Баткин Л.М.Леонардо да Винчи и особенности ренессансного творческого мышления

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Summary

The history of European culture probably knows of no other equally enigmatic and

amazing phenomenon as Leonardo da Vinci. Numerous authors have fragmented

this unique and integral figure into a string of hackneyed images: a reticent and

lonely man, a painter of genius, an engineer who was ahead of his time, a natural

scientist of wide-ranging interests, an author of striking prophesies and philosophic

pronouncements. They screen from us what was most important in Leonardo da

Vinci: his core which made these diverse images into a figure of paramount import-

ance. This book shows Leonardo, both man and thinker, in his united and unique

world. His creative heritage is seen as a quintessence of the Renaissance and as a pro-

phetic outline of the future.

The author draws on the history of culture and science, art studies, philosophy,

psychology and other disciplines to provide an integrated humanitarian approach and

a theoretical synthesis. His aim is to present the Italian Renaissance as a special type

of culture. At the same time he is fully aware that the time of profound insights of

Burkhardt and Spengler has long passed. He relies on the vast factual material accu-

mulated over the recent decades which illustrates the transitory nature of the varied

and pluralistic Renaissance scene. Since we regard the Renaissance as a specific aes-

thetic situation with a rich historical content and not as a conventional tag we need

such theoretical synthesis.

What Batkin offers are not ready-made formulas or sets of abstract phrases about

the "main idea of the period" or about its "traits and features". He shows us "a certain

algorithm of inner metamorphoses peculiar to each particular culture". In other

words, the book contains the first culturological model of "mutual transformations and

interdependence of varied and contradictory facts of the Renaissance". "The Italian

Renaissance as an integral whole is not limited to its empyrean. It is a more deep-

rooted reality. It is not an average and common property which belongs, in equal

measure, to various phenomena of the immense aesthetic actuality. My aim is to ex-

plain the principle of the culture's self-formation. What brings culture with all its

contradictions and varieties into being? How does Leonardo as the quintessence of

culture become possible? Any contemplations of the Renaissance involve logical

idealisations and a theoretical image of culture."

Again and again the author thinks over his methods: he dwells on them in the

"Introduction" and returns to them in his analysis of Leonardo's writings. Batkin's

methodological principles are rooted, in part, in Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophy of cul-

ture as he himself acknowledges. "Every work which I discuss in my book is seen as a

melting-pot," he comments. "All non-individualised matrices of the Renaissance cul-

ture come from these melting-pots where they are smelted down, re-forged or cast

anew with different degrees of intensity. I already know all of them. I could have

identify them in Alberti's or Castiglione's works. Each time I tried to do this the text

seemed to resist my efforts. Its peculiarities cannot be reduced to ready-made restrict-

ing patterns. Each work brings something new into our image of the Renaissance. We

should always be prepared for an unexpected shift, at least for rigid and dogmatic

minds, in the Renaissance features of any text. Such shifts call for fresh assessments

Summary ■

411

of commonly accepted conceptions and for fresh interpretations of the period as pre-

sented in the creations of yet another master."

Batkin contends that the Renaissance can be creatively assimilated through a mul-

titude of "conceptual centres" rather than through the only and unique focal point.

This enables the researcher to contemplate various theoretical aspects of his object

provided the changes in the focus are logical and consistent. The conception of the

Italian Renaissance discussed in Batkin's previous publications rests on the principle

of "dialogue approach" (L. Batkin, Die historische Gesamtheit der italienischen Renaissance.

Versuch einer Charakterisierung eines Kulturtyps, Dresden, 1979; reprint: Die italienische

Renaissance, Basle-Frankfurt-on-Main, 1982). In his new book he adds to it a funda-

mental conception of "varietà" which was invariably present in a latent form in the

Renaissance consciousness. This concept receives a detailed investigation in the first

part of the book "The Inner Logic of the Renaissance Culture. The Category of Var-

ietà". In its five large chapters Batkin substantiates this category through a careful ex-

amination of philosophic works by Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Miran-

dola, humanistic treatises of Manetti, Alberti, Castiglione and others, Sannazzaro's

Arcadia, Firenzuola's Dialogo delle bellezze donne, and the early Mannerist paintings, the

portent of the decay of the Renaissance world-view.

