Renaissance

Renaissance (pronounced ren-uh-sahns, ren-uh-zahns, ren-uh-zahns, or ri-ney-suhns)

(1) As “the Renaissance”, the description of great revival of classical art, literature, and learning in Europe, the conventionally dated between the fourteenth & seventeenth centuries, marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world.

(2) The period during which this revival occurred.

(3) Of or relating to this period.

(4) The forms and treatments in art, architecture, literature and philosophy during the period even if not including elements suggesting a revival of classical forms; extended widely (furniture, wallpaper et al).

(5) Used loosely, any sustained or dramatic revival in the world of art and learning, notably the so-called “Chinese Renaissance” (1917-1823) associated with the “New Culture movement”.

(6) A renewal of life, vigor, interest, etc; a rebirth or revival (used of people, institutions and ideas).

(7) Relating to furnishings or decorations in or imitating the style of the Renaissance, in which motifs of classical derivation frequently appear.

(8) Used sometimes ironically, a reference to any of the adaptations of the architectural styles associated with the Renaissance in foreign architecture (some playful, some ghastly), either as isolated detailing or entire buildings.

Late 1860s (as renascence since circa 1840): In the sense of “the great period of revival of classical-based art and learning in Europe that began in the fourteenth century”, the word was from the French renaissance des lettres (revival of the arts), from the Old French renaissance (literally “rebirth”, usually in a spiritual sense), from renastre (to grow anew (of plants)) (which exists in Modern French as renaître (be reborn), the construct being renaiss- (stem of renaistre (to be born again), from the Latin renāscī (be born again, rise again, reappear, be renewed) (the construct being re- (used in the sense of “again”)) + nāscī (be born again, rise again, reappear, be renewed) + -ance.  In the Old Latin, gnasci was from the primitive Indo-European root gene- (give birth, beget).  The suffix -ance was an alternative form of -ence, both added to an adjective or verb to form a noun indicating a state or condition, such as result or capacity, associated with the verb (many words ending in -ance were formed in French or by alteration of a noun or adjective ending in –ant).  The suffix -ance was from the Middle English -aunce & -ance, from the Anglo-Norman -aunce and the continental Old French -ance, from the Latin -antia & -entia.  The –ence suffix was a word-forming element attached to verbs to form abstract nouns of process or fact (convergence from converge), or of state or quality and was from the Middle English -ence, from the Old French -ence, from the Latin –entia & -antia (depending on the vowel in the stem word).  The Latin present-participle endings for verbs stems in -a- were distinguished from those in -i- and -e- and as the Old French evolved from Latin, these were leveled to -ance, but later French borrowings from Latin (some of them subsequently passed to English) used the appropriate Latin form of the ending, as did words borrowed by English directly from Latin, thus diligence, absence et al.  There was however little consistency, English gaining many words from French but from the sixteenth century the suffix –ence was selectively restored, such was the reverence for Latin.  The use in a historical context has a specific, limited definition but in a general sense the synonyms include rejuvenation, renewal, resurgence, revitalization & revival.  The related forms are the Italian rinascenza & rinascirnento.  Renaissance is a noun & adjective and renaissancey is an adjective; the noun plural is renaissances.

Although the use of the word Renaissance was a nineteenth century thing, the significance of what had happened in Europe centuries earlier had long been studied by historians and a term to describe the period (“the revival” or “revival of learning”) was in use by at least 1785.  Use extended (with a lower-case “r”) in the 1850s to the resurgence of just about anything long been in decay or disuse (especially of learning, literature, art).  The term “Renaissance man” was in use by 1885 and initially meant literally “a man alive during the Renaissance” but by the turn of the century it was being used to refer to the sort of “idealized man” imagined as an exemplar of the virtues and characteristics of those described by the historians who seems to see as much perfection in them as they did in the worthies of the Classical age.  The use to refer to those alive with such excellent qualities (humanism, scholarship, varied attainments, freedom of thought and personality) dates from the late 1940s and, perhaps surprisingly, “Renaissance man” didn’t wait for second-wave feminism (1960s-1980s) bur appeared almost simultaneously.  Technical terms (neo-Renaissance, Renaissance revival, Renaissance festival, Renaissance fair, anti-Renaissance, post-Renaissance, pre-Renaissance, pro-Renaissance etc were created as required.

Just about any sort of revival can be styled “a renaissance”.

The spelling renascence is slightly older, in texts since circa 1840 and purely French while the later renaissance emerged during the late 1860s and was Latinate, associated with historical scholarship.  The spelling renaissance has long been preferred but without the initial capital either can be used of anything suggesting a sense of revival or rebirth.  Some style guides suggest the use with the capital letter should be restricted to the flowering of European culture which began in Italy in the fourteenth century but others acknowledge such a use is appropriate also for certain other defined epochs such as the so-called “Chinese Renaissance” (1917-1823) associated with the “New Culture movement”.  The revival of interest in the texts of Classical authors resulted in many words from Greek & Latin being absorbed into English and this had the effect of many French loan-words acquired over the centuries being re-spelled on the models of the forms from Antiquity.  The relationship between renascence & renaissance is an example of that phenomenon, happening in the mid-nineteenth century.  However, the older form did retain its charms for some and the English poet (and what would now be called a “social commentator”) Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) preferred “renascence” and created something of a fashion (ie an affectation) for the word among those who fancied themselves “Renaissance men”.

