Art

ART. - I. HISTORY OF THE WORD. - The term has not, and never has had, strictly speaking, a univocal meaning; so much so that it can be understood in a broader sense (from the ars moriendi to the art of the blacksmith, etc.). It is therefore difficult to give a definition, since the various acceptations and figurative senses stray from a strict and clear specification; one can say generically that there is art when in any activity value is given to the manner in which it is carried out, attaining a form that is postulated as perfect. But the distinction or non-distinction of particular meanings within the more general concept corresponds to different ways of understanding, and therefore to just as many historical positions. It is therefore appropriate to examine, even if only through the essential episodes, how the current meaning has been reached, with which we wish to deal here, namely art as the essence of poetry, of music and of the so-called figurative arts.

In the Middle Ages the Aristotelian-Thomistic approach placed art within the sphere of the practical virtues, and more precisely of "making" as opposed to "acting": "ars est recta ratio factibilium... factio est actus transiens in exteriorem materiam, sicut sedificare, secare et huiusmodi: agere autem est actus permanens in ipso agente, sicut videre, velle et huiusmodi" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃe, q. 57, a. 4, c.); nevertheless, a more markedly intellectual character was seen in it than in that particular virtue of acting which is prudence: "ars magis convenit cum habitibus speculativis in ratione virtutis, quam cum prudentia" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃe, q. 57, a. 4, ad 2); and this because prudence, although it has absolute principles "per conformitatem ad appetitum rectum", must make use of "regulae arbitrariae" in applying them, since moral life never presents identical situations: "ea quae sunt ad finem in rebus humsnis non sunt determinata, sed multipliciter diversificantur secundum diversitatem personarum et negotiorum" (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃe, q. 47, a. 15); whereas, on the other hand, art has fixed rules, determined by reason: "immo nihil aliud ars esse videtur, quam certa ordinatio rationis, quomodo per determinata media ad determinatum finem actus humani perveniant" (St. Thomas, Poster. Analyt., I, I, lectio I, 1). Art therefore approaches science even if in some cases, as in the art of medicine and of agriculture, it too needs "regulae arbitrariae".

This relationship with science St. Thomas further clarifies with regard to the distinction between mechanical and liberal arts, a concept that the Middle Ages inherited from classical antiquity. The former, which St. Thomas calls servile, "ordinantur ad opera per corpus exercita"; the latter, divided into the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) as "habitus speculativi", "ad huiusmodi opera rationis... ordinantur". The liberal arts, then, approach the "scientiae", but differ from them in that the latter "ad nullum huiusmodi opus ordinantur"; certainly inferior to the liberal arts are the servile arts, just as the body is subject to the soul, but "nec oportet, si liberales artes sunt nobiliores, quod magis eis conveniat ratio artis" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃe, q. 57, a. 3, ad 3).

In the Middle Ages, therefore, that particular form of activity which would later constitute the object of aesthetics was not distinguished from the general concept of art; of the arts, as we understand them today, only music was admitted into the ranks of the superior ones, and this by virtue of its scientific character, then predominant, because of its reducibility to numerical relations; painting, architecture, etc. formed part of the mechanical arts, and were therefore not distinguished as an essence from the art of building ships or tools. Indeed, from Isidore of Seville onward, all the encyclopedists give precepts of artistic technique, placing architecture and, for example, the art of weaving on the same level; nor does the concept change in the statutes of the craft Guilds; and even Cennino Cennini (v.) in his Libro dell'arte, although already rich in happy intuitions about the specific character of painting, joins to precepts concerning this art others concerning the dyeing of fabrics and the preparation and use of ingredients for cosmetics.

This does not mean that the Middle Ages did not have an aesthetics of its own: it is enough to recall the function of beauty in St. Augustine, similar to that already proposed by Plotinus (v. ESTETICA) and the definition of the beautiful as an attribute of Being, not as a pure accident, coinciding metaphysically with the Good, with the One, etc. in the Thomistic conception; but the concept of the beautiful, despite the Plotinian approximation, was not in explicit relationship with that of art, as it would later become; which does not exclude that in Scholasticism there are found, even if implicitly, some very happy clarifications on the concept of aesthetic beauty, of creation, of the finality of art, etc., of which some mention will be given further on.