By no means Batkin's culturological orientation has made the book an exercise in

abstract deliberations. His theoretical conclusions rest on a vast and convincing mate-

rial, being justified by the content and inner tension of the texts he discusses. One

author, or even one work with their evident or implied problems make up the book's

sections. The author varies his style to match his subjects and his philosophical and

cultural orientation towards a dialogue with other aesthetic stands. This lively and

non-ostentatious book written in the form of a subtle essay makes Renaissance au-

thors, Leonardo in the first place, our partners in a dialogue. Leonardo da Vinci is the

centre-piece of the second part composed, as it is, of twenty-two sections, some of

them long, others quite short, that spotlight various aspects of Leonardo's personality

through unexpected disgressions, comparisons and parallels.

Batkin turns to the god Proteus to recreate the Renaissance anthropology. Man is

all things at one and the same time, he is "copula mundi" (Ficino), therefore he has

"nothing to his name", "he is neither an earthly, nor a heavenly creature, he is neither

mortal nor immortal", "he has everything he is striving to, and he is what he wants to

be" (Pico della Mirandola). According to Pico man is a blank potentiality with any im-

age and any place in the world at his command. Yet, he belongs to no one of them.

The humanistic idea of "man's universality as his merit"-and, by the same token, his

lack of a definite place and role-marks the beginning of our road towards Leonardo.

The naturalistic content limits the first approach to the logic of varietà. This Ren-

aissance idea is clearly seen as the world's visual image and as a special way in which

the visible ecumene is organised: in many Renaissance pictures a half-drawn curtain

or a window open into a landscape. Varietà realises itself in enumerations. The General

is mainly understood as Everything. From this inevitably follow endless variations of

the singular and pauses at every This, at every particular and individual. This (and

many other This in turn) actualises itself into an epitome of the Universal. A pause in

the enumeration, that is, a transition to the next element, an ellipsis (to borrow a

term from rhetoricians) has become especially meaningful. At a later period Leon-

ardo will perceive this pregnant Nothing as a "Point", a "cave" or "spots on the wall".

This conceptual enumeration found its specific and significant embodiment in

412

■ Summary

Sannazzaro's image of a pastoral grove and especilly in the composition and the

rhythm and rhetoric of his novel.

Another stage of analysis is associated with the culturological investigation of the

well-known excerpt on "copia et varietàs" from Alberti's treatise "Della Pittura" as

compared to his views on the subject expressed in his other works. The author sees

in them not just a requirement of the contemporary artistic taste, but a crucial cate-

gory of the entire culture of the Italian Renaissance which encompassed, in some de-

gree, the understanding of the individual and the particular. Some vagueness of such

understanding through "diversity" was in accordance with the peculiarly Renaissance

personality, whose immense grandeur was the necessary aspect of its historical evolu-

tion and its inscrutability. The Renaissance did not have the ready-made concept of

"personality". The artist was expected to portray an individual as a recognisable and

unique person, but at the same time he had to capture the universal in him, that

which transcends the limits of a given personality. Such an individual represented

the universal, but only to the extent that he missed being the universal, only tended

to become, and was capable of becoming one. He was not reproduced as separate and

immutable, he was not dissolved in the ideal or made into a type, nor was he con-

nected with the universal and absolute image of the Saviour-he was rather guessed

at. In a word, the Renaissance individual is different from both the New European

man and the mediaeval man. Hence the contradiction stemming from the paradoxical

idea of the "Universality" (or supraindividuality) of the individual, between aiming at

the typical and the ideal of classical beauty. This is also the origin of the conflict be-

tween what the author terms the "picturesque" and the "architectural" principles of

the Renaissance thought, the individual freedom for self-development and the world

harmony, and within the analysed scope of "diversity" this is the conflict between di-

versity as "abundance" and diversity as "singularity", between the endless transitions

in the universal catalogue of things from one to the next, lingering at some or other

of them. In the whirl of these conflicts and collisions, the Renaissance personality

came about, sensing in itself one tremendous potential-that is why it became exag-

gerated out of all proportion and considered "divine".

