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‘Curious pictures’ and the art of descriptionChristopher S. Wood

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To cite this article: Christopher S. Wood (1995): ‘Curious pictures’ and the art of description, Word & Image: A Journal ofVerbal/Visual Enquiry, 11:4, 332-352

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'Curious Pictures' and the art of description

CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD

The dHCriptive Hyle This paper is a comment on the meaning of trim contours, clean and copious detail, and glossy finish in northern painting of the seventeenth century. This manner of painting was often used to render objects Iike flowen, fruits, animals, and insects, although in principle it could represent any object. Such painting is sometimes called 'descriptive' because it appears unusually faithful to natural models.

One interesting set of contemporary comments on the descriptive manner surrounded the works of the so-called jgnschi/dm, or 'fine painten'. 1 The paint surfaces of the Lciden masters Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris were characterized as netU or gitJJJJk ('ncat' or 'smooth,), against the loss~ or rauUJ

('loose' or 'rough') manner of the Venetian school and of Dou's teacher Rembrandt. 2 These masters produced little wonders of oil technique. Anyone would marvel, reported the local historian Jan Orlers in I~I, 'at the neatness and curiosity' (Mlh8yt enth cvrieusMy~ of these paintings.3 The Leiden school was equally praised for its fidelity to the natural model The Italian buyer Giovacchino Guasconi, for example, reported in 1&]5 that when asked to paint exotic flora and fauna around a figure of St Francis Xavier, Mieris refused because he had never seen such things with his own eyes.4 Orlen st:rcs5ed that Dou worked 7IIl8T lin 180m, from the life. Joachim von Sandrart, the German art historical chronicler of the next generation, and Roger de Piles, the French critic and theorist, said the same about Dou. The painter Philips Angel saw Dou's nMticheyt vanquishing beholden with schiftt eygmIJijcJrt IrracIu, or the 'power of the appearance of the real.'5

The smooth or finished manner was associated with descriptive tasks, for example flower or animal painting, well before the successes of the Leiden school, and in many parts of Europe. But the Dutch had made a specialty of it. Karel van Mander ofHaarlem, the painter, theorist, and historian, linked the modem smooth manner to the legendary mysteries of Jan van Eyd's technique, Even van Eyck's underpaintingwas 'cleaner and sharper [~ en schnper] than the finished work of other painters.' The art of painting 'still required this noble invention' of oil giazes before it could 'approach the look of nature more closely, or become more lifelike. >6

Was the smooth manner better suited to the task. of description than the loose? It would be hard to argue that fine-grained, shaxp-edged facture makes a strictly truer representation of reality. The smooth manner renders well80me attributes ofphyKical reality, the loose manner renders others. To say that one manner corresponds more closely to reality than the other is really only to say that the means of representation employed corresponds more closely to a standard or expected mearu of representation. Resemblance is generated by representational conventions. At any rate, the probability of actually deceiving

I - Eric J. Sluijtt:r, 'SchiIdcn van "dcyne, mbtile cnde rurieuIc dingcnR: ~ "fijnrlildenR in rontcmponine bronnen', in UitJs" ~, cxh. cal.. (Lciden, 1988); Pt:tcr Hecht, J), H.LJ.tJs. ~ (Amacrdam, IgBg). Both autbon point out

that the t.enn~ u.cd to mean painter of oil piIintinga, u oppoICd. to

lignboanll or bouIca, and did not take on ill modern !p'ri,Jjzed meaning until the nineteenth C01tuIy.

II-j. A Emmcm, ~.8 RIfIIs­.. KaJt (AmIterdam, 1979), p.94. commenta on how Dutch da.iciIt art

criticim:! increuingIy came to p-efer thI:­'ncat' InIIIIIIC!". On the meaning of the 'rough' manner, ICC abo ... 'Natuur, Onderwijzing en Oefening. Bij een Dridui.k van Germ 000', in Aa-~ J. G. - GtItI.r (utrcchl, 1963), pp. 1115"""36; and Svetlana AIpen, R.tVr.Us &IItjtrisc V. ~ ati IIw MIriIl (Chicago, 1988), pp.l& 19· 3 - Qxlted in Sluijter, 'Schildcn van "cleync, rubtilc CDde curieuIe dinpR " p.lIl. 4- . Otto Naumann., Mas _ Millis IIw F1tI.r (Doormpij.k, 19B I), l, p. 185i quoted in Sluijtcr, 'SchiIden van "clcyne, IIUbtilc ende curicme dingcnR " p. III. 5-PbiIipI Angd, Lqf" ~ (Lcidcn, I~), PP.39··4'Y, quoted in Sluijtcr, 'SchiIdcn van "clcyne, .ubtilc cndc curicuIc cIi:ngocnR " p. Ig. 6 - Karel van Mander, Hit Ut-. .. DottrlwIdip~. HI'" ~ SdrUtIIn (1604J, ed. and tnnL Ham. f10erte (Munich and Leipzig, Igo6), I, PP.440 !lB. On van Mander .. iDIiItmce on van Eyck'. hiItorical authority in the 'neat' manner, ICC Walter s. McIioo, S/tqiIIr IItI ~ C-: r-L_ M.Mrl 'SdtiJiJ.-Bttd:' (Chicago, 1991), pp..,a-g I.

332 WORD 6: IMAGE, VOL. II, NO.4, OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1995

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7 -:Ilcllon Goodman, l.af:-tp tIf An (IndianapoIia, 19'16), pp. 34 -39- Goodman acknawiedgo that IpCcific and limited judgmcntl of nxmbIance can be objectiw:_ But judgmenu of what he ca.Ila 'compla averal.I roembl.nce', such u the relatiomhip between a painting and • natural ot;ect, are jnOnf'DN'(i by too many fa.cton to be comtant or univcnaL Even when • pictun: doca objcd:ivcly I'CICIIlhle ill object, !here may wdl be competing clemcnta of the n:pnxntation !hat dilrupt !he cffi:ct.. See p_ 39. n.. 31-B - Van Mander, reprinting the 'Ode on the Ghent AlJ.arpicce' by Luca de Hcere;

Hit 1-, p- 311-9 - Emmem pointI out that French and EngIiab critia, who gmcraDy went on preferring the ua.ditiooal virtuoIo bandIing of the great IIlDtCB, thouf!ht that the rough manner did • beucr job of 'hiding the art' _ R.iraiJ GIl til RIfIIs .. til EmW,

P-9+

10 Goodman, u.,..,a "An, p- 51RB_

II - See the nmarb on the objectivity of Iimitcd CIIICI or rc.cmbIance in note 7-

151 - Sluijtcl', 'SchiIdcn van "deync, IUbtiI.e ende rurieUIe dingcn-', p- 15-13 -Joachim von Sandrart, T.udw A-'-iI .. __ Ba-, BiJi- I11III ~au.

(1675), cd A R. Peltzer (Munich, 19515),

P-35 I -

L(.-Van Mander, H.1-, P-44-

IS-The pbrue rmdI 'ad exrogitwrvlnm et

faciavlnlD op1lI' in !he VIJIsatc; cf. Ezom. 31~ abo Emdua 518:51'7, RB_

16- See P- 34-51-

a beholder is close to ZCTO. All that 'descriptive' painting provides is an dJ6CI. of the real'

This effect has several factors. FU"St, tight handling of the brush hides any broad and obvious traces of the work's manual fabrication. Van Eyd's works, in the phrase of an old eulogist quoted by van Mander, were 'mirrors, not panels. oS Of course, the artifice of the brush is still visible at very close range. Indeed, the mailing of technique usually brings about just the opposite effect, namely, it calls attention to technique and therefore to the distinction between the representation and reality. The true art, in the classical tag, is to conceal art: ars est ulan arI8m. 9

Second, an elaborately worked and compartmentalized paint surface can give the impression that the representation lacks design. The artist appears not to have selected among the multiplicity of real data, but merely to have copied what he saw, unthinkingJy.ldca.li!t art criticism used to condemn much northern painting for this intellectual deficit, even while ceding its superiority in naturalism. For an apparent chaos of detail bolsters the beholder's confidence in the artist's good. faith toward reality.

Fmally, a representation built out of tiny units appears more reliably linked to physical reality than broader, more generalized depictions. Th.is puts descriptive painting in favorable analogy to writing, which also represents by means of atomic particles Qctters or words). Th.is notional atomism is the justification for calling pictures 'descriptions' in the first place. Actually, the distinction between description and depiction on the ba..sis of internal structure is fallacioU!, for each unit of a description is still a description and therefore no less conventional than the whole.1O But there is a successful illusion of accuracy, since small depictions arc less dimrrbingly conventional than large ones. Tmy depictions seem to approach the status of true and natural one-to-one representations. II The illusion of accuracy results from a kind of calculus, or repeated subdividing, of the vWble data. (In another terminology, description is digital while depiction is analog.)

The hypothesis oflhi! paper is that in the seventeenth century, and earlier, the descriptive manner was understood to be a highly wrought, stylish, and rhetorically figured mode of painting. One clue to this state of affairs is the association of the term 'curious' with the Leiden painters. Jan Orlen, whom we heard earlier praising Dou's 'neatness and curiosity,' along with his fidelity to nature, also called Dou a painter of 'small, subtle, and curious things.' GuaM:Oni characterized Mieris' works a! 'curiosamentc fatto e con gran nettezza."g Sandrart saluted the 'incomparably curious' Dou. ls And van Mander had dcscnbcd the drawings of van Eyd bimself as 'very curiously and cleanly [CIlriewfYck en ~] executed.''4 This is interesting because the words cvrio.nLr and curiosittu, and their cognates in the modem languages, were traditionally associated with ingenious, elaborately worked, or richly ornamented works. The Authorized Version of the Bible, for example, often described artefacts as 'curious.' Beza.leel, craftsman of the tabernacle, was filled with the spirit of God, 'in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,' in order 'to devise curious works' (Exodus 35:3Q---32).15 The iconophobc St Bernard, on the other hand, deplored 'curious depictions' that would distract worshippers.16 Natural phenomena were designated a! 'curiosities' precisely when they resembled extravagantly

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worked human artefacts. It wall the uncanny illusion that they had been fashioned by a willful and even perverse intelligence that gave these monstrous rarities their gloomy charimna. A curious literary work, meanwhile, wall an allegorical or otherwise rhetorically figured work. The curious work adumbrated through its difficulty and riddling involutions the graVCllt meanings. In sum, it is not immediately apparent how a curious painting manner, a highly figurative, overdetermined, and self-rdlexive manner, could serve simultaneously as a medium of reliable description.

Most of these usages stem from a long Christian habit of condemnation of curiosity. Curiosity wall the impulse to improper inquiry, in particular the search for explanations of phenomena beyond the straightforward recourse to divine causation. Curiosity was also what drove crafumen into vain and poindess embellishment of their work; it wall excessive attention to fonn and craft. And the overwrought artefact was then in tum described as curious. Many of the swviving medieval usages of the word an: monutic, and consequently disapproving. Theologians feared the power of the curious artefact or image to distract. Curiosity came to name any excess in an artefact beyond itll proper function. Ornament, luxury, superfluity were all chastised as curious. So too wall any advertisement of the figured status of a verbal or viruallangu.age. Curiosity was the compicuously human contribution to the work, the mark left on passive matter either by the fabricating hand or by the figuring imagination.

