In this presentation, we'll discuss the transition
from the late Middle Ages to the age of humanism,
from the 14th century to the 15th century
and we will discuss the passage from a God-centric
world (so we explored the cultural geography
of the late Middle Ages) to a new man-centered
world.
We'll explore the new geography of the courts
that shape the Italian territory.
Now to start from the medieval geography,
I just want to give you a sense, again starting
from the different maps of Europe, of how
much space and the imagination of space is
shaped by an understanding of world as given
by God.
So, for example, if we observe the map of
Europe (and this is something that is still
very much present today) we will see that
there is a very particular line, which is
called the Saint Michael Line, which is composed
of several points that are lined up, several
dots that basically crisscross the geography
of Europe, from Ireland to the Holy Land,
from the Skellig
Michael in Ireland to Saint Michael's mount
(the famous Mont Saint Michel
in northern France), from the Sacra di San
Michele, which is a very imposing church near
the Alps to the Sanctuary of Saint Michael
the Archangel in the southern region of Puglia
and ending to the Saint Michael on Mount Carmel
in
the Holy Land.
So, this is the mental geography of a territory
that has been given by God and defended by
the Archangel Michael.
Now the geography of Europe in the late Middle
Ages is also characterized by two main routes:
one is the route of the pilgrimage to Santiago
de Compostela, a route that starts from four
different points in France and basically unites
in northern Spain to the westernmost point
Santiago de Compostela, which is very near
Finisterre (the end of the known world).
In addition to the Camino de Santiago, the
pilgrimage to the relics of Saint James the
Apostle, the other route that moves European
peoples is actually the route that leads to
the second pilgrimage - to Rome - moving from
northern Europe (England and France) and getting
toward the Italian peninsula.
This is called La via Francigena.
Still nowadays, it is a series of posts that
are lined up as a way to create a mental itinerary,
a kind of divine geography.
In addition to these two routes, the third
route - of the most important pilgrimage for
the medieval world - is the route to Jerusalem,
which is open by the Crusades.
So the acts of war, the campaigns of war to
free the Holy Land actually open up a path
for a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem.
Now, if you observe Italy during this time,
still in the 14th century and the 15th, a
few cities emerged, some from a very long
tradition.
So the city of Bologna is the city where the
first University was founded in 1088.
It’s the first university ever.
There was a large component of faculty that
was dedicated to the study of law and out
of the city of Bologna the University of Padua
was founded as an extension in year 1222.
In addition to Padua and Bologna, the Italian
peninsula was also the site of a third very
important university, which was founded in
1224 by the emperor Frederick II that we discussed
in previous presentations.
The other important city is Assisi, the city
of Saint Francis, the city where a religious
renewal was moving forth, the renewal brought
forth by the Franciscan order.
Also the city of Padua was important for the
religious geography because of the presence
of Saint Anthony, who is also another very
important and beloved saint.
In addition, the most important saint of the
late Middle Ages and early modern age is actually
Saint Catherine of Siena, who is another reformer
who actually managed to bring back the papacy
(which was held in its captivity in Avignon
in France) back to Rome.
Now within this context we have to remember
that the understanding of the word still in
the 15th century is the understanding of a
god-centered world.
This is the map of Europe and of the world
as a globe or a circle divided in three parts
- being Asia the one half of it and Europe
and Africa the two
remaining quarters - but a world that is shaped
around a Tao or cross, whose center is the
city of Jerusalem.
Within this understanding of a God-centric
world, the Middle Ages also understand life
on earth as a labyrinth, as you will see in
some medieval cathedrals (like the Cathedral
of Chartres in France), a labyrinth that ends
in a center which lines up, for example in
a church, with the Tabernacle, which is the
site where the presence of the Eucharist is
held.
Now the medieval world is also a world that
is subject to a final judgment.
We see in many medieval churches the representation
of a final judgment, where Christ will judge
the works of man on earth and will divide
the blessed from the damned.
This is also the content of Dante's Divine
Comedy, of the three canticas of the Divine
Comedy: Inferno, for the souls that are damned,
Purgatory for the souls that still need to
work their way to salvation, and Paradise,
which is the site of the Blessed souls.
Now the fact that the Middle Ages was a God-centric
world does not preclude the fact that there
was a secular world, opposed to kind of a
religious view or a God-centric society dominated
by the church.
So, there is a secular world in the Middle
Ages, but the word secular actually means
‘the age’.
So the secular world was the world of the
saeculum, the world of the present.
It's a world that operates and informs the
life of cities and the administration of cities.
So this is the city of Siena, which became
very prominent during the Middle Ages.
