1 Gadamer, Renaissance Humanism, and Representation in Painting Gadamer is not often thought of as primarily a philosopher of painting.1 Like many German aesthetic thinkers, his philosophy of art seems oriented more toward poetry, as indicated by the title of the first volume of his collected works dedicated to aesthetics, Kunst als Aussage (Art as Statement). But Gadamer did devote attention to the visual arts, including an important chapter in Truth and Method called “The Ontological Valence of the Picture [Bild].” This chapter contains a reference to Leon Battista Alberti, the most influential theorist of painting from the Italian Renaissance, who developed a mathematically rigorous account of perspective in his treatise Della Pittura (On Painting, 1435). At the beginning of Truth and Method, Gadamer grounds his defense of the intellectual and cognitive value of the arts and human sciences in what he calls the “guiding concepts” (Leitbegriffe) of humanism – Bildung, sensus communis, judgment, and taste. The later reference to Alberti is notable because he counts as one of the very few thinkers from the Renaissance humanist tradition whom Gadamer explicitly appeals to. Yet his very brief discussion of Alberti is ambivalent at best, and certainly not a positive appropriation. Why does Gadamer’s appeal to humanism not extend to one of that tradition’s most prominent exemplars? My task today is to understand Gadamer’s reference to Alberti in the context of Gadamer’s positive account of the picture and his relationship to humanism. First I will reconstruct Gadamer’s critique of Alberti and contrast it with Gadamer’s theory of the picture, and then I will indicate where I think Gadamer unfairly ignores important elements of Alberti’s theory of painting. I will then argue that what is ultimately at stake in Gadamer’s critical discussion of Alberti is Gadamer’s (1) anti-relativism and (2) downgrading of the importance of the artistic medium in evaluating the truth-claim of an artwork. These are

                                                                                                                          1

Martin Jay’s claim is representative here: “Hermeneutic thinkers from Schleiermacher and Wilhlem Dilthey to Gadamer have trusted more in the word than the image” (Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in TwentiethCentury French Thought, 265).

2 important themes for understanding what Gadamer’s philosophy of art is fundamentally committed to. §1. Gadamer’s critique of Alberti In the chapter from Truth and Method on the picture, Gadamer announces that his intention is to challenge a distinctively modern understanding: “The concept of the picture prevalent in recent centuries cannot automatically be taken as a starting point. Our present investigation seeks to rid itself of that assumption.”2 In a discussion indebted to Heidegger’s “The Age of the World Picture,” Gadamer identifies this modern conception of the picture with the framed painting in an art gallery: “Thus we make every work of art, as it were, into a picture. By detaching all art from its connections with life and the particular conditions of our approach to it, we frame it like a picture and hang it up.”3 Such a picture is framed in the double sense of not only having a literal, physical enclosure, which may have been added to it by subsequent art restoration teams, but also of being meaningfully cut off from the rest of its life and context as an artwork. For modernity, a picture is independent and closed, separated from the culture that produced it and which it might itself exemplify, fit only to be hung on the wall for a detached observer to examine and aesthetically appreciate. A framed picture exists in a sterile environment in the museum or gallery, tagged with the appropriate title, date, biographical information about the artist, and an historically sensitive description written by a professional curator. Such a mode of existence is quite different from the context in which, say, an early Renaissance painting of the Madonna by Giotto once lived: “Such a picture, we know very well, has lost its place-in-life [Sitz im Leben] in a church or palace or wherever it was once at home.”4 According to Gadamer, the picture in this particularly modern sense includes a problematic conception of the sovereignty                                                                                                                           2

Truth and Method, 132. Gesammelte Werke 1, Hermeneutik I, 141; abbreviated as GW1. Ibid, 131; GW1, 140. 4 “The Artwork in Word and Image: ‘So True, So Full of Being!,’” 200. Gesammelte Werke 8: Ästhetik und Poetik I, 378; abbreviated as GW8. 3

