Neo-Platonism and the New Sacristy Virgin and ChildAuthor(s): John ArthosSource: Art Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Spring, 1969), pp. 278-279Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775250 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 14:34

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:34:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

John Arthos

Neo-Platonism and the New Sacristy Virgin and Child

In Michelangelo's Virgin and Child in the New Sac-

risty of the Church of San Lorenzo, Florence (fig. 1), the

perfectly clear features, of the faces particularly, appear to be subtly obscured. There appears to be something like a veil, or a mere thickness of air, overlaying these

parts of the sculpture. It is certain that the effect of the work depends upon the clarity in the distinctions in the features that are before us as well as in the suggestion of a certain concealment of their distinctness.

Differing from the non-finito of much of the rest of the work, the "look" of these sculptures seems more like the exploitation of haziness in the Leonardo landscapes. The effect, on the other hand, seems to depend so much on the appearance of finish and perfection, if not of pol- ish, that it clarifies rather than obscures the character and the significance of the faces, and in such a remark- able way that I am moved to suggest that Michelangelo liere is making use of a certain facet of Neo-Platonism that is not ordinarily brought to bear in interpreting his work.

Deriving from Plato, but finding full philosophical development only in the Neo-Platonists, is the idea of an astral body that is the vehicle of each individual soul, a spirit substance that is the envelope of the soul, accom-

panying it and the body it inhabits in its passage into creation. This is Ficino's presentation of the idea: "Hoc vocant Magi vehiculum animae, aethereumque scilicet

corpusculum, acceptum ab aethere, immortale animae

indumentum, naturali equidem figura rotundum propter a~theris regionem, sed in humanam effigiem sese trans-

ferens, quando corpus humanum ingreditur, atque in

priorem se restituens, quum egreditur."'1 Professor Kris- teller observed that this celestial substance or "ethereal

body" is sometimes identified with the glorified body of the souls in blessedness.2 By analogy, at least, as Ficino

speaks of it, such a body may be thought of as some-

thing to be seen, as an image of the body possessed of a

particular splendor: "Sicut enim Lunae splendor in nube promit ex seipso pallorem, sic anima in corpore coelesti emittit idolum, quasi stella crinita comam."3

Such a reference does not certify that this idea in

particular determines the technique of the New Sacristy Virgin and Child, but I believe it may be used to rein- force any impression the viewer may have that there is in

such figures something other than the technique of gener- alization that is the determining characteristic of Michel-

4::

:i Xi? i~ iliii;?ii?:Iiij ~:~~::i'i'

...... ..... : w

lifi

i~ix

9.1:L~::: ?i:::): ?':? ?

id;::-i$a::: j:j:':j:

Fig. 7. Michelangelo, Virgin and Child, ca. 1531, New Sacristy (Medici Chapel), Church of San Lorenzo, Florence.

The author is a professor of English at the University of Michigan. In recent years he has published books on Dante, Michelangelo and Milton, The Art of Shakespeare, and Milton and the Italian Cities. 0

' Opera (Basel, 1576), I, 404. 2

II Pensiero Filosofico di Marsilio Ficino, Florence, 1953,

p. 403. " Opera, I, 405.

ART JOURNAL XXVIII 3 278

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:34:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

angelo's David or his Bruges Madonna & Child (fig. 2), for example; this appears to be a technique of enhancing the mysterious and beautiful life taken to be resident in the Mother and Son of God, enhancing it not by refer-

ring us to the general and ideal but to the particular, non-material, identical appearance of another kind of, more splendid bodily substance.

In the poems (Frey, LXXXVII and CCXXXVIII) Michelangelo uses the word veil as Ficino does in com-

menting on Plotinus, at once the obscuring and the meta-

phorizing of reality." Michelangelo speaks in the ortho- dox way of the need to dissolve the barrier that stands between him and reality: the veil is a "veil of ice" that must be consumed by fire. It is deceptive, it can lead to death if mistaken for reality. But the "veiling" in this

sculpture seems to me to be of another kind, more the

projection of the life within the persons, more spirit than matter.

The Virgin and the Child both express a certain at- tentiveness not so much to what is before them to see in the flesh, as to what is significant in their thoughts. Al-

ways of course such a group would express felicity, but here it is agreed, I think, that there is more of passion and more of thought than one has experience of in other

representations of the subject, and in the Virgin, along with the knowledge of the future, a wholly extraordinary beauty.

There is an idea central to Neo-Platonism that may relate what I speak of as this "veiling" to the special character of this thoughtfulness and beauty: "So it is with the act of vision in the Intellectual Principle. This vision sees, by another light, the objects illuminated by the First Principle: setting itself among them, it sees veri-

tably; declining towards the lower nature, that upon which the light from above rests, it has less of that vision.

Passing over the visible and looking to the medium by which it sees, then it holds the Light and the source of

Light . . . It is certainly thus that the Intellectual Princi-

ple, hiding itself from the outer, withdrawing to the in- most, seeing nothing, must have its vision not of some other light in some other thing but of the light within itself, unmingled, pure, suddenly gleaming before it."'' It is this absorption with what is within that is not usually the effect of the Michelangelo sculptures-the aspect of contemplating the One, who is also the God within. The other figures in the New Sacristy have no such meaning and employ no such technique.

Amore P un choncetto di bellezza, Inmaginata o vista dentro al core.

(Frey, LX)

-Ago ..........-

..... ...

.. ............11

AMR;iii-ls~~

A M w8iiiijiii law, jwir ?A? I M o n

-'iiiiiiii?:iI~:ii~-~riiiiiii:

.......... x X.i

::::::,:? '' i~i ~ X ... .. ......ij~i ij :i

ix.ji No'' Xi- i

.... ......... :. :::--::rlr:?:: :::::;:::~ am X w. r-s.:r j?:iii i iiiiEiii

X:ii~~i :iii.1a~

i~i~t~:~a8~:.3~18g888881s~C:~ IBBB~8~B~B~k~~i:.lls~ ss~s~Bss -X.

... . .... axiiiiiii ii ii~iiZX.: -.0.0i ~ '

X.'li ii' e::_ :: . .... ......I

Fig. 2. Michelangelo, Virgin and Child, ca. 1501, Church of Notre Dome, Bruges.

From such contemplation issues an expression of the kind Professor Kristeller spoke of, and if this is relevant to the technique in question I should like to relate it to an idea expressed in the poem "Non ha l'ottimo artista"

(Frey, LXXXIII), where Michelangelo speaks of life not bounded by the stone that contains it, an idea which Val- erio Mariani in turn relates to Dante's

Tosto che loco li la circonscrive La virtih informative raggia intorno Cosi e quanto ne le membre vive.

(Purgatorio, XXV 88-90)

'Ibid., II, 1537.

SEnneads, V. v. 7 (MacKenna's translation). SMichelangelo, Turin, 1945, pp. 167-70.

279 Arthos: Neo-Platonism and the New Sacristy Virgin and Child

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:34:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions