Art and Science: Part II, Physical Sciences || The Taking and Use of Evidence; With a Botticellian...

The Taking and Use of Evidence; With a Botticellian Case StudyAuthor(s): Martin KempSource: Art Journal, Vol. 44, No. 3, Art and Science: Part II, Physical Sciences (Autumn, 1984),pp. 207-215Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776820 .

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The Taking and Use of Evidence; with a Botticellian Case Study

By Martin Kemp

John Jones avoided becoming pregnant during the past year, for he has taken his wife's birth control pills regularly, and, every man who takes birth control pills avoids pregnancy.'

I have a horrible feeling that many of the arguments used by art histori-

ans-and, I suspect, by most "straight" historians-exhibit logical flaws no less glaring than Wesley Salmon's amusing example of false explanation.

The practice of art history in the English-speaking countries and in much of the Germanic tradition upon which it is dependent has been dominated by a tacit empiricism in which the evidence, visual and written, is allowed to "speak for itself." Or, expressed in terms of a more active process of analysis, the explanation is drawn with systematic rigor out of the evidence. Although I shall in this essay be severely critical of such tacit or overt empiricism, I should make it clear at the outset that I do not regard recent and fashionable European trends as presenting viable alterna- tives-least of all semiotics, structuralism, and post-structuralism, in which arbitrary obscurity all too often mas- querades as philosophical profundity. Rather, I shall be looking to the history and philosophy of science for assistance in articulating the problems.

It seems to me that the most vital current debates about the nature of evidence, hypothesis, and proof are occur- ring in the field of history of science, not least as a consequence of its fertile entanglement with the philosophy of science. From philosophy it draws its sense of what constitutes an explanation with respect to questions of relevance,

causes, conditions, and so forth, and of what constitutes the very basis of those questions. From history it draws, above all, its sense of the historical determina- tion of the conceptual framework within which explanations are framed. Al- though I do not pretend to be more than an amateur in such matters, I am con- vinced that our historical discipline can profit from close attention to the sophisticated unsettling of empiricism that has occurred in the history and philosophy of science. The most cogent lessons are those concerned with the art of historical reconstruction, in which I assume we are all engaged in one way or another, and the explanatory models that under- lie our strategies for reconstruction.

The Interpretative Model

(a) The asking of questions. Much art history assumes that the

process of understanding consists of looking at the visual and other evidence, asking relevant questions, and honestly providing answers of a nonarbitrary kind. But "evidence" in this scheme assumes its status only in relation to presupposed questions; that is, it has special significance only in relation to a given explanatory goal. And the "question" gains its legitimacy from one or a series of expectations or predicates, nor- mally shared by the intended audience, for the answer. A question that is legiti- mate according to one frame of reference is irrelevant in another. A question in Renaissance medicine as to how to rectify a melancholic imbalance in the four humors of the body is no longer a relevant question today, just as it would have seemed absurd in a pre-Freudian age to ask what effect Leonardo's un-

usual infancy exercised on his St. John the Baptist.

The relevance and legitimacy of questions can also vary fundamentally even for a group of contemporaneous questioners examining the same event. The example given by N.R. Hanson concerns a fatal car accident:

Consider how the cause of death might have been set out by a phy- sician as "multiple haemorrhage," by the barrister as "negligence on the part of the driver," by a car- riage-builder as "a defect in the brakeblock construction," by a civic planner as "the presence of tall shrubbery at that turning."2

It is not hard to imagine circumstances in which each explanation is correct, yet equally insufficient. The relevant question for each of the accident investigators depends on the frame of reference of the questioner and in one way or another on the specific audience for the answer.

The nature of the questions we ask, and the kind of evidence we seek, also depends on a sense of value; that is to say, what we take as important and significant in the intellectual and aesthetic endeavor in which we are engaged. In the history of art, our questions will be determined by our image of what is important in the process of making a work of art, and even more fundamentally what is important in "art" itself.3 If, for example, we believe that art is essentially a series of signs com- municative of social systems, our most valued evidence will be that concerned with the action of art in its social context.

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(b) Explanations and causes. All historical analysis, even that in a

predominantly descriptive mode, pre- supposes some causal relationship (in the broadest sense) between the evidence and the work of art. Yet the nature of that relationship and the implied mechanisms of causation are seldom examined, and, indeed, rarely acknowledged. This is extremely dan- gerous. The necessary dependence of causal explanation on the standpoint that frames the question gives the term "cause" a multivalent quality. This cre- ates great, if generally unrecognized, problems for the historian.

To illustrate the problems I shall use an example close to that of Hanson. I go out of my house and start my car. Why has it started? Because I have turned my key in the ignition lock. But is that a sufficient explanation? Is it really a "cause" at all? My wife comes out of the house and asks me why I have started the car. I answer that I have to go to the University to pick up a book I have forgotten. My son, who is beginning to interest himself in such things, asks why turning the key makes the engine "broom" into life. My next-door neigh- bor, whom I needed to ask the previous morning to help me push the car to get it started, asks why it has started this time. Is it because I fitted new spark plugs? Each question is concerned with causes, yet each has an answer of a different kind, and each requires for the purpose of the answer that the other causes are given or "fixed." There is also an almost infinite set of necessary conditions- that I own a car, that I left my book behind, that I filled the car with petrol, that air and petrol constitute an explo- sive mixture, and so on.