The ideas of the Renaissance is understood as marking the end of the Middle Ages but unlike some dramatic act (such as the fall of the Western Roman Empire), there’s no exact date on which one era ended and the other began but nor does it make sense to speak of a period between the two, thus the long practice vaguely to refer to the Renaissance “beginning late in the fourteenth century an continuing even until the sixteenth” (by which time it had reached even barbaric lands like England).  As the scholarship of the period (especially of the visual art) grew, historians refined things by distinguishing between the early, middle, high and late Renaissance, again not exactly delineated but defined more by recognizable evolutions in architectural & artistic style.  From the beginning though, what was obvious was that the Renaissance was something admirable, an return to the imagined perfection of the Classical age and thus a contrast with the unlamented Middle Ages (the so-called “medieval period” and, more revealingly, known as also as the “Dark Ages”) which were regarded by historians as priest-ridden, backward, superstitious, uncultured, ignorant, narrow and inhibited by a dogmatic theology which crushed and punished thought.  The Renaissance was extolled as learned, civilized, broadminded, progressive, enlightened and free-thinking.

Scuola di Atene (School of Athens, 1509-1511), fresco by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1483–1520) on a commission from Julius II (1443–1513; pope 1503-1513) Stanza della Segnatura (Stanze di Raffaello), Palazzi Pontifici (Apostolic Palace), Vatican City.  Julius II was a Renaissance pope with all that implies and while they all did things in their own way, their general philosophy was best summed up in a phrase attributed to Leo X (1475–1521; pope 1513-1521), one of the four Medici popes and remembered (fondly by a few) for his observation “God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it” and although historians have their doubts he ever uttered the words, his conduct while on the throne of Saint Peter made clear if he didn't say it, he should have.  The “High Renaissance” was the period between the 1490s and 1520s and although the art historians usually don’t claim the period of necessity produced the finest works, it remains an orthodoxy that much of what was created best represents what might be called the “cultural zeitgeist”.  Raphael’s School of Athens depicted a gathering of philosophers, scholars and artists, with Aristotle (right) and Plato (left) in the centre, walking among a clutter of figures, most in animated discussion about obviously serious matters while the odd solitary figure sits quietly reflecting.  As an image, critics would now say the artist was laying the message on “with a trowel” but he certainly encapsulated the era’s idealized view of the Classical world.

Scholarship as early as the nineteenth theory (which would now be classed as “revisionist”) challenged the tradition views of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the notion of several renaissances, each succeeding the other and gaining a kind of momentum from its predecessor(s) and some even suggested the beginning of the era could be regarded as somewhere in the twelfth century, something quite plausible of the architecture though perhaps not of the painting but vernacular literatures were developing, there was some interest in the Latin classics, Latin poetry and Roman law and Greek philosophy and scientific understandings were being translated.  Tellingly too, Arab scientific discoveries were becoming and the first European universities were being founded so which the influence of the Church remained strong, it was a time not devoid of intellectual and creative activity but then neither was the Middle Ages wholly barren of such things.  One charming irony about the extraordinary art and architecture which appeared in Italy during the Renaissance was that the loveliness stands starkly in contrast to the appalling moral character of the patrons who commissioned much of it, some of the popes and cardinals, the latter in the era having gained such squalid reputations that the word “cardinal” was long used as an insult in Rome.  Historians tell these tales with some relish.

Primitive

Primitive (pronounced prim-i-tiv)

(1) Being the first or earliest of the kind or in existence, especially in an early age of the world.

(2) Early in the history of the world or of humankind.

(3) Characteristic of early ages or of an early state of human development.(4) In anthropology, of or relating to a preliterate or tribal people having cultural or physical similarities with their early ancestors: no longer in technical use; denoting or relating to a preliterate and nonindustrial social system.

(5) Unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences; uncivilized; a savage (some historians once distinguished between barbarians and savages on what was essentially a racist basis).

(6) Being in its earliest period; early; old-fashioned.

(7) In art, an artist of a preliterate culture; a naïve or un-schooled artist; an artist belonging to the early stage in the development of a style; a work of art by a primitive artist; an artist whose work does not conform to traditional, academic, or avant-garde standards of Western painting, such as a painter from an African or Oceanic civilization

(8) In fine art, a painter of the pre-Renaissance era in European painting (usually as "Italian primitive"); the works of these artists or in their recognizable style.

(9) In mathematics, a geometric or algebraic form or expression from which another is derived or a function of which the derivative is a given function; a function the derivative of which is a given function; an anti-derivative.

(10) In linguistics, the form from which a given word or other linguistic form has been derived, by either morphological or historical processes, as take in undertake (the most recent common ancestor (although sometimes hypothetical)).

(11) In biology, of, relating to, or resembling an early stage in the evolutionary development of a particular group of organisms; another word for primordial.

(12) In geology, pertaining to magmas that have experienced only small degrees of fractional crystallization or crystal contamination; of, relating to, or denoting rocks formed in or before the Paleozoic era (obsolete).

(13) In Protestant theology, of, relating to, or associated with a minority group that breaks away from a sect, denomination, or Church in order to return to what is regarded as the original simplicity of the Gospels.

