Laocoönbleg

I’m surprised that he didn’t bring up Duccio’s Maestà. Duccio portrayed two sequential events in the same predella panel: Jesus curing the blind man & the blind man seeing (image here). That’s the one I recall most vividly, but I think that he and other Sienese and Florentines did similar things. Also, the image is readily available online, whereas the other two seem not to be, as you said.

I’m no expert on clothing dynamics, but I thought the theory with Raphael is that the clothes move slower than the man, so you’re actually seeing the same thing that would be captured in a photo of the scene — it’s just that cloth lag gives you a little information about what went on before.

From a quick google image search, one nominee for the Saabine women picture he meant was Poussin’s. It at least fits the bill of showing both the original abduction on the left, and the reconciliation front and center. Seems a bit odd to confuse Poussin with Fra Mazzuoli, though.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women.jpg

“the kind of distinction i’m groping for is between a constructed thing and a revleaed thing.”

what i mean here (above) is poorly said, and is hopfeully better said like this (below):

the kind of distinction i’m groping for is between a constructed experience of epiphany – one where words and therefore concepts accumulate and interact formally according to the laws of grammer and meaning, in the mind of the reader, giving rise to an experience of insight/revelation – and a revealed epiphany, one where visual data floods the sensory experience of the viewer and the epiphany arises directly and seemingly spontaneously.

of course, this depends on whether you think the purpose of art is to create epiphany or insight into something in the viewer, though this scheme works equally if you substitute ‘communication’ for ‘epiphany’. (people are usually more inlcined to agree that the point of an art work is communication of something, which is deemed a pretty innocuous goal.)

and of course, on whether i’m guessing his meaning right – i haven’t read the piece you reference, but it seems reasonable, because this kind of distinction is common in art history and criticism.

d

Let’s try that again: this commentary.

Thanks, potchkeh, for tracking down what I was going to speculate. Parmigianino’s surname is not usually given as “Mazzuoli” in any case, but Mazzola — perhaps he meant one of the other, more obscure painters by that name?

“I’m reading Lessing’s Laocoön, An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry…”

You poor man: the pain will go away when you stop.

Why should I, or anyone else who isn’t Lessing, give a rat’s ass what Lessing thinks are the “domains” of the painter and poet? Or what “good” taste (i.e. Lessing’s taste) can and cannot sanction?

That being said, I find the Duccio painting rather weird. But that’s because I come from a background of expecting panel divisions, rather than a seamless blending of different times in the same frame. (If there *were* a panel division, it would be obvious to me what was going on, which presumably proves something about the importance of what the interpreter brings to the act of looking at art.) I don’t confuse my cultural expectations with some kind of objective truth about art, but it sure looks like Lessing does.

banned commenter trying it on again.

Then there’s Pater, who wrote in *The Renaissance* about how all arts, at their best, attempt to achieve the greatest effects of other arts, with all art ultimately striving to be music.

I have no problem with a pragmatic warning about arts stepping on each other’s toes. Whenever I read something like the poetry of p. inman and I’m told to appreciate it like free jazz, my response is always the same: free jazz is better, and for clear reasons. The timbres and textures of William Parker’s quartet, for example, add elements that a silently read random assortment of words and phonemes can never achieve.

And I’d argue the same about narrative. Novels and films do it so much better than paintings and comic books.

It’s like tools. Sure, you can use the handle of a screwdriver to get a nail into wood, but why would you if you have a hammer?

I’m pretty sure Lessing (a writer I would like to see read more rather than less) would not have had much of a reaction to Duccio, if he knew his work at all, other than to dismiss it as hopelessly primitive. Goethe, a less classicizing guy than Lessing, had minimal taste for the Trecento. His accounts of what he looked at vis a vis what we know he might have looked it is pretty amazing.

Lessing’s stance reminds me of Leon Kass’s position on the public eating of ice cream — obviously repugnant, and therefore just plain wrong. If you don’t share his aesthetic response you can’t understand his ethical position — and ultimately you’re reduced to getting Kass’s permission before doing anything. (Assuming you don’t chuckle and ignore him.)

Incidentally, I first read the post as “Lessig’s Laocoon” and thought, what’s Larry gone and done now?

Has anyone mentioned that Lessing was actually a pretty good playwright, writing both tragedy and comedy (I enjoyed Minna von Barnhelm, but then my tastes tend not to overlap with those of CT posters and commenters) — which might have distressed Socrates no end — and a theatre critic (in newspapers, I believe?)

In regard to the teichoscopia (that’s the Helen and the old men bit) that’s fully in accord with Homeric technique, where direct speech is the major portion of the poem, including most of the best known scenes, and the reader’s interest is usually not directed by the poet’s own voice but focalized through the points of view of the characters.

With regard to comment 1, Lessing would not have mentioned Duccio because the Maesta was taken apart around 1711. It wasn’t thought to be important or good art. It was old-fashioned and medieval, and the people of the cathedral had it divided up and sold.

Additionally, it is possible that the works of Parmigianino and Titian mentioned are no longer believed to be painted by these artists. For, in the nineteenth century, with the advent of the connoisseurship of Morelli and later Berenson, many of these paintings were re-attributed to different artists.

I can’t be certain, but it seems likely that Parmigianino’s “Rape of the Sabine Women” referred to is actually painted by Il Sodoma. Like Parmigianino, Il Sodoma works in the Mannerist style and has a painting which seems to fit Lessing’s description. The web gallery of art has a good image of this work.

The Titian referred to has likely been attributed to Andrea Schiavone, another painter of the Venetian school. As far as I can tell there continues to be some questioning as to whether the painting has actually been painted by Titian. I cannot seem to find a good image of this work online, though there is a black and white photograph of the painting on ARTstor.

For three separate moments in a narrative all in one painting, please see Masaccio’s The Tribute Money . (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tribute_Money)

One can say a lot of things about this painting; but until now, I would never have imagined anyone thinking that it somehow violates good taste.