Marin - 1983 - The Iconic Text and The Theory of Enunciation - (New Literary History - v14n3)

The Iconic Text and the Theory of Enunciation: Luca Signorelli at Loreto (Circa 1479-1484)
Author(s): Louis Marin and Lionel Duisit

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 14, No. 3, Renaissance Literature and Contemporary
Theory (Spring, 1983), pp. 553-596
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468702
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://
www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you
have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
New Literary History.
http://www.jstor.org
The Iconic Text and the Theory
of Enunciation:
Luca Signorelli at Loreto (Circa 1479-1484)*
Louis Marin
I. Introduction
HE SPECIAL ISSUE which New LiteraryHistory, after its exploration

of medieval literature, devotes to Renaissance literature as it
relates to contemporary theory presents, in its very wording, a
problem at once theoretical and historical. Indeed, by attaching to the
notion of literature the conventional denomination of a period in
European history,1 the editor of the journal queries the epistemolog-
ical notion of theory on two grounds. First on its historicity: What
separates contemporary from Renaissance literature if not two or
three centuries of history? What could this separation indicate if not
the assignment of a truth value, or at least an operational explanatory
value, to theory on account of its being contemporary? Would not
such an assumption allow chronology to become a key factor in giving
contemporary theory a privileged status over any other theory of the
past? And if the wording itself introduces into the formulation of the
leading theme an interrogative shade of meaning, then one of the
questions raised will indeed be that of the operational sway which
theory holds over its object as a result of its contemporaneous quality.
Expressed simply, the question is: What would be the relations be-
tween theory and history, if by theory one means a systematic set of
principles and methodological processes aimed at a complete,
exhaustive explanation of the objects to which it is applied?2 To give
such a definition of theory-the broadest possible definition-leads
naturally to the second question which seems to fall within the pur-
view of New LiteraryHistory's research project: What is the meaning
and the scope of the phrase contemporary theory? What theory does
it refer to? Will it fit under exact sciences, social sciences, human
sciences? For instance, cosmological, physical, biological, psychologi-
cal, psychoanalytical, linguistic, or semiological theories-all are dis-
* For Hubert Damisch.

554 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
tinct methodological approaches with their axiomatic set of principles,

unless the match-up with the notion of literature, considered as an
artifact of language and writing, an arrangement of enunciates,** of
discourses, enables one to distinguish, in this plural conglomeration,
between approaches external to this artifact, as, for instance, physical
theory,3 and those pertaining to its very essence, as linguistic and
semiological theory. We shall therefore assume that the field of re-
search is the following: the literature of the Renaissance, considered
both as a historical event, a cultural monument, and as a language
artifact perceived as a field of application of contemporary semiolog-
ical theory, the latter being understood as a subspecies and extension
of structural linguistics and also as an analysis of discourse, its forces
and effects.4
II. The Historical Text as Theoretical Object
The topic proposed by NLH would seem somewhat arbitrary or,

more precisely, of less consequence if it did not harbor in its formula-
tion a broader design; for the relationship between contemporary
theory and Renaissance literature would remain basically an external
one, not unlike that between a methodological instrument and its
object, even if the instrument was particularly well adapted to the
structure and organicity of the object, unless the object itself already
offered some rudiments of the theory which it is supposed to illus-
trate. Thus an epistemological discrepancy is built into the project of
NLH between medieval literature, Renaissance literature, and so
forth, and contemporary theory; a "theoretical" difference is both
** Translator's note: The word enonce has been used in French linguistic terminology
for many years. The term enunciate as a noun (see Greimas-Courtes's Dictionnaire
semiotique,pp. 123-24) is to be understood as the end product of the process of enun-
ciation, much as in chemistry a precipitate is the end product of precipitation. The
difficulty with this term is twofold: first, it is not easily distinguishable from the verb
form; second, it operates not only at the linguistic and communication level (where it
designates a unitary segment within the spoken chain or written text), but also at the
metalinguistic level, where it designates a "second-degree" statement capturing some of
the characteristics of the enunciation process itself. In the latter case, it is referred to in
this article as "monstration enunciate," which gives the iconic text its self-reflective
quality when merged with other enunciates of the same kind. It is the author's claim
that any meaningful information concerning the state of theoretical thinking in that
particular period (the Renaissance) must be derived from a reading of the iconic text at
that second-degree level, where it "mirrors" its own enunciation. Sometimes those
enunciates are manifested to the viewer through a dramatized "enunciator," but they
often lie hidden in hard-to-detect coincidences, layouts, gaps, substitutions, omissions,
or missing links, all of which require close attention on the part of the analyst.
THE ICONIC TEXT AND THE THEORY OF ENUNCIATION 555
perceived to exist and construed between the object to be explained,