The same paradox takes on another dimension when contemplated from the

point of view of Baldassare Castiglione's "Il Libro del Cortegiano". The notion of

norm perfection comes against the realisation of the power of circumstances which

charge every individual with the task of acting according to one's own discretion and

comprehension. The author imagines a discussion as to the precepts of conduct for a

well-bred person. His characters agree that there are no ready-made and exclusive

recommendations which would fit any situation. They conclude that every man

should guide himself by his inner feeling of what is right. Strange as it may seem, this

apparently didactic treatise implies that though many things can be taught, the main

thing is out of educators' reach. This main thing is the task to tailor one's conduct ac-

cording to circumstances which may be called conscious variety and individualised

norms, which are non-norm norms. Castiglione uses the concept of "grace" to explain

them. It can be seen as another logical centre of the Renaissance culture.

The advancing decay of the Renaissance ideals laid bare the cultural structure. In

his dialogues Firenzuola postulates an ideal of woman's beauty being well aware that

it does not and cannot exist. His "chimera" was made up of body parts of young beau-

ties of Prato. By his analysis of Firenzuola's correlation between the norm and parti-

cular cases and between "the beauty in general" and individual beauties Batkin de-

Summary ■

413

monstrates that despite a certain oversimplified connection with the neo-Platonist

tradition the norm failed to correspond to the individual or to be descerned in it. The

norm rested on reason. What is more, Firenzuola alienates himself from it in his sa-

tirical and burlesque way. The unity of this decaying world perception hinges on de-

pictions of individual body parts: the ideal and reality do not meet except in details

and never in the composition as a whole. This makes Firenzuola's outspoken writing

a completely serious culturological commentary to the way women's beauty was

treated by Parmigianino, Pontormo and Vasari. On a broader scale, these commenta-

ries can be applied to the handling of space and of classical and deformed elements in

painting. Batkin disagrees with an extended interpretation of Mannerism. He sees it

as a dramatic crisis in late Renaissance art (1510-the 1540s) and describes the most

prominent pictures of the period as "an experimental and irreal combination of per-

fectly real yet disunited and shifted structures".

Investigation of the inner logic of the Renaissance traced through the entire pe-

riod from the humanists of the first quarter of the Quattrocento to Mannerism brings

the reader to Leonardo's personality and creative endeavor as an "embodiment of var-

ietà". Batkin uses the fascimile and transcribed editions of Leonardo's works and his

paintings and drawings. The author turns to 20th-century studies of Leonardo da

Vinci from L. Olshka and P. Valeri to K. Pedretti. His original conception makes use

of minute details of Leonardo's writings, his marginalia scattered in manuscripts and

designs, the composition of the "Last Supper", his touch-ups of "St. Hieronimus", his

famous letter to il Moro, "examples and rules", strange fables, mathematical treatise

on "Nothing as the Greatest of All Non-Existing Things", advice to painters and de-

liberations on the language. Leonardo's heritage strikes imagination with its fragmen-

tary nature and incompleteness. Batkin exercises a new approach to the old problem

of "non-finito". For him it is not so much an organic property of Leonardo's mind

and a splendid manifestation of certain properties of the human mind in general. As

distinct from Olshka he refuses to regard the absence of systematised expositions and

rigorous logical conclusions as a "pre-scientific" feature which speaks of empirical in-

sight and inquisitiveness not yet ripe for theoretical generalisations. There is no need

to borrow concepts and criteria from a later age. In order to understand Leonardo

one has to identify Leonardo's logic through the concepts of the contemporary pe-

riod, or at least, adequate to it. Every culture is organised in its own way. If, for exam-

ple, like Moliere's Jourdain who "has been speaking prose without knowing it" a cer-

tain "Jourdanian" culture relies on other frames of reference than poetry and prose it

should be assessed in a coordinate system of its own. The same applies to its ele-

ments which might be close to our own cultural system. Batkin places Leonardo

within a specific historical and cultural context to bring out the unique value of his

spiritual experience. This is what puts Batkin apart from Olshka and Valeri (whom

the author gives their due) and from a fundamental work on Leonardo by Soviet art

critic V. Zubov. His predecessors with whom he occasionally enters into polemics

helped Batkin to substantiate his "historiological" approach. For him Leonardo is the

extreme and, therefore, maximally clear manifestation of the Renaissance specificity.

In a way, Leonardo and Michelangelo, two giants and two extremes, reveal, each in

his own way, the Renaissance inner limit. A parallel between them and a picture of

the Renaissance brimming with diverse potentialities and overflowing its limits

closes the book. Precisely because he was the highest manifestation of the Renaiss-

ance Leonardo's personality cannot be put into a definite chronological framework.

