Ideas
Page 148
2. Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, Op. cit., pages 302–303. See also: Moynahan, Op. cit., pages 334–335, for another account.
3. Elizabeth Cropper, Introduction to Francis Ames-Lewis and Mary Rogers (editors), Concepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art, page 1.
4. Ibid., page 2, and Burckhardt, Op. cit., volume II, page 351.
5. Aerial perspective deals with the tendency for all observable objects, as they recede from the spectator, to become more muted in tone and to become bluer in proportion to their distance, owing to the density of the atmosphere. (This is why mountains in the background always appear blueish.) Peter and Linda Murray, Dictionary of Art and Artists (seventh edition), London: Penguin Books, 1997, pages 337–338.
6. It was a bishop, the Bishop of Meaux, who argued in his mammoth poem, Ovide Moralisé, that Christian instruction could be found in many of the myths of Ovid. Burke, Op. cit. And see Moynahan, Op. cit., page 335, for the way Botticelli changed under the influence of Savonarola.
7. In line with all this there grew up what could be called an allegorical literature. As academies like Ficino’s spread to other cities beyond Florence, it became a desirable accomplishment for a courtier to be able to decipher allegories. Books of emblems began to appear in which a mythological device was shown alongside a few lines of verse explaining the meaning and moral of the picture. Venus, for instance, standing with one foot on a tortoise, teaches ‘that woman’s place is in the home and that she should know when to hold her tongue’. See: Peter Watson, Wisdom and Strength: The Biography of a Renaissance Masterpiece, New York: Doubleday, 1989, page 47. The impresa was a parallel innovation: it consisted of an image and text but was devised specifically for an individual, and commemorated either an event in that person’s life, or some trait or character. It did not appear in book form but as a medallion or sculpture or bas relief, the latter as often as not on the ceiling of the distinguished person’s bedroom so that he could reflect on its message as he went to sleep. There was also an array of popular manuals which appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century, such as The History of the Gods (1548) by Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, and The Images of the Gods (1556) by Natale Conti. Conti explains best the purpose of these works: that from the earliest times–first in Egypt, then in Greece–thinkers deliberately concealed the great truths of science and philosophy under the veil of myth in order to withdraw them from vulgar profanation. He therefore organised his own book according to what he thought were the hidden messages to be revealed: the secrets of nature, the lessons of morality, and so on. Jean Seznec sums up the spirit of the times when he says that allegories came to be regarded as a means of ‘rendering thought visible’. Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press/Bollingen Series, 1972/1995.
8. Umberto Eco (translated by Hugh Bredin), Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986/2002, pages 116–117.
9. Ibid., page 114.
10. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., pages 180–181.
11. Dorothy Koenigsberger, Renaissance Man and Creative Thinking, Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979, page 236.
12. Burckhardt, Op. cit., page 102.
13. Koenigsberger, Op. cit., page 13.
14. Ibid., pages 19–21.
15. Ibid., page 22. See also Brucker, Op. cit., page 240.
16. Burke, Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy, Op. cit., pages 51–52.
17. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., pages 113–114.
18. Burke, Op. cit., pages 51–52.
19. Ibid., pages 55–56. Brucker, Op. cit., page 243, says Brunelleschi also ‘learned some mathematics’.
20. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., pages 32–35.
21. Ibid., page 33.
22. Koenigsberger, Op. cit., page 31.
23. Ames-Lewis and Rogers (editors), Op. cit., page 81.
24. Ibid., page 72.
25. One particular aspect of the effect of humanism on art was the notion of ekphrasis, the recreation of classical painting based on ancient written accounts of works which the classical authors had seen but were now lost. In the same way, Renaissance artists emulated ancient artists. For example, Pliny recounts a famous story about the trompe l’oeil qualities of the grapes in a painting by Zeuxis that were so lifelike the birds mistook them for real grapes and flew down to peck at them. Likewise, Filarete paraphrased an anecdote about Giotto and Cimabue: ‘And we read of Giotto that as a beginner he painted flies, and his master Cimabue was so taken in that he believed they were alive and started to chase after them with a rag.’ Ibid., page 148.
26. Burke, Op. cit., illustration facing page 148.
27. Ibid.
28. In fact, nothing came of this approach.
29. Watson, Op. cit., page 31.
30. Barnes, Op. cit., page 929.
31. Ibid., page 931.
32. Yehudi Menuhin and Curtis W. Davis, The Music of Man, London: Methuen, 1979, page 83.
33. Ibid., page 83.
34. Ibid., page 84.
35. Al-Farabi thought the rabab most closely matched the voice. Anthony Baines (editor), Musical Instruments Through the Ages, London: Penguin, 1961, page 216.
