Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance

Studies in the Art of the Renaissance #2

by E.H. Gombrich

These classic studies on the interpretation of images are essential reading for all students of Renaissance art; they also take their rightful place as seminal texts that have themselves helped to shape the evolving discipline of art history. Many of the essays focus on the greatest artists of the Renaissance -- notably Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo -- and all reflect the author's deep and abiding concern with standards, values and problems of method. Yet Gombrich never loses sight of the works of art he is investigating, and he brings to all his analyses and interpretations an original and powerful intelligence, unfailing clarity of expression and immense learning. These four volumes have a permanent value and represent a vitally important humanistic tradition in scholarship and criticism.

Genres: Art, Art History, Renaissance, Nonfiction, History

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, OM, CBE (30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian, who spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Alessandro Massa]

Fascinating and enlightening. Written for readers with a strong grip of the classics. A little meandering at times.

[Lorna]

I think I'll put this one back on the shelf for now. I chose it because it was Gombrich and his 'The Story of Art' was an invaluable companion to me as a first year history of art student. This book of essays is however more akin to walking into a conversation between several professors in the midst of an animated debate. And I can only hear one of them speak.

My search continues for a good, heavyweight book on allegorical painting.

[Tom Brannigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

These classic studies on the interpretation of images are essential reading for all students of Renaissance art; they also take their rightful place as seminal texts that have themselves helped to shape the evolving discipline of art history. Many of the essays focus on the greatest artists of the Renaissance -- notably Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo -- and all reflect the author's deep and abiding concern with standards, values and problems of method. Yet Gombrich never loses sight of the works of art he is investigating, and he brings to all his analyses and interpretations an original and powerful intelligence, unfailing clarity of expression and immense learning. These four volumes have a permanent value and represent a vitally important humanistic tradition in scholarship and criticism.(less)

[Gort · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Tobias · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I wouldn't give for a Gombrich commentary on midjourney.

If there's a relatively noteworthy discontent, it's the absence of Nietzsche in this volume. I mean, in a volume that revolves around personification of concepts, how can you leave out the guy who said this:

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

Please don't do Freddy dirty like that! Given what Gombrich has experienced (WWII and being born in Austria and having the temerity to relate propaganda with art and all that) it's not exactly perplexing that he should, consciously or unconsciously, ignore Freddy Nietzsche, who has suffered terrible misinterpretation from the Nazis. Verweile doch — can't the same be said regarding Freddy's mortal nemesis, Plato?

Plato, the guy who granted philosophical significance to personification, whose presence can be felt on every page of this book. As a reader taking a break from the battlefield of Hellas, I can't help but notice some militant root in Plato's values and thinkings. Exhibit A: Plato valued "understanding at a split second through some graphical revelation" higher than "understanding via logical deduction" — a valuation that undoubtedly dominated Renaissance visual art. Needless to say, judgement based on "understanding that came from revelation" can be very shaky and cannot always stand against logical inspection. But where this "rapid response" matter is during battlefield decision-making, as pointed out by Carl von Clausewitz:

It is, therefore, not only the physical, but more frequently the mental eye which is meant in coup d’œil. Naturally, the expression, like the thing, is always more in its place in the field of tactics: still, it must not be wanting in strategy, inasmuch as in it rapid decisions are often necessary. If we strip this conception of that which the expression has given it of the over-figurative and restricted, then it amounts simply to the rapid discovery of a truth which to the ordinary mind is either not visible at all or only becomes so after long examination and reflection.

And what von Clausewitz understood was not something new. Compare this with the noteworthy quality of Themistocles, as described by Thucydides (or rather, notice what traits in Themistocles did Thucydides find noteworthy):

[F]rom his own native acuteness, and without any study either before or at the time, he was the ablest judge of the course to be pursued in a sudden emergency,and could best divine what was likely to happen in the remotest future. [...]Themistocles, by natural power of mind and with the least preparation, was of all men the best able to extemporise the right thing to be done.

if someone wants another example, see how closely Plato's Cardinal Virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) resembled Sun Tzu's list of militant virtues: 将者，智信仁勇严 (a general must be wise, trustworthy, benevolent, courageous, and well-disciplined).

