Two Final Images for Perspective: Works from Masaccio and Raphael

Masaccio's The Holy Trinity is many times the height of a normal person.  It is a fresco on the wall of a church.  We have many familiar figures.  We have not only the trinity but also Mary and John.  At the time, the figure of John was taken to be any of three biblical Johns.  The two figures who sit below Mary and John are donors, or patrons.  They have paid for this fresco in order to exhibit their piety and devotion.  In the painting, the donors are looking at each other.  In real life, the donors would also have been viewing themselves viewing Christ.  Below the patrons is a tomb with a skeleton.  Above the skeleton reads, "I was once what you were and what I am you will also be".

Sorry, guys.  The vanishing point in this image is on the steps where the donors are standing.  It is in the middle of the fresco, on the steps in between the donors.  Let's take this as a sign of how difficult visual analysis is.  

The image relies on perspective, although Dr. Herbert notes that the perspective is not consistent.  For example, if Christ were to be elevated as much as depicted, the underside of the cross should be more visible.  Another fact about this image is that it may have been used as an altar.

The last image we look at for studying perspective is Raphael's Transfiguration.  There are two scenes depicted.  In the top half, we see Christ conversing with Moses and Elijah after his clothes become dazzling white while on a mountain top with Peter, James and John.  Jesus's appearance was transfigured, and then a voice from a large cloud proclaims, "This is my Son, the Beloved: listen to him!".  Jesus then ordered them not to tell anyone until the crucifixion.  In the bottom half of the image, we see a crowd of people (including the other disciples) waiting for Jesus and his apostles.  A man has come to have Jesus heal his son of epilepsy.  In addition to the apostles, we see a book, meant to represent academic knowledge.

There is also an unidentified woman in the foreground.  Dr. Herbert notes that for a contemporary of Raphael, this woman would have looked like a stereotypical woman from Ancient Greece.  She is meant to represent old knowledge.  She points to the earthly problem of epileptic boy rather than focusing on Jesus (like everyone else).  She is a perfect representation of a secular, worldly woman.

Contrast the perfectly painted woman with the figure of Christ.  His image is blurry and seemingly disproportionate.  Dr. Herbert points out that the image of Christ makes more sense visually if we take two alternative perspectives on the image.  First, if we look at Christ from the perspective of a church-goer, for example, then the shadows on Christ's cloak make more sense.  Second, if we look at Christ from the perspective of God (from above), then things such as Christ's hairline makes more sense.  Thus Christ is to be viewed from both above and from below.  Dr. Herbert notes that the young boy in the image actually seems to gesture to both above and below.

This image was used as an altarpiece.  The Catholic argument, says Dr. Herbert, is that Jesus actually IS the wine and bread used in Eucharist.  Bread and wine may not resemble Christ.  But it is through grace that these things have the essence of Christ.

More Perspective on Perspective

Duccio's The Last Supper lacks a clear vanishing point.  There are many lines that seem to function like orthogonals, but they do not come to a single point.  Also, the space represented in this image is like a box that is entirely limited by the edges of the picture.

In contrast, there are images where it seems that there is space outside the bounds of the frame.  The picture appears as a slice of reality.  It seems as if the image is continuous with the space that would exist outside of that picture.  It appears as if there is more space beyond that which is represented in the image.  Indeed, finite represented space can indicate infinite space beyond itself.  Panofky notes that the vanishing point in particular is a concrete symbol for infinity.  The discovery of the vanishing point thus represents the discovery of the infinite itself (182/57).

Later, Panofksy argues that this is a secularization of the infinite, since the infinite is represented as being part of our own reality and not merely as divine reality (187/66).  Dr. Herbert notes that this idea is not contrary to religious thought.  There is nothing inherently secular about the notion of the infinite existing in finite space.  Indeed, Jesus Christ, as both human and divine, is such an example from religious texts.  A particularly relevant image is Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper.  Christ, as the vanishing point, is both made present in the image and is also presented as absent in this image.

In contrast, Christ is not the vanishing point in Perugino's Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter.  The vanishing point here is the church in the background.  What is signified here is that although the body of Christ will die, the church will live.  The church is thus something infinite and finite.  It is both a particular building (or buildings) and the "house" of the eternity of the religion.

