Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe: Finding Heaven
In this book, Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier offers the first systematic study of Pythagoras and his influence on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, religion, medicine, music, the occult, and social life—as well as on architecture and art—in the late medieval and early modern eras. Following the threads of admiration for this ancient Greek sage from the fourteenth century to Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth, this book demonstrates that Pythagoras’s influence in intellectual...
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In Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe: Finding Heaven, Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier offers the first systematic study of Pythagoras the ancient Greek sage, and his influence on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, religion, medicine, music, the occult, and social life-as well as on architecture and art-in the late medieval and early modern eras. Spanning the period between Dante and Petrarch in the fourteenth century and Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth, this book demonstrates that Pythagoras's influence in intellectual circles-Christian, Jewish, and Arab-was more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. Joost-Gaugier shows that during this period Pythagoras admiration for was great throughout Europe. She also shows how this admiration was translated into ideas that were applied to the visual arts by numerous well- known architects and artists who sought, through the use of a visual language inspired by the memory of Pythagoras, to obtain perfect harmony in their creations. Among these were Alberti, Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Thus, she suggests, some of the greatest artworks in the Western world owe their modernity to an inspirational force that, paradoxically, was conceived in the distant past.
1 Prologue : the diffusion of knowledge about Pythagoras in the Renaissance 152 The emergence of "Saint" Pythagoras in the early Renaissance 193 The apotheosis of Pythagoras in the sixteenth century 374 The Pythagorean tradition in the early fifteenth century 635 The strengthening and deepening of Pythagoreanism in the later fifteenth century 806 The maturation and vicissitudes of Pythagoreanism in the sixteenth century 1087 Renaissance images of Pythagoras 1458 The search for harmony in architecture and art in the fifteenth century 1629 Finding harmony : form and meaning in architecture and art of the sixteenth century 20210 Conclusions : the prince of philosophers and the birth of harmony as an aesthetic notion 240App. A Pythagorean works in six Renaissance libraries 245App. B English translation of Filippo Beroaldo's Symbola Pythagora (1503) 248Notes 267Select bibliography 301Index 315
