Borges' Library

Book Spines--Orvieto

It was during Lent when Freud met the Antichrist in Orvieto.

Wait, a minute.

Freud’s Trip to Orvieto occurred in September of 1897. Half a year away before Lent—or if you prefer, half a year after Lent. Mere months after the death of his father, he was still in the early days of his own self-analysis. In Orvieto, he would come face to face with Signorelli’s Orvieto Frescoes and thereby pronounce them to be “The finest paintings I have ever seen.”

It was an odd choice, don’t you think?

Started in 1447 by Fra Angelico and completely by Signorelli around 1500, the frescoes depict the Last Judgement and the End of the World in a tangle of writhing, pulsing, electrical bodies. This was how Fra Angelico and Luca Signorelli Saw the End of the World. Unforgettable paintings.

During the past several months of lockdown, I have found myself thinking of the End of Days frescoes constantly, especially the painting depicting the communal harmony of heaven–where people worked together. It wasn’t just something seen, but heard–the paintings become –again– Dante’s journey from cacophony to polyphony. People have compared Old Master paintings to particular pieces of music–from cacophony to polyphony. For example, legendary art historian Bernard Berenson declared the angels of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin to be “Embodied joys, acting on our nerves like the rapturous outburst of the orchestra at the end of “Parsifal.” And I would argue that Piero’s True Cross Frescoes are like Beethoven’s Cavatina. In this way, Nicolas Fox Weber, in his book Freud’s Trip to Orvieto compares the Signorelli frescoes to a symphony by Tchaikovsky at the apogee of force, every instrument of the orchestra performing simultaneously.

Weber also says that, the impact of standing in front of the paintings is like that of three shots of espresso, a bar of intense dark chocolate, and a double dose or Ritalin—all consumed simultaneously.

Yep.

Still it was a strange choice for Freud.

Most people would probably agree with me that Signorelli’s teacher Piero della Francesca (my own favorite painter) was the vastly better artist. Though Signorelli started off as an apprentice in Piero’s studio in Arezzo, his work lacks the sublime transcendent quality of that of his teacher’s. It is also missing the “more-real-than-real” vibrancy of Mantegna. And even fans of the robust style usually go for Michelangelo or Tintoretto. And speaking of Michelangelo, you won’t be too surprised to hear that when Michelangelo stopped at Orvieto to see Signorelli’s frescoes, he intended to stay for a day and instead stayed several weeks. Giorgio Vasari, the Florentine father of art history, counted this as a decisive influence, “as anyone can see,” in Vasari’s words, on Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel. So it wasn’t just Freud, Nicolas Weber and myself who became a bit obsessed.

But Freud would not hear the Confessions of the Antichrist. That happened to the painter Luca Signorelli, when he was busy at work Picturing the Apocalypse on the walls of the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto at the turn of the century in 1499.

Perhaps even more than we do now, the Italians of 1500 had good reason to fear the end was coming, with French invasions, sightings of ominous blood red clouds and ultimately a massive outbreak of the plague in the final days of the 13th century. It is not hard to imagine people would feel apocalyptic and wonder, “Is this it?”

So how did the

With so much at stake, one had to get things right. After all, this could mean an eternity in heaven or in hell, right?

And so the Great Master, Luca Signorelli painted his pictures.

 

MINI-SYLLABUS: WHEN FREUD MET THE ANTICHRIST AT ORVIETO:

Freud’s Signorelli Parapraxis & Luca Signorelli’s Renaissance Masterpiece the End of Days

 The Signorelli parapraxis represents the first and best known example of a parapraxis and its analysis in Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. The parapraxis centers on a word-finding problem and the production of substitutes. Freud could not recall the name (Signorelli) of the painter of the Orvieto frescos and produced as substitutes the names of two painters Botticelli and Boltraffio. Freud's analysis shows what associative processes had linked Signorelli to Botticelli and Boltraffio. The analysis has been criticized by linguists and others."--Wikipedia

You are brought to total, 100 percent attention. The impact of the frescoes is that of three shots of espresso, a bar of intense dark chocolate, and a double dose or Ritalin—all consumed simultaneously. – Nicolas Weber Fox

Course Overview

This course aims to uncover the meaning of Freud’s famous Signorelli Parapraxis. We will do this by first reading what Freud himself said about “what happened at Orvieto,” and then we will take a look at what other thinkers have written about the incident.

Sigmund Freud traveled to Orvieto in September of 1897. It was mere months after the death of his father, when he was still in the early days of his own self-analysis. He would later pronounce the frescoes, “The finest paintings I have ever seen.”Not only would Orvieto be one of the most significant pilgrimages of his life, but it would make a profound mark on his work, in the theory of repressed memories.

