The Imaginary Breeze

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DOI: 10.1177/1470412903002003001 2003; 2; 275 Journal of Visual Culture

Georges Didi-Huberman The Imaginary Breeze: Remarks on the Air of the Quattrocento

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The imaginary breeze: remarks on the air of the Quattrocento

Georges Didi-Huberman

The wind does more than just accompany the graceful footsteps and the drapery ofthe nymphs that populate so many of the Quattrocentos pictures. It is no more amere accessory of drapery in motion than drapery is itself an accessory of thebody in motion. Body, surfaces and air all hang together, like the Three Graces inBotticellis Primavera (see Figure 1): each element in that dialectical dance existsby virtue of its being borne, transported and transformed by the others. Thedraperies are in the wind as the wind is in the draperies, in the hair, and all aroundthe body: the accessory in motion (bewegtes Beiwerk), as Warburg clearly saw,touches and alters the very being of what it comes into contact with. The wind doesmore than just pass over things: it transforms, metamorphoses, profoundly touchesthe things it passes over.

Aby Warburg is probably the first Western historian of art to have placed the wind the fluid par excellence at the centre of a major exploration of Renaissance art. In18889, while he was still a student, Warburg observed the epic wind that blows inGhibertis reliefs and formulated his first hypotheses about the re-invention ofpictorial values (das Malerisch) by the sculptors of the early 15th century

journal of visual culture

journal of visual cultureCopyright 2003 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.comVol 2(3): 275-289 [1470-4129(200312)2:3;275-289;038435]

AbstractAby Warburg placed the wind, or air, at the centre of his investigation of the artof the Italian Renaissance. This article investigates how an external cause of theimage takes on the role of a figure in Quattrocento painting and sculpture, andbecomes foundational for Warburgs understanding of the Pathosformel and ofNachleben.

Key words air Botticelli dance displacement of affects drapery Renaissance Warburg


journal of visual culture 2(3)276

Figure 1 Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c. 14825 (detail: the Three Graces), tempera grassa on wood.Florence, Uffizi Gallery. 1990 Photo SCALA, Florence courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali. These images,protected by copyright and by watermark, are for reference purposes only. The downloading,reproduction, copy, publication or distribution of any of the images appearing on this website areforbidden by law.

SCALA Picture Library






(Warburg, 18889; Warburg, 1889, see Ghelardi, 2001[18889]: 7418).1 Later, byshifting his focus from the still beauty of Venus to the turbulent edges of her body to hair, draperies, and breaths of air Warburg, contra Winckelmann and hisimmobile goddesses, was to re-invent our entire way of seeing Antiquity and theRenaissance, placing bodily motion and the displacement of affects at the centre ofour perception (Warburg, 1998[1893]).2In his 1893 thesis on Botticelli, Warburg soon sought adequate expression for thisphenomenon, which had not previously been studied by the historical sciences butwhich, of course, had been grasped by certain artists, poets and philosophers. Thisis why, at the beginning of the chapter on Botticellis Primavera, Warburg citedsome lines alluding to the wind written by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This is also whyhe borrowed the superb expression imaginary breeze (in French in his text: briseimaginaire), probably from some romantic poet (Warburg, 1998[1893]: 20, 26).3 Inthe same spirit, he entitled the concluding chapter of his thesis with an enigmaticand enticing expression: The external cause of the image (die uereVeranlassung der Bilder) (pp. 4555).Why, then, was the wind which merely stirs the draperies and hair of a number of,mainly female, figures in Renaissance painting elevated to the status of a cause,motive or impetus (as the term Veranlassung suggests) for the entire picture?Because, from the start, Warburg recognized in the wind a formal means ofexpression or Pathosformel, as he was later to call it. The imaginary breeze causesthe hair of Botticellis Venus or the clothes of Donatellos princess to flutter freelywithout apparent cause (pp. 20, 30). For the artists of the Quattrocento, mobilizing airhad become a tool or rather, a fundamental vehicle for conveying pathos. Warburgwanted to analyse both the formulaic aspects of this vehicle, with their potential forrepetition, and its dynamic aspects, with their liberating potential (pp. 545). The wind causes all that it touches to quiver or stir, to be moved or convulsed. Itfirst sends a quiver through space: the graceful hereness of the princess recoiling infear is reached by the elsewhere of a violent combat carried out in her name, whichexhales its intensity in her direction. Here, then, the entire space is moved by thewind. But the passage of air also sends a quiver through time: Warburg discoveredwhy, during the Renaissance, a sense of surface mobility in the figures (die uereBeweglichkeit der Gestalten) was thought to be an essential trait ... and a criterionfor any successful influence of antique art (ein Kriterium des Einflusses derAntike) (p. 19). He also noted, among the artists of the Quattrocento, the tendency... to turn to the arts of the ancient world whenever life was to be embodied inoutward motion (p. 22). Finally, Warburg showed that the now of the Florentineservant-girl in the historia by Ghirlandaio was affected by the then of the Nymphcopied from Roman sarcophagi (Warburg, 1998[1893]: 1736).The air also sends a quiver through bodies. The servant-girl draped in a statuesrobe only divulges her appearance by virtue of the transitory energy of anapparition. Her state is nothing but a flux in the picture she bursts into. It is as if thewind that carries her, causing her dress to swirl, was a required accessory for hercorporeality a corporeality which is drastically altered and intensified inGhirlandaios fresco. Yet, with this intensification, the air in motion imparts pathosto the body of the servant, whose face is so closed and impassive, as in Botticelli.