understood, or interpreted and contemporary theory, which sets the
interpretive framework, the means of understanding, and the in-
struments of explanation. A distance has opened up between the
object "Renaissance literature," marked with historic specificity-in
what way marked, we need not inquire at the moment-and theory
itself, which is perhaps transhistoric only because it is contemporary,
or which could be considered atemporal only through some theoret-
ical farsightedness obliterating its most restrictive historic features.
This discrepancy, difference, or distance made explicit in the research
project of NLH by the weakest possible connective, and, would seem to
invite the following implicit hypothesis: hidden within this particular
literature-a language artifact embedded in history and recognized as
such-and more specifically within its immanent forms and struc-
tures, as well as in the diversity of its figures and images, there may be
a metalanguage holding the key to its interpretation, together with
the principles and processes leading to the discovery of its meaning.
In other words, a theory which would offer an explanation for the
differential traits of its existence. It could further be assumed that,
provided the implicit can be made explicit, such a metalanguage
would outline one of the possible profiles of contemporary semiolog-
ical theory.5
The stipulation that such metalanguage be made explicit is not an
idle one. The fact that the past object under scrutiny lacks any explicit
theoretical dimension, that its theory comes under the guise of an-
other discourse which needs to be translated into contemporary lan-
guage (terminology, syntax, rhetorics), has a definite "theoretical"
bearing on the research project undertaken as well as on the "practi-
cal" phases of its development. For a rigorous critic will always be in a
position to allege-and often enough to prove-that such an implicit
theory lying in the inner form and structure of the object under
consideration, and presumed to be a close relative to contemporary
theory (provided one manages to update its terms, transpose its pro-
cedures, liven up its forms), that such a theory, supposedly indige-
nous to the "historical" object, has actually been importedand built into
the object itself from the contemporary theoretical field. If such
should be the case, what the contemporary theorist believes he has
construed as a primitive and unfinished sketch of contemporary
theory, its blurred image or the secret signature underlying the object
studied, would turn out to be, through a retrospective fallacy, the
theoretical structure which, unintentionally and unwittingly, the
theorist himself projected into it.6 What second-degree metalanguage,
what metatheory is going to delineate the rigorous criteria distin-
guishing between the theoretical effects inherent in the historical

projections of theory and the historical traits inherent in the con-
struction of theory?
We believe that, put this way, the problem cannot be solved: a
critical consciousness will always be able to detect the signals of a
retrospective fallacy as it reads a pretheoretical element into a histor-
ically determined object of study. But it is at this point precisely that
we can turn the tables around and detect in such a demand for his-
torical purity-Renaissance literature is ostensibly of the past-and
theoretical purity-contemporary theory is scientific-the metacriti-
cal fallacy inherent in all pure criticism, namely in any criticism
(explicative, heuristic, interpretive) which bases its claims to theoreti-
cal purity essentially on the disclaiming of its connection with history,
including its own history as theory. As a consequence, what we defined
a minute ago in terms of implicitation and explicitation, translation
and amplification, both pairs implying a sort of inertia and passivity in
the object of study-verbal artifact and language as object-must now
be redefined more aptly in terms of reciprocal action and more spe-
cifically of dynamictransfer, or "work." The assumption that the liter-
ary object, because of its historical nature, radically affects and places
a burden of "work" [miseen travail] on contemporary theory, or more
generally on semiological theory, seems to me just as valid, or at least
as operational, as the reverse assumption of a past verbal artifact
being made to "work" within its text by semiological contemporary
theory. It is well known that, in physics, the notion of work is defined
as the product of force by displacement: work is a product.7 To im-
pose "work" simultaneously on the past text and contemporary
theory, the former by means of the latter and vice versa, is to place
both the text and theory in a position to produce meaning and in-
terpretation. What then are the components (force and displacement)
that make up the product "work" to which the meaning of the text
and the interpretation of theory are submitted? When confronted
with the force of an impinging theory, or with the force of the text
defying the theory, both the past text and contemporary theory ex-
perience displacement-the former away from the otherness of its
history into the anachronism of theoretical propositions eluding
thought, the latter awayfrom the alleged atemporality of its proposi-
tions and theses into the historicity of a pseudohistorical (virtual) de-
velopment. And in this sense it is true, or at least operational, to say
that the past text, as a verbal artifact, develops, through the ques-
tioning of contemporary theory, one of its potential profiles; while it
can also be said, reversing the process, that contemporary theory
uncovers, through the very displacement it forces upon the text by
probing it, unsuspected potentialities of the theoretical energy spe-