In the city of Siena there is a very important
reflection, also a visual, pictorial representation
of the secular power.
For example, in Simon Martini’s famous fresco
dedicated to the hero Guidoriccio da Fogliano.
In Siena, there is also a very important representation
in the city palace of the good and the bad
government, in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s famous
pictorial allegory.
Now the city of Siena became very rich at
the end of the fifteenth century not only
because of trade but also because of the first
invention of what we call now the bank.
So, toward the end of the Middle Ages, the
idea of borrowing money for interests was
less and less considered usury - so a capital
sin - and more and more placed within a reasonable
interest rate, which was considered acceptable.
This generates a structure, an institution,
like the banks that allows to fund trade,
fund production or manufacture and create
an immense wealth in the city.
Mostly the city of Siena, but also Florence,
where the Peruzzi were great bankers, and
the city of Milano.
You will see that in many cities in the world
you will find a Lombard Street in honor of
the ability in trade of the Lombards.
So people from Milano.
Now within this context, humanism develops
not from one day to the other, but as a slow
process that is in the same tracks of this
medieval culture that we described.
We talked about the age of discoveries, but
humanism is a culture that engenders a shift
from a God-centric to a man-centric world.
Three are the main passages that humanism
trickles.
On the one hand, it starts with the rediscovery
of ancient codices and texts from the Roman
and later Greek literature, which are mainly
focused on the understanding of the human
dignity, of a world, like the ancient world,
that is anthropocentric.
We understand through these texts the maturation
of an understanding of man as the central
actor of history.
So no longer the saint as the protagonist
of history, but the Divo, like the man-God
who makes himself the center and the protagonist
of history.
This does not eliminate religion or the religious
dimension of experience, but it causes a shift
in the self-understanding, in the self-awareness
of man.
This world, that is, anthropocentric, that
is revolving around the protagonism of men,
is a world that is shaped around men and his
place, within a very rationalized and idealized
space of his own self fashioning.
Now this is the world that has man as the
vanishing point of everything, is the world
that discovers perspective.
Perspective is a geometric structure that
was discovered in the 15th century, we'll
talk about it later, a structure that places
man within a geometry or a rational order,
or what we call an ideal city.
So a city where geometric or symmetric shapes
give rise to a world that is somewhat idealized
under the idea of a man that has reached his
perfection.
A man that inhabits a space that is ruled
by
reason, rationality, harmony, and geometry.
A world that an ideal man inhabits and in
this sense I go back to the image of Leonardo
of the so-called Vitruvian man, of a body
that is perfectly inscribed within a circle
and a square.
This is an idealized projection of the human
body which does not necessarily happen (our
body is not as perfect and as proportioned
as in the representation by Leonardo) but
this representation is very important because
it retrieves the Greek ideal of the proportions
of the body, of the mathematical proportions
of the body, and engenders the tension to
create man as the center of everything, of
a rationalized space and a rationalized or
idealized setting.
This is also the time when we see a reconversion
of the old systems of power from the Middle
Ages to new systems, from the old structure
of the castle to the idea of the court.
The castle had a defensive function, whereas
the court becomes the site of cultural life
and the creation, of the fashioning of men's
new understanding of himself as a protagonist
of the world.
At the same time, we see a shift from the
old system (in several cities especially of
the North) of the communes, to the Signoria,
that is the city ruled by a signore, Lord,
that gives the city its shape and impresses
upon it his own unique personality.
So the city is an ideal reflection of the
Lord's unique personality.
Now the city-states stop to become very fragmented
and very territorial and a few signorie emerge
on the Italian territory, in particular, Milano,
Mantova, Ferrara, Urbino, and Florence.
There is a particular case that we'll discuss
that is the case of Venice, which will develop
as an experiment of a republic rather than
of a Signoria.
This is the court of Ferrara (the Este family
reconverts the old idea of the castle as a
defensive place into a court, where a cultural
life can happen).
Ferrara will become one of the centers of
cultural imagination during the 15th and 16th
centuries.
With Ferrara, the city of Urbino, which still
nowadays hosts one of the most marvelous ducal
palaces in Italy, which was designed by Laurana
and commissioned by the duke of Montefeltro,
Federico da Montefeltro, who wanted to impress
upon the city his own unique imprint, not
just for his own age (so the present, the
saeculum, the secular age), but also for future
generations to see.
This is one of those courts that inevitably
leads the viewer, the visitor to really stop
and watch and marvel at the personality, at
the temperament of its maker, its Lord.
With Urbino and Ferrara, one of the most important
ducal palaces in Italy is in the city of Mantua,
now in the region of Lombardy, where the Gonzaga
family acquired an incredible power that was
then reconverted into the design of the city
around their own unique personality.
