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We examine here a second fresco by Raffaello, La Scuola di Atene, which is located on the wall opposite La Disputa del Sacramento. We will then compare the two past works with Broadway Boogie Woogie to highlight themes of universal character common to the three works and demonstrate that, mutatis mutandis, the twentieth-century painting can represent a synthesis of the two sixteenth-century frescoes.
Theology vs. philosophy and science
In La Disputa del Sacramento, themes of a theological nature are dealt with, while La Scuola di Atene, presents themes of philosophy, the sciences and the liberal arts. The painting depicts the most important philosophers of ancient Greece under the vaults of a building that seems to have been inspired by Bramante’s plans for the new St. Peter’s Basilica in Roma.
Nature and architecture
In La Disputa del Sacramento the composition is divided between a real scene (at the bottom) and an imagined or metaphysical scene (in the middle-high part). In La Scuola di Atene the whole scene takes place, instead, entirely at the level of earthly life:
If in La Disputa, from the horizontal of the earthly scene one rises vertically towards the spiritual and the divine, in La Scuola everything is concentrated on the human.
In La Disputa we find ourselves in the open space of nature with the immensity of the sky above men:
In La Scuola everything takes place in an artificial space where the sky (the infinite space of nature) is enclosed and measured by architectural vaults that are the work of human mind.
Unity and duality
In La Disputa del Sacramento the earthly scene converges towards a vanishing point that corresponds to the monstrance placed on the altar while the metaphysical scene (clouds, saints and prophets) tends towards the unity of a God the Father and, higher up, towards a point that lies beyond the image:
Diagram D
The multiplicity presented in La Disputa del Sacramento tends towards unity.
Through the three architectural vaults of La Scuola di Atene, the gaze converges towards the figures of Plato (on the left) and Aristotle (on the right):
The composition therefore tends towards two points (the heads of the two philosophers). These are close but distinct and seem to compete for the vanishing point of the perspective construction of the composition.
This is not accidental because the theme of the fresco is philosophy and science, that is, rational thought that proceeds through antinomies and therefore manifests duality.
We therefore see how the formal structure of the two frescoes already tells us what their contents are: the unity of faith in the first and the duality of thought in the second.
Aristotle and Plato are in the center because their vision of the world, rather than that of Heraclitus (seated below with his arm resting on a block of marble and portrayed in the guise of Michelangelo Buonarroti) inspired the thought of the time.
A synthesis of Platonism and Aristotelianism
Plato holds his hand up, with his finger pointing upward, indicating the world of ideas. The line extending from Plato’s finger follows the arc of the architectural vault and descends back to Aristotle’s hand holding a book, while with his other hand the philosopher points to the earthly world.
“Aristotle’s horizontal gesture, symbolizes the organization of the world through the Ethics, and Plato’s vertical gesture the movement of cosmological thought that rises from the sensible world to its ideal principle” (Chastel).
Plato’s finger that, following the curve of the architectural vault, descends in correspondence with Aristotle’s hand, suggests a synthesis of the two philosophies, which was probably the idea that the commissioners of the fresco wanted to illustrate. How to express a synthesis of Platonic and Aristotelian thought? In the two-dimensional space of the painting it can be done with a semicircle that ideally unites the two figures.
Plato’s gesture goes upwards, encloses the universe (the sky circumscribed by the architectural vault) and then descends to the ground, joining Aristotle’s hand. Using the semicircle that materializes in the architectural vault, the painter connects and unites the philosophy of Plato with the philosophy of Aristotle, thus expressing, in purely visual terms, the historical-literary content that the client required.
To read the arch as a line connecting Plato’s hand to Aristotle’s hand is, obviously, unrealistic from a three-dimensional point of view, since – in a real space – that arch would be well beyond the two philosopher bodies. However, in the art of painting the contents are expressed through the only two real and concrete dimensions of the pictorial surface.
Every good painter has always built up his images by establishing relationships that, first of all, interact on the two-dimensional plane even if they evoke the illusion of a three-dimensional space. The formal relations are born on the two-dimensional plane and, through a wise use of geometry and a conscious reading of the observer, they acquire meaning. I believe that in painting, and probably not only in painting, form precedes and determines content.
