to spring to life in the way in which the Greeks did, not at least before they were safely out of sight. The fear of art's power contributed to the regression to archaism in the Christian art of the fifth century. The powers of visual images were known from Old Testament prohibitions. The desire to limit their power resulted in their being treated as the 'bible of the unlettered'; the desire to channel their power led to the worship of God and the Saints through or across their images. Although images were intended to be read, and not to be regarded as a slice of reality, they were also intended to form the focus of meditation and spiritual transformation. The way in which this was achieved was through the manipulation of normal perceptual responses to the picture. According to Buhler's principle of abstractive relevance the grownup person of our culture hardly attends to [letters'] shape or font. Bruner 8 For this one can read the Akkadian myth of Etana's Flight to Heaven, published as Appendix 1 in Heinrich Schafer's, Principles of Egyptian Art, ed. E Brunner-Taut, trans. & ed. J Baines, Oxford 1986. 9 ‘Meditations on a Hobby Horse or the Roots of Artistic Form’, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, London 1963, p. 9. 12. See The Story of Art, 15th edition, Oxford 1989), pp. 97-8. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning referred to the same phenomenon, “the principle of economy in ordinary perceptual situations", as 'gating'. And Neisser referred to the "'main sequence', the sequential process of logical thought.”10 Gombrich gave an example of a violation of gating from Dickens' description of Pip's response to his parents' tombstone in Great Expectations: As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair...11 The child, who is in what may be compared to an adult regressive state, pursues the meaning of the script beyond what it says to the physiognomic elements of its statement. In Gombrich's view the medieval return to the pictograph: facilitated the emancipation of formal values. ... in as far as the recognisability of symbols is not compromised and the sign remains a sign, primitive predilections may be allowed full rein. This applies to the pure use of precious colours in medieval illumination as much as to that ornamental elaboration of the whole work which leads to such high decorative achievement.12 The decorative effect was central to medieval art’s appeal generally. One thinks of the emphasis placed on the effects of splendour by the early apologists of Christian buildings and imagery. The use of polished marble, mosaics and precious stones all helped to induce into the spectator a sense of heavenly presence. The aura of medieval Christian art was quite indisputable and that made the presence of figurative imagery itself a subject of dispute, particularly in Byzantium where there were major conflicts between iconoclasts and iconodules. Some worshippers confused the images with the powers of their objects, both in terms of the materiality of the image and the materiality of its depicted object. The auras of image and representation became inseparable in the imagination. A letter from the Emperors Michael II and Theophilus to Louis the Pius declared many clerics and laymen, alienating themselves from apostolic traditions and not observing the definitions of the Fathers, have become originators of evil practices. First, they expelled the venerable and life-giving crosses from the holy churches and in their stead they set up images, in front of which they placed lights and burnt incense. .. They sang hymns to these images and worshipped them and asked help of them. Many people wrapped cloths round them and made them the baptismal godfathers of their children. ... Certain priests and clerics scraped the paint of images and, mixing this with the eucharistic bread and wine, let the communicants partake of this oblation after the celebration of the mass. Others again placed the Body of the Lord in the bands of images and made the communicants receive it therefrom. ...13 10 E. H. Gombrich, ‘The Use of Art for the Study of Symbols’ in Psychology and the Visual Arts, ed. James Hogg , Harmondsworth 1969, p. 164. 11 Ibid. 12 ‘Achievement in Medieval Art’ in Meditations on a Hobby Horse, p. 74. 13 Quoted in Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453, Englewood Cliffs 1972, pp. 157-8. