{"id":591,"date":"2026-02-05T00:17:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T00:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/?p=591"},"modified":"2026-02-09T13:22:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T13:22:06","slug":"art-history-and-present-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/?p=591","title":{"rendered":"Art history, narrative, and lessons for the present time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Francesco Primaticcio, known as Le Primatice (1504-1570), Alexander presents Pancaspe to Apelles to be painted \u2013 Between 1541 and 1544<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The history of\nart is grounded in ancient legendary narratives presented as historical\nfoundations\u2014a romance of origins taken up by Alberti (1435) and Vasari (1550),\nto name but two. As Paul Barolsky reminded us, \u201c Many of these stories of Apelles and Zeuxis, among others [\u2026]\nare appropriately called legends. They endure because they celebrate the skill\nand power of artistic illusion that we in fact find in ancient art. Pliny’s\nanecdotes are poetic fictions true to the art of antiquity, as we understand\u2014or\nwish to understand\u2014it (P. Barolsky, \u201cHomer and the Poetic Origins of Art\nHistory,\u201d Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics<\/em>, Third Series,\nVol. 16, No. 3, Winter 2009). If they endure, it is also because, by adapting\nthem to the taste of the day or interpreting them according to the expectations\nof the moment, they have been updated in a sense\u2014reactivated, if not manipulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the\nregrettably sexist legend reported by Pliny the Elder, according to which\nAlexander the Great asked Apelles to paint his favorite mistress, Pancasp\u00e9,\nnude, and, realizing that in carrying out this order Apelles had fallen in love\nwith her, gave her to him as a gift, has over time\u2014and through a disastrous\nmisunderstanding of the original legend\u2014become a na\u00efve love story between\nApelles and Pancasp\u00e9 (even though Pliny the Elder\u2019s account gives absolutely no\nindication of the slightest consent). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This anecdote\nabove all shows that a king disposes of a woman as if she were a commodity.\nThis has not prevented art history from seizing upon it to exalt great\npainters, rewarded by kings with gifts of immeasurable value, and to praise the\n\u201cmagnanimity\u201d of Alexander the Great: \u201cThis deed brought him no less glory than\nany victory; for it was a victory over himself, and it was not merely a\nconcubine but a beloved woman that he gave to the artist, without even regard\nfor the feelings of the favorite, who passed from the arms of a king into those\nof a painter\u201d (Pliny the Elder, Natural History<\/em> XXXV.86\u201387).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These distortions recall other forms of manipulation of narratives that we are subjected to today\u2014for example, and at random, when a brutal warmonger claims the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raphael Cuir<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The history of art is grounded in ancient legendary narratives presented as historical foundations\u2014a romance of origins taken up by Alberti (1435) and Vasari (1550), to name but two. As Paul Barolsky reminded us, \u201c Many of these stories of Apelles and Zeuxis, among others [\u2026] are appropriately called legends. They endure because they celebrate the skill and power of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[83,80,82,81,19,84],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-apelles","tag-art-history","tag-leon-battista-alberti","tag-pliny-the-elder","tag-raphael-cuir","tag-zeuxis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":610,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}