Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance (1968) by Edgar Wind is an art history book. Its chief aim was to "elucidate a number of great Renaissance works of art". He maintained that "ideas forcefully expressed in art were alive in other areas of human endeavor". His thesis was that "the presence of unresolved residues of meaning is an obstacle to the enjoyment of art", and he attempted to "help remove the veil of obscurity which not only distance in time...but a deliberate obliqueness in the use of metaphor has spread over some of the greatest Renaissance paintings." While the book can be forbidding to the amateur, as all its Latin, Greek, German, and Italian quotations go untranslated, it should nonetheless be tried out for the light it sheds on, say, Botticelli's Primavera. It also is a truly original book on renaissance philosophy.