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

History of Art, Reason 109ical end congruent with his philosophy of knowledge. It is as thoughthe Kantism of pure reason had found in the Rinascità its best historicaljustification.This hypothesis will surprise. What exactly does renascent humanismhave to do with Kantian synthesis? Wouldn’t we expect so rigorousa historian as Panofsky to spare us such an anachronism? But wemust face up to the facts: obscure ends obliged him boldly to constructan anachronistic relation between Vasari and Kant. Thus didthe origin employ the ruse of pure reason, so to speak, to attain theend of its tortuous return.So Panofsky invented for us a Kantian Vasari: a way, for the son,to be reconciled with the venerable ‘‘father’’ of the history of art, andeven positively to combine two different ‘‘fathers,’’ those, respectively,of history and of pure knowledge. Also a way to make thewhole of his discipline adopt the famous ‘‘Kantian tone,’’ and for quitesome time. It is at the geometric center of the argument of Idea thatthe figure of Vasari appears. Panofsky opposes it, from the outset, tothat of Alberti, in whom, he writes, the artistic Idea found its abode—‘‘a mind familiar with nature’’—but not yet its origin. Now finding theorigin of something is nothing other than ‘‘deducing’’ this somethingfrom its own foundation: Vasari inaugurates first because, beyond thesensible and ‘‘concrete’’ intuition of Alberti, he—‘‘to use Kant’s terminology,’’Panofsky already writes—‘‘deduced’’ the Idea of its originaryfaculty. We should not be surprised to see resurface, and in a lengthycitation, the famous Introduzione alle tre Arti del Disegno, in which, itwill be remembered, Vasari made drawing ‘‘proceed’’ from the intellect(procedendo dall’intelletto) and foregrounded the eminent functionof a ‘‘universal judgment’’ (giudizio universale) apt, of course, to fascinateall readers of Kant. 64 Henceforth, Panofsky would never ceasesafeguarding and clarifying this philosophical legitimation of Vasari’swork.That the historian of the Lives turned his back on exacting Platonismonly justifies the ‘‘Kantian’’ value of his gesture: for he gave tothe Idea, Panofsky explains, a ‘‘functionalist significance’’ (eine Umdeutungim Sinne des Funktionalen). In short, far from constituting a simplerepresentational content, Vasari’s Idea attains the very status of a ‘‘fac-