Richard Woodfield, 'On the emergence of Aesthetics' more

ON THE EMERGENCE OF AESTHETICS Richard Woodfield The central concern of this article is to contribute towards an understanding of the cultural conditions which led to the emergence of aesthetics. This is not a topic which has engaged the foremost attention of aestheticians, mainly because the study of cultural phenomena extends beyond the disciplinary boundaries of contemporary philosophical aesthetics and also because there is an obvious difference between identifying specific philosophical issues and asking why they should have arisen. An immediate problem, when addressing this particular topic, is that of identifying a criterion of demarcation. As many histories of aesthetics start with antiquity, while recognizing that aesthetics emerged as an autonomous philosophical discipline in the eighteenth century, there must needs be some difference between ancient and modern attitudes towards those phenomena which are now subjects of aesthetic enquiry for the notion of 'emergence' to gain sense. I will confine myself to the figurative arts, and will argue that the emergence of aesthetics in this sector rested upon radically changed views of the functional status of humanly created visual images. It may be the case that my argument extends from the figurative arts across to the other arts, but a consideration of that topic is beyond the scope of this article. In his seminal paper, 'On the Origins of "Aesthetic Disinterestedness" ', Stolnitz stated: I want to trace the origins of 'disinterestedness' and to show that they are to be found where the origins of modem aesthetic theory are to be found, viz., in eighteenth- century British thought. They did not invent and never use the words 'aesthetic' or 'aesthetics', but it is simply frivolous to allow this to decide who 'created' aesthetic theory. The British were the first to envision the possibility of a philosophical discipline, embracing the study of all the arts, one which would be, moreover, autonomous, because its subject-matter is not explicable by any other disciplines. And the British were the first to act upon and realise this programme, The argument of this paper is that the motive idea in their thinking was 'disinterestedness'.1 The argument which Stolnitz used to support his case is both rigorous and sound, although it was misinterpreted by Saisselin in his paper 'Critical Reflections on the Origins of Modern Aesthetics'.2 Stolnitz analysed the way in which the concept of disinterestedness became operative in philosophical discussions, how it transformed the terms of earlier discussions and became fundamental to contemporary notions of aesthetics. Stolnitz, pace Saisselin, made no attempt to account for the cultural conditions under which the concept could have emerged, though he suggested that `It has its roots, indeed, in contemporary controversies in ethics and religion, and only gradually does it take on the distinctly aesthetic meaning which we attach to it today'.3 Saisselin's alternative suggestion that aesthetics emerged from the quarrel between the supporters of the Ancients and Moderns while being, to my mind, more pertinent to a discussion of the cultural conditions for the emergence of aesthetics, is vitiated by his failure to consider other, nonliterary, artistic developments. In his statement that in order for aesthetics to emerge `art had to be 1 2 Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XX (1961), pp. 131-2. British Journal of Aesthetics 4 (1964) 3 Stolnitz, op. cit., p. 132. defended from religious morality and religious dogma' he was on the right track, and his argument supports Stolnitz's; but his statement that `painting lived very well with religion, and the latter perhaps was more of an issue with literature' is very wide of the mark. However important the Querelle may have been, and it was important, its importance recedes when we consider developments in the history of the visual arts during the Renaissance and Reformation. There is a very strong case for arguing that the release of the visual image into an autonomous world took precedence over the Querelle. An important feature of the Italian Renaissance was that it resulted in an efflorescence of a specialist literature on the visual arts which was quite different in quality and kind from that which had existed in Western Europe before.4 Its novelty was that, in terms of a literary format, it treated painting by itself as an intellectual activity defined in terms of its relations with the artes liberales.5 No antique or medieval artist attempted a Commentarii, as did Ghiberti; no previous writer attempted a biography like Manetti's Vita di Filippo di Ser Brunellesco and there was nothing previously comparable to Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori Italiani ; the explanation for the previous absence of this type of literature is that before the Renaissance painters and sculptors were regarded as manual workers. We know that during the middle ages, and suspect that in antiquity, there were technical manuals on the practice of painting; but these differ substantially from the types of treatise stemming from Alberti's De pictura, the first Western art theoretical text. Alberti's De pictura is particularly striking for its structural similarity to antique treatises on literature; it marked a dramatic convergence of interests between a professional humanist and practising artists.6 Alberti applied the principles of rhetoric to the analysis of painting while, at the same time, maintaining a strong interest in the ways in which the painted image created its