In the previous post, we looked at mythic (or creative) imitation, noting that it is not what we normally mean by that word. It is a deep psychological process of absorbing, re-imagining, and reinterpreting the character of another person or culture from the past into one's being. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this was tied closely to the Imitation of Christ, but like most human phenomena, imitation is nuanced and many-hued.
Albrecht Durer was the leading Northern Renaissance painter and probably the greatest master of woodcut. Among, other distinctions, he composed more self-portraits than anyone prior to Rembrandt. The earliest is a silver-point he did at the age of 13, but the one I find most interesting and disturbing is the "Self-Portrait in a Fur-Trimmed Coat" (1500). As with some of his depictions of Christ, such as the "Self-Portrait as the Man of Sorrows" (1522) and his "Head of the Dead Christ" (1503), where he used himself as a model, this self-portrait, through the use of formal compositional elements borrowed from depictions of Jesus, is a conscious portrayal of the artist as Christ. It intrigues me more than the "Man of Sorrows" because of the detail and the haunting gaze. Are we to take this, as Erwin Panofsky and Roland Bainton did in the 1940s as an Imitation of Christ? Bainton writing of this and other works: "Such examples enable one to comprehend how fully the men of that generation moved in a perpetual Passion Play in which each and all might take the role of Christus." (Roland H. Bainton, "Durer and Luther as the Man of Sorrows," Art Bulletin, 29:4 (1947), 272.) That would place it solidly in the tradition of mythic imitation previously discussed.
Should we see this in the context of Renaissance individualism? Could he be likening the artist's creativity to that of the deity's? Is he seeing himself as a reflection of Christ with a clear-eyed stare into the mirror? I think all are possible and may have co-existed with the Imitation of Christ in Durer. We are seeing something of the beginnings of modern ego there but tinged with humility, piety, and imitation; not in the form it would take a century-and-a-half later when Newton drew parallels between himself and Christ in a prideful way.
It is too easy to read our own ideas into Durer's work, but elements of the Imitation of Christ, or as Bainton put it, living out a passion play, is clearly part of this. This is clear in some of his later works, where he identifies his own illnesses with Christ's suffering. But I am also suggesting that, at least in the 1500 self-portrait, he is commenting on his own talent and creativity by creating a formal portrait that is a compositional imitation of paintings of Jesus. There may be an element of ego in this; I think that's why I am bothered by his eyes, but there's much more. The closest recent equivalent I find is in Tolkien's writing on what he called "sub-creation". This is the idea (I am simplifying here) that no human can be truly creative, in any independent sense, but rather that all human creations must be a reflection of the Creator. If the sub- or secondary creation was complete and convincing, it would not require suspension of disbelief and would contain it's own truths, reflecting higher truths. This allowed Tolkien to create a world that was not Christian while still reflecting his very devout Catholicism. (See his 1938 essay "On Fairy-Stories" in J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, Houghton Mifflin, 1989.)
Although it is a considerable extension of his idea, I think the best way to think of both Tolkien's and much of Durer's best work, including the self-portrait of 1500, but also his amazingly detailed nature studies, such as his famous Young Hare, The Little Owl, and even The Large Turf (literally a watercolor study of a piece of dirt and grass), is to consider them as anagogic. There is a tradition going back to early medieval times of four ways of reading the Bible: literal, allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical. We are all too familiar with the literal and allegorical. The tropological way of reading the Bible involves finding moral parallels that move beyond mere allegory, metaphor rather than simile. If you can find anagogic in a dictionary, you are likely to find something about a mystical reading of the Bible. It is an act of seeing (literally being led) through to a higher reality beyond the word or image. The four modes of interpretation naturally became models for interpreting the Book of Nature, as well as holy writ. Both Tolkien and Durer engage in allegory on occasion, but at their best, they go beyond, seeing through the reality in front of them to the numinous beyond. That is what I believe happens in truly mythic imitation, it leads us through or beyond ourselves into a new level or mode of understanding, of being, but that takes us to the next part of this discussion, and that is another post.
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