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

80 Confronting Imagesing compromises and ‘‘magical’’ operations within which circularitiesand contradictions could indeed operate. Disegno was effectively amagic word for him, first because it is polysemic, antithetical, infinitelymanipulatable. It is almost a floating signifier—and Vasari didnot hesitate to use it as such. Of the eighteen long paragraphs accordedanalysis of the word today in the Grande Dizionario della LinguaItaliana, eight gloss its various ‘‘concrete’’ meanings and ten its ‘‘abstract’’ones, the whole covering roughly what the French languagedenotes with the two terms dessin and dessein, previously identical. 61Here we have the first element needed to comprehend the prodigiousextension of the word disegno in Vasarian semantics.It is a descriptive word and it is a metaphysical word. It is a technicalword and it is an ideal word. It is applicable to the hand of man,but also to his imaginative fantasia, and also to his intelleto, and alsoto his anima—as well as, finally, to God the creator of all things. Itcomes from the vocabulary of the studio, where it designates the formobtained on a support by the charcoal or crayon of the artist; it alsodesignates the sketch, the work in gestation, the project, the compositionalschema, and the layout of lines of force. It speaks the rule thatpresides over all of this technique, the buona regola of the painter, theone that gives rise to the retta misura, the grazia divina of the line—inshort, to the disegno perfetto . . . The vocabulary of the Lives, subjectto the ideal progress of the ‘‘three ages of drawing,’’ is constantlyobliged to expand, to rise. The rule of art becomes the law of nature.Visible effect becomes intelligible cause. And, always under the authorityof the same magic word, the form produced on the supportbecomes the form of the philosophers, in other words the Idea (whichis to say the negation of all material support). 62On this point, moreover, Vasari subtly—or rather: surreptitiously—reversedthe meaning of a passage in the old Libro dell’Arte,where Cennini advised his disciple to practice a whole year using leadpencil (istil di piombo), after which he could ‘‘practice drawing with apen’’ (praticare il disegno con penna), gradually mastering the depictionof flesh, half-tones, and shadows (conducendo le tue chiare, mezze chiaree scure, a poco a poco) . . . all of which was intended to make the disciplean ‘‘expert, skillful’’ practitioner (sperto, pratico), one who, thanks to