Form's Beginning (Incohatio formae) and Perfection of Form in the Aesthetics of Albert The Great. Anabasis to the Imago Pietatis in the Primitive Flemish Iconography

Abstract

The inclusion of pulchrum among the communissima of the Aristotelian legacy grants beauty a transcendental value by conversion in re (in supposito) with ens, verum and bonum: Pulchrum is what must be desired by itself as a true good. The characterization made by Alberto Magno in his metaphysics of the ratio pulchri will serve as a basic aesthetic key for an analysis of the female semblance in Early Netherlandish painting (Flemish Primitives), focusing especially on Van der Weyden and Hans Memling's portraits, which will culminate in the Imago Pietatis, with subsidiary attention to the figurative presence of pure intelligences in Nativity or Descent scenes. The Marian image will rise in the most sublime plastic expression of a canonical neatness in which the substantial form shines in its splendor on the proportioned parts of matter (pulchrum = splendor formae supra partes materiae proportionatas).