Rembrandt's Aristotle.pdf

Rembrandt's "Aristotle": Exemplary BeholderAuthor(s): Margaret Deutsch CarrollSource: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 5, No. 10 (1984), pp. 35-56Published by: IRSA s.c.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483193 .

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MARGARET DEUTSCH CARROLL

Rembrandt's Aristotle: Exemplary Beholder

Among the many difficulties that confront scholars trying to interpret Rembrandt's late paintings is the fact noted by Jan Biatostocki, that at times we can not agree even on a pre-iconographic description of the subject: whether, for example, Moses is displaying or about to smash the tables of the law, in the painting in Berlin;1 or whether, in what is conventionally entitled Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, the standing figure is or is not looking at the sculpture before him [Fig. 1].2

The currently prevailing interpretation of Rembrandt's Aris- totle, proposed by Julius Held in 1969, is based on the sense that philosopher is not looking at the sculpture, but rather, that his attention is divided between the bust and the golden chain that he fingers with his left hand.3 Identifying the chain as an honorific gift bestowed by Alexander the Great upon

his court philosopher, Professor Held suggests that "the melancholy reflections of Aristotle involve an awareness of

,the fickleness of princely favor."4 And Professor Held con- cludes that, like Rembrandt's Denial of St. Peter, his Aristotle deals with the theme " of a troubled individual caught in the center of conflicting forces," represented in this painting by "the bust of Homer on the one hand, and the golden chain as a token of secular honor on the other."5

A different interpretation is suggested, however, if one considers that the philosopher is indeed contemplating the bust before him, and that the golden chain itself may be a symbol of his contemplative activity. To be sure, Aristotle is not examining the bust with the same attentiveness that, for example, Vermeer's Astronomer directs to his celestial orb. Yet if Aristotle seems not to restrict his gaze precisely to the

1 Jan Biatostocki, " Ikonographische Forschungen zu Rembrandts Werk ", MOnchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, VIII, 1957, p. 260. On Moses with the Tables of the Law, see Abraham Bredius, Rem- brandt: the Complete Edition of the Paintings, 3rd ed., rev. H. Gerson, London, 1969, no. 527; also Christian Tumpel, " Studien zur Ikonogra- phie der Historien Rembrandts," Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, XX, 1969, pp. 169-7.

2 Bredius (Gerson), no. 478. On the identification of the figure as Aristotle, see Afterword.

3 " Although it ought to be obvious that Aristotle is not looking

at the bust, this is precisely what several scholars have said he was doing." And again, " The bust plays a most important role in these thoughts, but is not, in itself, the object of the sage's contemplation."

Julius Held, " Rembrandt's Aristotle ", in Rembrandt's Aristotle and Other Studies, Princeton, 1969, pp. 4 and 40-1, respectively.

4 Ibid., pp. 32-41; passage cited on p. 40. 5 Ibid., p. 41. Held notes that Aristotle does accord higher value

to Homer (p. 39): "The philosopher looks neither at Homer nor at the chain. Yet one can not help feeling that his melancholic countenance and faraway glance are in some way linked to both these objects, as if subtle impulses were flowing to him from them, while he touches them with his fingers... Though mindful of the function and meaning of the chain, Aristotle turns in the direction of the bust. In the rivalry of two centers of attention, he seems instinctively to put one above the other."

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confines of the sculpture, that by no means need suggest that it is no longer the object of his attention. Rather, the philosopher's thoughtful gaze suggests that he may be passing, in a familiar meditational progression, from an initial stage of sensory observation to one of intellectual deliberation, which

leads, in principle, to a final stage of spiritual insight. Many of Rembrandt's meditating saints and philosophers

are shown lost in thought with their gaze detached from the book lying open before them. Such is the prestige of the book, however, that it would never occur to us to doubt that these

38



thinkers look away from their books in order to reflect upon their meaning. In the case of St. Paul in Prison [Fig. 2], Rembrandt seems to capture that moment when the apostle turns from his reading of the Bible in order to ponder the commentary that he will write in his epistle - the pages of which lie upon the open text.6 Likewise we infer from A Scholar in a Room with a Winding Stair (of c. 1633) [Fig. 3] that the open book from which the thinker turns is the point of departure for his contemplative activity - here alluded to, perhaps, by the shadowy staircase, or scala meditationis, a familiar symbol of philosophy since the time of Boethius [Fig. 4].7

But whereas it is not unusual in Renaissance and Baroque imagery for a book to appear as the point of departure for a philosopher's contemplative activity, a secular work of art is almost never accorded that function. To be sure, sculpted busts are included in portraits of art collectors and scholars - but usually as attributes of their identity, not as objects of their attention. Thus in sixteenth-century portraits of collectors of antiquities, the collector usually stares out impassively while resting his hand on a sculpted head in a gesture that merely signifies possession.8 Even in seventeenth-century Flemish portraits of collectors in their konstkamers, the patron in usually shown stiffly posed in front of his collection or displaying it to others [Figs. 5 and 6]; but he is never seen privately absorbed in the contemplation of a single work.9

In a tradition parallel to that of collectors' portraits, antique busts are often included in depictions of scholars in their studies, following the ancient custom mentioned by Pliny of furnishing libraries with likenesses of famous men.10 Thus, for example, in Rubens' Portrait of Caspar Gevartius, a bust of Marcus Aurelius is placed next to the sitter, who looks up at us from his writing."1 But here, too, the bust in no way

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4) " Filosofia ". Woodcut from Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, 5th ed., Siena, 1613, p. 267. By permission of the Hough- ton Library, Harvard University.

commands the scholar's attention; it simply testifies to his humanist values. Indeed Rembrandt's drawing of Minerva at her desk, known as Anna Wymer in her Study, follows in this mode, whereby the sculpted bust - like the books on the table, and the helmet and shield on the wall - is an attribute of the

6 Bredius (Gerson), no. 601. 7 Bredius (Gerson), no. 431. Boethius, De consolatione philoso-

phiae, I, 1, 1-6; Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, Rome, 1603, p. 164; and Siena, 1613, pp. 266-74. Ripa's emblems of filosofia are discussed in Gerlind Werner, Ripas Iconologia: Quellen, Methode, Ziele, Utrecht, 1977, p. 42.

