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

Image as Rend 221arts whose ‘‘good methods,’’ he says, had been forgotten long ago(read: during the Middle Ages). Giotto, then, ‘‘resurrects’’ the good,the true painting (i modi delle buone pitture . . . risuscitò), in accordancewith a terminology that would consistently mimic the very vocabularythat it denies, namely, religious vocabulary. So the return to naturewill be qualified as a ‘‘gift of God’’ (per dono di Dio) and as‘‘miraculous’’ (e veramente fu miracolo grandissimo), precisely in thesense that disegno, the famous king-concept of Vasarian disegno, washere described as ‘‘restored completely to life’’ through the intermediary—themediation, the intercession, we might say—of the elect chosenartist (mediante lui ritornasse del tutto in vita). 168 Things become stillmore precise, a few lines on, where ‘‘life’’ as a metaphor for resurrectedbeautiful art is folded into ‘‘life’’ as the very object of this artdevoted to natural resemblance:[Giotto] became so good an imitator of nature [divenne cosìbuono imitatore della natura] that he banished completely thatrude Greek manner and revived the modern and good art ofpainting, introducing the portraying well from nature of livingpeople [introducendo il ritarre bene di naturale le personevive]. 169And it is here that the famous example of the portrait of Dantecomes conveniently to hand, for Vasari, to justify his concept of ritrarrebene di naturale, had to invent the notion of the poet’s havingbeen a ‘‘very great friend’’ of Giotto (coetaneo ed amico suo grandissimo).170 But what happened in these few lines? What happened wasthis: a commonplace was, if not invented, then at least firmly anchoredfor quite some time in all our minds, we who look first as ‘‘humanists’’at the great Western art of portraiture. This commonplace isthat of the identification of the terms ‘‘resemblance,’’ ‘‘natural,’’ and‘‘living.’’ It heavily conditions the vision that we can have, after Vasari,of the prodigious feats of imitation, in both painting and sculpture,bequeathed to us by the Renaissance. Such a commonplace is ofcourse not without pertinence, for it finds precise and detailed expressioneverywhere. But it denies, even represses, as much as it affirms.Let’s say, to get on with it, that it denies death as much as it wants to