Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Kunstlerliebe. Der Narcissus-Mythos bei Leon Battista Alberti und die Aristoteles-Lekture der Fruhrenaissance

2001; Deutscher Kunstverlag; Volume: 64; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3657243

2569-1619

Ulrich Pfisterer,

Medieval European History and Architecture

In De Pictura (1435), Battista Alberti transformed the Narcissus myth, as recounted by Ovid, into a myth about the origin of painting. For Alberti, a reflective water surface (Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection on the water) metaphorically represented the mimetic universality of painting capable of recreating a three-dimensional reality on a flat surface. Narcissus's self-love allowed Alberti, whose work echoes Aristotle, to make his first steps towards a rudimentary psychology of the artist, in which the act of creation and love seem almost the same. The artist loves his creations because they reveal his humanity; the acts of creation and love seem almost the same. The writer highlights the parallels between Aberti's Narcissus myth and early Renaissance Aristotelian discussions about the artist's love of his work.