Chapter 2 Matter as a Mirror: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance ...

100
Disreputable Bodies
dition of all sort of optical tricks involving mirrors; for example to let ghosts
appear on stages. 161 As we had occasion to notice, the mirror’s transforming
powers underscore the idea that it does not merely reflect the object itself, but
creates a new and structurally deceptive image of the object.
Since Antiquity the mirror was believed to have the capacity to
convey knowledge of things divine. As such, it could be both an instrument
of self-knowledge and the receptacle of diabolic or destructive forces. This
ambivalent attitude was also present in the Renaissance (and indeed, later
on): the mirror was an image of deterioration, as a screen, a focusing lens,
an instrument of deception, a magical object, an image of vanity or selfcognition.
162 In Renaissance art, the mirror served as an allegory for virtue
(Prudence) as well as for vice (Superbia). In the very early 1500s, just a few
years after Ficino’s death, the Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, in
his “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (Prado, Madrid), included a woman
looking into a mirror that is nothing more than the rear end (to use a euphemistic
English expression) of a devil, thus illustrating the equally explicit
French proverb Le miroir est le vrai cul de diable.
It was precisely this ambiguous nature of mirrors that made them
magical tools par excellence, instruments that were used to summon de-
[…] imagines indicat resupinas […]. Proinde cum radius visualis intuitus speculum illinc
obiecta plurima reflectatur eaque prospiciat per pares videlicet incidentiae reflexionesque
(ut ferunt) angulos simulque eorum imagines attingat in speculis. Cur non circa idem duo
quaedam sibi videatur idola contueri? Quia videlicet perfecta quadam imaginis ad obiectum
similitudine fallitur. Fallitur quinetiam rem obiectam putans esse duntaxat in speculo
ubi eius intuetur imaginem: imagines quasdam e speculis resultare, & si nonnulli negant:
Theoprastus tamen in libris de anima, ut Iamblichus et Priscianus exponunt, cum Platone
consentit: Et Proclus in sexto de Republica probat.” For the passage on distorting mirrors,
see Timaeus 46A and Lucretius (1994) IV, 311: 103.
161 Hero (1899–1911) passim.
162 Frontisi-Ducroux (1998) 122 comes to similar conclusions about the function of
the mirror in Classical Greece: “tantôt projecteur, tantôt instrument d’exploration interne,
le plus souvent récepteur de ce qui vient d’en face, il est aussi passage ou lieu d’émergence
de ce qui sans lui resterait inaccessible.” See also, 59–62. On the one hand, the mirror effeminates
and depersonalizes men; for a free male Greek citizen it was disgraceful to use a
mirror in private. On the other hand, Socrates recommended the mirror as an instrument
for self-cognition; see Diogenes Laertius (1925) II, 33; an opinion Seneca shares (1971–2)
I, 17, 4, 6.