Содержание

Введение

ПРОБЛЕМА ИТАЛЬЯНСКОГО ВОЗРОЖДЕНИЯ 5

О ЗАМЫСЛЕ И ПОСТРОЕНИИ КНИГИ 13

НЕСКОЛЬКО ОБЩИХ ЗАМЕЧАНИЙ ОБ ИЗУЧЕНИИ ИСТОРИИ КУЛЬТУРЫ 20

Часть первая

Внутренняя логика ренессансной культуры

(категория „Варьета")

Глава I

МАРСИЛИО ФИЧИНО И ПИКО ДЕЛЛА МИРАНДОЛА

О МЕСТЕ ЧЕЛОВЕКА В МИРЕ

ПОЧЕМУ ЧЕЛОВЕК ЗАСЛУЖИВАЕТ ВОСХИЩЕНИЯ? 27

ОТВЕТ ФИЧИНО 29

ОТВЕТ ПИКО ДЕЛЛА МИРАНДОЛЫ 33

ПЕРЕКЛИЧКА ДВУХ ФИЛОСОФОВ 36

ОТНОШЕНИЕ СОЗЕРЦАНИЯ И ДЕЙСТВИЯ 38

ПРОТИВОРЕЧИВОСТЬ РЕНЕССАНСНОЙ АНТРОПОЛОГИИ 43

БОГ И ЧЕЛОВЕК 49

ТРУДНОСТЬ ГАРМОНИИ 57

К ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКЕ ОСОБЕННОСТЕЙ ВОЗРОЖДЕНИЯ 61

Глава II

ГУМАНИСТИЧЕСКОЕ ПОНЯТИЕ ПРИРОДНОГО „РАЗНООБРАЗИЯ" (ВАРЬЕТА)

СЛОВО, КЛЮЧЕВОЕ ДЛЯ ПОНИМАНИЯ ТИПА КУЛЬТУРЫ 68

ИЗ КРИСТОФОРО ЛАНДИНО ГОРИЗОНТАЛЬ И ВЕРТИКАЛЬ 70

КАСТИЛЬОНЕ О ПРЕИМУЩЕСТВАХ ЖИВОПИСИ 72

ЗРЕЛИЩЕ МИРА У ДЖАНОЦЦО МАНЕТТИ 77

„ПРИРОДА" И „ИСКУССТВО" 88

ВАРЬЕТА В ПАСТОРАЛЬНОМ МИРЕ „АРКАДИИ" 90

Глава III

КАТЕГОРИЯ ВАРЬЕТА У ЛЕОНА БАТТИСТЫ АЛЬБЕРТИ.

ПРОБЛЕМА РЕНЕССАНСНОГО ИНДИВИДУАЛИЗМА

ВНУТРЕННИЙ СПОР „ОБИЛИЯ" И „РАЗНООБРАЗИЯ" 105

ПРЕКРАСНОЕ ИЛИ ХАРАКТЕРНОЕ?

ИСХОДНОЕ ПРОТИВОРЕЧИЕ КЛАССИЦИЗМА ВОЗРОЖДЕНИЯ 113

ЛОГИКА РЕНЕССАНСНОГО ИНДИВИДУАЛИЗМА 116

НЕБЕСНЫЙ ШУТ MOM 126

НЕКОТОРЫЕ ПРЕДВАРИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ВЫВОДЫ 129

Глава IV

МНЕНИЯ БАЛЬДАССАРЕ КАСТИЛЬОНЕ

ОБ ИНДИВИДУАЛЬНОМ СОВЕРШЕНСТВЕ

ХАРАКТЕР ДИАЛОГОВ КАСТИЛЬОНЕ.

ПОСТАНОВКА ЦЕЛИ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ 133

СОВЕРШЕНСТВО ОТДЕЛЬНОГО ЧЕЛОВЕКА? 139

„НЕ ВСЕ ПОДХОДИТ КАЖДОМУ" 145

НОРМА („ПРАВИЛА") И КАЗУС („ОБСТОЯТЕЛЬСТВА") 148

ИНДИВИДУАЛЬНЫЙ ВЫБОР 154

О ВРЕДЕ СКРОМНОСТИ. СПОР ПРЕД-ОПРЕДЕЛЕНИЙ ЛИЧНОСТИ 156

О ГРАЦИИ 160

ВОЗРОЖДЕНИЕ НА ПУТИ К САМООБОСНОВАНИЮ ИНДИВИДА 167

Глава V

ФИРЕНЦУОЛА И МАНЬЕРИЗМ. КРИЗИС РЕНЕССАНСНОГО ИДЕАЛА

„КРАСАВИЦА ВООБЩЕ" 170

ОТ ФИЧИНО К ФИРЕНЦУОЛЕ.