8 E. g. Sebastiano Florigerio's Portrait of Raffaele Grassi, Florence, Uffizi (illustrated in Held, fig. 22).

9 The painting no. 669 in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, called Une galerie de tableaux by Frans Francken III (Fig. 5), has been identified by S. Speth-Holterhoff as The Cabinet of Sebastian Leerse by Frans Francken II in Les peintres flamands de Cabinets d'Amateurs, Bruxelles, 1957, pp. 78-9. Willem van Haecht's Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest [Fig. 6] is discussed in ibid., pp. 100-4; in Julius Held, "'Artis pictoriae amator': an Antwerp Art Patron and his Collection," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, n.s. L, 1957, pp. 52-84

(repr. with addendum and postscript in Rubens and his Circle, ed. Anne W. Lowenthal et al. Princeton, 1982, pp. 35 - 64); Matthias Winner, Die Quellen der Pictura-Allegorien in gemalten Bildergalerien des 17. Jahrhunderts zu Antwerpen, Ph.D diss., University of Cologne, 1957, pp. 35 - 40; and Frans Baudouin, P. P. Rubens, trans. Elsie Callander, New York, 1977, pp. 283 - 301.

10 Held, " Aristotle," op. cit. pp. 22-3. Pliny specifically mentions a portrait of Homer, when he writes of "likenesses [of gold, silver, or bronze, which] are set up in libraries in honor of those whose immortal spirits speak to us in the same places, nay more, even imaginary likenesses are modelled and sense of loss gives birth to countenances that have not been handed down to us, as occurs in the case of Homer." Natural History, XXXV, 9, trans. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Library), London, 1952, v. IX, p. 267.

11 Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum: illustrated in Held, "Aristotle," op. cit. fig. 18.

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godess's identity as patroness of learning and the plastic arts [Fig. 15].12

Although Rembrandt's Aristotle, too, is seen with traditional attributes of learning - the antique bust, books and a mirror on the table - this painting stands apart from previous representations of collectors and scholars, precisely by virtue of the primacy Rembrandt now gives to the sculpture as the object of the philosopher's attention.

While the value of a work of art as an object of philosophi-

cal contemplation is rarely attested in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century painting, it is a theme that occurs with some frequency in the literature of art and art-collecting at that time. At the risk of oversimplifying a very complicated issue, one might state that the value of works of art to humanist philosophy was supported not only by familiar claims for their commemorative and exemplary functions, but also by two lines of argument which may be broadly distinguished as Neoplatonic and Aristotelian.

12 Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, 2nd ed., Eve Benesch, London, 1973, no. 914; Walter L. Strauss et al., The Rem- brandt Documents, New York, 1979, item 1652/11, pp. 290-2; and Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, "Rembrandt's So-called Portrait of Anna Wymer as Minerva ", Acts of the Twentieth International Con- gress of the History of Art, Princeton, 1963, v. III, pp. 59-65. These

same attributes, among many others, appear with Minerva in Rubens' Education of Marie de Medici [Fig. 11], discussed in Susan Saward, The Golden Age of Marie de' Medici, Ann Arbor, 1982, pp. 40-51. Ovid mentions Minerva's patronage of the arts in the Fasti, III, 831 - 3.

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6) Willem van Haecht, ((Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest), 1628. Antwerp, Rubenshuis.

Neoplatonic theory claims that in looking at things of beauty, the viewer forms an image of ideal beauty and in so doing gains access to the divine. In the words of Michelangelo, " Neither my eyes... nor my soul... possess any power that can raise them to heaven but the contemplation of beautiful things."13 What may be loosely described as the Aristotelian

argument claims that in looking at works of art, the philosopher pursues his aim of contemplating the entire visible universe. In the words of Leonardo, " He who despises painting loves neither philosophy nor nature, for painting brings philosophy and subtle speculation to all things."14

The growing vogue for encyclopedic collections in the

13 Quoted and translated in Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1600, Oxford, pb. ed., 1962, pp. 69 and 70n.

14 The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. and ed. Jean Paul Richter (facs. repr. of The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Lon- don, 1883), New York, n.d., v. I, p. 327, no. 652.

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sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be understood in- terms of the convergence of these Neoplatonic and Aristote- lian ambitions. In principle, such collections were designed to

present the viewer with representations and specimens of all that was made in nature and by man throughout the world and in the course of history, thus allowing the beholder to discern the divine concatenation of creation, and to progress from the contemplation of the visible to an apprehension of the divine.

This was the conceptual basis of Samuel Quicchelberg's ideal plan for a " universal theater," published in 1565 - which, he acknowledged, was indebted to Giulio Camillo's plan for a hermetic memory theater. Perhaps based, as well, upon the author's experience in organizing the collections of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, the pamphlet proposes a system for displaying works of art, artifacts, and natural specimens in such a way as to stimulate and guide the visitor to the attainment of Solomonic wisdom and knowledge of "all things." 15

Similar principles inform Vincenzo Borghini's program for the decorations of Francesco de' Medici's studiolo in 1570. The smallest room in the Palazzo Vecchio was planned as a private preserve for the most precious objects from the Duke's collections, where he could furthermore contemplate a cycle

of allegorical paintings serving as a "microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm," and as an affirmation of " Francesco's hegmony over nature and art."16

The idea of a universal collection as a refuge for studying specimens of nature and art, chosen and displayed according to broadly encyclopedic principles, governed the formation of numerous princely and private collections in Europe in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [Figs. 5 and 6].17 In the second decade of the seventeenth century an encyclopedic collection, modelled upon Quicchelberg's universal theater, was formed for the University of Leiden's anatomical amphitheater - complete with skeletons, maps, antiquities, and historical and allegorical prints.18 To my knowledge, this is the first instance of an encyclopedic collection formed express-

15 Samuel Quicchelberg, Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi, Munich, 1565, fol. Dv. Discussed in Elizabeth Hajos, "The Concept of an Engravings Collection in the Year 1567 ", Art Bulletin, XL, 1958, pp. 151-2 (n.b. passage quoted in n. 4, p. 151). Cf. Quicchelberg on Solomon as an exemplar for the collector, fol. Hiiv. On Salomonic and Neoplatonic themes in Camillo's memory theater, see Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, London, pb. ed., 1969, pp. 135-62.

