The Ugly Renaissance (47 page)

It was not just that
the rediscovery of classical literature exposed Italians to the “foreignness” of Greek literature and the greater learning of the ancient world. “Other” peoples—especially Jews from
Spain, Portugal, and, later,
Germany—were flooding into the peninsula, opening as they did so the doors to greater socioeconomic vibrancy and to medical, linguistic, and philosophical learning of immense value. But most important, travel was the real mainspring of the broadening of the Renaissance mind, and it was in this respect that Lippi’s journey to the
Barbary Coast seems to exemplify the spirit of the age. The East, in particular, became a realm of almost unique promise. As early as 1338, the Florentine traveler
Giovanni de’ Marignolli became the first person since
Marco Polo to visit and return from
China and—at the behest of
Pope Benedict XII—opened up diplomatic channels and brought back much commercially useful information. Trade with the Armenian kingdom of
Cilicia, the
Mamluk sultanate in
Cairo, the
Hafsid kingdom of
North Africa, the
Timurid Empire in central Asia, and the rising
Ottoman Empire grew exponentially, catalyzing a passion for greater and more reliable knowledge of the peoples, languages, and customs that were encountered with mounting regularity. Sub-Saharan Africa, too, seemed suddenly to burst into life as travelers crossed the desert and the seas in pursuit of new lands and new riches. But it was in the West that the greatest strides were taken.
After the settlement of the Canary Islands by
Lancelotto Malocello (from whom
Lanzarote takes its name) in 1312, all eyes looked toward the setting sun as thoughts turned to discovering another sea route to China, and it was left to the Genoese
Christopher Columbus and his successors to reveal the true, breathtaking novelty of the Atlantic territories. In place of the mythmaking ignorance of the past, there emerged an increasingly rich and detailed picture of a world that was bigger, and more exhilarating, than anyone had ever imagined.

Historians have placed considerable emphasis on the colossal extent to which knowledge of “foreign” lands grew from the fourteenth century
onward in giving shape to their notions of the Renaissance as a whole. In a sense, it has been only reasonable to see the pursuit of naturalism in art as having a counterpart in a growing consciousness of the realities of the wider world, and since the beginnings of modern critical scholarship the very
idea of the “Renaissance” has been intimately connected with the idea of “discovery.” As far back as the eighteenth century, for example,
Girolamo Tiraboschi identified the broadening of intellectual and commercial horizons through exploration as one of the period’s greatest, and most defining, characteristics. In the next century,
the great Swiss historian
Jacob Burckhardt followed Tiraboschi’s lead and made what he termed the “discovery of the world and of man” central to his conception of the Renaissance.
Today, when the advance of cross-cultural studies has eroded the excited spirit of Romanticism and Enlightenment, scholars continue to assert that the Renaissance was, indeed, the beginning of the “age of discovery,” and despite expressing certain reservations,
Peter Burke, for example, has not hesitated to draw a connection between the two.

The importance of the identification of “Renaissance” with “discovery” lies not so much in the coincidence of the two phenomena as in the vital impact that the exploration of other lands and cultures is thought to have had on the character of the period, and in the degree to which attitudes toward the wider world changed as a result of intercultural exchange. For Tiraboschi, the “discovery of America” was every bit as important as the “discovery of books” and the “discovery of antiquity” in giving rise to the self-consciousness that he believed was integral to the very essence of the Renaissance. So, too, Burckhardt made the broadening of intellectual horizons the centerpiece of his conception of Renaissance individualism, and although the work of scholars such as
Edward Said has done much to bring to light the mutual nature of culture exchange, more modern historians have shown a general willingness to sustain the identification of the two. It has even been suggested that it would have been impossible for the men and women of the Renaissance to have been aware of their own distinctive identity without a clear and sophisticated knowledge of the “other.”