Early science shared many of these excessive and unruly qualities. The pursuit of knowledge wall rnistrusted because the inquirer mubbed written authority and ventured to meddle with nature itsel£ The patristic and 1ICb.0la.stic tradition feared a poetic and generative moment in empirical research. Properly disciplined theoretical inquiry was a coming home, and an uncovering of what wall already known. Free-wanderi,ng inquiry, by contrast, would lead to the uMnmJich, the uncanny. In the New Testament, 'curious arts' meant black. magic (Ac1:II 19:19)." The sixteenth-century explorer Andre Thevet, who otherwise lauded the inquiring impulse, condemned 'natural' and demoniac magic with one stroke:

Vray est que l'une est plus vitieuac que I'autre, m.aiJ toutb deux plcinea de curiosite. Et qu'est-il de booing, quand noua avona lcs choecs qui noua IIOnt neccssaircs, ct en entcndona autant qu'il plai.at a Dicu noua &ire capahlca, trop curicuaement rech.crchcr lcs secrets de nature, ct autrel choacs, dc8qucllcs nostrc Seigneur a'cst reserve a Iuy &Culla cognoiM8D CC? Telles curiosites demonment un jugement imparfait, une ignorance et fautc de foy ct 1xmnc religion. 18

It wall not easy to di.stinguish between scientific and aesthetic fascination. In the Renaissance Kimst-1IIIIi W~, artificial and natural curiosities were ranged side by side: exotic specimena, unheard-of aberratiODll, 'sports' of nature, fantastic artefacts and machines. Scientific investigation yielded disinterested pleasure. The sixteenth-century French naturalist Pierre Belon scorned those who 'en leur monstrant quelque singularite de l'ouvrage memorable de nature, demandent 80udain a quoy telles observations singulieres peuvent profiter'; or thOllC who 'demandent aux Geometrien.s et AmologieOll, que leur sert d'estre si curieux d'observer Ie COUl'S des astres, et Ie mouvement des cieuI:I '" ne quel profit a receu Arutote de II9lvoir que l'oyseau nomme en Grcc Aegocephalus, et en Latin Capriceps,

334 CHRI8TOPHER 8. WOOD

17 - 'The Vulgate rmc\ 'mul1i autcm ex hiJ qui fucrant curi!.. 1CCtati'; __ t:raDIIalcd .;.;.,..

18-~ Tbevet, ~ .. ,. Pr-. ~ (1ssB). £: 68a, cited in cd. Jean C&nI, U a.riaiIiI • ,. R--. (PariI. 1986), p. 16.

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!IO -Jean Genco laid that the outward sign of curioIity wu ~ cited in ChriJtia.n K. Zacher, Clrriui!J ... ~. '[Itt 1.iI.tUtn qf Di-:J itc ~Ceuaa)o &tI-' (Baltimore, 1!j76), p. 53-

III - Immanuel Kant, KriIik ., CJrlIiJsh.tl, §16.

qu'interpretons un oyscau de nuict, est san! rate, et qu'il a Ie fid attache partie a l'estomach, partie au foye.' Belon even recognized the adventure involved in the most routine descriptive tasks: he did not believe that 'pcindre ou descrire un oyseau ou animal cogneu de chascun [flit] ouvrage ou il n'y a erudition. "51 The late medieval and early modern curitJ.ru.s is a prefiguration of the modern aesthete: endowed with a surplus of imagination, but solitary, sterile, eccentric in habits, unaccountable.!IO

Scientifie inquiry and artistic poesis were the common targets of the theological critique of curiosity, both severed from authentic knowledge of the divine. 'fhi! affiliation of inquiry and imagination looks thoroughly unrnodern. To sec this one only needs to jump a little farther ahead, to Kant's Third Critique, where Kant draws a sharp boundary between the scientific and the aesthetic appreciations of a flower. 'What kind of a thing a flower is,' Kant says, 'hardly anyone knows other than the botanist. And even the botanist, who recogni7.e! the sexual organs of the plant, takes no account of this natural end when he judges it according to wte. JIll But when the naturalist is exercising his curiosity, hc respects no frame-real or virtual-that would truncate or uproot the flower, sever it from its roots or pluck it from the cycles ofnourlshmcnt and sexual generation. The point of the scientist's descriptive discipline is to level the exotic, to convert the unfamiliar into the explicable. The artist who paints the same rare specimen, by contrast, establishes a seal around his description in order to keep it suspended in a state of exoticism.

This model provided the ground for the modern evaluation of the Netherlandish achievement in painting. Since Kant's time, more or less, Netherlandish artists have been perversely cdebrated for all the ways they fail to resemble artists - for widding their brushes and training their sight more in a spirit of neutral investigation than fantasy. This tradition of interpretation empha!i.zes the attentiveness of Dutch art to mundane detail and its relative insouciance toward Mediterranean standards of decorum or beauty. The attractive and profoundly paradoxical notion of Dutch art as a descriptive anti-esthetic was precisely made possible by Kant's clean cut between the scientist's interested inquiry and the artist's imagination-his decision to consign curiosity solely to the scientist.

Such an interpretation properly recognizes thc revolutionary potential of pictorial description. But it takes too seriously description's own rhetoric of neutrality and objectivity. Although the anti-esthetic reading ironically inverts the Italianate and classical critique of northern art, in doing so it effectively accepts the terms of that critique.

Description, it turns out, is a highly abstract and formalized procedure. Description disfigures its object. The scholastic critics of early modern inquiry appreciated this. Hegel recognized it too, and stressed the tendency of the descriptive method to dismember and distort the natural object. His aim was

not to discredit description, but to justify it

1'his rupcrficial raising up from particularity, and equally superficial form of universality which the sense data are merely taken up into, without ever thermclves becoming universal- this dtscrifHiota of things - is not yet a process motivated by the object. Rather, the motivation is provided by the description itael£ The object, aB it is described, thus loses all im interest; once the object is described, another must be taken up, and still another !Ought, in order that the description never cease.

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Description commences qfter the object has been selected and framed. 'That by which things are known is more important to description than the remaining range of sense properties, which are indispensable to the thing itself, but which consciousness docs without. - The practice of description is predicated on a clean split between subject and object, and thu! presumes that the attributes of the resulting representation derive exclusively from the object and not the describing subject. Description deal! best with superficial and static qualities of the object rather than its life or history; and yet in the representation those qualities are deceptively jJmm.I«l as simple and pennanent. Fmally, the descriptive process is not 'interested' in its own results. When the object is described, the subject moves on to the next object. In other words, the meaning of the description is determined from another point of view altogether. In this way unruly description earned its statw as the fundamental discipline of the modem natural sciences.

Descriptive painting certainly had plenty in common with descriptive scientific practice. Both were stylish. An apparently neutral, descriptive medium like the Dutch 'fine' painting seems as far removed as possible from the wild fancies that riled the monastie theologians. Yet the very fact that contemporary beholders called urn manner 'curious' suggests that they were seeing not only the labor concealed behind the surface, but also certain excessive, dynamic, and ornamental qualities that may not any longer be so easy to see. There was plenty of art in the art of description. The persistence of the tcnn 'curious' also suggests that the older ethical critiques of artifice still provided a living framework for some of the most sophisticated and stylish seventccnth-century painting. Indeed, this paper will argue that smooth facture and fa3tidious detail in northern painting arc intelligible only within the critical context established by the tradition of Christian imagery, with its permanent nostalgia for a neutral and natural pictoriallanguagc.

Medieval mistruR of curioUty The Latin word curiosu.s meant 'inquiring,' and from the beginning it had a pejorative shade. The curiosu.swas a prying, inquisitive meddler, even an actual spy. The word was formed out of the substantive CUTa, meaning 'care.' It became curiosu.s rather than curostI.S apparently on the modd of the older word-pair studiwn-stwiiosus. Curiosus is attested in Plautus, Terence, and Catullus, but espccially in Cicero, who eoined the substantive curiosiJas. The Stoics in particular despised intellectual self-indulgence. Seneca frequently sketched the perils of vain and unbridled inquiry, or the 'Greek illness.' Oversubtle philosophers had sacrificed res to verba. Even Socrates was accused of an idle and excessive desire for knowlcdgc.1l3

The outlook for curiosity under Christianity was bleaker still. 'Les Chrestiens,' Montaigne observed in the 'Apologie de Raimond Scbond,' 'ont une particulierc cognoissance combien la curiositc cst un mal naturd et origincl en l'homme. Le soing de s'augmcnter en sagessc ct en science, ce fut la premiere ruine du genre humain: e'est la voyc par OU il s'est prccipitl: it. la damnation etcrnelle. "Ll Curiosity conspicuously resembled a sensual appetite. Tcrtullian and St Augustine deplored the desire for knowledge. Curiosity implied dissatm"action with the theological version of things. Augustine contrasted the CIIriDsus- who insists on seeing for himself, who wants to know

336 CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD

\III - Georg WllhcIm Friedrich HescI, f'fIIII-qir .. GasIa, VAL, 'BeOOachtung del" !l:"atur' (Frankfurt, 1970), pp.l88 Bg. "[be IranIIatioo iJ my own, but

ICe 71tt ""--iwJ "Milt&, tnma. J. B. Baillie (London, 1931), pp.28.4- 86. On docription, ICe especially Ham Chriatoph Buch, UI Picbtr. PoGU: n;.

~ ati M LiIiDr - U:aitw .u lMUu (Munich, 1972), pp.l3" 1+ HCRci wu not particularly talking about pictures, although they ("8Jl figure in modem ICimtific docriptivc pra.ctia:. See gcncraDy 00 delcription and Dutch painting Svetlana AIpen, 71tt An "Dr:smitUrt (Chicago, 1989).

~3 Andrf Lahhardt, 'CurioIita.I: Notel IIW"

J'hiatoire d'un mot et d'une notion', M­H~, 17 (1g60), pp. R06 ll4- Cavia.au WID ruushiy equivalent to the Greek jIniITp. The word wu UIed pOIitMIy sa wcll, in the Il"IIK' of an appropriate lIDIiritOUlIlnl or attention to duty.

2.j. - :\lichel Montaignc, t:ss.is, II, I~.

&tition de Ia P\eia~ (Paris, Ig&i),

pp·4n,8.

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!IS St Augu.tine, c.,jasiJMs, X, 35·

26 - For •• urnmary, ICC Zacher, c.riGsi9 _~ch.~.

'T/ - H. W. JIlDIOO, Ale ... A;. Usn ill tit. MitItIJI ... 1M ~ (London, 1952), pp. 1111"""13·

28 - St Auguatine, Dr ... ,.,...., X1JX, 94-

119 Or 'lbOllUll i KcmpD, 1M IrtribIIit. tf Grrist., UI, ;)4: ':'Ii ature iI curiouJ to know aeaeta and to hear !leWI •••• But GnM:C doea IIOl care for nCWI or DOYC!tits, tx:cau.e all thae thingl apring from the age-old corruption of man, for there iI nothing new or iIIIIing in thia world'.

