The Renaissance: A Short History

Paul Johnson

New York: Random House, 2000. ISBN: 0-8129-6619-8. Pp. 196, biblio, index

This brief book (the adjective in the title is no misnomer for a change) brings Mr Johnson's formidable skills as a cultural historian to bear onto one of the most fascinating periods in the history of Western civilization (and all humanity). The Renaissance gave us Dante and Chaucer, Boccaccio and Petrarch, Machiavelli and Erasmus, Rabelais and Montaigne in literature and philosophy. Brunelleschi and Bramante, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Donatello and Cellini, Filippo and Filippino Lippi, Mantegna and Bellini, Botticelli and Giorgione, Raphael and Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese in the visual arts, from architecture to sculpture to painting... and these are just the Italians! It will not be an exaggeration to say that perhaps more than half of what we have today in art we owe to this stunning flowering in artistic human endeavor, and if we count its influence, the proportion will be significantly higher. Coming as it did at a time of general prosperity in Europe despite the interminable conflicts of the disunited states, republics, principalities, duchies, kingdoms, and empires, the Renaissance overshadowed not only the eminently worthy Romanesque and Gothic predecessors but even the Classical it sought to emulate and supposedly revive. In many ways, the men of the Renaissance invented the past when they recreated it as something they thought should have been rather than what it was. They are also responsible for our perception of the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and near barbarism, "a world lit only by candle," that had to be illuminated by the resurrection of the classical ideals and their subsequent improvement. That this improvement went too far as the attractive Baroque gave way to the ridiculously ornate Rococo is beyond doubt. But the legacy bequeathed by the Renaissance has outlived the weird off-shoots that succeeded it.

Johnson's book begins with a chapter on the economic background, and the argument is unexceptional, for he sees the "cumulative growth and the spread of wealth never before experienced in world history" as the necessary condition for this flowering of the human spirit. It is not just material wealth, of course, for humanity had seen accumulation and peace many times before (in fact, I am not sure what to make of the claim for while the Roman Empire acquits itself admirably within that framework, Pericles' Athens, while relatively wealthy by contemporary standards, would be quite punily endowed even by Macedonian or Roman ones, and yet it produced an astounding legacy, even amid constant warfare, and some of it following its decline). One huge difference that marks this period as truly unique is in the dissemination of knowledge made possible by the invention of moveable type by the German Gutenberg, something Johnson calls a "startling revolution," which can only be characterized as an understatement. Not until the present-day revolution created by the Internet would we see again something of similar importance. Mr Johnson is dead on in this, and while I would have loved a more detailed study of this phenomenon, I also have to agree that wealth and printing were not enough to account for the Renaissance. As he puts it, "the Renaissance was primarily a human event, propelled forward by a number of individuals of outstanding talent, which in some cases amounted to genius."

It is to these individuals that the rest of the book is dedicated to, with separate chapters on literature, architecture, sculpture, and painting (music curiously missing due to even more curious neglect as an art form during the period). Mr Johnson devotes several pages to important characters and presents a concise synopsis of what is known of their lives and then goes through a selection of their most important works; important in terms of their influence on contemporaries and for later generations. He traces Dante's writing in the Tuscan dialect of Italian that would make it effectively the Italian language, but most of the time is spent on the development of humanism that would shift the emphasis from the religious outer world to the individual inner world to such an extent that even Catholic dogma would be affected and eventually the Church would have to engage in brutal Counter-Reformation to stem the torrent its laxity and tolerance (due to its superior and previously unchallenged position) had unleashed. Interestingly, it was not in the universities that humanists made their presence known for these institutions were deeply devoted to stagnant scholasticism but in the secular courts where they ran "a scholastic freemasonry, getting one another jobs and recommendations and chances to acquire patronage from the rich and powerful," the latter being quite content to utilize their formidably literary skills for propaganda purposes and personal gratification.

The chapter on sculpture is mostly concerned with Donatello and Michelangelo, to nobody's surprise. One thing I found quite interesting was the account of Ghiberti's casting of the famous bronze gates of the Baptistry of Florence. He spent essentially his entire life working on the two sets, taking twenty years for the first (which had to contend with Andrea Pisano's doors) and then even longer on the second, the so-called Gate of Paradise. Johnson reminds us that even though to us this may appear excessively slow, "the standards of craftsmanship demanded and provided in late medieval, early Renaissance times were of a quality inconceivable to the modern age, and speed of execution was not possible." One only has to compare these doors (or almost any other work of the period) to any random sample of modern mass-manufactured decorations to see the difference. It is disconcerting to realize that amid all that prosperity we have enjoyed, our standards for art have declined so precipitously that we are willing to accept things that would never have made it half a millennium ago on quality grounds.

If this is true of sculpture, it is perhaps even more so of painting. I am no fan of modern art, so I may be biased here. Still, despite the time historians of art spend on the "invention" of perspective and the importance of understanding of the principles of foreshortening, visualization of reality in a way that remains faithful to the original is only part of the story. Curiously, modern art has much in common with the highly stylized abstract works of the medieval period preceding the Renaissance despite the general rejection of their exclusive concern with religious subjects. Johnson notes that in the so-called Dark Ages "the sophisticated illusionary art" of the Greeks and the Romans disappeared, and it is quite funny to contemplate what this means for modern art with its decisive refusal to engage reality, rejecting objectivity in favor either of incomprehensible interpretations of the world fractured by the artist's psyche or else in the pursuit of total nihilism in a deliberate rejection of meaning in favor of style and form. The Dark Ages may have lost the skill but the Modern Age has willfully abandoned it.