Has that ever happened to you? Where, not only do you forget a name or a person's face, but another image floods into your mind, making it doubly hard to recall the forgotten person or thing. The way we sometimes substitute one name for another is known to us today as Signorelli Parapraxis. A form of “Freudian slip,” it transports us back to the days before Google, when people used to get tripped up by temporary forgetting, mis-readings and mis-writings. Nowadays, we just grab our mobile phones and “google it!” –when someone can’t come up with a name. But back in Freud’s day, people had to wait it out until someone could help them remember --or the person finally recalled the name for themselves. This was the origin of the Signorelli Parapraxis: when a year after seeing the frescoes in Orvieto, Freud, in casual conversation with someone he had met on a train, was unable to remember Signorelli’s name. He could visualize the colors and figures in the frescoes, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall the name of the painter. It took several days, which Freud described as being an “inner torment,” before he remembered the Signorellis name.

But how could Freud forget the name of his favorite painter?

Engaging the texts and the frescoes, we will seek to come up with our own creative understanding of how great works of art can exert a profound power over us. Seminar components will include weekly reading responses and contemplative writing experiments about memory and art. There are no exams or final papers, as our focus will remain on discussions.

Main Pedagogies: Creative thinking, deep reading and embodied looking, as opposed to seeing, works of art.

Extra Credit: I’m really interested in comparing Signorelli's frescoes to Bosch's Garden of Heavenly Delight in terms of Carlos Fuentes novel Terra Nova. In the novel, we see the Orvieto frescoes flying off the walls of the cathedral in Orvieto and landing as paintings in El Escorial, where Philip II proceeded to gaze on them and obsess on them. In real life, Philip II ordered the Garden to be brought to the Escorial so that he could meditate on the painting as he lie dying. A perfect choice. So we need to consider why Fuentes felt the need to swap Garden for the frescoes. What does this say about Signorelli’s frescoes? 

Artworks under consideration

• Luca Signorelli’s frescoes of the Last Judgment in Orvieto Cathedral
• Michelangelo’s Last Judgement Sistine Chapel
• Bosch’s Garden, Prado
• Albrecht Dürer’s 1500 Self-Portrait and Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi (1500?)

 

Personae Dramatis

• Sigmund Freud (The Great Man)
• Luca Signorelli (Artist at Orvieto)
• Fra Angelico (First artist to work on frescoes)
• Piero della Francesca (My favorite Artist & Signorelli’s Teacher)
• Michelangelo (Artist & person of interest)
• Nicolas Fox Weber (Author of class main text & person of interest)
• Maud Cruttwell (Author of first monograph &person of interest)

Main Texts:

• Freud, S. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, chapter 1, "Forgetting of Proper Names"
• Freud’s Trip to Orvieto | Nicholas Fox Weber
• Artist Monograph: Life and Art of Luca Signorelli | Tom Henry

FURTHER READING

• Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art | Patricia Lee Rubin
• Luca Signorelli --written in 1899 (to enjoy how different art history was back then) |Maud Cruttwell
• Luca Signorelli: The San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto |Jonathan B. Riess
• The Renaissance Antichrist: Luca Signorelli's Orvieto Frescoes |Jonathan B. RiessHow Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World
  by Creighton E. Gilbert
• Jo Walton's novel, Lent and Confessions of the Antichrist (A Novel) |Addison Hodges Hart
• The Etruscans |Lucy Shipley
• Dante's Journey to Polyphony |Francesco Ciabattoni
• Notes from an Apocalypse |Mark O’Connell’s

Articles

• Forgetting Signorelli: Monstrous Visions of the Resurrection of the Dead , MARGARET E. OWENS Source: American Imago, Vol. 61, No. 1, Picturing Freud (Spring 2004), pp. 7-33 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable
• Sign/or/Sigm: Freud and the Name of Signorelli by Hubert Damisch

Madonna della Tavola

Originally called the Cappella Nuova, or New Chapel, in 1622 this chapel was dedicated to Saint Britius (San Brizio), one of the first bishops of Spoleto and Foligno, who evangelized the people of Orvieto. Legend says that he left them a panel of the Madonna della Tavola, a Madonna enthroned with Child and Angels. This painting is from an anonymous late 13th-century master from Orvieto, who was probably influenced by Cimabue and Coppo di Marcovaldo. The face of the Child is a restoration from the 14th century. This panel stands on the late-Baroque altar of the Gloria, dating from 1715 and made by Bernardino Cametti.

The Messiah

Mark 13:21-23 New International Version (NIV)
21 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. 22 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 23 So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

The great Jo Walton explores this notion of the antichrist in her book Lent. She began her book about Savonarola after reading a letter written in 1498 by the humanist Marsilio Ficino after Savonarola's burning, in which he basically argues that .Savonarola was a demon but didn't realize it. 

