Beauty is found in art when there is connectedness to something beyond novelty and originality. This connectedness must exist between the artist and the source of what inspires the particular medium of art.
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.[1]
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.[2]
These quotations, the first by G.K. Chesterton, and the second by C.S. Lewis, illumine an argument concerning art and beauty. This argument would hold that beauty is found in art when there is connectedness to something beyond novelty and originality. This connectedness must exist between the artist and the source of what inspires the particular medium of art.
Jacques Maritain provided a tested definition of beauty in an essay he wrote on the subject. “St. Thomas, who was as simple as he was wise, defined the beautiful as what gives pleasure on sight…. The beautiful is what gives joy, not all joy, but joy in knowledge; not the joy peculiar to the act of knowing, but a joy superabounding and overflowing from such an act because of the object known.”[3] The joy beauty renders does not stem from pure contemplation. Rather, joy which is derived from beauty, flows from the object that is beautiful. Implied here is some value in the object, value the viewer does not impart onto the object.
What causes the value in the beautiful object? What qualities must be present in order for beauty to be perceived? To answer these, Maritain’s essay on art and beauty will be discussed. In addition, a lecture by Dr. Eva T.H. Brann, retired Dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis, will be studied as to the connections between the ability to locate beauty and the roots of modernity found in deviations from Christian theology. Lastly, a visual example of art fitting the definition Maritain posited will be examined, with context provided by the Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari.
The quotations above act as guides. Chesterton likens morality and art in both requiring, “drawing the line somewhere.” The likely meaning here is art needing a paintbrush to mark something out on a blank canvas. Likewise, morality necessitates drawing lines between proper and improper behavior, thereby using said lines to separate.
What may be missed by this conception of morality is a sense of lines connecting instead of separating. If person A invokes invisible lines separating an understanding of morality distinct from person B, problems arise when A stops short of tethering morality A to something person B will comprehend as having sovereignty over differing moralities. Without this tethering, person B can simply deny A is correct. In this case, force, not reason or rectitude is the decider between the two.
Donatello’s ‘David’
Donatello’s David predated by half a century Michelangelo’s version. His slight, boyish David, holding Goliath’s mammoth sword, conveys that he would have needed God’s help in order to accomplish his task. Michelangelo’s statue is far more imposing. He shows confidence in both his faith, and his resourcefulness, downing the fearsome Goliath with but a sling. The youthful impertinence, and stoic courage, found in Donatello and Michelangelo’s respective statues separate them in terms of ethos. Yet, the faith found in both connects the statues to the city of Florence, and to what was once called Christendom.
The Lewis quotation above claims the drive for originality leads to its opposite. What is meant is twofold. First, in desiring originality, there is desire to separate oneself from another. Second, those on this quest realize others have chosen the same path. Those who have separated from others now find themselves conjoined, unintentionally, to those of similar volition. Yet, if one as Lewis claims, tells the truth, something recognizable by more than one person, then originality is the result. Implicit here is truth standing apart from an individual’s volition, and also serving to bind individuals together.
When Marcel Duchamp in 1917 revealed his “Fountain,” he seemingly deferred championing older artistic standards. Duchamp sought to shock. Others followed, outdoing themselves in defiling religious symbols. The desire to be original via shock ends up being tired and trite.
Let us move beyond the quotations to the topics at hand. The Friday evening lecture is an integral part of the Great Books Program at St. John’s College in Annapolis. It was during one such event that the former Dean, Ms. Eva Brann, presented, The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity.[4] Here, she posited that much of modernity stems from deviations of Christian theology.