View of God: Perspective in Renaissance in Italy

We begin with Enthroned Madonna and Child from the Byzantine School (13th century), and The Alba Madonna by Raphael (1511).  These images are important because they show how the representation of space changed over a period of hundreds of years.  The image from the Byzantine School has no sense of depth in the image.  Items look two-dimensional (2D) and flat.  In Raphael's image, however, the objects depicted look as if they are three-dimensional (3D).  The difference between these images is that in the earlier days of painting, certain techniques (or technologies) were not available to artists.  Another difference is that the earlier artist wanted to portray the figures in heaven.  Since heaven is a place of purity, the image is laden with gold.  Also, the image of Jesus looks like an adult even though he is sitting on his mother's knee.  In heaven, Jesus is both the child and the adult.  Also, both the front and the back of the footstool and the chair are shown.  This is because in heaven, all essences exist in purity, which is to say that we can see all things at all times.  Raphael, however, is not concerned with portraying heaven.  Raphael depicts Madonna and Jesus Christ as being in the real world.  Shading makes bodies and clothing look 3D and real.  A goal for this section of the course is to see how this new 

Next we look at Flagellation by Piero della Francesca (c. 1458-59), which is meant to reveal something to us about how images were read in this time (What Dr. Herbert calls the period eye).  In the figure, there are 15th century Italian men in the right half of the image.  In the left half of the image, there is a scene of Jesus being whipped.  To the person viewing this image at the time it was painted, both halves of the scene were very familiar.  An important detail about the painting is the way in which the tiled floor of the plaza is depicted.  Dr. Herbert's point is that in order to thrive in a merchant economy, people had to have a good ability to judge measurements and shapes just by looking at something at a distance.  This requires the ability to recognize ratios and proportions.  The tiles are painted in a way meant to imitate the way that tiles look at a distance.  The distance between the white bands of tile in real life would be the same.  In the image, the distance between the white bands decreases.  Painters could use mathematic ratios to calculate how to depict this perspective.

Next we look at Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter by Perugino.  This image is a great example of the vanishing point.  The idea is that on the surface of the image, the distance between two points is finite and measurable.  However, as a depiction of real space, the lines that go towards the vanishing point are parallel and will never meet.  In this way, what is infinite is portrayed by means of a finite line.  Imagine, for example, a picture of railroad tracks that extend out into infinity.  Perhaps these railroad tracks go into space forever.  In actuality, the distance is infinite.  Yet when portrayed in a 2D image, the tracks will meet at the vanishing point.  The vanishing point is a finite, concrete place in the painting which portrays something that is infinite.  In this way, the vanishing point is both finite and infinite.  

Maimonides Pt. II: What God is Not

According to Maimonides, God is essentially a unity.  God is one.  Plato is famous for arguing that nothing physical can truly be one because all physical things are theoretically divisible.  Even if there are practical limitations on our ability to actually divide something, we can still break it down into smaller parts theoretically. Maimonides notes further that the only true oneness is a simple essence without complexity (p.149).  In other words, to be truly one is to lack any divisible features or individuated characteristics--even conceptual distinctions are impossible.  Any characteristic or feature would be an addition or multiplication of the concept of God.  

There are four kinds of attributes that cannot be predicated of God (149-53).

• essence--God cannot be defined
• part of an essence--God is not a composite thing
• qualities--only composite things have qualities
• relations--God has no relation to anything else
• God is incorporeal, so he cannot be related to a place
• God is outside of time and space, so He is not related to time
• relations can only exist between things of the same kind, so God cannot be related to creations

We CAN attribute actions to God (153-56).  Even if a thing is simple (is not a composite), it is possible for that simple thing to perform different actions.  To talk about a number of different actions of God is not to talk about a number of different features of God.  Maimonides uses the analogy of fire.  A fire may burn one thing and melt another, but this difference of effects is not indicative of the powers of the fire itself.  The same fire has many different consequences.  Maimonides also uses an analogy with human rationality.  He notes that our ability to reason allows us to do a broad number of different things, but our ability to reason is one single thing.  So it makes sense to think that one single power (such as God's) can bring about a number of different actions.  These analogies are useful, but Maimonides is careful to warn the reader not to take the analogies too literally.  

Maimonides thinks that God cannot be like anything else.  Since similarity is a kind of relation, God cannot be similar because He cannot be in relation to anything else.  This is, however in direct conflict with Genesis 1:26.  One response is that the claim that humans are made in God's "image" is not to be taken literally.  We can be similar to God insofar as we are rational.  Only humans share this capacity with God.  But Maimonides notes that even this is not a true comparison (Book I, ch. 1).  True comparisons can only be made when the words used to make the comparison are not equivocal.  Indeed, even to say that God exists is to equivocate.