3 of an artwork – that is, its separation from the rest of culture and from its context as something that exemplifies a culture’s sense of meaning and significance. Instead, the sovereign picture exists in a vacuum, isolated from any other context. It is in the context of this discussion that Gadamer refers to Alberti in the following passage: There is certainly no historical truth in this use of the concept of the picture. Contemporary research into the history of art gives us ample evidence that what we call a “picture” has a varied history. The full “sovereignty of a picture” [Bildhoheit] (Theodor Hetzer) was not reached until the stage of Western painting that we call the high Renaissance. Here for the first time we have pictures that stand entirely by themselves and, even without a frame and a setting, are in themselves unified and closed structures [einheitliches und geschlossenes Gebilde]. For example, in the concinnitas that L.B. Alberti requires of a “picture,” we can see a good theoretical expression of the new artistic ideal that governs Renaissance painting.5 Gadamer identifies Alberti here as the first articulation of the problematic modern understanding of the picture I just referred to and which I called, following Gadamer in this passage, a problematic form of sovereignty. In what sense can Alberti, in particular, be said to exemplify this conception of the picture? To answer this question, and shed light on Gadamer’s allusion, I turn now to Alberti’s On Painting. There he claims that the mythological figure Narcissus is the founder of painting: “I used to tell my friends that the inventor of painting…was Narcissus, who was turned into a flower; for, as painting is the flower of all the arts, so the tale of Narcissus fits our purpose                                                                                                                           5

Truth and Method, 131; GW1, 140.

4 perfectly. What is painting but the act of embracing by means of art the surface of the pool?”6 Alberti emphasizes the inextricable connection between painting and surfaces.7 What is the significance of this claim? He says of painters that “their sole object is the representation on this one surface of many different forms of surfaces, just as though this surface which they color were…transparent and like glass.”8 In other words, painting aims to be an accurate representation of nature, as if the painting were a transparent piece of glass. The surface that painting embraces is one that acts like a mirror. Painting serves a representational function. Gadamer claimed that pictures in Alberti’s mode “stand entirely by themselves.” This is because Alberti expressed the idea that paintings are accurate and autonomous representations, scenes or images that are internally coherent and fully realized toward the purpose of representing nature. Here is where Alberti is so revolutionary in the history of art and aesthetics. He saw that “accuracy” and “coherence” are perspectival concepts. A painting is an accurate and coherent representation only from the human point of view: “The function of the painter is to draw with lines and paint in colors on a surface any given bodies in such a way that, at a fixed distance and with a certain, determined position of the centric ray, what you see represented appears to be in relief and just like those bodies.”9 The mathematical theory of perspective that Alberti develops is meant to undergird a practice that crafts representations that appear realistic from the point of view of the human eye and physiology. Painting is like a glass mirror, but one that represents things not as they are apart from human observers but precisely as they appear to a human subject.10 This is what Gadamer meant when he called Alberti’s pictures “unified and closed structures”: They possess an internal logic of representation such that they appear fully                                                                                                                           6

On Painting, 61. This point has been emphasized by the art historian Hubert Damisch in his study of Alberti’s invocation of Narcissus, “The Inventor of Painting,” 306-307. 8 On Painting, 48. 9 Ibid, 87. 10 Karsten Harries makes a similar point in this regard (Infinity and Perspective, 66). 7

5 coherent and consistent from the human subject’s point of view, which makes them complete images that stand on their own. Perspective constructs a unitary viewpoint on a scene that is meant to appear as an image would to the human eye. This may be what Gadamer intended to convey with his reference to Alberti’s later concept of concinnitas, a kind of internal harmony he develops in his philosophy of architecture.11 Alberti sets the stage for the problematic form of sovereignty Gadamer imputes to the modern understanding of pictures in general. If a picture is a perspectivally accurate representation that can stand on its own, then the logical conclusion of such a conception is the gallery painting hanging on the wall that requires no other connection to the outside world than the detached human observer who appreciates it. In Truth and Method, Gadamer makes one further comment about Alberti: …what the theoretician of the “picture” presents here are the classical definitions of the beautiful. That the beautiful is such that nothing can be taken from it and nothing added without destroying it was familiar to Aristotle, for whom there was certainly no such thing as a picture in Alberti’s sense. This shows that the concept of the “picture” still has a general sense and that it cannot be limited simply to a particular phase of the history of painting.12 Here Gadamer emphasizes that Alberti’s account is not sui generis or solely modern. There is continuity between the idea of a self-standing representation and the classical ideal of beauty. (This is not surprising, given the rootedness of Renaissance humanism in classical thought, especially Aristotle.) While Gadamer is critical of aspects of Alberti’s understanding of the                                                                                                                           11