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning Remains of pagan statuary were treated with fear and caution as the likely dwelling places of demons. Even as late as the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes wrote: at this day, the ignorant People, where Images are worshipped, doe really beleeve there is a Divine Power in the Images; and are told by their Pastors, that some of them have spoken; and have bled; and that miracles have been done by them; which they apprehend as done by the Saint, which they think either is the Image itself, or in it.14 Western Europe experienced its own iconoclastic movements during and after the Reformation. As Hobbes recognised, it was a system of thought allied to an institution of social control which gave rise to superstitious practices validated by pagan Greek philosophical ideas incorporated into Christian theology. If the appeal of classical figurative imagery and Pompeian wall paintings were to situate the spectator into a real imaginary space, the intended appeal of medieval imagery was to function as a kind of elaborated pictographic script. But in the same way that Alexandrian magic bred thoughts of the magical effects of incantations and amulets, so Christian magic led to images working miracles. Artists regained their interest in naturalistic imagery in Western Europe in the thirteenth century, probably as a result of the new devotional forms which emerged with Franciscanism in the South and the devotio moderna in the North. Until recently, historians have been preoccupied by Panofsky's theories on the topic of disguised symbolism in Netherlandish painting. Following Gombrich's advice, to look for documentary evidence of the existence of disguised symbolism, James Marrow collected late medieval texts about works of art.15 He discovered that: Mentions and discussions of works of northern art from the late middle ages show a minimal concern with what the art represents; their focus, instead, is overwhelmingly on how the art is to be used and experienced. He further argued that we bring our methods and the subjects of our historical enquiry into closer synchronization with concern demonstrably cultivated by artists at the time, and that we expand our sense of the meaning of works of art in ways that can yield further insights into the works themselves and into the circumstances of their creation.16 One very interesting result of this enquiry was the discovery that artists worked with the idea of encouraging specific emotional responses to their images: Northern artists of the fourteenth century developed new pictorial means of addressing the issue of compassion. ... In representations of the so-called group of Christ and St. John, excerpted from scenes of the Last Supper, and of the Vesperbild or Pièta, excerpted from the historical scene of the Lamentation beneath the Cross, artists focus on those figures and moments, and those narrative details, 14 15 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, London 1651, p. 363. ‘Symbol and meaning in northern European art of the late middle ages and the early Renaissance’, Simiolus, 16 (2/3), 1986, pp. 150-169. 16 Ibid, p. 152. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning which most concisely display the compassionate love of the Virgin or Christ.17 Such an approach to visual imagery was supported by devotional literature, which encouraged the worshippers to excite themselves to emotion not only by inward contemplation but also by bodily exertions, stretching their hands, raising their eyes to the crucifix, striking their breasts, making devout genuflections, and if necessary even scourging themselves; and that they should persist in these or similar exercises until they produce a plenteous stream of tears.18 These images were not, then, simply illustrations of the events described in the Bible but they were intended to be evocations of emotionally provocative events (that was their appeal). Marrow also drew attention to the way in which Pucelle visually commented on the image, foregrounding itself as a play of illusion and the way in which the Boucicault Master gave shifting views of the holy stable, as if to make the spectator doubly aware of his/her presence as a viewer. The emphasis on the spectator had been underlined by the use of reflections in the image to give a sense of what was outside it, thereby joining the fictitious world inside the image with the spectator's world outside. He concluded by showing how figures inside the picture implicate the spectator by gaze. The overall benefit of Marrow's approach is that it accounts for stylistic features of the imagery in the terms of the tasks which were know to be assigned to images. By contrast, Panofsky's theory of disguised symbols was based upon the view that whereas: A non-perspective and non-naturalistic art, not recognising either unity of space or unity of time, can employ symbols without regard for empirical probability or even possibility. ... a blend of present, past and future, of things real and things symbolic, proved to be less and less compatible with a style which, with the introduction of perspective, had begun to commit itself to naturalism.19 This is based upon the assumption that naturalism as a style must be naturalistic in its content. To which may be raised the obvious objection: ‘Why?’ Panofsky's reply to that question would be based upon the further assumption that the Renaissance was a secular rejection of the godly Middle Ages and images could not offend a secular sensitivity. But Panofsky's view of the Renaissance is false and his inference invalid. If people in the fifteenth century were generally not such devout christians, there would never have been a Savonarola and Luther would never have had cause to nail his theses to the gates of Wittenberg. There simply was no problem in reconciling the real and symbolic. Masaccio's Holy Trinity was a case in point. 