It is not possible to pinpoint the moment when the term art assumes its current meaning; even if the interest of Humanism focuses on particular forms of art (Ghiberti weaves the history of the illustrious painters of his time and Alberti writes a treatise on painting, another on sculpture and yet another — the most important — on architecture, understanding these arts in the modern sense of creators of beauty) the word art still indicates only one element of the creative act, namely the capacity for execution (not to be confused, however, with technique in the modern sense); and indeed the word art appears almost always accompanied by the term "ingegno", which indicates invention, the mental act of conceiving by imagining, corresponding, in the intellectualistic climate of the time, to what both in the late Middle Ages (Cennini) and in our own days is called "fantasy" (v.).

But already since Boccaccio the classification of painting, sculpture, etc. among the mechanical arts no longer satisfies, and there is a tendency to place these arts on the same level as the liberal ones, or rather simply to free them from the concept of mechanical, which begins to assume a pejorative meaning (Hugh of St. Victor, Boccaccio). Alberti, with his definition of the architect (De re aedif., proem) will fully bring about this liberation; and finally Leonardo will say that painting is the noblest of all human activities because it makes man the master ("lord and God") of the Universe through vision, the maximum evidence of the mental synthesis that is proper to man being realized in this.

In the sixteenth century the concept of art becomes more precise: Vasari, in fact, sanctions with the term "art of design" the intimate affinity of painting, sculpture, architecture, justifying it explicitly with the affirmation (repeated in the following centuries) that design is the common father of the arts; the term, which long remained, is still found in Hegel; Winckelmann states that he intends to deal, in his writings, with the arts of design, affirming that only for brevity does he call his work "history of art". And moreover even today, with the phrase history of art, what is commonly meant is the history of painting, sculpture and architecture.

The essential identity of the arts of design with music and poetry (not to speak of other manifestations, such as dance, etc.) which is for us moderns an acquired concept, was not at all clear in the Renaissance; the Horatian "ut pictura poesis" was repeated, as indeed already in the Middle Ages, but in an extrinsic and occasional sense. It should be noted, however, in this an at least shadowed comparison among the arts, a comparison that was most fully treated by Leonardo; and therefore the implicit recognition that, since they were comparable among themselves, the different arts must have a common quid. But it is certain that an explicit affirmation of essential identity among the arts was not pronounced before the seventeenth century, since only in that century, in France, did there come into use a term which in itself, through its force as a common attribute, effectively unifies the arts: the term was "beauty," which indeed appears joined with that of arts, in the formula "beaux arts." The expression also passed into Italy (Bettinelli); and Milizia, later, combined the two terms together, entitling his celebrated pamphlet Del modo di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno.

In Germany the Italian designation prevailed at first, then the French one; but in the mid-eighteenth century Lessing in his Laocoön set forth the new formula "bildende Kunst"; this tended to separate poetry sharply in its essence from painting, the one called the art of time and the other of space; in the term "bildende" is mirrored the then widespread conviction of the excellence of Greek sculpture (Lessing, precisely, demonstrates his thesis basing himself above all on a work of ancient sculpture); "Bild" in the strict sense means figure, and in the broad sense is any object that was once formless mass and has received from art a precise form. This terminology was accepted in Germany; in Italy an attempt was made to translate it with "formative art"; "plastic arts" or "figurative arts" were also said (the first to use this term was Selvatico in 1855). The theory of "pure visibility" (v. CRITICA D'A.), which limits artistic qualities to visual elements, has suggested the name "visual arts," today used resolutely by Berenson, for painting, sculpture, architecture (L. Venturi).

The philosophical formulation of the concept of art is due to modern philosophy, which, first with Vico's fundamental thesis and then with the treatments of the Leibnizian school and then again with Kant, develops, isolating it from the others, the science of aesthetics; and we today, even through divergences of opinions and systems relating to aesthetics, have by now acquired a clear awareness of this particular form of human activity that is artistic creation.

Naturally, since it is a matter of human activity, one cannot define its boundaries with geometric rigor; and while we immediately find its own proper characteristics in the five arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, we cannot deny that these same characteristics are also present, for example, in goldsmithing, in dance or in eloquence, even if mingled with other elements, practical or cognitive. The tendency of modern criticism is precisely that of investigating the essence of art above the various occasional manifestations, which gives rise, in practice, to a revaluation of the so-called "minor arts" (miniature, goldsmithing, the art of furniture, of fabrics, etc.); from this point of view, today as in the Middle Ages, a division into the various forms of activity is not possible. Better, therefore, rather than seeking what distinct external expressions art has, is to attempt to investigate what common concept presides over these various manifestations and the various problems that it raises; and to set aside, for reasons of brevity, consideration of the predominance that authors from time to time confer on a particular art (for example, when one wishes to identify the terms art and poetry, or when one affirms that all the arts tend toward the condition of music).

