Writings
The Renaissance is a revival of the classical culture and philosophy. The writings of Plato and Aristotle are rediscovered. Art is making large steps in the development to skill. The use of classical mythological figures starts to show up in artwork, projecting symbolic meanings. “Renaissance touches the soul in its rebirth fantasy, around which a good deal of passion and symbolism always constellates. The Renaissance is a fantasy” (Hillman, 194). Fantasy/imagination triggers the curiosity of individuals to explore in all facets of life. It is imagination which enables classical culture to synthesize with the Christian society of the time.
Plato’s writings were replacing the dry Aristotle philosophy with the greater ability to mode it into Christian theology. The subjects that where brought into discussion were “the contents of the intellectual imagination […this leads to] an exercise of imagination” (Hillman, 194). The only branching off from Plato’s thoughts on the Higher Forms is that of art as part of the lowest Forms, part of illusion. ”Plotinus departs from Plato in two major points: art is imagination”, the other being the concept of beauty in terms of proportion and symmetry (Williams, 31). Where Plato has the concept of the Dividing Line, Plotinus has a hierarchy of goodness. Everything created is good and beauty in gradations. In this division of levels, “any beauty, even the most physical, is an emanation of the One” (Williams, 33). The One, in Christian theology, being God-the creator; in his line of thought, all things have the desire to return to the One, the beginning. Art is applied in the concept of beauty here, making it a reflection of the One. Art in the Renaissance is raised from the lowest placement in society to a height that “rival [the] highest achievement of philosophy and theology” (Williams, 34).
With the development of Plotinus philosophy (with its foundation is Platonism), the Renaissance revives its perception of different aspects of society, this being called Neo-Platonism. Art varies off its highly religious themes to secular. Exemplified in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the usage of mythology is intergraded in the Renaissance with imagination. “Neoplatonism’s integration of astrology and inclusion of the pagan gods in the hierarchy of reality, Renaissance Humanists began employing the pantheon of planetary deities as modes of imagination” (Tarnar, 215). A new depiction of things nonreligious and/or historical, turning from Istoria to Poesie, the less serious of factual significance appears. The medieval world “Needs to build again rich and fantastic psychologies such as classical mythology […] The imagination of our culture calls for a culture of the imagination” (Hillman, 225). Cultivating the imagination leads to the rich legacy that we now have in art. “The artist’s products are beautiful by virtues of the intentions they reflect- the idea in the artist’s mind” (Williams, 34). These messages are embedded in the signs and symbols of the classical mythological figures.
Found in these figures form Greco-Roman mythologies are the embodiments of several archetypes that are still embedded in our culture. The archetype of the imagination is thought to be the language of the soul (Hillman, 195). The various meanings placed on the polytheistic gods/goddesses come into art as means to make statement of the artist, which mostly can be said to be a critique of human behavior and society in a whole. Classical mythology emerges in to the Renaissance and becomes “regarded as the noble religious truth”; the uses of which is then “restored as [a] symbol” in art (Tarnar, 215). The use of such mythologies characters in order to express the idea within the artist mind are synthesized with Christianity, replacing the Virgin Mary as the central female to Venus. Not only is the imagination of an artist interpretation of a particular biblical/historical event but is now developed a language separate from religion to make its statement.
To sum up all of the changes that occur in the Renaissance is in the importance placed upon imagination. “Imagination now rose to the highest position on the epistemological spectrum […] though the disciplined use of imagination man could bring to his consciousness those transcendent living Forms that ordered the universe” (Tarnar, 215)
Works Cited
Hillman, James. ‘Dehumanizing or Soul-making’ Revisioning Psychology. Within Renaissance Artworld Reader for Aesthetics and the Renaissance. Academy of Art, San Francisco: Summer 2008
Tarnas, Richard. ‘The Rebirth of Classical Humanism’. The Passion of the Western Mind. Within Renaissance Artworld Reader for Aesthetics and the Renaissance. Academy of Art, San Francisco: Summer 2008
Williams, Robert. Plotinus, Augustine, the Renaissance. Within Renaissance Artworld Reader for Aesthetics and the Renaissance. Academy of Art, San Francisco: Summer 2008