Gadamer’s reference to concinnitas in the context of a discussion of Alberti on the picture is surprising. The passage from Truth and Method about Alberti contains, uncharacteristically, no scholarly reference. Concinnitas is not a concept employed in On Painting, where Alberti develops his theory of perspective and which Gadamer must have in mind, but is rather featured in his later treatise on architecture, De Re Aedifactoria (1485). See Carroll W. Westfall, “Society, Beauty, and the Humanistic Architect in Alberti’s de re aedifactoria,” 66-68. 12 Truth and Method, 131; GW1, 140-141.

6 picture, his attitude towards Alberti can best be described as one of ambivalence; Alberti is merely one, in some ways problematic, stage in the history of painting. Gadamer announces here that he will formulate a non-modern understanding of the picture, which I will soon discuss. But there is one other crucial feature of Gadamer’s attitude towards Alberti that we must examine first. The device by which a painting becomes a humanly accurate representation is perspective, the mathematized theory and philosophical rationale for which Alberti develops and which is often taken (including here by Gadamer) as the distinctive innovation of Renaissance art. Gadamer expresses some criticisms of perspective in general that are worth exploring and which may be motivating his attitude towards Alberti in particular. Gadamer says of perspective that it “certainly is not the final consummation [Vollendung] of pictorial art as such.”13 Why is perspective not an unambiguous triumph for the visual arts? Because it values the subject’s position in relation to the artwork at the expense of letting the work speak for itself. Gadamer asks us to imagine trying to find the right angle at which to look at a painting or a sculpture, and appeals to the experience of circling around an artwork at a museum or gallery to find that optimal vantage point for viewing. He writes of such an experience: Who dictates the right distance [Abstand]? Does one have to choose one’s own standpoint and firmly hold to it? No, one must seek out the point from which “it” best comes forth [von dem aus ‘es’ am besten herauskommt]. This point is not one’s own standpoint. One makes oneself a laughingstock if in front of an artwork one says what one otherwise could say, that one is not standing at one’s own standpoint. There is no

                                                                                                                          13

“Word and Image,” 198; GW8, 375.

7 such distance. If an artwork exercises its fascination, everything that has to do with one’s own meaning and one’s own opining seems to disappear.14 For the theory of perspective, the “right distance” is certainly dictated by the limitations and needs of the human eye. As Alberti puts it, “with change of position, the properties inherent in a surface appear to be altered. These matters are related to the power of vision.”15 The best vantage point at which to view an artwork is the one best suited to the human body. Perspective involves constructing a picture of reality according to the limitations of human vision. Gadamer implies that this conception is subjectivistic. On his understanding, as we will see, the work possesses its own truth that it seeks to communicate to the viewer. The vantage point at which the artwork should be viewed is thus not the one best suited to the human subject but rather the one from which the artwork itself demands to be seen. Rightness in viewing should come not from the side of the subject in this interaction, but rather from the object or artwork. §2. Gadamer’s theory of the picture What does Gadamer mean when he says “one must seek out the point from which ‘it’ best comes forth”? Here we must take stock of his understanding of the picture. The first thing to be said in this connection is that he repudiates the modern idea, recognizable in Alberti, that a picture is a mere representational copy of reality: “we are dealing here with something quite different from the relationship of original and copy [Abbild und Original].”16 Pictures are not only representational, but have a deeper function. Gadamer indicates that something else comes forth in a picture other than an accurate copy. What is this other function of the picture? “The picture is an event of being [Seinsvorgang] – in it being appears, meaningfully and visibly. The