16 Scott Schaefer, The Studiolo of Francesco I de' Medici, Ph.D. Diss. Bryn Mawr College, 1976, I, p. 244 and passim.

17 Among the many studies on this subject, see: Luigi Salerno, "Arte scienza e collezioni nel manierismo," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Mario Salmi, Rome, 1963, III, pp. 193-214; Detlef Hei- kamp, "Zur Geschichte der Uffizien-Tribuna und der Kunstschrinke in Florenz und Deutschland," Zeitschrift fOr Kunstgeschichte, XXVI, 1963, pp. 193-268; R. W. Scheller, " Rembrandt en de encyclope-

dische kunstkamer," Oud Holland, LXXXIV, 1969, pp. 81-147; Ingrid W. L. Moerman, " De stad en haar schilders," in Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626, exhib. cat., Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden, November 1976 - January 1977, p. 12; Anne-Marie Logan, The 'Cabinet' of the Brothers Gerard and Jan Reynst, Oxford, 1977, pp. 98-101; Thomas da Costa Kauffmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme: Studies in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York, 1978, pp. 103-123; J. Briels, " Amator pictoriae artis: de Antwerpse kunstverzamelaar Peeter Stevens (1590-1668) en zijn Constkamer," Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1980, pp. 151 ff.; and Arthur MacGregor, ed., Tradescant's Rarities, Oxford, 1983.

18 Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, << Un amphitheatre d'anatomie moralisbe, ) in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century: an Ex- change of Learning, Leiden, 1975, pp. 217-77.

42



ly for an academic institution, and it underscores the educational and edifying value that such collections were thought to possess.19

Perhaps it was while a student at the university in 1620, that Rembrandt first beheld such a collection.20 In any case it is now well known that in his maturity, Rembrandt formed an encyclopedic collection himself.21 Among the specimens of nature in Rembrandt's Kunst Caemer were rocks, shells, coral branches, a bird of paradise, "casts from life, globes, and over seventy specimens of land and sea animals and the like."

Among human artifacts, Rembrandt had assembled Chinese

porcelain, rare Venetian glasses, Indian cups and boxes, woven baskets, a Japanese helmet, a Turkish powder horn, antique weapons and armor, and six fans; also medals, books, volumes of drawings and prints - arranged both by artist and subject- matter - and a series of antique sculptures, including portraits not only of Roman emperors, but also of Socrates, Homer, and Aristotle.22 The inventory made of Rembrandt's collection in 1656 lists the busts of Homer and Aristotle next to each other, suggesting that they may have been so displayed in the Kunst Caemer.23

Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer

clearly makes use of some of the objects in the artist's collection. As Julius Held has noted, the painted bust of Homer

reproduces a type closely matching a Hellenistic bust, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston [Fig. 7].24 There is more

uncertainty regarding the head of Aristotle that Rembrandt owned.25 But it seems to me that Rembrandt's philosopher at

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19 Although this and the previously mentioned collections were all shaped according to common encyclopedic principles, each had a highly individual character, determined by the interests and values of the collectors. In contrast to privately owned kunstkamers, where objects were often chosen for their preciousness and artistic quality, objects in the Leiden anatomy theater were chosen chiefly for their interest as scientific curiousities. Thus, for example, unlike the copies of the most renowned sculptures of classical antiquity that Cornelis van der Geest displayed in his collection (Fig. 6; references, supra, n. 9), the antiquities at Leiden were primarily recent archaelogical finds, including Roman artifacts from Nijmwegen and Genoa, and an Egyp- tian mummy shipped to the university by a grateful alumnus (Lun- singh Scheurleer, pp. 222-3). The preponderance of vanitas imagery among the prints in the amphitheater similary appears to have been a unique feature of the universal collection al Leiden, particularly suited to its association with an anatomy theater.

20 Strauss et al., item 1620/1, p. 50. For the impact of the Leiden anatomical theater upon Rembrandt, see also William S. Hecksher, Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp: an Iconological Stuory, New York, 1958, passim; and Julius S. Held, "The Polish Rider, " in Rem- brandt's Aristotle (article originally published in the Art Bulletin, XXVI, 1944, pp. 246-65), pp. 71-7.

21 Scheller, op. cit.. Notwithstanding Scheller's insinuation that Rembrandt's collection served him primarily as a means of displaying his high social status, the precedent of the academic collection at Leiden suggests that Rembrandt understood the serious function such a collection could serve.

22 The inventory of Rembrandt's collection, written in 1656, is published with an English translation in Strauss et al., item 1656/12, pp. 349-88. The contents of the Kunst Caemer appear on pp. 363-81.

23 Strauss et al., p. 365. Cf. Herbert von Einem, " Rembrandt und Homer," Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch, XIV, 1952, pp. 187-9.

24 For the identification of the Homer in Rembrandt's collection, cf. von Einem, p. 184; and Held, "Aristotle ", op. cit. pp. 17-18.

25 According to J. H. Jongkees (" Fulvio Orsini's Imagines and the Portrait of Aristotle," Archaelogica Traiectina, IV, 1960, pp. 3-43), three portrait-types were identified with Aristotle in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: 1) A man with a " venerable beard and flowing locks, and often an aquiline nose," and sometimes wearing a cap, as in a drawing of 1444 by Ciriacus of Ancona after a Samothracian bust (Jongkees, pl. 2, b); and a sixteenth-century North Italian bronze bust, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Jongkees, pl. 3, a); 2) A beardless, short-haired relief-figure, drawn before 1596 by Dirk Galle with no identifying inscription, but engraved by him in 1606 as

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least vaguely resembles a type of bust which was identified with Aristotle in the seventeenth century, of which the prime example is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna [Fig. 8].26

One is on even more perilous ground in trying to identify the prototype for the medal suspended from Aristotle's chain

a likeness of Aristotle for Faber's edition of Fulvio Orsini's Illustrium Imagines (Jongkees, pl. 5; Held, " Aristotle," op. cit. fig. 8); and 3) An ancient bust with shorter hair and beard, inscribed with Aristotle's name and excavated in Rome in the late sixteenth century. It belonged first to Orsini, then, after his death in 1600 to Ranuccio Farnese, and is now lost. The bust, which had been sketched by Dirk Galle and Rubens (Jongkees, pl. 6 and 7a; Held, " Aristotle," op. cit. figs. 6 and 7), was described in the text of Faber's 1606 edition of Orsini as the only authentic likeness of Aristotle (Jongkees, pp. 19-20). According to Studnicza, who accepts the authenticity of the lost Farnese- Aristotle, there are at least eleven ancient variants of this portrait- type, including sculptures in Vienna (fig. 8), Copenhagen, Palermo, and the Louvre (Franz Studnicza, Das Bildnis Aristotles, Leipzig, 1908.

