Renaissance and

In one great conceptual leap, Brunelleschi and Trinity, is a painted view of magnificent architecture
Masaccio bridged the gap separating the individual seen in sharp foreshortening•
from the universal. But, in uncritically accepting the In contrast to the traditional God infinitely distant
existent individual in terms of scholastic notions of from man, the new perspective fixes him in a Precise
existence, they had no notion of the individual himself location, whose point of reference is the viewer
as universal, himself• The architecture above the Trinity vaults and
Fra Angelico by contrast assumed paradise as circumscribes God, it is the counterpoint to the
primary substance, and the individual in himself had decaying corpse beneath. Two worlds are contrasted:
no real existence, except through his connection to the medieval world where human life is identified with i_'
paradise. Thus is the individual in Angelico's con- finite mortality, and Humanism where humanity is
ception universalized. But there is no necessity in identified with creativity. The one ends in decay. The
Angelico's conception of this relationship• Within each other is infinite.
plane of existence, there is no differentiation, no The perspective requires the observer to choose -.:
progress, and the relation between planes is the totally between the two conceptions: Can one rise above the : i.,_
extrinsic hierarchy of perfection, identity of the mocking corpse to participate in the '
Piero della Francesca supersedes Angelico's con- perfection represented in the Trinity Can one
ception of simple hierarcy in actualizing the moment exercise freedom in the face- of necessity The
of realization as the subject of religion. Forhim, the Trinity becomes the means to salvation by
essential subject is not the simple continuum of representing the perfection of which each man is .:
paradise, but the noetic act of enlightenment, or in capable•
Ficino's term, the motion of the mind. Recall now the setting -- the greatest and most
Piero and Angelico both accept the fixed nature of austere Dominican church of Florence. In the middle :
the perfect universe. Paolo Uccello, Piero's Floren- of an empty white plaster wall, representing the
tine contemporary, struggles to introduce motion, limitless extension of the medieval notion of infinity, -!
evolution, into this conception of perfection• He at- stands the precise and immediate perfection of the
tempts to show the evolution of the entire frame of Trinity, the color of the architecture clearly visible
reality changing as a result of the activity within it. across the entire nave of the church. There on the first
His contemporary, Andrea del Castagno, attacks the level is the secular intruder, the Gonfaloniere in his
same problem from a different vantage. Castagno, red robe of office. In place•
of the rigid abstract coninheriting
the tradition of Masaccio and Brunelleschi, ception of medieval tradition, the gap between the
shows man as the agent of change, not as the product realm of perfection, the Trinity, and the con-
Offate. temporary world has been bridged. (Fig. la)
With Uccello and Castagno, Florentine Humanist In earlier frescoes like those in the adjacent cloister
painting exhausts the philosophic conceptions avail- of S. Maria Novella, painted in the decades of the 1360s
able to it at the stage of development reached prior to and 1370s, and illustrating the Dominican Way of
Ftcino. Before turning to Ficino's contributions, we salvation, man is an insignificant creature like a toad.
shall consider the qualitative advances of the His only exercise of freedom is licentiousness,
Humanist artists in greater detail, drinking or gambling. He is everywhere threatened by
The Trinity, painted by Brunelleschi in monsters. This is the triumph of death.
collaboration with the painter Masaccio in the period Humanism locates man's real identity in his com-
1423-1425 on the wall of the Dominican church of S. prehension of his relationship to perfection. Because
Maria Novella in Florence, is not only the first he can create that connection, man l_articipates in
Humanist work, but poses clearly the, polemical perfection. By exercising this power,, men are
content common to the entire range of works. (Fig. 1) valuable to God and to each other. This is the triumph
The fundamental conception of the work is the over death•
triumph over death, locating human significance not In the Renaissance, the immortality of the soul was
in the mortal realm of physical being, but in the in- the expression of this potential for universal action
tellect, that lay within man. The quest to triumph over death
The work is actually a painted altar. At the bottom is by being, celebrated thrbugh creativity, was no vanity '
the decaying remains of a corpse who addresses the or whim of the ego. It was the recognition of the vatue, .
observer with these words, "I was once what you are,. of the extension beyond the mortal realm, of creative
you will be what I am.'" This famous phrase is the life.
medieval lament of the triumph of death. Above the Humanism joined with the older notion of univeraltar
is the Trinity; kneeling before the Cross are the sality embodied in religion. It was particulhrly in the
donors, the then-ruling Gonfaloniere, or chief city lives of the Saints that the reality of men who live
magistrate of Florence, and his wife. Above the according to universal laws could be conveyed. The
24