Modern science and medieval science

From the pulpit of Pisa Cathedral, Giovanni Pisano (1248-1314) left an immodest account, stating that his talent had surpassed that of his father, of his contemporaries, and of all the artists now dead: "God had mercy on this man, and endowed him with such genius, Amen.

Giovanni's closer contemporary, Giotto, signed only two of his paintings (which art historians now believe were made by his studio), but his name and reputation have survived thanks to writers like Dante (1265 -- 1321), who, along with the manuscript decorators, Giotto's name is included in the description of Purgatory. Dante's deliberate emphasis on Giotto's reputation makes it even more prominent than that of Chimabouet, giotto's master, but this only symbolises the fickleness of reputation. By the mid-14th century, however, Giovanni Boccaccio's view of Giotto's achievements really became the basis for subsequent studies of the history of art, recorded in a single section in his popular collection of stories, the Decameron: Thus he (Giotto) rediscovered art, which for centuries had been buried under human error, and which painted more to please the eyes of the ignorant than to please the minds of the wise.

By the late 14th century, the name of the Florentine artist had become a metaphor for artistic achievement. His compatriot Niccolo di Pietro Gerini (documented 1370-1415) boasted to his patron Francesco Datini that his 1395 design for a crucifix "could not have been surpassed by Giotto" was a cliche. When Datini complains about Gerini's bills, he uses the same allusion again, arguing that "I believe that even if Giotto had lived, he would have been inferior". Decades later, in the early 15th century, when Florentine merchant Giovanni Morelli wished to extol his sister's charms, he also declared that she had "hands like ivory, as perfect as those of Giotto." By the end of the 15th century, the Cathedral of our Lady of the Flowers had commissioned a bust of Giotto by Benedetto da Mayano to ensure that giotto's reputation survived even after his work had disappeared or been forgotten.

Giotto's name survives in part because of the attention paid to his work by contemporary and later writers and chroniclers. By the middle of the 14th century, many Italian artists, especially in Tuscany, seem to have recognized the need to enhance their own fame and long-term memory by writing about them themselves or encouraging others to write about them. This makes a clever connection with the flowery eulogies of the developing humanists, who imitate the way ancient people often used their best words to refer to painters and sculptors. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we find that artistic practice changed much less dramatically than the types of writing.

There are how-to books, theoretical monographs, eulogized poems and essays, and biographical drafts. The writing varies widely and widely. The Ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder provided them with archetypes and information about greco-Roman artists. In his multi-volume natural History, later writers were able to find and borrow a series of stories about the importance, social status, and wealth that painters and sculptors had once enjoyed. Pliny's highest praise for artists and patrons has been preserved, describing artists as persons who imitate nature, and patrons as persons who treat artists with the highest respect.

Pliny's "true imitation of nature" was championed by many later writers because of the intellectual and mathematical foundations of painting. The aphorism used by the Roman poet Horace, "Poetry as picturesque", led to a series of metaphors between the two arts. Others are more interested in geometric perspective in mathematics. Thus, in 1444, the humanist Michele Savonarola (c. 1384 -- 1468) wrote in Padua:

I fully support our painting school, it is a unique ornamental in our city, because it than any other art (manual) is more can connect literature studies and liberal arts, because the painting is perspective, this paper discusses the line of projection) branch, the perspective is the branch of philosophy.

Mathematical studies and their musical equivalents and acoustics are considered part of the university curriculum, so artists (who use Francesco Cosa's phrase, "keep studying") can insist on the same status as university graduates such as notaries and doctors. But painters are proud of their profession, and that goes before their mathematical skills. In the late fourteenth century, there was a Florentine painter working at the Court of Carrara in Padua named Gennino Gennini (only documented in 1398) whose "On Art" is perhaps the most famous Renaissance treatise on art today. The surviving manuscript of the treatise dates back to 1437 and was written by an anonymous scribe who was in the debtor's prison in Florence, the so-called Stimkay.

Hiring such people as scribes was considered an act of charity, but the commissioning of this particular edition is unknown. In the book, Mr. Gennini offers aspiring painters instructions on how to obtain materials and how to create different patterns on walls, wood, metal, stone and parchment, as well as on glassmaking, mosaics, coverages and bronze casting. Although we now associate these terms and instructions with craft traditions (and many of these instructions are still used today), this introduction in no way deters the philosophical status of the painter's profession:

Man (since the fall of Adam and Eve) has taken up many useful occupations, different from one another; Some of these professions were, and are, more theoretical than others; These careers can't be exactly the same, because theory is more valuable. Close to the theory, humans are engaged in a related occupation that requires a foundation associated with manual skills: that occupation is painting. Painting requires a great deal of imagination and hand skill. In order to reveal what cannot be seen, the painter hides it in the shadow of the natural object, and in order to fix the natural object with his hand, the painter presents a clear vision that is not really there. Painting should be given the throne next to theory and the crown of poetry.

Mr Cennini makes it clear that he is writing for fellow professionals who want to add lustre to their profession by having a manual of words explaining their tasks. There were other books in circulation in the fourteenth century on the art of making glass, for example, a monograph compiled at the same time in Florence. These manuals and guides were in no way intended to replace apprenticeship, and the number of manuscripts in circulation in the early stages seems to have been minimal (In the sixteenth century, of course, One could see Gennini's manual, and Giorgio Vasari used it).

Similarly, another Florentine lorenzo berti believe, by providing a hidden in his professional written account of the history and mathematics behind, he can not only ensure individual after the death of reputation, but also can promote and peers to gain the respect of people, it is in this respect, he and his companion's reputation to maintain after death. Sometime in the late 1440s, Ghiberti put together a series of records to form a three-volume so-called Chronicle, a term humanists used for historical writing. The first part deals with antiquity, the second part with Ghiberti's own artistic background, and the third part with some complicated theoretical problems about visual illusion.

Much of the work comes from his reading of ancient writers, such as Pliny and the Roman architect Vitruvius, as well as from the early medieval commentaries of Avilroes, Avichenna and Roger Bacon, and from the treatises of John Peccaan on anatomy and optics; There was some work by others, but it was more autobiographical. Today, only one manuscript of Ghiberti's work survives, and it has received much criticism for its lack of originality. But recent research has revealed that even Da Vinci's scientific knowledge relied on traditional medieval scientific theories.