30 - Hana Blumenberg. 1M ~ ., ~ (Frankfurt, 1966), pp.3368". 31 - Francil Bacon, 1M ~ tf u.nruc (16os), I, iv, 5. On Erumw' tonUOUl elf 0111 to reconcile ,.., and ~, K'e Andrt Godin, 'Fnmle: "PiaJImpia CurioIiw" " in cd. Cbrd, J~ QaiQsiM " • R..u-, pp. ~5 "36. See alao RClleraIJy H. J. Mette, 'Ncu¢cr unci Ncmcit', AUb IIIIIi AMMlati, 16 (1970), pp. u]ff.; Carlo Ginzburg. 'High and \ow: the theme of forbidden knowIcdgc in the Iixtcenth and ac:ventcenth centurio·, PasJ ... ~ 73 (19']6), pp.28-.... ; and William Hccbcher, 1M PriIttaw& AlAai c-,.a. (New York, IgBg), pp. sn--23-3lI-J.-P. Migne, ~ UJiaM, vol. 153 (PariJ, 11154), col.. 11'57. "The Carthwian ItatUtCI were mentioned by Meyer Schapiro in hiJ cI.aE: analyIiI of St Bernard'. icooopbobic writinga, 'On the anthctic attitude in Romanc.que art'

(194-7), in R-.- Art (New York, J(m), eIJI.P.7. FOI" compuahle ~ from the IKIltUtCi of the Dominicana, the Franci.Icana, and the CiIterrianI, lee V!ClOT Mortet. and Paul Dcachampa' anthology of high mediCYlll architectural tcxtI, R.wi1 til "* rMIi/" l'1riMin til f-**cbtn (Paria, I~), pp. ga, .ojD, lI"g6, 247. ~Ei5, 286; or Edgar de Bruyne, tJ.ia "F.rNJiqw ~ (Brugea, 194-6:, II, bk 3. ch. 4-

what does not concern him -with the properly focused studiosu.s. In Book x of the Corifessions he defined curiosity, following 1 John 2:16, as crmcupiscenlia oculorum, 'lust of the eyes.'2~

There ensued a long litany of pat:rim:ic and scholastic critiques of the hubristic, illegitimate craving for knowledge.1I6 Unrupervised inquiry was

anathematized as magic or heresy. Aquinas condemned curiosity a! a form of aadia, or spiritual apathy. On the north ~e of Chartres Cathedral curiosity was allegorized as an ape. A figure labclledJustitia runs him through with her sword-an animal passion done in by a virtue.'" The ape's folly is not merely that he fails to recognize his true object and his own limits, nor that he fails to apprehend that object. The problem is that the ape enjoys his play. Research propelled by mere sensory friction is as pointless as sport. One of the dangers of sensory research into the mysteries of the universe was the pho.run taken in it. 'What else docs curiosity seek,' asked Augustine, 'than the joy oflrnowing things?' (tk mum cogniJitme laetiJiam).!III The Dutch thcologian of the Deootio modmuz, Wesscl Gansfort, explained the distinction as follows: 'Knowledge diffen from wisdom just as docs the joke from the serious, play from study, curiosity [czaiositas] from understanding [consiiium]: for one is the action, but the other the result.'''9

Much has been written on the incrcmentalsubversion ofth.is point of view in the late middle ages. The crime of the magtl! was redundancy: truth was already known, through revelation. But once theology lost confidence in revelation and instead imagined a hidden God, there Wa! no choice but to attend to the world. The inventory of the world came to look less and less pointless. For Hans Blumenberg, one of the central and radically original achievements of modernity was the abandonment of an Aristotelian belief in a 'natural' correspondence between theory and the world, in favor of a 'culture of measurement' in which the incremental process of investigation itself yields the results. The properly scientific investigation is conducted without any hopes or illusions about an ultimate resting point. 3" But even this practical legitimation of the inductive method was long accompanied by traditional-sounding warnings from the humanists. Francis Bacon himself wrote that if the wit of man 'work upon itself, as the spider workcth his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance and profit. '~I

Here we are looking at another, parallel tradition ofusagcs which attracted less attention from the humanists: curiosiJas as the care that an artist put into a work. Monastic theologians were especially wary of the curious image. The attempts of the various ordCI"!l to stem the proliferation of sacred images have long been familiar to historians of medieval art. In 1261, for example, the Carthusian SJabJJa antiqua demanded that monks remove all 'pictured or curious tapestries and cushions' (topeJia universa et qruzmlli pictuJari vtl curiosi) from their celli, and that in general all churches and living qua.rter!l be emptied of 'curious pictures' (picturru cvriosae).3'l These guideliries were regularly flouted, especially far from the Grande Cha.rtreuse. In 1367 the General Chapter wrote and disseminated new sets of statutes:

Became in many C!ltablWunent! of our order in the provinces panels painted with curiow images [tabadal CII1io.ris imogi:ni/ni.s dq1ictat] arc multiplying on altar!, along with other divene pictures with cscutcheom and coa1:!-of-anm ofJaymen,

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and with female figul'C!, in glass windows and other places, against the h<?ly simplicity and humility of the order and against the statutes, by which notable men arc not a little scandalized; we ordain that all such painted tablets and other curious picture! [CIlriosQ8 pictIuae] be removed, a! instructed .... 33

By the mid-fifteenth century the order had to spell it out again: 'We reprehend curious pictures and images [pictza"at a imogUw czaiosas], or anything not respectable r Wumestz] in churches and monasteries of the order, either in windows, or in panels, stones, walli, and other places, so damaging and contrary to honesty of morals and the simplicity and humility of our religion. '34

It is not clear how to reconcile these strictures with the many paintings made for Carthusians, including portraits, by major fifteenth-century artists like van Eyck, Petru! Christus, Enguerrand Quarton, Hans Mernling, and the Master of St Bartholomew-unless the rules were direct responses to such brazen provocations.

The monastie orders harried their far-flung clerics for two basie reasons. FIrSt, painted or carved images were CO!tly and could thus become sources of pride to their patrons or owners. They could also become tokens in an invidious social competition. The escutcheons mentioned in the Carthusian statutes were irritating reminders that sacred art was not easily disentangled from money and st:atus. Still more irritating was the notion that the taste for complicated images was a luxury of the rich. Gerard Groote, the founder of the Deootio modmta, praised poverty for its indifference to 'the exquisite, the curious, and the difficult. '35 Pieter Blommcvccn ceruurcd in a treatise of 1526 those self-indulgent clerics who dwelt in Miijicia curiDsa with many scrvants.3fi One extreme and clear example of this sense that possession tainted use is the resentment that some theologians fdt for the private ownership of books. There was no question of the value of the content of a book.. But there was a sense that if one actually owned the volume one would be more likely to attend to !luch accidental attribute!! as the binding, the script, or the illustrations. In other words, scmually appealing sacred artefacts were suspicious tom. ifthcy fulfilled their didactie or signifying function. This vein of criticism does not raise the issue of the relationship between form and meaning.

The second reason the monks mistrusted im.ages is possibly more interesting. In this case the curious or beautiful image is unwelcome because it fails to bring across its message. This charge implies that the fonn of the image u divisible into those dements that reliably convey a given meaning, and thO!le elements that interfere with that meaning.

The line between the functional components and the excess is clear enough in many kind! of objects. High and late medieval refonners - and not only the monastie watchdogs - wen; good at isolating the luxurious superfluity of design in clothing, interior decorating, ecclesiastical apparatus, even the presentation of food That excess was often called 'curious.' In 1235, for instance, the Cistercians ordered the removal of a paoimmtum cvriosum, and the punishment of the abbot who installed it, at the monastery church ofLe Gard in the diocese of Amiens.37 The twelfth-century French clerie Peter Cantor denounced 'superfluity and curiosity in clothing, meals, and buildings . .,s

One bishop specified in his testament of 1390 that he was to be covered by a simple, not a curious tomb.39 Johannes Capistranus preached against

338 CHRISTOPHER s. WOOD

33 Alain Girard, 'La Chartreux, I'an l1 la ipiritualitl: autour d'Avignon'. in ros A. GirBrd and DanicI Lc BIh-ec, l~ a.n-:r • I'm, XII'r-XI7111 .JIIia:K, Ada du xe coIloque internalional d'biJtoirc ct de ipirituaIitC ~ (Paris, 1989), p.lIB, n.20.

34 N- c.lJ«titI ~ u, m. I;" acerpt.cd in Giovanni ~ 'La Chartr=x, I'art ct la .pritualite en I ta!ic' , in em Girard and I.e BlI:Yec, Us o.nr-: It I'm, .171 • • nvII --. pp. ligl-49- AD tbac dccrco were roIlectcd and publiIhed in Bucl in 1510 U SI.bd. arrIDris c.rt.u»ruis.

35 - Gerard Groote, s.- iJaja jMbtwrDt .,..".,.., cited in U:ciawt J~ ~ MIIiii. AIR, vol. \I (Lcidcn, 19B I), under-UU. s6 - Pictcr B1omnu:vccn, au. duu fiIitin- mm. (Cologne, 1.)26): 'la1a querunt ~ ... iu:JooIes, edificia CIII"Da, mu1tam familiam', cited in the I.IT:Ac lMiIriIcis ~ MItIii A.:.

'Sl MOI'tct and Dcw:bampe, &a.ii .laIa, p.3f\. 311 Peter Cantor, I'riaI~, ch. BII, in Mignc, PrttreI9-~ vol. 205. col. !l51.

!19 'VcDemque, ct ita de bonia mcia ontino, I.UIIlbam cmpori mea .upcrponi Rmpliccm, non curiomm, quae pretium I. francoru.m auri non exceda!.' Cited in Du Gange, ~ M6ii.1t bf-~ 10 vall (1883 87), under CII7icuu (g).

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40 - Jobannca Capimwnu.a, T radmu ",...us '" II1II ~ IIfIWbu (14:W37), cd. A. Chiappini (1956): 'Del auperftuo riIpctto alia ~ riIpetto alla .uperfiuiti dO piaceri, riIpetto alia curioIiti ... " p. 1']3; cited by Gerbard Jaritz, 'Von del" Objektiviw biJ zur 0bjeInzent0rung: Methoden und Hwndhmppiclrlume im SpAtmiucIaltcr', in cd. Bob ScribDer, IJiJMr I11III BiIIIInbtnta ill s,1tri ... "" IIItII ill .. .ft#J-~ WoIfcnbiltdcr Fonchungen, +6 (wlCIbaden, 1990), pp. 3f5O. 4l -Johannes Brugman. for example, an 0bIcrvantine in MecheIen, in the ~ ~ ('- 1451), cd. F. A. H . ..an den Hombergh (Groningcn, 1967), p. I'rf. 'Scripta onlinia ignorr.-erit, CUl"ioIitmI connn DOll COOIJ"'C' JtTit, Ii ccIl.u corum DOn frequenter viIitavcrit, Ii COtlIcicntiu corum. DOn pencrut:atuI fucrit, Ii ociari pcrmiIcrit' . 42 - 'fh. B-=hman (BoIman), Prrtamu "I'ffrtr-Ji«ri -mrii ~"'rir: 'OmniI diIigcncia ct ItUdium tnt priUl di.Ipoocre cameru ~i varia ... qui.que a1iwn preccIlcrc nitcbal.ur curioRtatc atque 1WIIptllOIitatc', cited in Im-. lMiIriIGis ~ M.Iii.A.i, under -wws. 4-3 .sa-""-,,, till amiIa S-- ... (Haarlcm IBsB cdn), pp.l3&. 1"]5L: 'Grote vcrcicringbc ... code curiale ommebsngbingbe ootn:n1 den lichacm'; 'Die vrouwcn ... die dat hooft curiOIdikcn Loemakcn'. A Dul.cb. text pointed out that 'the dothcI of holy women were DOt COItty, nor coIorcd, DOl" ruriouI'. Both ~ cited in E. Vcrwija andJ. Vcrdam, ~ W.-w(ISOO, m, col. IIlIRO.

4-4- - From a fiftcenth-ccnwry Nuremberg ItatutC, cited in J aritz, 'Von dcr 0bjcktivitIt bia RlJ" ~,

pp.4O"""4-1•

45 - 1M LijI qf 51 CdMt. Publicariom of the Surtcca Society, &] (Durham, IBgI), p.IISIB, II.. 7fl.t.t4B. +6- Geoffrey Chaucer,.A. TrEis. III "" .A.sbDWI (1391), Prologue, cd. Waher W. Skeat (Loodon, III"]!I), p. II, D. 31-!JlI. 4-7-Thomu i K.cmpiI, ViM -.; ---= 'rcIinquc curioIa ugumcnta vcrbon.un, quae impediunt profectum dcvotionia'; and

M.-~ 'verba curioIa important diItractiooem'. Both ~ cited in l..cria. l.MitfiICs ~ Abm ~ 4B -John Calvin, IruIiaIiIJIc '" I. ,... drrGtiIa6 (154-1) (PariI, 1911), ell. I, p. 13·

'superfluity with respect to preciosity, with respect to an excess of pleasingness, with respect to curiosity.'4D

Similar admonishments were aired. continually by the Dutch reformers.4-' One report on the reform of a monastery from around 1500 lamented that 'all diligence and study was firstly to dispose the chambers with various enticements ... and it glittered to exceed the other!! in curiosity and sumptuoumess. '4'1 A manual on confession condemned 'large ornaments ... and curious draperies wrapped about thc body,' as well as 'women who curiously make up their heads. '43 Municipal sumptuary laws took aim at 'ostentation, curiosity ~~l], and supcrlluous splendor.'+4- It should be pointed out that curiO!lity in an artefact, however, even an ecclesiastical accessory, wa! very often a term of wonder and praise. There arc several biblical examples, mentioned earlier. A further examplc is found in an English chronicle from the mid-fifteenth century, which described a bishop's staff 'as preciOUBC, / and in makyng full curiouse. '-0

But what was the equivalent in painting or sculpture to the vain excesses of dress or the carvings on a crozier? It is not so easy to di.stinguish the materiality of the image from its function. This is a problem whenever the main function of an object is to signify, since every part of the image, even the curious parts, will signify something. There is no easy way to splinter the image into its useful and useless components.