cifically relevant to that text. In the former case, the past literary text
reveals itself, along some of its dimensions and on certain levels, as a
fully valid though anachronistic theoretical text; in the latter case,
contemporary theory, following some of its own virtual theoretical
developments and in the course of its own inquiry, recognizes its kin-
ship with a historically determined literary text. Thus if our research
has a theoretical object, it would be, simultaneouslyand contradictorily,
to eschew and combine together a "Hegelian" definition of contem-
porary semiological theory perceived as the sum of its history, and an
"empirical" approach to the past literary text perceived as a unique
language artifact. In the "Hegelian" perspective we would have a con-
temporary theory drawing upon its earlier, tentative, and partially
realized developments and maturing into a full awareness of itself;
along the "empirical" line we would have a language artifact whose
otherness and even strangeness could only be apprehended through a
"critical experience" that would attempt to portray it through a
theoretical equivalence.
Finally, the theoretical and historical questions we would like to
raise in this essay on a single text of the end of the fifteenth century
could be formulated as follows: Under what historical and theoretical
conditions-a metacritical question of the adulteratedkind-can a text
constitute itself as a theoreticalobject,so that it would appear to be the
common product of the force and displacement generated by the past
literary text on the one hand, and the force of displacement gener-
ated by contemporary semiological theory on the other-in other
words, the product of the work-thrust they place on each other? By
introducing this notion of theoretical object, we are attempting to
rescue critical research from the "historicist" and "empiricist" impasse
we have just talked about, even if all we are doing is to try and bridge
the historical distance as well as the epistemological discrepancy be-
tween the past text and this achronistic contemporary theory by which
it is to be interpreted. But merely to coin a phrase is not the same
thing as justifying its existence or even its operational value.
It is now commonplace to state that any literary or artistic work
exists only as a sign or determinate arrangement of signs. Because of
this fundamental property, the signifying process qualifies as
discourse-made-text, that is to say, as a combination of signs arising
from, or manifested by, the written word or the icon.8 As it is ab-
sorbed by a reader or a viewer in the reading or viewing act, this
signifying whole is effective only if it says or enunciates something
(sagen, to tell, to say), namely, the theme of its discourse, whatever
modes of utterance it may choose: assertive, imperative, interrogative,
expressive, and so forth. But in addition, any enunciate says some-

thing about its own enunciation, including comments, description,
self-designation inherent in its very existence as enunciate (vorweisen,
to show).9
The theme of the discourse carries with it-not as an add-on but as
a built-in feature of discourse-the fact of its own enunciation.10 Thus
the discourse-made-text which every literary or artistic work stands
for can be considered as a set of enunciates which say something(assert,
arrange, question, or express), yet at the same time show that they are
saying something. From these general and well-known observations
of the theory of enunciation, we can move on to say that a theoretical
object shall be constituted by enunciates that assert the monstration of
discourse in the discourse-made-text. In other words, the theoretical
object, in any given work, is to be construed from the aggregate of
enunciates which mirror its enunciation.'l This self-reflective quality
peculiar to certain segments of the work defines its theoretical di-
mension or level: it imparts to the work as a whole, or in some of its
elements, a "theoretical consciousness or subject" through the con-
struction of a theoretical object.12 While enunciating the monstration
of certain enunciates in the work, the theoretical object exhibits itself
enunciating monstration. It is this autodeixis, indeed, which most
accurately defines the self-reflective quality of the theoretical
object-in other words, its theoretical quality.
This theoretical object implies, in turn, the presence of a subject:
any enunciate shows what its enunciation consists of, and it does this
most of the time by assigning the enunciation to someone who is
supposed to pronounce the words involved: the enunciation is au-
thored by someone, an author who is, for instance, the entity to which
the "I"and the marks of the first person refer.'3 We shall call locutorof
an enunciate the author to whom the enunciate assigns its enuncia-
tion, and scriptor,the author to whom the discourse-made-text assigns
its written enunciation. In this sense the theoretical subject is indeed
the author of all monstration enunciates. But more strictly speaking,
the theoretical subject is the mere enunciator of those enunciates, a
character or figure which the enunciates designate as author of the
theoretical act. Clearly then, the theoretical subject in its capacity as
theoretical enunciator is not to be mistaken for the scriptor of the
literary text and even less for the entity designated by the locutor in
general.14
The theoretical subject in that sense is the product of a certain class
of enunciates in the discourse-text, namely, those that enunciate
monstration or assert the fact of enunciation. It is one of several
possible figures of enunciation among others that people the
discourse-text. But when it does appear in the text, it stands separate

