Christopher Wood, Curious Pictures and The Art of Description, 1995

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Curious pictures and the art of description

Christopher S. Wood
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To cite this article: Christopher S. Wood (1995): Curious pictures and the art of description, Word & Image: A Journal of
Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 11:4, 332-352
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'Curious Pictures' and the

art of description
CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD
Downloaded by [Yale University Library] at 05:48 25 September 2012
The dHCriptive Hyle

This paper is a comment on the meaning of trim contours, clean and copious
detail, and glossy finish in northern painting of the seventeenth century. This
manner of painting was often used to render objects Iike flowen, fruits,
animals, and insects, although in principle it could represent any object. Such
painting is sometimes called 'descriptive' because it appears unusually faithful
to natural models.
One interesting set of contemporary comments on the descriptive manner
surrounded the works of the so-called jgnschi/dm, or 'fine painten'. 1 The paint
surfaces of the Lciden masters Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris were
characterized as netU or gitJJJJk ('ncat' or 'smooth,), against the loss~ or rauUJ
('loose' or 'rough') manner of the Venetian school and of Dou's teacher
Rembrandt. 2 These masters produced little wonders of oil technique. Anyone
would marvel, reported the local historian Jan Orlers in I~I, 'at the neatness
and curiosity' (Mlh8yt enth cvrieusMy~ of these paintings.3 The Leiden school was
equally praised for its fidelity to the natural model The Italian buyer
Giovacchino Guasconi, for example, reported in 1&]5 that when asked to paint
exotic flora and fauna around a figure of St Francis Xavier, Mieris refused
because he had never seen such things with his own eyes. 4 Orlen st:rcs5ed that
Dou worked 7IIl8T lin 180m, from the life. Joachim von Sandrart, the German
art historical chronicler of the next generation, and Roger de Piles, the French
critic and theorist, said the same about Dou. The painter Philips Angel saw
Dou's nMticheyt vanquishing beholden with schiftt eygmIJijcJrt IrracIu, or the
'power of the appearance of the real.'5
The smooth or finished manner was associated with descriptive tasks, for
example flower or animal painting, well before the successes of the Leiden
school, and in many parts of Europe. But the Dutch had made a specialty of
it. Karel van Mander ofHaarlem, the painter, theorist, and historian, linked
the modem smooth manner to the legendary mysteries of Jan van Eyd's
technique, Even van Eyck's underpaintingwas 'cleaner and sharper [~
en schnper] than the finished work of other painters.' The art of painting 'still
required this noble invention' of oil giazes before it could 'approach the look
of nature more closely, or become more lifelike. >6
Was the smooth manner better suited to the task. of description than the
loose? It would be hard to argue that fine-grained, shaxp-edged facture makes
a strictly truer representation of reality. The smooth manner renders well80me
attributes ofphyKical reality, the loose manner renders others. To say that one
manner corresponds more closely to reality than the other is really only to say
that the means of representation employed corresponds more closely to a
standard or expected mearu of representation. Resemblance is generated by
representational conventions. At any rate, the probability of actually deceiving
33 2
WORD 6: IMAGE, VOL.
II, NO.4,
I - Eric J. Sluijtt:r, 'SchiIdcn van "dcyne,

mbtile cnde rurieuIc dingcnR: ~
"fijnrlildenR in rontcmponine bronnen',
in UitJs" ~, cxh. cal.. (Lciden,
1988); Pt:tcr Hecht, J), H.LJ.tJs. ~
(Amacrdam, IgBg). Both autbon point out
that the t.enn~ u.cd to mean
painter of oil piIintinga, u oppoICd. to
lignboanll or bouIca, and did not take on
ill modern !p'ri,Jjzed meaning until the
nineteenth C01tuIy.
II-j. A Emmcm, ~.8 RIfIIs.. KaJt (AmIterdam, 1979), p.94.
commenta on how Dutch da.iciIt art
criticim:! increuingIy came to p-efer thI:'ncat' InIIIIIIC!". On the meaning of the
'rough' manner, ICC abo . . . 'Natuur,
Onderwijzing en Oefening. Bij een Dridui.k
van Germ 000', in Aa- ~ J. G.
- GtItI.r (utrcchl, 1963), pp. 1115"""36; and
Svetlana AIpen, R.tVr.Us &IItjtrisc V.
~ ati IIw MIriIl (Chicago, 1988),
pp.l& 19
3 - Qxlted in Sluijter, 'Schildcn van
"cleync, rubtilc CDde curieuIe dinpR "
p.lIl.
4- . Otto Naumann., Mas _ Millis IIw F1tI.r
(Doormpij.k, 19B I), l, p. 185i quoted in

Sluijtcr, 'SchiIden van "clcyne, IIUbtilc ende
curicme dingcnR " p. III.
5- PbiIipI Angd, Lqf" ~
(Lcidcn, I~), PP.394'Y, quoted in
Sluijtcr, 'SchiIdcn van "clcyne, .ubtilc cndc
curicuIc cIi:ngocnR " p. Ig.
6 - Karel van Mander, Hit Ut-. ..
DottrlwIdip~. HI'" ~
SdrUtIIn (1604J, ed. and tnnL Ham.
f10erte (Munich and Leipzig, Igo6), I,
PP.440 !lB. On van Mander.. iDIiItmce on
van Eyck'. hiItorical authority in the 'neat'
manner, ICC Walter s. McIioo, S/tqiIIr IItI
~ C-: r-L_ M.Mrl
'SdtiJiJ.-Bttd:' (Chicago, 1991), pp..,a-g I.
OCTOBER-DECEMBER
1995
7-:Ilcllon Goodman, l.af:-tp tIfAn

(IndianapoIia, 19'16), pp. 34 -39- Goodman
acknawiedgo that IpCcific and limited
judgmcntl of nxmbIance can be objectiw:_
But judgmenu of what he ca.Ila 'compla
averal.I roembl.nce', such u the
relatiomhip between a painting and
natural ot;ect, are jnOnf'DN'(i by too many
fa.cton to be comtant or univcnaL Even
when pictun: doca objcd:ivcly I'CICIIlhle ill
object, !here may wdl be competing
clemcnta of the n:pnxntation !hat dilrupt
!he cffi:ct.. See p_ 39. n.. 31B- Van Mander, reprinting the 'Ode on
the Ghent AlJ.arpicce' by Luca de Hcere;
Hit 1-, p- 3119 - Emmem pointI out that French and
EngIiab critia, who gmcraDy went on
preferring the ua.ditiooal virtuoIo bandIing
of the great IIlDtCB, thouf!ht that the
rough manner did beucr job of 'hiding
the art' _ R.iraiJ GIl til RIfIIs .. til EmW,
P-9+
10
Goodman,
u.,..,a
"An, p-
51RB_
II - See the nmarb on the objectivity of
Iimitcd
CIIICI
or rc.cmbIance in note 7-
151 - Sluijtcl', 'SchiIdcn van "deync, IUbtiI.e

ende rurieUIe dingcn-', p- 1513 -Joachim von Sandrart, T.udw A-'-iI
. . __ Ba-, BiJi- I11III ~au.
(1675), cd A R. Peltzer (Munich, 19515),

P-35 I L(.-Van Mander, H.1-, P-44-
IS-The pbrue rmdI 'ad exrogitwrvlnm et

faciavlnlD op1lI' in !he VIJIsatc; cf. Ezom.
31~ abo Emdua 518:51'7, RB_
16- See P- 34-51-
a beholder is close to ZCTO. All that 'descriptive' painting provides is an dJ6CI.

of the real'
This effect has several factors. FU"St, tight handling of the brush hides any
broad and obvious traces of the work's manual fabrication. Van Eyd's works,
in the phrase of an old eulogist quoted by van Mander, were 'mirrors, not
panels. oS Of course, the artifice of the brush is still visible at very close range.
Indeed, the mailing of technique usually brings about just the opposite effect,
namely, it calls attention to technique and therefore to the distinction between
the representation and reality. The true art, in the classical tag, is to conceal
art:
ars est ulan arI8m. 9
Second, an elaborately worked and compartmentalized paint surface can

give the impression that the representation lacks design. The artist appears
not to have selected among the multiplicity of real data, but merely to have
copied what he saw, unthinkingJy.ldca.li!t art criticism used to condemn much
northern painting for this intellectual deficit, even while ceding its superiority
in naturalism. For an apparent chaos of detail bolsters the beholder's
confidence in the artist's good. faith toward reality.
Fmally, a representation built out of tiny units appears more reliably linked
to physical reality than broader, more generalized depictions. Th.is puts
descriptive painting in favorable analogy to writing, which also represents by
means of atomic particles Qctters or words). Th.is notional atomism is
the justification for calling pictures 'descriptions' in the first place. Actually,
the distinction between description and depiction on the ba..sis of internal
structure is fallacioU!, for each unit of a description is still a description and
therefore no less conventional than the whole.1O But there is a successful
illusion of accuracy, since small depictions arc less dimrrbingly conventional
than large ones. Tmy depictions seem to approach the status of true and
natural one-to-one representations. II The illusion of accuracy results from a
kind of calculus, or repeated subdividing, of the vWble data. (In another
terminology, description is digital while depiction is analog.)
The hypothesis oflhi! paper is that in the seventeenth century, and earlier,
the descriptive manner was understood to be a highly wrought, stylish, and
rhetorically figured mode of painting. One clue to this state of affairs is the
association of the term 'curious' with the Leiden painters. Jan Orlen, whom
we heard earlier praising Dou's 'neatness and curiosity,' along with his fidelity
to nature, also called Dou a painter of 'small, subtle, and curious things.'
GuaM:Oni characterized Mieris' works a! 'curiosamentc fatto e con gran
nettezza."g Sandrart saluted the 'incomparably curious' Dou. ls And van
Mander had dcscnbcd the drawings of van Eyd bimself as 'very curiously and
cleanly [CIlriewfYck en ~] executed.''4 This is interesting because the
words cvrio.nLr and curiosittu, and their cognates in the modem languages, were
traditionally associated with ingenious, elaborately worked, or richly
ornamented works. The Authorized Version of the Bible, for example, often
described artefacts as 'curious.' Beza.leel, craftsman of the tabernacle, was
filled with the spirit of God, 'in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge,
and in all manner of workmanship,' in order 'to devise curious works' (Exodus
35:3Q---32).15 The iconophobc St Bernard, on the other hand, deplored 'curious
depictions' that would distract worshippers.16 Natural phenomena were
designated a! 'curiosities' precisely when they resembled extravagantly
333
worked human artefacts. It wall the uncanny illusion that they had been
fashioned by a willful and even perverse intelligence that gave these monstrous
rarities their gloomy charimna. A curious literary work, meanwhile, wall an
allegorical or otherwise rhetorically figured work. The curious work
adumbrated through its difficulty and riddling involutions the graVCllt
meanings. In sum, it is not immediately apparent how a curious painting
manner, a highly figurative, overdetermined, and self-rdlexive manner, could
serve simultaneously as a medium of reliable description.
Most of these usages stem from a long Christian habit of condemnation of
curiosity. Curiosity wall the impulse to improper inquiry, in particular the
search for explanations of phenomena beyond the straightforward recourse
to divine causation. Curiosity was also what drove crafumen into vain and
poindess embellishment of their work; it wall excessive attention to fonn
and craft. And the overwrought artefact was then in tum described as curious.
Many of the swviving medieval usages of the word an: monutic, and
consequently disapproving. Theologians feared the power of the curious
artefact or image to distract. Curiosity came to name any excess in an artefact
beyond itll proper function. Ornament, luxury, superfluity were all chastised
as curious. So too wall any advertisement of the figured status of a verbal or
viruallangu.age. Curiosity was the compicuously human contribution to the
work, the mark left on passive matter either by the fabricating hand or by
the figuring imagination.
Early science shared many of these excessive and unruly qualities. The
pursuit of knowledge wall rnistrusted because the inquirer mubbed written
authority and ventured to meddle with nature itsel The patristic and
1ICb.0la.stic tradition feared a poetic and generative moment in empirical
research. Properly disciplined theoretical inquiry was a coming home, and an
uncovering of what wall already known. Free-wanderi,ng inquiry, by contrast,
would lead to the uMnmJich, the uncanny. In the New Testament, 'curious arts'
meant black. magic (Ac1:II 19:19)." The sixteenth-century explorer Andre
Thevet, who otherwise lauded the inquiring impulse, condemned 'natural'
and demoniac magic with one stroke:
Vray est que l'une est plus vitieuac que I'autre, m.aiJ toutb deux plcinea de
curiosite. Et qu'est-il de booing, quand noua avona lcs choecs qui noua IIOnt
neccssaircs, ct en entcndona autant qu'il plai.at a Dicu noua &ire capahlca, trop
curicuaement rech.crchcr lcs secrets de nature, ct autrel choacs, dc8qucllcs nostrc
Seigneur a'cst reserve a Iuy &Culla cognoiM8 D CC? Telles curiosites demonment
un jugement imparfait, une ignorance et fautc de foy ct 1xmnc religion. 18
17 - 'The Vulgate rmc\ 'mul1i autcm ex hiJ

qui fucrant curi!.. 1CCtati'; _ _
t:raDIIalcd .;.;.,..
18-~
wall not easy to di.stinguish between scientific and aesthetic fascination.

