Freedom, Violence, and Art – Story of Civilization V.vii.i-V.xi.v.1

Often, discussions of freedom are quickly hijacked by the argument over precisely what type of freedom is being discussed.  For instance, in America today, you may love freedom, but is it the freedom to not have to worry about healthcare, or the freedom to not pay excessive taxes to the government?  Similar questions have occurred throughout recent history: in apposition to free enterprise, freedom of property, and freedom from oppressive regulation are freedom to work, freedom from poverty, and freedom to unionize.

These questions are not unique to our time.  Historians often say of Renaissance Italy that it was the freedom of the city-states that stimulated the great flowering of the arts that then occurred.  But which freedom, precisely, do they mean?

In the most trivial answer, the freedom that mattered was the freedom of the city-states themselves from outside rule.  Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Siena were all independent fiefs, practically free, if not technically so, from the encroaching kings, emperors, and popes of their time.  Economically, this meant that each city acted as the capital of its associated lands, receiving their taxes and their goods, and passing them on to no higher authority.

This map of Italy, actually from 1796, hints at the divided nature of the country during the Renaissance. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was actually the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Parma occupies approximately what would have been Milanese territory, and numerous smaller principalities, such as Ferrara and Siena, would at times have been independent.

Consider, by contrast, Rome during the Empire: prosperous cities and territories grew up repeatedly, but in the end, all were ransacked for the beautification of the capital.  When the method was not taxation or tribute, it was graft; the imperial appointees -native to Rome – would travel to a province, govern it for a few years, gather great wealth, and then leave with it for Rome.

In Renaissance Italy, with no imperial monster to feed, local concentrations of wealth were broken up but little, and the governors of each city-state, having collected the wealth that seems to be the eternal appanage of power, had nowhere to go with it but home.  This is reflected in the art patronage of the time. During the 1400s and 1500s, the greatest patrons of art were almost exclusively the government and the Church.  The Medicis in Florence, the Estensi in Ferrara, the Gonzagas in Mantua, and even Lodovico Sforza in Milan were all both premier patrons of the arts in their cities, and the dictators of said cities.

One is inclined to wonder whence came the great wealth of these dictators.  Other questions also arise.  Might the proletariat have done better under the oppression of a papal legate than under the freedom of the independent dictators?  Perhaps not; in addition to being artistically fertile, one of the signature characteristics of the Renaissance city-states was their patriotism.  Nonetheless, it seems clear that freedom from outside rule meant, in practice, the freedom of local rulers to cull for themselves whatever wealth they could extract from their territories.

Freedom from outside rule, in a way, also meant freedom from supervision, freedom from law.  This resulted in another notorious characteristic of the Renaissance city-states: their violence.  The Medicis and the Sforzas had to fear violent insurrections from time to time, but they were by no means the worst.  In cities like Verona under the Scaligeri, Perugia under the Baglioni, and others, rule was by families or factions whose sole claim to power appears to have been violence; so numerous are the stories of murder and midnight coups in these states, that, through the clouded vision of history, one could almost characterize the form of government as gang rule.

And so freedom can mean many things.  We must especially beware of those who would use freedom as a banner under which to usher in any number or variety of changes that in actuality have little to do with freedom.  When, in an effort to oust Lorenzo de’ Medici his opponents attempted to assassinate him, while running through the streets proclaiming freedom, the only reasonable interpretation of the freedom they offered was freedom from Lorenzo, and freedom for themselves to oppress the people in his stead.  The people responded accordingly, and killed them.

An Art Reinvented – Story of Civilization V.iv.vi-V.vi.vii

The most interesting way to write about history is as a revisionist.  The historian picks a period, examines common suppositions and conclusions, and then, through detailed analysis, shows that it was not so.

For the Renaissance, I suspect that such a treatment would be most unjust.  The Renaissance is supposed to have been a flowering of all of the arts and graces of civilization, and so it was.  No field better shows the contrast between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance than painting.

There may have been painting in The Age of Faith; if so, I don’t remember.  But in the Renaissance, it is as if man discovered canvas, and then through raw genius, invented de novo the art of covering it.  If some future revisionist wishes to annul this impression, let the sheer volume of Renaissance painting and painters overwhelm him, as it does the student of art.

The high state of painting during the 1400s is almost a curse; if we ever hope to make it to the 1500s, we must pass by whole careers of genius with a line, or even a word.  One or two who stood above the rest come to symbolize their age; so in the Renaissance, when we think of painting, we think of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Let this note, then, stand as a monument to forgotten genius: among these thousand Renaissance painters, Andrea del Sarto is also worthy of remembrance.  Michelangelo said of him to Raphael, “There is a little fellow in Florence who will bring sweat to your brow if ever he is engaged in great works.”  Indeed, Andrea’s especial focus on a narrow circle of subjects, particularly Madonnas, is apparently what has kept him from greater critical acclaim, in both his own day and ours.  Nonetheless, Durant prefers many aspects of his painting to that of the remembered greats, citing composition, anatomy, and color among others as elements in which Andrea surpassed all.

Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat

This humble critic also found Andrea’s work to be exceptional, particularly in the field of anatomy (nearly the only field in which he is a qualified judge).  Compare the Madonna of the Harpies, for example, to anything from Botticelli.  I found Andrea’s Last Supper preferable in some ways to Leonardo’s (though perhaps this is only a consequence of time’s caprice).  As Wikipedia says, each figure in Andrea’s rendition is like a portrait, exceptionally individualized, and excelling Leonardo’s in picturing the varied tones and shades of human skins and faces.  What a progression from Fra Angelico to this, in less than a hundred years!

Andrea del Sarto's Madonna of the Harpies

We can only hope that, in our own characteristic arts, our age may baffle future critics as the Renaissance baffles us.