The immanent and the transcendent

A correspondent visiting Rome writes:

We went to the Vatican Museums today. The highlight for me was the Pinoteca’s collection of 14th and 15th century paintings. Overwhelming. Such wonders.

LA replies:

The early Renaissance (in Florence, the 14th century and the first half of the fifteenth) is in some ways more impressive and meaningful than the high Renaissance.

This is because the early Renaissance captures a perfect balancing of the personal-immanent with the spiritual-transcendent. (This happened only one other time—in the sculptures of the fifth century B.C. Athenian Golden Age). But in the high Renaissance, the personal, the self, the ego, begins to dominate.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 27, 2012 02:30 PM | Send