II. CONCEPT OF ART

Modern authors, even of opposing tendencies, agree in holding that a. is a creative spiritual activity, not subordinated to any model or concept, an intuitive and therefore lyrical and not rational knowledge, and an expression of the spirit in the sensible; artistic creation, by its nature, is disinterested, sets itself no practical end, not even the highest; it has no other purpose than the perfection of form, but it is not for this a vain game or a dream, because in this perfection it attains (as is implicitly consequent) an absolute value; in creating, as has been mentioned, a. knows, but not in a logical, conceptual, discursive form, rather through immediate intuitive apprehension; it discovers and determines and reveals in the sensible new formal appearances, which then become the spiritual patrimony of all, even of non-artists, and in this way unveils new riches in creation and brings new praise to the Creator (Léonard): one may think, for example, of how the taste for landscape was born from Venetian painting first and then French.

The artist's intuition, even if it starts from his individuality and preserves its imprint, has universal value; and this universal value the artist transfuses into the sensible. And this is the prodigy of a. and its supreme dignity: to bring down the infinite of the spirit into a fragment of matter, to redeem and spiritualize the sensible, which brings the creative artist close to God. Thus the efficacy of the human personality is supremely exalted, which, for that very reason, not only through the practice of a. does not withdraw from the supreme principles on which in every case it depends and to which it is ordered, but rather shows, as in a higher synthesis, the most evident power of such principles.

But in this nobility of a. lies also its limit, its very drama: a. is an expression of the spirit, but must speak through the sensible; the artist is a creator, but only in a relative sense, insofar as he creates with the matter that pre-exists him and is given to him; even the greatest genius is first of all a workman who groans to bend matter to his expressive ends (Léonard).

From this dualism arise all the problems of a. In what relation do spiritual intuition and practical realization stand on the one hand, and on the other the new form of expression and the contents expressed? in what relation does a. stand with the other activities of the spirit?

III. A AND TECHNIQUE

Positivism has emphasized the importance of technique and of the material employed, making them indeed the determining cause of form; idealism, on the contrary, has overvalued the intuitive element, making art and fantasy coincide, art and lyricism, and assigning to technique the sole office of a mnemonic means or of accidental transmission of one's own intuition.

But it would be to deny the spirituality and the creativity of the artistic act to make it depend on extrinsic elements, and therefore to deny it in its essence; the arguments adduced do not prove the fact, because if it is true that a construction of marble is different from one of wood, it is equally true that it is the artist who chooses the materials, and who bends them to his expressive ends; so much so that in the Baroque, for example, marble was treated as if it were cloth or indeed pure color, in order to draw from it certain formal effects characteristic of that age and unmistakable with others; and the centuries that preceded the van Eycks took no account of oil colors, however well they knew of them, because the problem of form did not require it, just as the Greeks did not wish to use the arch in monumental buildings.

On the other hand, to give the artistic phenomenon a purely mental value is to disregard the concrete reality of the work of art, its character as an expression of the intelligible through and by means of the sensible. The artist knows well how difficult it is to overcome the passivity, the dullness of matter, and his work begins from the first brushstrokes or the first blows of the chisel: and the image frees itself little by little and with effort from matter; so much so that, strictly speaking, one can affirm that art does not pre-exist the completed work.

Technique, therefore, is necessary to the artist but does not dominate him; it is only a means that he has for dominating matter. Technique can be taught, art cannot. The latter indeed belongs, yes, to reason, because this is the principle of every human faculty, but it is due to a special aptitude, almost to a gift that predisposes the artist to creation; the artist is without doubt a privileged being, without being able to boast of it because the gift is gratuitous: his virtue will consist instead in serving this vocation of his, in nourishing it with all human and technical means the better to be able to unfold it.

Technique therefore does not intervene to determine the value of the work of art; and when the artist sets it before himself as an end, one has virtuosity, not art. Hence it is absurd to speak of a progress and a decadence of art on the basis of a greater richness of technique, as was done from the Renaissance onward, judging the art of the Middle Ages; every expression, if it is achieved form, is universally valid, whatever means it may employ.

IV. FORM AND CONTENT

As for the relationship between form and content, it is clear that both elements are necessary to the work of art. Art, if it expresses, cannot do without expressing something, whether it be the artist's feeling or the subject represented; but what gives the work the value of art is the form, it is the manner in which the content is expressed. Which content, that is, is entirely absorbed by the form, which recreates it anew, expressing itself in it and through it alone in a synthesis that is absolutely new, complete and unrepeatable, and therefore of universal value.

