Chapter 3: Beauty: Proportion and Harmony

1. Numbers and Music

Pythagoras first advocated that all things come from numbers. All things exist because of their order, and they are orderly because they are the realization of mathematical laws. The laws of mathematics are both the conditions of existence and the conditions of beauty. It was also Pythagoras who first studied the mathematical proportions of sounds that regulate music.

2. Architectural Proportions

The proportions between the pillars of Greek temples and the various parts of the facade echo the proportions between musical intervals. Moving from the concept of numbers in arithmetic to the concept of proportions between points in space geometry actually comes from Pythagoras.

3. Human body

By the 4th century BC, Polyclitus completed a statue. The front panel reflected the rules of proportion of each part, and there was the canon (the Canon): All parts of the body must follow each other in geometric proportions.

4. Universe and Nature

The universe we live in and the entire universe are governed by a rule, which is both a mathematical rule and an aesthetic rule. The embodiment of this rule is the music of the spheres: it is, says Pythagoras, the syllables produced by the planets, each of which, as it orbits the motionless world, produces a sound whose pitch depends on The distance between each planet and the earth therefore also depends on the speed of each planet. This system produces the sweetest music, which unfortunately our dull faculties cannot hear.

5. Other Arts

Renaissance artists believed that a masterful representation of perspective was not only correct and realistic, but also beautiful and pleasing to the eye. The perspective theory and practice of the Renaissance had a great influence. Representations from other cultures or other centuries were regarded as not obeying the rules of perspective, primitive, not enough to be called art, or even simply ugly.

6. Purpose

At the most complete stage of the development of medieval thought, Aquinas said that for beauty to exist, it must not only be proportioned properly, but also complete and complete. Be radiant—things with clear colors are beautiful.

7. The historical evolution of proportion

Plato believed that art is an imperfect imitation of nature, and nature itself is an imperfect imitation of the ideal world. Anyway, Renaissance artists strived to make artistic representations that conformed to Plato's ideals of beauty. However, there are periods when the schism between the ideal and the real world is quite clear.

During the twilight years of the Renaissance, a key idea gained ground: beauty came not so much from balanced proportions as from a kind of torsion, the constant effort to transcend the mathematical rules that governed the physical world.

Furthermore, at the end of the 16th century, when Giordano Bruno began to imagine an infinite universe and many worlds, it became clear that the whole idea of ??cosmic harmony had to change.

Chapter 4: Light and Color in the Middle Ages

1. Light and Color

In the late Middle Ages, Aquinas reiterated what had been widely popular before him Concept, it is said that three things are not necessary: ??proportion, completeness and clarity, that is, light and brightness.

2. God is light

Plotinus pondered why we think colors, sunlight or starlight are beautiful. Colors, sunlight or starlight are simple and their beauty is not Symmetry that does not come from its component parts. The answer he got was: "The simple beauty of a color comes from a form that dominates the darkness of matter, and a formless light, that is, reason and idea." The same is true for the beauty of fire, the luminescence of fire, Similar to ideas.

3. Light, wealth, poverty

In order to show their power, medieval nobles decorated themselves with gold and jewelry, and their clothes were dyed with the most precious colors, such as purple. The richness of color and the light of jewels are signs of power, objects of desire and wonder.

4. Decoration

"Etymologies" written by Isidore of Seville: Some parts of the human body have purposes in their functions, and some in their functions. decus, that is, decorative effect, beauty and pleasure.

5. Color in poetry and mysticism

The metaphorical techniques used by the medieval people can best express the vividness of simple colors and how light can make colors translucent: this Namely the stained glass of a Gothic church.

6. Color and Daily Life

Color taste can also be used in fields other than art, that is, daily life and daily habits, clothing, decoration and weapons.

7. The symbolic meaning of colors

Medieval people believed deeply that everything in the universe had a supernatural meaning, and that the world was a book written by God. It is common for people to assign positive or negative meanings to colors.

8. Theologians and Philosophers

Bonaventure of Bagnoregio proposed a kind of light based on Aristotle’s theory. metaphysics. According to him, light is the substantial form of objects. In its meaning, light is the principle of all beauty.

Light is the most pleasing to the eye (maxime delectabilis) because it is through this medium that such a range and variety of color and brightness can be found in heaven and on earth.