Jongkees has rightly cast doubts upon the claims of any of these works to authenticity as a likeness of Aristotle. That is not, however, to deny the currency of all three Aristotle-types among seventeenth- century collectors. It therefore seems likely that Rembrandt's bust of Aristotle was a variant of type 1 or 3 (type 2 being only a relief).

26 Type 3, in n. 25.

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[Fig. 9]. Rembrandt's inventory gives us no clue as to the contents of his medal collection. According to Konrad Kraft, the pendant " most likely " reproduces a widely circulated type of ancient coin depicting the helmeted Athena [Fig. 10] 27.

Since there is evidence that sixteenth- and seventeenth-

century collectors could misidentify such likenesses as por-

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traits of Alexander the Great, Kraft concluded that Rembrandt, too, may have presumed such a coin or medal to be an image of Alexander.28 His evidence on this point is hardly dispositive, however. Kraft does not claim that numismatic images of Athena wearing a helmet were universally taken to be images of Alexander in Rembrandt's time, only that they could have been so misidentified. Yet it seems unlikely that Rembrandt would have been liable to make such a mistake, since the

27 " Eine antike Goldmunze der Alexanderzeit mit der Maked6nen- k6nig im Helm gibt es aber bekanntlich nicht. Damit steht man vor den zwei Moglichkeiten, dass Rembrandt entweder seinem Philosop- hen eine sehr viel spatere moderne Medaille mit einem behelmten Alexanderkopf umhangte, was aber ganz unwahrscheinlich ware, oder dass der Kunstler einem Goldmunze der Alexanderzeit selbst meinte, dabei aber einem Irrtum unterlag, indem er den behelmten Athena- kopf der Alexanderstatere for ein Portrat Alexander hielt." Konrad

Kraft, " Der behelmte Alexander der Grosse," Jahrbuch fir Numismatik und Geldgeschichte, XV, 1965, pp. 7-32; esp. p. 8; also Held, " Aristot- le," op. cit. pp. 16-17.

On the gold double stater illustrated here, see Barclay Head, A Guide to the Principle Coins of the Greeks, rev. ed., G. F. Hill, London, 1932, IV. B. 4, on p. 53.

28 Kraft and Held, Ibid.

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14) Johann Theodore de Bry, "The Chain of Creation". Engraving in Robert Fludd, Utrius cosmi, maioris scilicet et minoris, metaphysica, physica atque technica historia. Tomus primus: de macrocosmi historia, Oppenheim, v. I, 1617, p. 3. By permission of the Houghton Library, Har- vard University.

iconographic type of the" helmeted Athena " was still in wide circulation [Fig. 11], and, as we know from Rembrandt's prior representations of Athena, or Minerva, as she was called in Latin, he was familiar with her iconography and the helmet as one of her identifying attributes [Fig. 1 5].29 Yet the identity of the figure on the medal must in any case remain open, since the brushwork in this passage is so indistinct as to preclude its precise identification with any single numismatic prototype.

Coinciding with the spreading vogue for encyclopedic collections like Rembrandt's in the seventeenth century, trea- tises proposing systems for universal education began to acknowledge the instructional and philosophical value of such collections. In his Advancement of Learning published in 1605, Francis Bacon wrote approvingly of "collections made of agriculture and likewise manual arts," to be used for "the history of nature, wrought or mechanical." 30

The idea was elaborated and given even greater promin- ence in the pansophical program of Jan Amos Comenius, the expatriate Czech educational theorist and author of the first illustrated children's book, many of whose writings were published in Amsterdam.31 In an essay published in 1639, Comenius outlined his program for achieving universal wisdom, using the imagery of Solomon's temple. After leaving the courtyard of the visible world (mundus visibilis), containing all the works of nature, the student was then to enter the courtyard of the representational world (mundus representa- tus), where he could study all the works made by human art and genius, in preparation for gaining entry to the innermost sanctum of divine wisdom.32

29 Cf. also Bredius (Gerson), no. 469. On Rubens' Education of Marie de' Medici, see Saward, op. cit.

30 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 3rd ed. rev., William Aldis Wright, Oxford, 1885, Book II, I, 5, p. 88.

31 On Comenius (1592-1670), see Milada Blekastad, Comenius, Oslo and Prague, 1969; and Herbert Hornstein, Weisheit und Bildung: Studien des Bildungslehre des Comenius, Dusseldorf, 1968.

32 Conatuum Pansophicorum Dilucidatio, in his Didactica Opera Omnia, Amsterdam, 1657, v. I, col. 473. More specifically he argues: "The remedy [for difficulties in learning] will be to represent everything to its proper sense, visible things to the eyes, things that may be tasted, to the palate, and so for the rest. For by once looking upon an elephant, or at least upon his picture, a man shall more easily and more firmly apprehend his forme, than if it had been told him ten times over, what manner of beast he is. For

The eyes make true report unto the mind, But eares are duller, and come farre behind." A Reformation of Schools, (trans. of Pansophiae prodomus, 1639)

by Samuel Hartlib, 1642, facs. repr., Menston, England, 1969, p. 14. For the relevance of Comenius' theories to Dutch art, see Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing, Chicago, 1983, pp. 93-99 and passim.

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47



The Dutch philosopher, Gerhardus Johannes Vossius likewise allocated an important place to the visual arts in his encyclopedic program of learning, De artium et scientarum natura, published in 1650. It presents an hierarchical arrange- ment of the arts and sciences, from the " vulgar " arts, through the " popular " arts and liberal arts to philosophy and culminat- ing with divination and theology at the pinnacle.33 In this scheme Vossius places painting and sculpture once among the popular arts (having to do with the education of the young), and then again in the domain of philosophy - with the implication that both the beholding and the making of a work of art were forms of philosophical activity.34

The assertion that a work of art was a fit object for philosophical contemplation had of course long previously been made by Aristotle himself. In the Nicomachean Ethics he argues that contemplation is the highest form of human activity and the source of man's greatest happiness.35 The word Aristotle uses for this activity is theoria, the origin of our word, " theory ", and conventionally translated as " con-

templation ". In Aristotle's Greek, however, the word theoria is associated particularly with the sense of sight and embraces the idea of looking and observation.36

The activity of contemplation for Aristotle is by no means limited to the appearances of things, but is also concerned with their causes, a point which he elaborates in the Metaphys- ics.37 There, in fact, the discussion repeatedly turns to works of sculpture to consider the interraction between the causes - formal, material, efficient, and final - which produced them.38