from the others, removed, as it were, from the plane that features the
other enunciative figures. Unlike those other figures (also distin-
guishable from the scriptor), the theoretical subject is readily identi-
fiable as such because it is the product of a thinking process of the text
on itself, in one or the other of its segments, where the text happens to
exhibit itself asserting the monstration of its diversified enunciates.
Naturally, this self-probing ability of the text enables us to perceive
the enunciative conditions of discursivity peculiar to itself through
diverse cultural, social, and historical forms and modalities, or, more
specifically, to perceive the character of the theoretical enunciator
among different roles that match historical, social, and cultural speci-
fications of the text's enunciation. Thus the past text and contempo-
rary theory seem to interact as they come into contact with each other:
the past text comes forth as theoretical object; it exhibits the enuncia-
tive conditions of its unique discursivity, yielding access, within itself
and through itself, to the theoretical level. But in reverse procedure,
contemporary theory discloses itself as historically, culturally, and so-
cially determined in the past text to which it is being applied.
There remains one more move we have to make and justify as part
of these theoretical and methodological prolegomena. The theoretical
distinction between saying and showing, which we have been using,
calls for a clarification: to tell, sagen, and to show, vorweisen. Saying is
to assert, question, command, exclaim-that is, to outline themes of
discourse and general enunciates. Showing, on the other hand, is to
say that one asserts or questions even as one is asserting or question-
ing, and so forth. As we have shown, the enunciate represents some-
thing and at the same time presents its representation of something.
Now this monstration is the image of a showing gesture, if one is to
adopt the metalanguage of a theoretician analyzing the mechanism of
language discourse. So there is a dimension of the saying act that is
precisely the metaphor, the displacing of a specific bodily gesture.15
Everything seems to support the assumption that discourse, as it is
being enunciated, is silently accompanied by a dumb gesture that
points to the singularity of its enunciation. Thus the whole "theoreti-
cal" discourse, which makes explicit both dimensions of the saying act,
namely, the "representing act" and the "showing act,"16 even as it
brings out that distinction, serves no other purpose except that of
translating into language this silent monstrative gesture which any
enunciate carries within itself.
Now there is a type of "text" whose primeval mode of signifying,
due to its essential definition, medium, and substance,17 is monstra-
tion. Such is the iconic text, a dumb text, as tradition is wont to repeat
after Simonides,18 whose finality is exhausted in its presentation or