Didi-Huberman The imaginary breeze 277


The air, then, also sends a quiver through souls, and its invisible atmosphericdisplacement an outward cause serves as a fluid index for the displacement ofaffects, for inward causes. Even before seeking any confirmation in the writtensources, this can be ascertained simply by looking at the right-hand side ofPrimavera: the Nymph Chloris is held by the wind (Zephyr incarnate) by virtue ofbeing moved by him (for she is still fleeing him) and, at the same time, by beingaffectively moved by him (for she is already producing flowers, the fruit of theirsexual union, from her mouth). As Andr Chastel (1978: 393405) has successfully shown through his reading ofMarsilio Ficino and of Vasari, the notion of aria was frequently called upon in theRenaissance to define what Vasari termed a cosa mirabile e occulta di natura: thequality of a place that is enigmatically effective on the dispositions of the soul,through the agency of a subtle affection of bodies. Along with this contextualisttheory of the affects, Renaissance men adopted an entire psychology of the air inorder to justify (among other things) certain mysteries of the psychology of art,such as when Vasari tried to explain why, paradoxically, the Roman air was bettersuited to Michelangelos Florentine genius (pp. 393405). The theoreticalunderpinnings of this mysterious form of aerial determinism, of course, remain tobe worked out.4

In the visual arts specifically, it is easy to see that the motion of the air is integral tothe figurative concerns of both painters and sculptors of the Quattrocento.Concerning the intellectual training of the artist, Lorenzo Ghiberti (1998[c. 1447]: I,2, 8: 48) wanted to place knowledge of atmospheric and celestial things (climata,astrologia) at the same level as knowledge of corporeal and medical objects(notomia, medicina). Further on, in his Commentarii, Ghiberti discusses the modelof ancient works of art from the perspective of air sculpted into draperies (in theymagini togate anticamente), of air painted by Apelles as almost living breaths(gente paiono che spirino) or in the form of a variety of atmospheric phenomena (I,6, 9; I, 8, 10; I, 8, 15: 56, 72, 75).Ghiberti, therefore, clearly suggests that air in motion should, by all accounts, beincluded in the figurative concerns of modern art. In this spirit, he mentionsAmbrogio Lorenzettis frescos at Siena (now lost), which show hail falling hard ...wind blowing furiously, trees bowing down to the ground and some of thembreaking (con venti meravigliosi... piegare gli alberi insino in terra e qualespezzarsi); before mentioning his own reliefs for the northern door of the Baptistryin Florence, which show, among other things, the people [of Moses] at the foot ofthe mountain, stricken with horror by the earthquakes, lightning and claps ofthunder (2000[c. 1447]: II, 4; II, 8: 878, 96).