In relation to historical inquiry we may say that there are three factors involved in the network of processes leading to a particular event (taking a work of art as an "event" for the pur- poses of the argument). First, there is a series of enabling conditions, which can be extended indefinitely towards factors of increasing generality and distance. Second, there are the immediate, circumstantial causes that are apparent in the close-up story of the event's occur- rence. And third, there are the contin- gent factors that are not conditions or causes but exercise some shaping influence on the event. It might seem as if the immediate causes have a special status in this network of processes, a specially objective value. But two arguments weaken this apparent strength. As I have already argued, the notion of relevant evidence is dependent on standpoint. And the immediate causes, however discerned, may be historically triv- ial, in that alternative causes could have

led to the same result; e.g., patron x might have commissioned the fresco rather than patron y. In this way the cause may not be genuinely necessary, whereas the enabling conditions may well be utterly necessary.4

Still, it is not unreasonable to argue that the pattern of immediate, circumstantial causes represents the only prac- tical starting point for the historian; that our first job is to undertake a "rational reconstruction" of the specific circumstances of the making of the work of art, and then to work outwards from there.

(c) Reconstruction and the explanatory model.

Our reconstruction will be dependent on the finite and fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence relating to all the potential questions. It will be subject to the inherent limitations of our conceptual apparatus in holding in simulta- neous and proportional play a series of interlocking variables. And it will be circumscribed to a greater or lesser degree by the frames of reference established by existing explanatory models.

An explanatory model is absolutely inevitable and necessary, and will play a proportionately greater foreground role the more the evidence is incomplete. The example I shall use is drawn from biolo- gy. The giraffe is an animal that has a long neck and can be observed to feed off high branches.5 We explain the length of its neck as an evolutionary response to problems in food supply. The long neck has enabled the animal to outstrip all those shorter animals that compete for lower grazing. Yet there is no independent evidence of shortages of lower grazing, nor does the fossil record adequately tell the evolutionary story. Rather, the explanation is based upon a general evolutionary model that has resulted from a long series of individu- ally incomplete matches between the evidence and the theory.

Behind every explanatory model that claims to place different pieces of evidence in significant conjunction lies a theory that is used to explain their interaction. (I am deliberately saying that the theory is used to explain rather than that it explains.6) We may feel that it is possible to demonstrate the logical relationship between two factors indepen- dently of a theory of how they act. Take the statement, "if you smoke you run a high risk of contracting lung cancer." It may seem that this can be demonstrated statistically, without a theory of action. But for the statement to have its intended significance, it is assumed that smoking does have an effect on our metabolism, even if the mechanism is unknown. A counterassumption might be that people who succumb to the

temptations of smoking are tempera- mentally disposed to contract lung cancer. In which case we could reasonably say that if you develop cancer, you are also likely to be a smoker, which is no less in keeping with the statistics but quite different in sense from the original statement.

Faced with all these problems- incomplete circumstantial evidence, the dependence of questions on context, the dependence of causal explanations on standpoint, and the dependence of interpretative models on theory-the historian should become sharply aware of how crude and potentially arbitrary his or her tools are both in relation to the infinitely dense web of historical cir- cumstance and in confronting the slip- pery ambiguity of works of art. It should be the historian's duty to be aware of the status of the tools he or she is using.

Evidence in the Practice ofArt History It is relatively easy to see the relevance of the foregoing remarks for some of the great, traditionally imponderable questions of art history. If we look, for example, at the invention of linear perspective, a topic that has exercised the atten- tions of our guest editor and myself to no little degree, we can readily see how fundamental assumptions about the nature of perspective itself affect what will be considered to be relevant evidence. If perspective is regarded as a means of replicating basic features in the process of perception, the evidence is likely to be drawn from the cognate fields of progress in science and systematic realism in art. On the other hand, if perspective is essentially an artificial convention that has no inherently superior status in the representation of nature, the salient factors will be those conventions and systems of society which predispose its members towards a particular, subjective vision.

But it may be argued that such questions belong to an area of theoretical and aesthetic speculation that lies outside the more concrete historical goals of documentation and analysis that prop- erly constitute the discipline of art history. It may be claimed that a legal document relating to, say, a fifteenth- century painting will not raise any such theoretical issues. The document, let us imagine, provides the name of the artist, the identity of the patron, and the date, size, price, and location of a surviving work of art. Surely these pieces of information relate directly and uncompli- catedly to the origins of the work. In one obvious sense, this is true; but with respect to interpretation, the document either as a whole or in its details means nothing as it stands. If, to take an extreme stance, the essential features of

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a work of art-its "significant form" or expresssive value-are quite independent of the temporal, accidental factors of its time and place, the document will have no relevant value. But even if we take a more moderate position, we see that the relevance of the patron, to take one example, will be apparent only in the context of an interpretative model that assigns patronage an explicit or implicit role of a formative kind in the chain of causes leading to the creation of the work. The fact that the document sets the work of art in the context of fifteenth-century Florence will not be of significance unless we assume that there were salient factors in Florence that could affect the characteristics of that work.

The standpoint of the questioner determines where in the causal net the evidence is sought. The same document or same work of art can provide quite different yields for differently equipped questioners. The same documentation of a British country house, for instance, will yield different information for a historian who aims to analyze the house within the context of stylistic trends of the nineteenth century than for someone concerned with understanding the plan of the house as a response to functional and social considerations. This interpretative variety provides, thank goodness, a source of the inexhaustible richness essential for the health of our subject.