Likewise in the Poetics, Aristotle affirms the philosophical value of contemplating works of art, when he states,

All men delight in imitations. A sign of this is what happens in respect of the functions (of imitations). For we delight in contemplating the most exact likenesses of things which

are in themselves painful to see, e.g. the shapes of the most dishonored beasts and corpses. The cause of this is that learning is most pleasant, not only to philosophers, but to others as well, however little they share in it. For men delight in seeing likenesses, because in contemplating [theorountas] them it happens that they are learning and reasoning out what each thing is, e.g. that this man [in the image] is that; for if by fortune one has not previously seen what is imitated, the likeness will not produce pleasure as an imitation [that is to say, because of its formal cause], but because of its execution [that is to say, its efficient cause] or coloring [its material cause], or some other cause of this sort.39

For Rembrandt's Aristotle to gaze upon the bust of Homer in an attitude of mental abstraction seems to me perfectly contrived to suggest that the philosopher's thoughts are directed not simply to the sculpture's ostensive appearance, but also or to its other causes, perhaps to Homer, or to the question of causation itself.

The intensity of Aristotle's absorption in contemplating this sculpture is given added resonance by the symbolic allusions of his golden chain. As Herbert von Einem originally pointed out, the bust of Homer itself prompts one to associate the chain with ' the golden chain of Homer," a phrase frequently invoked by Neoplatonic and later encyclopedic philosophers.40 It originates with a boast made by Zeus in The

Iliad that, using a golden rope, he could pull all the other gods up to heaven, though they could not pull him down to earth.41

In the fifth century A.D. Macrobius interpreted the story in the following passage:

Since, from the Supreme God, Mind arises, and from Mind, Soul, and since this in turn creates all subsequent things and fills them all with life, and since this single radiance illumines all and is reflected in each, as a single face might

33 Gherhardus Johannes Vossius, De artium et scientarum natura (1st ed., 1650), Amsterdam, 1696. Vossius' art theory is discussed by Allen Ellenius in De arte pingendi: Latin Art Literature in Seven- teenth-Century Sweden and its International Background, Uppsala, 1960, pp. 56-9.

34 Vossius, pp. 21-31 and 264ff. 35 " Contemplation is at once the highest form of activity.... and

the most continuous." (X 7, 2) "The activity of God, which is trans- cendent in blessedness, is the activity of contemplation; and therefore among human activities, that which is most akin to the divine activity of contemplation will be the greatest source of happiness." (X, 8, 7) Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, rev. ed., trans. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass., 1934, pp. 613 and 623, respectively.

36 Rackham, Ibid., p. 14n. For the origins of the word, cf. Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque, Paris, 1968, v. 1, p. 433. My thanks to Miranda Marvin for this reference.

37 Metaphysics, I, II, 8 ff. 38 E.g. Metaphysics, V, II, 1, 4, and 11-13; V, IV, 3; VII, III, 2; and

VII, X, 4. 39 Poetics, 4. English translation from Kenneth Telford, Aristotle's

Poetics: Translation and Analysis, Chicago, pb. ed., 1961, pp. 6-7. 40 Von Einem, op.cit., p. 195. The idea is also mentioned by Held,

who, however, rejects the possibility, preferring to identify the chain as a chain of honor bestowed by Alexander the Great upon Aristotle, his tutor, although there is no mention in antique or even later literature of Alexander ever giving a chain of honor to Aristotle ("Aristotle," op. cit., p. 33ff.). Even if Held's suppostition were correct, that need not deny the possibility that, in its very proximity to the likeness of Homer, the chain could also have reminded the contemporary viewer of " the golden chain of Homer," a phrase which, we shall see, had broad currency in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

41 Iliad, VIII, 19

48



be reflected in many mirrors placed in a series; and since all things follow in continuous succession, degenerating to the very bottom of the series, the attentive observer will discover a connection of parts from the supreme God, down to the last dregs of things, mutually linked together and without a break. And this is Homer's golden chain, which God, he says, bade hang down from heaven to earth. Having said this, Homer asserts that man alone among earthly creatures has a common fellowship of mind, or soul, with heaven and the stars.42

One should note the importance Macrobius gives, in this passage, to the attentive observer. It is by attentively observ- ing (" inveniatur pressius intuenti") that one discovers the divine order in the universe that is symbolized by the golden chain.

The golden chain of Homer became a familiar topos in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries not only as a cosmologi- cal figure, but also as a symbol of philosophy and magic.43 In 1555 Petrus Ramus invoked it to illustrate the nature of dialectical method.44 In 1558 Giovanni Battista della Porta wrote of the golden chain of Homer as a symbol of the divine concatenation of the universe, as well as of the power of the magus to " marry heaven to earth, and, as minister of marvels, to reveal the secrets of nature."45

In The Advancement of Learning, Francis Bacon invoked the image not as a symbol of the magician's power to

influence the cosmos, but rather as a symbol of Bacon's belief that through philosophy alone man gains access to the divine:

It is an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism, but a further proceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion. For in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause; but when a man passeth along further, and seeketh the dependence of causes, and the works of Providence, then, according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair.46

Finally in 1650, Vossius invoked the image of the chain to affirm the principle of the interrelationship of all the arts and sciences.47 And he specifically describes philosophy as the connecting chain which unifies the knowledge of particulars.48

Despite the wealth of references to the golden chain of Homer in sixteenth and seventeenth century philosophical literature, it only rarely occurs in the visual arts. In the early sixteenth century Giulio Camillo planned for an image of the golden chain to be placed on one of the gates of his memory theater, to symbolize man's power, through sight, of " going

42 " Secundum haec ergo cum ex summo Deo mens, ex mente anima sit; anima vero et condat, et vita compleat omnia, quae sequun- tur, cunctaque hic unus fulgor illuminet, et in universis appareat, ut in multis speculis, per ordinem positis, vultus unus; cumque omnia continuis successionibus se sequantur, degenerantia per ordinem ad imum meandi: invenietur pressius intuenti a summo deo usque ad ultimam rerum faecem una mutuis se vinculis religans et nusquam interrupta connexio. Et haec est Homeri catena aurea, quam pendere de coelo in terras Deum jussisse commemorat. His ergo dictis, solum hominem constat ex terrenis omnibus mentis, id est, animi societatem cum coelo et sideribus habere communem." Macrobius, In somnium Scipionis I, 14; in M. Nisard, ed. and trans., Macrobe, Varron, Pompo- nius Mela (Collection des auteurs latins), Paris, 1850, p. 46. Engl. trans. in Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, p. 62. Last sentence not quoted by Lovejoy; my thanks to Laura Slatkin for her help in translating it.