Discussing modernity, she touched on two considerable veins of thought. First, there is the apprehension of time consisting of a certain forward movement. “We live differently in our time from the way those who came before us lived in theirs. For instance, when we speak of something or even someone as being ‘up to date,’ we are implying that what time it is, is significant, that time marches, or races, on by itself, and we have the task of keeping up with it.”[5] Secondly, modernity appears to imbue the current time with importance. The expectation of some profound revelation matches the auspicious nature of the present. “You might say that we don’t just have a sense of doom or delivery, but that things are, in fact, that way. And yet such a feeling of crisis has marked decades of every century for the last half-millennium. Modernity itself is, apparently, a way of charging the Now with special significance.”[6]
Evan Brann
Keeping this in mind, Ms. Brann claimed in her title, modernity was rooted in perversions of Christianity. Perversions, she clarified, take on two levels of meaning. “Perhaps, then, I should speak less dramatically and say that it is the secularization of certain Christian notions that is at the root of modernity. Nevertheless, I do want to hold on to the stronger word to describe this development, and for the following reasons.”[7] Though using the less mercurial word, “secular,” she nevertheless retained the prerogative to use the more forceful meaning of “perversion” as it related to certain strains of thought. Perversion of the more diabolical sense matched more closely this development. “You all know what the sin of Satan is said to have been. It was resistance to God and rebellion against his creator, and its cause was pride, the sin of sins. Satanic pride, any pride, is, theologically speaking, a perverse will, literally a will that turns things awry. In particular, it overturns the relation of the creature to his creator.”[8] It would seem that Satan’s rebellion is born from his awareness of being created, making him have to answer to his Creator. He also chafed at being more removed from the font of knowledge that is the Son of God. This led him to impart, “…that terrible impatience to Eve in the Garden when he tempts her with the fruit of knowledge and promises ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,’—in Latin, this is the scientia boni et mali.”[9] The deceiver, knowing he is not God, and being embittered by this knowledge, uses knowledge to tempt the first humans, who think they can be gods, but do not know they cannot. The sin then in the Fall, is one less of spite, but of the will’s desires. Both forms of sin have pride in common, as Lewis put it elsewhere, an inherently competitive urge to want more than others, even when the competition is turned inwards.
Three famed men from the dawning of modernity embodied this pride, wrote Ms. Brann, and embodied it unspeakably so: Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, and Francis Bacon. This may strike some as odd, as these men were known for their contributions to the age of science. The tone of their collective writings speak of an undemonstrative ethos. They deferred any notion of pulling a great veil back and shedding light on profound mysteries, or of venturing on epic quests. “They present themselves as merely having found a careful, universally accessible method, which, once they have set it out, can be used by all mankind. All that is needed is the willingness to throw off old prejudices and preoccupations, all that Bacon calls our ‘idols;’ we are to throw off the nonsense of the ages and to apply sober human reason to clearly-defined problems.”[10] This requirement of overthrowing idols evinces rebellion, albeit rebellion revealed in moderate words. Breaking away from traditional wisdom appears more palatable when clothed in language making it seem a reasonable response to prior ages’ superstitions. It is as if language is part of the draw, tempting those who listen with the promise of a new era governed by reason.
However moderate and restrained, theirs were still acts of the most revolutionary rebellion, similar to the diabolical and human revolts above, both involving pride. Unique to these is that they did not consist of spurning God. Ms. Brann posited this group as possessing the belief in a creator of a world that was accessible to reason, and would not refrain from adopting God as He who guarantees the human capacity to be rational. Instead, “Their rebellion is rather against all intermediaries between themselves and God and his nature. They want to be next to him and like him. So they fall to being not creatures but creators.”[11]
Here, two avenues of thought present themselves as parallels to the quotations of Chesterton and Lewis, quotations which typify modernity’s beginnings. The overthrowing of idols of traditional wisdom breaks away from a past intellectual patrimony, in exchange for more verdant vistas of thought made attractive by the language of reason. Hence, a movement forward to something “better.” Additionally, there is rebellion not being directly against the Creator, but rather against His intermediaries, in an effort to not only be as gods, but as creators. In other words, the temptation consists of seeking originality as a sign of humanity’s ascending to godhood. These, Ms. Brann wrote, came about with perversions of Christianity, a faith wherein history moves toward divine revelation, and embraces the belief of the Logos entering time and affecting creation from within, not without. What better way for human beings to seek godhood, but to ascend to these heights by way of creating original works, which deliberately break away from heaven’s designs?
Forms of separation, or fragmentation, proceed from what Ms. Brann wrote concerning modernity’s secular deviation from Christian theology.
First, in abandoning traditional wisdom, human beings are distanced from history. One of the integral foundations of history, especially what is known from Thucydides, is unchanging human nature. This knowledge made non-Greeks relate to the tragedies of Sophocles. When we see tragic characters possessing what we too share, we have a greater connectedness and awareness of what it means to be human. When we reject the past, we distance ourselves from each other.
Second, by aiming efforts in the now solely toward some destination in the future, we sacrifice respect for the past, and unknowingly, the present. We offer ourselves to future generations as untethered beings occupying a mere moment in time, unaware of the value history has imparted to our present. Why ought the future value what we have to offer? Hence, we are separated from others, and from ourselves.
Lastly, the all too human imperative to assume the divine position as a creator leads to forswearing the Creator. This complicates matters when the recognition of value in others and in ourselves derives from a Creator responsible for establishing such value. When only human beings create, the threads binding us to others, and to who we are, fray gossamer thin. If there is no divine spark in human beings, why ought our lives, and anything we create, be valued?