Faced with the standpoint-dependence of what constitutes relevant evidence or even what the same evidence means, how can the historian determine what is legitimately relevant in a given situation? I should like to begin to give a hypothetical answer through a rather personal case study.

Reason and Revelation in Botticelli's "St. Augustine" Such was to have been the title of an Art Bulletin-style article upon which I was engaged in the early 1970s. It developed as far as a relatively final draft approaching some 10,000 words, to say nothing of two substantial appendixes and the expected scholarly millstone of Panofskian footnotes. The reason it has never troubled the no-doubt relieved editors of the Art Bulletin was that I began to harbor ill-formed but insistent doubts about the whole enterprise. My concern was to illuminate the meaning of the fresco in the Ognissanti (Fig. 1) in its context in late fifteenth-century Flor- ence. The fresco contained enough enticing clues to trigger a seductive exploration of Renaissance theology and philosophy. The body of potential "evidence" was enormous, but different strands of that evidence pertained to different interpretative models-like

Fig. 1 Sandro Botticelli, The Vision of St. Augustine, Florence, Chiesa d'Ognissanti (before the removal of sixteenth-century framing devices).

those of the accident investigations in Hanson's car crash-and the problem became not choosing among them, or even accepting all as valid in different ways, but the validity of the exercise itself. How was I to validate evidence for relevance and irrelevance to the work in question? Let us look at the problems in some detail.

Botticelli's fresco, restored following the flood of 1966, is now in the Refec- tory of the Ognissanti in Florence. The St. Augustine and its comparison piece, the St. Jerome by Domenico Ghirlan- daio (Fig. 2), originally flanked the cen- tral opening in the screen (tramezzo) of the Church.'

For someone like myself, interested in the interplay of science, thought, and art, the fresco possessed obvious attrac- tions. The Saint is set in a scholar's study in a manner that had been reintro-

duced to Italy by Northern examples, particularly the Jan van Eyck St. Jerome then owned by the Medici. He has been equipped with an armillary sphere, geometrical treatise, and weight-driven clock. And he is obviously involved in weighty intellectual matters.

The breakthrough for the interpretation of the subject came when I read Helen Robert's 1959 article on Carpac- cio's St. Augustine (previously regarded as St. Jerome) painted for the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavone.8 She showed that Carpaccio had illustrated a spurious letter from Saint Augustine to Saint Cyril, which probably originated in the thirteenth century and was available in Italian versions in the fifteenth. In the letter, "Augustine" tells that he was intending to compose a treatise on the nature of the eternal bliss of souls in paradise. Having reached an impasse in

Fall 1984 209



Fig. 2 Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome, 1480, Florence, Chiesa d'Ognissanti (before the removal of sixteenth-century framing devices).

his meditations, he decided to write to Jerome for advice. But, at that very moment, Jerome died in distant Bethle- hem (A.D. 420), and his soul was ascending to the eternal heaven. Augus- tine's study was suddenly flooded with light and "an ineffable fragrance."

These manifestations were accompa- nied by the voice of "Saint Jerome," telling of his death and rebuking Augus- tine for his ambitious and inevitably futile attempt to codify and define the infinite mysteries of heaven. Jerome explained that it was impossible for earthly man to obtain a rational comprehension of paradise through his intellect: "Immensa qua misura metieris?" While on earth we should accept our fixed limitations. What we can do is to follow, with patient resolve, the guaranteed

path to salvation through the deeds pre- scribed by Christian dogma.

Nevertheless, all was not lost for Augustine's treatise. The disembodied voice of Jerome subsequently answered many of Augustine's questions about these infinite and elusive truths-on the basis of his newly privileged status in heaven. The point of the letter is that only through divine intercession can man be made aware of such celestial matters. And only through divine intercession was Augustine made aware of the essential "otherness" of these truths and of their inaccessibility to the intellect. Augustine accordingly becomes a divinely favored intermediary between the world of the spirit and the world of the flesh-a clear illustration of the popular medieval doctrine that "the

Fig. 3 Sandro Botticelli, St. Augustine, detail showing light rays and armillary sphere.

. . . ............ i:i--~:: iiisr~: ':'?':?''"':":": D Y::: --

Fig. 4 Jacomo da Fabriano, The Vision of St. Augustine, Rome, Vatican, MS. Reg. lat., 1882, fol. 1.

Christian on his knees can see further than the philosopher on tip-toe."

To support her arguments, Roberts drew attention to the illustration of this episode in Benozzo Gozzoli's Saint Augustine cycle in San Gimignano. Although she illustrated the Ognissanti St. Augustine, she was reluctant to identify it as the same subject, despite the fact that the visual evidence seems con- clusive (given the accepted interpretative model for narrative expression in Renaissance art). The Saint has stopped writing on a single sheet of paper and stares enrapturedly at the source of golden light rays diverging from the border of the fresco beside the armillary sphere (Fig. 3). The identification of those rays as the light of Jerome has been confirmed by Meiss and Light-