It was therefore said very effectively (L. Venturi) that a cry of pain can never be a work of art; that is, the simple expression of feeling, in its empirical immediacy, cannot have, as it does not have, universal value; for it to acquire such value, the artist must free himself from his own empirical nature, contemplate his feeling and "seek" the form that expresses it in the best way. Thus it is entirely comprehensible how art is absolute liberation and purification (catharsis); and thus generates, in every case, a feeling that can be none other than that special enjoyment to which the sole attribute of "aesthetic" is fitting. That is, even if what is represented in a work of art is in itself something painful or ugly, it resolves itself — contemplated by the artist and by the spectator — into a particular pleasure: one applauds before a scene of death and admires with complacency a painted monster.

The artist will have realized an irreplaceable expression, to which one cannot change, remove or add anything without breaking the spell, that is, without losing its harmony. (And here the concept of "completeness" joins with that of art.) The artist must attain, that is, the conditions of beauty, that which St. Augustine called "unity" (De vera Relig., ch. 41), that which St. Thomas formulated in three points: "ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur. Primo quidem integritas, sive perfectio. Quae enim diminuta sunt, hoc ipso turpia sunt. Et debita proportio, sive consonantia. Et iterum claritas. Unde quae habent colorem nitidum, pulchra esse dicuntur" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 39. a. 8, c.), and which Alberti would enunciate in his celebrated definition: "la Bellezza è un conserto di tutte le parti accomodate insieme con proportione e discorso, in quella cosa, in che le si ritruovano, di maniera che e' non vi si possa aggiungere, o diminuire, o mutare cosa alcuna, che non vi stesse peggio. Et è questa certo cosa grande e divina" (De re aedif., trans. Bartoli, l. VI, ch. 2).

This unity, this integrity, this "concinnitas" is what the moderns call style, that is, form attained and affirmed. This style, this form, precisely because it is the fruit of creation, will be new every time and unrepeatable; it is therefore vain to speak of progress or decadence, not only with respect to technique, but with respect to the style of a particular artist (as it was, for Vasari, with Michelangelo); to fix the perfection of art at a particular historical moment or in particular works is to deny the life of the spirit, which is always renewing itself and growing upon itself; for the artist a preceding style may have the value of experience and of stimulus, but it must not become a canon, a bond that constrains his creative freedom. Harmful, as well as vain, is therefore the academic teaching that studies styles torn away from the artistic personalities that created or recreated them, within the sphere of which alone these "styles" have value, or, worse, that sets up a model in a single abstract — and therefore artificial — style gratuitously judged perfect. While the artisan workshop of the Middle Ages had the function of teaching the technical means, which whoever had an artistic vocation could then master, the academic schools, from the seventeenth century onward, if they have not prevented the natural development of art, which finds its own way despite all hindrances, have nevertheless brought an innumerable series of equivocations and misunderstandings, from which we are still not liberated today. As Léonard rightly says, "l'essentiel... est... que chacun exprime la beauté dans la ligne spirituelle du don qu'il a reçu... Vivant, il doit recréer en esprit tout ce qu'il touche, sous peine de réduire les trouvailles en formules... Nécessairement donc, ne pouvant vivre hors de la circulation commune, il accepte disciplines et continuité, mais non les contraintes qui lui resteraient extérieures, même religieuses".

V. ART AND NATURE

Another hindrance that is at times sought to be imposed on the artist is the natural model. The art–nature relationship constitutes perhaps the oldest question, because it was, one might say, the first problem concerning art that imposed itself on the attention of the Greek philosophers (well known is Plato's definition of art as mimesis — partial and deceptive — of nature and therefore condemnable, and Aristotle's revaluation, which sees in art the imitation not of the particular but of the universal, and therefore — in our present-day language — no longer imitation); and the controversy cannot be said, even today, to be closed.

Here too, holding firmly to the concept of art as spiritual creation, it is clear that art itself cannot copy nature (as has already been said of any model) without renouncing its creative function; if that were so, the best work of art would be the photograph or a means of reproduction, if one existed, still more exact or more conformable to ocular vision (which, however, has never an absolute and unique value). The artist is free before his subject, and if he is truly an artist he ends by imposing his vision on us. There is, however, a truth in this concept of imitation: namely, as St. Thomas said, « ars imitatur naturam in sua operatione » (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 117, a. 1, c.), and, as Boccaccio repeats or as Kant will say, genius operates like nature; « sa vocation n'est pas d'imiter la nature créée (ce qui ne l'ordonnerait qu'à la matière) mais en elle l'acte de créer. Solution divine; elle sauvegarde l'essentielle dépendance de l'homme par rapport à la création et à Dieu, et l'essentielle indépendance de l'élan créateur dans le seul domaine où l'homme puisse y prétendre » (Léonard).