43 Lovejoy, passim; also refs. in Held, "Aristotle," op. cit., pp. 33-4, and Schaefer, op. cit. pp. 573-5. For uses of the image by medieval theologians, see Bernard McGinn, The Golden Chain, Washington, D.C., 1972.

44 In the words of Ramus, "[ Aristote] " enseigne que toute vraye doctrine et science doibt proc'der par les choses generales et des- cendre degrez A degrez aux specialles. Et n'est poinct possible de bien dresser un art par autre voye.... Et bref, ceste methode artificielle me semble quelque longue chaTne d'or, telle que feint Hombre, de laquelle les anneletz soient ces degrez ainsi dependans I'un de I'autre, et nous

enchainez si justement ensemble que rien ne s'en puisse oster sans rompre l'ordre et continuation du tout ". Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Rambe), Dialectique (1555), crit. ed., Michel Dassonville, Geneva, 1964, p. 146. C.f. also Yates, op. cit., p. 236.

45 " Haec noscens Magus... sic ipse coelo terram, vel ut aperitus loquar, inferna haec superiorem dotibus mirificisque virtutibus maritat, & inde arcana Naturae gremio penitus latentia, veluti minister in publicam promit." Giovanni Battista della Porta, Magiae Naturalis (1st ed., 1558), Leyden, 1650, 1, 6, p. 13. C.f. Schaefer's discussion of Porta, op. cit., p. 224 ff. The golden chain of Homer was frequently invoked by another late Renaissance "magician", Giordano Bruno, for whom it symbolized both the unity of the cosmos and the gnostic powers of the intellect. According to Bruno, Yates explains: "The concord between higher and lower things is the golden chain from heaven to earth; as descent can be made from heaven to earth, so ascent may be made through this order from earth to heaven ". Yates, op. cit., p. 222.

46 Bacon, Advancement, I, 1, 3, pp. 9-10. He uses the image again in II, 6, 1, p. 109.

47 " Adde jam, quod solida doctrina nonse unam intra scientiam, vel alteram etiam continet: sed artes comprehendi universas. Melius quippe conjunctim, quam separatim, intelleguntur: idque propter commune, atque hoc arctissimum vinculum, colligantur." Vossius, op. cit., p. 38.

48 " Est enim Philosophia quasi jugale vinculum eorum, quae multijuga lectio peperit." Vossius, op. cit., p. 229.

49



to the sun [identified with God], taking in the sun, stretching out to the sun." 49

The image occurs again in Vincenzo Borghini's program for the studiolo, when he writes to Vasari in 1570 that the decorations were "to make that miraculous chain of nature which holds everything together." so And he warns that the order of decorations not be changed, lest the principle of concatenation (which would enable Francesco to conceptua- lize and influence the macrocosm) be disturbed.51 It has even been suggested that the golden interlace pattern painted on the lower edges of the panels of the elements is a " visualiza- tion of the originally Homeric idea." 52

At the end of the sixteenth century Cesare Ripa gives a novel twist to the chain as a symbol of the concatenation of causes, in his description of an emblem of pittura. Although the personification of painting was only first illustrated in a French edition of the Iconologia, published in 1637 (where she stands next to a painting of Minerva, Fig. 12), the earlier Italian editions had already included Ripa's written description of pittura as wearing a golden chain with a pendant mask, symbolizing imitation. The chain's links, Ripa writes, signify the conjunction of things, a principle which he then applies to the relationship between master and pupil.53 In Ripa's fifth edition of the Iconologia published in 1613, he inserts an emblem in which a golden chain hangs down from the sky into the hands of a man kneeling on the earth below [Fig. 13]. Explicitly citing Macrobius, now, Ripa explains that the emblem signifies "the conjunction of human things with the divine." 54

Finally, Johann Theodore de Bry's engraving for Robert Fludd's History of the Macrocosm (1617) illustrates one chain

descending from God to a nude woman, representing the celestial world, and another chain descending from her to a monkey, symbolizing man as artist in the elemental world. [Fig. 14]. The image prompts us to reflect not only that God is the original cause of all things, but also that man, through art, can ascend through the hierarchy of creation to the divine.55

To be sure, none of these idiosyncratic chain-images can be put forth as a direct iconographic source for the golden chain in Rembrandt's painting. Nevertheless they do attest to the survival in pictorial tradition, as in literary tradition, of the golden chain as a symbol at once of divine causation and at the same time of human artistic and philosophical activity. Those symbolic allusions accord well with the spirit in which Aristotle beholds the portrait of Homer, by calling to mind the common goals linking art and philosophy, and by affirming that the contemplation of art is in itself a philosophical activity.

If, as seems possible, Rembrandt intended the medallion on Aristotle's chain to portray Athena, this would confirm an interpretation of the chain as a symbol of contemplative philosophy.56 The association between Athena, (or Minerva), philosophy, and the plastic arts was a familiar theme in pictorial allegories such as Adam Elsheimer's Realm of Miner- va, Rubens' Education of Marie de' Medici [Fig. 11], or the emblem of peinture, in the French edition of Ripa [Fig. 12] 57 As we have seen, this association was even evoked in Rem- brandt's drawing of Athena at her desk, known as Anna Wymer in her Study [Fig. 15], which he drew into Jan Six's album amicorum in 1652, along with Homer Dictating to his Pupils [Fig. 16].58 The reappearance of Homer and Athena in

49 " La catena d'oro significherb andare al sole, pigliare ii solo, stendere al sole ". Giulio Camillo. L'ldea del theatro, p. 77. Discussed by Yates, p. 156. For the importance of light and vision in Camillo's theology, see passage quoted in Yates, op. cit., p. 153.

50 Schaefer, op. cit., p. 225. 51 Schaefer, op. cit., p. 35. 52 Schaefer, op. cit., pp. 225-6. Schaefer describes several other

instances of golden chain imagery that are less germane to this study on pp. 573-5.

53 " Gli anelletti della catena, mostrano la conformitA di una cosa, con I'altra, & la congiuntione, perch6 non ogni cosa, come dice Cicerone nella sua Rettorica, ii Pittore impara dal Maestro, ma con una sola ne apprende molte, venendo per la conformith, & similitudine congionte, & incatenate insieme." Ripa, 1603, p. 405; discussed in Held as "a distant echo of the philosophical interpretations of the golden chain," (" Aristotle ", pp. 33 - 4n.).

