On Alberti's "sign": vision and composition in quattrocento painting - Leon Battista Alberti's commentary 'On Painting'

Such speculation increases without explaining the paradox of these works. Mantegna's Madonnas share a religious identity but differ in individual character. Christian viewers immediately recognize Mary from her attributes by prior cognition. And those few viewers familiar with the model, if Mantegna did indeed use one, would also recognize her immediately by prior cognition. Mantegna's achievement in these works, however, lies not in making the figures recognizable but in presenting what they are like.

Medieval and Renaissance thinkers discuss this likeness in terms of substantial nature. As Leonardo da Vinci puts it, "likeness is the substance of things."(161) According to optical theory, the mind obtains a knowledge of substance not by prior cognition of the object but by intuition of its visual form and recognition of its properties. In post-Albertian Renaissance art theory, the three-dimensional form that makes a person or object recognizable is termed "proportioned quantity" and is associated with disegno, or design. As Gian-Paolo Lomazzo argues, the resemblance secured through proportioned quantity is that of equality.(162) Likeness, however, demands a higher degree of resemblance; secured through qualifies, not quantity, it pertains to individuality, not merely to identity. The recognition of three-dimensional form engages the viewers' estimative powers, but the perception of substantial likeness requires greater discrimination and engages the viewers' sense of their own human nature.

In discussing the composition of bodies to form the historia, Alberti recommends that "those things should be painted most prominently which leave more for souls insofar as they think [excogitent] things than for eyes in so far as they intuit [intuentur]" (II.42).(163) This paper argues that by treating the surfaces as the prime elements of recognition, Renaissance artists presented most prominently those visual qualifies that appeal more strongly to the human capacity for discriminating substantial nature than to the capacity for apprehension or for discriminating material value. The artist selected and arranged these visual qualities through the cognitive process of composition, by which the intellect fashions and judges the signs for identity of real things. The particular form of naturalism that distinguishes Renaissance art is the result of this subordination of recognition to discrimination.

Research for this paper was begun in 1992-93 at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where I benefited from discussions with Nicole Beriou, Glen Bowerstock, Giles Constable, Oleg Grabar, Thomas Head, Irving and Marilyn Lavin, and Philip Sohm. Its central thesis was presented in a brief lecture at Northwestern University in December 1994, and a draft was written at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. The argument was much improved by the insightful comments of Luce Giard, who read a draft of the manuscript, and of David Summers, who served as a referee for the Art Bulletin. I am especially grateful to Nancy Troy, the previous editor-in-chief, and to John Paoletti, the current editor-in-chief, for their encouragement and suggestions.