Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Difference between revisions

Giovanni's maternal family was singularly distinguished in the arts and scholarship of the [[Italian Renaissance]]. His cousin and contemporary was the poet Matteo Maria Boiardo, who grew up under the influence of his own uncle, the Florentine [[Gaius Maecenas|patron of the arts]] and scholar-poet [[Tito Vespasiano Strozzi]].<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.geocities.com/autorbis/boiardolife.html|title= Trionfi.com|access-date= 2008-03-09|work= Boiardo's Life: Time Table|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090806060236/http://geocities.com/autorbis/boiardolife.html|archive-date=6 August 2009}}</ref>

 

 

===Education===

[[File:Hypatia Sanzio.png|thumb|Figure from [[Raphael]]'s ''[[The School of Athens]]'', possibly Pico della Mirandola.]]

*The beardless young man in [[Raphael]]'s [[fresco]] ''[[The School of Athens]]'' (1509–11) is thought to be Pico della Mirandola (or maybe [[Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino|Francesco della Rovere]]).<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XRY6rgYan00C&q=%22Pico+della+Mirandola%22+%22school+of+athens%22&pg=PR15|title=Group Identity in the Renaissance World|first=Hannah Chapelle|last=Wojciehowski|year=2011|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1107003606|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yzH9CwAAQBAJ&q=%22Pico+della+Mirandola%22+%22school+of+athens%22&pg=PA69|title=Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint|first=Mary|last=Jacobus|year=2016|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1400883288|via=Google Books}}</ref> [[Christiane Joost-Gaugier]] described Pico della Mirandola as "a major philosophical inspiration of the fresco's program, especially insofar as he was the most outspoken proponent of the harmony of [[Plato]] and [[Aristotle]]."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SC7Id_HAa7IC&q=%22Pico+della+Mirandola%22+%22school+of+athens%22&pg=PA158|title=Vision and the Visionary in Raphael|first=Christian K.|last=Kleinbub|date=2019|publisher=Penn State Press|isbn=978-0271037042|via=Google Books}}</ref>

* Of minor interest is a passing reference to Mirandola by [[H. P. Lovecraft]], in the story ''[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward]]'' (1927). Mirandola is given as the source of the fearsome incantation used by unknown evil entities as some sort of evocation. However, this "spell" was first depicted (as the key to a rather simple form of divination, not a great and terrible summoning) by, and in all likelihood created by, [[Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim]] in his ''[[Three Books of Occult Philosophy]]''. This was written several decades after Mirandola's death and was the first written example of that "spell", so it is almost impossible for Mirandola to have been the source of those "magic words".

* Psychoanalyst [[Otto Rank]], a rebellious disciple of [[Sigmund Freud]], chose a substantial excerpt from Mirandola's ''Oration on the Dignity of Man'' as the motto for his book ''Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development'', including: "...I created thee as a being neither celestial nor earthly... so that thou shouldst be thy own free moulder and overcomer...".<ref>Rank, Otto, ''Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development'', Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1932.</ref>

** at the end of Chapter 24, having discussed [[Martin Luther|Luther]]'s concept of free will{{clarifyme|date=August 2019}}, the sage wants the acquaint Giovanni with Mirandola's ideas on this issue and lets him read "De hominis dignitate"; Giovanni peruses the book with great interest in Chapter 25;

** at the beginning of Chapter 26, with Giovanni having now read the ''Oration on the Dignity of Man'', the sage discusses two issues from the book with him. One is Pico della Mirandola's attempt to form one unified and universal philosophy and the difficulties thereof. The other one is Mirandola's concept of free will. Giovanni has learnt one passage from the book by heart, about God addressing man and telling him, that He has made him neither a heavenly nor an earthly creature and that man is the forger of his own fate. This passage is quoted in the novel.

* Pico della Mirandola appears as the character Ikaros in [[Jo Walton]]'s novels ''[[The Just City]]'' and ''[[The Philosopher Kings (novel)|The Philosopher Kings]]''. Also, he is one of the main characters in her novel ''[[Lent (novel)|Lent]]''.

* In the book ''Dying for Ideas; The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers'' (2015) by Romanian philosopher [[Costica Bradatan]], Mirandola's life and work is taken as an early or even first example of taking human life as a project of 'self-fashioning', relating this to Mirandola's heretic idea of man being part of creation with 'an indefinite nature'.

 

==See also ==

* [[Christian Kabbalah]]

* Contemporary [[Italian Renaissance]] philosophers: [[Marsilio Ficino]], [[Lodovico Lazzarelli]], [[Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio]]

 

==Sources and further reading==

* Ben-Zaken, Avner, "Defying Authority, Rejecting Predestination and Conquering Nature", in ''Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: A Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), pp.&nbsp;65–100. {{ISBN|978-0801897399}}.

* Borchardt, Frank L. "The ''Magus'' as Renaissance Man." ''Sixteenth Century Journal'' (1990): 57–76. {{doi|10.2307/2541132}}.

* {{cite SEP |url-id=pico-della-mirandola |title=Giovanni Pico della Mirandola}}

* [http://www.exclassics.com/Pico/picintro.htm Life of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola]

{{Medici}}

{{Platonists}}

 

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1463 births]]

[[Category:1494 deaths]]

[[Category:15th-century writers in Latin]]

[[Category:15th-century Italian philosophers]]