*

In none of these examples is air that natural element which we breathe without evenbeing aware of it. It is a supernatural substance, stirred by the effect of someextraordinary event. In Giotto, the wings of the devils put to flight by Saint Francismake a tumult in the blueness of the sky, while the angels wings make the entirespace above the dead Christ tremble.5 In the Scrovegni chapel, an aerodynamicangel traverses the Dream of Joachim, the angels lower body nothing but a trail of



air; while the Baptism of Christ takes place under a tremendous breath (spiritus) ofdivine grace. In countless Crucifixions from the Trecento to Raphael and beyond,the air is saturated with the vibrations of wings or draperies agitated by angels orseraphim. Wherever there are supernatural struggles, the entire atmosphere is astirand tormented, such as in Ucellos Saint George, in deluges, or agonistic visions.

Warburg spoke all the more legitimately of an imaginary breeze, for in Primaverathe supernatural power of Zephyrs breath went hand in hand with a personifiedrepresentation of the wind. The air, then, also appears as an allegorical fluid. Itrecuperates an entire tradition, which stretches back to Antiquity and remainsuninterrupted in the Middle Ages (see Raff, 19789: 71218). Mercury himself, onthe left in Primavera, has close affinities with the wind; he is the god of prodigiousspeeds through the atmosphere, the god who cleaves the air (see Roscher, 1878).Several years before Botticellis painted Zephyrs in the Birth of Venus and inPrimavera, Liberale da Verona had designed the illuminated initials for Sienneseliturgical books in the turbulent form of a representation of the North Wind (DelBravo, 1967: 20, xxxviii; Gilbert, 1981: 21721; Eberhardt, 1983: 6676).At the same time, a number of images included puffs, breaths or blasts of air asallegorical elements in their own right. From the Leonello dEstes medal, with itssail swelling in the wind, to the Leon Battista Albertis occhio alato, from the Talesof Fortune Pinturicchio of Siena to various Allegories of the Passion, artistsdeveloped an entire use value for air in the domain of allegory. Its pedigree hadalready been established in the Trecento, with Giottos famous grisailles at Padua with Hope and especially with Inconstancy, who spins in the wind like aweathervane and with the Allegories of the Liberal Arts by Andrea da Firenze atSanta Maria Novella. In the 1450s, Agostino di Duccio set out to cover the TempioMalatestiano in Rimini with his extraordinary, vibrant reliefs in which everything winds and water, hair and draperies, nature and allegory tends toward a strangelystylized fluidity. His Euterpe, the Muse of feasts and dithyrambs, already seems towear windswept drapery with an extreme degree of mannerism, although she isstill reminiscent of a (somewhat enlarged) medieval ivory (Warburg, 1998[1893]:12; Pointner, 1909: 25111; Campigli, 1999: 2744).To the contemporary eye, the most striking feature of most of these imaginarybreezes or winds is their spatial incoherence. Paolo Uccello may well havedesigned his Deluge with rigorous unity of perspective, yet he did not hesitate todivide his wind in two, so that the trees on the left are almost uprooted by the stormwhile Noahs draperies on the right do not quiver in the least. The cloud in SaintGeorge is as theatrical as the dragons cave (see Francastel, 1967; Damisch, 1992:1006). In the Karlsruhe Adoration, the wind filling the boats sails seems not toreach the rather sculptural, almost metallic palm-tree in the foreground. Elsewhere,supernatural breaths of wind leave natural things unfazed, as witnessed by the treesthat remain impassive despite the unfurling of angelic wings in Benozzo Gozzoli, orin Botticelli.6