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bown.9 If any further support is needed, I can produce a manuscript illumination by Jacomo da Fabriano (Fig. 4), in which Jerome's light is similarly charac- terized as a bundle of rays, and a small version of Botticelli's fresco attributed to Bartolommeo di Giovanni (Fig. 5).1o The author of the derivative painting has understood in general terms that Botticelli's Saint is undergoing a visionary experience, but has felt it necessary to give the vision a less ineffable presence by translating the source into a divine child who, in keeping with a medieval tradition, almost certainly represents the soul of Jerome." For good measure, Lightbown has neatly suggested that the time shown by the clock-the end of the twenty-fourth hour-corresponds in the Italian system to the setting of the sun, which is also the time given in the spurious letter.12

So far so good. But the letter does pose problems regarding the meaning of the fresco-and we have all been brought up to think of Botticelli's art as deeply meaningful. The letter originated from a specific medieval, probably Ben- edictine context, and was one of many such stories fabricated to illustrate the superiority of revelation to reason. For instance, one of the predelle of the San Barnaba Altarpiece (Fig. 6) illustrates the legend of the child who was attempting to empty the sea into a hole in the sand. When the Saint dryly remarked on the futility of this exercise, the child answered that it was no more hopeless than Augustine's attempt to achieve a rational understanding of the Trinity.13 In the St. Augustine fresco, that antira- tional message stands in sharp contrast to the equipment in the Saint's study.

The equipment of his study is notably Renaissance in kind and possesses a clear internal coherence. The armillary sphere, geometrical treatise, and clock are entirely suitable tokens of the intellectual life of a Renaissance studiolo or scrittoio. Comparable paraphernalia are richly illustrated in the intarsia decorations of Federigo da Montefel- tro's studiolo together with other humanist devices relating to the liberal arts as interpreted in the Renaissance.14 The internal coherence of the symbols in the painting is clear. Time, geometry, and celestial orbits were the essential elements in astronomical speculation. If we want to illustrate the intellectual context in which these symbols could acquire a potent meaning, we can look towards the philosophy of Cusanus, for whom such creations and inventions as the astrolabe are infinitely perfectible realizations of the true sciences of the intellect:

Creat anima sua inventione nova

Fig. 5 Bartolommeo di Giovanni (?), A Vision of St. Augustine, formerly Heim & Co., London.

inventione instrumenta, ut dis- cernat et noscat: ut Ptolemaeus astrobalum et Orpheus lyram et ita de multis. Negue ex aliquo extrinsico inventores crearunt illa. Sed ex propria mente. Explicarunt enim in sensibili materia concep- tum.'5

But, this is already to start weaving

the loosely contextual net of which I am now so wary. At the time, under the influence of a nasty attack of Art Bulle- tinitis, I had no doubts about how to proceed to explicate the meaning of the fresco in the light of the tension between the medieval narrative and the Renais- sance depiction. I wrote:

In any attempted resolution of this

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Fig. 6 Sandro Botticelli, St. Augustine and the Child with a Spoon, predella, the San Barnaba Altarpiece, tempera on panel, 20 x 38 cm. Florence, Uffizi

problem, the celestial sciences which are represented by the symbols must be examined [my later italics] in a number of possible contexts: in the context of Augus- tine's own philosophy; in the light of Renaissance interpretations of Augustine; and in the contempo- rary perspectives of Renaissance cosmology. In examining each context, four closely related philosophical questions must be borne in mind. To what extent was knowledge of God and his domain considered inaccessible to human comprehension-relatively or absolutely? How could man be made aware of the nature of this inaccessibility-by reason or revelation? Was it nevertheless believed that man could transcend this intellectual limitation in order to gain some degree of awareness of true divinity? And, if so, by what means-by the active reason of philosophy or by the passive recep- tion of divine revelation?

This now reads like a caricature of the kind of research that takes as its starting point the index of Patrologia latina and goes on to achieve the kind of impres- sively footnoted and numbing results with which we are all too familiar. How- ever, nothing daunted, I embarked on a steady trawl of what I assumed to be the relevant theological waters-including Augustine, Aquinas, Cusanus, Ficino (of course, for Botticelli!), the Umiliati of the Ognissanti (who espoused the Dominican rule in 1436), Savonarola, and not a few others. A reasonable measure (reasonable at least for an art historian) of theological erudition was duly marshaled. But it proved nothing other than the variety and subtlety of Chris- tian philosophy in demonstrating, on the one hand, the incompatibility and, on the other hand, the compatibility of

rational science and received revelation, with all shades of opinion between.

The question of the theological stance(s) implied by the narrative and symbols in Botticelli's painting gives the material I was examining a relevance- but it is a particular kind of relevance that depends on the question and its implicit explanatory model. When the relevant evidence becomes so wide that it cannot be brought to bear in a nonarbitrary way in formulating an explanation, we may suspect that the question (and model) is at fault.

Perhaps we can improve our general question, by asking a subset of more specific questions that lie within its scope. This subset consists of studying what are judged to be salient factors in the immediate historical context of the work of art. I can list them as follows (in no particular order and not necessarily exhaustively):

(a) the representation of this episode in art.

(b) the image of Saint Augustine in Renaissance art, with special reference to the scholar-in-his- study genre.

(c) representations of Saint Augus- tine in Botticelli's art.

(d) the intellectual stance of the artist himself.

(e) the intellectual stance of the patron.

(f) the intellectual stance of a puta- tive theological "adviser" or iconographer in the circle of the patron or orbit of the Umiliati.

(g) the relationship of Botticelli's St. Augustine to the St. Jerome of Ghirlandaio.