Actually, the megalomania and the power of
the Gonzaga family is not manifested just
through the buildings of the ducal palace
but most importantly through the palazzo del
Te, so the palace for the leisure of the Gonzaga
family.
This palace is quite simply extraordinary
and gives the sense - in its geometry and
its rational planning – of a world that
is completely measured and rationalized around
man's needs and man's personality.
With Mantova, Urbino, and Ferrara, another
castle that becomes a prominent Court is the
one of the Sforza family, modeled on the one
by the Visconti family in the city of Pavia,
one hour south of Milano.
The Sforza castle in Milano, now in downtown
Milano, is really a space where the interior
of the castle becomes the site of cultural
life, commissions and hosting to great artists
who gave glory to the lord of the city through
their work.
In the Sforza castle, Leonardo lived and worked
for many years, reshaping the urban configuration
of the city of Milano and working on some
great masterpieces that we'll discuss.
Together with Leonardo, Donato Bramante the
architect, one of the greatest architects
of the age, was hosted in the castle, lives
and operates in the city of Milano.
In particularly Bramante will work on one
of the most stunning examples of illusions
in the architectural perspective in the Church
of Saint Satire, now in Center City Milano,
which has a flat apse, which however gives
the impression of depth through a particular
game of perspective.
Both Leonardo and Bramante worked in the Church
of Santa Maria delle grazie and Bramante was
the author of a particular kind of dome covering
the church.
In the church of Santa Maria delle grazie
Leonardo worked at his most renowned masterpiece,
The Last Supper.
As you can see the Last Supper is a painting
that reflects no longer a bidimensional, flat
reality, but rather a reality that is breaking
this bi-dimensionality and opening up to a
vanishing point.
So the idea of perspective like the vanishing
point where all the lines tend toward and
meet.
Speaking of ducal palaces, we have to add
also the ducal Palace of Venice, which was
the site of La Serenissima (the brightest)
Republic and was the site of the Doge (the
leader of the city).
The ducal Palace was the site of a power that
did not necessarily belong to a Lord but belonged
to an aristocracy of people that ruled, kind
of an oligarchy, that ruled the city of Venice.
Now, the city of Venice was in a particular
condition of independence, being a republic,
an oligarchy, guaranteeing the city more flexibility,
more independence and even more freedom of
expressing thought, without being punished
by the Lord in case of disagreement.
The city of Venice was actually the ideal
site for the development of the publishing
industry.
Aldo Manuzio was the most important
designer and publisher of books in the new
form opened up by Gutenberg after and the
invention of the printing press in 1453.
Not only the mastering of the new technique
of the printing press made Manuzio famous,
but also the ability given by the city of
Venice to publish many texts of different
forms and allowing a more open, a freer circulation
of ideas.
What you see is one of the pages of a book
designed by Manuzio.
One of his designers, Griffo, is actually
the inventor of italics, of the font italics.
Now, the most important Signoria of the 15th
century is actually the city of Firenze (Florence),
which became really a cradle of intellectuals
and artists that shaped this new understanding
of the world as a projection of man's new
authority and new protagonism.
As we were saying, this discovery of man's
protagonism and man’s centrality comes from
a philological rediscovery of Latin classical
text by humanists, the most important one
of them is Poggio Bracciolini.
The rediscovery of Latin literature is the
rediscovery of a leadership that focused on
an anthropocentric world and its values.
At the same time, we discussed the fall of
Constantinople in 1453.
It is actually very important, because the
remaining Greek intellectuals that were working
in Constantinople were forced to leave the
city and escape to the western part of Europe.
Many of them actually escaped to Florence
and communicated to Florentine intellectuals
the knowledge of the Greek language and philosophy.
One of the most important philosophers of
the age, Marsilio Ficino, is related to the
rediscovery of Platonism, in particular the
idea of Neoplatonism, a new version of the
philosophy of Plato.
Another important intellectual is Poliziano,
who worked on the Fable of Orpheus and on
the Stanze della giostra, the celebration
of the joust of the city, which were two important
pieces not just to celebrate the new life,
cultural life of the city of Florence, seen
as a new Athens, but also as the launching
point of the rediscovery of the myth of Orpheus,
which will then become, in the 17th century,
the founding myth for the birth of opera.
The first opera by Monteverdi is dedicated
to Orpheus himself.
Among the intellectuals in Florence it's important
to mention the polymath, intellectual and
polyglot philosopher Pico della Mirandola,
who delivered in 1486 one of the most important
speeches that will remain as a kernel for
the new understanding of man's dignity and
man's new protagonism in the world.