Language poses the same difficulty, indeed even more so than irnagc!. Yet even here one finds a critique of superfluity. Curiosity in language, in this period, was the unusually difficult, ornate, subtle, or rteMrchJ verbal manner. Chaucer apologized for the absence of 'curious enditing [i.e. writing or composition] & hard sentence' in his T 7!tllist on f}" AsIrolaiH, a book written for a child ¢ Thomas a Kempis recommended abandoning 'curious argument!! of words, which hinder profitable devotion,' and 'curious words' which distract. 47 Calvin, near the beginning of the Instibdes, declined to resort to 'longue [et] curieuse demonstration, pour mettrc en avant lea tesmoignages, qui scrvent a esclaircir et approuver la majeste de Dieu. >4B It wa! always somebody else's style that wa.!I curious, as if one could only arrive at a natural or straightforward style through a negative example. The simple mode W8.!I

thought to lack style altogether and wa! thus taken as a truer or more natural mode. This is a fallacy. Simplicity is a style in its own right; the very absence of conventional 'ornamental' words is significant. And contrariwise, those superfluous words that convert straightforward communication into misleading style are by no meam mcaningicss. The partitioning of style into bare words and ornament really amounts to a partitioning of content into important and trivial meanings. It is a doctrinal or political distinction masquerading as an epistemological distinction.

Curious language is language whO!le effect ha! traditionally been characterized with visual metaphors, such as 'figure' or 'image.' Such metaphor!! attempt to isolate operations of language that !IOmehow betray language, for example by not being reducible to propositions. Curiosity is after all the improper attempt to gain knowledge through vision. Thus the interest of the application of the concept to images. Curiosity in an image is apparently what is essentially visual about the image, what is proper to the image. Curiosity is what di.stinguishcs the image's way of meaning from the text's way. The critique ofpictorial curiosity, although iconophobic, actually articulate!!

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a psychology of creation and reception with more color than most other premodern discourses of the image. Most iconophobic texts address more comfortably issues ofsubjcct matter, location, exhibition, and function of the image.

The curious part of the image is what is left after the part trarulatable into a linguistic proposition has been subtracted. Sometimes a writer attempting to characterize this remainder will resort to the old topos ofindescribability. The modem locus classicus of this maneuvrc is Petrarch's sonnet IUS:

Arnor s'e in lei con oncstatc aggiunto, con bclti naturale, abito adomo et un atto che parla con silcn.zi.o, ct non so che nelli occhi ....

Here is Chaucer in his dream-poem Th Howe of FtI1M, about a generation later:

That hit altonyeth yit my thought, And maketh al my wit to swynk.e, On this C8.!1tel to bethynkc, So that the grete craft, beaute, Ibe cast, the curiosite Ne kan I not to yow dcvyse; My wit ne may me not Ruffuc. (III, 83ft)

And in Caxton's Golden Legend of 1483: 'to wrytc the curiosyte and werke of the temple ... passctb my connyngc to exprcssc.'-19 This linguistic abdication became a commonplace in Italian Renais!lance writing on art.

It is no wonder that all the old references to curious I53.CTeCi image!! arc deprecatory. The conspicuowly wrought !l3.CI"Cd image distracted beholders from its own subject matter. Profane images were free to indulge in curiosity and play. Chaucer's narrator in The House of Fame found himself

Within a temple ymade of glaa, In which there were mo images Of gold, standing in sundry stage!!, And mo curiow portraitures, And queint manner of figures Of gold worke than I saw ever. (I, 12off.)

ThC!lC were figures ofVcnus, Cupid, and Vulcan 'in portreiture,' and a series of Aenean !ICCllcs.,50 Certainly the sculpture!! on a fountain imagined by Spenser in the Faerie ~ were profane:

Moo goodly it with curiow imageree Wal over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes, Of which some 5CCIJled with lively jollitce, To fly about, playing their wanton toyes Whilst others did themsclve! embaye in liquid joycs. (0, xii, 6o~'

But sacred images were another matter. Any corupicuous principle of design in the work., any surplw of workmaruhip, any luxurious and appealing material, any self-serving artisanal self-display was curiow and dangcrow. The surplw notoriowly provoked emotional and !IOmatic responses. St Bernard regretted that the eyCll of the monks 'encounter curiO!lities that delight them, and not sad things that would !lU8tain them'; d&ctan literally meant

340 CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD

4!J - Ciled in the oy;n ¥sJI. Didi.wry uD~r nuitui!r.

so - Uucr in IIx- pam! Chaucer dClcnlxs a gate 'ywrought. by greal and rubtiD cure' (w, 1108).

51 Edmund Spcmer gocncnlIy a.ociatt-cI rurioUty with antiquity; ICe 1WrW a.-.. 'Y. x, 6; or TItt RIIiIws ,,~ p. 119.

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5>1- 'hlVMliunl rurillsi quo deiectenlur, el nOll inYMliunt mWeri quo IUltcntrntur'.

Mignc, PltrrJqj« ~ vol. 18~, enl. 91';-

53""Curiosu dqlictiollCl ... quae dum

orantium in lit' rcrorquem aJPCdUIn.. improi unt r1 alTtrturn'. Q)Kxcd in ex­Bru~. Ii.twks "E.rtJtItjqw .\IiJiiwJt, II, bk :,\, ell. 4-5'1- . Thol1111.. Ii Kcmpil. SoIi/oqltluH -= 'qui came mortUUI MIl, non viclct curinm cI

puIchra', citccI in J.ma. utWJ.lis .~ Mtin.1«i

55 On the Catholic ironophohcs, !ICC the CXN"!lt-nl ~y by t:hrinilU' (~, 'Dit·

DWipliniN1ll1g ~ Hciligenbildt-l durrh a1tg1tubi~ Thnllosen'. in ed. Scnbncr, BikIIr raM BiltImbtnlf, pp. 26g "95-

56 Mignc, ~ IAIi-. voL ~ col. ~55- lill'd in ck- Bruynr, IiJ.J,s tI' EstItItiqIll .\f~, pp. 115-36.

57 Crcighton Gilhcn., IT'artL, IhflilDl Art 1400 '.IjOO.' ,Wus trM IJonanb (EVRllIIlon,

IgBol, p. 1+8; nrigiJULI tC'Xl quotro by GiIIJn1 in Art &IJItUt, +1 (1959)· pp. j'6 n, n. 9. Gil~ hypothCllixo that AllIooino 'va>! thinking of n painting Iikr GentiJr cia Fnhriano'~ Atltmdioll ~tIr .\ltWi Ilo\!Z3:.

~,B Citro in JRrtAOll ... -lIn tottI Apt INt'. p.3+-

'draw away', that is, from serious busincss.32 He denounced 'curious depictions that twist the g"d.Ze during prayer and entangle the mind.'53 Vision operates here like an extension or prosthesis of the sense of touch and is thus highly vulnerable to temptation. Attentiveness to form becomes a kind of carnal knowledge. Thomas a Kempis pointed out balefully that 'he who is dead in the flesh, docs not see the curious and the beautiful' - meaning that not until death is one liberated from this appetitc.~ The 'wrought' aspects of a work are moreover direct traces of the artist's hand. Ibis indexical reference is automatically more compelling than any merely iconic resemblance of the work to its proper object, the sacred. personality or story.

100 line of thinking was followed by later iconophobcs as well. Sixteenth-century German clerics made uneasy by the cult of images, Protestants and conservative Catholics alike, condemned any excess of /amst in the religious image. Kimst meant either ornament, that is forms that did not contribute to the expository content of the picture, or artistry, that is any distracting display of skill. These critics of the modem image pined for the art

of a simpler, purer past-55 Already in the late twelfth century Peter Cantor observed how labor 'is turned toward faultiness, and things fall into vice, if it is lacking in art. Thi'! is seen in the superfluity, curiosity, and swnptuousness of our buildings.' Behold, he lamented, 'how far we have retreated from the simplicity of the ancients in the construction of buildingsl'Y;

One of the few iconographic principles found in the mona'!tic texts was the hostility to female forms. For the male beholder - particularly the cleriC.'! addressed by St Bernard or the Carthusian General Chapter . the figure of the woman was the unknown and the unc.anny. It was prcswnably not the living woman who posed a threat to cell-bound monks, but the representation of woman - the pomograpJu. The beautiful image was also metaphorically a woman. Like the image, the woman supposedly lured adrniren by her supplements: her cosmetic excesses, her hair, her ganncnts, her superfluous curves. And just as erotic fantasy dangerously supplements a properly chaste love, the private poesis that creates and savors idols is a supplement to worship.

Any style c.an become the object of a nostalgia for purity, and any other can become a dangerous harlot. But there WB! ncverthelellS some objectivity to the iconophobic critique!!. One critcrion of pictorial curiosity was a surplus of information, for example through gratuitous description. Another related structural criterion was a proliferation of marginal details and episodes. lbe Dominican St Antonino, Archbishop ofF1orence in the mid-fifteenth century, warned that to paint 'curiosities [CIlriosal in stories of the wnts or in churches, which have no value in stimulating devotion, but laughter and vanity, such as monkeys, or dogs chasing hares, or the like, or vain adornments of clothing, appears !!uperfl.uous and vain. '57 Antonino chose examples that could stand for all marginalia. Monkeys suggc!ted foolish play and thus symbolized art-making. But the ape was also the symbol of the work of art, which grotesquely parodied its natural object, just as the ape was nature's parody of man. The characteri'!tic response to ape and art was idle amusement. In the phrase of the twclfth-ccntury grammarian Alexander Neckam: 'The ape caters to vain curiosity [lX11fi.s snvat curiosiIaIibus], making the bystandCl"ll laugh with his ridiculous antics.'~ Antonino's cavorting dog, meanwhile, recalls Augustine's repudiation of curiosity in the Cmifession.r, where he confessed (among other things) that a dog chasing a hare 'might easily hold

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my attention and distract me from whatever serious thoughts occupied my mind .... Gnlcss you made me realize my weakness and quickly reminded me, either to tum my eyes from the sight and raise my thoughts to you in contemplation, or to despise it utterly and continue on my way, I should simply stop and gloat. '59 In Antonino's warning, the dog chasing the hare actually repeats the desultory, meaningless wanderings of the beholder's eye about the picture. Petrarch, in his dialogue De rmwJiis ulriu.sqzuJortunae, had also identified curiosa disparsio as a key to pleasure: 'Thou conceivcst delight in the pcncill and colours, wherein the price, and cunning, and varietie, and curious dispersing, doth please thine eye. >60

Ccntrifugal motion was the structural principle of such a picture. Antonino was not necessarily thinking of specific monkeys and dogs in paintings, but merely wing them as stock devices to denounce the sort of painting he deplored, which must have generally been the loosely structured, various, paratactic mode characteristic of Pisanello and other northerners, and acknowledged by contemporary humanists in brimming ekphrases.61