All these questions fall into categories that are established elements in current art historical analysis. And there is no doubt that relevant evidence can be found for almost all of them. The excep- tion is (d), the artist's own stance, for

which no reliable primary evidence survives outside the paintings themselves. If we try to read the artist's stance from the paintings and then require this stance to explain those paintings, we are engaged in an entirely circular pursuit.

I have neither the space nor the incli- nation to enter into a comprehensive analysis of these questions, but some notes may be helpful in evaluating the kind of evidence they produce and the status of that evidence with respect to its relevance to the causal web.

(a), the vision of Augustine in Renais- sance art, has been discussed by Rob- erts, and I have added two further examples. But what is the point of looking at those other versions? Is it simply to identify the subject of Botticelli's fresco? If so, the Benozzo Gozzoli would probably suffice. Is it to compare Botti- celli's power as a narrative artist with his predecessors and successors, with regard to figural expression, handling of light, and so forth? Such an aspiration is fair enough but is circumscribed by the limits of this comparative approach. Is it to infer that Botticelli derived inspira- tion from any of the earlier examples? This is a quite different kind of question, and the answer can radically affect our view of the causal web. If Botticelli had, say, simply been adapting the Benozzo or Jacomo da Fabriano image as the way to show Saint Augustine in his study-or relying on that standby of desperate art historians, a "lost proto- type"-all the other questions could either fall or be quite altered in relevance. Let us, for the moment, assume that we are using the examples simply to confirm the subject, and no more.

(b), concerning the image of Saint Augustine, is a valid general question to which Botticelli's painting can contribute as a piece of relevant evidence. We can look towards a range of representations of Augustine, using Kaftal's invaluable compendium as a starting point."6 We shall find that the most comprehensive view of Augustine in paint is the cycle by Benozzo Gozzoli at San Gimignano. We shall notice that no less than nine of the seventeen fields are devoted to preconversion episodes in Augustine's life, emphasizing his humanist role as a Ciceronian rhetorician and Platonic philosopher rather than as a "medieval" saint. The attitudes that lead to this particular emphasis can be illustrated by reference to Petrarch's absorption of Augustine's late-classical humanism into the Renaissance, to Fici- no's admiration for the Platonizing Augustine, and so on. They can also be related to the humanist admiration for all the Latin Fathers of the Church, Jerome most especially. This general image of the humanist Fathers can in

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turn be seen behind the rise of the scholar-in-his-study genre, the history of which was an ever-growing section of my unpublishable article.

But does the answer to the general question necessarily contribute any- thing to our understanding of Botticelli's image? If his image is typical, we need not necessarily say more than that, unless we deliberately want to use his painting as a door into this wider problem. If it is atypical, the relevant answer lies elsewhere, and no amount of beguil- ing Petrarchism is going to help.

(c), representations of Augustine by Botticelli, does seem to yield some specific if limited results. His standard portrayal shows Augustine as a contempla- tive or writing bishop, generally wearing his bishop's cape over his canon's habit.17 The image of Augustine Writing in His Cell in The Metropolitan Museum of Art deviates from this by replacing the canon's habit with that of an Augus- tinian friar. Lightbown's argument that this painting was destined for a church or patron of the Augustinian hermits-- Santo Spirito was their only convent in Florence-makes a good working hypothesis. The correct dress for Augus- tine had been hotly disputed between the Canons Regular and Hermits-a controversy laid to rest only by a Bull of Sixtus IV in 1484.18

This explanation for the costume of the Metropolitan St. Augustine does seem to have a different status from the vague hypotheses discussed so far. I shall later suggest why this may be. For the moment, we may note that it does not help much with the Ognissanti St. Augustine, whose costume is unexcep- tional if somewhat voluminous and dis- orderly. But it does have implications for our interpretative model, since the nature of his costume seems in one case to have been a quite specific response to an interorder dispute and fits with a model in which patronage plays a key role in such matters.

This leads naturally to (e), the patron's stance. Here, there are two main types of possible patronage: that from within the church and order; or that from private, lay persons. The Ognissanti was the Vespucci family church, and the cornice above Augus- tine's head bears a Vespucci shield. The association of the shield with the original surface of the fresco is less secure than we might wish, since it is painted a secco and could conceivably date from the transfer of the fresco from the tramezzo in the 1560s.19 In either case, however, it provides reasonable evidence to confirm Vasari's statement that the Vespucci were the fresco's original patrons, and Horne makes out at least a circumstantial case for the Amerigo

Vespucci branch of the family being directly involved.20

This association opens the floodgates. Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, Amerigo's uncle and tutor, was a member of the Ficino circle and is known to have been involved in the education of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, perhaps Botti- celli's most important patron.21 He later took holy orders as a Dominican at San Marco and became a dedicated Savona- rolan. If we add the intellectual associations of the young Amerigo-he was a little under thirty by the probable date of the fresco-the possibilities enlarge even further. Amerigo's studies in cos- mography and cosmology are said to have benefited from close contact with Paolo Toscanelli, a scientist associated with Cusanus, but whose documented achievements are as elusive as his influence is claimed to be ubiquitous.22 Interest in the Ptolemaic science of astronomy (and astrology) is a common thread in these associations, and it is very tempting to embark on a thor- oughgoing investigation of Ptolemaic science and humanist science in general in the Vespucci orbit. If we do so we shall find no shortage of material with which to provide a general background for the Renaissance fascination with armillary spheres, geometrical motifs, and so forth. There is no doubt that this is relevant in response to a question such as: "What factors in the intellectual circles of the patron would have been favorable to the depiction of Augustine with these symbols of cosmological science? But this is not the same as: "Why did Botticelli include these symbols?" or "What was it that caused their inclusion?" The answer to these two questions relies on our interpretative model of the relevant causes in the making of a work of art. How is content determined and by whom?

