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276 Notesl’art (Strasbourg: C.E.R.I.T., 1990), the proceedings of a conference held in Strasbourg in1988; the other in Cahiers du Musée national d’Art moderne, no. 30 (December 1989): 41–58.Chapter 11. ‘‘I call a sign (segno) anything which exists on a surface so that it is visible to theeye. No one will deny that things which are not visible do not concern the painter, for hestrives to represent only the things that are seen (fingiero quello se vede).’’ Leon BattistaAlberti, De pictura [On painting] 1:2, trans. Cecil Grayson, intro. Martin Kemp (1435; Londonand New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 37].2. ‘‘Composition (composizione) is the procedure in painting (ragione di dipignere)whereby the parts are composed together in the picture. The great work of the painter(grandissima opera del pittore) is not a colossus but a ‘historia’ (istoria), for there is far moremerit in a ‘historia’ than in a colossus. Parts of the ‘historia’ are the bodies, part of thebody is the member, and part of the member is the surface.’’ Alberti, De pictura 2:35, 71.3. ‘‘The first thing that gives pleasure in a ‘historia’ (voluttà nella istoria) is a plentifulvariety (copia e varietà delle cose].’’ Alberti, De pictura 2:40, 75.4. I previously introduced the two linked theoretical notions of the visual and thepictorial pan [patch] in La Peinture incarnée (Paris: Minuit, 1985) and in ‘‘L’Art de ne pasdécrire: Une aporie du détail chez Vermeer,’’ La Part de l’oeil, no. 2 (1986): 102–19, whichis reprinted as an appendix to the present volume.5. ‘‘Those painters who use white immoderately and black carelessly should bestrongly condemned.’’ Alberti, De pictura 2:47, [On painting], 84.6. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a:1, 5.7. Among the many autograph and apocryphal texts of Albertus Magnus, see esp.Mariale sive quaestiones super Evangelium: Missus est Angelus Gabriel . . . , ed. A. and E.Borgnet, Opera Omnia, vol. 37 (Paris: Vivès, 1898), 1–362.8. Luke 1:31.9. Isaiah 7:14: Ecce, virgo concipiet et pariet filium, et vocabit eius.10. That is why Saint Antoninus vehemently prohibited painters from representingthe infant Jesus—the ‘‘term’’ or resolution of the announcement—in depictions of theAnnunciation. See Antoninus of Florence, Summa Theologiae, iiia, 8, 4, 11 (Verona ed.,republished in Graz, 1959), 3:307–23.11. Fra Angelico must have been familiar with this basic idea, which informed manyexegeses, notably those found in the Exposition of the Angelic Salutation by Thomas Aquinas(iii and x), in the Catena Aurea, and in works by Albertus Magnus.12. See the Tractatus de Approbatione Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum (c. 1260–70), ed.Thomas Käppeli, and Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 6 (1936): 140–60, esp. 149–51.13. For a more extended discussion, see Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico: Dissemblanceand Figuration, trans. Jane Marie Todd (1990; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1995).14. From an iconographic perspective, as well as according to the ‘‘modern’’ academic(hence anachronistic) definition of art, one would have to say that in the Paleo-Christianera Christian art did not exist: ‘‘If an art is defined in terms of a style peculiar to it andcontent specific to it, then there is no more a Christian art than there is a Herculean or aDionysian art; there is not even an art of Christians, for the latter remained men ofantiquity, whose artistic language they retained.’’ F. Monfrin, ‘‘La Bible dans l’iconogra-