                                                                                                                          14

Ibid, 214; GW8, 390. On Painting, 39. 16 “Word and Image,” 207; GW8, 383. 15

8 quality of being an original is thus not limited to the ‘copying’ function of the picture.”17 A helpful example – one that would be recognizable even to Alberti – that Gadamer provides is of a portrait, a picture that would seem to be aiming at representational accuracy if any does. But Gadamer insists: “Even when one is dealing with a portrait, and the person portrayed knows and finds the picture to be a likeness, it is still as if one had never seen the person before in quite this way. So much is the person it [So sehr ist er es]. One has, so to speak, been seen into [hineingesehen], and the more one looks, the more ‘it’ comes forth [herausgekommen].”18 What comes forth in a picture is a kind of rightness, a fundamental truth about the thing being portrayed or presented that is viewable for the first time only in light of the picture. A genuinely revealing portrait presents the subject of the portrait in a truly new way, but one that reveals something deeply true about its subject that one can recognize. This is what Gadamer means when he calls a picture an “event of being.” Something true is coming forth in our viewing of it: “Works of art possess an elevated rank in being [erhöhten Seinsrang], and this is seen in the fact that in encountering a work of art we have the experience of something emerging [Es kommt heraus] – and this one can call truth.”19 Such a mode of presentation or revealing in a new way of what is true is more than just creating an accurate representation. It requires bringing something forth that could not be seen in any other way. The being of the thing – something true about it that we recognize but had never quite seen that way before – appears in the picture. A representational copy in Alberti’s sense is one that is appropriate and true to our human mode of vision and experience. But on Gadamer’s analysis, pictures reveal things the human eye on its own cannot see for itself under ordinary circumstances:

                                                                                                                          17

Truth and Method, 138; GW1, 149. “Word and Image,” 216; GW8, 392. 19 Ibid, 207; GW8, 383-384. 18

9 …the divine becomes picturable [Bildhaftigkeit] only through the word and image [das Bild]. Thus the religious picture has an exemplary significance. In it we can see without any doubt that a picture is not a copy of a copied being, but is in ontological communion with what is copied. It is clear from this example that art, as a whole and in a universal sense, increases the picturability of being. Word and image are not mere imitative illustrations, but allow what they present to be for the first time fully what it is.20 The thing portrayed in a picture only achieves its full being in its portrayal. A picture is not just true to the reality it represents, but actually improves our ability to perceive or discern that reality. That was the idea behind Gadamer’s example of the portrait: I can see the subject of a portrait in an improved and deeper light thanks to the painting. In virtue of my viewing of the painting, I now perceive the subject of the portrait in the fullness of its being: It will be, for me, for the first time fully what it is. Thinking of pictures as mere representational copies actually underestimates their power. They bring a truth to light that is not merely viewable via human physiology; pictures allow what they depict to fully articulate or present themselves to us. This is how Gadamer understands pictures. How does this understanding conflict with Alberti’s view? For Gadamer, Alberti’s theory of perspective makes paintings into structures that are self-enclosed insofar as they completely fulfill their function of accurately representing nature according to the limitations of the human body; they present a scene as it would be viewed by the human eye. Gadamer called this a problematic form of sovereignty, one that ultimately cuts the picture off from its meaningful context. Such a picture will be an image that exists only in relation to the eye. We have seen how Gadamer thinks of pictures as being more than mere representational copies. Yet he, too, credits pictures with a form of sovereignty: “The                                                                                                                           20

Truth and Method, 137; GW1, 147-148.

10 image [Bild] has its own sovereignty [Hoheit]. One says this even about a wonderful still life or a landscape, because in the picture everything is just right [alles so stimmt]. This causes one to leave behind every relation to what is copied. This is its ‘sovereignty’ as a picture [Bildhoheit].”21 We can call this the right form of sovereignty (as opposed to Alberti’s problematic form). Pictures are sovereign insofar as they possess their own truth that is more than representational accuracy but is rather, as we have seen, a presentation of the being of the thing, which exists independently of human vision. This other valence of Gadamer’s positive notion of sovereignty emphasizes the fact that the picture demands to be seen in a certain way because it contains a truth that speaks for itself. On Alberti’s view, the best way to view a picture was the optimal vantage point for the human eye. Gadamer’s sovereignty accords preeminence to the truth of the picture and whatever way of viewing it requires. Thus, in light of Gadamer’s theory of the picture, we have clarified Gadamer’s critique of Alberti’s theory of perspective. §3. Alberti on sensuous imagery I now want to emphasize the limitations of Gadamer’s discussion of Alberti by bringing out aspects of Alberti’s theory of painting that actually resonate with Gadamer’s understanding of the picture. Showing these limitations will in turn reveal the deeper stakes of Gadamer’s reference to Alberti. Alberti’s treatise does not just articulate a mathematized theory of perspective but is also a text firmly within the Renaissance humanist tradition.22 This fact is significant because, as mentioned earlier, Gadamer takes humanism as his starting point in Truth and Method, and in this regard he picks out for special attention a text by Giambattista Vico called On the Study Methods of Our Time (1709).23 In that text, Vico looks back on and                                                                                                                           21