The TV show the Messiah also plays around with this theme of people struggling to try and understand whether a mysterious person is the Messiah or the antichrist--or just a regular charleton.

This from the Medievalists website:

Ficino even admits he too was once a follower of the preacher, but then “I rapidly came back to my senses.” Throughout his letter he finds many ways to insult the recently deceased Savonarola – here are some of our favourites:

“diabolical fraud”

“venomous monster”

“stuffed with a dreadful legion of demons.”

“devilish spirit”

“it was not a mortal man but a most cunning demon – not only one demon but a whole swarm of demons.”

“the prince of hypocrites”

“He is a fruit quite worthy of his diabolical seed.”

“tyrannical malevolence of Savonarola”

“Savonrola, or I might say more fittingly Savage-arola”

If that is not enough, Ficino offers this assessment of the character of Savonarola:

The Antichrist had an utterly incomparable cleverness, imitating virtues most obstinately, a crude spirit, a savage audacity, an empty ostentation, a satanic pride, the most impudent mendacity everywhere, and all supported by curses and oaths. When he spoke, his face, voice, and speech were often fulminous, overwhelming his listeners with violence rather than voluntary persuasion. For often in the middle of a disputation, he would suddenly shout, rage, thunder and lose control, more or less like insane people possessed by demons, as the poets have described it.

You can read the full letter, edited and translated by Volkhard Wels, in Antichrist Girolamo of Ferrara, Greatest of All Hypocrites, which was published by Bridwell Library of Southern Methodist University in 2006.

To learn more about Savonarola, please

From Cacophony to Polyphony

 

Anyone who has ever looked at Renaissance art--especially works inspired by Dante, like Signorelli's frescoes in Orvieto-- will immediately understand that Dante's journey was musical. Of course! The universe was thought to be musical, and God was seen as music. Music of the spheres and music as a form of prayer... it wasn't just Episcopalians who valued music. When I think of Signorelli's painting of the damned and the way those condemned were covering their ears because hell is so noisy. Like the orchestra warming up--why do they do that before a concert?-- cacophony hopefully leads the way toward harmony and music... interesting though about this book, it was not just the horns announcing angels, but that music functioned as medicine to heal those in purgatory. Singing in monophony, it was like exercise. Singing individually until they were ready to graduate to polyphony--CONCORDIA. The many in the one... three in one... polyphony was the music of paradise. My sole complaint was there was no mention at all of art. See, Dante's Journey to Polyphony
by Francesco Ciabattoni

Painted Around 1500

 

Resurrection

Ends of Days

Freud’s Trip to Orvieto

_{Freud’s Trip to Orvieto:}

_{The Great Doctor’s Unresolved Confrontation with Antisemitism, Death, and Homoeroticism; His Passion for Paintings; and the Writer in His Footsteps
By Nicholas Fox Weber}

 

_{“The finest paintings I have ever seen.” Freud states this with rare humility.  Presenting this as personal preference,  based on his own limited experience, surely, this is not the towering know-it-all we have come to expect?}

_{Freud traveled to Orvieto in September of 1897. He was not a religious man. He was neither raised in the Jewish faith, nor practiced it as an adult. What he was, was thoroughly steeped in the languages of myths and literature. From ancient Greek mythology to the imagery of Dante and Cervantes, Freud knew his stuff.}

_{--I knew about his obsession with the Quixote--but not about Hannibal. I knew about Signorelli, but never knew about his love of Dostoevsky.} 

_{Nicolas Fox Weber, you have written the best book I have read in years. Totally original, this book is a testament that life is endlessly interesting...} 

_{Arriving in the small town mere months after the death of his father, Freud was still in the early days of his own self-analysis. Orvieto would be one of the significant pilgrimages of his life. It would also make its mark on his work— in the form of an inexplicable inability to remember something.}

_{The way we sometimes substitute one name for another is known to us today as “Signorelli parapraxis.” A form of “Freudian slip,” it transports us back to the days before Google, when people used to get tripped up by temporary forgetting, mis-readings and mis-writings.}

_{Nowadays, we just grab our mobile phones and “google it!” –when someone can’t come up with a name. But back in Freud’s day, people had to wait it out until someone could help them remember or the person recalled the name for themselves. This was the origin of the Signorelli parapraxis, when Freud, in casual conversation with someone he had met on a train, was unable to remember Signorelli’s name. He could visualize the colors and figures in the frescoes, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall the painter’s name. It took several days, which Freud described as “inner torment,” before he remembered the painter’s name.}

_{How could Freud forget the name of his favorite painter? Freud himself would ponder this question in great depth, not only writing three different and opposing accounts of what happened on the train that day, but conclude that the forgetting was caused by a kind of repression. He was, after all, working on the puzzling case of Anna O at the time.  If this wasn’t enough, Freud would go on to forget Signorelli’s name two more times—in 1902 and 1907.}