СОВЕРШЕНСТВО ПОДРОБНОСТИ И ХИМЕРИЧНОСТЬ ЦЕЛОГО 179

ПРИКЛЮЧЕНИЯ РЕНЕССАНСНОГО КЛАССИЦИЗМА 185

О СУЩНОСТИ МАНЬЕРИЗМА.

ПРИНЦИП ФИРЕНЦУОЛОВОЙ „ХИМЕРЫ" В ЖИВОПИСИ 194

Часть вторая

Воплощенная Варьета. Леонардо да Винчи

„СОБРАНИЕ БЕЗ ПОРЯДКА" 209

ЕЩЕ НЕСКОЛЬКО ИСТОРИОГРАФИЧЕСКИХ ЗАМЕТОК 223

СОВРЕМЕННИКИ О ЛЕОНАРДО. ДЖОРДЖО ВАЗАРИ 224

„И ТАК ДАЛЕЕ" 230

ПОЛЬ ВАЛЕРИ О ЛЕОНАРДО 237

ПИСЬМО К МОРО 239

64 ТЕРМИНА ИЗ ГИДРОДИНАМИКИ 247

„РАЗНООБРАЗЬ КАК ТОЛЬКО МОЖЕШЬ" 258

ФРАГМЕНТ ПРОТИВ НАЧЕТЧИКОВ. ПОНЯТИЕ „АКЦИДЕНТАЛЬНОГО" 266

„ПРИМЕРЫ" И „ПРАВИЛА" 270

ПОХВАЛА ГЛАЗУ 285

О ТОМ, ЧТО КАРТИНЫ НЕ ДОЛЖНЫ НЕ БЫТЬ ПОХОЖИ НА СВОИХ МАСТЕРОВ 291

„ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЕ НИКОГДА НЕ ПЕРЕСТАЕТ УЛУЧШАТЬСЯ" 296

ФРАГМЕНТ О „ВОКАБУЛАХ". ИСТОРИЗМ ЛЕОНАРДО? 303

ПРОТИВ „АВТОРОВ СОКРАЩЕННЫХ ИЗЛОЖЕНИЙ" 306

ЧТО ЗА ЧЕЛОВЕК БЫЛ ЛЕОНАРДО 309

„МОНА ЛИЗА ДЖОКОНДА" 316

„ТАЙНАЯ ВЕЧЕРЯ" 319

ЛЕОНАРДОВА ПЕЩЕРА 325

„ПЯТНА НА СТЕНЕ" 328

„ТОЧКА". СУЩЕСТВОВАНИЕ НИЧТО 334

ДВА ПОЛЮСА ВАРЬЕТА:

ЛЕОНАРДО В СОПОСТАВЛЕНИИ С МИКЕЛАНДЖЕЛО 345

ЛЕОНАРДО И РЕНЕССАНСНЫЙ ТИП КУЛЬТУРЫ 357

Вместо заключения 366

Примечания 368

Список иллюстраций 405

Указатель имен 407

Summary 410

Б 28

Баткин Л. M.

Леонардо да Винчи и особенности ренессансного

творческого мышления. – М.: Искусство, 1990. – 415

с.: ил.

ISBN 5-210-00033-8

Книга посвящена всестороннему исследованию творческого гения Лео-

нардо – наиболее полного воплощения гуманистической культуры Возро-

ждения. Работа основана на конкретном рассмотрении живописного и гра-

фического наследия Леонардо, а также его рукописей. Затрагивается

широкий круг вопросов на стыках искусствоведения с философией и тео-

рией культуры, психологией, эстетикой, литературоведением. По своему

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и не повторяет уже имеющейся литературы о Леонардо. Вместе с тем напи-

сана книга в свободной, живой манере.

57-89

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Леонид Михайлович Баткин

Леонардо да Винчи

и особенности ренессансного творческого мышления

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