“Word and Image,” 216; GW8, 392. On this point, see Carroll W. Westfall, “Painting and the Liberal Arts: Alberti’s View.” 23 “…it is important to remember the humanistic tradition, and to ask what is to be learned from it with respect to the human sciences’ mode of knowledge. Vico’s De nostri temporis studiorum ratione makes a good starting point” (Truth and Method, 17; GW 1, 24-25). On Gadamer’s appropriation of Vico, I have learned much from Donald Phillip Verene, “Gadamer and Vico on Sensus Communis and the Tradition of Humane Knowledge.” 22

11 synthesizes the main themes of the Renaissance humanist tradition in order to marshal its insights against the growing influence in the eighteenth century of Cartesian method into all spheres of knowledge and scholarly inquiry. Vico’s arguments will help clarify Alberti’s view. Vico argues that Cartesian method, with its overwhelming emphasis on mathematical truth graspable by the intellect, is incompatible with the traditional humanist training of the faculties of common sense, practical judgment, eloquence, imagination, and memory. The reason why Cartesian method does not allow cultivation of these other faculties is that it traffics in abstract deduction, whereas these other faculties require sensuous imagery to thrive.24 The faculty of eloquence or artfully presenting a line of argument in words, of special interest to Vico who was Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Naples, is a case in point: …eloquence does not address itself to the rational part of our nature, but almost entirely to our passions. The rational part in us may be taken captive by a net woven of purely intellectual reasonings, but the passional side of our nature can never be swayed and overcome unless this is done by more sensuous and materialistic means…the soul must be enticed by corporeal images and impelled to love; for once it loves, it is easily taught to believe; once it believes and loves, the fire of passion must be infused into it so as to break its inertia and force it to will.25 The way to move the non-rational part of our nature, which is governed by sensuous passions, to believe and ultimately to act is by means of images. For Vico as a philosopher of education, this fact is significant because Cartesian method ignores images in favor of equations and deductive chains of reasoning, whereas real training in eloquence and the other sensuous faculties requires

                                                                                                                          24 25

On the Study Methods of Our Time, 13. Ibid, 38.

12 rich imagery to be effective. Thus, Vico shows the centrality of sensuous imagery to the Renaissance humanist tradition. Gadamer himself exemplifies this feature of humanism in his claim that “the divine becomes picturable only through the word and image.” Like Vico, he argues that certain forms of edification and learning are possible only through imagery. But Gadamer overlooks the way Alberti’s theory of painting also resonates with this humanistic theme. Consider the following passage: Painting possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make the absent present (as they say of friendship), but it also represents the dead to the living many centuries later…We should also consider it a very great gift to men that painting has represented the gods they worship, for painting has contributed considerably to the piety which binds us to the gods, and to filling our minds with sound religious beliefs.26 For Alberti, painting is clearly not just the representation of nature (though it is that as well). Painting also “makes the absent present,” including representing the dead and rendering the gods visible. As Hubert Damisch says of this passage, “Alberti does not hesitate to claim that there is, at the heart of painting, a divine power.”27 Things that first of all and most of the time appear unreal to us, such as the dead and the gods, are brought to life by painting. Painting brings the divine to sensuousness. On this point, Alberti and Gadamer agree, for Gadamer also claims that the power of the picture to bring forth the being of a thing includes the divine: “one also says this about an image of a god [Götterbild] or about an image of what is holy [Heiligenbild].”28 For Alberti, this capacity makes the painter into a godlike figure, more than a mere mirror: “The                                                                                                                           26

On Painting, 60. “The Inventor of Painting,” 304. 28 “Word and Image,” 216; GW8, 392. 27