(f), the question of a "theological adviser," brings the foregoing questions into a focus that is at once more concrete and more elusive. It is more concrete in that it assumes an actual mechanism for the establishing of content; it is more elusive in that almost no independent evidence survives of the activities of "iconographers" or "programmers" in fifteenth-century religious art. If the advice was oral, the lack of such evidence is not surprising, but neither does it give cause for confidence.

Who could our hypothetical adviser have been? Giorgio Antonio Vespucci obviously springs to mind. Or could it have been one of the resident Umiliati? Lightbown suggests that it was the Umiliati's espousal of the Benedictine rule, "which lays great stress on study," that is "probably the ultimate explanation of the frescoes."23 For reasons that

should now be abundantly clear, I do not like this form of argument, and do not understand the status of an "ultimate explanation" in historical causation.

Even if we suppose the existence of a programmer for Botticelli's fresco, it is impossible to know how far to go. Is it a question of explaining the "Cusanian" symbols as admired examples of Renais- sance learning? Is it a question of their inclusion as symbols of the cosmological speculations disparaged as futile by the spurious letter? And does this dispar- agement reflect late fifteenth-century tides of antipaganism as manifested most spectacularly by Savonarola, whom at least one Vespucci was to follow? Or is it a matter of a sophisticated balance between reason and revelation, such as that struck by Aquinas and Ficino? We can undoubtedly invent interpretative models to cope with each of these questions, but they seem to me to be equally arbitrary in that they lack concrete support.

(g), which concerns the relationship with Ghirlandaio's St. Jerome, has not been left to last because it is least useful, but because it is the one factor that is not primarily internal to Botticelli and the painting. It does provide an indica- tion of the likely date for the St. Augus- tine, since Ghirlandaio has dated his fresco 1480, and Botticelli's painting is likely to have been painted around the same time. It also provides a rationale for Botticelli's narrative, since Augus- tine's vision of Jerome associates the Saints even more closely than they were already as contemporaneous Church Fathers. Indeed, since the rediscovered inscription above Jerome speaks of him as a lamp that radiates the darkness of the earth, no more explanation of Botti- celli's narrative may be strictly necessary.24

Jerome's Eyckian room contains the expected clutter of an ecclesiastical study, but it also contains two inscrip- tions that seem to call for explanation. The one on the upper shelf is in Hebrew, and the one on the lower in Greek. They obviously refer to Jerome's activities as a translator of the Bible. But do the texts actually say something important in guiding our interpretation? The Greek text-"O God have mercy upon me / According to your great pity"-is taken from Psalm 50 with two minor abbrevia- tions.25 The Hebrew text, incompletely legible, is more remarkable. The first two lines contain the names of two angels, very obscure in the Christian tradition, Kemuel and Uzziel. The second two lines imply an appeal for help: "I still call out in anguish / My lament is troubling me."26

The general nature of the Hebrew inscription is recognizable as cabalistic, Fall 1984 213



and could provide a motive for a further intellectual excursion-this time into the realms of Christian cabalism in the late fifteenth century, and Pico della Mirandola in particular.27 Again there will be a problem in knowing where to stop, and, indeed, in knowing whether we should have started at all.

It is possible to propose an explanatory model that means we need not start. It runs as follows: Ghirlandaio wanted some real Hebrew writing to refer to Jerome's linguistic skills. A cabalistic amulet, obtained or borrowed for the purpose, provided a suitable source, and was laboriously, if not wholly legibly, inscribed on a suitable scroll. At least this model has a whiff of reality about it.

There is a further element in Botticel- li's fresco that may relate to its content. Amongst the scribble-writing on the geometrical treatise are two lines of reasonably legible script marked by a cross (Fig. 7). The reading favored by Meiss and Lightbown is: "Dove fra martino e scappato / e dove andato e fuori della porta / al prato." This can be translated as, "Where is Brother Mar- tin; he has rushed away. And where has he gone; he is outside the Porta al Prato" (which is the nearest city gate to the Ognissanti). For Lightbown this is "perhaps caught from a conversation going on between two of the brethren below the painter's scaffold."28

But an alternative reading may be suggested: "Dofis Sa Martino e cha- shato / e dove andato / e fuor dela porta / al prato." Although we do not know of a collapsed (cascato) house (domus) of San Martino, we do know that there was a convent and church of San Martino outside the Porta al Prato, later demol- ished during the siege in 1529. This was San Martino a Mugnone, generally known as "outside the Porta al Prato" to distinguish it from San Martino alla Scala.29 This at least has the advantage of containing a concrete reference, in contrast to the novelistic idea of an overheard conversation. And it occa- sioned for me a search of the archive of San Martino. I did discover a document from 1471, concerning the rent of a quarry beside the monastery, a transac- tion that involved the notary Ser Amer- igo Vespucci, the explorer's grandfath- er.30 But what would any such link between the Vespucci and San Martino fuori della Porta al Prato tell us? We simply do not have any reasonable interpretative model here, since the inscription seems to be unparalleled in type. Its small size and insignificant placing suggests that it was not intended for general consumption. It is so odd that it is rather like trying to explain a giraffe's neck with no evidence about tall trees. Our

Fig. 7 Sandro Botticelli, St. Augustine, detail showing geometrical treatise and clock.

explanations will necessarily have the status of guesses.

