Alberti on Apelles: Word and Image in "De Pictura"

Alberti's De Pictura (1435)-his seminal treatise on the art of painting-is subtly but unmistakeably riven by a fundamental contradiction. Though he aims to show that painting can move the beholder just as powerfully as speech can, that its silent rhetoric of gesture and expression can signify a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of the classical tradition 1996-12, Vol.2 (3), p.345-359
Main Author: Heffernan, James A. W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abstract art
Defamation
Gestures
Illustration
Narrative art
Renaissance art
Rhetorical invention
Soul
Spoken communication
Treatises
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Summary:Alberti's De Pictura (1435)-his seminal treatise on the art of painting-is subtly but unmistakeably riven by a fundamental contradiction. Though he aims to show that painting can move the beholder just as powerfully as speech can, that its silent rhetoric of gesture and expression can signify a whole inner world of thoughts and feelings, Alberti cannot sustain the would-be natural link between painted visible sign and invisible signified. Straining as the argument proceeds, the link breaks altogether when Alberti tries to illustrate the power of invention in art with a pointedly edited version of Lucian's description of an allegorical painting by Apelles. Here the expressive power of painting gives way to the regulative, determining power of words. In spite of himself, Alberti at last makes the rhetoric of painting depend on the rhetoric of speech.
ISSN:1073-0508
1874-6292