In the Renaissance Kimst-1IIIIi W~, artificial and natural curiosities
were ranged side by side: exotic specimena, unheard-of aberratiODll, 'sports'
of nature, fantastic artefacts and machines. Scientific investigation yielded
It
disinterested pleasure. The sixteenth-century French naturalist Pierre Belon

scorned those who 'en leur monstrant quelque singularite de l'ouvrage
memorable de nature, demandent 80udain a quoy telles observations
singulieres peuvent profiter'; or thOllC who 'demandent aux Geometrien.s et
AmologieOll, que leur sert d'estre si curieux d'observer Ie COUl'S des astres, et
Ie mouvement des cieuI:I '" ne quel profit a receu Arutote de II9lvoir que
l'oyseau nomme en Grcc Aegocephalus, et en Latin Capriceps,
334
CHRI8TOPHER 8.
WOOD
Tbevet,
.. ,. Pr-.
(1ssB). : 68a, cited in cd. Jean

C&nI, U a.riaiIiI ,. R - - . (PariI.
1986), p. 16.
qu'interpretons un oyscau de nuict, est san! rate, et qu'il a Ie fid attache partie
a l'estomach, partie au foye.' Belon even recognized the adventure involved
-Jean Genco laid that the outward sign

of curioIity wu ~ cited in
ChriJtia.n K. Zacher, Clrriui!J ... ~.
'[Itt 1.iI.tUtn qf Di-:J itc ~Ceuaa)o
&tI-' (Baltimore, 1!j76), p. 53-
!IO
III -
16.
Immanuel Kant, KriIik ., CJrlIiJsh.tl,
in the most routine descriptive tasks: he did not believe that 'pcindre ou
descrire un oyseau ou animal cogneu de chascun [flit] ouvrage ou il n'y a
erudition. "51 The late medieval and early modern curitJ.ru.s is a prefiguration of
the modern aesthete: endowed with a surplus of imagination, but solitary,
sterile, eccentric in habits, unaccountable.!IO
Scientifie inquiry and artistic poesis were the common targets of the
theological critique of curiosity, both severed from authentic knowledge of
the divine. 'fhi! affiliation of inquiry and imagination looks thoroughly
unrnodern. To sec this one only needs to jump a little farther ahead, to Kant's
Third Critique, where Kant draws a sharp boundary between the scientific
and the aesthetic appreciations of a flower. 'What kind of a thing a flower is,'
Kant says, 'hardly anyone knows other than the botanist. And even the
botanist, who recogni7.e! the sexual organs of the plant, takes no account of
this natural end when he judges it according to wte. JIll But when the naturalist
is exercising his curiosity, hc respects no frame-real or virtual-that would
truncate or uproot the flower, sever it from its roots or pluck it from the cycles
ofnourlshmcnt and sexual generation. The point of the scientist's descriptive
discipline is to level the exotic, to convert the unfamiliar into the explicable.
The artist who paints the same rare specimen, by contrast, establishes a seal
around his description in order to keep it suspended in a state of exoticism.
This model provided the ground for the modern evaluation of the
Netherlandish achievement in painting. Since Kant's time, more or less,
Netherlandish artists have been perversely cdebrated for all the ways they fail
to resemble artists - for widding their brushes and training their sight more
in a spirit of neutral investigation than fantasy. This tradition of interpretation
empha!i.zes the attentiveness of Dutch art to mundane detail and its relative
insouciance toward Mediterranean standards of decorum or beauty. The
attractive and profoundly paradoxical notion of Dutch art as a descriptive
anti-esthetic was precisely made possible by Kant's clean cut between the
scientist's interested inquiry and the artist's imagination-his decision to
consign curiosity solely to the scientist.
Such an interpretation properly recognizes thc revolutionary potential of
pictorial description. But it takes too seriously description's own rhetoric of
neutrality and objectivity. Although the anti-esthetic reading ironically inverts
the Italianate and classical critique of northern art, in doing so it effectively
accepts the terms of that critique.
Description, it turns out, is a highly abstract and formalized procedure.
Description disfigures its object. The scholastic critics of early modern inquiry
appreciated this. Hegel recognized it too, and stressed the tendency of the
descriptive method to dismember and distort the natural object. His aim was
not to discredit description, but to justify it
1'his rupcrficial raising up from particularity, and equally superficial form of
universality which the sense data are merely taken up into, without ever
thermclves becoming universal- this dtscrifHiota of things - is not yet a process
motivated by the object. Rather, the motivation is provided by the description
itael The object, aB it is described, thus loses all im interest; once the object is
described, another must be taken up, and still another !Ought, in order that the
description never cease.
335
Description commences qfter the object has been selected and framed. 'That
by which things are known is more important to description than the remaining
range of sense properties, which are indispensable to the thing itself, but which
consciousness docs without. - The practice of description is predicated on a
clean split between subject and object, and thu! presumes that the attributes
of the resulting representation derive exclusively from the object and not the
describing subject. Description deal! best with superficial and static qualities
of the object rather than its life or history; and yet in the representation those
qualities are deceptively jJmm.Il as simple and pennanent. Fmally, the
descriptive process is not 'interested' in its own results. When the object is
described, the subject moves on to the next object. In other words, the meaning
of the description is determined from another point of view altogether. In this
way unruly description earned its statw as the fundamental discipline of the
modem natural sciences.
Descriptive painting certainly had plenty in common with descriptive
scientific practice. Both were stylish. An apparently neutral, descriptive
medium like the Dutch 'fine' painting seems as far removed as possible from
the wild fancies that riled the monastie theologians. Yet the very fact that
contemporary beholders called urn manner 'curious' suggests that they were
seeing not only the labor concealed behind the surface, but also certain
excessive, dynamic, and ornamental qualities that may not any longer be so
easy to see. There was plenty of art in the art of description. The persistence
of the tcnn 'curious' also suggests that the older ethical critiques of artifice still
provided a living framework for some of the most sophisticated and stylish
seventccnth-century painting. Indeed, this paper will argue that smooth
facture and fa3tidious detail in northern painting arc intelligible only within
the critical context established by the tradition of Christian imagery, with its
permanent nostalgia for a neutral and natural pictoriallanguagc.
Georg WllhcIm Friedrich HescI,

f'fIIII-qir .. GasIa, VAL,
\III -
'BeOOachtung del" !l:"atur' (Frankfurt, 1970),

pp.l88 Bg. "[be IranIIatioo iJ my own, but
"Milt&,
71tt ""--iwJ
tnma. J. B.
Baillie (London, 1931), pp.28.4- 86. On
docription, ICe especially Ham Chriatoph
Buch, UI Picbtr. PoGU: n;.
ICe
~ ati M LiIiDr -
.u lMUu (Munich,
1972), pp.l3" 1+
U:aitw
HCRci
wu not particularly talking about pictures,

although they ("8Jl figure in modem
ICimtific docriptivc pra.ctia:. See gcncraDy
00 delcription and Dutch painting Svetlana
AIpen, 71tt An
"Dr:smitUrt (Chicago, 1989).
Medieval mistruR of curioUty

The Latin word curiosu.s meant 'inquiring,' and from the beginning it had a
pejorative shade. The curiosu.swas a prying, inquisitive meddler, even an actual
spy. The word was formed out of the substantive CUTa, meaning 'care.' It
became curiosu.s rather than curostI.S apparently on the modd of the older
word-pair studiwn-stwiiosus. Curiosus is attested in Plautus, Terence, and
Catullus, but espccially in Cicero, who eoined the substantive curiosiJas. The
Stoics in particular despised intellectual self-indulgence. Seneca frequently
sketched the perils of vain and unbridled inquiry, or the 'Greek illness.'
Oversubtle philosophers had sacrificed res to verba. Even Socrates was accused
of an idle and excessive desire for knowlcdgc.1l3
The outlook for curiosity under Christianity was bleaker still. 'Les
Chrestiens,' Montaigne observed in the 'Apologie de Raimond Scbond,' 'ont
une particulierc cognoissance combien la curiositc cst un mal naturd et
origincl en l'homme. Le soing de s'augmcnter en sagessc ct en science, ce fut
la premiere ruine du genre humain: e'est la voyc par OU il s'est prccipitl: it. la
damnation etcrnelle. "Ll Curiosity conspicuously resembled a sensual appetite.
Tcrtullian and St Augustine deplored the desire for knowledge. Curiosity
implied dissatm"action with the theological version of things. Augustine
contrasted the CIIriDsus- who insists on seeing for himself, who wants to know
336
CHRISTOPHER S.
WOOD
~3 Andrf Lahhardt, 'CurioIita.I: Notel IIW"

J'hiatoire d'un mot et d'une notion', M -
H~, 17 (1g60),
WID
pp. R06 ll4- Cavia.au
ruushiy equivalent to the Greek
jIniITp. The word wu UIed pOIitMIy sa

wcll, in the Il"IIK' of an appropriate
lIDIiritOUlIlnl or attention to duty.
2.j. -
:\lichel Montaignc, t:ss.is, II,
&tition de Ia P\eia~ (Paris,

pp4n,8.
I~.
Ig&i),
!IS St Augu.tine, c.,jasiJMs, X, 35

26 - For urnmary,
ICC
Zacher,
c.riGsi9
_~ch.~.
'T/ - H. W. JIlDIOO, Ale ... A;. Usn ill tit.

MitItIJI . . . 1M ~ (London,
1952), pp. 1111"""13
28 - St Auguatine, Dr ... ,.,...., X1JX, 94-
119 Or 'lbOllUll i KcmpD, 1M IrtribIIit. tf

Grrist., UI, ;)4: ':'Ii ature iI curiouJ to know
aeaeta and to hear !leWI But GnM:C
doea IIOl care for nCWI or DOYC!tits, tx:cau.e
all thae thingl apring from the age-old
corruption of man, for there iI nothing new
or iIIIIing in thia world'.
30 - Hana Blumenberg. 1M ~ . ,
(Frankfurt, 1966), pp.3368".
3 1 - Francil Bacon, 1M ~ tf
(16os), I, iv, 5. On Erumw'
u.nruc
to reconcile ,.., and