effects. He thought that a painting should operate as a `window on to nature', that it should strive to represent `things seen' and that it should `please, instruct and move'. In short he believed that a painting should constitute an extension of the phenomenal world, and that by its contents, its istoria, it should affect human behaviour. He held that the artist should be like the scientist, optician or anatomist, who had to examine the appearance of the world, and should associate with writers, who had to study the way in which men's thought was exemplified in their behaviour; this was necessary for a simulation of reality and construction of a drama which would direct and enhance the conduct of life. It is well known that his major successor as an art theoretician was Leonardo da Vinci, who wrote: If poetry treats of moral philosophy, painting has to do with natural philosophy. If poetry describes the workings of the mind, painting considers the workings of the mind as reflected in the movements of the body. If poetry can terrify people by fictions of hell, painting can do as much by setting the same things before the eye. Suppose the poet is set against the painter to represent beauty, terror, or a base, ugly, monstrous thing, whatever the forms he may in his way produce, the painter will satisfy the more. Have we not seen pictures so closely resembling the actual thing that they have deceived both men and beasts.7 See J. Schlosser Magnlno, La letteratura artistica (1964). See P. O. Kristeller, 'The Modern System of the Arts', Journal of the History of Ideas XII (1951) and XIII (1952). 6 See M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (1971) 7 L A. Richter, ed., Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1959), p. 200. 5 4 Though Alberti had developed a theory whereby the spectator could analyse the contents of the pictorial frame, Leonardo was his peer in developing a literary vocabulary which would match the objects and processes within the field of vision,8 but both were committed to the doctrine that the proper task of art was to simulate reality; neither felt that the work of art had an autonomous existence, that it constituted its own world inherently separate from reality. Despite the critical self-consciousness of Alberti and Leonardo, the general function of painting in quattrocento Florence and, by extension, the rest of Europe was much the same as it had been for millenia. Figurative images constituted a phenomenal extension of the real world into the intangible though equally real world beyond; they carried the same perceptual burden as typically the photographic image does today. The contemporary photographic image operates as the mediator between, and document of, our own immediate environments and those which we regard as important, fascinating or interesting. The consciously constructed photographic image affects our knowledge of the world, directs our beliefs and behaviour, as well as affording pleasure; the same is true of the pre-modern use of the figurative image. As we know that the photographic image may be falsified, our criterion for accepting the authenticity of a particular image is based upon notions of temporal and physiognomic consistency. In the pre-modern world, consistency was obtained by the dominance of verbal and visual tradition which emphasised, among other things, the continuum between the physical world and the world beyond; it only needed the traditions to be shattered for the authenticity of the image to be destroyed. But at the same time, if by sheer interest in the nature of the image itself the spectator lost concern with what it represented, the authenticity of the image would become marginal to its appreciation. Behind the creation of a 'phenomenal extension of the real world' lay a commitment to the notion of the instrumental efficacy of visual imagery in the development and enhancement of human life. Frances Yates has pointed out that: In medieval theory, as laid down in particular by Thomas Aquinas, man's nature is so constituted that he cannot remember intellectual or spiritual concepts save through material images. To make him grasp an abstraction, such as the vice of avarice, one must show him the image of a miser, perhaps holding a bag of money, an avaricious man. To indicate to him an abstraction such as the virtue of charity, one must show him an attractive human figure, a woman, exemplifying or exercising this virtue. These are very simple examples of the principle of teaching man about the intelligibilia through the sensibilia which is at the root of medieval didactic art. To make man fear and avoid the sins which lead him to hell, one shows him hateful images of sins and the great doom paintings or sculptures of the Last Judgement with their countless figures of the damned. Or to lead him towards paradise, one shows the glorious vision of the life of the blessed in heaven, the reward of virtue. The imagination is allowed to form material images, images from the world of sense, because it is only through such images that man can be taught, and made to remember, the higher intelligible truths.9 But, and this is a point that Yates did not make, the efficacy of pre-modern figurative arts rested upon a particular psychological effect of their substitutional nature. The principle of substitution has 8 9 See V. P. Zubov, Leonardo da Vinci (1968), pp. 75-6. F. Yates, 'Broken Images', New York Review of Books, 21/19 (1974), p. 23. been elaborated at length by Gombrich and Bernheimer;10 as the latter pointed out, `the function most akin to representation is not, as the semanticists suppose, that of