Bearing Eva Brann’s trenchant thinking on modernity’s dawning in mind, and as we cannot alter living in modernity, what options are available that allow for movement to something better, movement which does not overly rely on relentlessly desiring originality? Can beauty in art illumine this path? Jacques Maritain would answer yes.
In an essay entitled Art and Beauty, Maritain elaborated on the definition of beauty he cited from Aquinas. “Every sensible beauty, no doubt, implies a certain delight of the eye or the ear or the imagination: but there can be no beauty unless the mind also is in some way rejoiced.”[12] As Aquinas had previously stated concerning objects of beauty, that they render joy on sight and at being able to be known, Maritain focused on joy and delight being able to be intellectually apprehended. Distinguishing between a potent scent and a lovely hue of color, Maritain wrote only color can rightly be called beautiful. A perfume may serve to stimulate, or prompt reminiscence. Yet, only a beautiful hue is able to be assimilated via, “a sense capable of disinterested knowledge…”[13]
After some exposure to a variety of wines, it is possible to smell the differences between them. There is the light, delicate note of an Oregon Pinot Noir. Likewise, there are the earthy Sangiovese grapes in the best Chianti Classicos. What follows from pleasing scents is often the desire to own, or consume, that which the nose finds attractive. Disinterested thought is far from someone relishing such a libation.
Contrast this with driving on a rural road in the American Midwest, perhaps in Northern Wisconsin. There, the immense, but almost youthfully blue skies rule over vast green farmlands. One sees the softest of white clouds, like so many peacefully grazing sheep. Here is a sense of peace, the peace of one’s youth, far removed from the cares of adulthood. Pleasant memories, even pleasant memories wished for, come to mind. Some may move from these memories to thinking about the setting itself, how such a lovely landscape can promote contemplation of what created such beauty. Gravitating to more theoretical, disinterested thinking occurs because what is being seen, cannot be owned or consumed. Its appreciation does not end with an interested sip. In contrast to scent, which has the power of taking us back, or enticing us forward, a beautiful sight may take us upward.
As Chesterton hinted, nature’s art draws a line, not dividing, but connecting our thoughts about the object of beauty, and the source of beauty. And, in light of what Ms. Brann cited as modernity’s deliberate choices to throw down idols in order to envision a new historical path to an earthly paradise, disinterestedly contemplating beauty bids us to pause together, and evaluate not what we own or consume, but what we share as human beings.
There is more to this aspect of beauty bringing delight to the mind. It does so due to beauty existing as, “essentially a certain excellence or perfection in the proportion of things to the mind.”[14] Maritain listed three requirements as written by St. Thomas. These are: “…integrity, because the mind likes being; proportion, because the mind likes order and likes unity; lastly and above all brightness and clarity, because the mind likes light and intelligibility.”[15] Of these, thinking on the last, brightness and clarity, would be of benefit.
The ancient term, according to Maritain, often associated with this was splendor. It meant a luminescence which was purposed to make something intelligible more so than merely to illuminate. This splendor allowed for the revelation of what Maritain cited Aquinas describing as form, “…the principle determining the peculiar perfection of everything which is, constituting and completing things in their essence and their qualities, the ontological secret, so to speak, of their innermost being, their operative mystery, is above all, the peculiar principle of intelligibility, the peculiar clarity of everything.”[16] Splendor lends itself via the clarity found in illuminating intelligibility, to make known the beauty in the manifestation of what something truly is, accessible as posited earlier, to the eye and mind.
Splendor allows for the revelation of what something is in its utmost clarity. But, that is not the only role that it plays. Splendor serves as a bridge, connecting something of beauty to its creator. “Every form, moreover, is a remnant or a ray of the creative Mind impressed upon the heart of the being created.”[17] There is a sense of movement here, unlike the one seen in modernity’s quest of progress toward a secularized utopia. There is intention and care transferred from a creator to its creation. The beauty visible in a created work reveals the intention and care of the one who made it. Being aware, and able to see such a connection enhances the beauty of a visible work because through it, one may see the source of all beauty. Maritain asserted that God is this source of beauty. “He is beauty itself, because He imparts beauty to all created…every light is ‘a certain irradiation proceeding from the first brightness,’ ‘a participation in the divine brightness’.”[18]
Here are two aspects of beauty from Maritain that address the two perversions of Christianity written of by Ms. Brann: the movement toward an assumedly better secular future, and the drive to ascend to the throne of the Creator within creation, both emphasizing the disintegration of humanity from itself and its source. Beauty cannot be owned or consumed, prompting us to contemplatively share its splendor with others. This splendor is a subtle tell that there exists an origin of this beauty. This origin, when contemplated alongside an object of beauty and other human beings, connects these together, and in doing so, serves to elevate.