Moreover, it is also true that the artist is always free in his creation, but, as has been said, he must avail himself of sensible means in order to express himself; and if he paints, for example, a tree, he will paint, it is true, « his » tree, but he will have to submit to certain conditions of intelligibility, bound to his conditions as a man; which conditions, it should be noted, are not fixed and immutable, but, on the contrary, mirror the continuous enrichment of human experience and of the uncontrollable taste that can give rise even to conventional expressions. If, however, the artist neglects those conditions — as has happened in certain modern tendencies — he will pay for his sin of pride by not attaining art, that is, the transparency of the intelligible in the sensible, but either intellectual symbols, « ciphers » without formal value, or signs without meaning, that is, without the light of the spirit.

VI. A AND TASTE

Art is thus nourished by the whole life, spiritual and material, of man; this nourishment is indispensable to it and is at the same time its bondage: the artist can never disregard the taste of his time and his own individual taste; but it is not this taste that constitutes the essence of the work of art, and therefore, as long as we speak, for example, of the love for perspective of the painters of the Humanist era, of Baroque emphasis, or of the religiosity of Blessed Angelico, we do not grasp the moment of art; these elements are, however, the necessary "historical" presuppositions of artistic creation, which will transfigure them (v. CRITICA D'A.).

VII. AUTONOMY OF ART

Art, by virtue of its dignity as an absolute creation, is an end in itself; it is not a means to the attainment of other ends, however lofty; art pleases and moves, but it does not set pleasure as its end, on pain of failing as art; it does not demonstrate intellectual truths, it does not give precepts of moral edification; the artist, even if he expresses himself, must be in a certain sense objective, and, like the scientist, abandon himself to his own object without thinking of the effect. Indeed St. Thomas affirms with extreme clarity the autonomy of art; since, while "ad prudentiam... requiritur quod homo sit bene dispositus circa fines... ideo ad prudentiam requiritur moralis virtus", "bonum autem artificialium non est bonum appetitus humani, sed bonum ipsorum operum artificialium : et ideo ars non praesupponit appetitum rectum" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 57, a. 4, c.); "non enim pertinet ad laudem artificis, inquantum artifex est, qua voluntate opus faciat, sed quale sit opus, quod facit... Dummodo enim verum geometra demonstrat, non refert, qualiter se habeat secundum appetitivam partem, utrum sit laetus, vel iratus : sicut nec in artifice refert, ut dictum est" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 57, a. 3, c.).

The artist, therefore, as such, must serve only the perfection of the work he accomplishes; his moral intentions, his qualities are indifferent to the work of art, which is likewise indifferent as such. On the other hand, even in the face of this absolute autonomy of art, nothing authorizes us to forget that the artist is still a man among men, and his humanity cannot be sectioned into parts wholly independent of and extraneous to one another; the human personality has an integrity of its own that it is impossible to disregard, not only on the psychological level, but also on the moral level, because it is ordered to an end that transcends it. If anyone, therefore, not as a private man, for that concerns his conscience, but as an artist, reduces his work to an illustration of something that conflicts with the ethical order, without resolving it into a work of art, he documents only his particular state of mind, falling short, as is evident, of his peculiar quality as an artist; indeed, as in every other similar case, since he pursues a determinate end that does not rise to universal value, he remains outside the domain of art.

It is obvious, moreover, that, apart from its intrinsically artistic value, it may happen that a work of art is an occasion apt to arouse feelings contrary to the moral law; but this would depend not on the work of art in itself, but on the contingent dispositions of the one who contemplates it, and therefore such a case can and must entail the action of the censor. For example, the partial nudity of the figures represented, which no one thought of prohibiting during the Humanist era, because at that time it did not appear to arouse feelings contrary to morality, was not admitted in other ages. In the same way a certain poetry, being able to harm a determinate and particular kind of readers, must be kept away from them. But, as can be seen, such questions lie entirely outside the judgment on the work of art (v. MORALITÀ DELL'ARTE).

VIII. RELIGIOUS ART

Since we have seen that it is not the content that determines the value and essence of a work of art, one cannot properly speak of religious art; the artist who treats a religious subject has no style different from that of his landscapes or still lifes. Only in deference to the destination that sacred painting, for example, has, can one say that the artist must keep certain conditions in mind: his work, that is, cannot be obscure, full of implications and cultural presuppositions, but must be legible and clear. This, in the final analysis, concerns iconography.