ostensive propensity. No doubt the iconic text can represent some-
thing which is meant to be seen or read; no doubt it can, in this sense,
enunciate and cause something to be said, but whatever is enunciated
or represented will always rely on a fundamental ostensive dimension
which constitutes its reality or its essence as an icon. As a result, what
was named monstration in the literary text or in discourse in general,
namely, an indication of the enunciative act through metaphor, that
is, through displacement of the indicative gesture into the
semantico-pragmatic "deixis" of language, now happens to establish
the iconic text in its fundamental signifying modality. One can see
why it was tempting to test contemporary enunciation theory on a
singular iconic text, historically marked as a Renaissance text, in order
to show how such theory may become embodied in this text, both
historically and theoretically, and through what procedures this iconic
text comes to exist as theoretical object in the sense we have chosen to
give to this expression, namely, how the iconic text presents itself in
the act of representing the monstrational gesture typical of the enun-
ciative dimension of any discursive enunciate.
Because it is iconic, this text finds itself compelled to show itself
showing; that is to say, it exhibits integrally the enunciative dimension
of any enunciate. It presents this dimension as such, as well as its own
capacity to enunciate. Because it is a Renaissance text, it is further
determined not only to show itself showing, but also to show itself
showing representations; that is to say, the autodeixis in its ostensive
process happens to obey precise historical, cultural, and social con-
straints, those very constraints which characterize the image of the
Renaissance in its internal structure, its construction as represented
space, its syntactical articulation, its formal lexicon, and so forth. Fi-
nally, a trait that constitutes its singularity as theoretical object, this
iconic text selects as a themeof its representationthe conditionsand diverse
modalitiesof its discursivity(both general and historically determined). It
shows itself showing the representation of discourse in general, the
written text in particular, and the linguistic conditions of its enuncia-
tion. At the same time it displays the figures of this representation
(actors, characters, roles) which, because they are historically and
culturally determined, place a strain (a work-thrust), if not a crisis,
upon those enunciative conditions.
III. The Cupola: Architecture and Setting

Around 1479, shortly before he undertook the painting of the Sis-
tine Chapel in Rome and some twenty years before he began the
large fresco of the Last Judgment in Orvieto, Luca Signorelli painted