signification, but the much neglected and little known one of substitution'.11 If, as I believe, Bernheimer was correct, the difference between ancient and modem approaches towards the figurative arts lies in the way in which the figurative image as substitute was accepted and appreciated. The figurative arts were a potent means of directing human conduct through a re-ordering of mental and physical space. A number of good stories would illustrate the pre-modern mentality, but we will have to rest content with that of St. Nilus, who recounted the miraculous rescue of two men who addressed prayers to St. Plato: Both of them had their prayers heard, the father in his cave on the mountain, the son in captivity, and behold, our Plato suddenly appeared on horseback before the young man who was then awake, bringing along another horse without a rider. The young man recognized the Saint because be had often seen his portrait on images. Straightaway [Plato] ordered him to arise from among all the other [captives], and to mount the horse; his fetters fell apart like a spider's web, and he alone was delivered by virtue of his prayer.... 12 For us, this story's interest lies not in the ancient existence of miracles but in a mutual interaction of fantasy, figurative image and reality. St. Nilus said that the young man recognized Plato from his picture; this is significant testimony to the perceptual and ontological status of the figurative arts in the pre-modern world; either they were treated as authentic representations or as lies. Neither the visual products of the imagination nor their concrete embodiment in the figurative arts were assigned the status of fiction as we understand it today. Given widespread belief in the authenticity of visions and the efficacy of image-magic, the viability of a constructive notion of fiction was fundamentally undermined. The figurative arts presented pictures of reality which could be accepted as right or wrong, but never as neither. The notion of fiction paved the way for disinterested interest, but it did not become a subject for serious enquiry until the eighteenth century, especially in the writings of Addison and Burke. Before aesthetics could emerge, the social function of art had to change; the type of story represented by St. Nilus would have to lose its credibility and the medieval link between intelligibilia and sensibilia would have to be broken or reduced to play. The figurative arts played the same instrumental role in men's public and private lives in quattrocento Florence as they had before; the confusion of realities was as strong as ever. But it is well known that in Florence a major change occurred affecting the social status of the artist and the terms of artistic patronage.13 Through the quattrocento, patrons' interests in an artistic product shifted from concern with its quality, as a piece of workmanship, to its character as a display of mental ingenuity; this change in style of patronage was given added impetus by notions of artistic progress shared by artists and professional humanists.14 The notion of works of art as dimonstrazioni came to a head in the cinquecento with the phenomenon known as Mannerism,15 and it has been E. R Gombrich, `Meditations on a Hobby Horse or the Roots of Artistic Form', in Meditations on a Hobby Horse (1963), and R. Bernheimer, The Nature of Representation (1961). 11 Bernheimer, op. cit., pp. 24-5. 12 10 C. Mango, ed., The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453 (1972), p. 40. See M. Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (1972), and D. S. Chambers, ed., Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance (1970). See E. H. Gombrich, `The Renaissance Conception of Artistic Progress and its Consequences', in Norm and Form (1966). 15 See J. Shearman, Mannerism (1967). 14 13 argued by the Marxist historian Hauser, that the changed commodity function of art, initiated in the quattrocento and realized in Mannerism, marked the emergence of modern art.16 We have already noted that for Alberti and Leonardo, two prime representatives of quattrocento Florentine culture, although the figurative arts were to be respected for their intellectual character they, nevertheless, constituted an extension of the phenomenal world. We must now examine the claim that Mannerism created a break between the phenomenal worlds of art and the spectator, producing the attitude of disinterested interest. Mannerism is still a subject of heated debate amongst art historians, despite the wealth of literature published on it in the past five decades. Some historians have seen Mannerism as constituting a retreat from the `objective reality' of the high Renaissance into a subjective form of mysticism, embodying a state of alienation from the realities of mundane life; others have seen it as encapsulating notions of refinement and virtuosity, in an appeal to the visual interests of a learned élite of patrons; these two types of explanation are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Whether or not there was a profound spiritual crisis after the Sack of Rome, which is doubtful, it is nevertheless true that mysticism was still present and that it was given fashion- ability by the brand of Neoplatonism which had been forged by Marsilio Ficino and his circle in Florence in the quattrocento.17 Although Ficino never gave much consideration to the visual arts, it is clear from his writings that the figurative image could exercise a powerful contemplative function in placing the spectator in contact with the divine world;18 for Ficino, the universe operated by a hierarchic series of analogic emanations from