Andrt Godin, 'Fnmle:
"PiaJImpia CurioIiw" " in cd. Cbrd, J~
QaiQsiM " R..u-, pp. ~5 "36. See alao
RClleraIJy H. J. Mette, 'Ncucr unci
Ncmcit', AUb IIIIIi AMMlati, 16 (1970),
pp. u]ff.; Carlo Ginzburg. 'High and \ow:
the theme of forbidden knowIcdgc in the
Iixtcenth and ac:ventcenth centurio, PasJ
... ~ 73 (19']6), pp.28-.... ; and
William Hccbcher, 1M PriIttaw& AlAai
c-,.a. (New York, IgBg), pp. sn--233lI-J.-P. Migne, ~ UJiaM, vol. 153
(PariJ, 11154), col.. 11'57. "The Carthwian
ItatUtCI were mentioned by Meyer
Schapiro in hiJ cI.aE: analyIiI of St
Bernard'. icooopbobic writinga, 'On the
anthctic attitude in Romanc.que art'
(194-7), in R-.- Art (New York, J(m),
eIJI.P.7. FOI" compuahle ~ from the
IKIltUtCi of the Dominicana, the Franci.Icana,
and the CiIterrianI, lee V!ClOT Mortet. and
Paul Dcachampa' anthology of high
mediCYlll architectural tcxtI, R.wi1 til
rMIi/" l'1riMin til f-**cbtn (Paria, I~),
pp. ga, .ojD, lI"g6, 247. ~Ei5, 286; or Edgar de
Bruyne, tJ.ia "F.rNJiqw ~ (Brugea,
194-6:, II, bk 3. ch. 4tonUOUl
elf0111
~, K'e
"*
what does not concern him -with the properly focused studiosu.s. In Book x of
the Corifessions he defined curiosity, following 1 John 2:16, as crmcupiscenlia
oculorum, 'lust of the eyes.'2~
There ensued a long litany of pat:rim:ic and scholastic critiques of the
hubristic, illegitimate craving for knowledge.1I6 Unrupervised inquiry was
anathematized as magic or heresy. Aquinas condemned curiosity a! a form
of aadia, or spiritual apathy. On the north ~e of Chartres Cathedral
curiosity was allegorized as an ape. A figure labclledJustitia runs him through
with her sword-an animal passion done in by a virtue.'" The ape's folly is
not merely that he fails to recognize his true object and his own limits, nor
that he fails to apprehend that object. The problem is that the ape enjoys his
play. Research propelled by mere sensory friction is as pointless as sport.
One of the dangers of sensory research into the mysteries of the universe was
the pho.run taken in it. 'What else docs curiosity seek,' asked Augustine, 'than
the joy oflrnowing things?' (tk mum cogniJitme laetiJiam).!III The Dutch thcologian
of the Deootio modmuz, Wesscl Gansfort, explained the distinction as follows:
'Knowledge diffen from wisdom just as docs the joke from the serious, play
from study, curiosity [czaiositas] from understanding [consiiium]: for one is the
action, but the other the result.'''9
Much has been written on the incrcmentalsubversion ofth.is point of view
in the late middle ages. The crime of the magtl! was redundancy: truth was
already known, through revelation. But once theology lost confidence in
revelation and instead imagined a hidden God, there Wa! no choice but to
attend to the world. The inventory of the world came to look less and less
pointless. For Hans Blumenberg, one of the central and radically original
achievements of modernity was the abandonment of an Aristotelian belief in
a 'natural' correspondence between theory and the world, in favor ofa 'culture
of measurement' in which the incremental process of investigation itself yields
the results. The properly scientific investigation is conducted without any
hopes or illusions about an ultimate resting point. 3" But even this practical
legitimation of the inductive method was long accompanied by
traditional-sounding warnings from the humanists. Francis Bacon himself
wrote that if the wit of man 'work upon itself, as the spider workcth his web,
then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for
the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance and profit. '~I
Here we are looking at another, parallel tradition ofusagcs which attracted
less attention from the humanists: curiosiJas as the care that an artist put into
a work. Monastic theologians were especially wary of the curious image. The
attempts of the various ordCI"!l to stem the proliferation of sacred images have
long been familiar to historians of medieval art. In 1261, for example, the
Carthusian SJabJJa antiqua demanded that monks remove all 'pictured or
curious tapestries and cushions' (topeJia universa et qruzmllipictuJari vtl curiosi) from
their celli, and that in general all churches and living qua.rter!l be emptied of
'curious pictures' (picturru cvriosae).3'l These guideliries were regularly flouted,
especially far from the Grande Cha.rtreuse. In 1367 the General Chapter wrote
and disseminated new sets of statutes:
Became in many C!ltablWunent! of our order in the provinces panels painted
with curiow images [tabadal CII1io.ris imogi:ni/ni.s dq1ictat] arc multiplying on altar!,
along with other divene pictures with cscutcheom and coa1:!-of-anm ofJaymen,
337
and with female figul'C!, in glass windows and other places, against the h<?ly
simplicity and humility of the order and against the statutes, by which notable
men arc not a little scandalized; we ordain that all such painted tablets and other
curious picture! [CIlriosQ8 pictIuae] be removed, a! instructed .... 33
By the mid-fifteenth century the order had to spell it out again: 'We reprehend
curious pictures and images [pictza"at a imogUw czaiosas], or anything not
respectable Wumestz] in churches and monasteries of the order, either in
windows, or in panels, stones, walli, and other places, so damaging and
contrary to honesty of morals and the simplicity and humility of our religion. '34
It is not clear how to reconcile these strictures with the many paintings made
for Carthusians, including portraits, by major fifteenth-century artists like van
Eyck, Petru! Christus, Enguerrand Quarton, Hans Mernling, and the Master
of St Bartholomew-unless the rules were direct responses to such brazen
provocations.
The monastie orders harried their far-flung clerics for two basie reasons.
FIrSt, painted or carved images were CO!tly and could thus become sources
of pride to their patrons or owners. They could also become tokens in an
invidious social competition. The escutcheons mentioned in the Carthusian
statutes were irritating reminders that sacred art was not easily disentangled
from money and st:atus. Still more irritating was the notion that the taste for
complicated images was a luxury of the rich. Gerard Groote, the founder of
the Deootio modmta, praised poverty for its indifference to 'the exquisite, the
curious, and the difficult. '35 Pieter Blommcvccn ceruurcd in a treatise of 1526
those self-indulgent clerics who dwelt in Miijicia curiDsa with many scrvants.3fi
One extreme and clear example of this sense that possession tainted use is the
resentment that some theologians fdt for the private ownership of books.
There was no question of the value of the content of a book.. But there was
a sense that if one actually owned the volume one would be more likely to
attend to !luch accidental attribute!! as the binding, the script, or the
illustrations. In other words, scmually appealing sacred artefacts were
suspicious tom. ifthcy fulfilled their didactie or signifying function. This vein
of criticism does not raise the issue of the relationship between form and
meaning.
The second reason the monks mistrusted im.ages is possibly more
interesting. In this case the curious or beautiful image is unwelcome because
it fails to bring across its message. This charge implies that the fonn of the
image divisible into those dements that reliably convey a given meaning,
and thO!le elements that interfere with that meaning.
The line between the functional components and the excess is clear enough
in many kind! of objects. High and late medieval refonners - and not only the
monastie watchdogs - wen; good at isolating the luxurious superfluity of
design in clothing, interior decorating, ecclesiastical apparatus, even the
presentation of food That excess was often called 'curious.' In 1235, for
instance, the Cistercians ordered the removal of a paoimmtum cvriosum, and the
punishment of the abbot who installed it, at the monastery church ofLe Gard
in the diocese of Amiens. 37 The twelfth-century French clerie Peter Cantor
denounced 'superfluity and curiosity in clothing, meals, and buildings ..,s
One bishop specified in his testament of 1390 that he was to be covered by
a simple, not a curious tomb. 39 Johannes Capistranus preached against
33 Alain Girard, 'La Chartreux, I'an l1 la

ipiritualitl: autour d'Avignon'. in ros A.
GirBrd and DanicI Lc BIh-ec, l~ a.n-:r
I'm, XII'r-XI7111 .JIIia:K, Ada du xe
coIloque internalional d'biJtoirc ct de
ipirituaIitC ~ (Paris, 1989), p.lIB,
n.20.
m.
34 N- c.lJtitI ~ u,
I;"
acerpt.cd in Giovanni ~ 'La
Chartr=x, I'art ct la .pritualite en Ita!ic' ,
in em Girard and I.e BlI:Yec, Us
It
I'm, .171 nvII --. pp. ligl-49- AD tbac
dccrco were roIlectcd and publiIhed in
Bucl in 1510 U SI.bd. arrIDris c.rt.uruis.
o.nr-:
35 - Gerard Groote, s.- iJaja jMbtwrDt

.,..".,.., cited in U:ciawt J~
MIIiii. AIR, vol. \I (Lcidcn, 19B I),

under-UU.
s6 - Pictcr B1omnu:vccn, au. duu
fiIitin- mm. (Cologne, 1.)26): 'la1a
querunt ~ ... iu:JooIes, edificia
CIII"Da, mu1tam familiam', cited in the
I.IT:Ac lMiIriIcis ~ MItIii A.:.
~
338
CHRISTOPHER
s.
WOOD
'Sl MOI'tct and Dcw:bampe, &a.ii .laIa,
p.3f\.
311 Peter Cantor, I'riaI~, ch.
BII, in Mignc, PrttreI9- ~ vol. 205.
col. !l51.
!19 'VcDemque, ct ita de bonia mcia
ontino, I.UIIlbam cmpori mea .upcrponi
Rmpliccm, non curiomm, quae pretium I.
francoru.m auri non exceda!.' Cited in Du
Gange, ~ M6ii.1t bf- ~
10 vall (1883 87), under CII7icuu (g).
40 - Jobannca Capimwnu.a, Tradmu ",...us

'" II1II ~ IIfIWbu (14:W37), cd. A.
Chiappini (1956): 'Del auperftuo riIpctto
alia ~ riIpetto alla .uperfiuiti dO
piaceri, riIpetto alia curioIiti ... " p. 1']3;
cited by Gerbard Jaritz, 'Von del"
Objektiviw biJ zur 0bjeInzent0rung:
Methoden und Hwndhmppiclrlume im
SpAtmiucIaltcr', in cd. Bob ScribDer, IJiJMr
I11III BiIIIInbtnta ill s,1tri..."" IIItII ill . .
.ft#J- ~ WoIfcnbiltdcr Fonchungen,
+6 (wlCIbaden, 1990), pp. 3f5O.
4l -Johannes Brugman. for example, an
0bIcrvantine in MecheIen, in the ~
~ ('- 1451), cd. F. A. H . ..an den
Hombergh (Groningcn, 1967), p. I'rf.
'Scripta onlinia ignorr.-erit, CUl"ioIitmI
connn DOll COOIJ"'C' JtTit, Ii ccIl.u corum
DOn frequenter viIitavcrit, Ii COtlIcicntiu
corum. DOn pencrut:atuI fucrit, Ii ociari
pcrmiIcrit' .
42 - 'fh. B-=hman (BoIman), Prrtamu
"I'ffrtr-Jiri -mrii ~"'rir: 'OmniI
diIigcncia ct ItUdium tnt priUl di.Ipoocre
cameru ~i varia ... qui.que a1iwn
preccIlcrc nitcbal.ur curioRtatc atque
1WIIptllOIitatc', cited in Im-. lMiIriIGis
~ M.Iii.A.i, under -wws.
4-3
till amiIa S-- ...
(Haarlcm IBsB cdn), pp.l3&. 1"]5L: 'Grote
vcrcicringbc ... code curiale
ommebsngbingbe ootn:n1 den lichacm';
'Die vrouwcn ... die dat hooft curiOIdikcn
Loemakcn'. A Dul.cb. text pointed out that
'the dothcI of holy women were DOt COItty,
nor coIorcd, DOl" ruriouI'. Both ~
cited in E. Vcrwija andJ. Vcrdam,
~ W.-w(ISOO, m, col.
.sa-""-,,,
IIlIRO.
4-4- - From a fiftcenth-ccnwry Nuremberg

ItatutC, cited in J aritz, 'Von dcr
0bjcktivitIt bia RlJ" ~,
pp.4O"""4- 1
45 - 1M LijI qf 51 CdMt. Publicariom of
the Surtcca Society, &] (Durham, IBgI),
p.IISIB, II.. 7fl.t.t4B.
+6- Geoffrey Chaucer,.A. TrEis. III " "
.A.sbDWI (1391), Prologue, cd. Waher W.
Skeat (Loodon, III"]!I), p. II, D. 31-!JlI.
4-7- Thomu i K.cmpiI, ViM -.;
'rcIinquc curioIa ugumcnta vcrbon.un,
quae impediunt profectum dcvotionia'; and
M.- ~ 'verba curioIa important
diItractiooem'. Both ~ cited in
l..cria. l.MitfiICs ~ Abm ~
4B -John Calvin, IruIiaIiIJIc '" I. , . . .
drrGtiIa6 (154-1) (PariI, 1911), ell. I, p. 13
---=
'superfluity with respect to preciosity, with respect to an excess of pleasingness,