Conclusion Where does this leave us with respect to the case study and, more generally, in relation to historical explanation?

I suggested that one element, the explanation of the friar's habit of the Metropolitan St. Augustine, possesses a particularly secure status. Why is this? It is because: (a) we have an element of control-namely, the normal portrayal; (b) we have an individual feature that precisely matches the evidence with no redundancy, insufficiency, or special pleading. In this case we may say our interpretative model-namely, that the mode of representation responds to the requirements of the patron-can be confirmed. It is, of course, rare for such a neat equation to be possible, given the erratic survival of evidence. And in the case of less limited and less specific considerations, the relevant questions can never elicit tightly precise answers.

Do we, therefore, throw up our hands in despair? I think not, provided that we recognize what we are doing. At each stage of our historical explanation we should ask a series of questions about the positions towards which we are pro- gressing:

(a) What is the simplest sufficient, material explanation that is consistent both with the facts and the kind of explanatory model which can be confirmed in other contexts?

In the case of the visionary subject matter of Botticelli's fresco, this mini- mally sufficient explanation would be that Botticelli or the patron knew the story of Augustine's vision and took advantage of it to forge a special link with Jerome. In the case of the cosmological tools, the explanation would be that they have been included as approved and carefully conceived refer-

ences to the kind of study regarded as appropriate in Renaissance studioli in general and in the patron's intellectual circles in particular. Their inclusion can be credited to either artist or patron.

(b) Does the explanation relate to a conceivable mechanism in the process of creation?

In the case of the content of St. Augustine, this would mean asking how the artist can have gained access to the concepts being employed. The more the- ologically sophisticated the concepts become, the more an adviser becomes necessary, and the more the mechanism becomes difficult to envisage. In other words, the historical reconstruction in terms of concrete processes becomes increasingly incredible in this instance. That is why I would not ultimately favor regarding the fresco as a conscious dia- logue between reason and revelation.

(c) Is the explanation intellectually sufficient and satisfying in explaining the depth and reso- nance of the work?

This criterion will often work against the other two, and quite rightly so. There is no guarantee that the materi- ally simplest explanation is correct. There is an intuitive, almost "aesthetic" element in the judgment to be made of how far to go beyond the minimal explanation. We may feel that the superb characterization of Augustine's response to the vision precisely captures the sense of profound intellectual insight that Augustine was seeking in his studies, and that the symbols reinforce the sense of high difficulty involved in his meditations. This was certainly apparent to Vasari, whose intuitive response is worth quoting: "[Botticelli] demonstrated in the head of the Saint that profound cognition and sharp subtlety which is only present in persons of wis- dom who continually devote their thoughts to the examination of topics of the highest order and greatest difficulty.31 In this view, we may suggest that Botticelli's fresco is a brilliant response to the narrative and emotional tone of the letter, without necessarily exhibiting a full awareness of the theological ten- sions involved.

When we take his kind of interpretative step, however, we should be fully conscious of what we are doing and of the somewhat nebulous and undemon- strable part of the causal net we are attempting to reconstruct-namely, the artist's own intuitions and thoughts. We should also be aware of what we are doing when we step into the general, "enabling" context or broad "causal" background of events leading up to the work of art; we must be careful not to give our "findings" in each of these areas a status within inappropriate

214 Art Journal



explanatory models.

Since I began by expressing the hope

that the history and philosophy of science might help to articulate the problems, perhaps I might end with a quotation from a prominent author in this field, Larry Laudan:

It is the historian's intellectual-- even moral--obligation not only to be self-conscious about the kinds of norms he is applying, but also to see to it that he is utilising the best available set of norms.32

Notes 1 W.C. Salmon, Statistical Explanation and

Statistical Relevance, Pittsburgh, 1971, p. 33. I should like to acknowledge the assistance of Peter Clark of the Department of Logic and Metaphysics, St. Andrews University, in mar- shaling material for this opening section.

2 N.R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, Cam- bridge, 1958, p. 54.

3 For a parallel discussion of the interaction of history and philosophy of science, see: L. Lau- dan, Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth, Berkeley, 1977, pp. 155 ff.

4 B.C. van Frassen, The Scientific Image, Oxford, 1980, p. 114, for the necessity and otherwise of causes. This question is ap- proached from a different angle by T. Puttfark- en, "Causes and Circumstances," Art History, IV, 1981, pp. 479-83.

5 This example is adapted from van Frassen (cited n.4), p. 107.

6 Ibid., pp. 100-101, for the relationship between theory and explanation.

7 The main sources for the history of the fresco are: G. Vasari, Le Vite de piih eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568), ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols., Florence, 1905-15, III, p. 311, and (in the life of Ghirlandaio) p. 258; H. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, painter of Florence, London, 1908, pp. 67-73; M. Meiss, The Great Age of Fresco, London, 1970, pp. 169-70; and R. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli. Life and Work, 2 vols., Lon- don, 1978, I, pp. 49-52, and II, pp. 38-40. Lightbown's catalogue entry is substantially acceptable. I differ from him in reading the condition of the fresco. The present surface corresponds to that part of the fifteenth- century surface remaining after the deliberate removal of the sixteenth-century framing devices following the 1966 flood. I am illustrat- ing them in their preflood state.