God regulated by magical ties. While he subscribed to the doctrine of different levels of perception, as did his mystical predecessors,19 he, like them, believed in their ultimate interrelation. If any Mannerist art could be construed as embodying mystical inclinations, this would have been quite in keeping with fashionable interests in Neoplatonism. Although there was some talk by Mannerist theoreticians of the artist creating `new worlds', those new worlds were intended to bear a direct ontological relationship to our own; it is striking that Lomazzo's Trattato dell'Arte della Pittura, which Schlosser described as Mannerism's `vera Bibbia', was cast within the mould of hermetic magic.20 As a form of artistic virtuosity Mannerism appealed to spectators' sense of ingenuity; neither artist nor spectator would have made sense, however, of the notion that a proper response to art was one of disinterested interest. Virtuosity was still a game which could be played within the traditional framework of the creation of `a phenomenal extension of the real world'. We are, perhaps, too caught up with the classicist norm of a `rational construction of space' to credit the dramatic efficacy of Mannerist images and too historicist to appreciate the sense of continuity and literary tradition which lay behind the `novelty' of Mannerist subjects. While it may be granted that in the cinquecento the artist emerged as a specially gifted person, whose creations could be regarded as intellectually rewarding and placed on a par with those of the writer, there is little evidence to show that perceptual habits had changed and that the spectator did not fuse his interests in the figurative image with the fictitious and powerful world of his imagination. Mannerist 16 17 A. Hauser, Der Manierismus (1964). See E. Panofsky, 'The Neoplatonic Movement in Florence and North Italy in Studies in Iconology (1967). See E. H. Gombrich, 'Botticelli's Mythologies: A Study in the Neo-Platonic Symbolism of his Circle', in Symbolic Images (1972). 19 E.g. St. Bonaventura, Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum. 20 G. M. Ackerman, The Structure of Lomazzo's Treatise on Painting (1964) and R. Klein, "'La sept gouverneurs de l'art" selon Lomazzo', in La forme et l'intelligible (1970). 18 art, with its emphasis on the appreciation of artistic virtuosity, was important for the impetus which it gave to a critical approach towards the figurative arts, but a more powerful and traumatic phenomenon was needed for the detached spectator to come into being. It is historically important that at the same time that Mannerist works of art were growing in popularity the Italian church was engaged in a counter-reform movement as a reaction to the Protestant reformation. The Protestant reformation was accompanied by a wave of destruction of Christian devotional objects which had, hitherto, been unknown in Western Europe and only matched by the much earlier activities of the Byzantine iconoclasts.21 The motives of the Protestant iconoclasts were many and varied, extending from piety, through hostility to papal institutions, to unadulterated greed; the intention lay in an attack on superstition and a preoccupation with the world of sense to the neglect of true piety. The leading Protestant theologians, whatever their particular doctrinal differences may have been, were united in their attack on idolatry; they were particularly critical of the arguments which had traditionally been used in defence of Christian figurative art Contrary to St. Gregory,22 they maintained that visual imagery could not, of itself, instruct and that if it were to be tolerated at all, it should take second place to the study of the Word of God as revealed in the Bible. Contrary to the decisions of the Second Council of Nicaea,23 they were not prepared to accept any form of veneration of religious art and regarded the distinction between latria and doulia as functionally meaningless. Contrary to late medieval devotional practice,24 they were not prepared to accept art's inspirational function, but regarded images as materially corrupt through being a product of sense, resulting in undesirable anthropomorphism. For the Protestants, an unbridg eable gap lay between the world of man and the world of God, and the construction and veneration of visual imagery represented an unwonted attempt to breach that gap which constituted false belief. Protestantism was, initially, responsible for the disruption of figurative art's function as a `phenomenal extension of the real world'. When iconoclasts did not physically destroy works of art, they shattered men's beliefs about them by emphasizing their falsity and lack of inherent utility; images could not be made of the unknown and they were redundant as mediators. The Protestant attack on images was integrally connected with a decline in belief in magic in general and imagemagic in particular.25 In direct response to Protestant iconoclasm, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the utility of figurative art: The holy council commands ... that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints are to be placed and retained especially in the churches, and that due honour and veneration is to be given them; not, however, that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them by reason of which they are to be venerated, or that something is to be asked of them, or that trust is to be placed in them, as was done of old by the Gentiles who placed their hope in idols; but because the honour which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which they represent, so that by means of the images which we kiss and See J. Phillips, The Reformation of Images (1974) and `Reformation and Counter- Reformation' in Encyclopaedia of World Art, vol. XI (1966). 