De l’imitation de l’idee a l’ideal de la perfection: La legitimation de la creation artistique du manierisme au neoclassicisme
From the Imitation of the Idea to the Ideal of Perfection: Legitimating Artistic Creation from Mannerism to Neoclassicism

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with the attempts to legitimize the Painting made in Italy at the end of the 16th century and in the 17th century. It is firstly about the theological-metaphysical justification of the artistic creation by an a priori principle, the Idea, in the mannerist theories of Gian Paolo Lomazzo and of Federico Zuccaro. By formulating at the same time the question of the conditions of possibility of the artistic creation and of Beauty, and that of the salvation of art, they arrived at a paradoxical association of furor divinus and erudition, of genius and rules. The analysis is then focused on the neoclassical theory of Giovan Pietro Bellori, formulated during the battle that he engaged against both mannerism and naturalism, which ends by legitimating the artistic creation through the searching of an ideal of perfection. In this case the idea of Beauty has no metaphysical origin, being instead an imaginative invention as it is an a posteriori result of the artist’s experience, reached through a selective process. This solution permits him to articulate without contradictions the instinct of imitation and the imagination, the judgment and the creative enthusiasm.

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