13 virtues of painting, therefore, are that its masters see their works admired and feel themselves to be almost like the Creator.”29 Gadamer’s assessment of Alberti’s theory of perspective as inaugurating the problematic modern sovereignty of the picture is at best one-sided, because Alberti’s humanistic emphasis on the divine power of painting actually makes his view, in at least this respect, quite close to Gadamer’s theory of the picture’s power to make being visible. Alberti’s theory is thus more complex than just being an example of modern representationalism. §4. The real stakes of Gadamer’s discussion of Alberti Why does Gadamer miss – or at least fail to emphasize – this continuity between his thought and Alberti’s? Unlike Heidegger, Gadamer has no fundamental objections to Renaissance humanism in general, and so that cannot account for his blind spot with regard to Alberti.30 Instead, Gadamer’s critical discussion of Alberti is notable because it crystallizes two important features of his philosophy of art that Alberti is crucially opposed to. In this final section, I will explain these two issues that most fundamentally separate Gadamer from Alberti. The first theme is one I have already touched upon, and that concerns perspective. For Alberti, the function of a painting is to be a vivid and realistic representation for a human subject. This has the consequence that painting does not represent the features or qualities of things as they really are apart from human observers: “Large, small, long, short, high, low, wide, narrow, light, dark, bright, gloomy, and everything of the kind – which philosophers termed accidents, because they may or may not be present in things – all these are such as to be known                                                                                                                           29

On Painting, 61. For this reason, Harries points out that “the association of painting with magic...shadows Alberti’s treatise” (Infinity and Perspective, 80). In this respect, Harries emphasizes the Renaissance heritage of Alberti as I do here. However, Harries’s overall assessment of On Painting – that it “may be said to help usher in what Heidegger called ‘The Age of the World Picture’” – is closer to Gadamer’s negative appraisal in Truth and Method (ibid, 77). But Harries’s presentation of Alberti has been very influential on my project in this paper. 30 For a discussion and critique of Heidegger’s treatment of the Renaissance, see Ernesto Grassi, Heidegger and the Question of Renaissance Humanism. Grassi implies that Heidegger failed to ever engage in a detailed or systematic way with the texts and figures of the humanist tradition. Jean Grondin argues that Gadamer self-consciously fashioned his defense of humanism in Truth and Method in response to Heidegger’s Letter on “Humanism” (“Gadamer on Humanism,” 161). Gadamer refers to Heidegger’s Letter at Truth and Method, 253; GW1, 268.

14 only by comparison.”31 It is only from the perspective of an embodied human observer that an object will be “large,” “wide,” “dark,” and so on, and so a convincing painted representation has to show these qualities only as they appear to us. To convincingly depict these qualities is the purpose of the theory of perspective. Alberti readily recognizes that this means perspective entails relativism. In a remarkable passage, he invokes Protagoras: “As man is the best known of all things to man, perhaps Protagoras, in saying that man is the measure of all things, meant that accidents are duly compared to and known by the accidents in man.”32 Perspective is the recognition that the human is the measure of all things. The specter of relativism and subjectivism was one of Heidegger’s fundamental objections to humanism, and though Gadamer has a more nuanced (and appreciative) understanding of the humanist tradition than Heidegger does, Gadamer shares this Heideggerian aversion to humanistic subjectivism.33 But this distinction between Heidegger and Gadamer on the one hand and perspective on the other may not be as obvious as it seems. Karsten Harries says the following: “The theory of perspective teaches us about the logic of appearance, of phenomena. In this sense the theory of perspective is phenomenology.”34 Is this proximity of perspective to phenomenology another area of surprising convergence between Gadamer and Alberti? I think not, because Gadamer, unlike Alberti, has a core commitment to a form of antirelativism. Recall his critique of perspective. The way we look at or view an artwork should not be dictated by the demands of human physiology, but rather by the truth that the work wants to convey to us: “The unconcealment of what comes forth is of something that is hidden in the

                                                                                                                          31

On Painting, 53. As Harries remarks, “The perspectival art of Alberti subjects what is present to a human measure that has itself been subjected to the demand for ease of representation” (Infinity and Perspective, 76). 32 On Painting, 53. 33 For an argument as to why Gadamer’s version of humanism is not subjectivistic or anthropocentric in Heidegger’s sense, see Grondin, “Gadamer on Humanism,” 164-167. 34 Infinity and Perspective, 69.