with respect to curiosity.'4D
Similar admonishments were aired. continually by the Dutch reformers.4-'
One report on the reform of a monastery from around 1500 lamented that
'all diligence and study was firstly to dispose the chambers with various
enticements ... and it glittered to exceed the other!! in curiosity and
sumptuoumess. '4'1 A manual on confession condemned 'large ornaments ...
and curious draperies wrapped about thc body,' as well as 'women who
curiously make up their heads. '43 Municipal sumptuary laws took aim at
'ostentation, curiosity ~~l], and supcrlluous splendor.'+4- It should be
pointed out that curiO!lity in an artefact, however, even an ecclesiastical
accessory, wa! very often a term of wonder and praise. There arc several
biblical examples, mentioned earlier. A further examplc is found in an English
chronicle from the mid-fifteenth century, which described a bishop's staff 'as
preciOUBC, / and in makyng full curiouse. '-0
But what was the equivalent in painting or sculpture to the vain excesses
of dress or the carvings on a crozier? It is not so easy to di.stinguish the
materiality of the image from its function. This is a problem whenever the
main function of an object is to signify, since every part of the image, even
the curious parts, will signify something. There is no easy way to splinter the
image into its useful and useless components.
Language poses the same difficulty, indeed even more so than irnagc!. Yet
even here one finds a critique of superfluity. Curiosity in language, in this
period, was the unusually difficult, ornate, subtle, or rteMrchJ verbal manner.
Chaucer apologized for the absence of 'curious enditing [i.e. writing or
composition] & hard sentence' in his T7!tllist on f}" AsIrolaiH, a book written
for a child Thomas a Kempis recommended abandoning 'curious
argument!! of words, which hinder profitable devotion,' and 'curious words'
which distract. 47 Calvin, near the beginning of the Instibdes, declined to resort
to 'longue [et] curieuse demonstration, pour mettrc en avant lea tesmoignages,
qui scrvent a esclaircir et approuver la majeste de Dieu. >4B It wa! always
somebody else's style that wa.!I curious, as if one could only arrive at a natural
or straightforward style through a negative example. The simple mode W8.!I
thought to lack style altogether and wa! thus taken as a truer or more natural
mode. This is a fallacy. Simplicity is a style in its own right; the very absence
of conventional 'ornamental' words is significant. And contrariwise, those
superfluous words that convert straightforward communication into
misleading style are by no meam mcaningicss. The partitioning of style into
bare words and ornament really amounts to a partitioning of content into
important and trivial meanings. It is a doctrinal or political distinction
masquerading as an epistemological distinction.
Curious language is language whO!le effect ha! traditionally been
characterized with visual metaphors, such as 'figure' or 'image.' Such
metaphor!! attempt to isolate operations of language that !IOmehow betray
language, for example by not being reducible to propositions. Curiosity is after
all the improper attempt to gain knowledge through vision. Thus the interest
of the application of the concept to images. Curiosity in an image is apparently
what is essentially visual about the image, what is proper to the image.
Curiosity is what di.stinguishcs the image's way ofmeaning from the text's way.
The critique ofpictorial curiosity, although iconophobic, actually articulate!!
339
a psychology of creation and reception with more color than most other
premodern discourses of the image. Most iconophobic texts address more
comfortably issues ofsubjcct matter, location, exhibition, and function of the
image.
The curious part of the image is what is left after the part trarulatable into
a linguistic proposition has been subtracted. Sometimes a writer attempting
to characterize this remainder will resort to the old topos ofindescribability.
The modem locus classicus of this maneuvrc is Petrarch's sonnet IUS:
Arnor s'e in lei con oncstatc aggiunto,
con bclti naturale, abito adomo
et un atto che parla con silcn.zi.o,
ct non so che nelli occhi ....
Here is Chaucer in his dream-poem Th Howe of FtI1M, about a generation

later:
That hit altonyeth yit my thought,
And maketh al my wit to swynk.e,
On this C8.!1tel to bethynkc,
So that the grete craft, beaute,
Ibe cast, the curiosite
Ne kan I not to yow dcvyse;
My wit ne may me not Ruffuc. (III, 83ft)
And in Caxton's Golden Legend of 1483: 'to wrytc the curiosyte and werke of
the temple ... passctb my connyngc to exprcssc.'-19 This linguistic abdication
became a commonplace in Italian Renais!lance writing on art.
It is no wonder that all the old references to curious I53.CTeCi image!! arc
deprecatory. The conspicuowly wrought !l3.CI"Cd image distracted beholders
from its own subject matter. Profane images were free to indulge in curiosity
and play. Chaucer's narrator in The House of Fame found himself
4!J - Ciled in the

uD~r
oy;n sJI.
Didi.wry
nuitui!r.
Within a temple ymade of glaa,

In which there were mo images
Of gold, standing in sundry stage!!,
And mo curiow portraitures,
And queint manner of figures
Of gold worke than I saw ever. (I, 12off.)
ThC!lC were figures ofVcnus, Cupid, and Vulcan 'in portreiture,' and a series
of Aenean !ICCllcs.,50 Certainly the sculpture!! on a fountain imagined by
Spenser in the Faerie ~ were profane:
Moo goodly it with curiow imageree
Wal over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes,
Of which some 5CCIJled with lively jollitce,
To fly about, playing their wanton toyes
Whilst others did themsclve! embaye in liquid joycs. (0, xii, 6o~'
But sacred images were another matter. Any corupicuous principle of

design in the work., any surplw of workmaruhip, any luxurious and appealing
material, any self-serving artisanal self-display was curiow and dangcrow.
The surplw notoriowly provoked emotional and !IOmatic responses. St
Bernard regretted that the eyCll of the monks 'encounter curiO!lities that delight
them, and not sad things that would !lU8tain them'; d&ctan literally meant
340
CHRISTOPHER S.
WOOD
so - Uucr in IIx- pam! Chaucer dClcnlxs a

gate
(w,
'ywrought. by greal and rubtiD cure'

1108).
Edmund Spcmer gocncnlIy a.ociatt-cI

'Y.
rurioUty with antiquity; ICe 1WrW
x, 6; or TItt RIIiIws ,,~ p. 119.
51
a.-..
5>1- 'hlVMliunl rurillsi quo deiectenlur, el

nOll inYMliunt mWeri quo IUltcntrntur'.
Mignc, PltrrJqj ~ vol. 18~, enl. 91';53""Curiosu dqlictiollCl ... quae dum
orantium in lit' rcrorquem aJPCdUIn..
improi unt r1 alTtrturn'. Q)Kxcd in exBru~. Ii.twks "E.rtJtItjqw .\IiJiiwJt, II, bk :,\,
ell. 45'1- . Thol1111.. Ii Kcmpil. SoIi/oqltluH
'qui came mortUUI MIl, non viclct curinm cI
puIchra', citccI in J.ma. utWJ.lis
-=
.~
Mtin.1i
55 On the Catholic ironophohcs,
!ICC
the
CXN"!lt-nl ~y by t:hrinilU' (~, 'Dit

~ Hciligenbildt-l durrh
Thnllosen'. in ed. Scnbncr,
BikIIr raM BiltImbtnlf, pp. 26g "95-
DWipliniN1ll1g
a1tg1tubi~
56 Mignc, ~ IAIi-. voL ~ col.

~55- lill'd in ck- Bruynr, IiJ.J,s tI'EstItItiqIll
.\f~, pp. 115-36.
IT'artL, IhflilDl Art

,Wus trM IJonanb (EVRllIIlon,
IgBol, p. 1+8; nrigiJULI tC'Xl quotro by
GiIIJn1 in Art &IJItUt, +1 (1959) pp. j'6 n,
57 Crcighton Gilhcn.,
1400 '.IjOO.'
n. 9. Gil~ hypothCllixo that AllIooino
'va>! thinking of n painting Iikr GentiJr cia

Fnhriano'~ Atltmdioll ~tIr .\ltWi Ilo\!Z3:.
~,B
Citro in JRrtAOll...-lIn tottI Apt INt'.
p.3+-
'draw away', that is, from serious busincss.32 He denounced 'curious depictions
that twist the g"d.Ze during prayer and entangle the mind.'53 Vision operates
here like an extension or prosthesis of the sense of touch and is thus highly
vulnerable to temptation. Attentiveness to form becomes a kind of carnal
knowledge. Thomas a Kempis pointed out balefully that 'he who is dead in
the flesh, docs not see the curious and the beautiful' - meaning that not until
death is one liberated from this appetitc.~ The 'wrought' aspects of a work
are moreover direct traces of the artist's hand. Ibis indexical reference is
automatically more compelling than any merely iconic resemblance of the
work to its proper object, the sacred. personality or story.
100 line of thinking was followed by later iconophobcs as well.
Sixteenth-century German clerics made uneasy by the cult of images,
Protestants and conservative Catholics alike, condemned any excess of /amst
in the religious image. Kimst meant either ornament, that is forms that did not
contribute to the expository content of the picture, or artistry, that is any
distracting display of skill. These critics of the modem image pined for the art
of a simpler, purer past- 55 Already in the late twelfth century Peter Cantor
observed how labor 'is turned toward faultiness, and things fall into vice, if
it is lacking in art. Thi'! is seen in the superfluity, curiosity, and swnptuousness
of our buildings.' Behold, he lamented, 'how far we have retreated from the
simplicity of the ancients in the construction of buildingsl'Y;
One of the few iconographic principles found in the mona'!tic texts was the
hostility to female forms. For the male beholder - particularly the cleriC.'!
addressed by St Bernard or the Carthusian General Chapter . the figure of
the woman was the unknown and the unc.anny. It was prcswnably not the
living woman who posed a threat to cell-bound monks, but the representation
of woman - the pomograpJu. The beautiful image was also metaphorically a
woman. Like the image, the woman supposedly lured adrniren by her
supplements: her cosmetic excesses, her hair, her ganncnts, her superfluous
curves. And just as erotic fantasy dangerously supplements a properly chaste
love, the private poesis that creates and savors idols is a supplement to worship.
Any style c.an become the object of a nostalgia for purity, and any other
can become a dangerous harlot. But there WB! ncverthelellS some objectivity
to the iconophobic critique!!. One critcrion of pictorial curiosity was a surplus
of information, for example through gratuitous description. Another related
structural criterion was a proliferation of marginal details and episodes. lbe
Dominican St Antonino, Archbishop ofF1orence in the mid-fifteenth century,
warned that to paint 'curiosities [CIlriosal in stories of the wnts or in churches,
which have no value in stimulating devotion, but laughter and vanity, such
as monkeys, or dogs chasing hares, or the like, or vain adornments of clothing,
appears !!uperfl.uous and vain. '57 Antonino chose examples that could stand
for all marginalia. Monkeys suggc!ted foolish play and thus symbolized
art-making. But the ape was also the symbol of the work of art, which
grotesquely parodied its natural object, just as the ape was nature's parody
of man. The characteri'!tic response to ape and art was idle amusement.
In the phrase of the twclfth-ccntury grammarian Alexander Neckam: 'The
ape caters to vain curiosity [lX11fi.s snvat curiosiIaIibus], making the bystandCl"ll
laugh with his ridiculous antics.'~ Antonino's cavorting dog, meanwhile,
recalls Augustine's repudiation of curiosity in the Cmifession.r, where he
confessed (among other things) that a dog chasing a hare 'might easily hold
341
my attention and distract me from whatever serious thoughts occupied my

mind .... Gnlcss you made me realize my weakness and quickly reminded me,
either to tum my eyes from the sight and raise my thoughts to you in
contemplation, or to despise it utterly and continue on my way, I should simply
stop and gloat. '59 In Antonino's warning, the dog chasing the hare actually
repeats the desultory, meaningless wanderings of the beholder's eye about the
picture. Petrarch, in his dialogue De rmwJiis ulriu.sqzuJortunae, had also identified
curiosa disparsio as a key to pleasure: 'Thou conceivcst delight in the pcncill and
colours, wherein the price, and cunning, and varietie, and curious dispersing,
doth please thine eye. >60
Ccntrifugal motion was the structural principle of such a picture. Antonino
was not necessarily thinking of specific monkeys and dogs in paintings, but
merely wing them as stock devices to denounce the sort of painting he
deplored, which must have generally been the loosely structured, various,
paratactic mode characteristic of Pisanello and other northerners, and
acknowledged by contemporary humanists in brimming ekphrases. 61
Curiosity as a cognitive habit was generally understood as the impulse to
pointless motion. St Ikrnard. scorned the 'restless curiosity [iltqWla cwiosilatel
to build, to tear down, to turn squares into circles. 'M Aquinas defined curiosity
as one of the species of oogatio mmtis cin:a illiciJa, or 'straying of the mind toward
illicit things. Jti3 Curiosity propelled the faithful into endless pilgrimages and
image-cults. fi4. The samc motor would propel the modern tourist: Rabelais had
one of the charact.crs in Pan.tagruel recount how on his travels he had 'curiously
contemplated the site and thc beauty oflolorence, the structure of the Duomo,
the sumptuousness of the temples and magnificent palaces.'65 And it was very
often the curiosity of the wrought object, or the monument, that initiated the
pilgrim's or the traveller's trajectory (here we switch back to the other semantic
tradition).John Wycliffe, for example, around 1380, lamented that 'they draw
thc people in the holiday by coryouslt of gay windows.,66
What is notable in these texts is the assumption that both seeing and making
are active, even enterprising, processes. Seeing i! clearly much more than a
merely passive reception of impressions; thc eye pursues the world And on
the other side of the image, the artist does not merely replicate the world, but
makes a world. It must be stressed how much this adventurous aspect of
making was taken for granted in this period, even by the likes ofJean Gerson,
who conceded the artist's licence to invent by quoting Horace's famous tag,
'pictoribus atque poetis quidlibct audendi semper fuit aequa potesta!,' or
'painters and poets always had equal authority to venture anything they
likcd.J6"] 1bis is exactly what the iconophobcs feared: the forward movement
of the eye and the hand, the initiative, the unpredictability, the leap into the
unJzeimJich and the unfamiliar. The picture's curiosity contributed to the
representation of the unseen. Fantasy fabricated images of the beyond, the
transcendental, the unearthly, the unnamed. Ornament and excess
augmented the image's range of reference; they supposedly initiated a swerve
out of the routine of normal representation in hopes of capturing the
unrcprescntable.
The generative powers of the creative imagination were simultaneously
exploited and feared, especially in the mystical tradition. A fourteenth-century
English mystical text, for instance, the Cloutlt of UnJawwing, warned the devout
not to mistake such fancies for adequate figures of the divine. The hungry mind
34lZ
CHRISTOPHER S.
WOOD
59 - Sl Augu.tinc",
lAifmitRu, x,
35.
~ JOrl-, in
the EnglWh trunalation by lbomu Twyne,
~.4pst FarlJow (1579), Dialop;ue XI.
text and l1"IlnIIaWon given in MkhHM
Baxandall, ~ - ' 1M Orun (Oxford,
Sc, - Petran:h, Dr TrINIiiis
197 1), p . .)4.