54 " CONGIUNTIONE DELLE COSE HUMANE CON LE DIVINE. Si dipingere un'homo ginoccioni con gl'occhi rivolti al Cielo, e che

humilimente tenghi con ambe le mani una catena d'oro pendente dal Cielo, & da una Stella.

" Non e alcun dubbia, che con ii testimonio di Macrobio, & di Luciano, che la sopradetta catena non significhi un congiungimento delle cose humane con le divine, e un certo vincolo commune con ii quale Iddio quando gli piace ci tira a se, & alleua le mente nostre al cielo." Ripa, Iconologia, Siena, 1613, pp. 134-5

55 Robert Fludd, Utrius cosmi, maioris scilicet et minoris, metaphysica, physica atque technica historia. Tomus primus: de macrocosmi historia, Oppenheim (1617-18), I, p. 3. Discussed in Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, New York, pb. ed., 1969, pp. 144-5. For the publishing history of Fludd's work, cf. Yates, Art of Memory, pp. 412-13, n. 4.

56 See pages 44-46 above. 57 See Begemann, op. cit, p. 62; also Winner, Quellen, op. cit., pp.

126-32; and his " Gemalte Kunsttheorie," Jahrbuch der Berliner Mu- seen, IV, 1962, fig. 13, and pp. 159-60.

58 Cf. supra, n. 12; Benesch, 913; and von Einem, pp. 185ff.

50



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53



the painting confirms that Rembrandt conceived of it as a synthesis and extension of the themes in the drawings he had made for Six the year before. In the painting the confrontation between creative art and philosophy becomes more concrete and more immediate. Philosophy is no longer represented by a patron godess, but by an actual philosopher. And the worlds of art and philosophy, which were kept distinct on separate pages in Six's album, are now brought together within a single frame. Furthermore, by virtue of the fact that now Homer is not represented in his own person, nor by a volume of his works, but by his portrait, the painting occasions the reflection that we are witnessing a confrontation, not only between philosophy and poetry, but between philosophy and visual art as well.

Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer stands in telling contrast to earlier Flemish pictures of encyclopedic collections, which attest more to the owners' pride in the abun- dance and variety of their possessions, than to the philosophical enlightenment they gain from them [Figs. 5 and 6]. To recall Vossius' distinction between philosophy and the knowledge of particulars,59 one might say that paintings of encyclopedic collections stress the copious information that they provide about many " particular things," so that the impact of any single work of art is trivialized and overwhelmed in the ensemble.60 Rembrandt's painting counters that Flemish tradition of profuse and virtuoso display by focussing on the commanding power of one work, and by intimating how the contemplation of it contributes to philosophy, which binds the knowledge of particular things together.61

Possibly there was an element of flattery, or at least personal address in Rembrandt's decision to present this subject to his patron, Don Antonio Ruffo, who apparently commissioned the painting from Rembrandt without specify- ing what the subject was to be.62 We do not know what Don Antonio's agent in Amsterdam told Rembrandt about the Sicilian collector: perhaps that he was forming, as we now know, an extensive collection not only of paintings, but also of books, prints, tapestries, coins, metalwork and antiquities - a collection which may have reminded Rembrandt in its diver- sity and range of the encyclopedic collection that Rembrandt himself had been forming.63 Perhaps this prompted Rem- brandt to depict a bust from his own collection for his patron, a fellow-collector. And perhaps, in portraying Aristotle as an exemplary beholder, Rembrandt meant to depict the ideal prototype of Don Antonio himself.

Yet this painting seems to betray some of Rembrandt's misgivings about these notions, as well. As many viewers have sensed, there is a poignant irony in the confrontation between Aristotle, the philosopher of the visible, and the poet Homer, who, though blind, was nonetheless gifted with insights into the divine - who, for example, was the original source for the story of the golden chain.64

The opposition between a melancholic philosopher of the visible and a poet reputed to have been inspired by God, calls to mind Durer's Melencolia / [Fig. 17]. Surrounded by the unused tools of operative philosophy, she broods in heavy contrast to the winged genius, or Eros, who works busily at her side.65 In a spirit similar to Durer's engraving, Rembrandt's

59 Citations, supra, n. 47 and 48. 60 Many of the Flemish konstkammer paintings appear to not

have been records of actual collections, but fictive inventions (Speth- Holterhoff, passim). Those fictional scenes may be seen, in part, as virtuoso allegories of the power of painting to render the macrocosm in microcosm, as, for example, Jan Brueghel the Elder's Allegory of Sight of 1617 in the Prado (Winner, Quellen, op. cit., pp. 130-132; and Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel d. A.: die Gemdlde, Cologne, 1972, pp. 332 - 348); or the Encyclopedic collection of 1620, in the Prado attributed by Winner to Jan Breughel the Elder and Adriaen van Stalbent. (Quellen, pp. 64 ff., and "Gemalte Kunsttheorie," fig. 15, pp. 170-1).

61 One further distinction might be drawn between Rembrandt's Aristotle and the frequent allusions made in Flemish konstkamer paintings to the Studio of Apelles - as, for example, the painting in the foreground of The Cabinet of Sebastiaen Leerse [Fig. 5]; or the drawing on the table in The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest [Fig. 6]. As Winner has shown (Quellen, op. cit., pp. 3 - 40), the subject attests to the power and prestige of painters by showing Alexander the Great visiting Apelles in his studio and being moved to " give " his mistress

to his painter, who had fallen in love with her while using her as a model (Pliny, Nat. Hist., XXXV, 86). Rembrandt depicts not the mon- arch, but his philosopher, in a scene which alludes not to the worldly rewards art can bring to its maker, but to the imaginative world it opens up for the viewer.

62 Held, "Aristotle," op. cit., p. 12. Documents relating to Rem- brandt and Ruffo are published in Strauss et al., 1654/10, p. 315; 1654/16, p. 320; 1660/7, p. 457; 1660/9, p. 458; 1661/5, pp. 484-5; 1662/11, pp. 506-8; and 1662/12, p. 509. Cf. also Vincenzo Ruffo, " Galleria Ruffo nel secolo XVII in Messina," Bollettino d'Arte, X, 1916, pp. 21-64; 95-128; and 165-92; esp. p. 126-8 and 165-6. Also Corrado Ricci, Rembrandt in Italia, Milan, 1918.