Indeed, it must be kept in mind, as a responsibility of the artist, that images, precisely when they are works of art, impose themselves with the value of reality upon whoever observes them. For example: a figure painted by a great artist in a certain way binds the thought of anyone who, in any case, thinks — even independently of the work of art — of the person represented by that figure, thereby establishing, as if they were truthful, its somatic characteristics. From this derives the necessity (entirely contingent, moreover) of submitting to certain traditional iconographic norms; which, however, have no close relationship with art. In fact, nothing would forbid, for example, clothing sacred figures in the garments of our own time, in conformity with what painters did at least until the sixteenth century; but it is also true that the immediate confrontation with reality, the immediate appeal to particular experience, determined by modern garments, would diminish the intrinsic universal value of the artistic vision, tied as we are to an iconographic tradition established, precisely, in past centuries; unless, of course, the artist has such creative power as to divert us entirely from the appeal of reality and experience; we all accept without any difficulty seeing the shepherds of the Nativity in Renaissance garments or contemplating the Annunciation within a plainly fifteenth-century architecture; just as no one notices, for example, or is in any way astonished by the fact that in Donatello's Deposition (pulpit of St. Lawrence) the hands that support the body of Christ are far more numerous than those corresponding to the bodies of the bystanders.

IX. CHRISTIAN ART

For the same reason one cannot speak of a Christian a. as an essential distinction within the sphere of a. As a historical qualification, Christian a. arose with the advent of Christianity, but at the beginning it made use of pre-existing pagan forms (v. ARTE CRISTIANA ANTICA). All a. that expresses a content inspired by the teaching of Christ can be called Christian; and in this sense, if historically it embraces a narrower sphere than religious a., it nonetheless has a broader meaning, because one can paint with a Christian spirit both a Madonna and a basket of fruit; indeed, observes Léonard, the Christian artist who tends to spiritualize the sensible cannot reduce the field of his work, but must «avoir l'ambition d'y amplifier plutôt l'orchestration du sensible pour que la louange en remontât plus pleine vers Dieu».

X. THE CHURCH AND ART

Since artistic activity is connatural to man and intrinsically independent, the Church not only could not think of excluding it, but on the contrary welcomed it with such dignity as to raise it to the role of coadjutor in cultural expression. Christian monuments are the most valid testimony to this, from the catacombs to the splendor of churches and the value of their furnishings; and the Liber Pontificalis and the Inventories, for example, document how assiduous was the care the Pontiffs devoted to adorning churches and how objects of art were very soon considered as an effective patrimony.

The first controversies the Church sustained in matters of art concerned music (v.); this is explained, moreover, by the fact that music directly recalled profane spectacles and banquets, and was supremely suited to stirring the affections, having a particular power, recognized in all ages, to move souls; whence moral problems could more easily arise from the practice of music; and on the other hand this same emotional power, joined with the heritage of Hebrew worship, had made it suited to play a part in the sacred office. For these reasons many Fathers of the Church were explicit in condemning certain kinds of melody, chromaticism, the use of instruments and women's voices (for the latter see canon 9 of the Council of Auxerre of 578). In any case the Church favored the development of liturgical music, so much so that Gregory the Great already had to intervene to curb the virtuosity of the "precentores." The two fundamental aspects of the Church Fathers' way of considering music may be summed up in the propositions of St. Jerome and St. Augustine; for St. Jerome music has an essentially content-based value: "Sic cantet servus Christi, ut non vox canentis, sed verba placeant" (Comm. in Eph., III, 5, 19); while St. Augustine, who, as is well known, resolves positively his doubts about the appropriateness of singing as prayer, establishes not only as legitimate but also as obligatory the intrinsic value of art as such; indeed he recommends the singer to sing well, directing his art to God who is absolute perfection.

The Church took a position on the figurative arts on the occasion of the iconoclast heresy (v. ICONOCLASTIA), and from that time established that art could not in itself lend itself to the danger of substituting the worship of the mere image for the worship of what that image represented, and that whoever had countenanced such confusion was worthy of condemnation.