(14) In computer programming, a data type that is built into the programming language, as opposed to more complex structures; any of the simplest elements (instructions, statements) in a programming language.

(15) In digital imagery, artistic training and certain aspects of engineering and architecture, a set of basic geometric shapes which can be used individually or from which more complex shapes can be constructed.

(16) In grammar, original; primary; radical; not derived.

1350-1400: From the Middle English primitif (of an original cause; of a thing from which something is derived; not secondary (used as both noun and adjective and originally in the sense of "original ancestor")), from the Middle French primitif (very first, original) from the Latin prīmitīvus (first or earliest of its kind), from primitus (at first), from prīmus (first).  The alternative spelling primative is long obsolete.  Primitive is a noun & adjective and primitiveness & primitivism are nouns; the noun plural is primitives.

The meaning "of or belonging to the first age" was from the early fifteenth century and was applied especially in the Christian church in the sense of "adhering to the qualities of the early Church."  The secular version of this meaning "having the style of an early or ancient time" was a nostalgic expression, an allusion to the (supposed) simplicity of the "old days" emerged in the 1680s.  The use during the era of European colonial expansion to mean "an aboriginal person in a land visited by Europeans" is from 1779, thus the idea of a primitive being an "uncivilized person".  To the colonial powers it was quite an important point to make because, being "uncivilized" (1) there could of course not be a legal system and thus no conception of the "ownership" of land and (2) such lands the Europeans "discovered" could be declared Terra nullius (from the Latin meaning "nobody's land" (literally "land belonging to nobody").  In Western anthropology, the idea persisted and by the late nineteenth century it was applied to cultures which, through isolation, had continued to operate at a technologically simple level, and even by the mid-late twentieth century it was common for mainstream historians to distinguish between "civilizations" and mere "cultures".  Reflecting both the snobby disdain for the pre Renaissance Italian primitives and perhaps as an allusion to prehistoric cave art, critics in the early 1940s applied the label "primitive" to artists thought "untrained", water-colorists seemingly a particular target.

The Italian Primitives

Technically, the phrase “Italian primitives” refers to works of art created between late eleventh and early fourteenth century with a particular emphasis on the later years.  It wasn’t until the late eighteenth century that historians and collectors first showed notable interest in Italian primitives and it’s indicative of the attitudes of the time that the artists of the era were often classified as “Italian pre-Renaissance” or “proto-Renaissance” painters; as late as the 1970s, “Italian primitives” was something of a pejorative term, such was the reverence for the works of the later Italian Renaissance, especially the High Renaissance (1495–1520), and Mannerism (1520–1600).

Two works by Cimabue (Cenni di Pepo, circa 1240–1302): Castelfiorentino Madonna (circa 1283), tempera & gold on panel (left) and Santa Trinita Maestà (circa 1295), tempera on panel (right).  The early Italian primitive style contrasted with a work representing the later intrusions of technique and dimensional imagination.  It is however misleading to speak of "early" and "late" Italian primitives in the sense of a definable stylistic shift, works with the classic Byzantine lines and form still being painted (for a receptive market) even in the early Renaissance and there would of course be a revival of sorts in some of the schools of early twentieth century modernism.

The role the Italian primitives played in the transition from the Byzantine artistic tradition to the more naturalistic and humanistic style that would later characterize the Italian Renaissance was of course acknowledged but the works themselves were usually treated as something imitative or at least derivative of the earlier techniques despite there being an obvious move away from the strict stylization and abstract qualities of Byzantine art, elements of naturalism, spatial depth, and even an exaggerated emotional expression appearing.  The Renaissance was not one of those moments in art when there was an abrupt shift from one stylistic tradition to another and the Italian primitives were part of series of developments in art, architecture and culture that typify the forces which become epoch-making.  The emphasis on perspective, anatomical accuracy and depictions of the range of human emotion so associated with the Renaissance owes much to the Italian primitives, not only in technique but also what came to be regarded as acceptable subject matter for art and one might suspect the Renaissance masters, revolutionary though they were, perhaps regarded the earlier tradition with more reverence than the critics who were so seduced by the sumptuousness of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella (circa 1280), tempera on wood by Giotto (Giotto di Bondone, circa 1267-1337).  Among the Italian primitives, the works of Giotto provide some of the finest illustrations of the emergence of elements which the Renaissance masters would refine and perfect.  His Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella is very much in the vein of earlier works by Giunta Pisano (circa 1180-circa 1260) and Cimabue and details how the Italian primitives didn't wholly abandon the hieratic solemnity of Byzantine iconography but weren't constrained by their formulaic traditions, returning to a realism which would have been familiar in antiquity.  The use of embryonic techniques of perspective and chiaroscuro created a depth and volume which would later become the dominant motif in European art.

Graphics Primitives in Digital Images

Lindsay Lohan constructed in graphic primitives by MeygaHardy on DeviantArt.

In digital imagery (vector graphics, CAD systems et al), graphic (sometimes called geometric) primitives are the simplest form of shape which can be rendered and scaled for display on a screen (although in advanced engineering, as mathematical expressions, there are pure geometric primitives which can’t be displayed although they can be manipulated) and are sometime thus described as “irreducible” or “atomic”.  The origin of all graphics primitives are the point (technically the representation of a point as a point exists in space as a dimensionless address) and the straight line (that which extends from one point and another).  These lives were the original vectors and the earliest computers could handle only lines and points, thing like triangles and squares being constructed from these.  Graphic primitives are now more extensive and from assembling these, more complex shapes can be built.  Among mathematicians, there are debates about just what can be said to constitute a pure primitive, some suggesting that if a shape can be reduced to two or more shapes, it doesn’t qualify but for most they’re just handy objects and the technical squabble passes unnoticed.  The principle of graphic primitives underpinned the techniques of the early cubist artists.

