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Utopian Ruins
Author(s): Edgar WindReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg Institute, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jan., 1938), pp. 259-260Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750017.
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8/10/2019 warburg 17
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THE
ISLE
OF THE
AMAZONS
259
in the
reports
of the
travellers
must be
sought
in the
mediaeval
romances
about
antiquity;
a
fact
which
reflects
the
importance
attached
to
them
as
encyclopaedias
and
authoritative
books of
information.
With
increasing knowledge
of
geographical
realities
there
developed
a
tendency
to
locate
the
monsters
and
fabulous
creatures
which
populate
the
imaginary kingdoms
of
ancient
and
mediaeval
descriptions
of
the
world,
in
ever
more
distant corners
of the earth.
Fabulous creatures such as the
kynocephali,
the
monoculi,
or the
pygmies,
-the
tradition
of
which is
closely
linked with
that
of
the
Amazons,
are
still
to
be found
on
geographical
maps
of
the
sixteenth
century,
but,
alas
they
have
been driven
to
the South
Polar
regions
ALBRECrr
ROSENTHAL
TWO
NOTES
ON
THE CULT
OF
RUINS1
I. RUINS
AND
ECHOES
It
appears
from
a scene
in
Webster's
"Duchess
of Malfi"
(Act
V,
Scene
III),
that
the
love of
ruins
and the love
of echoes
were
closely
associated
in
the
Elizabethan
mind.
Immediately
before
meeting
his
death, the hero, Antonio, is led by his friend
Delio
to the
ruins of an ancient
abbey
which
"gives
the best
echo that
you
ever
heard."
Antonio
begins
his
dialogue
with
the
warning
voice
of
the
echo
by meditating
on
the nature
of ruins
:
I
do love
these ancient
ruins.
We never
tread
upon
them
but
we set
Our
foot
upon
some reverend
history
And,
questionless,
ere in
this
open
court,
Which
now
lies
naked
to the
injuries
Of
stormy
weather,
some
men
lie interred
That
loved
the church
so
well,
and
gave
so
largely
o't,
They
thought
it should
have
canopied
their
bones
Till
doomsday
but
all
things
have
their
end :
Churchesand cities,whichhave diseases ike to men,
Must
have
like
death that
we have.
The
echo
answers,
in the voice
of Antonio's
murdered
duchess,
"like
death
that
we
have."
And
of
every
sentence
that
Antonio
speaks
the
echo
resumes
the
"deadly
accent."
That
dilapidated
buildings
are
haunted
by ghosts
is
a
common
belief. But
to
a
poet
of Webster's
power
of
imagery
the
association
of
an
echoing
voice
with a ruined
building
had a
profounder
meaning.
The
scene
which
he wrote reveals
a
natural
affinity
between
the two. What the ruin
is
to
the sense
of
sight,
the echo
is
to
the sense
of
hearing
:
a
faint reflection
of the
past.
A
ruin 'lives' as
long
as
it
yields
an
echo.
Only
when the
stone has lost
that
power
is
the
death
of
the
building complete.
That this
was
actually
in
Webster's
mind
becomes
apparent
at the end
of
the
play.
After Delio has
taken
his
friend
to
the
ruined
abbey
which
"gives
the best
echo
that
you
ever
heard,"
the hero
and
his
companions
are
killed
;
and
while
the
spectator
still
has
the
scene
of
the
echo
in his
mind,
he
hears
the words
of utmost
hopelessness
in
which
the
dying
Bosola
proclaims
his
belief
in
universal
perdition
:
We
are
only
like
dead
walls
or
vaulted
graves,
That,
ruined,
yield
no
echo.
"These
notes
are
to
be
taken
as
incidental con-
tributions
o
a
study
in
progress
by
Yv.
S.
Heckscher
(cf.
his
thesis Die
Romruinen,amburgDiss., I936).
2.
UTOPIAN
RUINS
To
interchange
the tenses
of
Past,
Present
and
Future
is
one
of
the
favourite
pas-
times
of
Romanticists.
A romantic
philo-
sopher
coined
the
phrase
:
"The historian is
a
prophet
looking
backwards."'
It
was for
a
Romantic
architect
to discover
that the
reverse
is
equally
true
and
that the
r6le
of
the
prophet
can
be
played
with effect
by
an
antiquarian
looking
forward. In a
strange
drawing
in
the
Soane
Museum,
first
pub-
lished
by
John
Summerson,s
the
great
vault
of the
Bank
of
England
which
is
Soane's
architectural
chef
d'euvre,
is
represented
by
Soane's
own
draughtsman-and
evidently
at
Soane's
request--in
a state of
delapidation
so
that it
looks
like
a
classical
ruin.
Soane
evidently
felt
that,
by
indulging
in
this
reverie,
a
new nuance
was added
to
his archi-
tectural
achievement.
By anticipating
a
situation
which would
normally
be
regarded
as
'posthumous,'
he
meant
to
give
a
new
glamour
to the
building.
If Edmund
Burke
could
have
seen
this
drawing
he
might
have
used
it
as
an illus-
tration
for one
of
his favourite
theses
:
"We
delight
in
seeing things,
which so
far from
doing,
our
heartiest
wishes
would
be
to
see
redressed.
This
noble
capital,
the
pride
of
England,
and
of
Europe,
I
S44Der Historiker
ist
der
riickwiirts
gewandte
Prophet" (Friedrich
Schlegel).
1
The
Strange
Case
of
J.
M.
Gandy.
The
Architect,
1936, pp. 38-44.
-
8/10/2019 warburg 17
3/3
260 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
believe no
man
is
so
strangely
wicked
as
to desire to
see
destroyed
by
a
conflagra-
tion
or
an
earthquake,
though
he
should
be removed
himself
to the
greatest
distance
from the
danger.
