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

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Disreputable Bodies
through these forms, is false.” 176 The following description from the medieval
Roman de la Rose of a crystal at the bottom of the fountain of Narcissus gives
a very accurate synopsis (in the truest sense of the word) of ideas about mirrors
and translucent objects as potentially demonic and even lethal objects,
but also erotically attractive:
The crystal is so marvellous and has such power over that
whole place, with its trees and flowers and everything
adorning the garden, is revealed there in due order. Just as
things placed in front of a mirror are reflected in it, and their
appearance and colour are seen quite plainly, exactly so […]
does the crystal truly disclose the whole of the garden to
him who gazes into the water. […] And there is nothing so
small, so secret, or so hidden that it is not displayed there, as
if it were etched into the crystal. This is the perilous mirror
where proud Narcissus looked at his face and his bright
eyes, and afterwards lay stretched out in death. Whoever
looks at himself in this mirror can have no help or remedy
against seeing something which causes him promptly to fall
in love. […] for Cupid, Venus’ son, sowed here the seed of
Love which covers the whole spring; here he sets his nets and
snares to trap young men and maidens. […] I was happy then
to linger, admiring the spring and the crystals revealed to a
thousand things around me. 177
In the Roman de la Rose the mirror functions as an advanced tool of
perception (with a remarkable capacity for synthesis) that represents objects
that otherwise would pass unnoticed. As was the case with the mirror of providence,
the crystal at the bottom of the font is able to “capture” the objects it
reflects, to dominate them and even to kill them; this optical device exerts considerable
and highly uncanny power over the things it reflects. In the Roman
de la Rose, the fate of Narcissus is sealed by his looking into a crystal, which
176 Ed. Lindberg (1983) 146: “falsa est illa opinio vulgi quae estimat formas seu species
imprimi in speculo ad hoc, ut visus eius contemplatur per illam formam.”
177 Romance of the Rose vs. 1530–1532; On the Narcissus episode in this work, see
Vinge (1967) 81–32 with references; Vitti (1992) 53–57.