61 &xandalI,
PP7 B gG.
(;foUo
IIIfi IN Umltn, "'P.
&2 Mip;nC". ~ ~. vol. Ig.l,

("()I. g8s. citro in Zacher. Uuiosi!J IJIIIi
~. p. 'r]. ICe alto P.52. In fA ~
De Beman:! made punning connectiom
and ~.
lbomas Aquinaa, os-- . . . . II. ii.
q. 35, art.. 46+ - i'..acher. 0triDsi!1 -' fiWilMift. ch. 3with many quoblliona.
lis Franc;oU Rahcla.is, ProclIIgrwI (1.)48). 1\.
xi. Rabdaia ItiInrlf bad hccn in florence
around 1535- Anhur Hculhard. RtrJ.J.U.. Sn
II11J9t til IIG&!ParU, 1Bg6). pp. &2 -6+
66 Citro in the O:rfoti ]<Rc DictitNHrr;F,
under 1YTiari!J.
IX"twN""1l atmfI
63
67 .. Genoa WIll juarifying rr-prctmtaliom of

StJOIeph u a young 1TW1. UJwrw DIfIm
(1"]06), III, col. 1352; quoted in Mt-)"M"
Schapiro, "Mworipula DiaboIi~: t~
symbolilm of the Mmxie Altarpica"', Art
Btdl#tizt. 27 (1945), pp. 182 B7. rcprintn:l in
~ An, ed.. Creighton GiIbo."T1. ;New
York, 1970), P3 1.
68 .f7tt (:JaM '!! ~ ati JUW.i

1r.Jisn, m l'hyiIa HodgIon, Analecla
CamvUna, 3 (SaUburg, 1982), pp.5B and
121 (from the tn-atDc In. lJiDiIfi9); lee aiIo
pp.2, 12, 130 66.
6g.- Sandran, TaLsdtt A-r..a" p. 62.
Thia IlOle WU already pubIimed in the

1155 edition; I!eC the modem edition,
&.g.'S ~ cd. C. F. Bell (Oxford,
Igo6), p. dBv.
71 Van Mander, HIl 1-. r. 2221". He
makes a IimiIar comment about Jan vm
Heme.en in the ICCtion 'Van venchcyden
&hilden .. .'. r. !I05T.
']0
72 Berlin, Kupfentichbhinett, KdZ %

dated 1511; project foe tht- Tucher alwnow in St Seb&ld, Nuremberg.
73 Sandrmt, T.udw Ac-.n., pp. ']6, 80.
74 'l'bomaa WalIOD, n.H~ ~
PusittMII c.u.r;" ff Un (1.)82), Dedicatory
EpiItle, r. 3V.
75 Further Dutch cditioru in 16sg and
1675. A German tramIa1ion did
not
appear
until 17']0.
76 See the remarb by Jeffrey M. Muller,

'MeamrcI of authenticity: the ~ioo. of
copiea in the early literature on
~p', SlMia ill "" HISItttJ t(Art,
20 (lgBg), pp. 141 49-
of the mystic climbs impetuously toward the sky; it imagines a God in rich
clothes and set in a throne, 'fer more curiously than euer was he depcynted
in this erthe.' Again and again the author (probably a Carthusian) abominates
the 'corioustee' that seeks truth 'bi making of figures of the la!t and the leest
worthi thingcs of thees beyng visible thinges, as stocke! or stones, and seyen
[sayl that it [the :Hrst Causel hath nothing abouen [beyond] thoo wickyd &
manyfolde fonnaciouns, maad of hcrnse1f in here fantastick ymagynatyue
witte!.' In this text, the curious wit that indulges in abstract speculation and
the curious imagination that carves stocks and stones arc equal targets of
reselltmenL 1bis is the clearest irutancc of the convergence of the two
semantic traditions. 68
Franc:iKua JUDi... on curiMity and judgment

What happened to this adventurous version of curiosity? When sixteenth- and
seventecnth-ccntury text! speak of a euriow manner of painting or drawing,
they arc usually referring to manual control. Curiosity was associated with
technique, even technology. Joachim von SandrcUt, writing about Peter
Vtscher's bronze Tomb oJSt &baJ.dus in Nuremberg in 1&]5, remarked on 'the
great industry and curiosity of the casting. >6g John Evelyn observed in a
marginal note written on a copy of his own treatise on engraving (1662) that
the art of mezzotint had since 'arrived to the utmost curiosity and
accurateness. '7" Karel van Mander reported that many excellent portraits by
the 'clean' (suijr;er} hand of Hans Holbein were still to be seen in great houses,
'indeed so many that one wonders how in the span of his life he managed to
produce so much neat and curious work' (Mt cvrimr UJeTCI9,1' The emphasi! is
on skill and on the time invested in paintings.
But in other imtanees curiosity implied fancy and excess. Sandrart,
describing an altarpiece by Hans von Kulmbach, mentioned its dependence
on a preliminary drawing by Dorer that he happened to own himself,
'sketched with the pen very ingeniowly [simzm'ch] and curiowly.' That pen and
watercolor drawing survives and it is indeed stylish. and animated, without a
trace of aridity or pedantic diligence.7fI. Sandrart also wrote that many of the
early Gennan engravers 'curiously completed and decorated the work of
the goldsmitfu. '73 Thw one supposes that when the Elizabethan poet Thomas
Watson invoked the 'cunning hand and .. , curious pencill' of Apellcs, he had
in mind something more than a merely disciplined draftsmanship.74
This slight confusion about what a curiow manner was, and how to judge
it, is multiply reflected in the great contemporary treatise on the classical
literature of art, De picturo veImIm by FranciscusJunius.Juniw was a Protestant
of French and Flemish birth, educated at Leiden, who served from 1621 as
librarian to the Earl of Arundd. His book appeared in 1637 with a dedication
to Charles 1. The next year Junius published his own revised English
translation, ThA p~ oJth4 Antimtr. A Dutch translation followed in 16.p.75
The book, a collage of classical citations, is organized not historically but
analytically. It amounts to a treatise on aCllthetics. Although Juniw was
basically a classicist and an idealist, he was troubled by the ways beauty
and grace interfered with the clear intellectual apprehension of form and
clouded the beholder's judgment. In many ways Junius - although himself
no connoisseur-was an intellectual patron of the modern discipline of
connoisseurship.76 His text has been I1li!prizcd as a mere antiquarian
343
compilation, a late product of the medieval anthologizing impulse. TIlls poor

reputation dates fromJoharm Wmckelmann, who necessarily rejcctedJunius'
entire approach to classical. art. In fact,Junius' thinking on the structure of
the work of art and the problem of judgment was original enough to have
influenced G. P. Bellori and Roland Freart de Chambray, the classicist art
theorists and friends of Poussin.n
Near the end of De pUluTa vetmJm, believing to have said enough to 'serve
for an introduction into a setlcd way of judging,' Junius appends a comment
on the topic of the pictorial supplement, or parergon.78 In Pliny and other
ancient writers, pamga are marginal and superfluous embellishments of
pictures or artefacts. Qntilian definedpamga [mJunius' own translation) as
'such things as are added to the wode for to adorne it.' Philostratus called
them the amdim.enJa picturtu. The pamgon can also serve as a sort of personal
emblem or signature. Galen reported that 'good workemen usc to make some
Pamgon or by-worke for a document of their Art [.rpecimm anisJ, upon the bolts
and shields: oftentimes also doe they make upon the sword hilts and drinking
pots, some little images over and above the use of the worke ... .'
Junius then warm that 'artists tend to delineate these parerga most
incuriously [inczaiosius, i.e. negligently] and therefore do not seem to merit care
in examination equal to the works themselve!. '79 What doesJunius mean when
he says that by-works arc done carelessly? Surely these supplements were
important to the arti.sts. They were appended to the work precisely to make
room for non-functional, unsupervised play and for self-advertisement.
The pamgon was the place where conventions could be conspicuously relaxed,
and where ordinary meaning went on holiday. What the artist neglected in
the pamga were the established rules of art that guarantee truthful
representation. Proper care, or curiosity, thus means properly oriented
workmanship.
Junius expects the beholder to examine the work with care. Evidently he
is supposed to evaluate the work and not merely register its content. Junius'
suggestion that the beholder's care in examining ought to be matched by care
of execution implies that the real object of such an examination is the
execution. So far,Junius' critique of the by-work is quite compatible with an
idealist theory of art. But this connection between careful judgment and
careful execution opens a window on to a potential conflict with idealism.
Already in antiquity, artists were ambivalent about the appeal exerted by
their own stylish or eccentric rupplernents. The best painter! were the most
likely to undo their own art with clever marginalia or odd subject-matter.
Protogenes, in a famous anecdote recounted in Strabo, found himself 'much
vexed, that the by-worke should be preferred before the worke it sdfe.' When
beholders admired the ingenuity of the invention rather than the technique,
Zeuxis complained that they 'commend the mud of our Art.' InJunius' text
these quotation! stand generally for the ways painting oventeps its own
functional boundaries, not just through literally marginal devices, but through
stylishness. And likcwiseJunius repeatedly cautions the beholder not to pennit
hi! curiosity to slide into contemplation of the marginal or supcrlicial, as
curiosity is wont to do: 'all it is then evident,' he says, 'that our curiositie may
not busie it sclfe too much about poore and frivolous matters, so must we on
the contrary endeavour to conceive the whole shew of the represented matter
with a large and freely diffused apprehension .... ' Junius wants to divert
344
CHRISTOPHER S.
WOOD
Ancbt Fontaillf", I~ tiortnlUl "'m1 III

Hate .. PrtusiIc Ii DitInot (1909, reprinted
IgSg), pp. ~~ 33; FJi:cnbeth Cropper, 1'"
J. . ff PmJiI/fi Pimrl Tt3ll1:r ~
_~ (PrinCf"Uln. IgI4), pp. llil 71Panoflky mcnUolll.lWUIJI only to blame
him for leading Bdlori RAIny: I...: A
Cttttnpl ill Alt n-;, (New York, 1968),
pp. ~son, 2:,:m. His inflUM\C(" lin Dutch
dllllicism is lamented by Emmcns,
&Mruth 111 H RIfIIIls WI! U XiDuJ. pp. 66 6'].
']8 - }o'ranciIruI juniua.. Dr ~ "'*'-. bk
III, ch. vii, l:l, p. 220. 'n.. 1'rtiitIiIIt ,y 1M
ANiIIIu, in the recent annot.arcd cdi rion by
Krith /\lldrich, Philipp F~h1 and Raina
fehl (BertcIIry, 1991), bk III, rho vii, 13,
pp. 310 - II. 1bc Engl.iah and Dutch cdiriollll
nctually end with the dilruBiOIl of the
p.mp; du pa&Hgl' fnllowa tlu- exhortIuioo
.nd is tllU. literally II KUpplemcnt.
79 juniUA, DI;idItm I'dIrwM, bk 111, ch. vii.
l:l, p. 220: 'SOlCIll vcn artifico parerga
haec ut p1urimwn incuriosiUII deli neart':
undc nequc pvcm cum ipm opcribuI
inlpiciendi curam videntur 1'IK"TCIi'. In

juniUl' awn ll'a1IIIation, which is not quite
accul"llte: But ba-auIe the Artificen SOC
OYer thne worUs IiightIy and with a light
Iw1d, 10 it it that _ do likewiae for the
mOlt part examine tht"lTl more negligently'.
n. PaiItJitv IM.t111Ci111Js, bk III, ch_ vii, 13.
p. 310 (page citatiOIll from the Alldrich-fehl
OOitioll).
Su-Ilnd.,
6-7, PP.3U1
J.
RI -Junius, Dt pictM", ~, bIr. m, cit. \ii,

