Suchergebnisse

Nella lirica greca il tema della "cosa più bella" è ricorrente: per alcuni essa è rappresentata dal valore guerriero (Tirteo), per altri dall'innamorato (Saffo), dalla verità (Mimnermo), dall'eccellenza nei Giochi Olimpici (Pindaro) o da molti altri beni ancora. Fra questi vi è la ricchezza, variamente citata, che muta le proprie caratteristiche insieme all'evoluzione dell'assetto socio-politico della polis: dai valori assoluti del mondo epico-eroico la ricchezza diviene un bene ambiguo o persino un pericolo (se accumulata porta al decadimento dei costumi). ; In the frame of Greek lyric poetry the theme of the "most beautiful thing" is recurrent: according to some authors it is symbolized by warlike Bravery (Tyrtaeus), for others by Lovers (Sappho), by Truth (Mimnermus), by Excellence in Olympic Games (Pindar) or by some more other goods. Among the latter Wealth is differently mentioned, as it changes its characteristics according to the evolution of social and political order of the polis: starting from the absolute values of epic-heroic world, it comes to be considered an ambiguous good or even a danger (hoarded wealth is likely to bring about looseness of morals).

Sidonio Apollinare conclude con questi versi l'ode contenuta nell'ultima epistola della sua raccolta, epistola che l'opinione comune considera il "testamento politico e letterario" dell'autore, una sorta di bilancio finale della sua attività nella poesia e nella prosa epistolare. Sidonio abbandona la poesia perché poco adatta alla dignità vescovile, a favore di un genere più elevato – scelta opposta a quella dichiarata nella classica recusatio –, quello della prosa d'arte, che regola il genere epistolare. Un primo approccio a questa epistola è quello di dedicarsi ad una lettura ravvicinata del testo di Sidonio e dell'ultima ode oraziana (carm. IV 15). ; Sidonius Apollinaris concludes with these verses the ode contained in the last epistle of his collection. This letter is commonly considered his "political and literary will", a sort of final balance of his activity as author of poetry and epistolary prose. Sidonius abandons poetry because it is less suitable to his rank of bishop, in favour of a higher genre, literary prose, which regulates the epistolary genre; he thus makes a choice which is diametrically opposed to that avowed by the classical recusatio. As a first approach to this epistle, this paper will carry out a close reading of Sidonius' text and in parallel with Horace's last ode.

Art and Ideas Francisco de Hollanda and Sixteenth-Century Aesthetics The historians of aesthetics who have studied the problem of ideas in art theory (from Panofsky to Baeumler and Tatarkiewicz) have overlooked Da pintura antiga, by Portuguese artist and theoretician Francisco de Hollanda (1517-1584), a text where the Platonic notion of idea enters a treatise on art for the first time. The present volume aims to fill such gap by shedding light on an author who has long been overshadowed by the great Michelangelo (whom Hollanda met during his stay in Rome in the years 1538-1540), as well as by advancing an analysis of the aesthetic concepts that emerge not only from Da pintura antiga, but from the entire body of Hollanda's works. The most significant element is that in Hollanda's approach art theory appropriates connotations previosuly reserved for poetic creativity. In fact, poetry had borrowed from Platonic philosophy the notion of "divine frenzy" to describe the inspired poet. According to Hollanda, on the contrary, it is the artist who, possessed by such frenzy, is able to rise to the world of ideas. Artistic creativity thus acquires a sacred dimension: "ancient painting" is seen as a sort of "prisca pictura" that, like Ermete Tremegisto's "prisca theologia", reveals the most hidden truths. The "melancholic" artist, who possesses an inspired and bizarre imagination, as best exemplified by "grottesche", is the only one capable of grasping the idea and fixing it with uncommon rapidity in a sketch. This is a complex and not always immediately successful procedure. Thus, Hollanda considers blindness as a privileged factor to grasp the kind of beauty that the artist, like the prophet, can see only with his "inner eyes", eyes that are not dimmed by sensible perceptions. Consequently, "drawing" becomes a key element of Hollanda's thought. Drawing emerges as the basis not only of painting, sculpture, and architecture, but of all the arts that are connected with images: from martial strategy to civil and military engineering; from maps to the design of insignia, livery, clothes, and ornaments. Hollanda moves beyond the distinction between major and minor arts, and his approach emerges as more modern than the one that Vasary will articulate a few years later in his famous definition of the "arts of drawing".