Primitif by Max Factor (1956).  The use of the French adjective Primitif lent the product a continental connection but it's the masculine form, the feminine being primitive.

Mannerism

Mannerism (pronounced man-uh-riz-uhm)

(1) A habitual or characteristic manner, mode, or way of doing something; distinctive quality or style, as in behavior or speech; a distinctive and individual gesture or trait; idiosyncrasy.

(2) Marked or excessive adherence to an unusual or a particular manner, especially if affected; adherence to a distinctive or affected manner, especially in art or literature.

(3) A style in art, a principally Italian movement in art and architecture between the High Renaissance and Baroque periods (1520–1600) that sought to represent an ideal of beauty rather than natural images of it, characterized by a complex perspectival system, elongation of forms, strained gestures or poses of figures, and intense, often strident color (usually initial capital letter).

1795–1805: A compound word manner + -ism.  Manner was from the Middle English maner, a borrowing from the Anglo-Norman manere, from the Old French maniere, from the Vulgar Latin manāria (feminine form of manuarius (belonging to the hand)), from manus (hand).  In Romance languages, there was also the French manière, the Italian mannaia (ax, axe), the Portuguese maneira and maneiro (handy, portable), the Romanian mâner (handle), and the Spanish manera (way).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Mannerism & Mannerist are nouns, manneristic & manneristical are adjectives and manneristically is an adverb; the most commonly use noun plural is Mannerists.

After the Renaissance

Classic Mannerism: Madonna dal Colla Lungo (The Madonna with the Long Neck (circa 1537-1540)) oil on wood by Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, 1503-1540).

Historians of art use (sometimes a little loosely) the term Mannerism to refer to a style of painting, sculpture and even architecture which developed in Florence and Rome in the first two decades of the sixteenth century, the later years of the High Renaissance and although it’s a bit of a cliché, Mannerism can be thought of as the transition between the idealized style of Renaissance art and the dramatic theatricality of the Baroque.  Early Mannerism (circa 1510-1535) tends to be known for what it was not: it was “anti-Renaissance” or “anti-classical” and a reaction against what had evolved to be a formal and prescriptive style while High Mannerism (circa 1535-1580) adopted a formalism of its own, intricate, self-referential and a visual language which focused on technique and an appeal to the sophisticated critics and patrons of the age.  A deliberate retreat or advance depending on one’s view) from the naturalistic traditions of Renaissance painting the artificiality became the an exaggerated idiom associated with the era and was applied to the strained poses, elongated human figures, distortions of scale, tricks of lighting or perspective which were often depicted in vivid, contrasting colors.  More than anything, it was an attempt to find a way in which the attributes of the emotions could be depicted by technique alone.  Because Mannerism is now so associated with its distinctive markers such as the wan-like necks and facial expressions suggesting something between bemusement and constipation, it’s often forgotten artists as diverse as Correggio (1489-1534), noted for his sentimental narrative paintings, Federico Barocci (1526-1612) the devoutly religious painter of sacred images and Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) known for his monumentally bizarre portraits which were collages of fruit and vegetable (still popular as posters) were all significant figures in the Mannerist tradition.  The best remembered of course remains Michelangelo (1475-1564) who influenced for centuries the portrayal of the Christ child by showing light radiating from the infant, his Sistine Chapel frescoes such as The Last Judgement (1536-1541) a landmark of the movement.

High Mannerism: El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz (The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586) oil on canvas by El Greco (Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos, 1541-1614) 

Mannerism did not develop merely as an artistic novelty.  The idealized works of the High Renaissance were an expression of stability in society which had by the sixteenth century evolved into what at the time seemed to many not only the highest level of civilization ever achieved but the highest that was possible to achieve.  That didn’t last and the turmoil which followed in the wake of the religious war of the Reformation against the Catholic Church shattered the certainties of centuries, something exacerbated by what was discovered and uncovered by science; not only was it clear that Europe was not the centre of a flat Earth, but the Earth itself was not something around which all the universe revolved.  The ordered harmony of the world explained by the church was crumbling and the adventurism of Mannerism was there to reflects the new uncertainties.

Vista de Toledo (View of Toledo, circa 1599), oil on canvas by El Greco.  Although most associated with depictions of the human form, Mannerism also spawned a school of landscape painting.  Vista de Toledo is the best known of El Greco's surviving landscapes, a portrayal of the city in which he lived and worked in for most of his life.  Mannerist depictions of the built environment actually belonged to the long tradition of emblematic rather than faithful documentary descriptions of city views and here, there's also a bit of artistic licence; viewed looking north-east, the artist has shifted the cathedral to the left of the Alcázar (the royal palace), just to provide the desired compositional balance.  The ancient Alcántara Bridge and the Castle of San Servando are both faithfully represented.