I:l, p.:no. Cr. Plutarch, .w~ lOC. In
Juniull' own lnulllalion. agKin ralhcr
lilx-rnl: 'WI" consider the oy-worb of
workmen bul IIC1lderiy. for they ItUdy
0Iu:/y to Ix- pleaaHnl in many of lhem;
nMlhcr doe lhey ahwyes aYO}-d in them
whAl is to srna.I.I pu1pOIC and luperftuoul'.
'n" PrJixJitq ~ 1M .AJtc;"'L<. bk III. ch. vii, 13,
Pr. 310-'11.
Ih Juniw, Dt /'imurIlImuII, bk III, ch. vii.
p. J20: 'magni artificcA, dum operi ~uo
parrrwt '11111.Ntam cu m mi nore runt.
U(ljiriunl. rdirius in iis, quam in ipw opel1'"
\"{'nullam flrmac racilitali3 gratinm
a.dK-qwmtur. In JwLiw' own Il"lllUllariuu:
'lhe ArtifiC"t"n hil the true forrc and facilitie
(If grace OCHer in these ~udden thi"!!" than
in tilt: "'U1V i t ~If{" .. .' TItt I'rnIIliIw oj
.UtrilNls, hI!. III, eh. vii, I3, p. ::III.
1:l,
u..
R3 Ibid. rho vi, 3, pp.288-Rg. Cf.JUJliw'

of all ekphnw. of R hunting
deer and ~ fmm Libwni~
DarripIirws. to, where lllf" ani rn."Uion
lltimula!o the imKginRliuJl; bk III, rh. 7, 7,
disc1.wriOll
1Ct"nt: ....ilh
P-:i"::1
14 . Ibid ..
hk II. ch. xi, 7, p. 179
curiosity toward. serious things: 'the most earnest intension of our curious mind
ought chiefly to employ it sclfe about the chiefest and most remarkable things.'
Junius' invocation of an ckphrasis by Claudian of a dramatic sculpturdl work
suggests the primacy of imitation and emotional content over mere delight:
'He cannot abide that his euriositie should spend it selfe about matters of small
importance, 80 doth he very seriously obserVe the most strange miracles of the
noble Art, as they doe display themselves in such a noble argument.. >110
But there is a slight dishonesty imbedded within Junius' peremptory
dismissal of the incurious supplement. lbis is quickly exposed in the passage
on the pamgon. Immediately after di.smissing the by-works as careleKS
afterthoughts, Junius quotes Plutarch as follows: 'We suffer the accessories of
the crafum.en, for many are quite neatly done; but in fact they do not always
avoid the frigid and the curious' (frigidum d curiosum, or psychron kai pniDgon in
the Greek original).81 'Ibis timeJunius is conceding that the by-work can be
worked carefully, indeed all too carefully. When the ornament is overwrought,
the labor is too apparent and comes to look self-serving. The charge of
'frigidity' suggests that whatcver representational conventions had been
mobilized in the ornament now look unnatural and alien.
1bis pcrmitsJunius to observe, just before he delivers his ultimate warning
against the attractions of the supplement, that sometimes 'great craftsmen,
though they append pamga to their work 80 to speak with less care, nevertheless
achieve beauty and the grace of secure facility more happily in these than in
the work itself. >8;z For an instant, the tables are turned. The absence of care
becomes a virtue, while curiosity yields more correctness. This reversal is
comparable to the confusion about d.ra:ft:smaruhip in the passages quoted at
th(" beginning of this section. In Sandrart, curiosity was the key to correct
drawing, and yet at the same time its absence was temptingly stylish.
This criterion of stylish negligence lay at the core ofJunius' own ideas on
grace, laid out earlier in Book Three. 'Picture,' he explains, 'must: follow a bold
and carelesse way of art, or it must at least make a shew of carelcssne88C in
many things.' Junius then caJ.lg on an ancient ekphrasis to illustrate this
principle:
Phi.Jo.rtrabLr propoundeth unto w a lively example of this same secure and
unlaboured Facilitie, when he describeth the picture of many little Cupids
wantonly hunting a hare, and careles1y tumbling on heaps for the cagcmcs.o;e
of their sportfull chace; . .. the Grace of this picture was infinitely graced with
the confwed falls of the lasciviow and pampered little ones, as they were
negligently represented in the worke by ruch another !IeeIlling error of a
temr:rary and confidently careless Art.1I:!
Jwrius is recommending that the negligent look of the pamgon be extended to

the whole work.. Now the supplement is prelumably executed with authentic
carelessness. But the work itselfcannot simply be dashed off thoughtlessly. Any
negligence will have to be feigned.J unius caJ.lg this maneuver a 'seeming error ':
the artist needs to break the rules ir. order to cleave to a higher rule.
Ars est celare artem: this paradox was pointedly cultivated in the north, where
thoughtful artisl~ were apt to be defensive about the place of craftsmanship
in their work. 1be principle was derived from rhetoric and particularly from
Qrintilian.Junius observed that 'artificers therefore must take great care, least
their care be perceived. "4 'Beauty when it is set forth too carefully, is no
beautie. Wee arc therefore above all things to take good heed that there do
345
not appeare in our works a laborious gaynesse and an ovcr-curious affectation

of grace. >B3 The artist's natural tendency was to become absorbed in his own
craft.Junius quoted Seneca to this effect: 'It i! more delightfull to an Artificer
to paint, then to have done painting: our sollicitude, as long as wee busieth
her selfe about the wode, taketh a singular great pleasure in the occupation
it selfe ..as
It was exactly this self-indulgent solicitude that the monastic and scholastic
sentinels mistrusted. The Renaissance solved the problem by dropping the
theological objection and instead reca!ting the concealment of labor as a
matter of manners and good taste. The critique of curiosity came to resemble
the gentleman's disdain for pedantic or overeorrect behaviour. Think of
Castiglione; or Montaigne, who observed that 'pcrsonne n'est exempt de dire
des fadaises [foolish remarks]; Ie malheur cst de les dire curieuscment [i.e.
insistently or tediously].>117 An early scvcnteenth-century French-English
dictionary offered 'doubtful,' 'scrupulous,' and 'hecdfull' among the
translations of cvriewc. 88 Curiosity suggested ignoble pedantry and
timorousness. Artists warned against excessive curiosity were doubtless
flattered by the expectation that thcy meet these gentle standards.
This sort of carelessness is obviowly anything but random. Carelessness is
the product of care and diligence, jmt as the gentleman's simplicity is a
symptom of the greatest refinement and cultivation. The studied avoidance
of curiosity is merely a special case of curiosity. And once curiosity is safely
masked, it can flood the entire work, collapsing the distinction between the
work and the pamgon.
Striking is the congruence between the ekphrasisJunius chose to illmtrate
carelessness, and the illustrations ofillcgitimate curiosity in the medieval texts.
Augustine had evoked a dog pursuing a hare to represent the vain and idle
errancy of hi'! own mind; St Antonino had lamented dogs chasing hares in
the margins of sacred paintings. ForJ unim, the image of cupids chasing a hare
represents the grace of the work, just as did Spenser's romping fountain-cupids
(p. 340). What was once the work's failing is now the emblem of its beauty.
The usc of the identical image ofludic movement to illustrate both negligence
and curiosity is the clearest demonstration that negligence, the absence of
curiosity, has itself become a species of curiosity. Curiosity is an internal
movement that appears random but is actually the product of high artifice.
Only nature could license such a reversal of the rules of art and a transferring
of responsibility over to the artist. Junius therefore offers nature, not as the
direct object of imitation in such marginal fancies, but as a structural model
for purposeless mov(:ment:
Pictures which are judged I!WCCtcr than any picture ... [have] something in them
which doth not proceed from the laboriow curiOBitie prescribed by the rules
of Art ... the free spirit of the Artificer mamng how Nature sporteth her sdf"e
in such an infinite varictie of things, undertookc to doe the samc.1I9
Nature was often called in to legitimate a new principle. Early writing on

imagination, inspiration, or fancy, for instance, commonly invoked nature's
own whimsical inventions, the accidental figures found in tree stumps,
mountain profiles, or gems.go
The most extreme paradox is the idea that a simple style is the product of
refinement and art. The conventional condt:scension toward the primitivc
346
CHRISTOPHER
s.
WOOD
115 Ibid., hit IU, ch. vi, 3, p. ~8g.
86 -Ibid., bit II, ch. vii, I, pp. Hl']-g.
B7 - Cited in A. J.
Greinwl lind Teresa

DictitIrIMirr tIM ""!J'I'.fraf.is: 14
~ (J>uia, 199\1), under Aaiau:.
88 RandI .. Co~, A Dictita.rW ~tJw
Mill)'
Kca~,
ttIfIi"~ TMfIIG (London, 1611).

Sec IIho William ~, A:a, 1Mr,
ii, ~ 'Whemorc should I / Stand in the
plague of rllltom, and pennit / 'Ibc
L"uriclllitY of nationJ to deprive me ... ?'
Fr.1t
I,
8g J unilll, T1tI PrriItJDw 9f 1M AItMm.. hit III,

m. vi, 6, pp. 93
go On thoc: bui ....,.,

natW't'"',
lee
U!'
H. W.Jamon,
'Jporu of
'The ~
madt- Ily ("hance~ in RrnaiIIanrc though!",

in Dr Artibtu ~ XI: ~ ill H_ r#'
f:ntU PatifsJ;I r.Jew YOTk, 1961), ~5-(1r.; and
J. &Itrulaitis, 'PiermI Irnajn'. in
.~ I{Wln mIIU rwr 14 ~ mJrsn(Paris., 19.)71, i7ff See abo Junius, T1tI
PrtizIJDc rt' .-t..n.ls, Ilk II, ("h. ~ 4., p. 86,
00 a 'ruriOUl rarity" tht- fal1lOl.ll gem
danihed 0)' Pliny.
91- Joachim du .8dlay, fA ~ It

ilbtstrtdif1II if II! fmttw ~ ;(549), I, p. g.
He l'OntinlX'lO: :.Ie dy IMJ1emmt l]U'il n'cst
1_ impo..ihlc qllt" llOItre langue pw.c
rt:('l.'VOir
~,
qudquesfoil I'C!II omement e\

aJJIIIi curicux quil cst RUX Gn:cII ct
Romailll'.
~ -Juniua..
7". ~
ch. 6, k, p.!!8993" Chaucer, A TTtfIIig
III IM..t.n.w, Ilk III,

till
tJw ~
PnJioRue.
9-4 JuniUA, 7'" p.~ ofIM.~, hk III,

r.h. vi, 6. p.~; Dc p;rt.r. IWr-..
pp. ~u5 -6. Cr. the COTT\mrnbi on simplicity
hy Prter CII.lltor quoted Oil p. 34-1 .bove.
95 Junius, 1M l'rriMiIw of IM~, hk III,

ch. S. IO, p. 280. Junius wal paraphruing
(without Iltt:rihutilm) II puaagc from thr
introductory Epiade to Spcllser'l ~
~ (1579), by 'EX' (who may havt:
hccn SpenJel' hirTllelQ: 'Oftima we fyude
ooneIvcs.. I knowc not how, singularly
deliJ!htcd with the shcwt- of IUch natunill
rudenea, and take !!fCti pleuure in thai.
disordcrIy order'. 1M SJ,m,r l'-s III
&IwaattJ s,-. (New Ha'"en, IgSg), p.l5g6 -Junius, TIw PrWI1i1rf of 1M A..ciEr, Ilk II,
ch. vi, 2, p. 107. cr. Plutarch, MtnlM,
6938, where the topic iI actually the
llI.II..Dufacturc of wine. Thia ~ the lIOrt of
slightly fraudulent IChoIanhip that later
dixTcditcd JuniUl.
97 - JuniUA, 1M PDuiIIt of 1M A1tciew, hk III,