Curiosity as a cognitive habit was generally understood as the impulse to pointless motion. St Ikrnard. scorned the 'restless curiosity [iltqWla cwiosilatel to build, to tear down, to turn squares into circles. 'M Aquinas defined curiosity as one of the species of oogatio mmtis cin:a illiciJa, or 'straying of the mind toward illicit things. Jti3 Curiosity propelled the faithful into endless pilgrimages and image-cults. fi4. The samc motor would propel the modern tourist: Rabelais had one of the charact.crs in Pan.tagruel recount how on his travels he had 'curiously contemplated the site and thc beauty oflolorence, the structure of the Duomo, the sumptuousness of the temples and magnificent palaces.'65 And it was very often the curiosity of the wrought object, or the monument, that initiated the pilgrim's or the traveller's trajectory (here we switch back to the other semantic tradition).John Wycliffe, for example, around 1380, lamented that 'they draw thc people in the holiday by coryouslt of gay windows.,66

What is notable in these texts is the assumption that both seeing and making are active, even enterprising, processes. Seeing i! clearly much more than a merely passive reception of impressions; thc eye pursues the world And on the other side of the image, the artist does not merely replicate the world, but makes a world. It must be stressed how much this adventurous aspect of making was taken for granted in this period, even by the likes of Jean Gerson, who conceded the artist's licence to invent by quoting Horace's famous tag, 'pictoribus atque poetis quidlibct audendi semper fuit aequa potesta!,' or 'painters and poets always had equal authority to venture anything they likcd.J6"] 1bis is exactly what the iconophobcs feared: the forward movement of the eye and the hand, the initiative, the unpredictability, the leap into the unJzeimJich and the unfamiliar. The picture's curiosity contributed to the representation of the unseen. Fantasy fabricated images of the beyond, the transcendental, the unearthly, the unnamed. Ornament and excess augmented the image's range of reference; they supposedly initiated a swerve out of the routine of normal representation in hopes of capturing the unrcprescntable.

The generative powers of the creative imagination were simultaneously exploited and feared, especially in the mystical tradition. A fourteenth-century English mystical text, for instance, the Cloutlt of UnJawwing, warned the devout not to mistake such fancies for adequate figures of the divine. The hungry mind

34lZ CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD

59 - Sl Augu.tinc", lAifmitRu, x, 35.

Sc, - Petran:h, Dr TrINIiiis ~ JOrl-, in the EnglWh trunalation by lbomu Twyne, ~.4pst FarlJow (1579), Dialop;ue XI. text and l1"IlnIIaWon given in MkhHM Baxandall, ~ -' 1M Orun (Oxford, 1971), p . .)4.

61 &xandalI, (;foUo IIIfi IN Umltn, "'P.

PP·7B gG.

&2 Mip;nC". ~ ~. vol. Ig.l,

("()I. g8s. citro in Zacher. Uuiosi!J IJIIIi ~. p. 'r]. ICe alto P.52. In fA ~ De Beman:! made punning connectiom IX"twN""1l atmfI and ~. 63 lbomas Aquinaa, os-- .... II. ii. q. 35, art.. 4-6+ - i'..acher. 0triDsi!1 -' fiWilMift. ch. 3-with many quoblliona. lis Franc;oU Rahcla.is, ProclIIgrwI (1.)48). 1\ .•

xi. Rabdaia ItiInrlf bad hccn in florence around 1535- Anhur Hculhard. RtrJ.J.U.. Sn II11J9t til IIG&!ParU, 1 Bg6). pp. &2 -6+ 66 Citro in the O:rfoti ]<¥Rc DictitNHrr;F, under 1YTiari!J.

67 .. Genoa WIll juarifying rr-prctmtaliom of StJOIeph u a young 1TW1. UJwrw DIfIm (1"]06), III, col. 1352; quoted in Mt-)"M" Schapiro, • "Mworipula DiaboIi~: t~ symbolilm of the Mmxie Altarpica"', Art Btdl#tizt. 27 (1945), pp. 182 B7. rcprintn:l in ~ An, ed.. Creighton GiIbo."T1. ;New York, 1970), P·31.

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68 .f7tt (:JaM '!! ~ ati JUW.i 1r.Jisn, m l'hyiIa HodgIon, Analecla CamvUna, 3 (SaUburg, 1982), pp.5B and 121 (from the tn-atDc In. lJiDiIfi9); lee aiIo pp.2, 12, 130 66.

6g.- Sandran, T aLsdtt A-r..a" p. 62.

']0 Thia IlOle WU already pubIimed in the 1155 edition; I!eC the modem edition, &.g.'S ~ cd. C. F. Bell (Oxford, Igo6), p. dBv. 71 Van Mander, HIl 1-. r. 2221". He makes a IimiIar comment about Jan vm Heme.en in the ICCtion 'Van venchcyden &hilden .. .'. r. !I05T.

72 Berlin, Kupfentichbhinett, KdZ % dated 1511; project foe tht- Tucher alw­now in St Seb&ld, Nuremberg. 73 Sandrmt, T.udw Ac-.n., pp. ']6, 80.

74 'l'bomaa WalIOD, n.H~ ~ PusittMII c.u.r;" ff Un (1.)82), Dedicatory EpiItle, r. 3V.

75 Further Dutch cditioru in 16sg and 1675. A German tramIa1ion did not appear until 17']0.

76 See the remarb by Jeffrey M. Muller, 'MeamrcI of authenticity: the ~ioo. of copiea in the early literature on

~p', SlMia ill "" HISItttJ t( Art, 20 (lgBg), pp. 141 49-

of the mystic climbs impetuously toward the sky; it imagines a God in rich clothes and set in a throne, 'fer more curiously than euer was he depcynted in this erthe.' Again and again the author (probably a Carthusian) abominates the 'corioustee' that seeks truth 'bi making of figures of the la!t and the leest worthi thingcs of thees beyng visible thinges, as stocke! or stones, and seyen [sayl that it [the :Hrst Causel hath nothing abouen [beyond] thoo wickyd & manyfolde fonnaciouns, maad of hcrnse1f in here fantastick ymagynatyue witte!.' In this text, the curious wit that indulges in abstract speculation and the curious imagination that carves stocks and stones arc equal targets of reselltmenL 1bis is the clearest irutancc of the convergence of the two semantic traditions. 68

Franc:iKua JUDi ... on curiMity and judgment What happened to this adventurous version of curiosity? When sixteenth- and seventecnth-ccntury text! speak of a euriow manner of painting or drawing, they arc usually referring to manual control. Curiosity was associated with technique, even technology. Joachim von SandrcUt, writing about Peter Vtscher's bronze Tomb oJSt &baJ.dus in Nuremberg in 1&]5, remarked on 'the great industry and curiosity of the casting. >6g John Evelyn observed in a marginal note written on a copy of his own treatise on engraving (1662) that the art of mezzotint had since 'arrived to the utmost curiosity and accurateness. '7" Karel van Mander reported that many excellent portraits by the 'clean' (suijr;er} hand of Hans Holbein were still to be seen in great houses, 'indeed so many that one wonders how in the span of his life he managed to produce so much neat and curious work' (Mt cvrimr UJeTCI9,1' The emphasi! is on skill and on the time invested in paintings.

But in other imtanees curiosity implied fancy and excess. Sandrart, describing an altarpiece by Hans von Kulmbach, mentioned its dependence on a preliminary drawing by Dorer that he happened to own himself, 'sketched with the pen very ingeniowly [simzm'ch] and curiowly.' That pen and watercolor drawing survives and it is indeed stylish. and animated, without a trace of aridity or pedantic diligence.7fI. Sandrart also wrote that many of the early Gennan engravers 'curiously completed and decorated the work of the goldsmitfu. '73 Thw one supposes that when the Elizabethan poet Thomas Watson invoked the 'cunning hand and .. , curious pencill' of Apellcs, he had in mind something more than a merely disciplined draftsmanship.74

This slight confusion about what a curiow manner was, and how to judge it, is multiply reflected in the great contemporary treatise on the classical literature of art, De picturo veImIm by FranciscusJunius.J uniw was a Protestant of French and Flemish birth, educated at Leiden, who served from 1621 as librarian to the Earl of Arundd. His book appeared in 1637 with a dedication to Charles 1. The next year Junius published his own revised English translation, ThA p~ oJth4 Antimtr. A Dutch translation followed in 16.p.75 The book, a collage of classical citations, is organized not historically but analytically. It amounts to a treatise on aCllthetics. Although Juniw was basically a classicist and an idealist, he was troubled by the ways beauty and grace interfered with the clear intellectual apprehension of form and clouded the beholder's judgment. In many ways Junius - although himself no connoisseur-was an intellectual patron of the modern discipline of connoisseurship.76 His text has been I1li!prizcd as a mere antiquarian

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compilation, a late product of the medieval anthologizing impulse. TIlls poor reputation dates fromJoharm Wmckelmann, who necessarily rejcctedJunius' entire approach to classical. art. In fact,Junius' thinking on the structure of the work of art and the problem of judgment was original enough to have influenced G. P. Bellori and Roland Freart de Chambray, the classicist art theorists and friends of Poussin.n

Near the end of De pUluTa vetmJm, believing to have said enough to 'serve for an introduction into a setlcd way of judging,' Junius appends a comment on the topic of the pictorial supplement, or parergon.78 In Pliny and other ancient writers, pamga are marginal and superfluous embellishments of pictures or artefacts. Q¢ntilian definedpamga [mJunius' own translation) as 'such things as are added to the wode for to adorne it.' Philostratus called them the amdim.enJa picturtu. The pamgon can also serve as a sort of personal emblem or signature. Galen reported that 'good workemen usc to make some Pamgon or by-worke for a document of their Art [.rpecimm anisJ, upon the bolts and shields: oftentimes also doe they make upon the sword hilts and drinking pots, some little images over and above the use of the worke ... .'

Junius then warm that 'artists tend to delineate these parerga most incuriously [inczaiosius, i.e. negligently] and therefore do not seem to merit care in examination equal to the works themselve!. '79 What doesJunius mean when he says that by-works arc done carelessly? Surely these supplements were important to the arti.sts. They were appended to the work precisely to make room for non-functional, unsupervised play and for self-advertisement. The pamgon was the place where conventions could be conspicuously relaxed, and where ordinary meaning went on holiday. What the artist neglected in the pamga were the established rules of art that guarantee truthful representation. Proper care, or curiosity, thus means properly oriented workmanship.

Junius expects the beholder to examine the work with care. Evidently he is supposed to evaluate the work and not merely register its content. Junius' suggestion that the beholder's care in examining ought to be matched by care of execution implies that the real object of such an examination is the execution. So far,Junius' critique of the by-work is quite compatible with an idealist theory of art. But this connection between careful judgment and careful execution opens a window on to a potential conflict with idealism.