Some historians have argued that although Mannerism wasn’t at any time inevitable, something was because the artistic forms of the Renaissance had been perfected by Old Masters like Raphael and Leonardo who had refined their techniques to the point where their ability to render the natural and realistic transcended the two-dimensional space in which they often worked; at what they did, they couldn’t be improved upon.  This wasn’t an attractive thing for younger artists who wished to be more than just imitative and foreshadowing the iconoclastic movements which centuries later would remake what art could be thought to be, the mannerists formed a new pictorial language, one which was individualistic and mapped symbolism onto a visual structure in which the symmetry and balance so prized by the Old Masters were replaced by a dynamism so challenging that a viewer might be uncertain where their gaze should be focused.  It was a confident and exaggerated artificiality.

Nozze di Cana (The Wedding Feast at Cana, 1562–1563), oil on canvas by Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari, 1528–1588).  Nozze di Cana is sometime used in fine art studies, lecturers asking students to identify the elements associated with the High Renaissance and those then exclusive to Mannerism.

From Mannerism can be traced the path which led via almost a dozen different movements to the art of post-modernism in which the real & unreal, the spiritual world and the perceptible world, can not necessarily be distinguished, a notion which the masters of the High Renaissance would have thought absurd but just as Mannerism was once a disrupter, it became an orthodoxy so of course there were those who wanted to create their own unique things and the school begat “High Mannerism” which in the seventeenth century became “the Baroque” and, in a nice twist, the style (which at its core was illusionist) was with alacrity embraced by the Church which understood what needed to be done to make faith attractive.  It was at the Council of Trent (1562) when the framework for the strategy of the Counter-Reformation was first thrashed out that it was decided the mystical and supernatural would become a prominent part of the religious experience: Baroque art could do that like none other.  

A distinctive feature of Mannerism was the use of figurative serpentinata (serpentine figure) in the depiction of the human body with extended limbs and the elongation of forms, the figures presented an otherworldliness that departed from classical renditions and many Mannerist works presented individuals or scenes in non-naturalistic settings, oftentimes without any contextual basis, inviting the viewer to regard the work as something beyond the literal renditions of the Renaissance.  Elements of the Mannerist style are often seen in modern art.  Although he describes himself as a “modern Impressionist artist” Lucas Bufi (b 1987) allows motifs from other traditions to flavor his work and for Lindsay Lohan Playboy Painting (oil on canvas, 2012), which followed her photo-shoot for the January–February 2012 issue of Playboy magazine, he used a Mannerist technique.

Dunce

Dunce (pronounced duhns)

(1) A dull-witted, stupid, or ignorant person; a dolt.

(2) In educational systems, a person slow to learn (obsolete).

(3) As dunce’s cap, a conical hat once used as a form of shaming and punishment in some educational systems.

1520–1530: Named after the Dunses, Dunites or Dunsmen, term of ridicule applied to the devotees of Scottish Franciscan friar, John Duns Scotus (circa 1265-1308).  The use of SCotUS as the initialism of Supreme Court of the United States is wholly coincidental; cool people anyway prefer “the supremes”.  The many synonyms of dunce include clodpoll, ass, birdbrain, blockhead, bonehead, buffoon, dimwit, dolt, donkey, dope, dork, dullard, dunderhead, fool, goof, half-wit, idiot, ignoramus, imbecile, jerk, numbskull, ignoramus, simpleton, nincompoop & ninny but dunce has a special place because of the historic association with schoolrooms and the utility of the dunce’s cap for cartoonists and, latterly meme-makers.   Dunce is a noun, duncical, duncelike & duncish are adjectives and duncishly is an adverb; the noun plural is dunces.

The first dunces

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1648), oil on canvas by Antoine Nicolas (circa 1606-1661).

The shock of the Reformation, the sixteenth century movement within Western Christianity that mounted a theological and political challenge to the Roman Catholic Church and especially papal authority seems to have colored the popular view of the era and it’s often not appreciated that early in the century, both Church and papacy were in good shape and enjoyed popular support.  Far from being a rigid, unchanging institution, the Medieval Church was inventive and energetic and while it couldn’t be said to be tolerant of dissent, it certainly welcomed regional diversity and after the end of the papal schism (between 1378-1417 popes in France and Italy both asserted their authority over the Church) and the centralization of the institution in Rome, things really were looking good.  It was in this atmosphere that the Church played a part in the great cultural movement which began in Europe in the fifteenth century: The Renaissance (rebirth).

Print by Valentine Green following Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and reputedly inspired by William of Ockham.

The Renaissance re-energized fields as diverse as literature, history, linguistics, mathematics, art, political theory and architecture.  One far-reaching effect (which would take centuries to unfold) was the re-discovery of the works and histories of the Greco-Roman world of antiquity, pursued with a method which resonates still in the modern academic method: Ad fontes (back to the sources).  Those sources, Galen, Cicero, Seneca, Plato et al, transformed study in western Europe, something made possible largely because of the wealth of documents arrived from the libraries, monasteries and palaces of the Byzantine Empire after Constantinople fell to Islamic conquest in 1453.  The scholars and scribes who immersed themselves in these texts came to be known as “the humanists” (from studia humanitatis (the classic curriculum of the academy and related not at all to the modern use of humanist to describe the particularly chauvinistic sect within secular, western intellectual life)).  What the Renaissance humanists did however was uncover the Greek texts of the original Bible and detected in them words a phrases which imparted meanings with theological implications at variance with what had come to be regarded as orthodoxy, based on the Vulgate, translation in Latin of the Bible dating from the late fourth century.