36. Joan Peysor et al. (editors), The Orchestra, New York: Billboard, 1986, page 17. See Baines (editor), Op. cit., page 68, for more on Pythagoras. Ibid., page 53, also links the shawm to instruments in Ur. John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw, The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650–1815, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
37. Alfred Einstein, A Short History of Music, London: Cassell, 1936/1953, page 54.
38. Barnes, Op. cit., page 930.
39. Baines, Op. cit., page 117, who says, page 192, that Orfeo also made use of a double harp.
40. Barnes, Op. cit., page 932.
41. Hall, Cities in Civilisation, Op. cit., page 114. Sheldon Cheney, The Theatre: Three Thousand Years, London: Vision, 1952, page 266, says only a third of the plays have survived.
42. Hall, Op. cit., page 115.
43. Richard Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642, London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1972, page 75.
44. L. C. Knights, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson, London: Chatto & Windus, 1937, page 118. See also Cheney, Op. cit., pages 261ff, for the social changes behind the rise in theatre.
45. N. Zwager, Glimpses of Ben Jonson’s London, Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1926, page 10.
46. Hall, Op. cit., page 125.
47. Ibid., page 126.
48. See Annabel Patterson, Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, pages 20–21, for repeated attempts to control the theatre.
49. See Cheney, Op. cit., page 264, for another candidate. Patterson, Op. cit., page 30, points out that at least five of the characters in Hamlet are university men.
50. Hall, Op. cit., page 130, and Cheney, Op. cit., page 169. See the latter source, page 271, for a rare, uncontested drawing of a Shakespearean theatre.
51. But see Patterson, Op. cit., page 33, for the cultural divisions of the time, and pages 49–50, for Shakespeare’s own attack on illiteracy.
52. Harold Bloom, The Western Canon, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994, pages 46–47.
53. Ibid., pages 67–68. Cheney, Op. cit., page 273, for Shakespeare’s adaptations and hack writing.
54. Barnes, Op. cit., page 620.
55. Krailsheimer (editor), Op. cit., page 325, for La Celestina.
56. Angus Fletcher, Colors of the Mind, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991. See also: William Byron, Cervantes, London: Cassell, 1979, pages 124ff, for the battle of Lepanto, and page 427 for more on the relation between the Don and Sancho Panza.
57. Byron, Op cit., page 430.
CHAPTER 20: THE MENTAL HORIZON OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
1. Valerie Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus, Princeto
n, New Jersey, and London: Princeton University Press, 1992, page 115.
2. Beatrice Pastor Bodmer, The Armature of Conquest, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992, pages 10–11.
3. John Parker, Discovery, New York: Scribner, 1972, page 15.
4. Ibid., page 16.
5. Ibid., pages 18–19.
6. For the dimensions and speeds of Columbus’ ships, see E. Keble Chatterton, Sailing the Seas, London: Chapman & Hall, 1931, pages 150–151.
7. Parker, Op. cit., page 24.
8. Ibid., page 25.
9. Ibid., page 26.
10. To prove this once and for all, Alexander instructed Nearchus, a trusted officer, to sail back west to Persia, where Alexander would meet him. Nearchus’ voyage was eventful. He encountered people who lived only on fish–they even made bread out of fish; he saw terrifying whales which spouted water like geysers; and he was blown in all directions by unpredictable winds. But some of the ships made it and Nearchus and Alexander met up again in the Persian Gulf, having discovered the way to India by both land and sea. Parker, Op. cit., pages 30–32.
11. Ibid., page 33.
12. John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers, New York: Vintage, 1982, pages 19–20.
13. For Eratosthenes’ map of the world, see: Ian Cameron, Lode Stone and Evening Star: The Saga of Exploration by Sea, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965, page 32.
14. Parker, Op. cit., pages 48–49.
15. Ibid., page 51.
16. Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space, London: British Library, 1997, pages 108–109, which includes a map showing Paradise in the east as a ‘sunburst-island’ with four rivers draining out of it.
17. Parker, Op. cit., page 54.
18. Ibid., page 55.
19. See Tryggi J. Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches 1000–1632, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press/McClelland Stewart, 1964, pages 100ff, for other ‘mythical’ voyages.
20. Noble Wilford, Op. cit., page 38.
21. Parker, Op. cit., page 62.
22. Ibid., page 63.
23. Oleson, Op. cit., page 101, says that Brendan ‘probably’ reached the St Lawrence.
24. Ibid., chapter 6, for the Skraelings. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, Op. cit., pages 166–179, for the medieval discovery of America. The Vinland Map, at Yale University, purportedly made about 1440, but very probably a forgery, shows that these ‘western isles’ were still (fairly accurately) in the mind of the mapmaker and that they constituted a traditional part of the idea of the north Atlantic.
