Lorredan wrote: ...

What I am concerned about or why I think it matters is that in 1450 and those years around that time all these soldiers that had won lands, counties, fiefdoms etc started to have written these verbal triumphs, almost as if they had to prove they were of some sort of Noble birth because of their military prowess. Malatesta saw himself as another Augustus,
I do not know what Sforza saw himself as- but he apparently saw that Jove/Jupiter/God gave him the right to rule.
Then they all had these great orations to prove this, written. They saw themselves as "Sons of Fortune" Cosimo Medici painted the Magi and glorified his Family and friends. It was like they all gave themselves a Military Parade or Triump sequence. At the same time they made cards that seemed to celebrate Marriage that had their so called illustrious family depicted. These handpainted cards came from the same families that wished to make dynastic alliances through marriage. This 'new money' was turning itself into 'old money' by association.
There is some sort of connection...... now Ross asks if there is any connection of games played to reflect war.
Well yes there is. It is called Tarot- not the War itself- but the Glory and Triumph of winning, and the money to have illumination on little pictures. In Cosimo Medici you have the money to paint big illuminations as well.
Whilst down at the Tavern you have the little people playing their own Triumphant games. Processions of cards called 'runs' and 'sets' and one person winning a little war and making some money hopefully.
~Lorredan

Huck wrote:

Lorredan wrote:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/da-vi ... 259-6.html

The London Sforziade ... 5 star buttons, each with 16 ends, similar to Sforzinda.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: There are only 15 points on each button. It really doesn't matter.

Filelfo had tried his own hand at la citta ideale through his contribution to the Trato di architectura of the artist Filarete.

...for the most part it was personalities more than ideological or political alliances which determined the groupings of the humanist network. The international ambit of that network can be illustrated by the several recipients of Francesco Filelfo's unfinished epic, the Sforziad, including Lorenzo de'Medici, Alfonso of Naples, three popes, and several humanists colleagues, among them Giovanni Pietro Arrivabene, one of Filelfo's favorite pupils.

On the Sforziad, see K. Lippincott, "The neo-Latin historical epics of the north Italian courts: an examination of "courtly culture" in the 15th century', Renaissance Studies 3 1989, 415-28; G. Bottari, 'La "Sphortias"; in Francesco Filelfo nel Quinto Centenario della morte, Padua 1986, 459-93; E. Pellegrin, La Bibliotheque des Visconti et des Sforza, Ducs de Milan au xve siecle, Paris 1955, 336, and eadem, supplement, Florence-Paris 1969, 41, n.174.

Originally Posted by Ross G Caldwell
You have to be clear on your dates here. The knowledge of Plato's texts is a delicate subject, especially when claiming precise influence on a specific work of art or political policy or whatever. Some scholars might have known the Republic, others not; it wasn't translated completely into Latin until Ficino around 1480.

Can you show, iconographically or textually, that the Cary-Yale "World" reflects something in the Republic?

But did Decembrio use these texts during Filippo's rule, or after, with the Ambrosian Republic (unlikely I think), or even later, under Francesco Sforza?

There was the Chrysolus-Decembrio translation for G. Visconsti, and then the translation of Decembrio's son Pier [secretary of Filippo]. Pier used in Filippos time Plato's republic as propaganda material for Milan against the regimes of Venice and Florence, in which Milan he compares as the closest in aspiration to Plato's 'ideal city', in a manner in which can be construed as being identified with Augustine's 'City of God' . There were also excerpts of Plato [particularly some of the more 'scandalous' parts others glossed over, such as homosexuality and the equality of women] in Hermaphrodita, and the very literal, without additions, omissions or glosses translation of Cassarino, also connected with the Visconti court but in an opposing faction to Decembrio.