John Duns Scotus (circa 1475), oil on panel by Justus van Gent (1460-1480) & Pedro Berruguete (1450-1504).

The differences imparted by those variations were essentially about whether an individual’s relationships with Christ and God required only that they followed what was written in scripture or whether it depended on the institution of the Church, its ritual, its rules, its priests and of course its taxes and its pope.  In that debate lies the root of so many of the disputes which exist in Christianity still and, interestingly, are not dissimilar to the core of the theological dispute between the Sunni and Shi'a in Islam.  What the humanists did was lay siege to the old dominance in theology of the “scholastics”, themselves divided by an intellectual schism between the via antiqua (the old way) school and the via moderna (the new way), something which must seem familiar to anyone who has cast a glance at the squabbles which have disfigured the Lambeth Conferences since 1968.  Those who thought the old ways were still the best traced their lineage from Italian Dominican friar Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) & Scottish Franciscan friar John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) while the modernists were inspired by English Franciscan friar William of Ockham (circa 1287-1347; he of "Ockham's razor").  It was the still influential Aquinas who in Summa Theologica (1265–1274) created what came to called the “medieval synthesis of faith and reason”, a reconciliation of the teachings of Aristotle (384-322 BC) with scripture and for that he was canonized.  Ockham dismantled the great synthesis and the Church condemned him as a heretic, excommunicating and exiling him although, in an example of having two theological bob each way, never declared his work a heresy.

Those of the via moderna faction however wanted more than ever for the synthesis to be realized but wanted it based on the understanding of scripture (and thus the word of Christ) that their study of the documents from Constantinople had revealed.  Those tied to the old ways of Aquinis and John Duns Scotus (who had for some time been derisively dismissed as the “Dunses”, “Dunites” or “Dunsmen”) they decided deserved the collective “dunce”, those well-schooled and expert in orthodox philosophy but wholly ignorant of the authentic message of Christianity.

Intelligence is famously difficult to measure and even standardized intelligence tests, while they can provide a comparative index of performance of the sub-set taking the test, ultimately measure only a proficiency in answering certain question at a certain time, in a certain place and even then need to be understood in terms of the bias selection in both content and participation.  Based on conventional measures however, the consensus view probably would hold George W Bush (b 1946; US president 2001-2009) was (1) of somewhere above average intelligence and (2) one of the less intelligent US presidents.  However, his halting delivery (except in informal settings), deliciously mangled syntax and frequent malapropisms certainly made him appear a bit of a dunce and he was a gift to the meme-makers in the early days of the form.  The one from 2002 showing him in an elementary school, holding a book upside down circulated widely but was a fake as analysis of some of the detail revealed; book and dunce’s cap both photoshopped.  The book was America: A Patriotic Primer, by Dr Lynne Cheney (b 1941), wife of Dick Cheney (b 1941; US vice-president 2001-2009).  The first evidence of the dunce’s cap seems to date from the early eighteenth century although the earliest known use of the term appears to be 1791 and by the middle of the next century it was used in English literature and appeared in the work of cartoonists.  Actually used in many educational systems as a device both to assist pedagogy and inflict punishment, they had substantially been abandoned by the 1960s but in some of the more remote regions of the British Isles, dunce’s caps were said still to be in use early in the twenty-first century.

Rodomontade

Rodomontade (pronounced rod-uh-mon-teyd, rod-uh-mon-tahd, rod-uh-muhn-tadh or roh-duh-mon-teyd.

(1) Vainglorious boasting or bragging; pretentious, bluster.

(2) To boast; to brag.

1605–1615: From the Middle French rodomontade, the construct being the Italian Rodomonte (name of the boastful Saracen king of Algiers in the Italian Renaissance epic poems Orlando innamorato (1483-1495) and its sequel Orlando furioso (1516–1532)) + the Middle French –ade (the suffix used to form nouns denoting action, or a person performing said action), from the Occitan -ada, from the Latin -ata.  In dialectal Italian the name means literally “one who rolls (away) the mountain” (clipped also to “roll-mountain”).  As a verb in the sense of “boast, brag, talk big” it was in use by the 1680s and as early as the 1590s rodomont was used to mean “a braggart”.  Rodomontade is a noun, verb & adjective, rodomontador is a noun and rodomontaded, rodomontading are verbs; the noun plural is rodomontades.  The adjective rodomontadish has been used but is listed as non-standard.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

The epic poem Orlando innamorato (known in English also as “Orlando in Love) was written by the Italian Renaissance author Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440-1494 and published between 1483 (the first two books) and 1495 (third book, the three concurrently issued as a complete edition)).  The “sequel” was Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando) by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) which appeared first in 1516, the complete work published in 1532.  It was a continuation of Boiardo's unfinished work and in its settings and characters shares some features with the eleventh century chanson de geste (literally “song of heroic deeds”, from the Latin gesta (deeds, actions accomplished)), a medieval narrative (usually in the form of an epic-length poem) which is among the earliest forms of French literature) La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland).  La Chanson de Roland was a chivalric romance and tells the tale of the death of Roland (circa 740-778), the Frankish military leader under Charlemagne (748–814; (retrospectively) the first Holy Roman Emperor 800-814).

Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

It was never a common word bit now it’s vanishingly rare and appears usually only when referring to certain politicians.  In the nineteenth century the spelling “rhodomontade” was more common, reflecting the pronunciation then often used in English and dictionaries still list “rodomontade” & “rhodomontade” as acceptable spellings while noting the latter is archaic.   As a literary term it can be applied to a style which is inflated, bombastic and generally meretricious in its quest for the exotic.  In the poems, the Saracen king Rodomonte was a brave and honorable warrior but also bombastically boastful.  Of politicians described thus, there’s not of necessity any implication of honor, just the boasting and bluster, often in the most grandiloquent of terms.  The comparative is “more rodomontade”, the superlative “most rodomontade” and, as a modifier, it can be used in the form “rodomontade behaviour” although some suggest this is clumsy.

Donald Trump, mid-rodomontading.

Rodomontade would seem an ideal word to use in the era of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021; president elect 2024) but, acquaintance with epic poetry of the Italian Renaissance being hardly mainstream, the utterances once so described will now be better understood as “Trumpisms”.  Mr Trump is certainly given to the rodomontadish and seems willing to concede that while George Washington (1732–1799; first president of the United States, 1789-1797) and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865) might have been his equals, he’s better than any of his other 43 predecessors.  His boasts have included:

“I am a genius and a very stable genius”.
“I would give myself an A+.”
“I did the biggest deal ever done in the history of our country yesterday in terms of trade — and probably other things too, if you think about it.”
“This is the biggest deal there is, anywhere in the world by far.’’
“I think we've done more than perhaps any president in the first 100 days.”
“My administration has accomplished more than virtually any administration in the history of our country”.
“I am one of the best presidents”.
“My presidency has been a tremendous success despite significant opposition and I have unparalleled achievement.”

Novecento

Novecento (pronounced no-vee-chen-toh)

(1) In Italian, nine hundred (900).

(2) In Italian the “twentieth century (1900s)”, the term used in the modern way to define the century as 1900-1999 rather than the strictly correct 1901-2000.

(3) As Novecento Italiano (literally the “Italian 1900s”), the Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 with the aim of representing the fascism of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) in artistic form.

An Italian word which translates literally as nine-hundred (900), the construct being nove (nine) +‎ cento (hundred).  Nove was from the Latin novem, from noven (contaminated by decem, the original form preserved in nōnus), from the Proto-Italic nowem, from the primitive Indo-European hnéwn̥, the cognates including the Sanskrit नवन् (navan), the Ancient Greek ἐννέα (ennéa), the Gothic niun and the Old English nigon (which became the English nine).  Cento was from the Latin centum, from the Proto-Italic kentom, from the primitive Indo-European ḱm̥tóm, the formal cognates including the Sanskrit शत (śata), the Old Church Slavonic съто (sŭto) and the Old English hund (from which English, with an appended suffix, gained “hundred”. In Italian, the adjective novecentistico (feminine novecentistica, masculine plural novecentistici, feminine plural novecentistiche) is used generally of “twentieth century art” while “Novecento Italiano” was specifically of the movement (1922-1943) associated with Italian fascism.  However, “novecentistico” is sometimes used casually in the sense of “modern art”.  Novecento is a noun and novecentesco & novecentistico are adjectives.

Mussolini, Italian fascism and the Novecento Italiano 

In Italy and beyond, the curious coming to power in 1922 of Benito Mussolini (an event less dramatic than the Duce’s subsequent “March on Rome” propaganda would suggest) triggered many events and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) always acknowleded the debt the Nazi state owed because "Mussolini was the one who showed us it could be done").  One of the more enduring Italian footnotes of the epoch was the Novecento Italiano, opportunistically announced as having been “formed” in Milan in 1922 (although some “members” at the time appear not to have been aware they’d "joined".  What attracted the movement’s founders was the what Mussolini called “la visione fascista” (“the Fascist vision” and sometimes translated as “the Fascist platform” (la piattaforma fascista)) although, as the years went by, most seemed to conclude Mussolini dealt more in concepts than plans (even the so-called "corporate state" was never really "corporatized").  The Duce had expressed his disgust at the decadence of the modern Italian people, believing they had been seduced by French ways into “elevating cooking to the status of high art”, declaring he would never allow Italy to descend to the level of France, a country ruined by “alcohol, syphilis and journalism”.  His vision extended also to reviving national vigour with “the beneficial hygiene of war”, something which worked only until his army was confronted by forces with more firepower than the brave but out-gunned (and out-gassed) Abyssinian (Ethiopian) tribesman.  Mussolini was harking back to the glories of the Roman Empire which has once stretched from “Hadrian’s Wall to the first cataract of the Nile, from Parthia to the Pillars of Hercules” and while so much of fascism was fake and bluster, the Duce genuinely was intoxicated at the notion he might be a “new Roman Emperor”.

Paesaggio urbano (Urban Landscape, circa 1924), oil on paper mounted on board by Mario Sironi.  Despite his latter day reputation, not all Sironi's representations of streets and buildings were gloomy, cold scenes but the ones now most popular seem to be; they must suit the twenty-first century zeitgeist.  Sironi was a devoted and leading Futurist and traces of that really never left his works; his most compelling technique was to exclude the human element from his urban scenes or deliberately have the figures dwarfed by the built environment.  The supremacy of the state over the individual was a core component of fascism and although as a motif it isn't apparent in all of the Novecento Italiano's output, it's a recurrent theme in Sironi's works. 