One couldn't help but wonder if some militant aspect of Plato — if there is any — was somehow gobbled down by Christianity via neoplatonism. It could be that this is just indigestion in the history of thoughts we are seeing, now manifesting in visual arts: rather than understanding why a visual revelation is better than lengthy logical deduction, artists and their humanist friends/consultants (who often provided programmes for the artworks) simply made a doctrine out of it. But then again I do recall early Christians describing themselves as "warriors of Jesus Christ", so it might be more complicated than that, which would definitely be fun to dig into. "To what extent was Plato's theory a sophisticated PTSD of the Peloponnesian War" would also be fun to dig into. All these potential rabbit holes might help us understand, and augment accordingly, the ever-present misinterpretation of texts which Gombrich had come across in this very book and in his life. But would our end goal be something as lackluster as "presenting a 'true' interpretation"? Or with the abolishment of the idea of "misinterpretation", we can also abolish the "true" one?

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Platonic and the Aristotelian traditions which have here been traced in their attitudes towards symbolism may be said to represent two fundamental reactions to the problem which the existence of language poses for every reflecting human being. It was the Platonists who made man feel the inadequacy of 'discoursive speech' for conveying the experience of direct apprehension of truth and the 'ineffable' intensity of mystic vision... It may be argued that the Aristotelians, by contrast, kept this reaction alive by overrating the powers of language... They (the Aristotelians) failed to notice the inadequacy of language for the communication even of very commonplace subjective experiences...they did less than justice to its flexibility and powers of creative growth."

Thus E.H. Gombrich sums up the warring systems of thought present in Renaissance art in the penultimate section of his wonderful book about Renaissance images, "Gombrich On the Renaissance: Volume 2, Symbolic Images." However, before one reaches this critique of the main trends of the book, Dr. Gombrich brings his readers through a series of nine distinct chapters which treat great exemplars of Renaissance painting, such as Botticelli's 'Primavera,' the unknown artist's work 'Tobias and the Angel,' Raphael's 'Stanza della Segnatura,' Poussin's 'Orion,' and a wide range of other examples of the visual arts, in light of the philosophical systems that informed, so Gombrich asserts, the 'world' that was inhabited by the denizens of the Renaissance. So we are exposed to the thoughts of Ficino's Academy and their relationship with Botticelli's patron, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco; we understand the 'science' underlying the imagery of Poussin's allegorical painting "Orion;' we explore the neo-Platonism of Florence, and how it shaped the images, their significance and type, of that time. Viewed after the fact of reading, Gombrich's tome is characterized by a strict adherence to the principles of scholarship and visual, literary, and philosophical exegesis; supporting evidence in the form of primary sources (Ficino, Neo-Platonists like Plotinus, writers such as Schiller and Goethe) are accessed with the aim of supplementing analysis of the images themselves, allowing the reader clear, unimpeded insight into the 'thought' that, according to Gombrich's thesis, informed these masterpieces of the visual arts. The tone is majesterial, the erudition is advanced, and the beneficial pedagogical effect is immediate and long-lasting. For the reader is left convinced of the author's suppositions and assertions; additionally, one becomes enlightened to the philosophical traditions that were at war in these artifacts of culture, and one submits, with humility and acceptance, to the tutelage that is Gombrich's 'take' on these grand themes. To this reader, who is mostly a neophyte to the terrain of this artistic debate, the arguments are convincing due to the encyclopedic and all-encompassing breadth of Gombrich's vision and erudition. This makes for a enlightening read, a read where one encounters a breadth of vision and learning that is truly wonderful. The addition of images of the works at the end of the book serves to illustrate the theories and assertions of the author; they are also fine additions to the appreciation of art in their own right. Together the images and text provide the reader with an all-encompassing encounter with the works of the Renaissance in light of the philosophy of its era. To discount the importance of such a book to an understanding of either element would be a great disservice to the cause of clear understanding of an essential time in our history as a people. A fine book this is!