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The Imagining of Community in European Art and
Architecture, 1140-1617.
Envisioning Transcendence of, Authority in, and Founda-
tions for Community
by
David B. Greene
North Carolina State University
The Edwin Mellen Press
Lewiston•Queenston•Lampeter
Imagining Community in the Arts
A set of three books by David B. Greene from
THE EDWIN MELLEN PRESS:
The Imagining of Community in European Art and Architecture, 1140-1617. En-
visioning Transcendence of, Authority in and Foundations for Community
The Imagining of Community in Works of Beethoven, Verdi and Shostakovich.
Musical Means for Envisioning Community
The Imagining of Community in the Arts of Guatemala.
Weaving, Folk Tales, Marimba Performance, Contemporary Painting
Front cover illustration by Sean Overington
Back cover photograph by Justin Bennett
Contents
Foreword i
Preface vii
PART ONE
Imagining Community:
Belonging and Not Belonging to a Community 1
1. Issues of Participation and Transcendence 1
(1) Imagining and Conceiving Community 6
(2) Describing Imaginative Participation and
Transcendence in the Visual Arts 10
2. Three Case Studies of Pictorial Space, Viewers’ Location
and the Imagining of Community Participation and
Transcendence 11
(1) Herman, Paul and Jan Limbourg, Très riches heures 12
i. Multiple Scales, Angles of Vision, and Perspectives 15
ii. Space-Expanding Diagonals 19
iii. Multiple Locations and the Joining of Participa-
tion with Transcendence 22
iv. Précis 24
(2) Perugino, Delivery of the Keys 25
i. Linear Perspective and Its Impact on Imagining
Community 26
ii. Non-linear Nearness and Its impact on
Imagining Community 30
iii. Précis 33
(3) Tintoretto, Vulcan Surprising Venus and Mars 35
i. Theatricality 38
ii. The Mirror 39
iii. Précis 42
3. Summary I: Self-Identity/Self-Transcendence and
Participation in/Transcendence of Community 43
4. Summary II: Self-Identity/Self-Transcendence and
Continuity/Change in Individuals and Community 47
PART TWO
Imagining Legitimate Power:
Transforming Community by Transforming Power 55
1. Issues of Power, Legitimacy and Civic Obligation 55
2. Botticelli’s Lorenzo de’ Medici 59
(1) Contradictions in the Medici Identity 63
(2) Botticelli’s Medici Paintings 68
i. Three Religious Paintings: Divine Space, Medici
Space, and the Legitimacy of Medici Power 71
ii. Primavera: Transforming Love, Self-Fulfillment
and Civic Life 81
(i) Platonism and Trinitarian Thinking 93
(a) Contemplative Life and Civic Virtue 94
(b) Mature Love 95
(c) Platonic and Trinitarian Thinking 95
(ii) Botticelli’s Trinitarian Thinking 97
3. Summary I: Botticelli’s Achievement—New Markers of
Resemblances and the Transformation of Political Power 102
4. Summary II: Botticelli’s Achievement—Re-imagining
the Legitimacy of Power and the Legitimacy of Art 108
PART THREE
Imagining the Foundations of Community:
The Well-Founded Building and the Well-Built Community 119
1. The Search for a Foundation for Art and Community 119
2. Public Architecture and Community 130
(1) The St.-Etienne Cathedral in Sens and the San
Lorenzo Church in Florence 132
i. Harmony 135
ii. Diffusion of the Worshiper’s Presence 137
iii. Linear Energy 137
iv. Horizontal Energy 138
v. The Incarnation in Christ and the Incarnations in Stone 140
vi. Individuals and Community 145
(2) The Blue Mosque in Istanbul 151
i. Harmony 154
ii. The Line to Mecca 156
iii. Immeasurable Space 157
iv. The Beauty of the Mosque and the Beauty of Allah 158
v. The Meaning of Beauty: The Self-Revealing and the
Revelation of Allah 160
vi. The Mosque, the Revelation of Allah, the Self-
Revealing of Allah, and Community 162
3. Summary I: A Community and Its Architecture—Each the
Foundation of the Other 168
(1) Equiprimordiality of Foundations that Presuppose
Each Other 168
(2) Allusions to Religious Architecture as Allusions to
Well-Foundedness 171
(3) Eventfulness 172
(4) Founded Communities and Their Artifacts 174
i. The Well-Founded Community’s Need for Artifacts 175
ii. Some Characteristics of Founded Communities’ Artifacts 178
iii. Secular Communities and Their Artifacts 179
4. Summary II: Transition to Future Studies of Arts and
Community 183
Appendix: Rethinking the Autonomy of Art 187
Bibliography 193
Index 199
Color Plates and Figures 205
Foreword
This book is one in a set of three books dealing with the imagining of com-
munity in and through works of art. The second one takes up the imagining of
community in some pieces of European music written between 1825 and 1970,
and the third one the imagining of community in the traditional arts of a single
country. These are published by the Edwin Mellen Press under the titles, The Im-
agining of Community in Works of Beethoven, Verdi and Shostakovich: Musical
Means for Envisioning Community, and The Imagining of Community in the Arts
of Guatemala: Weaving, Folk Tales, Marimba Performance, Contemporary
Painting.
All three books work from a distinction between imagining community
through a work of art and having a concept of community in a work, and in the
main dwell on the former. The term, “having a concept of community,” is used
when a work of art involves images that illustrate or allude to a concept of com-
munity and that the artist knows before beginning the work. The content of the
concept is much the same whether it is referred to artistically or explained discur-
sively. The work of art treats the concept as though its content were fixed and sta-
ble, the product of good thinking, and generally considered worthy of universal
agreement. The purpose of the artistic images is to add affective power to the
concept, and not to modify its content.
The tern, “imagining community,” is used when the interrelationships among
the parts of a work of art have an impact on the meaning of the images. Caught up
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in a network of interconnections created by the artist, the content of an image is
quite different from whatever it might be in another context. Because the interre-
lationships themselves are unique and particular to the work of art, they turn
something general or vague into something unique and specific, something that is
peculiar to the work, something that cannot be universalized. Prospects that can
be couched only in the artistic medium have come into being. The artist’s skill in
managing the medium and interrelating the work’s various parts has created oth-
erwise unavailable imaginings.
The artist’s skill and the interrelationships it creates are also what make a
work of art enduringly appealing. That means that what makes a work of art out-
standing as a work of art overlaps with what makes its imagining of community
stand out.
The three books in this set point out and detail imaginings of this kind in
some important works of art. They try to bring to the surface the particular way
particular works of art enable their audiences to imagine, re-imagine and renego-
tiate certain aspects of community.
There are two goals for these efforts. One is to get deeper into the works
themselves. The other is to think new thoughts on the crucially important issues
that the pieces re-imagine, such as the pursuit of the common good, the value of
working, legitimizing a community’s power structure, the boundaries of commu-
nity, and the nature of the contrast between being inside and outside these bor-
ders.
Closure on these issues is not a goal. Unlike fantasizing imaginary communi-
ties, imagining puts forward real possibilities, but it does not stifle further ques-
tioning. It stresses what is particular at the expense of what can be universalized.
It is effective when it is stimulating, and does not have to elicit widespread
agreement in order to be valuable. It sets up prospects, but does not coerce people,
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