But
suppose
such
a
fatal
accident to have happened, what num-
bers from all
parts
would
crowd
to
behold
the
ruins,
and
amongst
them
many
who
would
have
been
content
never to
have
seen London
in its
glory
?"1
Both
Burke and Soane were
high-minded
men.
Therefore,
it did not
occur
to them
that the
same
device
which
they
associated
with
tragic
grandeur,
can be
efficiently
used
in
a
spirit
of
wit.
When the
American
poetess,
Edna
Millay,
sought
for a
poignant
expression
of
jealousy,
she
chose
to address
her
lover as "if he
should lie
a-dying."2
She merely furthered the tradition of
wooing
set
by
Koko:3
There's fascination
rantic
In
a
ruin hat's
omantic
Do
you
think
ou
are
sufficiently
ecayed
E.W.
1On
the
Sublimeand
Beautiful.
Part
I,
Sect.
xv.
'A
Few
Figs
from
Thistles,
by
Edna
St. Vincent-
Millay.
T3
he
Mikado,
Act
II,
No.
12.
A
SYMBOL
OF
PLATONIC LOVE IN A
PORTRAIT
BUST
BY
DONATELLO
The
way
in
which Donatello used
an
ancient cameo in his famous bust of a
youth
in the
Bargello
(P1. 34d)4
can best be
understood
by
considering
it in
relation to
mediaeval
tradition. His
prototypes
are
the then
very
numerous
busts,
mainly
reliquaries,
which
were
decorated with inlaid
original precious
stones.
Yet,
it
is
charac-
teristic
of the
growing
Renaissance and
its
new
conception
of
Antiquity
that Donatello
does not
incorporate
an
actual cameo
;5
instead
he
copies
one-thus
preserving
the
unity
of his
material
(bronze).
By
putting
the
cameo
on
the neck
of the bust
like
a
jewel he interprets the mediaevaldevice in a
pseudo-rational
way (in reality
such
ornaments
were never worn
by
young men).
Moreover,
by
increasing
the size of his emblem in
com-
parison
with
the ancient
original
he is able
to
emphasise
the
symbolic
meaning
of
the
scene
represented:
a
winged
charioteer
driving
two horses and
holding
a
whip.
It appears that the original of this cameo
belonged
in
Donatello's
days
to the
col-
lection of
Cosimo
de'
Medici.6 We
may,
therefore,
conclude that
Cosimo
himself or
a
member of his
circle
gave
the
order
for the
bust. What was the
patron's
intention
when
he
asked
that
this
particular
cameo should
be
reproduced
? At the
date
to
which
the
bust is
generally
assigned-about
i44o-
Cosimo de'
Medici and his friends
were
filled with
enthusiasm
for a revival
of Pla-
tonism
under
the
influence of Gemisthos
Plethon,7
and
according
to
Marsiglio
Ficino
Cosimo had planned a Platonic Academy in
Florence even
before
1440,
that
is,
more
than
22
years
before
its
actual foundation
by
Ficino.
Donatello's
bust,
conceived
in
the
years
of
this first
enthusiasm
for
Plato,
can
only
be
interpreted
in a
Platonic sense.
It
is
in-
spired by
the
passage
in Plato's
Phaedruss
where
winged genii
on
cars
driving
two
horses with
whips
are
described as
symbols
of the
soul.
The
madness of
love,
the
best
of the
'Four
Divine
Madnesses',
is
explained
by
Socrates
in terms of this
image.
"We
described the
passion
of Love
in
some
sort
of figurative manner... and ... we chanted
a
sportive
and
mythic hymn
in
meet
and
pious
strain to
the
honour
of
your
lord and
mine
Phaedrus, Love,
the
guardian
of
beautiful
boys".
No
doubt
in
Cosimo's
circle the
ancient cameo
was
interpreted
in
this
Platonic sense
and
its use
on
the
bust
was meant
to
prove
its bearer as one
of
the
'beautiful
boys'
guarded
by
the
Platonic
amore
eleste.9
Bibliography
in
Catalogue,
Exposition
de
l'Art
Italien,
Paris,
1935,
No.
1032.
6
As
examples
of
the insertion of
precious
stones
into
Renaissance
busts,
we
may
refer to
Laurana's
Neapolitan
princess
in
the Mellon
Collection in
Washington (the
hole
which
formerly
contained
the
stone
recently
filled with
marble).
Mirrors instead of
stones
were
not
rare. Cf.
Mino's
medallion in
the
Cabinet des
M6dailles
de
la
Biblioth&que
Nationale,
Paris.
6
It
appears
later
in
an
inventory
of
the
collection
of Lorenzo
de'
Medici, cf.
E.
Muntz,
Revue Archdo-
logique,
1879,
p.
248.
Informative notes in
Bange,
Die
Ital.
Bronzen
d.
Renaissance. Staatl. Museen zu
Berlin
II,
1922,
No.
82,
and
Seymour
de
Ricci,
The
Gustave
Dreyfus
Collection.
Reliefs
and
Plaquettes,
1931,
p.
30,
No.
27.
There are some Renaissance
medals in
existence which were
probably
struck
after
Dona-
tello's bust.
SCf. A. della
Torre,
Storia dell'Accademia
latonica n
Firenze,
1902, pp.
426
ff.
8
Translated
by
Leonardo
Bruni
in
1423-
9
This
interpretation may
be
confirmed
by
the fact
that
about
ioo
years
later such
a
learned
man
as the
engraver
Giulio
Bonasone
used
the
same
cameo for
a