The basic upshot of Maimonides's negative theology is that we cannot say anything that God is.  Rather, we can only say what God is not (p.165).  In fact, Maimonides thought that to anthropomorphize God is tantamount to idolatry, since you are not thinking about God as God but you are thinking about God as some human-like idol (p.174).  Aquinas responds to this concern by noting that some words we use to talk about God should be understood only as negations (incorporeal, infinite), but "good" should be understood as an analogy.  In this way, Aquinas tries to argue that we can say "God is good" without equivocating.    

Maimonides also tries to offer a guide about how humans can attain human perfection (176-81).  The most important perfection for humans is intellectual.  We should have correct beliefs about God.  Being perfect in this way is the only way to achieve the ultimate goal of human life: immortality.  Moral perfection is only useful for living with other people.  Moral perfection is a necessary condition for intellectual perfection, but intellectual perfection is much more important.  

Moses Maimonides AKA Moshe ben Maimon AKA Rambam

Moses Maimonides, known as Moshe ben Maimon or the Rambam, has influenced other religious thinkers such as Aquinas, who agreed that we can only have knowledge of what God is not (rather than what God is); Spinoza, who agreed that God does not directly punish or reward people, but disagrees that we can attribute miracles and creation to God and Newton, who agreed that God is a transcendent unity and that Scripture has riddles that can only be solved by intellectuals.  Maimonides thought that God is the One, which is entirely outside of the world of being (the real world, our world).  Because the One is outside of our realm of existence, we can identify no attributes or characteristics of the One.  This idea that the divine is something entirely out of our realm of existence is one influenced by Platonism.  Indeed, if God is outside our realm of experience, then we cannot say things about God.  The central idea of negative theology is that we can never say what God is.  We can only ever say what God is not.  Maimonides is still known as a proponent of negative theology.

Maimonides was raised in Muslim Cordova (now Spain).  His father was an intellectual, and he passed on Rabbinic teachings to Moses.  Moses was a physician, logician and theologian.  He died in 1204 at the age of 66.

Maimonides considered the role of dogma in Judaism.  He asked whether there are certain things a person must believe in order to be a Jew.  For Rabbinic Judaism, being a Jew was a matter of being born of a Jewish mother and of following rules.  In his Commentary on the Mishnah, Maimonides claimed that there are 13 principles that Jews ought to believe.  There is still debate today about whether religious dogma itself is contradictory to the spirit of Judaism and about whether Maimonides himself believed these 13 principles.

The Guide of the Perplexed was written for religious believers with background in philosophy and Talmudic Law.  The goal of the Guide is to consider whether educated, philosophical thinkers must abandon commitments to dogma and Law.  An important point of the work is that there are limits to understanding God.  Certain things cannot be known by human beings because we are limited.  We can only "glimpse" truths.  Other truths, however, are only accessible to the educated elite.  Since Maimonides work itself was intended to be understood by this group of intellectual elite, it is unclear even today whether Maimonides actually thought that philosophy and religion are at odds or whether philosophy is only at odds with naive religious thinking.

The main idea of the Guide is that God is utterly unique.  There is nothing else that exists which is anything like God.  Because God is so entirely different and unique, there are problems when it comes to learning about God.  In particular, we have problems learning about God by reading about God in Scripture, which was written by humans (p.154).  We can know that God is One, that He is incorporeal and that He exists, but we cannot know any positive facts about God.  We cannot attribute any characteristics or qualities to God.

This leads to many puzzles:

• If we are made in God's image, as stated in Genesis, this seems puzzling.  If God is incorporeal and lacks any physical qualities, how can we be made in the image of nothing?  
• Isn't it impossible to even describe something that is incorporeal?
• Even to ascribe non-physical traits to God (such as goodness) is to attribute a quality to God.  Since God is "one", we cannot describe Him as a multiplicity  We cannot describe him as a collection of different attributes.
• Even to say that God exists is to equivocate about the word "exists", since we usually use this word to mean that something exists in our own world.  Things that exist in our world are composite entities (made up of many qualities) and exist accidentally as a combination of those qualities (we can go in and out of existence).  God, on the other hand, is a unity which exists necessarily and independently of any qualities.   

The main upshot is this.  Usually, when we describe things, we try to figure out what kinds of categories a thing falls into.  God, however, is so unique that He does not fall into any categories.  We can only say what categories God does not fit into.