8 H. Roberts, "St. Augustine in 'St. Jerome's Study': Carpaccio's Painting and Its Legen- dary Source," Art Bulletin, XII, 1959, pp. 283-97.

9 Meiss (cited n. 7), pp. 169-70 (more hesi- tantly); and Lightbown (cited n.7), I. pp. 50- 51.

10 For Jacomo's illumination, see: P. d'Ancona,

La Miniature Italienne, trans. E. Poirier, Paris and Brussels, 1925, p. 67, n. 3. Bartolommeo's painting was in the possession of Heim and Co. of London in 1970. Its present location is not known to me.

11 Jerome is portrayed as a baby in a Cardinal's hat in a manuscript illumination of Augustine's "second vision" of Jerome (Walters Art Gal- lery, MS. 304), illus. Roberts (cited n.8), pl. 14.

12 It may be noted that in numbering the clock, Botticelli has allowed for only three of the four hidden divisions on the right, and has later jumped from XVIIII to XXI to finish on the desired XXIIII.

13 Lightbown (cited n.7), II, p. 67, no. B52; and J. and P. Courcelle, Iconographie de Saint

Augustin.: Les Cycles du XVe siecle, Paris, 1969, pp. 100-101.

14 L. Cheles, "The Intarsia Decorations of Feder- igo da Montefeltro's Urbino Studio: an Icono- graphic Study," Mitteilungen des Kunsthisto- rischen Instituts in Florenz, XXVI, 1982, pp. 1-46. See, also: A. Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria: "As well as [books] it is not unseemly to have an instrument for drawing up horoscopes or a celestial sphere or even a lute if your pleasure lies that way"; quoted by M. Baxandall, "Guarino, Pisanello and Manuel Chrysoloras," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XVIII, 1965, p. 196.

15 Cusanus, De ludo globi, II, 231, quoted by E. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. M. Domandi, Oxford, 1963, p. 41n.

16 G. Kaftal, The Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting, Florence, 1956; and Cour- celle (cited n. 13).

17 For portrayals of St. Augustine, see: Light- bown (cited n.7), II, nos. B 25, 49, 52, 55, 57, 77, and 89.

18 Ibid., I, p. 119, and II, p. 86.

19 For the tramezzo, see: R. Razzoli, La chiesa d'Ognissanti, Florence, 1898. It was removed by the Franciscans, who had displaced the Umiliati in 1561.

20 Home (cited n.7), pp. 70-71; and Razzoli (cited n.19), pp. 73-78. The Ser Amerigo/Ser Nastagio/Amerigo branch had been responsi- ble for the Ghirlandaio fresco on the Altar of the Pieti on the South wall of the nave.

21 E.H. Gombrich, "Botticelli's Mythologies," Symbolic Images, London, 1972, p. 43; and A. della Torre, Storia dell' Accademia Platonica di Firenze, 1902, pp. 772 ff.

22 C. Edwards Lester, The Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius, 6th ed., New Haven, 1855, p. 67. For Toscanelli, see: G. Uzielli, Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli, Florence, 1892, although some of the claims for Toscanelli are exaggerated.

23 Lightbown (cited n.7), I, p. 51.

24 The inscription above Jerome reads: (R)EDDE NOS CLAROS LAMPAS RADIO(SA) / SINE OVA TERRA TOTA EST VMBRO-

SA. The original inscription above Augustine has not been recovered, but remains as substi- tuted in the 1560s.

25 EAEH2OMEOO2 / KATATOMETAEA (EO1). Psalm 50, in Septuagint and Vulgate (51 King James): 1: EAEHIO[N] ME O OEOI / KATA TO MEFA EAEO2 [2OY]. I am grateful to Caroline Elam and Christian Habicht for assistance with deciphering and identifying the source.

26 The deciphering and translation of the Hebrew was kindly undertaken by S.C. Reif, of the Department of Hebrew and Semitic languages, Glasgow University.

27 For late fifteenth-century cabalism, see: J. Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance, Columbia, 1944; F. Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrktiens de la Renaissance, Paris, 1964; and L. Bronstein, Kabbalah and Art, Hanover, N.H., 1980.

28 Lightbown (cited n.7), I p. 51.

29 The giornale of the monastery (Florence, Archivio di Stato, Conventi sopressi, 130, n. 8, a. 21.) refers to the "monasterio di san martino fuori della porta al prato." For San Martino al

Muguone, see: W. and E. Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, 6 vols., Frankfort on the Main, 1940-54, IV, pp. 131-2.

30 A.S.F., Conventi Sopressi, 130, n. 8., f. 44r.

31 Vasari-Milanesi (cited n.7), III, P. 311. The

interpretation by Horne (cited n.7, p. 69) also contains a beautiful insight into the Saint's expression.

32. Laudan (cited n.3), p. 165 (Laudan's italics).

Martin Kemp is Professor of Fine Arts, University of St. Andrews. He is a member of The Institutefor Advanced Study, Princeton (1984-85) and the author of Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (1981).

Fall 1984 215



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