In Primavera, Floras step raises a breeze that is immediately refuted by the steps ofChloris beside her. As for Ghirlandaios Ninfa fiorentina, much admired by Warburg,the wind that almost carries the nymph is conspicuously one that she brings along,as if for herself alone. What does this imply, if not that air only constitutes a means



of figuration to the extent that it is a local fluid? It is a particular movement or atrembling, a particular disturbance of surfaces, a symptom, an index of strangenessthat affects a single body and, by the same token, signals itself as a spiritus, a bearerof thoughts and the movements of the affects. If Renaissance painting continues todivide the air (there will never be a breeze in Giorgiones Tempest), it is notbecause it is archaic or partial and incoherent in its representation of atmosphericphenomena, as some art historians have affirmed (Rostworowski, 1973: 1330). Itis because, for Renaissance man, the aria follows so closely upon bodilymovements that she air being feminine to the Italian ear becomes the subtlesymptom, almost invisible in her fluidity, of the movements of the anima.

*

The De pictura clearly suggests this dialectic. In the same way that, for Alberti,movements of the body make visible movements of the soul (motus animi exmotibus corporis cognoscuntur), the movements of surfaces, and primarily of thelight, flowing surfaces of draperies, make visible the movements of the air (Alberti,1435: II, 41). Yet, a genuine dialectic is involved here; that is, a dance in the roundlike that of the Three Graces in Primavera (see Figure 1): just as the perturbationsof the soul (animi perturbationes) find expression in bodily gestures, those gestureshave to be accompanied, prolonged and adorned by perturbations of surfaces, thesurfaces of draperies and hair moved by the wind:

Finally, each persons bodily movements, in keeping with dignity, should berelated to the emotions you wish to express. And the greatest emotions mustbe expressed by the most powerful physical indications (maximarum animiperturbationum maximae in membris significationes adsint necesse est). Thisrule concerning movements is common to all living creatures (in omnianimante) ... Now I must speak of the way in which inanimate things move,since I believe all the movements I mentioned are necessary in painting alsoin relation to them. The movements of hair and manes and branches andleaves and clothing are very pleasing when represented in painting (etcapillorum et iubarum et ramorum et frondium et vestium motus in picturaexpressi delectant) ... in the folds of garments care should be taken that, justas the branches of a tree emanate in all directions from the trunk, so foldsshould issue from a fold (sic ex plica succedant plicae), like branches. Inthese too all the movements (omnes motus) should be done in such a way thatin no garment is there any part in which similar movements are not to befound. Since by nature clothes are heavy and do not make curves at all, asthey tend always to fall straight down to the ground it will be a good idea,when we wish clothing to have movement (pannos motibus aptos esse) tohave in the corner of the picture (ad historiae angulum), the face of the Westor South Wind blowing between the clouds and moving all the clothing beforeit. The pleasing result will be that those sides of the bodies the wind strikeswill appear under the covering of the clothes almost as if they were naked,since the clothes are made to adhere to the body by the force of the wind (subpanni velamento prope nuda appareant); on the other sides the clothingblown about by the wind will wave appropriately up in the air. (II, 445;Grayson, 1975: 801)



Here, in the space of a few lines, Alberti traces the full circle of our dialecticalsequence: movements of the soul, movements of the body, movements of surfacesand movements of air have, indeed, become indissociable by the time he concludeshis reasoning. In fact, Alberti here defines nothing less than the field of animationproper to painting. The principal flaw of painting namely, that it is an inanimatesurface that merely bears a semblance to animate things becomes prodigious onceall of the movements in a painting function with the same level of effectiveness.Whether they are mechanical or organic, subsidiary or essential, local disturbancesor disturbances globally propagated throughout the picture, they all conspire toanimate the image. When this occurs, iconographic hierarchies become relativised:in painting, it is always possible that a piece of fabric in motion will be morelively than the movement of a head. Furthermore, throughout other passages of theDe pictura, Alberti put forward a quasi-animistic theory of painted objects (II, 25).Everything in a painting is dead, nothing really moves; yet, everything is invokedthere under the quasi-magical aspect of things and beings that move in order toform a historia and to move (movere) the viewer in turn.Alberti insists, then, that this power of animation should incorporate the field ofaccessories in motion: hair, manes (think, once again, of Donatellos SaintGeorge), branches, foliage, or draperies. It is fascinating to observe the extent towhich Alberti enters into the fractal intimacy of these surfaces in motion, to whichhe assigns a common morphology. Multiple folds emanate from a single fold likeleaves grow from the twig, the twigs from the branch and the branches from thetrunk; but, in addition, each local fold reproduces the global structure, each detail ofthe movement contains the totality of possible movements.