The reason for this is not hard to appreciate, and it is indeed difficult to avoid the sense that here, at last, is one aspect of the Renaissance that lives up to familiar preconceptions of the period. Despite the grim realities of Renaissance society, it has been thought that the discovery
of new lands served to produce a fresh sense of openness and tolerance that found expression in both literature and the visual arts. Coming into contact with new peoples and cultures, Renaissance Italians, it has been argued, began to question their preconceived notions of humanity more intensively. When they were confronted with the civilization of the
Ottoman Empire, the strange customs of Javanese islanders, and the unfamiliar habits of
North American Indians, chauvinism was supplanted by a growing awareness that when superficial differences were stripped away, there was, in fact, an unchangeable human nature that was common to all men. Not only did this contribute to the development of the
Renaissance conception of man as an independent, creative individual (most clearly evident in
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s
Oration on the Dignity of Man
), but it also went a long way toward weakening the fantastical prejudices of previous centuries. Men were men, no matter where they came from, and all had the same potential to reach the dizzy heights of human achievement envisaged by the Florentine Neoplatonists. Some, like Pico della Mirandola, were even moved to speculate about whether Christianity did not, in fact, share more with the pagan religions of diverse cultures than had previously been thought.

At first glance, the
Barbadori Altarpiece
and Vasari’s account of Filippo Lippi’s adventures in
Barbary appear to fit nicely with this interpretation. By including a pseudo-Kufic inscription in his painting, Lippi seems to demonstrate his awareness of Muslim and Levantine culture, and to acknowledge a certain shared heritage linking Christian and Near Eastern traditions. That the Virgin Mary wears a distinctly Arabic-looking mantle points both to a certain willingness to root early Christian history in its proper geographical context, and to a recognition that both Christianity and Islam had common roots. Similarly, Vasari’s decision to integrate the story of Lippi’s captivity in the
Hafsid kingdom of
North Africa into his biography of the artist appears to testify to a sense that the aesthetic judgment of other peoples could evidence the talent of an Italian painter and a belief that the “foreign” was not altogether alien to the life of an artist.

Parallels are not hard to find, and the numerous literary examples are, perhaps, especially striking. As early as the mid-fourteenth century, hints that the horizons of the imagination were broadening to include a more positive view of other peoples and places became visible in Boccaccio’s
Decameron
.
In the first book, for example, a Jew named Abraham serves to illustrate the hypocrisy of the Church in Rome, while a co-religionist called Melchizedek outsmarts Saladin in the very next tale. Later in the collection, an even wider range of locations are chosen as settings for
Boccaccio’s tales, and the starring characters—among the most impressive and dramatic in the entire work—are both “foreign” and familiar.
Thus, the reader is introduced to the sultan of Babylon’s diplomatic links with the king of the Algarve, to Genoese trade in Alexandria, to the shipping interests of the king of Tunis, and to the dramas of everyday life in Cathay.
So, too, the deliciously lusty tale of Alibech and Rustico (see
chapter 5
) takes place in Gafsa, in modern Tunisia, while the elopement of three beautiful sisters culminates in high drama in Crete. Such tendencies only became more pronounced in later centuries. Boiardo’s
Orlando innamorato
(ca. 1476–83), for example, begins with the arrival of Angelica, the daughter of the king of Cathay, at Charlemagne’s court and has as one of its main themes the struggle between her father and the Tartars, and between the Franks and the Moors. Similarly, in Tasso’s
Gerusalemme liberata
(1581), the Christians’ Muslim enemies in the Holy Land are accorded a degree of chivalry that is hard to ignore.

Examples from the visual arts are, however, certainly not lacking. It was not merely that paintings such as Gozzoli’s
Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem
included both striking depictions of the Byzantine court and a liveried servant of obvious African descent. Familiar myths were, for example, also adapted and augmented to take account of growing knowledge of other lands.
Depictions of the Cappadocian
saint George—whose story not only was shared by different Christian traditions but also served as a cipher for East-West relations by virtue of the dragon having supposedly been slain in Libya—became a particularly prominent vehicle for the display of Near Eastern dress and cross-cultural exchange. In this vein,
Vittore Carpaccio’s scenes from the life of Saint George, painted for the Chapel of Saint John in Venice in ca. 1504–7, included a host of turbaned Muslims set in an urban landscape that is a curiously revealing blend of the Italianate and the “oriental.” Similarly, in
Pinturicchio’s
Disputation of Saint Catherine
(ca. 1492–94), painted for the Sala dei Santi in the Vatican’s Borgia Apartments (
Fig. 34
), the emperor is shown surrounded by figures reflecting the full gamut
of late-fifteenth-century Mediterranean cultures, such as Greeks, North African Muslims, and Turks, an image that seems positively to radiate a sense that a world was being discovered without barriers of any kind.