a cupola and the wall surfaces of the sacristy of "the vicarage" as it is
called, or St. John's sacristy, in the famous sanctuary of Notre Dame
of Loreto. "In S. Maria at Loreto," Vasari wrote, Signorelli "painted in
fresco in the sanctuary the four Evangelists, the four Doctors, and
other saints, which are very fine, being liberally rewarded by Pope
Sixtus."'9 Actually the group is more complex, and even though it is
not all by Signorelli's hand,20 it displays an extraordinary unity at the
level of study we are contemplating.21 The cupola, of moderate pro-
portions, which houses the painted work, consists of eight sections
that merge into a sort of wheel whose hub (or keystone) bears the
arms of the Rovere family against a setting of foliage and fruits, and
whose spokes consist of filets (costoloni),also richly adorned, the whole
arrangement suggesting a rotating motion around a central vertical
axis. The structure is articulated around a focal point from which all
the lines of force that constitute the inner space radiate: originating
from the same focal point, rigorous limits define the various planes
that will identify, and locate with precision, the subsurfaces and sur-
faces to be painted.22 The keystone-the hub of the cupola as
wheel-is, in a sense, but in one sense only, the point where the group
of eight filets of the cupola recede into infinity, and with them the
architectonic space of the sacristy; but it is also the starting point from
which the eight planes blossom out into the wall surfaces.23 These are
structurally equivalent movements that are both underscored and
determined by the circles on which are inscribed first the signs and
marks of the sponsor, Cardinal Girolamo Basso della Rovere; next the
instrument-playing and dancing angels; next the evangelists and
doctors; and finally, on the wall portions, the apostles.
At the site of the gaping hole, where the framing members vanish
into infinity, or, conversely, where the lines originate and branch out,
generating in an abstract way the surfaces intended for the images
and figures, the eye encounters the signature of a name, of the
lineage which generated the architectural whole, painted with the
material and moral means available to the painter. The very fact that
the escape into infinity, or starting point of the architectural
construction-a point of infinite implication and explication, as
Nicholas of Cusa would put it-should be signaled and concealed, as it
were, by the Rovere shield, where the oak of strength (robur),desig-
nated in the name, spreads out its roots and foliage under the cardi-
nal's hat of an offspring-denoting his affiliation to the Church-this
very fact of signaling/concealing heralds the ideological and cultural
crisis through which the entire painted work will specify, in historical
terms, the problematics of the enunciative conditions of the text.24
Around this center, then, this fading and originating point, "swirl"
the filets of the cupola, defining the architectonic planes, intended to
serve as material support for the image-bearing surfaces. When we
say that the whole arrangement is involved in a rotating movement,
we are not just using a metaphor or impressionistic perception.
Rather, we intend to interpret that movement as the concrete, easily
traceable imprintor wake left bya set of transformationaloperationsthat can
be isolated on a theoreticalplane. It is our contention that these opera-
tions form an organic whole, due precisely to the fact that the move-
ment is circular and, whatever the point of departure, will reproduce
the system at the end of its cycle.25It is then the architectonic principle
governing the structure of the building as represented space or de-
terminate geometrical volume which constitutes the organizational
scheme of the whole iconic text inscribed in represented space-its
deep structure, we might say, or its theoretical structure as text.
Conversely, all the figures represented in that space will specify this
theoretical structure historically and ideologically, even pinpointing
in return one of its historical and ideological crises and making its
elements and relations problematical.26
The determinate group of transformations which characterizes the
theoretical structure of the text serves as a basis to integrate the ver-
tical slices of the planes that are rigorously and precisely set apart by
the filets of the cupola and the series of dual pilasters set with regu-
larity in the fictitious depth of the painted scenes on the walls: those
planes will be identified in strict conformity with the surfaces of the
represented figures and scenes. Yet the principle involved is no
longer architectonic but representative: it governs the setting painted
in the represented space rather than the structure of the building as
represented space. This setting will introduce a quality of space pecu-
liar to its functions; it will illustrate a principle which is none other
than the inscriptionscheme of the iconic text. While the architectonic
principle governs the deep structure of the text, the representative
principle governs its surface paradigmatics. We are not concerned
with the theoretical structure of the text but rather with the rules of
utterability as rhetorical, historical, ideological discourse. This in-
scription scheme, set in hierarchic order, receives positive emphasis
through a higher or lower positioning in a succession of three planes:
the celestial empyrean, the mediating zone, and the terrestrial zone,
each with its appropriate spatial characteristics: for the celestial zone,
luminous rays from the radiant nimbi surrounding the instrument-
playing angels and dancers, each poised on its individual cloud, stand
out against a dark bluish-grey background interspersed with golden
wisps of flame; for the intermediate zone, a similarly radiant niche
against the same dark background streaked with luminous rays be-
hind which the winged faces of little angels are faintly outlined, flit-
ting about the evangelists and doctors, each sitting squarely with his
feet planted on a rock-textured bank of clouds; finally, for the terres-
trial space, a succession of narrow scenes, set against a background of
landscape and sky, each framed, on either side, by a couple of cable-
molded pilasters, under an arched canopy decorated with grotesques.
Each of those scenes features a pair of apostles, with the exception of
three panels -one facing the front door of the sacristy, taken up by a
window which lights up the entire room; another, a smaller one,
above the door, featuring Paul's conversion; the third one, against a
dull beige background, representing Christ in a yellow mandorla with
doubting Thomas.
The hierarchical scheme which articulates the cupola and the walls
from top to bottom encompasses two types of space: an "abstract"and
symbolic one-a theophanic space-and a "realist" one, based on a
double illusion, since it is prolonged by vedute and scanned by the
rhythms of a "fake" portico. The intermediate level displays some of
the characteristics of both -of the former, the golden rays set against
the dark background that assumes here and there the form of angels;
of the second, the massive solidity of the niche and the density built
into the monumental figures of the apostles and doctors in their sit-
ting posture, creating the amazing illusion of a concave volume by
their excessive relief (relievo).27All in all, this level mediates the hier-
archical opposition between Heaven and Earth, through the ar-
chitecture of the cupola and walls as well as through the theology that
bestows on them their logical and religious significance.
However, the inscription scheme of the hierarchically ordered fig-
ures is broken in two locations. The first is at the keystone of the
cupola, where the signature of the sponsor supersedes the theophany,
that is, where the framing members of the cupola both originate and
terminate, marking off the planes of hierarchized representations.28
The other discrepancy of the inscription scheme is to be found in the
terrestrial zone, where the theophanic mandorla reappears behind
the risen Christ in the episode with doubting Thomas, as if, in this
scenic site-which, unlike the others, is devoid of veduta, yet like the
others is set in make-believe architecture-the representative princi-
ple, with its hierarchically ordered scheme, came to be dissolved: How
are we to recognize with self-evident certainty the divinity of Jesus
Christ in the rebounding vision of an infinite universe? Or, to put it
differently, under what conditions is a discourse of/on God (a theol-
ogy) possible? Where can one find (in 1479) the rules governing the
utterability of discourse in general?
We have found out that two schemes help constitute the work un-
der study: one, an organizational scheme defining the theoretical
structure of the iconic text; the other, the inscription scheme of this
text that sets forth the surface paradigmatics. The former defines a
structure, that is, a specific group of transformations; the other sets
forth the figures that will effect, each in its proper space, the historical
and ideological investment of that structure. The historic reading and
the theoretical interpretation of the iconic text must therefore take
place at the zone of articulation between those two schemes, with
special focus on the historical figures of this articulation where the
iconic text, as previously suggested, mirrors itself showing the repre-
sentations. Those representations, at the end of quattrocento,29 con-
cern the linguistic conditions underlying the enunciation of discourse
in general, and the enunciation of discourse as written text in partic-
ular. Such an articulation of the two schemes implies the necessity of
studying each figure or group of figures simultaneously as an indi-
vidual phase within the general group of circular transformations
structuring the entire work, and as a representation linked with those
positioned either higher or lower in the vertical hierarchy.
IV. The Angels and the Coincidence of Opposites
Let us first consider the round of angels (see fig. 1): being at the
shortest distance from the theophanic point, the music-making angels
and dancers provide one possible figuration of that point among
others, since music livens up the eternal wisdom of God and also
regulates the order and movement of celestial bodies. But in order to
manifest in visible terms-that is, to show itself showing-the divine
music of infinite intelligence and celestial universe, the iconic text, by
the nature of its definition and in recognition of historical and
ideological constraints, must resort not only to figures but figures
through which God as music30can be displayed and made accessible to
sensuous viewing. Now there is a twofold human imitation of divine
music, the more lofty one being that of verse and meter, and the more
lowly one that of voices and instruments; such is the double mimetic
analogy offered to our contemplation by the first figurative crown of
the cupola, with its eight figures of instrumentalist angels (the lowly
imitation), and by the proportions of their rhythmic disposition set to
the metrics of the architectonic framing members that scan the
rhythms of this arrangement (the lofty imitation). However, the intel-
ligible music of God, like the cosmic music of the celestial spheres, is
locked in everlasting silence as far as the visible world is concerned;
Fig. 1. The Dancing and Instrument-Playing Angels