This piece on the dignity of man will remain
a sort of the manifesto of Humanism.
All these intellectuals were all working for
the lord of the city, whom you certainly have
heard of.
His name is Lorenzo de Medici, known as Il
magnifico, the magnificent, who ruled over
the city for several decades and who was a
poet himself.
The celebration of this new age of rebirth
and this new youth, this Renaissance, or rebirth
of the city was synthesized in one of his
most famous poems for the carnival, celebrating
the beauty of youth.
Quanto é bella giovinezza che si fugge tuttavia;
chi vuol essere lieto sia, di doman non v’è
certezza How beautiful is youth, which however
escapes.
Who want to be merry, be it!
There's no certainty about tomorrow.
So this is kind of a synthesis of the carpe
diem philosophy of an age that sees itself
in its rebirth and its peak.
Now the rebirth of the city is not just an
intellectual rebirth but also a rebirth in
the arts.
All the arts tend to celebrate this new configuration
of the city as the ideal space for man's self-projection.
The arts are meant in Florence to celebrate
the glory of the Medici family and give rise
to some of the most glorious pieces that visitors
continue to see nowadays.
Artists in various fields: like Luca Della
Robbia in the fields of porcelain.
The incredible artistry of Lorenzo Ghiberti
in sculpting real gold and jewelry (Ghiberti
is the author of the Paradise gate, the door
of the baptistry of Florence, all in gold,
depicting scenes of the life of Christ).
Among the great artists of the 15th century,
of course, we have to name the great painter
Masaccio and his Brancacci chapel, which is
still nowadays one of the most important pieces
of the new idea of art and painting, generated
by the discovery of perspective.
This is the famous tribute scene by Masaccio,
focusing in central perspective on the figure
of Christ.
Masaccio is also the author of the famous
Trinity in the Church of Santa Maria Novella
in Florence, which is a painting structured
around the geometrical figure of the triangle,
where the figures are lined up around this
geometry.
The world that humanists inhabit is a world
that is inherently geometric, rationalized,
a space that no longer entails a dark unknown.
Among the artists of Florence also Donatello
needs to be mentioned with regard to sculpture.
Donatello is the author of one of the first
figures of David, a theme that will be recovered
over the following centuries, especially by
Michelangelo and later Bernini.
In Florence, there is also an architectural
culture that develops which gives rise to
some of the most important achievements of
Western culture.
One of them is related to the architect and
sculptor Filippo Brunelleschi who was involved
as an artisan both in the planning of buildings
and in their creation.
He was also a sculptor involved with the actual
building of these pieces.
He is the author of the self-supporting dome
of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Cathedral of
Florence, which is one of the most iconic
sites of the city.
The model for this dome is not just geometry,
so the application of geometry to the feat
of covering a hole inside the church that
had an immense diameter (this is still the
largest dome in brick and mortar in in the
world).
It's actually a double dome constructed through
a particular system based on the model of
Rome's Pantheon.
So once again the rediscovery of the classical
heritage as a way to reinvent it in new forms.
Brunelleschi is also the architect in Florence
of the hospital of innocents, created on a
proportion of figures that are lined up in
the attempt to create a perspective, so a
movement of a three-dimensional space.
Not a flat space but a more profound movement.
Now, in the architectural culture of Florence,
we also have to mention Leon Battista Alberti,
who was again another polymath writer, humanist,
poet, but also architect.
Leon Battista Alberti is the author of the
De pictura, which is the text that actually
argues and discovers the whole theory of perspective
that we talked about, that we discussed.
He also wrote a text De Re Aedificatoria,
a latin text on building, which entails the
rediscovery of the treatise by the most important
Roman architect Vitruvius.
We talked about the Vitruvian Man earlier.
The name comes from Vitruvius, one of the,
if not the most important architect in ancient
Rome and author of the treatise De architectura,
on architecture, that was the base for the
rediscovery of certain ways of building.
Now Leon Battista Alberti is the author of
the façade of the church of Santa Maria Novella
in Florence, and, as you can see, the façade
is structured around the idea of geometry,
creating emotions through the harmony, the
symmetry of geometry.
This concludes our presentation because it
gives us the sense of a new world that is
no longer a labyrinth, as we saw earlier,
an unknown path with many folds that might
lead somewhere else and that conduces at the
end of a long tortuous walking to the center,
to the judgment, but this is a new world that
instead projects man’s reason, man’s abstract
mathematical calculations on the reality that
surrounds him and so we see this as the key
of a new understanding of the world where
man again is the center.