It was a vision which appealed to a certain sort of artist, one with a mind full of the grandeur of Italy's classical artistic heritage and the possibilities offered by science and the techniques of modernity, something seen as an authentic continuation of the works of Antiquity and the Renaissance whereas other threads in modern art, like the Futurism which had come to dominate avant-garde Italian art, were derided as “the work of skilled draftsmen”.  Futurism had also been disruptive and Italy had suffered more from the effects of World War I (1914-1918) that its status as a nominal victor might have been expected and like Mussolini, one of the Novecento Italiano’s key themes was a “return to order”, presumably the cultural analogue of “making the trains run on time”.  Again reflecting the post-Renaissance “construction” of a certain “idea” of the perfection of things in the ancient world, the movement sought a “return” to the Classical values of harmony, clarity, and stability.  They were pursuing a myth which remains to some persuasive, even today.

Lindsay Lohan as the Novecento Italiano might have depicted her: Lindsay (2019) by Sam McKinniss (b 1985), from a reference photograph taken 22 July 2012, leaving the Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood, Los Angeles.

The most obvious influence on the movement was a return to the imagery associated with Antiquity (albeit with many of the exemplars from later artists), with mythological or historical subjects, emphasizing form and balance, a deliberate rejection of the abstraction and dynamism of Cubism, Vorticism or Futurism.  Instead, a figurative and realist prevailed, an attempt deliberately to place the movement as the inheritor of Italy’s artistic heritage.  The movement was founded by a number of prominent figures but remains most associated with art collector, critic & journalist Margherita Sarfatti (1880–1961).  That focus is probably unfair to others but signora Sarfatti also wrote advertising copy for the Partito Nazionale Fascista (the PNF, the National Fascist Party) and perhaps more significantly, was also Mussolini’s mistress, a form of administrative horizontal integration not unfamiliar to the Duce.  Prominent members of the movement included Mario Sironi (1885-1961), known for his monumental and often sombre depictions of urban landscapes and political figures, Achille Funi (1890-1972) who focused on classical subjects with modern interpretations and Felice Casorati (1883-1963), in many ways the most interesting of the movement because few were more accomplished in the technique of fusing elements of modernism with a sharp focus on form and structure; the (not always complimentary) phrase “technical ecstasy” might have been invented to critique his output.  The most comprehensive collection of the movement’s works is displayed in Rome’s La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art).

Donna al caffè (Woman in the Café, 1931), oil on canvas by Antonio Donghi (1897-1963). The subject matter (a lone woman at a café table) was familiar in European art but the artists of the Novecento Italiano anticipated the later technique of "photographic clarity", achieved with the air of stillness, reminiscent of the precision with which Renaissance portraits were staged though without their sumptuous detailing.  As well as the movement's focus on clarity, order, and balance, there was a new interest in depicting "ordinary" urban citizens in scenes of a detached, almost serene realism.  In the work of the Novecento Italiano, woman tended to be represented as what the fascist state would have liked their citizens to be.

The comparisons with “Nazi art” are sometimes made but because art was a topic of little interest to Mussolini (who preferred the Autostrada (the world’s first motorways (freeways)), tanks and battleships, never in Italy as there anything so so dictatorial and the funding was spread to ensure the widest support for the regime.  That was a contrast with Hitler who to his dying day never ceased to think of himself as “an artist” and assumed the role of the Third Reich’s chief critic and censor, meaning there was a recognizably political theme to the art of the period.  Interestingly, while artists in the Reich increasingly “worked towards the Führer” and dutifully churned out what they knew would be “regime approved”, more than one memoir from his contemporaries recorded how little interest he took in them, responding with delight only to stuff like landscapes or portraiture he thought works of genuine beauty.  Really, there were probably fewer than a couple of dozen “Nazi” paintings or sculptures; it was just that hundreds of artists produced them thousands of times.

Dafne (1934), oil on plywood by Felice Casorati.  Casorati’s work often featured mythological subjects but, unlike many, he surrounded them with simplified forms, drawing attention to his sense of focus, precise structure and clarity.  Here, Daphne (in Greek mythology transformed into a laurel, the tree sacred to Apollo), is rendered in a figurative, geometric style with flat, muted colors, the work, while obviously modernist, owing a debt to classical traditions, Mannerism and hinting even at the Italian Primitives.

So the movement was neither monolithic nor “political” in the way things were done in the Third Reich and certainly nothing like the even more severe regime which prevailed in comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) Soviet Union but it was supported to some extent by the Fascist state and while that association proved helpful, even before the tide of World War II (1939-1945) turned against Italy, as early as the mid-1930s the historic moment of Novecento Italiano had already passed as the world responded to the latest “shock of the new”, the language of surrealism and other adventures in abstraction capturing the imagination.  When in 1943 Italian Fascism “burst like a bubble” and Mussolini was removed from power, the movement was dissolved.  However, artistically, the legacy was real in that it did foster a dialogue between modernism and tradition in European art and ensured the Italian state during the inter-war years became involved in the commissioning of monumental and representational public art, beginning a tradition which continues to this day.