Already in antiquity, artists were ambivalent about the appeal exerted by their own stylish or eccentric rupplernents. The best painter! were the most likely to undo their own art with clever marginalia or odd subject-matter. Protogenes, in a famous anecdote recounted in Strabo, found himself 'much vexed, that the by-worke should be preferred before the worke it sdfe.' When beholders admired the ingenuity of the invention rather than the technique, Zeuxis complained that they 'commend the mud of our Art.' InJunius' text

these quotation! stand generally for the ways painting oventeps its own functional boundaries, not just through literally marginal devices, but through stylishness. And likcwiseJunius repeatedly cautions the beholder not to pennit hi! curiosity to slide into contemplation of the marginal or supcrlicial, as curiosity is wont to do: 'all it is then evident,' he says, 'that our curiositie may not busie it sclfe too much about poore and frivolous matters, so must we on the contrary endeavour to conceive the whole shew of the represented matter with a large and freely diffused apprehension .... ' Junius wants to divert

344 CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD

n Ancbt Fontaillf", I~ tiortnlUl "'m1 III Hate .. PrtusiIc Ii DitInot (1909, reprinted IgSg), pp. ~~ 33; FJi:cnbeth Cropper, 1'" J .. ff PmJiI/fi Pimrl Tt3ll1:r ~ _~ (PrinCf"Uln. IgI4), pp. llil 71-Panoflky mcnUolll.lWUIJI only to blame him for leading Bdlori RAIny: I ... : A Cttttnpl ill Alt n-;, ( New York, 1968), pp. ~son, 2:,:m. His inflUM\C(" lin Dutch dllllicism is lamented by Emmcns, &Mruth 111 H RIfIIIls WI! U XiDuJ. pp. 66 6']. ']8 - }o'ranciIruI juniua.. Dr ~ "'*'-. bk III, ch. vii, § l:l, p. 220. 'n.. 1'rtiitIiIIt ,y 1M ANiIIIu, in the recent annot.arcd cdi rion by Krith /\lldrich, Philipp F~h1 and Raina fehl (BertcIIry, 1991), bk III, rho vii, §13, pp. 310 - II. 1bc Engl.iah and Dutch cdiriollll nctually end with the dilruBiOIl of the p.mp; du· pa&Hgl' fnllowa tlu- exhortIuioo .nd is tllU. literally II KUpplemcnt. 79 juniUA, DI;idItm I'dIrwM, bk 111, ch. vii. § l:l, p. 220: 'SOlCIll vcn» artifico parerga haec ut p1urimwn incuriosiUII deli neart':

undc nequc pvcm cum ipm opcribuI inlpiciendi curam videntur 1'IK"TCIi'. In juniUl' awn ll'a1IIIation, which is not quite accul"llte: • But ba-auIe the Artificen SOC OYer thne worUs IiightIy and with a light Iw1d, 10 it it that _ do likewiae for the mOlt part examine tht"lTl more negligently'.

n. PaiItJitv w IM.t111Ci111Js, bk III, ch_ vii, § 13. p. 310 (page citatiOIll from the Alldrich-fehl OOitioll).

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Su-Ilnd., §§6-7, PP.3U1 J.

RI -Junius, Dt pictM", ~, bIr. m, cit. \ii, §I:l, p.:no. Cr. Plutarch, .w~ ¥lOC. In Juniull' own lnulllalion. agKin ralhcr lilx-rnl: 'WI" consider the oy-worb of workmen bul IIC1lderiy. for they ItUdy 0Iu:/y to Ix- pleaaHnl in many of lhem; nMlhcr doe lhey ahwyes aYO}-d in them

whAl is to srna.I.I pu1pOIC and luperftuoul'. 'n" PrJixJitq ~ 1M .AJtc;"'L<. bk III. ch. vii, §13,

Pr. 310-'11.

Ih Juniw, Dt /'imurIl¥ImuII, bk III, ch. vii. §1:l, p. J20: 'magni artificcA, dum operi ~uo parrrwt '11111.Ntam cu m mi nore runt.

U(ljiriunl. rdirius in iis, quam in ipw opel1'" \"{'nullam flrmac racilitali3 gratinm a.dK-qwmtur·. In JwLiw' own Il"lllUllariuu:

'lhe ArtifiC"t"n hil the true forrc and facilitie

(If grace OCHer in these ~udden thi"!!" than in tilt: "'U1V i t ~If{" .. .' TItt I'rnIIliIw oj u.. .UtrilNls, hI!. III, eh. vii, §I3, p. ::III.

R3 Ibid. rho vi, §3, pp.288-Rg. Cf.JUJliw'

disc1.wriOll of all ekphnw. of R hunting 1Ct"nt: .... ilh deer and ~ fmm Libwni~

DarripIir»ws. to, where lllf" ani rn."Uion lltimula!o the imKginRliuJl; bk III, rh. 7, §7,

P-:i"::1·

14 . Ibid .. hk II. ch. xi, §7, p. 179·

curiosity toward. serious things: 'the most earnest intension of our curious mind ought chiefly to employ it sclfe about the chiefest and most remarkable things.' Junius' invocation of an ckphrasis by Claudian of a dramatic sculpturdl work suggests the primacy of imitation and emotional content over mere delight: 'He cannot abide that his euriositie should spend it selfe about matters of small importance, 80 doth he very seriously obserVe the most strange miracles of the noble Art, as they doe display themselves in such a noble argument.. >110

But there is a slight dishonesty imbedded within Junius' peremptory dismissal of the incurious supplement. lbis is quickly exposed in the passage on the pamgon. Immediately after di.smissing the by-works as careleKS afterthoughts, Junius quotes Plutarch as follows: 'We suffer the accessories of the crafum.en, for many are quite neatly done; but in fact they do not always avoid the frigid and the curious' (frigidum d curiosum, or psychron kai pniDgon in the Greek original).81 'Ibis timeJunius is conceding that the by-work can be worked carefully, indeed all too carefully. When the ornament is overwrought, the labor is too apparent and comes to look self-serving. The charge of 'frigidity' suggests that whatcver representational conventions had been mobilized in the ornament now look unnatural and alien.

1bis pcrmitsJunius to observe, just before he delivers his ultimate warning against the attractions of the supplement, that sometimes 'great craftsmen, though they append pamga to their work 80 to speak with less care, nevertheless achieve beauty and the grace of secure facility more happily in these than in the work itself. >8;z For an instant, the tables are turned. The absence of care becomes a virtue, while curiosity yields more correctness. This reversal is comparable to the confusion about d.ra:ft:smaruhip in the passages quoted at th(" beginning of this section. In Sandrart, curiosity was the key to correct drawing, and yet at the same time its absence was temptingly stylish.

This criterion of stylish negligence lay at the core of Junius' own ideas on grace, laid out earlier in Book Three. 'Picture,' he explains, 'must: follow a bold and carelesse way of art, or it must at least make a shew of carelcssne88C in many things.' Junius then caJ.lg on an ancient ekphrasis to illustrate this principle:

Phi.Jo.rtrabLr propoundeth unto w a lively example of this same secure and unlaboured Facilitie, when he describeth the picture of many little Cupids wantonly hunting a hare, and careles1y tumbling on heaps for the cagcmcs.o;e of their sportfull chace; . .. the Grace of this picture was infinitely graced with the confwed falls of the lasciviow and pampered little ones, as they were negligently represented in the worke by ruch another !IeeIlling error of a temr:rary and confidently careless Art.1I:!

Jwrius is recommending that the negligent look of the pamgon be extended to the whole work.. Now the supplement is prelumably executed with authentic carelessness. But the work itself cannot simply be dashed off thoughtlessly. Any negligence will have to be feigned.J unius caJ.lg this maneuver a 'seeming error ': the artist needs to break the rules ir. order to cleave to a higher rule.

Ars est celare artem: this paradox was pointedly cultivated in the north, where thoughtful artisl~ were apt to be defensive about the place of craftsmanship in their work. 1be principle was derived from rhetoric and particularly from Qrintilian.Junius observed that 'artificers therefore must take great care, least their care be perceived. "4 'Beauty when it is set forth too carefully, is no beautie. Wee arc therefore above all things to take good heed that there do

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not appeare in our works a laborious gaynesse and an ovcr-curious affectation of grace. >B3 The artist's natural tendency was to become absorbed in his own craft.Junius quoted Seneca to this effect: 'It i! more delightfull to an Artificer to paint, then to have done painting: our sollicitude, as long as wee busieth her selfe about the wode, taketh a singular great pleasure in the occupation it selfe . .as

It was exactly this self-indulgent solicitude that the monastic and scholastic sentinels mistrusted. The Renaissance solved the problem by dropping the theological objection and instead reca!ting the concealment of labor as a matter of manners and good taste. The critique of curiosity came to resemble the gentleman's disdain for pedantic or overeorrect behaviour. Think of Castiglione; or Montaigne, who observed that 'pcrsonne n'est exempt de dire des fadaises [foolish remarks]; Ie malheur cst de les dire curieuscment [i.e. insistently or tediously].>117 An early scvcnteenth-century French-English dictionary offered 'doubtful,' 'scrupulous,' and 'hecdfull' among the translations of cvriewc.88 Curiosity suggested ignoble pedantry and timorousness. Artists warned against excessive curiosity were doubtless flattered by the expectation that thcy meet these gentle standards.

This sort of carelessness is obviowly anything but random. Carelessness is the product of care and diligence, jmt as the gentleman's simplicity is a symptom of the greatest refinement and cultivation. The studied avoidance of curiosity is merely a special case of curiosity. And once curiosity is safely masked, it can flood the entire work, collapsing the distinction between the work and the pamgon.

Striking is the congruence between the ekphrasisJunius chose to illmtrate carelessness, and the illustrations ofillcgitimate curiosity in the medieval texts. Augustine had evoked a dog pursuing a hare to represent the vain and idle errancy of hi'! own mind; St Antonino had lamented dogs chasing hares in the margins of sacred paintings. For J unim, the image of cupids chasing a hare represents the grace of the work, just as did Spenser's romping fountain-cupids (p. 340). What was once the work's failing is now the emblem of its beauty. The usc of the identical image ofludic movement to illustrate both negligence and curiosity is the clearest demonstration that negligence, the absence of curiosity, has itself become a species of curiosity. Curiosity is an internal movement that appears random but is actually the product of high artifice. Only nature could license such a reversal of the rules of art and a transferring of responsibility over to the artist. Junius therefore offers nature, not as the direct object of imitation in such marginal fancies, but as a structural model for purposeless mov(:ment:

Pictures which are judged I!WCCtcr than any picture ... [have] something in them which doth not proceed from the laboriow curiOBitie prescribed by the rules of Art ... the free spirit of the Artificer mamng how Nature sporteth her sdf"e in such an infinite varictie of things, undertookc to doe the samc.1I9

Nature was often called in to legitimate a new principle. Early writing on imagination, inspiration, or fancy, for instance, commonly invoked nature's own whimsical inventions, the accidental figures found in tree stumps, mountain profiles, or gems.go

The most extreme paradox is the idea that a simple style is the product of refinement and art. The conventional condt:scension toward the primitivc

346 CHRISTOPHER s. WOOD

115 Ibid., hit IU, ch. vi, §3, p. ~8g.

86 -Ibid., bit II, ch. vii, §I, pp. Hl']-g.

B7 - Cited in A. J. Greinwl lind Teresa Mill)' Kca~, DictitIrIMirr tIM ""!J'I'.fraf.is: 14 ~ (J>uia, 199\1), under Aaiau:. 88 RandI .. Co~, A Dictita.rW ~tJw Fr.1t ttIfIi"~ TMfIIG (London, 1611). Sec IIho William ~, A:a, 1Mr, I,

ii, ~ 'Whemorc should I / Stand in the plague of rllltom, and pennit / 'Ibc L"uriclllit Y of nationJ to deprive me ... ?'

8g J unilll, T1tI PrriItJDw 9f 1M AItMm.. hit III, m. vi, §6, pp. ¥ 93· go On thoc: bui ....,., U!' 'Jporu of natW't'"', lee H. W.Jamon, 'The ~

madt- Ily ("hance~ in RrnaiIIanrc though!", in Dr Artibtu ~ XI: ~ ill H_ r#' f:ntU PatifsJ;I r.Jew YOTk, 1961), ~5-(1r.; and J. &Itrulaitis, 'PiermI Irnaj¢n'. in .~ I{Wln mIIU rwr 14 ~ mJrsn­(Paris., 19.)71, i7ff· See abo Junius, T1tI PrtizIJDc rt' • . -t..n.ls, Ilk II, ("h. ~ §4., p. 86, 00 a 'ruriOUl rarity" tht- fal1lOl.ll gem danihed 0)' Pliny.