It is now time to view a particular work of art, Raphael’s “Madonna of the Goldfinch,” and see the connections which beauty in art makes visible.
The Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote of Raphael’s childhood. Raphael was born on Good Friday, 1483. His father, Giovanni de’ Santi, endeavored to provide his only son with an especially nurturing environment. Giovanni was, “…a painter of no great excellence, and yet a man of good intelligence, well able to direct his children on that good path which he himself had not been fortunate enough to have shown to him in his boyhood.”[19] For his father, Raphael, “…should have his character formed in the house of his parents…”[20] This, coupled, with instruction in art, produced a young man that Vasari would liken to, “gentleness itself…”[21]
Raphael’s inner gentleness translated to the beauty in his art, in the form of a gift to his friend Lorenzo Nasi. On the occasion of Lorenzo’s wedding, Raphael presented him with a painting that came to be known as the Madonna of the Goldfinch. It features Mary resting on a rock, with the infant John the Baptist gifting a bird to a baby Jesus. “In the attitude of each is a certain childlike simplicity which is wholly lovely… the Madonna, likewise, has an air truly full of grace and divinity…”[22]
Here is what can be found in the painting, connections where beauty serves to integrate human beings to themselves, to each other, and to the source of beauty.
In contrast to modernity’s forward movement of breaking from the past toward a secularized utopia, there is an alternate dynamic. The river waters behind the Madonna flow from left to right. This mirrors the smiling infant John’s gift of the goldfinch to Jesus. The goldfinch traces back to an old account when one such bird pulled thorns out from the crucified Christ, and is hence a symbol of His suffering. The red marks on its plumage manifest what Jesus will one day suffer. Jesus looks smilingly at John, accepting his gift with the almost weary eyes of a grown Savior. It is as if He also accepts His own fate. Whereas modernity’s breaking from the past separates moments of time, the images in Raphael’s work do the opposite. Christ is accepting something from the past, the prophecy of the Messiah, while being firmly grounded in the present, as seen by his lovingly touching His mother’s foot. The gift points to the future, but one in which the Messiah will join with human beings in taking up the burden of their sins. The vision is one of connection and integration, binding together time, and those who live within it. As Maritain wrote, beauty that can be contemplated means beauty that can be shared. When this beauty is shared, we are connected to each other as beings that can appreciate together, and we at the very least appreciate value in another person. Going back to Chesterton, the line is drawn, connecting human beings, a line which elevates with its integration.
Modernity, as Ms. Brann wrote, seeks to eliminate intermediaries in between humankind and divinity, not as an act of rejecting God, but as one desiring to ascend to His throne. Creative originality will purportedly make one as a god. Maritain, in writing of beauty’s splendor, emphasizes its ability to point toward a creator. This illuminates the care bestowed by the creator. This care enables human eyes to more fully witness how a created being, by what it is bestowed by its maker, is created and original.
In Raphael’s painting, Mary, graceful and peaceful, is the intermediary between God and humanity. It is through her that God chose to share our life in this vale of tears. It is through her that creations in the form of individual human beings, recognize the care of the Creator in gifting them Himself to redeem their sins. Though she is Christ’s Mother, her connectedness to Him seen by their feet touching, her gaze rests gently on a playful young John. She is extending the love of a familial bond to him, though he is not directly her child. His life, like ours, means something. The red on her garments translates to the passion and sacrifice of her actual child for John and the rest of humanity. In this case, the painting’s beauty involves the intermediary between Creator and creations, connecting both together, and sharing this wisdom with the latter. To borrow from Lewis, if one participates in the truth, though never being an author of oneself, originality is achieved.
Notes:
[1] The Society of G.K. Chesterton, quotations on Art and Literature.
[3] Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, (Providence, Cluny 2020) 23.
[4] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[5] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[6] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[7] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[8] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[9] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[10] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[11] Eva Brann, “The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity,” The Imaginative Conservative.
[12] Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 25.
[13] Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 25.
[14] Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 24.
[15] Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 24.
[16] Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 24.
[17] Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 24.
[18] Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 30
[19] Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, (Digireads, 2020), 232.
[20] Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, (Digireads, 2020), 232.
[21] Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, 234.
[22] Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, 234.
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The image of Donatello’s “David,” uploaded by Patrick A. Rodgers, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license; the image of Raphael’s “Madonna of the Goldfinch” is in the public domain. Both images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.