Such reflection approaches a form of Naturphilosophie or a dynamics of fluids.Except from the outset, Alberti re-affirms the fictional nature of all these gracefulsurface movements, of which Primavera provides such an impressive inventory.Even during the Quattrocento, a woman in a dressing gown would not produce theanimation of fabric that Botticellis Three Graces produce: only the painter candefy gravity and intensify the natural configurations of movement, whether or nothe justifies this by Zephyr blowing out of the corner of the painting as amythological detour. This brings us to the issue of the power of air over visiblethings. This is why Albertis text concludes on the subject of fabrics plastered to thelimbs by the wind: the wind reveals nudity, motion and the intimacy of bodies. Itmoves surfaces and fabrics only in order to make visible as if by contact a set ofgestures invisibly ordered by the movements of the soul. In the painting, then, aria,spiritus, and anima are derived from the same imaginary breeze.

Warburg, of course, cited the Alberti passage in his 1893 thesis; it played a crucialrole in illuminating the concept of accessories in motion (Warburg, 1998[1893]:1011). The passage is discussed from the point of view of a dialectical tensionbetween two terms: the anthropomorphic imagination (anthropomorphistischePhantasie), from which both animism and empathy proceed, and differentialreflection (vergleichende Reflexion):

This rule of Albertis shows both imagination and reflection in equalproportions. On the one hand, he is glad to see hair and garments in marked




Figure 2 Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 14845 (detail: Zephyr, Flora and Spring), temperamagra on canvas. Florence, Uffizi Gallery. 1990 Photo SCALA, Florence courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali. These images,protected by copyright and by watermark, are for reference purposes only. The downloading,reproduction, copy, publication or distribution of any of the images appearing on this website areforbidden by law.







movement, and he gives rein to his fancy, attributing organic life to inanimateaccessory forms; at such moments he sees snakes tangling, flames licking, orthe branches of a tree. On the other hand, however, Alberti expressly insiststhat he set his accessory forms in motion only where the wind really mighthave caused such motion. This cannot be done, however, without oneconcession to the imagination: the youthful human heads that the painter is toshow blowing in order to account for the motion of hair and garments, are nomore and no less than a compromise between anthropomorphic imaginationand differential reflection (vergleichende Reflexion). (pp. 1112)