63 Ruffo, op. cit., p. 27; On Ruffo's patronage of contemporary painters, see Frances Haskell, Patrons and Painters, New York, pb. ed., 1971, pp. 209-210.

64 Thus, for example, Macrobius wrote of Homer as " divinarum omnium inventionium fons et origo" (quoted in von Einem, op. cit., p. 184). Cf. also Held, "'Aristotle," op. cit., pp. 18-21 for Homer's reputation.

54



Aristotle induces us to ponder what human philosophy by itself can attain.

This, in turn, brings to mind Rembrandt's etching on a related theme, that was executed at about the same time as his Aristotle, the so-called Doctor Faustus [Fig. 18].66 Here we see a scholar in his study, rising to behold a divine vision, while the apparatus of philosophical inquiry lies abandoned on the table. Again Rembrandt seems to address the question of what human study and contemplation can achieve in the face of insights imparted by the divine. It is moreover surely noteworthy that the heavenly vision is mediated to the scholar not by any work of human fabrication, but by a mirror in the hand of an angelic messenger.67

Like Durer, Rembrandt thus seems to have created, at a time when he was reaching the peak of his artistic powers, works probing the limits of what human philosophy and imagination could attain.68 Perhaps Rembrandt meant to de- monstrate thereby his belief that the power of visual art lies less in its ability to unveil the divine, than to disclose to us our human limitations.

AFTERWORD

The identification of Aristotle in this painting is warranted by the following evidence:

1) Documentary evidence. Notwithstanding the fact that the earliest documents show some confusion, Ruffo's inven-

tory entries and documentation identify the painting as " Aris- totle " from 1662 on, when the patron was still in contact with Rembrandt.69

2) Thematic and historical links between Aristotle and Homer. Whereas von Einem sees the juxtaposition of Aristotle and Homer as an allegorical confrontation between poetry and philosophy, Julius Held draws attention to the specific historical association between Homer and Aristotle, who had so frequently praised Homer in the Poetics.70 The fact that Rembrandt placed the busts of Aristotle and Homer next to each other in his Kunst Caemer suggests that the artist was sensitive to the thematic and historical relationship between those two personages, and that he may have very well intended their pictorial conjunction.71

3) Correspondences between Rembrandt's Aristotle and the icongraphic type. Three sculpted portrait-types of Aristotle (one relief, two busts) appear to have been in circulation in the seventeenth century.72 Although we can not ascertain the appearance of the bust of Aristotle that Rembrandt owned, the figure in the painting, while at once highly individuated, at the same time shares some of the features of the two bust-types: the facial proportions and thoughtful expression of the antique Orsini/Farnese-type [Fig. 10]; and the long hair and beard of the Renaissance-type derived from a sketch by Ciriacus of Ancona.73

Additionally Aristotle's pose accords with written descrip- tions of an ancient painting of " Aristotle with a stretched out arme", as mentioned by Franciscus Junius in his De pictura veterum.74 Points of correspondence between Rembrandt's Aristotle and Renaissance painted likenesses of the philo-

65 Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, DOrers 'Melencolia I/ Leipzig, 1923. On Aristotle as " melancholy sage ", see Held, " Aristotle," op. cit., pp. 29-32.

66 Bartsch 270. Martin Bojanowski, "Rembrandts 'Faust'," Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift fir Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesge- schichte, XXX, 1956, pp. 525-32; Wolfgang Wegner, Die Faustdar- stellung vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, Amsterdam, 1962; and H. van de Waal, " Rembrandt's Faust Etching: a Socinian Docu- ment," Oud Holland, LXXXIV, 1969, p. 6-48 (repr. in his Steps towards Rembrandt, Amsterdam, 1974, pp. 133-181.

67 The mirror in Dr. Faustus functions as a Neoplatonic symbol, much in the spirit of the passage by Macrobius, cited above. As the mirror of God's radiance, it makes a striking contrast to the mirror of human speculation that lies on the table beside Aristotle.

68 This allusion to the vanity of intellectual ambition recalls the many allegorical prints in the Leiden anatomy theater which served

in a sense to enframe the scientific arena with reminders of the vanity of all human ambition (supra, n. 19). Rembrandt's ironic reflections here may be seen as prefatory to some of his heavily revised late religious prints, which address, in part, the final impossibility of trying to render the spiritual in material form. (cf. this writer's "Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker," Art Bulletin, LXIII, 1981, pp. 585 - 610.)

69 Supra, n. 62. 70 Von Einem, op. cit., pp. 187-9; Held, "Aristotle," op cit., pp.

18-19. 7' Supra, n. 22, and von Einem, op. cit, pp. 182 and 188. 72 Supra, n. 25. 73 Aside from n. 25, see also von Einem, pp. 183-4, 188-9; and

Held, " Aristotle," op. cit., p. 29. 74 Franciscus Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, trans. of 1st

Lat. ed., (1637) by the author, London, 1638, p. 52.

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sopher are harder to discern: according to von Einem, Pedro

Berruguete's half-length figure of Aristotle, painted for Federigo da Montefeltro shows the closest kinship to Rembrandt's version.75

To this body of evidence, Julius Held offers further confir- mation by identifying the medallion on Aristotle's chain as a

likeness of Alexander the Great, whom Aristotle tutored. This

permits Held to identify the chain as a chain of honor given to the philosopher by his royal patron.76 Although this writer is unpersuaded that Aristotle's medal portrays Alexander,77 the identification of Aristotle himself nevertheless seems

justified, in light of the other evidence reviewed above.78

75 Von Einem, op. cit., p. 189, Fig. 166. On Aristotle's anachronis- tic costume, see von Einem, p. 187-8, and Held, " Aristotie ", op. cit., p. 15-16, and 32.

76 Supra. n. 40. 77 Cf. supra, pp. 44-45. 78 As a portrait of Alexander, the medallion effectively limits the

identity of Rembrandt's philosopher to Aristotle alone (since only Aristotle had been Alexander's tutor in philosophy). If, however, as

this writer believes is even more plausible, the figure on the pendant represents Athena, patroness of all philosophers, it would be an appropriate attribute for any philosopher. It should, indeed, be noted that the interpretation offered here, of the painting as an essay on the philosophical value of looking at art, does not depend upon identifying Rembrandt's beholder with Aristotle, although one's appreciation of the painting may certainly be enriched by that possibility.

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