25. Parker, Op. cit., page 83. Phillips, Op. cit., page 192 for the Prester John/Alexander the Great legend.
26. Bodmer, Op. cit., pages 13–14. And Phillips, Op. cit., page 69.
27. Parker, Op. cit., page 89.
28. Bodmer, Op. cit., page 15.
29. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 188, for Polo’s other (Christian) adventures.
30. Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986/1989. Phillips, Op. cit., page 113, for Rustichello of Pisa.
31. Flint, Op. cit., page 3.
32. Ibid., page 7.
33. This position also implied an arduous uphill journey to reach it, which accorded well with the moral preoccupations of the time.
34. Flint, Op. cit., page 9.
35. Ibid., page 10.
36. Ibid., page 26.
37. Ibid., page 36.
38. Bodmer, Op. cit., page 13.
39. Flint, Op. cit., page 40 and ref. Samuel Morison, Christopher Columbus: Mariner, maps by Erwin Raisz, London: Faber, 1956, page 103.
40. Flint, Op. cit., page 42.
41. Bodmer, Op. cit., page 15.
42. Flint, Op. cit., page 53.
43. He would actually set up a council to govern the first island he discovered, based on his reading. Joachim G. Leithäuser, World Beyond the Horizon, translated by Hugh Merrick, New York: Knopf, 1955, page 73.
44. Ibid., page 44.
45. Bodmer, Op. cit., chapter 4, which includes a discussion of ‘models’, ways to understand the new world and its social arrangements.
46. Flint, Op. cit., page 95.
47. Ibid., page 96.
48. J. D. Bernal, The Extension of Man: The History of Physics Before the Modern Age, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1954, pages 124–127.
49. J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963, pages 100ff. See also: Edson, Op. cit., especially chapter 1; and Noble Wilford, Op. cit., chapters 4 and 5, pages 34–72.
50. Parry, Op. cit., page 103.
51. Ibid., page 105.
52. Ibid., page 106.
53. Noble Wilford, Op. cit., pages 71ff.
54. Parry, Op. cit., page 112.
55. Noble Wilford, Op. cit., page 75.
56. At night the so-called ‘guards’ of the Pole Star describe a complete circle around the pole every twenty-four hours. ‘A nocturnal’ consisted of a circular disc with a central hole for sighting Polaris and a rotating pointer to be aligned on Kochab. Around the edge of the disc were a series of marks indicating the angle for midnight on various dates of the year. This gave a crude measure of midnight for every day of the year. Noble Wilford, Op. cit., page 77.
57. Ibid., page 79.
58. Ibid., page 82.
59. Tidal races were also much more important in the Atlantic, where the tides rose and fell many feet, than in the Mediterranean, where they did not, and where the only dangerous tidal race was in the Straits of Messina. The relation of the tides to the moon now came into sharper focus, since they often affected access to Atlantic ports. Noble Wilford, Op. cit., page 85.
60. Parry, Op. cit., page 98. Phillips, Op. cit., page 194, for the implications of the disappearance of the Pole Star.
61. Parry, Op. cit., page 63.
62. Ibid.
63. For a vivid description of travel aboard a galley see: Chatterton, Op. cit., page 139.
64. Parry, Op. cit., page 58. See Chatterton, Op. cit., page 144, for a description of the development of lateen rigging and the highpoint of its use at the battle of Lepanto in 1571. The format allowed a ship to sail ‘two points nearer the wind’. And see the illustration facing page 142.
65. Ronald J. Watkins, Unknown Seas: How Vasco da Gama Opened the East, London: John Murray, 2003, page 118.
66. Parry, Op. cit., page 140.
67. He also found Christians on the Malabar coast, whose liturgy was in Syriac. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 553.
68. Parry, Op. cit., page 149.
69. Bodmer, Op. cit., page 10.
70. Parry, Op. cit., page 151.
71. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Columbus and the Conquest of the Impossible, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974, pages 166–167.
72. Parry, Op. cit., page 154 and ref. See also: Peter Martyr, De Orbo Novo, edited and translated by F. A. McNutt, New York 1912, volume 1, page 83, quoted in Parry, Ibid.
73. Ibid., page 159.
CHAPTER 21: THE ‘INDIAN’ MIND: IDEAS IN THE NEW WORLD
1. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, London: Cape, 1997.
2. Ibid., page 140.
3. J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press/Canto, 1970/1992, page 7.
4. Ibid., page 8.
5. Ibid.
6. Bodmer, Op. cit., page 33.
7. Elliott, Op. cit., page 9.
8. Ibid., pages 9–10.
9. Bodmer, Op. cit., pages 65–66 and 88. For Gó mara, see: Michael D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992, page 78.
10. Elliott, Op. cit., page 10.
11. Ibid., page 11.
12. Ibid., page 12. But see: Jack P. Greene, The Intellectual Construction of America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993, page 15, for the expectations of Americans.
13. Bodmer, Op. cit., page 12.
14. Elliott, Op. cit., page 15.