22 Letter to Bishop Serenus of Marseille. 23 See E. J. Martin, A History of the Iconoclastic Controversy (1930). 24 21 See S. Ringbom, Icon to Narrative (1965). 25 See K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) and also D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell (1963). before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear. That is what was defined by the decrees of the Councils, especially the Second Council of Nicaea, against the opponents of images .26 In the interest of maintaining belief in the divine and intercessory order, the Council intimated a need for an affective relation between image and spectator; the response of such concerned clerics as the Cardinal Paleotti was to call for a form of imagery which would make a direct emotional impact on the spectator.27 It is likely that the implementation of the Council's decree adversely affected patronage of Mannerist art within the milieu of the Church as patrons were inclined to be antipathetic to the exercise of artistic licence in the interpretation of religious themes, both in terms of subject-matter and style. In terms of habits of patronage, a sharp division occurred between paintings which were appropriately secular and religious; consequently, a much more rigorous sense of history emerged and, along with it, a change in attitude towards cosmological space. Italian Catholics were not unaffected by the literary warfare which formed an integral part of the Reformation. In particular, many leading Catholic intellectuals were influenced by the views of Erasmus, even though he suffered in the hands of the Index.28 Erasmus launched a scathing attack on the popular misuse of images, but he also laid bare the origins of Christian art in its assimilation of paganism, implicitly criticizing the practice of Italian artists: And if someone were to adorn our churches with statues similar to those with which Lysippus once adorned the temples of the gods, would you say that he is similar to Lysippus? No. Why not? Because the symbols would not correspond to the things symbolized. I would say the sanie if somebody were to paint a donkey in the guise of a buffalo or a hawk in the guise of a cuckoo, even if he had otherwise expended the greatest care and artistry upon that panel.29 If the artists of the Renaissance had happily produced mythological paintings, knowing that they would be subject to Christian allegorization, they could now be accused of producing something other than Christian paintings, and their motives could be found suspect. More importantly, Erasmus helped shatter the traditional fabric of visual imagery by drawing attention to, what may be regarded with hindsight, as a perversion of thought. From one point of view, the history of medieval and renaissance art may be regarded as the history of the use, and misuse, of classical art which provided both style and content for later images.30 Thanks to the work of the Warburg Institute, we are now in a position to begin to define the classical contribution to the shape of the medieval and renaissance universe, a universe which was not simply inhabited by God, but by the gods as well as a host of demons. The philosophy of Neoplatonism, which operated as the mainstay of esoteric Mannerist art and reflected a renaissance commitment to the unity of antique experience, came under the fire of critics of a magical universe. Intellectuals may well have begun to wonder what they were looking at when they saw classical personages entering Christian paintings, and may well R. Klein and H. Zerner, eds., Italian Art 1500-1600, p. 120. See A. W. A. Boschloo, Annibale Carracci in Bologna: Visible Reality in Art after the Council of Trent, 2 vols. (1974). 28 See for example D. Freedberg, 'Johannes Molanus on Provocative Paintings', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 34 (1971), pp. 232 ff. 27 26 E. Panofsky, 'Erasmus and the Visual Arts', JWCI, 32 (1969), p. 213. E. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1965), and J. Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (1953). 30 29 have begun to differentiate between levels of mythical, historical and actual experience. Despite the angst of intellectuals, artists worked on. I would tend to agree with Boschloo31 in seeing the counter-reformation as the stimulant to the `Reform of Painting' initiated by Annibale Carracci, so lauded by Bellori.32 The decline of Mannerism did not result in a decline in the appreciation of artistic virtuosity; indeed quite the reverse happened; the birth of caricature, one of Annibale's lasting achievements, marked the emergence of a new form of sensibility and a radically new approach towards virtuosity among the type of cultivated élite that had encouraged Mannerism. The relationship between Annibale's stylistic revolution and his invention of caricature has yet to be examined, but Gombrich and Kris have already pointed out that: it must come as a surprise even to his admirers that the master of such sublime and classical pictures should at the same time have been responsible for the invention not only of the art but of the very word 'caricature'. Carracci himself is credited with a witty and clever defence of this activity of his. 