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91- Joachim du .8dlay, fA ~ It ilbtstrtdif1II if II! fmttw ~ ;(549), I, p. g. He l'OntinlX'lO: :.Ie dy IMJ1emmt l]U'il n'cst 1_ impo..ihlc qllt" llOItre langue pw.c rt:('l.'VOir qudquesfoil I'C!II omement e\

~, aJJIIIi curicux quil cst RUX Gn:cII ct Romailll'. ~ -Juniua.. 7". ~ III IM..t.n.w, Ilk III, ch. 6, k, p.!!89-93" Chaucer, A TTtfIIig till tJw ~ PnJioRue.

9-4 JuniUA, 7'" p.~ ofIM.~, hk III, r.h. vi, §6. p.~; Dc p;rt.r. IWr-..

pp. ~u5 -6. Cr. the COTT\mrnbi on simplicity hy Prter CII.lltor quoted Oil p. 34-1 .bove.

95 Junius, 1M l'rriMiIw of IM~, hk III, ch. S. §IO, p. 280. Junius wal paraphruing (without Iltt:rihutilm) II puaagc from thr introductory Epiade to Spcllser'l ~ ~ (1579), by 'EX' (who may havt: hccn SpenJel' hirTllelQ: 'Oftima we fyude ooneIvcs.. I knowc not how, singularly deliJ!htcd with the shcwt- of IUch natunill rudenea, and take !!fCti pleuure in thai. disordcrIy order'. 1M SJ,m,r l'-s III &IwaattJ s,-. (New Ha'"en, IgSg), p.l5-g6 -Junius, TIw PrWI1i1rf of 1M A..ciEr, Ilk II, ch. vi, §2, p. 107. cr. Plutarch, MtnlM, 6938, where the topic iI actually the llI.II..Dufacturc of wine. Thia ~ the lIOrt of slightly fraudulent IChoIanhip that later

dixTcditcd JuniUl.

97 -JuniUA, 1M PDuiIIt of 1M A1tciew, hk III, ch. vii, 12, p. "'97·

g8 . Ibid., §5, p. 300·

99 Ibid., ('h. vi, k.. p.~.

style was still found, for example, in Joachim du Bellay's disdain for the 'simplicity of our forefathers who were content to express their conceptions with bare words, without art and ornament, not imitating the curiou.~ diligence of the Grceks.'9 I Junius, however, treats simplicity not as the mere absence of ornament, but as a positive quality. Here again he follows Quintilian: 'A plaine and unaffected sirnplicitie is commendable for a certain kind of pure ornament it hath, and for a certain kind of neatnesse which seemeth to proceed out of a slender diligence, and is lovdy even in women. >gg (When Chaucer explained his adoption of a 'rewde' rather than a 'curious' manner in the T reo.li.se 071 th.t Astrolahe, interestingly, he apologized for the 'supcrfluite of wordes,' suggesting the stylishness of Latinate cconomy.93) Junius represents the rude simplicity of ancient Greek painting as the splendid culmination of a process of refinement: 'these arts being anciently pe.rlited by the study and care of many and most consummate artificers, came so low about the times of Au.gust, that they were ready to give their last gasp .... ' The crime of the decadent followers WaJI to overfill the cup, to expend further care on a perfect art: 'when the Artificers, leaving the simplicitie of the ancients, bcganne to spend themselves in garnishing of their works L uUro modvm. CIlTtlITI. cultui impendenJes in his own Latin text], the art grew still worse and worse, til it was at last overthrowne by a childishly frivolous affectation of gayncsse.'!)4.

Like any classicist theorist, Junius by and large mistrusL~ the colorism, the disorderliness, and the naturalism associated with the Venetian or the northern schools. But he associates these tendencie!l with curiosity, which shows that even idealists appreciated that northern disorder or Venetian colorism W"dS more than mere unsclcctcd, raw nature. Junius recognizes the labor involved. At one point, displaying a certain sympathy for the rough pleasures of northern landscape painting, Junius concedes that 'the most curious spectators finde themselves singularly delighted with such a disorderly order of a counterfeited rudenessc. '95 Elsewhere he echoes a remark of Plutarch's: 'There is a wonderfull great difference betwecn pure neatnesse and curious affectation. >g6 Simplicity is an ornamentation beyond ornament. Even in the texts of the idealists, purity of form sometimes looks less like a metaphysical achievement, and more like a fonnal refinement.

Junius has a good deal to say, towards the end ofhis text, about judgment. With the ekphrasis from Claudian, cited above, he suggests that the true purpose of the work is to convey meaning, and that that meaning should furnish the structure of the work. The work's success in conveying sense mould in turn be the principaJ evaluative criterion. 1be mind is constantly in danger of slipping away from the important work toward!! the frivolous pamgon.j unius envisions a competition between the intdlcctual structure of the work and the materiality of the curiow supplement- He associates curiosity with pleasure, quoting Cicero: 'Witty things teach us; curious thing!! [mguta] delight us: grave things move us. >g] There is room for ddight in the blend. But the senses arc not a sound basis for judgment 'For our sense doth seldom at the first judg rsic] right of these curiosities, it is an unwary Arbitrator, and mistaketh many things: all the !IOundnesse and truth of our judgement must proceed ondy from reason. og8 Excessive care and study may produce dazzling 'gay-seeming' effcct!l, but these are aJI grass choking off the nourishing corn.99

And yet when Junius comes to discws the capacity to draw the finest di.!tinctions among works - to tdl original from copy, ancient from modern,

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good from bad-- he falls back on the senses. Tlu.'! lime. the basis of judgment is not the intellect, but the scrupulous exercise of curiosity. Attentiveness to the minutiae offono - the same attentiveness that propelled the early modern. proto-scientific practices of discovery and classification paradoxically authorizes the t.'valuation of aesthetic quality. ThusJunius csteCllUl 'the daily pI""clctice of a (:urious eye to be the chiefest meanes whereby we do attaine to SUcll a faci1itie of judging .... 'IOU 'Ibe beholder takes as his model the intensc and single-minded concentrcltion of the artist himself: 'How many things doc Painters see in the shadows and eminen<:e!l, the which wee cannot sec?'"11 Careful execution should be met by careful scrutiny. Here JunilL'i quotes Plutarch. in turn quoting a painter:

IR Jude spccLators ... arc Iikc thO!le that Iialute a great multitude at once; but neat spectaton, and such all are studiow of good Arts, may be compared with them that salute onl' by one: the first namely doc not exactly lookt~ into the workc!i or the Artificers, but conceive onely a grosse and wlShapcn image of th(~ worlu:s; where the others going judiciously over every part or the worXc, looke upon all and observe all what is done well or ill. I,,"

One is reminded more of the passage where Junius praises the 'disorderly order' of the northern landscape, than of Claudian's ekphrasis of statues. The curious mind scans the surface of the painting, but without a plan. It errs, circles, jumps.

Junius has transformed judgment into an intimate and experiential eneounter with the paint surface. Judgment shares its ludic structure with cupid'! and the dogs. 'Ibis curiosity OPCI""cltes independently of any interpretation or reading of the picture. And the scrutiny of the curiosities in a painting is properly an affair of leisure and disinterest. Many gentlemen

recreate themselves in the contemplation of the divine workes of excellent Artificers, not ondy weighing and examining by a secret estimation what trca.'\UI"Cll of delight and contentment there are hidden in them, but ISOmetimcs abo viewing and examining therein every little moment of Art fparouIa f[IUXIUt

mommJa arlir] with such infatigable [sicl though IIC'rupulous care that it is easie to be perceived they do not adlmowledg l.ricJ any greater plcalIure.lo:-\

Junius here is closer to modem connoisseurship than to classicism. In fact the affiliation between curiosity and connoisseurship is older than

this. The figure of the curiosus, the antiquarian, was already in the sixteenth century credited with subtlety, or the infinite capacity to discriminate and to discern resemblances. In one of the DisCOIlTS phiJosophiquM ofPontus de Tyard (1557), a character called the 'Solitaire,' ascetic and single-minded, engages in debate with the 'Curieux,' cloquent and diversely erudite: the hedgehog and the fox, as it were. The Solitaire admires the other's range and ingenuity, but doubts that the chain of reasoning will lead anywhere: 'VOllS estes asscz heureuscment disert pour savoir descouvrir vos conceptions mais j'ay I'apprehension tant durc que si subtil.<! discours n'y peuvcnt aucunement entrcr."04 Curiosity was precisely the tendency to overlook the main point in favor of marginalia or superfluities. This is how the connoisseur sees through content to style and quality. The Roman chronicler and theoretician Giulio Mancini, for example, suggested around 1620 that a great ma!ter's true hand would be found cspccially in those passages not dependent on literal imitation, such as hair or drapery. "'5

34B CHRISTOPHER s. WOOD

wo Ihid., ch_ xii, §I~- p_ ::lOll.

WI Ihid .• hlr. I. ch. v. §g, 1lP- 6~, 66_ quoting Ckero.

IO"J Ibid, p.li5. P1utun-h, JfINrlIitL, 5758-

103 JwUu., TItt PnWi'W tif 1M .~, Ilk I.

ch_ \". §fl. p- 6g; /)" JWIIrn l'drmII. p- +4-

I U1- Sylvil1D(" II uOI-Bulr.clam. '(.0 lip;urt" du nllirux dallllt~ I>iscHrs pIt~iqllD de PonlUli dr Tyard', in 00_ <.:btrd, /", nlriasiit

'* ~ RnWs=Kt, p. Hl'j.

105 Cited in Mul!n-, 'l.kuun .. ur authrnticity'_

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106 - Crwin PanoJll.Y. C'o«li/m 4U II Critic rIf 1116 .-47t.r r]"b(" Huguc. 195iJ. §SO

107 Raben Eatienne. DictitMtD iDe t.fiIttt.rp1JiaM (1.')38). cited in the IlIt'ful Icxicon compikd by &rban J. &h!igt:r in her diHlcrtatioo 'n" ·KJow· IIIIIi W......,laauan·: A ~ IWsorutI qf (JN~ Dc ~. ~ -' FJWItrM 1j6s 17.;0 (Ann Arbor. 1!J701. p.7¥i. 108 - La Bruyere, I ~ CmttcIbu, • Dc la Mode'. 110. 1/. fi.dition <X- la P\eiade (PIIria, 1951), p.:JII6. 109 Rimy G. SaiIReIin. T1w IbIIt qf &tuotI -' 1M !bun qf ~ HMTI (C~KI. 1970i. pp. iii 00.

By the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the connoisseur was confident enough to hcgin distancing himself from his roots in hase curiosity. The modem curiosus was always shadowed by the image of a bizarre, magus-like figure sequestered in his cabinet. When Galileo, in a letter of 1612,

preferred the grand design of Ariosto's epic to the tonuous ingenuities of the modem Tas.'>O, he compared the latter's verse to the cluttered cabinet of a droll, muddle-headed antiquarian, 'WlO studietto de qualche ometto curioso. "ob '[he curi.oso reacts capriciously and subjectively to the works of man and nature; he is incapable of interpretation; he is farinated hy novelty for its own sake. And his ohscssi.oru were tainted by the suspicion of possessiveness. A sixtccnth-century Latin -French dictionary defined mUiquarius as one 'curieux d'avoir ou sc;avoir chases antiques.""7 La Bruyere scornfully pronounced: 'Curiosity is not a taste for what is good or beautiful, but for the rare, the unique, for that which one has and others do not have. It is not an attachment to perfection, hut to the popular and the fashionable. It is not an amusement but a passion, and often so violent that it yidds to love and ambition only in the pettiness of its object."nII For the Comte: de Caylus in the next century, the immoderate predilections of the curieu."( rrndered him inferior to the true connoisseur. "'9

DeKription in northern pllinting The Kunst- und WUMn'kammer hou.ored both naturc:l.l curiosities and their glib, painted doubles. Paintings of lobsters or seashells were twic.e curious. Their technique - descended from the legendary oil technique of Vc:I.ll Eyck - appears to report neutrally on the exotic !!pCCimcn. And yet just as in van Eyck's paintings, the glazed surface itsclfwas as marvellous as any object. 'lbey were reports in a descriptive language that !reized precisely the most curious features aberrations of structure legible in irregular contours, unexpected colors, unearthly textures. The paintings were opaque and highly present objects in their ~wn right, the prodm.:ts of an active imagination rather than merely passive, mimetic reflexes. Their inscrutable surfaces become poetic figures as difficult and seductive as any overtly wrought ornament.

