Mimesis of Christian Historia in a 16th Century Treatise on Sacred Art
Alphonso Lopez Pinto
The treatise on Sacred Art, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre et profane (Bologna, 1582) composed by Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, uses ideas of mimesis and verisimilitudine in the portrayal of salvation history (i.e., the events of Christ and the Saints seen in the context of the High Renaissance and Early Baroque usage of the term, historia). However, the portrayal of historia in terms of Sacred Art is not confined to a merely empirical historical event, but is also a portrayal of a supernatural and moral order especially noted when salvation history is seen as God’s action in human history. Thus, mimesis in Sacred Art must portray human and divine aspects of the events of Christian historia in order to serve its end and be faithful to the Truth. The artist uses various stylistic techniques of his ingenuity to be faithful to historical reality and the ineffable divine/salvific aspect of “Christian historia.” In the perspective of “tragedic” liturgical ritual, Sacred Art through mimesis of Salvation History, unfolds before the eyes of the contemporary worshipper an higher invisible Divine Mystery of which they participate. The paper will also examine pieces of Sacred Art from the Early Baroque Period contemporary to Paleotti’s Discorso, as examples of mimesis of Christian historia.
