Figura Serpentinata Unleashed: Hogarth's Line of Beauty and the Misreading of Lomazzo's Treatise
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11240%2F17%3A10389590" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11240/17:10389590 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
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DOI - Digital Object Identifier
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Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Figura Serpentinata Unleashed: Hogarth's Line of Beauty and the Misreading of Lomazzo's Treatise
Original language description
The essay analyzes a certain misunderstanding that stimulated William Hogarth to invent his 'line of beauty' and eventually made this line, which was to become the ideal measure and visual performative of beauty, to unleash all its ferocites and self-destructive potential. Hogarth rather carelessly misapprehended Lomazzo's Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura (1584), especially the passages devoted to the so-called 'figura serpentinata' and the related representation of movement, life and elegance. Hogarth even saw himself as Lomazzo's successor and intended to transform his remarks into the general theory of beauty as a key aspect of artistic representation. Hogarth, however, fatally underestimated the Neoplatonic context of Lomazzo's remarks and stripped the serpentine line of it's most essential quality of translating between the physical and metaphysical domain and mediating the hierarchical relationship between the sensual agitation and spiritual elevation. He missed the fact that figura serpentinata is motivated by the specific furia della figura', derived from Platonic mu alpha nu iota alpha,Latvia / Ficino's 'furor' which not only (literally) animates, but also immanently controls its undulation. Hogarth thus deprived himself of these means. At the same time, however, he never gave up the ambition to define his line in terms of a similar ideal directive. Hence the number of contradictions, consisting in mutually excluding attempts to derive the line from experience, deligitimise any external rules and define it as an idealistic norm of movement. The essay first exposes and analyzes these contradictions in context of both Neoplatonic philosophy and Hogarth's milieu, showing that the supposed 'line of beauty' constantly escaped Hogarth's efforts to control it and became the wanton notation of incoercible impulses and passions instead. In short, Hogarth's spontaneous line, which was supposed to become the backbone of restrained beauty, the instructive signature of the elegance of things and our bodies alike, rose up against Hogarth's parenting and evolved into a notation of anarchy and decay, to which our beautiful bodies and things inevitably succumb.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2017
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Umění
ISSN
0049-5123
e-ISSN
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Volume of the periodical
65
Issue of the periodical within the volume
5-6
Country of publishing house
CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC
Number of pages
14
Pages from-to
460-473
UT code for WoS article
000433397100002
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85046787581