ch. vii, 12, p. "'97
g8 . Ibid., 5, p. 300
99 Ibid., ('h. vi,
k.. p.~.
style was still found, for example, in Joachim du Bellay's disdain for the
'simplicity of our forefathers who were content to express their conceptions
with bare words, without art and ornament, not imitating the curiou.~ diligence
of the Grceks.'9 I Junius, however, treats simplicity not as the mere absence of
ornament, but as a positive quality. Here again he follows Quintilian: 'A plaine
and unaffected sirnplicitie is commendable for a certain kind of pure ornament
it hath, and for a certain kind of neatnesse which seemeth to proceed out of
a slender diligence, and is lovdy even in women. >gg (When Chaucer explained
his adoption of a 'rewde' rather than a 'curious' manner in the Treo.li.se 071 th.t
Astrolahe, interestingly, he apologized for the 'supcrfluite of wordes,' suggesting
the stylishness of Latinate cconomy.93) Junius represents the rude simplicity
of ancient Greek painting as the splendid culmination of a process of
refinement: 'these arts being anciently pe.rlited by the study and care of many
and most consummate artificers, came so low about the times of Au.gust, that
they were ready to give their last gasp .... ' The crime of the decadent followers
WaJI to overfill the cup, to expend further care on a perfect art: 'when the
Artificers, leaving the simplicitie of the ancients, bcganne to spend themselves
in garnishing of their works LuUro modvm. CIlTtlITI. cultui impendenJes in his own Latin
text], the art grew still worse and worse, til it was at last overthrowne by a
childishly frivolous affectation of gayncsse.'!)4.
Like any classicist theorist, Junius by and large mistrusL~ the colorism, the
disorderliness, and the naturalism associated with the Venetian or the
northern schools. But he associates these tendencie!l with curiosity, which
shows that even idealists appreciated that northern disorder or Venetian
colorism W"dS more than mere unsclcctcd, raw nature. Junius recognizes the
labor involved. At one point, displaying a certain sympathy for the rough
pleasures of northern landscape painting, Junius concedes that 'the most
curious spectators finde themselves singularly delighted with such a disorderly
order of a counterfeited rudenessc. '95 Elsewhere he echoes a remark of
Plutarch's: 'There is a wonderfull great difference betwecn pure neatnesse and
curious affectation. >g6 Simplicity is an ornamentation beyond ornament. Even
in the texts of the idealists, purity of form sometimes looks less like a
metaphysical achievement, and more like a fonnal refinement.
Junius has a good deal to say, towards the end ofhis text, about judgment.
With the ekphrasis from Claudian, cited above, he suggests that the true
purpose of the work is to convey meaning, and that that meaning should
furnish the structure of the work. The work's success in conveying sense mould
in turn be the principaJ evaluative criterion. 1be mind is constantly in danger
of slipping away from the important work toward!! the frivolous pamgon.j unius
envisions a competition between the intdlcctual structure of the work and the
materiality of the curiow supplement- He associates curiosity with pleasure,
quoting Cicero: 'Witty things teach us; curious thing!! [mguta] delight us: grave
things move us. >g] There is room for ddight in the blend. But the senses arc
not a sound basis for judgment 'For our sense doth seldom at the first judg
rsic] right of these curiosities, it is an unwary Arbitrator, and mistaketh many
things: all the !IOundnesse and truth of our judgement must proceed ondy from
reason. og8 Excessive care and study may produce dazzling 'gay-seeming'
effcct!l, but these are aJI grass choking off the nourishing corn. 99
And yet when Junius comes to discws the capacity to draw the finest
di.!tinctions among works - to tdl original from copy, ancient from modern,
347
good from bad-- he falls back on the senses. Tlu.'! lime. the basis of judgment
is not the intellect, but the scrupulous exercise of curiosity. Attentiveness to
the minutiae offono - the same attentiveness that propelled the early modern.
proto-scientific practices of discovery and classification paradoxically
authorizes the t.'valuation of aesthetic quality. ThusJunius csteCllUl 'the daily
pI""clctice of a (:urious eye to be the chiefest meanes whereby we do attaine to
SUcll a faci1itie of judging .... 'IOU 'Ibe beholder takes as his model the intensc
and single-minded concentrcltion of the artist himself: 'How many things doc
Painters see in the shadows and eminen<:e!l, the which wee cannot sec?'"11
Careful execution should be met by careful scrutiny. Here JunilL'i quotes
Plutarch. in turn quoting a painter:
IRJude spccLators ... arc Iikc thO!le that Iialute a great multitude at once; but neat
spectaton, and such all are studiow of good Arts, may be compared with them
that salute onl' by one: the first namely doc not exactly lookt~ into the workc!i
or the Artificers, but conceive onely a grosse and wlShapcn image of
th(~ worlu:s; where the others going judiciously over every part or the worXc,
looke upon all and observe all what is done well or ill. I,,"
wo Ihid., ch_ xii,
I~-
p_
::lOll.
WI Ihid . hlr. I. ch. v. g, 1lP- 6~, 66_

quoting Ckero.
IO"J
Ibid,
p.li5.
P1utun-h, JfINrlIitL, 5758-
One is reminded more of the passage where Junius praises the 'disorderly
order' of the northern landscape, than of Claudian's ekphrasis of statues.
The curious mind scans the surface of the painting, but without a plan. It errs,
circles, jumps.
Junius has transformed judgment into an intimate and experiential
eneounter with the paint surface. Judgment shares its ludic structure with
cupid'! and the dogs. 'Ibis curiosity OPCI""cltes independently of any
interpretation or reading of the picture. And the scrutiny of the curiosities in
a painting is properly an affair of leisure and disinterest. Many gentlemen
recreate themselves in the contemplation of the divine workes of excellent
Artificers, not ondy weighing and examining by a secret estimation what
trca.'\UI"Cll of delight and contentment there are hidden in them, but ISOmetimcs
abo viewing and examining therein every little moment of Art fparouIa f[IUXIUt
mommJa arlir] with such infatigable [sicl though IIC'rupulous care that it is easie
to be perceived they do not adlmowledg l.ricJ any greater plcalIure.lo:-\
Junius here is closer to modem connoisseurship than to classicism.

In fact the affiliation between curiosity and connoisseurship is older than
this. The figure of the curiosus, the antiquarian, was already in the sixteenth
century credited with subtlety, or the infinite capacity to discriminate and to
discern resemblances. In one of the DisCOIlTS phiJosophiquM ofPontus de Tyard
(1557), a character called the 'Solitaire,' ascetic and single-minded, engages in
debate with the 'Curieux,' cloquent and diversely erudite: the hedgehog and
the fox, as it were. The Solitaire admires the other's range and ingenuity, but
doubts that the chain of reasoning will lead anywhere: 'VOllS estes asscz
heureuscment disert pour savoir descouvrir vos conceptions mais j'ay
I'apprehension tant durc que si subtil.<! discours n'y peuvcnt aucunement
entrcr."04 Curiosity was precisely the tendency to overlook the main point in
favor of marginalia or superfluities. This is how the connoisseur sees through
content to style and quality. The Roman chronicler and theoretician Giulio
Mancini, for example, suggested around 1620 that a great ma!ter's true hand
would be found cspccially in those passages not dependent on literal imitation,
such as hair or drapery. "'5
34B
CHRISTOPHER
s.
WOOD
103 JwUu., TItt PnWi'W tif 1M .~, Ilk

ch_ \". fl. p- 6g; /)" JWIIrn l'drmII. p- +4-
I.
I U1- Sylvil1D(" II uOI- Bulr.clam. '(.0 lip;urt" du

nllirux dallllt~ I>iscHrs pIt~iqllD de
PonlUli dr Tyard', in 00_ <.:btrd, /", nlriasiit
'* ~ RnWs=Kt, p. Hl'j.

105 Cited in Mul!n-, 'l.kuun.. ur
authrnticity'_
106 - Crwin PanoJll.Y. C'oli/m

.-47t.r r]"b(" Huguc. 195iJ. SO
4U II
Critic
rIf 1116
107 Raben Eatienne. DictitMtD iDe

t.fiIttt.rp1JiaM (1.')38). cited in the IlIt'ful
Icxicon compikd by &rban J. &h!igt:r in
her diHlcrtatioo 'n" KJow IIIIIi
W......,laauan: A ~ IWsorutI qf
(JN~ Dc ~. ~ - ' FJWItrM
1j6s 17.;0 (Ann Arbor. 1!J701. p.7i.
108 - La Bruyere, I ~ CmttcIbu, Dc la
Mode'. 110. 1/. fi.dition <X- la P\eiade (PIIria,
1951),
p.:JII6.
109 Rimy G. SaiIReIin. T1w IbIIt qf &tuotI

- ' 1M !bun qf ~ HMTI (C~KI. 1970i.
pp. iii 00.
By the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the connoisseur was

confident enough to hcgin distancing himself from his roots in hase curiosity.
The modem curiosus was always shadowed by the image of a bizarre,
magus-like figure sequestered in his cabinet. When Galileo, in a letter of 1612,
preferred the grand design of Ariosto's epic to the tonuous ingenuities of the
modem Tas.'>O, he compared the latter's verse to the cluttered cabinet of a
droll, muddle-headed antiquarian, 'WlO studietto de qualche ometto
curioso. "ob '[he curi.oso reacts capriciously and subjectively to the works of man
and nature; he is incapable of interpretation; he is farinated hy novelty for
its own sake. And his ohscssi.oru were tainted by the suspicion of possessiveness.
A sixtccnth-century Latin -French dictionary defined mUiquarius as one
'curieux d'avoir ou sc;avoir chases antiques.""7 La Bruyere scornfully
pronounced: 'Curiosity is not a taste for what is good or beautiful, but for the
rare, the unique, for that which one has and others do not have. It is not an
attachment to perfection, hut to the popular and the fashionable. It is not an
amusement but a passion, and often so violent that it yidds to love and
ambition only in the pettiness of its object."nII For the Comte: de Caylus in the
next century, the immoderate predilections of the curieu."( rrndered him inferior
to the true connoisseur. "'9
DeKription in northern pllinting

The Kunst- und WUMn'kammer hou.ored both naturc:l.l curiosities and their glib,
painted doubles. Paintings of lobsters or seashells were twic.e curious. Their
technique - descended from the legendary oil technique of Vc:I.ll Eyck - appears
to report neutrally on the exotic !!pCCimcn. And yet just as in van Eyck's
paintings, the glazed surface itsclfwas as marvellous as any object. 'lbey were
reports in a descriptive language that !reized precisely the most curious
features aberrations of structure legible in irregular contours, unexpected
colors, unearthly textures. The paintings were opaque and highly present
objects in their ~wn right, the prodm.:ts of an active imagination rather than
merely passive, mimetic reflexes. Their inscrutable surfaces become poetic
figures as difficult and seductive as any overtly wrought ornament.
The device of masking stylishness under iconic stillness was introduced to
northern painting by van Eyck, whose pictures look almost like direct
responses to the complaints of the theologian'! of the Deootio moderna - and in
general of late scholasticism about the sensuality and opacity of curious
pictures. Van Eyck concealed, with false modesty, his imperfect presence
behind a smooth surface. His images did not rely falsely on ornament or on
visible figures. These were the ancient ambitions of the icon: a styleless style
that corrals and refocuses the wandering attentions ofartist and beholder alike.
Such a style initiates a properly centripetal attentiveness, leading toward
subject-matter and not away from it. The Eyckian image, 111 theory, trimmed
off the figural supplement to subject matter.
One way of seeing through van Eyck's sclf-deprccating illusionism is
suggested by Waltr:r Benjamin's exegesis of the Baroque allegory. In Tht Origin
oftht Gmnan. Tragic Drama, Benjamin showed how the simple display oflifeless
objero, uncouthly laden with emblematic signification. could stand for the
trc:l.llSfiguration of the empirical enacted by any work of art. Here he quoted
a proposition of another literary historian, Petersen: 'Science cannot lead to
the naive enjoyment of art, any more than geologists or botanists can awaken
349
a feding for the beauty oflandscapc .. Benjamin then crisply denied both terms
of the analogy:
The geologist and the botanist can indeed do just this. Without at least an
intuitive grd.Sp of the life of the detail in the structure, all love of beauty is no
more than empty dreaming. In the wt analysis detail and structure are always
hilltorically charged. The object of philosophical criticism ~ to show that the

function of art:i!t:ic tonn ~ as follOW!: to make historical content, such WI provides
the basis of every important work of art, into a philosophical truth. This
traJlsformation of material content into truth content makes the decrease in
cifcctivcne!ll, whereby the attraction of earlier chanm diminishes decade by
decade, into the basis for a rebirth, in which all ephemeral beauty is completely
stripped off, and the work stands as a ruin." O
The work's interpretation of the material world begins with description.