From multiplicity to unity and from unity to multiplicity
A further noteworthy aspect of La Disputa del Sacramento consists in the following:
We have seen a progression that tends to unite in the figure of God the multiplicity of human figures that are observed below. We will now see how, in addition to this motion that proceeds from the bottom to the top, the composition presents a simultaneous progression that descends from the top to the bottom:
The gilded canopy at the top of the fresco evokes a large circular space that ideally extends beyond the painted wall upward. Descending, that portion of the circle becomes a semicircle (with Christ) which then transforms into the circle with the dove (symbol of the Holy Spirit) which finally concentrates in the small circle of the monstrance placed on the altar.
From an immense circle that is only partially visible (symbol of the totality in which the figure of God is inscribed), the space proceeds downwards, concentrating on the monstrance.
From earth to heaven and from heaven to earth
We thus observe two opposing motions: on one hand we see a motion of elevation of the contradictory figures scattered on the ground towards a more orderly semicircle (saints and prophets) that then becomes a quasi-circle (Christ) and finally a sphere (in the hand of God) and on the other we see a motion of descent from a totality, suggested by the golden cap at the top, towards the quasi-circle with Jesus (God who becomes man) that then becomes a complete circle (the Holy Spirit) to finally concentrate in the small circle of the monstrance.
One contemplates a progression from earth to heaven and a descent from heaven to earth. With great mastery in the art of composition, Raffaello evokes in this way the meeting of men with the divinity.
The reading of the four roundels in a single sequence seems plausible due to the fact that they are all painted in gold. From the largest at the top to the smallest at the bottom, the golden energy is concentrated in the monstrance above the altar, the earthly symbol of the kingdom of God.
The fresco thus shows a progression from the multiple toward the one (from the bottom to the top) and a descent of the one toward the multiple. To express this, Raffaello uses contrasting circular tensions that open, close and open again.
Comparing the three works
Let us now see, mutatis mutandis, how some of the contents highlighted in the two ancient frescoes can be found in Broadway Boogie Woogie.
La Disputa presents at the bottom a multiplicity of characters that upwards unites in the figure of a God. From the bottom to the top a multiplicity of individual parts become one and at the same time the inscrutable golden empyrean descends on men concentrating in the monstrance placed on the altar, tangible symbol of divine unity. As we said, in this composition everything refers to the one.
In La Scuola a variety of characters is concentrated in two predominant figures that compete for the vanishing point of the entire composition. The multiple here remains open to duality. Even the architectural vaults suggest continuous references of space towards a synthesis that is only realized as a relationship between the two figures of Plato and Aristotle.
In Broadway Boogie Woogie the duality expressed by horizontal lines opposed to vertical lines generates a multiplicity of small fragments that through a process of growth and progressive synthesis reach unity:
A unity that then reopens to new multiplicity and duality of opposite lines:
As we have seen, also in La Disputa del Sacramento, ascending from the bottom to the top, multiplicity (the crowd below) becomes unity (the figure of God) while, in the opposite direction, totality (evoked with the golden dome) descends on men but, in this case, the one does not reopen to the multiplicity of earthly characters but remains closed within itself with the monstrance placed on the altar.
On the wall depicting theology (La Disputa del Sacramento) we see a multiplicity evoking unity in the absolute terms of faith:
On the opposite wall, the composition which illustrates philosophy, the sciences and the liberal arts (La Scuola di Atene), we see a multiplicity tending toward a synthesis that remains open to duality because rational thought proceeds by contradiction:
In Broadway Boogie Woogie, the duality expressed by opposite lines generates a multiplicity which becomes a unitary plane and this then reopens to a duality of opposite lines, i.e. to multiplicity. In this perspective we can say that in the modern painting rational thought that develops through duality (philosophy, science and and liberal arts of La Scuola di Atene) becomes mystical or theological thought (La Disputa del Sacramento) and this remains open to the contradictory solicitations of reason and the real world avoiding to become clogged in preconceived and dogmatic formulas.
Rational theology and spiritual science
Broadway Boogie Woogie exhorts to think of a theology that also satisfies rational instances and a science that does not lose sight of the spiritual.
“I believe that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research” (Albert Einstein).
One and multiple are usually considered opposite terms. Broadway Boogie Woogie shows a process from the many towards the one and of the one opening up again to the many. One and multiple appear to be opposites and irreconcilable if considered from a static point of view but reveal equivalence becoming the same “thing” if thought of in a dynamic way, that is, if thought of as opposites that unite through a sequence that transforms one thing into its opposite, that is to say, the dynamic process we see in Broadway Boogie Woogie.
To give an example: black and white are opposites. Between black and white there is an infinite range of grays and if we could really contemplate every single infinitesimal degree of that range, white would progressively become black.