It is well known, moreover, how the monastic Orders and especially the Benedictine one cultivated art to the point of deriving characteristic aspects from it, thanks to special organizations and norms that sometimes formed part of the Rules themselves (v. ABBAZIA; BENEDETTINA, CISTERCENSE, CLUNIACENSE, FRANCESCANA, etc., ARCHITETTURA). And it is likewise well known that Gothic art was at all times taken as the symbol of the most vivid religiosity; and on the other hand the Gothic cathedrals gathered within themselves the names and portraits of the architects who built them (by way of curiosity, let it be recalled how in the chivalric poems Rinaldo di Montalbano rises to the fame of sanctity thanks to his work as builder of a cathedral).

At the Council of Trent the Church issued a decree concerning the arts; against the iconoclasm of the Calvinists (the decree was in fact solicited by Cardinal de Guise in order to have a weapon against them), the cult of images is established and explained in the sense of tradition: "omnis lascivia vitetur, ita ut procae venustate imagines non pingantur nec ornentur" (Conc. Trid., ed. Goerresiana, IX, 1078). A new and very important element is the appeal made to bishops to instruct the faithful on the meaning and usefulness of sacred images for the Christian life (Conc. Trid., loc. cit.) and the obligation to submit every "unusual" image to the judgment of the competent bishop: "statuit sancta synodus nemini licere... ullam insolitam ponere vel ponendam curare imaginem" (Conc. Trid., loc. cit.).

The Church has moreover often intervened in iconographic questions, that is, whenever the image represented contradicted dogmatic truths; for example, on June 11, 1623 the Congregation of Rites proscribed the Crucifix with Christ represented with his arms raised on high; on Sept. 11, 1670 a decree of the Holy Office forbade making Crucifixes in an indecent posture and with features too deformed by pain.

The Church's concern that whatever serves worship must be of indisputable artistic value is evident in the instructions on sacred music given motu proprio by Pius X (Nov. 22, 1903). The Pontiff requires that music be first of all "true art," since it is not possible that otherwise it have upon the soul of the listener that efficacy which the Church intends to obtain by welcoming into its liturgy "the art of sounds." Such a norm must be extended analogically to every other form of art.

Any form that responds to the requirements of true, holy art, with the exclusion, it is understood, of profane elements, may enter the church. Decisive in this regard is the teaching of the recent encyclical Mediator Dei: "One must not despise — writes the pontiff Pius XII — and generically and on principle reject recent forms and images...; avoiding with wise balance excessive realism on the one hand and exaggerated symbolism on the other, and taking into account the needs of the Christian community rather than the judgment and personal taste of artists, it is absolutely necessary to give free scope also to modern art" (AAS, 39 [1947], p. 590).

For the historical treatment of art v. the entries relating to the individual artistic periods: ARTE CRISTIANA ANTICA; BARBARICA, BIZANTINA, CAROLINGIA, ROMANICA, GOTICA A., etc.; QUATTROCENTO, CINQUECENTO etc., ARTE DEL; CONTRORIFORMA, ARTE DELLA; etc.

Adriano Prandi

XI. ECCLESIASTICAL AND CIVIL LEGISLATION

The Church was undoubtedly the first public institution to regulate by its own laws the creation, preservation and enhancement of its artistic heritage. There are numerous pontifical and conciliar acts which in every age laid down valuable norms on the matter. Memorable are the apostolic constitutions Etsi in cunctarum (31 May 1425) of Martin V, Etsi de cunctarum (30 June 1480) of Sixtus IV and, in more recent times, the edict of the Secretary of State Cardinal Pacca, of 7 April 1820, which served as the basis and inspiration for the laws on the Fine Arts currently in force in the principal nations of the world.

As regards the ecclesiastical legislation in force, it is well to bear in mind that as early as 1907 Pius X imposed on the Ordinaries of Italy the establishment of the Diocesan Commission, to evaluate objects of art, to watch over their preservation and to examine plans for restoration and new constructions (circular letter of the Cardinal Secretary of State, of 12 Dec. 1907). Later, the CIC [Code of Canon Law] provides for regulating in its most vital points the matter concerning sacred art, especially as regards the erection or restoration of buildings of worship (can. 1164, § 1), the making or repair of sacred pictures and images (cann. 1279, 1280), the material and form of sacred furnishings

(can. 1296, § 3), the custody and supervision of the sacred artistic heritage (cann. 1497, 1522, 1523), at the same time arming with particular precautions and severe sanctions the alienation of anything belonging to it (cann. 1539, 1532, § 1, n. 1; 1947, § 2; 2347).