even their two human imitations-instruments and voices on the one

hand, verse and meter on the other-remain silent. The inaudible,
the rhythm that lies at the foundation and origin of any voice, any
articulation of meaning, any logos, may be made analogically and
symbolically visible whether in its terms or its relations, yet it is not
actually heard for all that. One can even say that such representation
both signals and covers up the great absence at the center of the
cupola's sky, this implex-complex point of theophanic infinity, an
absence already sealed in by the signature of the sponsor.
Upon closer examination of the eight angels that form the transcen-
dent crown of the building, it will become apparent that none is rep-
resented singing and two of them do not have any musical instru-
ment. One of the two "silent" angels dances on its cloud, wrapped in
flowing draperies, in a twisting motion of wings and body. Separated
from him by a lutenist, the other noninstrumentalist is represented in
a frontal view, motionless, with downcast eyes and joined hands. An-
other dancing lutenist precedes the half-naked figure of an angel
playing the tambourine, who is the precise figurative counterpoint of
the first dancing angel, especially since he is inscribed in the slice of
the cupola defined by the same diametrical filets. Next in succession is
an angel shown in a frontal view, moving in a more restrained fashion
and playing the psaltery. Completing the crown are two instrumen-
talists, one of whom seems to be tuning his lute-as the position of his
left hand and his right-hand gesture, an ear close to the strings, seem
to indicate-in an attitude of half-rest; the other, motionless, drawing
his bow over the strings of his violin. The angelic orchestra thus
consists of three lutes, one violin, one psaltery, and one tambourine,
while one angel dances and another, his hands joined, prays "in time
with the others." The diagram shown here brings out a certain
number of characteristic features: on the plane of motion vs. rest, all
indications are that the figures are making a visible display, at the
crown of the cupola, of a complex eight-beat rhythm with a double
motion climax and a double rest stasis. Let us consider the following
sequence, where M is the most intense and m the moderate motion, R
the rest stasis and r potential motion within rest. The complete se-
quence will read: M', ml, R1, m2, M2, m3, r', R2.
m3
Sequence
Starting Point
In order to analyze the composition of the "orchestra" in structural