From this point of view, the idea of opposites seems to be a sort of escamotage of human’s mind to condense the infinite variations of nature (such as the one between white and black) into the shortest possible interval which therefore becomes easier to handle.
If we observe nature with a spiritual gaze, it evokes unity, and if we observe it with the analytical gaze of the sciences, nature itself never ceases to multiply, shattering the sense of unity evoked by the spirit.
“Nature is God divided infinitely” (Friedrich Schiller).
Rational thought analyzes, creating multiplicity, what the spiritual soul perceives as an inseparable whole. It is also true that science today considers the infinite extension of its studies as a whole, but in its operation at a particular level, analysis often loses sight of the synthesis. In plastic terms Broadway Boogie Woogie exhorts us to contemplate the multiple as one and then return to consider all its infinite variety when unity re-opens to multiplicity. Edgar Morin speaks of: “continuous comings and goings between the parts and the whole”.
Expressing the imprecise with maximum precision
The plastic means used by Mondrian (straight lines, defined geometric shapes, three primary colors) are precise and therefore, already in the form evoke the clarity and determination of rational thought; nevertheless, the precision of the means does not preclude the possibility of dealing with what is commonly considered imponderable.
Italo Calvino comes to mind when he says: “Expressing the imprecise with maximum precision” and I think of Vito Mancuso when he writes: “(…) rationalism that reduces reality to the limits of human reason, excluding from the horizon of truth all that human reason cannot conceive and ending up depriving reality of every mystery and every depth. Against such a narrowing of rationalism, spiritual dialogue exalts the opposite perspective of rationality, which aims at a continuous opening of human reason towards the much broader logic-lógos of reality.”.
This is tantamount to saying that the multiple becomes one and then the one reopens to the multiple and this is what we see in Broadway Boogie Woogie.
Art must make us taste nature eternal
What nature offers to our observation (often fleetingly) is the fruit of the same, intimate and more enduring reality. “Beneath the succession of moments, which composes the superficial existence of beings and things, cladding them with changeable appearances that soon vanish, one can look for a truer, more essential character, to which the artist will cling in order to give a more lasting interpretation of reality.” (Henri Matisse)
“Everything we see fades away. Nature is always the same but nothing remains of it, of what it appears. Our art must give the thrill of its duration, it must make us taste it eternal” said Paul Cézanne.
This is where the process of abstraction began in the art of European painting. This process found its first, fundamental conclusion in the work of Piet Mondrian, who wrote: “Art must look not at the appearance of nature but at what nature really is” – and then added: “What is the particular value of abstract art that distinguishes it from the art of the past and from naturalistic art? That it is a direct, stronger and purer expression of life. What do we mean by life? Not already the repetition of changing events but life itself, that is, the vital energy present in all of us.”
Symmetry vs. asymmetry
In the two ancient frescoes a variety of human figures generates pieces of asymmetrical space within a composition that as a whole tends to a general symmetry:
In the modern painting we observe, on the contrary, an entirely asymmetrical composition within which short sequences of symmetrical space are generated:
Order and disorder
The symmetries generated in Broadway Boogie Woogie are momentary tendencies towards a certain order that never come to govern the entire composition as in La Disputa del Sacramento and La Scuola di Atene. In modern painting the idea of symmetry is only a special case of a natural universe which is entirely asymmetric.
The symmetrical sequences of Broadway Boogie Woogie suggest the genesis of an ordered and measurable space within an infinite context (the virtually endless lines) and this evokes in plastic terms the the human condition (finite and tendentially ordered) within the immeasurable and unordered context of the natural universe.
The unpredictable evolution of existence
The idea of symmetry evokes a center around which things remain identical. Symmetry transforms the variation and diversity inherent in every vital process into an absolute identity and this helps the human being to maintain a certain control over the unpredictable evolution of existence. The idea of symmetry has long been applied in the arts and architecture, especially when man’s position in the natural context was more precarious than it is today.
Both Raffaello and Mondrian were well aware that nature and human existence are a combination of infinite and finite, disorder and order, asymmetrical and symmetrical. However, in the sixteenth century asymmetry was subjected to symmetry, disorder to order, infinite to finite, nature to man and this, as we said, just to increase through culture a weaker position of the human being in the natural context. In the meantime, the situation has changed to the point that today it is man who has to take care of nature.
