Luca Signorellis Pan : Kunst als Sublimierung von Liebe

Abstract

Summary Research has established that Luca Signorelli's puzzling depiction of Pan can be interpreted as a visual programme of the (Neo)Platonic academy in Careggi and a tribute to Marsilio Ficino and Lorenzo de’ Medici. The picture portrays the nature god in his Orphic‐Pythagorean guise—as an exemplification of the human condition (firmly rooted in the sensual world while aspiring to the divine). Our thesis is that Signorelli's mythological “Sacra Conversazione” also contains a representative of what the Neoplatonists considered the motor of the apperception of God—Love. The youth lying on the ground at the front is, in our opinion, Eros. Initially he had triumphed over Pan, afflicting him with an unrequited passion for the nymph Syrinx, but now it is the nature god that triumphs: by substituting a divine musical instrument (the panpipes) for the woman, he has “sublimated” physical love. The motif used to express the idea of sublimation is curious: with her pipe, Syrinx, symbol of the reed (left, in the a...