Erfindung und Komposition in der Monumentalen Zyklischen Historienmalerei des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts in Itallien & On Composition as Method and Topic: Studies on the Work of L.B. Alberti, Leonardo, Michelangelo. Raphael, Rubens, Picasso, Bernini and Ignaz Gunther.

On Composition as Method and Topic: Studies on the Work of L.B. Alberti, Leonardo, Michelangelo. Raphael, Rubens, Picasso, Bernini and Ignaz Gunther

Rudolf Kuhn. Erfindung und Komposition in der Monumentalen Zyklischen Historienmalerei des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts in Itallien.

Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 2000. 666 pp. $79.95. ISBN: 3-631-37022-9.

Rudolf Kuhn. On Composition as Method and Topic: Studies on the Work of L.B. Alberti, Leonardo, Michelangelo. Raphael, Rubens, Picasso, Bernini and Ignaz Gunther.

(Tel Aviv Lectures.) Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 2000. 280 pp. append. illus. $45. ISBN: 3-651-37055-5.

Rudolf Kuhn, in Erfindung und Komposition... (cited henceforth as EK), considers the evolution of composition in painting as a vehicle for narrative in late medieval and Renaissance Italy. On Composition as Method and Topic (to be cited as CM), a collection of previously published works here translated into English, also explores "the role of composition in narrative paintings" (11), broadened to encompass the Baroque and modern era, and to include reflections on composition in sculpture.

Kuhn's work affirms the significance of the aesthetic experience of art, and, if only implicitly, questions the premises of poststructuralist critical theory. Much in the manner of a latter-day Heinrich Wolfflin, whose Die klassische Kunst (1898) comes to mind in reading the studies of Michelangelo and Raphael (in CM), Kuhn hews to a formalist approach. This is not to say that art is presented purely in ahistorical terms. As with Wolfflin, High Renaissance classicism is followed by Baroque elaboration (in CM). The habits of vision of a connoisseur, nonetheless, shape Kuhn's scholarship in a more rudimentary sense.

The ostensible springboard for Kuhn's research, in both EK and CM, are Leon Battista Alberti's instructions concerning the composition of the istoria. The idea that composition enters the realm of teachable art and that the painter's management of composition is to be advanced as the principal means for the presentation of a story, is contrasted with the somewhat earlier writings on art of Cennino Cennini, who, as Kuhn observes, is silent on these matters.

Putting aside the somewhat simplified, yet all-too-common, representation of Cennino as Alberti's converse -- Cennino, in truth, provides a transition to Alberti's scholarly artist -- the discussion of theory is not a formative agent in Kuhn's rehearsal of the development of story-telling in painting (EK), despite what the reader might well anticipate. The determinants of this rehearsal are, rather, literary in nature and are said to correspond to the poetic, dramatic, and epic modes.

As Kuhn's depiction of Cennino seems imperfect, so is his Alberti incomplete. The absence of notice of the didactic ends of the istoria -- the fact that the composition of the ideal painting was to be readily legible so that the story and its lessons would be easily understood -- leaves one somewhat unsure of Kuhn's command of Renaissance writing on art.

Kuhn's research may be more seriously challenged on the grounds that it is not sustained by a scholarly armature. Allusion to other authorities is only rarely made. Footnotes are exceedingly meager, both in number and substance, and there is no bibliography or index in either book, and, for that matter, EK is without illustrations. Thus, as original as are many of the observations in EK concerning, for example, the early fourteenth-century (?) Life of St. Francis in the Upper Church of San Francesco (Assisi), lacking a review of the unresolved attribution question -- Giotto is simply accepted as the artist with no indication of the disputatious nature of the matter -- and with only scant reference to the pertinent literature, it is difficult to accept Kuhn's conclusions concerning Giotto's part in the genesis of a narrative art in Italy.

Kuhn's interpretation of certain pictorial programs is often somewhat one-dimensional, imposing as he does on each what is deemed a defining mood or emotion. The Assisi Life of St. Francis is said, for example, to blazon forth the saint's dignity arid prestige, while Simone Martini's Scenes from the Life of St. Martin of Tours (Montefiore Chapel, Lower Church of San Francesco, Assisi, ca. 1317-20) are said to portray Martin's friendliness. The analysis of the Sr. Francis frescoes thereby glosses over the varying ways in which the saint is represented, with differing aspects of Francis' personality revealed as the circumstances of his life warrant. Kuhn's Martin suffers in another way. The refined and chivalric dimension of Simone's characterization, widely viewed as Martin's distinctive trait, remains unacknowledged.

Kuhn finds his voice in the descriptive sections of CM, dense and suggestive passages in which he closely examines and interprets the compositions of works by Michelangelo and Raphael, among others. The Battle of Cascina (1504-06, destroyed; known through copies of its central section), of course a most familiar and, one would have thought, fully-known image, assumes fresh visual and narrative possibility as Kuhn's capable eye rakes across its surface. This is true too of Michelangelo's Deluge (Sistine Ceiling, Vatican, Rome, 1509). Figures all but overlooked previously come to be freighted with an emotional significance that augments the already considerable might of the fresco. The brilliance of such analyses as these is diminished only by the often uneven quality of the translations.

The studies of Raphael's working methods in CM lay bare one larger flaw in Kuhn's approach, one that results, possibly, from the fact that he views all in terms of the relationship between narrative and pictorial design. Raphael's development as an artist, in the sense at once of his grappling with the challenge of seeking a compositional solution to a particular narrative challenge and of his growth from one project to the next, is construed solely as a function of the desire to accommodate his art to the requirements of a given story or theme. There is no indication of the impact of encounters with the work of other artists, to note but one obvious external factor that figured in the artist's brain-storming for compositional ideas.

Kuhn is to be thanked for these books, notwithstanding the aforesaid reservations. The intense study of composition bestows emphatic importance to the individual artwork. At a time when much art historical writing and theory appear to have moved toward the nullification of the object, Kuhn's work is most welcome.