The natural spiritual
Asymmetry prevails in Broadway Boogie Woogie because modern thought no longer claims to embrace and enclose the natural universe as a whole, but rather to understand it briefly from within through scientific observation and experimentation. The short symmetrical sequences that develop in Broadway Boogie Woogie make measurable, that is, finite and therefore comprehensible, an infinite space such as that which is manifested by the straight lines; straight lines that for Mondrian are a plastic symbol of the infinite extension of nature.
As mentioned, the symmetrical sequences that arise along the lines are a symbol of human thought (finite and measurable space) that emerges for short stretches from the natural universe (the infinite lines).
If in Raffaello’s time through a general symmetry of the whole composition human thought tended to enclose nature once and for all, in Mondrian’s time human thought tends to capture only more or less extended sections of the natural totality (the symmetrical sequences).
The endless lines (suggesting the totality) become finite symmetrical sequences while the lines never stop continuing. This means that in our time human thought (the symmetrical sequences) is generated by nature (the endless lines) and returns to it. Thought or what Mondrian called “the spiritual”, would therefore be one of the possible ways of being of natural energy.
“Through the internalization of what is understood as matter and the externalization of what is understood as spirit – so far too separate! – matter-spirit become a unity.” (Mondrian)
Full and empty space
Reality, as it appears to us, induces us to see the space around us as “full” and “empty” space. We call empty space what is in between visible and tangible things. In reality this is not so. Everything is full and the “void” appears to us as such only because it is formed by energy-matter with a different density from what appears to us as full.
The colors of Broadway Boogie Woogie are white, gray, yellow, red and blue. In this progression we proceed from the lightest (white) to the darkest (blue). White suggests invisible, “empty” space while the lines and yellow, red and blue planes evoke “full” space. White evokes an ethereal space while yellow, red and especially blue express a solid space.
Gray appears as a first hint that from emptiness (white) proceeds towards fullness. Emptiness (white) acquires consistency (gray) and consolidates into full and clearly visible forms (yellow, red and blue). From the ethereal to the more solid; from the indistinct to the definite; from the invisible to the visible.
The most solid and clearly visible area of space is the plane where yellow, red and blue reach unity. The white space to the right of the unified plane has the same proportions as the plane itself. In that way the painting tells us that fullness is equivalent to emptiness, the visible has the same importance as what is for us invisible:
During the elaboration phase of the Neo-Plastic language Mondrian considered white, grey and black as colors symbolizing the spiritual while yellow, red and blue were a plastic symbol of the more lively and contrasting variety of colors present in the real and concrete world.
The use of gray
Mondrian’s use of gray in Broadway Boogie Woogie is also interestingly reflected in Raffaello’s La Disputa del Sacramento.
The passage from the real earthly scene to the metaphysical one that develops in the sky takes place through a semicircle of white-grey clouds in which we can glimpse figures of angels that, compared to the well-defined figures of the earthly characters, appear almost as incorporeal entities interconnected among themselves:
From the central circle with the dove of the Holy Spirit, the space expands towards the sides, first with the four more defined angels showing the Gospels and then with the more ethereal angels at the base of the figures of saints and prophets. What is an angel if not a metaphor for spiritual energy? Through the angels mixed with clouds, the Holy Spirit (solid and well defined in the center) radiates into those wise and holy men.
Here too, therefore, the color white and gray express something ethereal and indistinct, while yellow, red and blue tones express the garments of the earthly characters, that is, something more tangible and concrete. White plays a similar role to gray even higher up, just below the golden canopy, where a trail of clouds can be seen in which incomplete silhouettes of waving angels can be glimpsed, while on the right and left are two groups of three angels each.
Ethereal and solid
In both the ancient fresco and the modern painting white and gray express a more ethereal matter (the so called “void”) than the solid, full-bodied yellow, red and blue.
In Broadway Boogie Woogie some phases of transformation of space appear in gray precisely those in which the process of internalization of space begins (1 and 2), which continues with 3 and then 4 and 5 and reaches the largest extension with 7:
With 8 the gray color again signals a process of metamorphosis.
The phases of transformation from the outside to the inside (from 1 to 7) and then from the inside to the outside (8) are gray because gray is the color closest to white where everything appears indistinct.
Both painters seem to attribute to gray a function of lymph flowing between the more solid parts of the matter or, to put it better, white and gray express energy in a fluid state while yellow, red and blue express the same energy that has become matter.
Genesis of space-time
Mondrian writes: “The straight line is the plastic expression of maximum speed, maximum energy and therefore leads to the abolition of time and space.”
