Portraying Friendship by the Book: An Example from the Erasmus Circle
Abstract This article responds to the philosopher Alexander Nehamas’ argument that “no gesture, look, or bodily disposition, no attitude, feeling, or emotion, no action and no situation is associated with friendship firmly enough to make its representation a matter for the eye.” The article proposes...
| Published in: | Erasmus studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2021
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| In: |
Erasmus studies
Year: 2021, Volume: 41, Issue: 2, Pages: 182-199 |
| RelBib Classification: | NCA Ethics TJ Modern history VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Friendship
B Book B Portrait B Humanism B Painting |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Abstract This article responds to the philosopher Alexander Nehamas’ argument that “no gesture, look, or bodily disposition, no attitude, feeling, or emotion, no action and no situation is associated with friendship firmly enough to make its representation a matter for the eye.” The article proposes a “humanist exception” to Nehamas’ general rule. Building on Lorna Hutson’s argument that humanism “textualized” friendship, I contend that in the early modern period scholars and artists associated with humanism were engaged in the development of a set of recognizable signs of friendship connected to the distinctive humanist culture of the book and associated activities of reading, writing, and circulating texts. The article offers a case study of Quentin Metsys’ diptych of Erasmus and Pieter Gillis (1517) and then applies the lessons gleaned from that work to a picture that Nehamas cites as evidence of his claim, Jacopo Pontormo’s Two Men with a Passage from Cicero’s “On Friendship” (ca. 1522). Both pictures, I contend, not only depict friendship but also promote humanist ideals of friendship to the viewer. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Erasmus studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/18749275-04102002 |