Johnson spends some time on the technique of tempera and the much more laborious fresco, compares them to painting in oil, and then discusses what the constraints of the various techniques imply for the finished product and the process of creating it. But beyond these technical changes, the most important element was, again, the human, and in particular the idea of progress, of a constant struggle to improve upon the extant, a pursuit of an increasingly demanding standard of excellence. Competition among artists was the order of the day not only because victory meant patronage but because comparisons with others were how judgments were made and how one's self-worth was defined. One may be quite startled to see in this strange mix of commercial interests (these artists never produced art for its own sake, they all worked exclusively on commission) and personal gratification (in doing so, they insisted on the highest possible standards, sometimes even antagonizing their patrons with their rigid clinging to the integrity of their vision). In other words, it looks a lot like a market in which various artists compete with each other to sell their product to the highest bidder but where the criterion is quality as judged by the others. This is a far cry from the self-absorbed art that would follow, from artists detaching themselves from the world (and imagining themselves above it), with creators haughtily refusing to submit to the judgment of the audience by sticking to the notion that it is incapable of appreciating sublime work. Today, in an age where mass approval is taken to imply lack of artistic merit, a competition like the one between Michelangelo and Leonardo in Florence would be inconceivable for it would have to be judged by spectators. We have reached an impasse in which "art" looks inward, insulated from the one thing that can spur it to progress: competition for approval. Little wonder, then, that we get that crap that hangs in modern art galleries and which is the subject of much oohing and aahing by patrons who invariably seem to be pretentious old ladies or equally pretentious destitute young. The less accessible the work these days, the more profound it is assumed to be. Never mind that its author could not find his or her way around a coherent thought with a step-by-step guide. Like critic like artist, I think these artists deserve the audience they get in the aforementioned groups. It's not that they have rejected mass appeal, it's that the masses have rejected them.

This is not to say that Johnson approves of all Renaissance painting. He is not a fan of Michelangelo's, for example, finding the bold emphasis on the muscular human physique (Michelangelo used male models even for the female figures) off-putting in sharp contrast to the dreamy Raphael (who not only did not shy away from using female models but often bedded them too). It is obvious that Johnson concurs with his namesake's "description of the dog walking on his hind legs: 'It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all'," and then continues to quote approvingly again from Dr Johnson's take on Milton adapting it to the Sistine Chapel: "No one ever wished it bigger." He faults Michelangelo for taking literally the Biblical notion that man was made in God's image. However, if that's the case one has to wonder why muscular bodies should be the end result; after all, it's not like Michelangelo saw God. If anything, the artist invented God on the basis of the classic sculptures from antiquity that he so admired. It seems to me the causal direction runs the other way: Michelangelo was fascinated with the idealized body, a direct inheritance from the Greeks, and proceeded to invent the God whose image this ideal had to reflect. The old strong patriarchal God with the flowing white beard and long hair that we take for granted today is actually Michelangelo's invention. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant; to claim that Michelangelo failed in comprehending a "symbolic truism" and therefore failed to see humanity in a more nuanced way, with its "peculiar faces and expressions," is a bit of a stretch.

The chapter on architecture is the weakest of the lot even if it is that inheritance that is most visible today. I am not just talking of the instantly recognizable St Peter's at the Vatican or Brunelleschi's dome on Florence's cathedral. The succession of buildings financed by competing princelings or patriotic citizens has created much of the urban landscape that makes Europe so European today. The organic growth of Rome, Florence, and Venice has always been cognizant of preserving the image of the city (much invented, of course) its denizens had, and in the creation of public spaces this image was upheld, clarified, and transmitted to subsequent generations. Hence, building was much more important than just putting a roof over a shelter. As Churchill remarked, we first shape our buildings and then the buildings shape us. Architecture has a much more profound influence on us because it determines, in part, how we perceive ourselves, and as such any discussion limited to this particular detail or that innovative technique is going to miss the essence altogether. Unfortunately, Mr Johnson spends most of his time on the purely technical innovations, trying to see how Renaissance architects improved upon the Romans or how the rivalry between them resolved itself in acquiring one rich patron or another. Although fascinating by themselves, these details completely obscure the bigger picture.

Another major shortcoming of this book is it lack of illustrations. While this is not much of a problem while Johnson deals with literature (after all, we're all supposed to have read Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer in high school if not college), it becomes a serious annoyance once he delves into sculpture, architecture, and painting. There are often references to specific works said to illustrate one point or another and unless one has a handy reference work at hand (i.e., one of those lavishly produced coffee-table books that I so love) or unless one has seen the work in person and can summon the image from the dark recesses of memory on command, then much of what Johnson says will be lost on the reader. In fact, Johnson presupposes a more than average familiarity with the Renaissance, and he uses this to basically march us across its many creators trying to put everything into a coherent whole. As a primer on the phenomenon, The Renaissance will be sadly lacking. However, as a unifying perspective on it, this book will be of great interest to people already in the know. The question then remains: if it is meant to be read by people who are already quite familiar with the period, then what exactly is the contribution? I am not sure actually.

December 9, 2006