The device of masking stylishness under iconic stillness was introduced to

northern painting by van Eyck, whose pictures look almost like direct responses to the complaints of the theologian'! of the Deootio moderna - and in general of late scholasticism about the sensuality and opacity of curious pictures. Van Eyck concealed, with false modesty, his imperfect presence behind a smooth surface. His images did not rely falsely on ornament or on visible figures. These were the ancient ambitions of the icon: a styleless style that corrals and refocuses the wandering attentions of artist and beholder alike. Such a style initiates a properly centripetal attentiveness, leading toward subject-matter and not away from it. The Eyckian image, 111 theory, trimmed off the figural supplement to subject matter.

One way of seeing through van Eyck's sclf-deprccating illusionism is suggested by Waltr:r Benjamin's exegesis of the Baroque allegory. In Tht Origin oftht Gmnan. Tragic Drama, Benjamin showed how the simple display oflifeless objero, uncouthly laden with emblematic signification. could stand for the trc:l.llSfiguration of the empirical enacted by any work of art. Here he quoted a proposition of another literary historian, Petersen: 'Science cannot lead to the naive enjoyment of art, any more than geologists or botanists can awaken

349

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a feding for the beauty oflandscapc .. Benjamin then crisply denied both terms

of the analogy:

The geologist and the botanist can indeed do just this. Without at least an intuitive grd.Sp of the life of the detail in the structure, all love of beauty is no more than empty dreaming. In the wt analysis detail and structure are always hilltorically charged. The object of philosophical criticism ~ to show that the function of art:i!t:ic tonn ~ as follOW!: to make historical content, such WI provides the basis of every important work of art, into a philosophical truth. This traJlsformation of material content into truth content makes the decrease in cifcctivcne!ll, whereby the attraction of earlier chanm diminishes decade by decade, into the basis for a rebirth, in which all ephemeral beauty is completely stripped off, and the work stands as a ruin."O

The work's interpretation of the material world begins with description. The recalcitrance of the detail prefigures its own ending a, a ruin.

'£1lls analysis make!! it easier to see how description of the world differs from the world, even in van EyeIL The descriptive detail is automatically allegorical: it points away from its obvious referent towards some absent significance. An an that merely doubles the real might appear redundant. In fact, description m'dk.es strange; representations even of familiar things take on an unreal charisma. A simple reduction in scale works an effect. Contemporaries never failed to cxclairn over the scale ofDou's paintings." 1 Objects treated to the intense descriptive mode are isolated from any surrounding narrative. Description flattens reality, spreads it out for viewing, like a poetical fIgure. The most banaI object is invested with a corona of significance simply by being singled out of the chaos of experience and treated to attention. Benjamin called that the 'religious dialectic' of allegory:

Any pel"llOn, any object, any relationship can mean absolutely anything else. With this possibility a destructive, but just verdict ~ passed on the profane world: it ill characterized as a world in which the detail is of not great importance. But it will be wunistakably apparent, especially to anyone who is familiar with allegorical textual exegesis, that all of the things which are used to signify derive, from the very fact ofthcir pointing to something ehc, a power which makes them appear no longer comrnemurable with profane things, whic.h raises th('m onto a higher plane, and which can, indeed, sanctify them. Considered in allegorical tl.'nm, then, the profane world is both elevated and devalued ""

Van Eyck did not shun curiosity-·he actually created a m.ort curious picture. It was his historical (and probably intellectual) detachment from the pious ambitions oficonicity that pennitted him to ironizc the tradition of the styleless icon, and to call attention to himself through iL

1bc seventccnth-century northern painter ~ nature by imitating it. Van Mander admitted bluffiy that description delights: ~t, the technical key to painterly description, 'gives sweet nourishment to the eyes' and thus 'makes them lingcr.' 'Such things confound, and through the insatiable eyes, make the heart stick fast with constant desire."'3 Van Mander was no closer to wIving the puzzle of description's chann than Aristotle, who wondered., in Book Four of the Potties, why it is that we enjoy looking at accurate imitations of repulsive or banal things. Aristotle could think of no very convincing answer.

Since the ingenious description of surface can make any object charismatic, one is impressed mainly by the arbitrarincss of the relationship between

350 C H R 1ST 0 P HER S. woo D

110-Walter Benjlunin, 17w Drip '.! c.:.r-1,. Dr-. irani. John OIbome (London, 1977:. p. 18~.

III S1uijlel'. 'SchiI&n van "cleyne, subtile t:I1dc cur1claC dinRCl1"·. p. 23.

m Benjamin, '/7w 0rW1I1!f(~ Trqit: nr-, P.175.

113 Van Mander, lAtc f1MiIJ ,. ... t!' diJiIw-cMSt (16o.f.), ch. I~, §21. ed Hr.cI Miedema (l;trWtt, 1m, I, pp. ~s8 59. See Me/ion, ~ tJw~ C-. pp.60-66, for a reading ofthia~, and in gcneraI for the anti-didactic, anti-cluIical interpretation of ~ury Dutch art. Sec equally Sluijtr.r, 'Didactic and diIguiJcd meaninga'

Seven! IeVeTItcenth-a:ntury textJ on

painting and the icoooklgical approat"h to

northern Dutrh painringa of thia period', in cda David Fn-edberg and Jan de Vriea, Arl ill HisIory, H"1SkIry ill An: SbMDa ill ~-c.uq, Drudi Qdbm (Santa Monica, 1991).

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114 True poc'try, fUT Novalia, WIIJI a

profulion of h~rtJRmCO\a fngmcrll!. And thMTfon: narurc too ~ 'purely paNic, arul

lIO it ~ a magician '. ocn, a phyJirut '. IHbom.t.ory, a chiIdrrn'. nuncry, an attic, and a lumber-room'. Benjamin continues: 'Thr ~.a1 iA ~lated in this way \0 W fragmrnwy, untidy, alld diIOnItTed c11Rn("\cr uf magicians. dmR or a1chcmim·

laboratorin f"amiliar a~ aU 10 the

baroqur"'. 1M Drip r!f(~ 1. Dr-. p.I88.

115 - IhicL, p. \85.

116 Angus "'etcher, Alllp;,: .11M 1kttJf:r W If !S..PfItboIic AI. (lthaCII, 1964), p.234, n. 22.

117 William EmJllOn, Mn "J)pn qf ~9 (~I"W Yun... 1917). pp. 2"l1 ~J.

surface and meaning. Descriptive painting often fixed on objects that would have been overlooked or even avoided if encountered in life - insects, the remains of breakfast, shabby rustic buildings. Close description trarufigured them into objects of delectation, an ironic maneuver. Sometimes the fragrant or suceulent accessory to routine existence was described, the flower or fruit. In such a case, the gap between the animation and durability of the description, and the ephemerality of the object in real life .- the knowledge that the actual model for the painting has long since disintegrated is the emblem of mortality. Description otTers up dead and empty fragments for the sort of melancholic contemplation cultivated in the magician's workshop, the gentleman's lGmstIrammer, and eventually the bourgeois salon:'4- The connection between curious technique and still-life painting is thus deep and organic. Descriptive painting did not emerge to fulfill the requirements of the rxmiIas topas, the theme of ironic reflection on the ephemerality of worldly experience that authorized all stiI.l-life painting. Rather, the topos followed from the technique.

Benjamin revealed the process of allegorization as a morbid oscillation between fascination and boredom, and made what is by now a familiar analogy:

The overbearing OlItcntation, with which the banal object seems to ari.'Ie from thc depths of allegory i~ soon rcplacffi by its disconsolate everyday countenance; it is true that the profound fascination of the sick man for the i~lated and iruignilicant is succeeded by that disappoint(,d abandonmrnt of the <'Xha.wted emblem, the rhythm of which a spcculatiV<'iy inclined observer could fmd expressively repeated in the behaviour of aJX'll. But thr: amorphous dr:taiLs which can only be understood allegorically kcl'P corning Up."·;

This same fascination with the unlikely and starkly isolated detail is characteristic of the Baroque drama that interested Benjamin, or of the Metaphysical poets. Curious poetic language was difficult, strained, even painfully emblematic. For the scholastics, the difficulty of scriptural figures was

the criterion of its grandeur. The labor of exegesis is simultaneously the price of the Fall, and a pleasurable reward."6 We have seen already that Galilco disapproved of Tas.'iO's curiosity. What Empson called the 'curious attitude' condoned the most tormented disfigurings of normal usage, and the most repulsive images, in the lurid verse of the Metaphysicals. "7

This rhythm of attention and boredom, and this propensity to push the indecorous detail to the fore, is unexpectedly shared by scientific method. Once the natural representation of the world claimed by scholastic natural philosophy was no longer credible - according to Blumenberg's analysi! cited previously-the only recourse was mindless inventory, leading to an abstract but useful image of the world And, according to Hegel, scientific description chronically loses interest in the object at hand, and is thus forever grasping after the next. Hegel's account of this mechanism is really the last echo of the old Augustinian analysis of curiosity, except that now it is cleverly turned to the service of science. The result of natural science's massive C<H>ption of the pointless, repetitive, descriptive method, oddly enough, is that modem science has made more room for curiosity than modem art has. Science is more truly anti-theological and anti-thcoretical. Art, as long as it remains uneasy about craft, ingenuity, and highly wrought structures of meaning, fails to sever itself from the traditional Christian mistrust of curiosity.

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From this point of view, the often-remarked coexistence of extreme stylishness and extreme naturalism in Netherlandish art of around 1600, even within the oeuvre of the same artist, is less puzzling. One clue to the natural affiliation of the two modes is that both were anathema to later seventeenth-ccntury classicisL'i. (Classicism, which in the north had a flavor of Christian-idealist revanchism, even managed to absorb and tame the Dutch 'ncat' manner. Philips Angel himself, by recommending that netti.ch')t ~ combined with lossicheyt in order to avoid a 'stiff and tidy unpleasantness,' contributed to its detachment [rom the Eyckian, 'curious' tradition."R 'Neat' eventually came to mean mostly 'smooth,' as in van Dyck, or worse, Adriacn van der Werff.) The versatility of the turn-of-the-century painters has been explained as an adaptation to contemporary notions ofliterary decorum. "9

The stylish, mythologically saturated manner is supposedly equivalent to the high literary mode, appropriate to lofty subjects, and the descriptive manner to the humble mode, suited to low subjects. No doubt this isjust what a literary pcI"50n of the epoch would have said. But northern painting had its own internal traditions and codes, incommensurable with those of rhetorical culture. In painting, the descriptive manner was historically linked to the work of van Eyck, above all the Ghent Altarpiece, which was hardly an exercise in the humble mode. The stylish supplement so conspicuous in the mannerist work was not simply jettisoned to create a naturalistic work. Rather, that supplement was absorbed into the weave of description. It became invisible to all but the initiate.

352 C H R 1ST 0 P HER s. WOO D

118· Emmms, ':\"allrur, Onderwiping en Ocfcning', p. J~:>; Sluijler, '))iductic and ~ meanings?', p. J8~.

119 Thomu Da Co.ta Kw.uliruinn, T1w SdtooI Gj~. Pmlill& III ,., l-n af RJIIJtNf II (ChiC8f!O, 1988), pp. 91 gG. Kaufmann i.a primarily conccmcd with Rudolfuuo painting, bur here extenda the dilCUllion to

lhe Haarlem ITUISten and 10 Jacopo Liguu.i III the Medici Coun.

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