Word: poliziano
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...wave of neo-Platonic fantasizing about how outer shape mirrors inner essence--"For Soule is Forme, and doth the Bodie make," wrote the poet Spenser in 1596--may be great for the figure and complexion when court painters like Botticelli and writers like Marsilio Ficino or Angelo Poliziano are watching, but it's not so good for documentary truth. As faithful records of human appearance, these 15th and 16th century portraits of women are unreliable. But they are also dream images, illustrating a semiphilosophic proposition that we have altogether abandoned today: the idea that great beauty implies lofty virtue. Tell...
...Paul Mellon's role as patron is to draw comparisons. "Medicean" is the cliché for large acts of art patronage. This myth dies hard: started by the ruthless city-boss Lorenzo Il magnifico himself, prolonged by his sons, nourished by poets, flacks and hero-seeking historians from Poliziano to Jakob Burckhardt, it seems ineradicable, like kudzu. In fact, Lorenzo de Medici was not a remarkable art patron; he preferred jewelry, knickknacks, antiques and rare manuscripts to either painting or contemporary sculpture. The idea of disinterested art patronage in the service of some imagined "public good" did not occur...
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