F
OREVER
F
OREIGN
?

Yet as with so much else in the Renaissance, appearances are bewilderingly deceptive. Attractive though it may be to equate discovery with knowledge, and knowledge with tolerance, it’s important to remember that such connections are more a testimony to modern sensibilities and Romantic tendencies than they are to Renaissance attitudes. Dramatic and extensive though the discoveries of the period may have been, there really was no objective reason why greater exposure to “foreign” cultures should either erode long-held and deeply felt prejudices or im- pinge on the moral standards of the day. The emergence of a genuine sense of intellectual curiosity about the world could quite easily coexist with ignorance, hatred, and exploitation. Far from looking on new lands with wide-eyed naïveté, travelers often saw exactly what they wanted to see and interpreted the scraps of what they saw through the lens of inherited ideas. What was more, the relationship between Renaissance travelers and foreign cultures was often framed by political conflict, economic self-interest, or cultural parasitism. Although information was accurately recovered and appreciated for its own sake on occasion, misunderstandings abounded, myths were adapted to take account of changing circumstances, and fresh forms of bigotry were crafted to take the place of the old with equal frequency. And as a result, lurking beneath the surface of those artworks that seem so innocent and open-minded is a host of altogether more surprising and unpleasant views.

Regardless of how they initially appear, Lippi’s
Barbadori Altarpiece
and Vasari’s biography conceal signs not only that understanding was still tempered with ignorance, but also that relativism and tolerance were wafer-thin veneers for crude bigotry and unseemly prejudice. Whatever the nature of Lippi’s acquaintance with Islamic culture, the
Barbadori Altarpiece
does not seem to point to any genuine sympathy. Intriguing though the pseudo-Kufic script on the Virgin’s hem may be, it remains a rather crude and amateurish imitation of Arabic orthography and does not attempt to be anything more than a superficial stereotype capable of fooling the ignorant. An even more pronounced tendency to
approach Islamic culture from the perspective of disdainful condescension is visible in the account of Lippi’s life. Vasari’s biography—which has proved impossible to verify from other evidence—is as much a display of ill-informed cultural caricatures as it is of intercultural relativism. While he might have accorded some weight to the aesthetic judgment of the Barbary slave master, Vasari’s dramatization of that judgment relies on the persistence of notions of Islamic “barbarism.” Even though the Muslim societies of North Africa consistently produced an exceptionally rich and varied range of artworks—from pottery and carpets to architecture, calligraphy, and manuscript illustrations—Vasari quite deliberately affirms that drawing and painting were totally unknown in the Hafsid kingdom, and goes so far as to make this manifestly absurd claim the linchpin of his biographical sketch. Not only is this caricature every bit as reliant on antiquated stereotypes as Lippi’s own use of pseudo-Kufic script, but it also prioritizes the excitement of the narrative over accuracy to an almost ludicrous degree.

For both Lippi and Vasari, the imagination was still fenced in by the barriers of old. And yet their works are, in fact, perhaps among the “better” examples of artistic engagement with other cultures. Insofar as the arts were concerned, the fruits of discovery were mostly rotten. At the same time as Italian artists and writers came into closer contact with the wider world and experienced a greater sense of curiosity about the practices and habits of different peoples and religions, willful ignorance, hopeless prejudice, and rampant bigotry grew with mounting fervor and found expression in ever more insidious forms of art and literature.

The Florence in which
Filippo Lippi lived and worked for the majority of his adult life was a microcosm of the environment in which Renaissance attitudes toward the “other” took shape. As one of the epicenters of international commerce and a crucial cultural center, the city was the locus for comings and goings from the farthest reaches of the known world, and was in the throes of the momentous changes that would transform the period’s intellectual outlook beyond all recognition. But at the same time, these factors ensured that it was also the nexus for the development of the more unpleasant dimensions of cross-cultural exchange.