georges didi huberman, confronti... - lensbased.net

74 Confronting Imagesprincipalmente, e poi, perché da se non può salir tanto alto, dellecose che da quelli che miglior maestri di sè giudica sono condotte]. 48But no sooner is the slogan pronounced than it reveals all its fragility.Imitation, to be sure, will impose its law, will govern and perhapseven tyrannize over its subjects. But what is it? What is it, if not thepuppet goddess of a simulacrum of a system? In the imitazione of thesixteenth century, it is philosophical compromise that presides overthe destinies of art, such as they were striven to be written, in historiesas in trattati d’arte. Nothing is more unshakable than imitation in this‘‘artistic literature’’ of the Cinquecento, and yet nothing is more elusive—notvague, exactly, but ungraspable, luxuriant, protean. Imitationin the Renaissance is a credo, but it is not for all that a unifyingprinciple. It is rather an extraordinarily fecund agent of all sorts oframifications, of transformations, of compromises. A magic word, a‘‘floating signifier.’’ A large sack open to all winds, a cornucopia uponwhich Vasari, like many others, drew generously to pull out whateverhe wanted. 49What was it, then, to imitate? Was it to submit oneself, to equal,or was it to compete with what one imitated in the hope of gettingone up on it, even of eclipsing it altogether? The questions are classicones, but they nonetheless point to two or three contradictory ethics.Vasari, like his contemporaries, never stopped asserting the mimetic‘‘dependence’’ of the artist on his model—and also the ‘‘equality’’ betweenthem when the illusion is perfect—but also the ‘‘supremacy’’of the imitative work when invenzione or maniera was added to it ...It was basically, since the fifteenth century, a question of improvingupon all paintings, in other words of increasing mimesis without sacrificingfantasia—the imaginative faculty—even if at the beginning thetwo notions might seem contradictory. 50 It is likewise well knownthat, to the question ‘‘What to imitate?’’ the Renaissance gave twoanswers that were very different, yet skillfully intermingled with eachother. The first stated that art had managed to be reborn only byremembering and imitating beautiful art, in other words the art ofantiquity; the second stated that art had managed to be reborn onlyby observing and imitating beautiful nature, without the aid of the