Can the historical context, and the sources of this emphasis on hair and draperiesblowing in the wind, be situated with more precision? After Warburg, some authorshave linked this aspect of Albertis aesthetics to Botticellis mythological paintings.The connection is facilitated by the fact that the De pictura conjures up a clearimage of the Three Graces represented in antiquity as laughing and holding hands,adorned with loose and transparent clothes (soluta et perlucida veste ornatas)(Alberti, 1435: III, 54; see Michel, 1930: 4389; Rosand, 1987: 15663).When Alberti (1435) calls for hair ... to tie itself in a knot (vertantur), to waveupwards in the air (undent in aera) like flames, to weave like serpents (serpant)beneath other hair and sometimes lift on one side and another (attollant) on eachside (II, 45: 81), he is alluding to a typology of the seven movements (septimusmovendi modus) presented some lines further up, and recognizable as directlyborrowed from Quintilians Institutio oratoria (II, 43; XI, 3).7 However,commentators are silent when it comes to the supposed direct source of Albertisinjunction to make hair and drapery float in the wind.8 This is probably because theinjunction was issued in response to several determinants. The three major conceptsenumerated in Warburgs Vorbemerkung in 1893 the survival of antiquity, thepathos formulae and empathy respond rigorously to those determinants.For painting to affirm its humanistic vocation and its ability to compose figuresallantica, draperies and hair had first to undulate in the air (undent in aera).9Next, this figurative tool had to demonstrate its pathetic force, its ability toillustrate the historia with greater clarity and to improve its composition.10 Theillustrious examples that Alberti calls upon in this respect Giottos Navicella, theCalumny by Apelles bring into play the physical force of the wind, the patheticmovements of bodies, and the moral values of these things, visible in the variousprotagonists of these paintings (Alberti, 1435: II, 42; III, 534).11 Finally, all thisanimation of the figures had to produce effects on, and affects in, the eye: it had tomove the viewer. This effect is termed movere in ancient rhetoric and in theinterpretation of that tradition at the time of Alberti; it is called Einfhlung in thenew aesthetics of Aby Warburgs time.12

The story will touch the souls of the viewers (animos ... spectantium movebithistoria) when the men painted display very visibly the movements of their soul,so that the man or woman weeping in the painting will be able to invite (invitet)the viewer to weep with him (Alberti, 1435: II, 412). This famous injunction byAlberti once again borrows a known principle from classical eloquence, accordingto which the very clarity (evidentia) of an argument is conveyed through the



channels of pathos and affect (adfectus), of imagination (phantasia) andamplification: such is the task Quintilian sets for what he calls ornament (ornatus)(VI, 2; VIII, 34). This is how eloquence though an artificial thing, like a painting revolves around the activities of life (opera vitae), [for] each person relates tohimself (ad se refert) what he understands, what he recognises (VIII, 3).The air stirred by the draperies of the Three Graces, then, should give birth to aform of moral yearning, an aspiration to dispense grace for each grace dispensed,as the ancient precept taken up by Alberti says (Alberti, 1435: III, 54).13 But itshould also give birth more rhythmically, more organically to a desire to dance.It is as if the air stirring those beautiful surfaces, with their white trails and theharmonics of their borders that envelop and intensify the bodies of the Graces, wassomething like an ornament of the soul.

*

This should hardly come as a surprise: it is precisely in this way that the men of the Quattrocento explained the essentially figurative nature of dance, with the result that the respective vocabularies of painting and choreography not onlymatched, but were even interpreted reciprocally. On this point, Warburg wished todevelop an intuition of Burckhardts. That intuition concerned the exchange andempathetic interpenetration of movements represented in sculpture and painting, onone hand, and the elements of a life genuinely infused with motion (wirklichbewegten Lebens) in feasts, theatre and dance, on the other. Warburg considered that the latter was an invaluable material when it came to understanding theprocess of artistic creation (der knstlerisch gestaltende Proze) (Warburg,1998[1893]: 37).There is no divorce between dance and painting or sculpture, wrote Lucian inantiquity: Quite the contrary, it also seeks to achieve the eurhythmia thatcharacterises those arts (Lucian, De Saltat: 35; quoted by Reinach, 1985[1921]:359). This constitutive affinity of the visual and gestural arts under the aspect offiguration, which pertains to semiotics, and under the aspect of rhythm, whichpertains to dynamics was taken quite literally by the Florentine humanists. This iswhy the vocabulary of motion in Pollaiuolo (prompto) or of grace in Filippo Lippi(gratioso) is, as Michael Baxandall has shown, directly borrowed from treatises ondance (Baxandall, 1972: 1206, 195212, 2234). In every context, bodily move-ments along with the accessories that invariably attached to them, were perceivedas the indexes of a soul. As such, they were liable to encompass an entire scale ofstates ranging from decency to obscenity, from parody to the grotesque. Finally,they were perceived as the index of a style, or of a certain technique of composition.

