Looking Past the Mark

In Castiglione's book on The Cortier, Pietro Bembo takes a classic rhetorical approach to portray love and beauty as divine qualities, distinct from the body. The most fundamental tools he uses to display his argument is definition and division. Pietro says he will "make it clear" exactly what love is, and how we experience it. He goes on to divide our perception and understanding of the world into the senses, rational thought and intellect. He defines love as an ardent desire for beauty,  which cannot be satisfied by sensual love, but by cherishing your partner, serving them, and rationally enjoying their divine beauty. While Pietro is correct that beauty cannot be enjoyed through sensual desires, he misses the mark of the true reasons behind love.

Portrait of a Young Man- Bronzino (1530's)

Beauty and love cannot only be enjoyed through rational thought and intellect. In Bronzinos' Portrait of a Young Man renaissance thinkers humanist ideas can be seen. As n Haughtan points out in her thesis, "Portrait of a Young Man not only depicts his subject's idealized appearance but also his scholarship, background and potential. " The book cracked in his right hand suggests that reading was so normal that he would have been caught in the act, not wanting to stop when the painter came. Bronzino does not simply add the book as an afterthought, but the ornate background furniture, and the book as a symbol of knowledge, class, and wealth at the time add to the viewers concept of beauty. This idea however falls as flat as the painting itself. To love only through looking or listening to someones thoughts and ideas is as futile as trying to understand the Young mans true character by simply looking at the painting. 

Pietro concedes that a kiss may be appropriate at certain times because the rational lover can mingle his soul with that of his lover. He contends that beauty is supernatural, and loses its nobility when fused with our bodies, but what he doesn't realize, is that by expressing our natural desires in love, we take part in the supernatural and divine. What Pietro thinks of as only sensual and evil, is a part of and a symbol of the divine creation of all mankind. The mingling of souls in a kiss is amplified and completed as are dedicated to each other, and become like the Ultimate Creator. While beauty is divine, and cannot be only fulfilled in the body, trying to exclude all physicality from love is looking past the mark of what love is.

Bronzino - Portrait of a Young Man, (1530's)- public domain

Haughton, Neil. “Perceptions of Beauty in Renaissance Art.” Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, vol. 3, no. 4, 2004, pp. 229–233., doi:10.1111/j.1473-2130.2004.00142.x.