_{In one of the most unique and original books I’ve ever read, Freud’s Trip to Orvieto, writer and art-historian Nicolas Fox Weber follows Freud to Orvieto a hundred years later to try and get to the bottom of what happened. Weber begins with Freud’s idiosyncratic predilection.}

_{Freud loves Signorelli’s frescoes.}

_{Well, it was an odd choice. Weber, for example--probably like many people (myself included) -- prefers Signorelli’s teacher Piero della Francesca. Though Signorelli started off as an apprentice in Piero’s studio in Arezzo, his work lacks the sublime transcendent quality of that of his teacher. Weber continues—and I agree—that Signorelli’s work also lacks the jewel-like coloring of Duccio or the “more-real-than-real” vibrancy of Mantegna. And even fans of the robust style usually go for Michelangelo or Tintoretto.}

_{Why Signorelli? That is Weber’s mission: to try and find out.} 

_{For me, part of the delight of this book was that I had followed the same path as Weber... from Maud Cruttwell and Berenson to Piero, Titian, and Michelangelo...}

_{What works of art work for you are not necessarily those you like-- puzzle-like quality and the way they make life feel meaningful.} 

_{Like Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, this is a book that you didn't know you were looking for--but you were.} 

_{So quirky was his story of Susie, his youthful love that follows him through life till she is 80! About the tricks of the mind and how wonderful it is to NOT go through life in a foggy daze. How art can change the way we think and feel, this is one of my favorite books of all time.}

_{I have created a class--for those interested (it's not a real class)} 

_{https://www.borges-library.com/2020/06/mini-syllabus-when-freud-met-the-antichrist-at-orvieto.html}

_{For really thinking along with Weber about the time Freud met the antichrist at Orvieto...} 

_{If I could, I would give this book 10 stars.} 

Signorelli Notes

Books

Freud’s Trip to Orvieto, by Nicholas Fox Weber

With a barely suppressed grin, Nicholas Fox Weber believes the homoerotic imagery was to blame and this witty, art-savvy project meanders in all manner of delightful directions to build the case.

Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art
by Patricia Lee Rubin

Luca Signorelli --written in 1899 (to enjoy how different art history was back then)
by Maud Cruttwell

The Renaissance Antichrist: Luca Signorelli's Orvieto Frescoes
by Jonathan B. Riess

How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World
by Creighton E. Gilbert

Jo Walton's novel, Lent.

Luca Signorelli: The San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto
by Jonathan B. Riess

Confessions of the Antichrist (A Novel)
by Addison Hodges Hart

The Etruscans
by Lucy Shipley

Dante's Journey to Polyphony
by Francesco Ciabattoni

Mark O’Connell’s Notes from an Apocalypse

Articles

Forgetting Signorelli: Monstrous Visions of the Resurrection of the Dead ,  MARGARET E. OWENS Source: American Imago, Vol. 61, No. 1, Picturing Freud (Spring 2004), pp. 7-33 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable Download Signorelli

Canadian professor of English literature Margaret E Owens has the most convincing theory I have ever read about the gorgeous bodies found in the work of Signorelli and Michelangelo. For example, below is one of the most famous images from the fresco cycle, The Resurrection of the Dead. Notice something peculiar about the bodies (peculiar to our 2020 eyes?) In Signorelli's day, theologians and artists were struggling with this notion of being resurrected. At what age will one's body be restored? Will you be ten or twenty? Or maybe the age at which you died? If you had an amputated leg would your original leg be restored at the time of resurrection? If you had died of the Pox would you be pox-free? Scar-free? You get it. The Christian concept of the resurrected individual BODY is quite different from concepts of eternal life found in Judaism or the ancient Greek tradition. It was Saint Augustine who hit on the brilliant idea that we will all --okay, not all of us-- be reunited with our bodies at the age of thirty. Augustine chose this age, of course, because this was around the age Christ died.

Owens suggests --and I agree- that this is the reason being the gorgeous bodies transitioning back from skeletons to the perfection of youth. It was a direct statement concerning heretical skepticism about bodily resurrection--as the dreaded Cathars were known to have questioned, not only heaven and hell, but the return of our bodies. She gets this from Riess above.

 

Fuentes

I’m really interested in comparing Signorelli's frescoes to Bosch's heavenly delight. I found it so jarring that Fuentes imagined the Orvieto frescoes flying off the walls in the cathedral in Orvieto and landing as paintings in El Escorial where Philip II proceeded to gaze on them and obsess on them just like he did the Bosch triptych. I was puzzled because Philip II and the Bosch triptych is a case of fact being better than fiction--or so I thought?? But how to improve on the Triptych? But the more I am reading, the more inspired and fascinating I am finding this idea of the genius that is Carlos Fuentes.