In Broadway Boogie Woogie two opposite and virtually infinite straight lines meet to generate a small square and then move away. The square indicates an instant of measurable space that is manifested in a fraction of time. With the small square space-time is born.
The small squares join in symmetrical sequences which then generate larger areas of color which, in turn, grow in size until they reach their maximum extension with the plane that unites the three primary colors. The increase in extension of space implies a relative increase in the duration of time.
Broadway Boogie Woogie makes visible in plastic terms the birth and progressive consolidation of space-time.
Our space-time is only a part of a universal space-time
Present science thought made us aware that our sense of space-time is only a particular case of a universal space-time (micro and macrocosm) that does not respond to our usual coordinates. Before and after that interval of space-time that we call reality, the true and more complete reality no longer responds to our usual perception of space-time.
Mondrian: “Time is real for us. Beyond time is the true reality, but not our reality. By means of our reality we have to come to the true reality. Hidden more or less by our reality, the true reality is always present. Progress is unveiling of the true reality.”
The notion of space-time that we experience in a completely spontaneous way (to the point that we cannot imagine anything different) is, in truth, only a part of a more extended and alien universal space-time. Particle physics is investigating this extension and not infrequently is faced with events that cannot be described by our current way of thinking.
“That which is outside of time and space is not unreal. If at first it is only an intuitive concept, it becomes real as our intuition becomes purer and stronger. The new plastic is an intuition that has become plastically determined.” (Mondrian)
An elastic space-time
By contemplating infinite straight lines, it is not possible to isolate a finite portion of space that lasts a given interval of time. As mentioned, our sense of space-time manifests itself with the birth of the small squares.
With the symmetrical sequences, the larger planes and finally with the unitary plane space-time reaches the maximum duration and then shrinks and return again to the instantaneous dimension of the small squares and towards straight, monochromatic, endless lines where our notion of space-time dissolves, that is, towards the reality of the infinitely small (microcosm) and the immensely large (macrocosm).
Here we see another fundamental difference between the two ancient frescoes and the modern painting. In the two sixteenth-century works, man and his sense of space-time is the measure of everything; the twentieth-century work, on the other hand, shows the absence of space-time (the infinite lines) from which our space-time is generated (squares / symmetries / planes) which then returns towards the absence of our space-time (the infinite lines, that is, towards the universal space-time of the micro and the macro. We could talk of an “elastic sense” of space-time.
“Through our reality the true reality is revealed”. (Mondrian)
The “supernatural” is still nature
This clearly shows the overcoming of the concept of nature as the only part of phenomena that we perceive (realistic or figurative painting) and its extension to the infinite variety of phenomena that make up the microcosm and macrocosm we are part of. As long as man considered himself the measure of creation, reality had necessarily to coincide with what he is given to see. For a long time and even today we believe that what appears to our senses is all reality and the rest we have defined metaphysical, beyond, supernatural.
Ascertained through the experimental sciences that what we see is only a part of reality, the “beyond” becomes a “here and now”; a reality that we do not see but that is just as real and substantial component of everything we can see. The so called “supernatural” is beyond that part of nature that we can perceive but it is still nature. There is nothing surreal in all this but only a healthy and more current expansion of our idea of reality. How could painting express this broader picture of reality if not abstracting from what appears to us?
“Art must look not at the appearance of nature but at what nature really is. If we wish to fully represent nature, we are forced to look for another plastic expression. And it is precisely out of love for nature and reality that we avoid its natural appearance” (Mondrian)
Leonardo da Vinci
“The senses are terrestrial, reason is beyond them when it contemplates” (Leonardo da Vinci) In this affirmation I see an implicit reference to a vision intuited by reason that goes beyond the most immediate perception of the senses but that is no less real for this. Leonardo said that “painting is innate to the visible” adding, however, in another note that “painting is a mental activity”: it follows that the painter must take into account not only what he sees, that is, what appears to the senses, but also what, according to reason and intuition, nature really is.
Having said that, painting is still a question of of beauty, harmony, equilibrium, pleasure of the eye and the mind.
It is about proportions
Man’s questions about the essence and purpose of the world also arise from our finite dimension compared to an infinite universe. Every religion, philosophy or scientific theory are sophisticated attempts to rebalance that disproportion. In the final analysis it is a question of proportions and what, if not the art of painting, can deal with proportions?
In the past, painting dared to engage with the universal. I believe that once the anomalous wave of certain “contemporary art”, which has been abusing our patience in the recent past, has passed, art will be able to resume its journey towards new, more serene and convincing horizons.
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