Of notable importance, for the purposes of the preservation and enhancement of the sacred artistic heritage, are the circulars of the Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri, of 15 Apr. 1923, n. 16605, and of 1 Sept. 1924, n. 34215, with which last, addressed to the Ordinaries of Italy, a special Central Commission for Sacred Art was instituted in Rome, at the Secretariat of State of His Holiness, for all of Italy, which carries out its action through a Central Junta, with the aim of keeping alive and active everywhere — by means of its own action of direction, inspection and propaganda, in collaboration with the Diocesan (or Interdiocesan or Regional) Commissions — the sense of Christian art and of promoting intelligent and devout zeal for the preservation and increase of the Church's artistic heritage.

Other norms and instructions are laid down, to the same end, in the circulars of the same Secretariat of State of 3 Oct. 1923, n. 22352 and of 1 Dec. 1925, n. 49158, which contains the consolidated text of the pontifical provisions on the matter of sacred art, as well as those of the S. Congregation of the Council respectively dated 10 Aug. 1928, 20 June 1929, 24 May 1939, and of the Congregation of Seminaries and Universities dated 10 March 1927.

Among the initiatives tending to favor and deepen the knowledge of sacred art, particular mention should be made of the Higher School of Christian Art "Beato Angelico" in Milan, and of the "Beato Angelico" Institute of studies for sacred art in Rome.

As regards, finally, civil legislation on the matter of art, let us recall that the Italian State provides for the preservation of the national artistic heritage by the law of 1 June 1939, n. 1089.

Subject to it are immovable and movable things which present artistic, historical, archaeological or ethnographic interest, as well as villas, parks and gardens which have artistic or historical interest. Excluded are works by living authors, or whose execution does not go back more than fifty years.

When it is a question of things belonging to ecclesiastical bodies, the Minister of Public Education, in the exercise of his powers, proceeds, as regards the requirements of worship, in agreement with the ecclesiastical authority.

Zaccaria da San Mauro

XII. MEDICINE AND ART

In the earliest epochs medicine enters art almost exclusively through religious subject matter (purely and strictly medical representations are very late, and they become more abundant from the sixteenth century onward): medical miracles, to depict various types of sick persons and settings; Christ on the cross, to show knowledge of external anatomy (at times more or less arbitrary and conditioned by artistic requirements); resurrections of the dead, especially the resurrections of Lazarus, for the thanatological notes, such as painters had occasion to observe in nature; in particular representations of the putrefied (memento mori) given by corpses in an advanced state of decomposition, as material for observation and study for forensic physicians, even if the ravages of death are often enriched with elements of pure fantasy. The scenes of the nativity of the Virgin and of certain saints are often nothing but representations of a setting where a birth has recently taken place and in which the first cares are lavished on the newborn. The figures of physician saints (first of all Sts. Cosmas and Damian and then St. Luke), often dressed and set according to the artist's own time, are precious testimonies of the medical custom and of the surgical interventions of the era.

The truth with which the features of the sick, the blind, the crippled, the paralytic, the "possessed" are portrayed, the depiction of medical customs and settings, constitute precious testimonies for the medical historian, worthy of the highest interest.

It is not possible, naturally, to review all the works on this subject, since they number in the hundreds and perhaps in the thousands. From the cemetery fresco of St. Luke in the dress of a physician (cemetery of Commodilla, 6th century) one passes in broad outline to the cover at the opening of the Evangeliary known as "of the five parts" of Ravenna, where the medical miracles of Jesus are carved, to the healing of the man born blind, likewise carved at the opening on the lid of a portable pharmacy of the 6th century (Vatican Museum). The mosaics that begin from this century to adorn the church of Ravenna also represent medical miracles or physician saints (St. Ursicinus), while the basilica of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in Rome depicts, also in mosaic, its titular saints. There follow frescoes and mosaics, among which we recall the healing of the blind (S. Angelo in Formis), of the paralytic (S. Saba, Rome), the freeing of the possessed (Oberzeil).

In the cathedral of Monreale, the mosaics of medical miracles are numerous (12th century); in the Martorana of Palermo a mosaic represents the "Dormition" of the Madonna (12th century) with a physician listening to her heart. From the 13th century we recall Isaac blind repulsing Esau (Assisi, S. Francesco), the healing of the cripple wrought through the merit of St. Francis (ibid.), the renunciation of the blood bath by Constantine (Rome, SS. Quattro Coronati), the healing of the cripples (Parma, Baptistery), Hippocrates and Galen (Anagni, Cathedral), etc.

From then on the examples multiply with Giotto and his school, with Fra Angelico, painter of the stories of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and then with the very numerous host of painters and sculptors who in representations of sacred subjects have touched, remotely or closely, on medical matters.

Adalberto Pazzini