The virtue of dance comes from the fact that it is an action which makesspiritual movements visible (una azione dimostrativa di fuori di movimentispirituali) ... certain graceful movements are there engendered which, beingconfined as if against their nature, strive as hard as they can to escape andmake themselves manifest in the form of active movements (uscire fuori efarsi in atto manifesti) (Ebreo, 1873[c. 1465]): 7).

This very general notion perfectly matches Albertis theory of the figuration of



gestures in painting. It covers a very broad field that ranges from the moralevaluation of a manner of walking in the street (look at that girl walk and you willknow whether you can marry her)14 to the stylistic codifications of representation.In this respect, Ninfa appears as the very embodiment of ambivalence: her wingedgait gracefully amplifies the step of an onesta, humble young girl, and this is whyshe is found in religious contexts, in Lippi or Ghirlandaio, for example. But her gaitis also already a dance, already too ornate, too ancient, pagan and sensual: it isSalomes dance, the disonesta young princess par excellence. The same decorum what we called the ornament of the soul further up is susceptible to so manydifferent values that, not surprisingly, it becomes a matter of endless nuance andsubtlety. (On this subject, see McGrath, 1977: 8192 [on decency and thegrotesque, grace and madness]; Franko, 1986; Padovan, 1987: 59111; Fermor,1992: 7888.)The most important of these subtleties or choreographic artifices consists inenhancing the natural gesture, in the spatial sense as well as in the dialectical sense.When Ninfa moves forward, her step is enhanced in that it is amplified andintensified; its nature undergoes a complete change as it turns into a whirlwind ofreturning time: the Nymph or Victory does not so much walk as leap forward.As such, her step disrupts and choreographs the trivial present of the Florentineservant-girl, who no longer merely brings fruit to her mistress from the country butherself becomes something of an offering from the gods of antiquity. This is allmade physically perceptible in the ascent of her foot in motion and of her draperyraised by the wind. Alberti (1435) is quite clear on this point:

beauty and grace should be sought in all motion (in omni motu venustas etgratia sectanda est). The most lively and graceful (vivaces et gratissimi)movements are those of the limbs rising in the air (aera in altum) (II, 37).

Is it surprising, then, that the aria or aere became one of the key concepts oftreatises on dance, and of aesthetic writings generally, in the Quattrocento? InAlberti, the Italian word ariosa translates the Latin grata, so that all grace is seen toparticipate in a certain quality of the air, whether this word is taken to refer to anappearance or to the atmosphere (II, 44; Grayson, 1975[1435]: 789). WithGuglielmo Ebreo and Antonio Cornazano, aere specifically designates a moment ofgrace in the gestures of dance: the brief rising movement executed by the dancer atthe beginning of a step. This movement confers an airy presence (aierosapresenza) and another grace that makes these movements pleasurable to the eye(unaltra gratia tal di movimenti che rendati piacera a gli occhi) (cited andcommented by Fermor, 1990).This vocabulary, which has been analysed in detail by Sharon Fermor, is as preciseas it is fascinating: it describes the grace (gratia) and suavity (soavit) that is,the serene fluidity of all corporeal composition, if this expression may be usedto describe choreographic movement (Fermor, 1990: 12035). In the Quattrocento,this vocabulary anticipates all that the following century was to designate asmanner (maniera) (see Treves, 1941: 6988; Shearman, 1970: 181221;Summers, 1972; Hazard, 1974). Above all, it defines a framework of intelligibilitycharacterized by an impressive degree of dialectical subtlety. The aere is defined,



first of all, as an intensification of presence that authors like to describe as veryhuman (umanissima). Secondly, it is considered in the light of an intensification ofform. This gives rise to an entire vocabulary of undulation (ondeggiare); as ifbodies, in their airy motions, were capable of assuming the images of waves, blastsof air, or draperies lifted by a breeze.