17 18 Ibid, pp. 153-4. Ludolph of Saxony's Vita Christi, quoted by Marrow, p. 155. 19 Panofsky continued: "On the other hand, the world of art could not at once become a world of things devoid of meaning. There could be no direct transition from St. Bonaventura's definition of a picture as that which “instructs, arouses pious emotions and awakens memories" to Zola's definition of a picture as "un coin de la nature vu à travers un tempérament". A way had to be found to reconcile the new naturalism with a thousand years of Christian tradition; and this attempt resulted in what may be termed concealed or disguised symbolism as opposed to open or obvious symbolism." Early Netherlandish Painting, I, New York 1971, pp. 140-1. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning Whether Panofsky's interpretation of particular images in Early Netherlandish Painting was along the right lines is another matter. It is not impossible that learned clerics should ponder the significance of individual elements of a picture. Without evidence we are not in a position to know what people did think though, excepting anachronisms, we do know that we cannot know what they didn't think. One would imagine that if there were learned clerics planning every image down to the last symbolic detail, at least some of the hypothetical programmes might have survived. Renaissance artists didn't appear to have too much difficulty in accommodating naturalistic imagery with symbolism. This can create a problem in appreciating quite what it is that we're looking at. Renaissance artists themselves distinguished between imagini, which were images of the saints and suchlike, and storie, which were narrative episodes.20 Tobias and the Angel might seem to be a storia, but it was in fact an imagine. This has enormous consequences for the modern spectator’s recovery of the image’s historical appeal. In his study of the painting in Symbolic Images Gombrich reported that it had been explained as the story of a business journey. Young Tobias is sent by his blind father to distant Rages in Media to recover ten talents of silver which his father had lent to Gabael, his brother in faith. Would this story not strike a chord in the hearts of Florentine merchants who frequently had to send their sons to distant lands on similar errands. These pictures were explained as ex votos commissioned by anxious parents to secure or commemorate the safe return of their son. This theory has found almost general acceptance but it rests on no documentary evidence.21 But "to restrict the application of the story to the literal parallel of merchants sending their sons abroad betrays a rationalist approach which misreads the role of Scriptures in the life of the past." As churchgoers will know from listening to sermons, the same story in the Bible can be used as a resource for commenting on a variety of very different situations. "But over and above these individual applications the story of Tobias remained the epic of the Archangel Raphael." To get to the point quickly, a close scrutiny of the image will reveal the peculiarity of the physical contact between Tobias and the Angel: the two figures hold each others hands very strangely. It is not as if Tobias holds the angel’s hand so much uses his hand to indicate that he is linked to it. With a warning that “the study of meanings cannot be separated from the appreciation of forms” Gombrich drew attention to the competing demands of symbolic clarity and realistic representation. In representing the imagine of the Archangel Raphael: The Painter had to display him before us in full view like any Saint represented to receive the prayers of the faithful. Here we can still discern the hieratic formula of the symbolic art of the Middle Ages. Tobias, on the other hand, was from a different world. The painter was not restricted by the requirements of devotional art. Tobias' part in the story was to stride along confiding himself to his helpmate. In his person the new realism could be given free play. The problem was how to fit the two together. 20 On this topic see C. Hope, ‘Religious narrative in Renaissance art’, Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts, 134 (1986), pp. 804-18. 21 ‘Tobias and the Angel’, republished in Symbolic Images, pp. 26-30, for this and following quotes. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning ... Raphael's image does not merely ‘represent’ the Biblical symbol. It partakes of its meaning, and hence of its power; it helps the donor to enter into communion with those forces of which it is the visible token. Tobias was to Raphael what the keys were to St. Peter and the wheel to St. Catherine, an identifying attribute. It is in this context that one should look at Leonardo's St. Anne, where Leonardo faced the similar problem of achieving symbolic clarity at the same time as solving a tricky compositional problem.22 We turn now to Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura, which has been the subject of a vast array of interpretations. If Gombrich's study of Tobias and the Angel pointed to the interaction of the symbolic and the realistic, his study of Raphael's images underlines their importance as decorations. An important determinant of the way in which they have been understood in the past has been the way in which they have been reproduced, as separate images. When looked at in their totality, with the ceiling above, they form a cycle whose key is the set of images at the top of the room. Gombrich's analysis is very substantial but his key observation is typically brief: "The real question of method raised by the interpretations of the Stanza ... [is] in iconography no less than in life, wisdom lies in knowing where to stop.”23 The figures in the 'School of Athens', for example, are simply images of exemplary philosophers under the figure of Causarium Cognition who is shown "enthroned holding two volumes marked Moralis and Naturalis, the main divisions of philosophy.”24 Any idea that Raphael worked according to some carefully drawn up philosophical scheme, demonstrating relationships between philosophical systems, may be rebutted by the preparatory drawings which showed him experimenting with various compositional devices. The principle of abstractive relevance would rule out philosophical conversations of the type reputedly dreamt up by Edgar Wind. In conclusion we turn to Botticelli’s Primavera. Historical scholarship has moved on since 1945, when Gombrich first published ‘Botticelli’s Mythologies: A Study in the Neo-Platonic Symbolism of his Circle’.25 There has been so much debate, yet Gombrich’s theoretical contribution to the solution of the problem of its meaning has passed un-noticed. Viewed from the perspective of Bühler’s Organonmodell, the following features stand out: 1. the picture is treated as an ‘utterance’ in a highly specific situation. Marsilio Ficino had written a letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s tutors telling them that he had cast his horoscope and asking them to “exhort him to learn it by heart and treasure it up in his mind.”26 2. a painting was produced for (addressed at) Lorenzo which celebrated Humanitas “a nymph of excellent comeliness born of heaven and more than others beloved by God all highest.”27 22 See Gombrich’s discussion of this painting in ‘Aims and Limits of Iconology’, pp. 14-5. 23 ‘Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura and the Nature of its Symbolism’ in Symbolic lmages, p. 95. 24 Ibid, p. 91. 25 Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 8, 1945, 7-60; reprinted in Symbolic Images with a ‘Postscript as Preface’. 26 Op. cit., Symbolic Images, p. 43. 27 The text of Ficino’s letter is reproduced on pp. 41-2. Richard Woodfield Representational Meaning 3. the nymph was portrayed in a setting conjured (my expression) out of the famous bawdy novel, Apulieus’s Golden Ass, and the specific scene was one expressing the appeal of metamorphosis (no doubt encouraging Lorenzo to metamorphose himself into a more pleasant person!) 4. the terms in which Humanitas was described were drawn out of traditional Christian devotional practice.28 5. the motifs were drawn out of International Gothic images of courtly love and dancing angels. The analysis is conducted with the image’s appeal, expression and representational status in mind. In the image there was a complete fusion of form and meaning that would deliver an image suitable for the metamorphosis of Lorenzo himself. As an object for analysis in neoplatonic mode, once the visual ‘text’ is there the figures in the image can be attributed any number of different significances, as was Ficino’s wont. Gombrich’s key conclusion was, however, that it was “the Neo-Platonic approach to ancient myth which succeeded ‘in opening up to secular art emotional spheres which had hitherto been the preserve of religious worship’.”29 In 1930 Ernst Cassirer organised a congress on aesthetics and the general theory of art in Hamburg. It was one of a series that had been started by Max Dessoir in Berlin in 1913. Edgar Wind submitted a paper at that congress, as did Erwin Panofsky. Ernst Gombrich would have been in his second year at the University of Vienna when it was held and only then starting out his journey of discovery with Julius von Schlosser. It was Schlosser who developed the notion of Kunstsprache in relation to the figurative arts, the very notion pursued by Gombrich following the novel ideas developed by Karl Bühler. It is a pity that with the advent of Nazism and emigration of scholars to the West that this distinctive approach to visual imagery became submerged in the routine tasks of art historians. The time has come for a renovation. 28 I am mindful in this and the following point of Professor Kuczynska’s contribution to the 1988, XIth International Congress on Aesthetics held in Nottingham. The title of her paper was ‘Tradition as Innovation’ and she focussed in that paper on the Italian Renaissance. 29 Postscript as Preface, p. 35.