15 work itself and not in whatever we may say about it.”35 This objectivism is at the heart of Gadamer’s philosophy of art, and represents a real difference from Alberti and the aspects of modernity he inaugurates. Letting the truth of the work speak for itself is not at all the same as making an artwork fitted only for a human perspective. The second deep point of contention between Gadamer and Alberti has to do with the status of painting relative to that of the other arts. Alberti claims that “painting is the mistress of all the arts,” unambiguously asserting painting’s supremacy.36 Painting accurately represents nature from the human perspective, and also beautifies it by presenting it in a harmonious and excellent way that the human will find pleasing.37 It is for this reason that Alberti claims that one of painting’s greatest virtues is that “Nature herself delights in painting.”38 Painting also requires knowledge of all the liberal arts, including geometry and poetry, to enhance the painter’s technical skills and method in constructing a narrative.39 For these reasons, Alberti considers it the greatest of all the arts. Alberti is thus part of a rich and varied tradition in the history of aesthetics that emphasizes the importance of an artwork’s medium. Gadamer is opposed to this tradition, and this is the second crucial commitment that puts him at odds with Alberti. Gadamer wants to emphasize the capacity all artworks in any medium have to claim truth: “What keenly interested me…was trying to work out what the art of making a picture or sculptural image and the art of making a poem have in common [das Gemeinsame], and to take this common element and place it within a more general classification [Allgemeineres einzuordnen] that says art is a ‘statement

                                                                                                                          35

“Word and Image,” 214; GW8, 390. On Painting, 61. 37 See ibid, 90-91. 38 Ibid, 63. 39 See ibid, 87-88. 36

16 of truth.’”40 When Alberti emphasizes the preeminence of painting and the special qualities of that medium, this is at odds with Gadamer’s totalizing view that any artwork can claim truth, no matter the medium. Thus he emphasizes the continuity between all the arts: “In its appearing to you the artwork is ‘truly there’ [‘richtig da’] – the picture, the poem, the song. ‘It’ has come forth.”41 Against any chauvinistic claim for the superiority of one medium to another, Gadamer always wants to move the conversation to, as he says, “a more general classification” of artworks as statements of truth in which being is presented. The question I will end with here is why the specificity of an artwork’s medium has to be at odds with understanding an artwork as a statement of truth. Perhaps the truth of an artwork depends in some ways on the specificity of its medium. For example, while one can certainly object to the subjectivism of Alberti’s theory of perspective, his view does have the virtue of calling our attention to the particular features that distinguish painting as a presentation of the human perspective on nature. Gadamer’s lack of attention to medium may be a limitation inherent in his approach.

                                                                                                                          40

“Word and Image,” 195; GW8, 373. Gadamer is referring here to Lessing, who in his 1766 Laocoön essay sought to differentiate painting from poetry. 41 Ibid, 217; GW8, 392.

17 Bibliography Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Trans. C. Grayson. London and New York: Penguin, 1991. Damisch, Hubert. “The Inventor of Painting.” Trans. K. Minturn and E. Trudel. Oxford Art Journal Vol. 33 No. 3 (2010), 301-316. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “The Artwork in Word and Image: ‘So True, So Full of Being!’” The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings. Trans. and ed. R.E. Palmer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007. ---. Gesammelte Werke 1: Hermeneutik I. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebek), 1990. ---. Gesammelte Werke 8: Ästhetik und Poetik I. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebek), 1993. ---. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. ed. Trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 2004. Grondin, Jean. “Gadamer on Humanism.” The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (The Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXIV). L.E. Hahn, ed. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1997. Grassi, Ernesto. Heidegger and the Question of Renaissance Humanism: Four Studies. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1983. Harries, Karsten. Infinity and Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. Verene, Donald Phillip. “Gadamer and Vico on Sensus Communis and the Tradition of Humane Knowledge.” The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (The Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXIV). L.E. Hahn, ed. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1997. Vico, Giambattista. On the Study Methods of Our Time. Trans. E. Gianturco. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1990. Westfall, Carroll W. “Painting and the Liberal Arts: Alberti’s View.” Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 30 No. 4 (1969), 487-506. ---. “Society, Beauty, and the Humanistic Architect in Alberti’s de re aedifactoria.” Studies in the Renaissance Vol. 16 (1969), 61-79.