In 1455, Antonio Cornazano (1915[1455]) insistently claimed that the ondeggiare isa rhythmic quality that goes well beyond mere conformity of steps to music. Heheld that it concerns the totality of the form created by upward motion, producingundulation, ornamentation and the flowing of the dancer and the space as a whole.15Dancing is not merely a matter of executing a number of more or less beautifulmovements, it involves the bodys recreation of a certain air, which the accessory ofdrapery serves to emphasize; and, along with all of this, the recreation of a certainsoul, which must be signified by the gestures.

Let us look, once again, at our Botticellian Grace. Through a movement ofondeggiare, the dancer of the Quattrocento ornaments the air and reciprocallygrants visible fluidity to the anima or fantasia seeking outward expression. Formand intensity combine in these graceful movements and subtle elevations of theaere. We can now understand why this corporeal velocity (prestezza corporale), asDomenico da Piacenza put it, falls under the category of phantoms (fantasmata)such as it was defined by Italian choreographers: in the suspense of immobility andmotion, the dancer must suddenly become a phantasmal shadow (ombra phantas-matica) (Fermor, 1990: 467; see also Castelli, 1987: 3557.) She then escapesgravity and the earthly condition; she becomes a semblance of the ancient gods, anairy creature of dreams and after-life, a revenant: an embodiment of Nachleben.

Translated by John Zeimbekis, translation revised by Vivian Rehberg

Notes

1. Warburg (1889) was recently published with a commentary by Ghelardi (2001[18889]).2. The authoritative edition of Warburg (1893) is edited by Bing and Rougemont, see

Warburg (1998[1893]).3. The verses from Rossetti are as follows: What mystery here is read / Of homage or of

hope? But how command / Dead Springs to answer? And how question here / Thesemummers of that wind-withered New Year? I have not been able to find the expressionbrise imaginaire in either Taine or Eugne Mntz.

4. The elements of a psycho-physiology of the air in the Renaissance are to be found inThorndike (1934: III, 2457, 3278, 514, 528, 5568, etc; IV, 58, 137, 293, 318, 380,505, etc.)

5. In the frescos of Assisi and Padua. 6. The former in the Medici-Riccardi Palace (Florence, 1459), the latter in the Mystical

Nativity (1501) in London.7. On the rhetorical and poetical aspects of the De pictura, see Gilbert, 19435: 87106;

Spencer, 1957: 2644; Baxandall, 1971: 12139; Wright, 1984: 5271.. 8. In the edition by H. Janitschek, which was used by Warburg (Alberti, 1877), as well as

in the more recent edition by Grayson (1975), paragraphs 44 and 45 of Book II are notannotated.

9. On Alberti and the Antique, see Grayson (1998: 3141); Locher (1999: 75107); Michel(2000: 37987).



10. On Albertis concept of historia, see Galantic (1969: 2366); Patz (1986: 26987);Greenstein (1990: 27399); Hope (2001: 25167).

11. On Giottos Navicella, see Khren-Jansen (1993). On the Calumny of Apelles see Cast(1981) and Massing (1990).

12. On the concept of movere in Alberti, see Cameron (19756: 258); Zllner (1977:2339).

13. The reference is obviously to Seneca, De beneficiis, IIII, 24.14. This is the essence of a letter sent by a Florentine lady to her son in 1465; see Macinghi

negli Strozzi, 1877: 4589.15. Anchora nel danzare non solamente sobserva la misura de gli suoni, ma une misura la

quale non musicale, anzi fore di tutte quelle, che un misurare laere nel levamentodellondeggiare, cio che sempre salzi a un modo; ch altrimenti si romperia misura.Londeggiare non altro che uno alzamento tardo di tutta la persona e labbassamentopresto. (Cornazano, 1915[1455]: 13).

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Georges Didi-Huberman teaches anthropology of images at the Ecole desHautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His latest publications include:Limage survivante: histoire de lart et temps des fantmes selon Aby Warburg(Editions de Minuit, 2002), Ninfa Moderna: Essai sur le drap tomb (Gallimard:2002) and Devant le temps: histoire de lart et anachronisme des images (Editionsde Minuit, 2000).



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