'Is not the caricaturist's task', he is reported to have said, 'exactly the same as the classical artist's? Both see the lasting truth beneath the surface of mere outward appearance. Both try to help nature accomplish its plan. The one may strive to visualise the perfect form and to realise it in his work, the other to grasp the perfect deformity, and thus reveal the very essence of a personality. A good caricature, like every work of art, is more true to life than reality itself.'33 Taken together with their observation that for the emergence of the caricature to occur the pictorial representation had to be removed from the sphere where image stimulates action. Once the artist's prerogative as a dreamer of dreams was asserted the sophisticated art lover of the seventeenth century would be flattered rather than hurt to look at his countenance in the distorting mirror of the great artist's mocking mind,34 it becomes clear that there was a major revolution in responses to the figurative arts in the cinquecento. When Erasmus disapproved of realistic representations of heaven and hell, down to the last detail, as if the artist 'had dwelt there for many years',35 he clearly had in mind a criterion of authenticity which would delimit areas of appropriateness in pictorial representation. Given a situation where the bounds of authenticity were marked out, and appropriate responses to particular images became determined by social convention, the creative function of the artist's imagination could become appreciated. Bellori could appreciate Annibale Carracci since he was clear that Annibale did not portray the actual (as did Caravaggio) or the fantastic (as did Giuseppe d'Arpino, and the Mannerists) but the ideal, which was a product of his artistic imagination linked to a clear understanding of the bounds of art. It is not likely that the Protestant Reformation by itself brought about a disinterested interest in works of art. Although Erasmus, for example, was highly critical of the ways in which visual images were used, by the common herd in particular, he did not have the same sensibility Boschloo, op. cit. G. P. Bellori, The Lives of Annibale & Agostino Carracci, trans. C. Enggass, (1968), pp. 5-6. 33 E. H. Gombrich and E. Kris, Caricature (1940), pp. 10-12. 34 E. Kris (in collaboration with E. H. Gombrich), 'The Principles of Caricature' in Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (1974), p. 202. 35 E. Panofsky, 'Erasmus and the Visual Arts', p. 209. 32 31 towards the figurative arts as the Italian patrons who nurtured Mannerism. Neither is it likely that Mannerism, of itself, would have led to a disinterested interest in works of art; whether or not the Mannerist was a 'dreamer of dreams', he believed in the ultimate reality of his dream world. But it may be argued that Protestantism created the setting for the 'sophisticated art lover', with his repertoire of skills in visual analysis, to break loose from beliefs in the functional efficacy of works of art, capitalising on notions of artistic creativity forged by the theorists of Mannerism.36 It may seem strange that a sophisticated Italian Roman Catholic élite of patrons should have been so affected by Protestantism as to accept the notion of art's fictionality, but this was a situation forced upon them by the Counter-Reformation, by its insistence on a fundamental change in cultural values. The patrons enjoyed the exercise of artistic skill, implicit in Mannerism, and this was transformed by a rigid separation of religious art, which should affect behaviour in ways determined by the Council of Trent, and secular art, which became the province of sheer enjoyment; such a separation did not exist in the quattrocento. As a general social phenomenon ancient beliefs in image-magic were fast declining in the cinquecento and with them the belief that art constituted 'a phenomenal extension of the real world'. The mystical world of the quattrocento, where it was believed that the artist simply extended the domain of the real world to incorporate the divine, gave way to the critical world of the cinquecento, where Protestants subjected the existence of the divine world to severe scrutiny. The great Baroque ceiling paintings of the seicento constituted a last-ditch stand on the part of the Catholic Church to capture the public's imagination with visions of heaven, and it was selfconsciously dramatic; in this connection Rubens's remarks are apposite : Otto Venius often used to say to us: let your compositions be in accordance with customs and the times, ... imitate in this respect tragedy, which is the sister of painting. He would also say that the aim of painting is at once to enlighten the mind and delude the eyes, and that this illusion which is caused in the eyes is based on their very functioning; the eyes themselves have learnt how to be deceived.37 Rubens's sense of artistic deception was not novel, as readers of Plato and Augustine well know, but what was new was his sense of the necessity of deception and the bounds of fictionality; he could play the illusionistic game with the consent of his patrons, because they knew what was real and what was not only the hoi poloi could be deceived, and was he not a Catholic diplomat? The release of art from its phenomenal bondage to the divine world paved the way for the emergence of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline in the homes of Protestantism, England and Germany But an account of the ways in which the artistic and theological issues generated by the cinquecento became absorbed into philosophical literature and resulted in an autonomous province of intellectual enquiry will have to be left to another occasion. See E. Panofsky, Idea, trans. J. J. S. Peake, (1968) and E S. Barelli, Teorici e scrittori d'arte tra manierismo e barocco (1966). 37 P. Rubens, Leçons, ed. Broussart, (1858), p. 119. 36