The recalcitrance of the detail prefigures its own ending a, a ruin.
'1lls analysis make!! it easier to see how description of the world differs from
the world, even in van EyeIL The descriptive detail is automatically allegorical:
it points away from its obvious referent towards some absent significance.
An an that merely doubles the real might appear redundant. In fact,
description m'dk.es strange; representations even of familiar things take on an
unreal charisma. A simple reduction in scale works an effect. Contemporaries
never failed to cxclairn over the scale ofDou's paintings." 1 Objects treated to
the intense descriptive mode are isolated from any surrounding narrative.
Description flattens reality, spreads it out for viewing, like a poetical fIgure.
The most banaI object is invested with a corona of significance simply by being
singled out of the chaos of experience and treated to attention. Benjamin
called that the 'religious dialectic' of allegory:
Any pel"llOn, any object, any relationship can mean absolutely anything else.
With this possibility a destructive, but just verdict ~ passed on the profane world:
it ill characterized as a world in which the detail is of not great importance.
But it will be wunistakably apparent, especially to anyone who is familiar with
allegorical textual exegesis, that all of the things which are used to signify derive,
from the very fact ofthcir pointing to something ehc, a power which makes them
appear no longer comrnemurable with profane things, whic.h raises th('m onto
a higher plane, and which can, indeed, sanctify them. Considered in allegorical
tl.'nm, then, the profane world is both elevated and devalued ""
Van Eyck did not shun curiosity-he actually created a m.ort curious picture.
It was his historical (and probably intellectual) detachment from the pious
ambitions oficonicity that pennitted him to ironizc the tradition of the styleless
icon, and to call attention to himself through iL
1bc seventccnth-century northern painter ~ nature by imitating it.
Van Mander admitted bluffiy that description delights: ~t, the technical
key to painterly description, 'gives sweet nourishment to the eyes' and thus
'makes them lingcr.' 'Such things confound, and through the insatiable eyes,
make the heart stick fast with constant desire."'3 Van Mander was no closer
to wIving the puzzle of description's chann than Aristotle, who wondered., in
Book Four of the Potties, why it is that we enjoy looking at accurate imitations
of repulsive or banal things. Aristotle could think of no very convincing
answer.
Since the ingenious description of surface can make any object charismatic,
one is impressed mainly by the arbitrarincss of the relationship between
350
C H R 1ST 0 P HER S.
woo D
110- Walter Benjlunin, 17w Drip '.! c.:.r1 , . Dr-. irani. John OIbome (London,
1977:. p. 18~.
III S1uijlel'. 'SchiI&n van "cleyne, subtile

t:I1dc cur1claC dinRCl1". p. 23.
Benjamin, '/7w
0rW1I1!f(~
Trqit:
nr-, P.175.
113 Van Mander, lAtc f1MiIJ ,. ... t!'

diJiIw-cMSt (16o.f.), ch. I~, 21. ed Hr.cI
Miedema (l;trWtt, 1m, I, pp. ~s8 59. See
Me/ion, ~ tJw~ C-.
pp.60-66, for a reading ofthia~,
and in gcneraI for the anti-didactic,
anti-cluIical interpretation of
~ury Dutch art. Sec equally
Sluijtr.r, 'Didactic and diIguiJcd meaninga'
Seven! IeVeTItcenth-a:ntury textJ on
painting and the icoooklgical approat"h to

northern Dutrh painringa of thia period', in
cda David Fn-edberg and Jan de Vriea, Arl
ill HisIory, H"1SkIry ill An: SbMDa ill
~-c.uq, Drudi Qdbm (Santa
Monica, 1991).
114
True poc'try, fUT Novalia,
WIIJI
profulion of h~rtJRmCO\a fngmcrll!. And

thMTfon: narurc too ~ 'purely paNic, arul
it ~ a magician '. ocn, a phyJirut '.
IHbom.t.ory, a chiIdrrn'. nuncry, an attic,
and a lumber-room'. Benjamin continues:
'Thr ~.a1 iA ~lated in this way \0 W
fragmrnwy, untidy, alld diIOnItTed
c11Rn("\cr uf magicians. dmR or a1chcmim
laboratorin f"amiliar a~ aU 10 the
baroqur"'. 1M Drip r!f(~
Dr-.
p.I88.
lIO
1.
115 - IhicL, p. \85.
116 Angus "'etcher, Alllp;,: .11M 1kttJf:r WIf

1964), p.234, n. 22.
!S..PfItboIic AI. (lthaCII,
117 William EmJllOn, Mn "J)pn qf

Yun... 1917). pp. 2"l1 ~J.
~9 (~I"W
surface and meaning. Descriptive painting often fixed on objects that would
have been overlooked or even avoided if encountered in life - insects, the
remains of breakfast, shabby rustic buildings. Close description trarufigured
them into objects of delectation, an ironic maneuver. Sometimes the fragrant
or suceulent accessory to routine existence was described, the flower or fruit.
In such a case, the gap between the animation and durability of the
description, and the ephemerality of the object in real life .- the knowledge that
the actual model for the painting has long since disintegrated is the emblem
of mortality. Description otTers up dead and empty fragments for the sort of
melancholic contemplation cultivated in the magician's workshop, the
gentleman's lGmstIrammer, and eventually the bourgeois salon:'4- The
connection between curious technique and still-life painting is thus deep and
organic. Descriptive painting did not emerge to fulfill the requirements of the
rxmiIas topas, the theme of ironic reflection on the ephemerality of worldly
experience that authorized all stiI.l-life painting. Rather, the topos followed
from the technique.
Benjamin revealed the process of allegorization as a morbid oscillation
between fascination and boredom, and made what is by now a familiar
analogy:
The overbearing OlItcntation, with which the banal object seems to ari.'Ie from
thc depths of allegory i~ soon rcplacffi by its disconsolate everyday countenance;
it is true that the profound fascination of the sick man for the i~lated and
iruignilicant is succeeded by that disappoint(,d abandonmrnt of the <'Xha.wted
emblem, the rhythm of which a spcculatiV<'iy inclined observer could fmd
expressively repeated in the behaviour of aJX'll. But thr: amorphous dr:taiLs which
can only be understood allegorically kcl'P corning Up.";
This same fascination with the unlikely and starkly isolated detail is
characteristic of the Baroque drama that interested Benjamin, or of the
Metaphysical poets. Curious poetic language was difficult, strained, even
painfully emblematic. For the scholastics, the difficulty of scriptural figures was
the criterion of its grandeur. The labor of exegesis is simultaneously the price
of the Fall, and a pleasurable reward." 6 We have seen already that Galilco
disapproved of Tas.'iO's curiosity. What Empson called the 'curious attitude'
condoned the most tormented disfigurings of normal usage, and the most
repulsive images, in the lurid verse of the Metaphysicals. "7
This rhythm of attention and boredom, and this propensity to push the
indecorous detail to the fore, is unexpectedly shared by scientific method.
Once the natural representation of the world claimed by scholastic natural
philosophy was no longer credible - according to Blumenberg's analysi! cited
previously-the only recourse was mindless inventory, leading to an abstract
but useful image of the world And, according to Hegel, scientific description
chronically loses interest in the object at hand, and is thus forever grasping
after the next. Hegel's account of this mechanism is really the last echo of the
old Augustinian analysis of curiosity, except that now it is cleverly turned to
the service of science. The result of natural science's massive C<H>ption of the
pointless, repetitive, descriptive method, oddly enough, is that modem science
has made more room for curiosity than modem art has. Science is more truly
anti-theological and anti-thcoretical. Art, as long as it remains uneasy about
craft, ingenuity, and highly wrought structures of meaning, fails to sever itself
from the traditional Christian mistrust of curiosity.
35 1
From this point of view, the often-remarked coexistence of extreme

stylishness and extreme naturalism in Netherlandish art of around 1600, even
within the oeuvre of the same artist, is less puzzling. One clue to the natural
affiliation of the two modes is that both were anathema to later
seventeenth-ccntury classicisL'i. (Classicism, which in the north had a flavor
of Christian-idealist revanchism, even managed to absorb and tame the Dutch
'ncat' manner. Philips Angel himself, by recommending that netti.ch')t ~
combined with lossicheyt in order to avoid a 'stiff and tidy unpleasantness,'
contributed to its detachment [rom the Eyckian, 'curious' tradition." R 'Neat'
eventually came to mean mostly 'smooth,' as in van Dyck, or worse, Adriacn
van der Werff.) The versatility of the turn-of-the-century painters has been
explained as an adaptation to contemporary notions ofliterary decorum. "9
The stylish, mythologically saturated manner is supposedly equivalent to the
high literary mode, appropriate to lofty subjects, and the descriptive manner
to the humble mode, suited to low subjects. No doubt this isjust what a literary
pcI"50n of the epoch would have said. But northern painting had its own
internal traditions and codes, incommensurable with those of rhetorical
culture. In painting, the descriptive manner was historically linked to the work
of van Eyck, above all the Ghent Altarpiece, which was hardly an exercise
in the humble mode. The stylish supplement so conspicuous in the mannerist
work was not simply jettisoned to create a naturalistic work. Rather, that
supplement was absorbed into the weave of description. It became invisible
to all but the initiate.
352
C H R 1ST 0 P HER
s.
WOO D
118 Emmms, ':\"allrur, Onderwiping en

Ocfcning', p. J~:>; Sluijler, '))iductic and
~ meanings?', p. J8~.
119 Thomu Da Co.ta Kw.uliruinn, T1w
SdtooI Gj~. Pmlill& III ,., l-n af RJIIJtNf
II (ChiC8f!O, 1988), pp. 91 gG. Kaufmann i.a
primarily conccmcd with Rudolfuuo
painting, bur here extenda the dilCUllion to
lhe Haarlem ITUISten and 10 Jacopo Liguu.i
III the Medici Coun.

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This article was downloaded by: [Yale University Library]

On: 25 September 2012, At: 05:48

Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry

Curious pictures and the art of description

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

'Curious Pictures' and the

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The dHCriptive Hyle

WORD 6: IMAGE, VOL.

I - Eric J. Sluijtt:r, 'SchiIdcn van "dcyne,

(Doormpij.k, 19B I), l, p. 185i quoted in

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7-:Ilcllon Goodman, l.af:-tp tIfAn

II - See the nmarb on the objectivity of

151 - Sluijtcl', 'SchiIdcn van "deync, IUbtiI.e

(1675), cd A R. Peltzer (Munich, 19515),

IS-The pbrue rmdI 'ad exrogitwrvlnm et

16- See P- 34-51-

a beholder is close to ZCTO. All that 'descriptive' painting provides is an dJ6CI.

ars est ulan arI8m. 9

Second, an elaborately worked and compartmentalized paint surface can

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17 - 'The Vulgate rmc\ 'mul1i autcm ex hiJ

wall not easy to di.stinguish between scientific and aesthetic fascination.

disinterested pleasure. The sixteenth-century French naturalist Pierre Belon

(1ssB). : 68a, cited in cd. Jean

a l'estomach, partie au foye.' Belon even recognized the adventure involved

-Jean Genco laid that the outward sign

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Immanuel Kant, KriIik ., CJrlIiJsh.tl,

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Georg WllhcIm Friedrich HescI,

'BeOOachtung del" !l:"atur' (Frankfurt, 1970),

wu not particularly talking about pictures,

"Dr:smitUrt (Chicago, 1989).

Medieval mistruR of curioUty

~3 Andrf Lahhardt, 'CurioIita.I: Notel IIW"

pp. R06 ll4- Cavia.au

ruushiy equivalent to the Greek

jIniITp. The word wu UIed pOIitMIy sa

:\lichel Montaignc, t:ss.is, II,

&tition de Ia P\eia~ (Paris,

!IS St Augu.tine, c.,jasiJMs, X, 35

'T/ - H. W. JIlDIOO, Ale ... A;. Usn ill tit.

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28 - St Auguatine, Dr ... ,.,...., X1JX, 94-

119 Or 'lbOllUll i KcmpD, 1M IrtribIIit. tf

to reconcile ,.., and

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33 Alain Girard, 'La Chartreux, I'an l1 la

35 - Gerard Groote, s.- iJaja jMbtwrDt

MIIiii. AIR, vol. \I (Lcidcn, 19B I),

'Sl MOI'tct and Dcw:bampe, &a.ii .laIa,

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40 - Jobannca Capimwnu.a, Tradmu ",...us

4-4- - From a fiftcenth-ccnwry Nuremberg

'superfluity with respect to preciosity, with respect to an excess of pleasingness,

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Here is Chaucer in his dream-poem Th Howe of FtI1M, about a generation

4!J - Ciled in the

Within a temple ymade of glaa,

But sacred images were another matter. Any corupicuous principle of

so - Uucr in IIx- pam! Chaucer dClcnlxs a