For details on Plato's Republic as propaganda tool of Milan as closest to the Platonic 'ideal' city and the association of such with Augustines 'City of God' against Florence and Venice see 'Plato in the Italian Renaissance' by James Hankin, especially the Milan section, and Hans Baron's 'Crisis in the Italian Renaissance.'

quote from James Hankin "Plato in the Italian Renaissance".:

"Like his father, Pier Candido would use Plato's morphology of constitutions as proof that Milan's 'timocratic' constitution was superior to the oligarchic ones of her enemies Venice and Florence. Plato's authority is employed for this purpose both in the de laudibus Mediolanensium urbis panegyricus of 1436, written in reply to the recent republication of Bruni's laudatio Florentinae urbis, and in the lost declamationes, the illeitimate rule of the Visconti was identified with the rule of Plato's philosopher king, while the Venetian constitution was compared to Plato's timocracy or democracy. In the De Laudabis, Decembrio is more conservative; he argues that the Milanese constitution was identical with Plato's timocratic polity, but maintains that this is the best kind of regime one may hope for in this imperfect world:


Quote:
But to carry forward what we set out to discuss, it is frequently inquired whether a commonwealth is better ruled by the advice and authority of one man, or by the judgement of many. Plato of Athens, by far the best of all philosophers (as Cicero said), distinguished four kinds of government. One was the 'honourable', which he called by the Greek term 'timocratic'; another was 'the rule of the few', or oligarchy; a third was the popular or democratic, and a fourth was the [constitution] we both [Greeks and Latins] call 'tyrannic'. Then he added a fifth one better than all of these, the 'aristocratic', but since it comes, like the phoenix, only once every 500 years, or rather never, we may omit it, and return to the rest. Now then, there is no species of government, it seems, to be preferred to the timocratic; it is in fact what Plato asserts to have been the form of government in use among the Cretans and Lacedaemonians. When any man eager for honour and victory seizes power, and does not bring violence or death to anyone, but fights nobly and protects the commonwealth with care and distinction, he generates praise for himself and utility for his country, just as Lucius Brutus did among the Romans, and many centuries ago the extraordinary kings, the founders of this magnificent City, did, who were not so much concerned with acquiring wealth [surely a hit at the Florentines] as they were mindful of glory and posterity, and thought all things were to be subordinated tot he [good of the] commonwealth. And later, in our time the divine Prince Giangaleazzo Visconti, the father of the present glorious and victorious Duke, did the same. (Decembrio)

"Where Bruni had used Aristotles doctrine of corporeal and external goods to defend the Florentine yearning for money and public honours, Decembrio mixes Plato, Seneca and Augustine to attack such worldly values, elevating instead the supreme worth of contemplation.


Quote:
Many thing themselves indebted to God merely for having been born and having enjoyed the beauties of nature, I am affected yet more by those goods which are sought by the acuity of and goodness alone of mind - supported by no external aids - by whose who favour we not only gaze upon these visible objects, but, drawn on to higher things, we are made in some sense participants in the divine nature. What does it profit to look upon Earth, Sea, Heaven, to marvel at the diverse regions, to enter unknown cities, to learn the manners of peoples, to investigate the sources and mouths of rivers, if you neglect the founder and ruler of all these things, by whose gift an immortal soul has been vouchsafed to us, than which no more divine or useful gift was given by God to the human race. There are those who glory in riches, offices, and the other goods of fortune, and think nothin more excellent than fame and republican government, but such persons are far from a true and perfect felictiy; they make for themselves not repose, but troubles, and with troubles life can in no wise be blessed. (Decembrio)

"This passage shows particularly why the Republic was a more welcome text in Milan than in the republics of Florence and Venice. One may see how the affinity between signorial humanism and the older, contemplative humanism of Petrarch and his Milanese followers made them more receptive to the Republic as as text which gave nourishment to the contemplative life.

"Decembrio calls his translation of the Republic 'The Heavenly Polity of the Most Illustrious Philosopher, Plato of Athens'. This title comes from Book IX:


Quote:
Not in his own city, perhaps, unless some divine providence intervenes, but he will in the city to which he properly belongs.
- I understand. You mean the one we have founded in our present discussion, whose home is in the ideal, for I don't suppose it exists anywhere on earth.
- Well, perhaps it is laid up in the heavens as a pattern for anyone who wants to see it, and seeing it to found it in himself. It makes no difference whether it exists anywhere or ever will exist. It is the only city in whose affairs he can take part. (Plato)

Of which passage Decembrio wrote:
"So help me God, I do think Plato wanted to set out in words not a human but a divine and celestial polity, to be sought not in fact but in prayer."

In other words an Augustinian 'City of God' as a platonic like 'ideal' set up in heaven.

Kwaw
Above excerpt from: James Hankin "Plato in the Italian Renaissance".

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