Document Type : Original Article
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Abstract
In the dispute over determining the hierarchy of arts in the Western history of thinking, the comparison between painting and poetry, as two everlasting rivals, have been among the most prominent and challenging discussions: this is a comparison that shapes a part of the dual history of image and word. This research seeks to investigate the contrast between image and word, through the comparison between painting and poetry made in treatise of Paragone written by Leonardo Da Vinci, which is known to be one of the first finely systematic works written in this field. His discussions in this subject matter are foundations of many of today’s well-known concepts in the area of aesthetics, and therefore this very matter which confirms its freshness makes this treatise as double important. The question of this paper, primarily based on the comparison between painting and Poetry discussed in Paragone, is to analyze the contrast between image and word as two distinctive media, or two distinctive means of perception. In the attempt to study dimensions of this problem, and in order to achieve the goal of writing this paper, the descriptive-analytical research method is applied, and information is gathered from library resources. In this series of notes, Leonardo compares and contrasts painting with poetry, music and sculpting. Many consider this work as a defense of painting because different kinds of art are compared with painting or image, as the only pattern for the perfect art, and this is their imperfections and similarities respecting painting that leads to their definition. Among these notes which are organized according to their subject matter within the Aristotelian tradition, the major part is dedicated to the comparison between painting and poetry or in other words between image and word. It will be revealed that in this collection of notes, Leonardo makes painting (image), as a perfect model for perception, confront poetry (word) in a battle; and by defining painting as a science, clarifying the close connection between painting and the Nature, referring image to sight, talking about the broad range of apprehensibility of painting and at last by suggesting the existence of harmony in painting, he elevates this art up to a status to be as a pattern for poetry and eventually superior to it. In this way, image is treated as one of the most fundamentally vital references of perception, whereas word is merely a trivially minor reflection of a small part of this visual perception. Not only Leonardo considers the extent and power of visual signs superior than the ones of poetry, but also he considers the creator of them as a dominating power over the world. He considers the creation of image and its perception by the spectator as an exceptionally special experience which is not attainable through poetry. In other words, Leonardo meant to overturn the hierarchy of arts by theorizing what his colleges treated in a practical way, and to give image that supremacy that humanists considered for poetry by giving references to vision.
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