terms,31 let us point out that, with the exception of the tambourine, a
percussion instrument, all the other instruments are string instru-
ments, but that among those only one is bowed (the violin), while the
other two, the psaltery and the lute, are hand-plucked. Among the
latter, three are lutes, but one is being readied for playing. In the
series to be considered next, 0 stands for the absence of instrument, o
for potential music-making, S for string instrument, L for lute, T for
tambourine, Ps for psaltery, Vi for violin, p for plucked strings, b for
bow. Using the same starting point, the series will read: 0, SLp1, 0,
SLp2, T, SPsp3, SLp4o, SVib. The musical actualization of the three
lutes is characterized by o, or potential music-making on the one
hand, and by 1, 2, 3, and so forth, or music actually being played on
the other. Setting the two series of pertinent traits side by side turns
out to be most interesting, since the absence of any instrument coin-
cides with a motion climax in one case and a rest stasis in another,
while the second motion climax is marked by the percussion instru-
ment and the second rest stasis by the string instrument played with a
bow. Furthermore, the three moderate-motion slots are marked by
plucked string instruments; finally, the tension within rest is accom-
panied by the plucked string instrument being readied for music.
In substance, all indications tend to justify the assumption that, by
means of this visual figuration articulated through a complex group

of transformations, some of which we have evidenced by isolating just
a few relevant characteristics, the innermost circle of the cupola at-
tempts to offer a visual synthesis of cosmic motion and rest through
the synthesis of divine music and silence: coincidentiaoppositorum32 in
an unspeakable, inaudible, invisible transcendence, for which the only
representability is the rhythm of motions and rests and, integrated in
alternate fashion with the preceding, the rhythm of sounds and si-
lences, oscillating in this case between the two extremes, at once sym-
metrically opposed and corresponding in the architectonic structure
of the cupola, namely, the instrument with the loudest sonorous im-
pact (the percussive tambourine) and the absence of any musical in-
strument. The mediation between those extremes is effected through
the soft-toned string instruments-the violin, psaltery, and lute.
Sweeping over the round of angels clockwise, the gaze will move
from the angel with the climactic yet silent motion to the dancer with
the tambourine, a climax in both motion and sonority, after passing
through the three figures of the motionless violinist, the
instrument-tuning, practically motionless lutenist, and the moderately
dancing psaltery player. We shall then have gone over five successive
"slices" of the cupola, whence, moving around further, we shall go
back to our point of departure, pausing on the way for the two mod-
erately moving lutenists that flank, on both sides, the silent and mo-
tionless angel positioned, as it were, at the "degree zero" of music and
dance. We are then in a position to scan the round of the eight angels
by pinpointing two primitive stages of the transformational cycles
between motion and rest, music and silence, one of those stages being
defined by the absence of motion and music, the other by a dynamic
and sonorous climax (the dancer with the tambourine), leaving in
between two secondary stages which combine, on the one hand, an
absence of motion with a subdued tone, and on the other, a climax of
movement with an absence of sound. The next four "movements" of
the secondary stage are characterized by the subdued tone of plucked
string instruments in conjunction with moderate motion.33
Belonging to the architectonic slice which corresponds with and stands
in opposition to the silent and motionless angel, the lutenist tuning his
instrument is readying himself to produce a sound while his dance
motion tends to rest, a rest found in the violinist on his left, combined
however with the playing of a bowed string instrument. In this way,
the coincidence of opposites taking place at the central implex-
complex point of infinity becomes visually transposed, yet at the same
time a mode of painting becomes visually defined that can express
motion through rest, sound and music through silence, and finally, in
the concave volume within the cupola, relief through flat surfaces. By
showing representations of what is no longer shown, perhaps because
it has become inaudible, Luca Signorelli's sophisticated pictorial art is
fully revealed:34 it mirrors within itself and through its own means the
typical conditions of its enunciation; it represents the theory of its
practice, while implicitly pointing to its transcendent metaphysics and
theology, and through this theology to the historical, ideological, and
cultural investments attendant upon the theory.
V. Evangelists and Doctors:

The Absent Voice and the Writing Mode of the Text
The intermediate zone of the cupola is occupied by the four
evangelists and the four doctors of the Latin Church: St. John and St.
Augustine, St. Luke and St. Jerome, St. Matthew and St. Ambrose, St.
Mark and St. Gregory (see fig. 2). Here again the eight figures seem to
require being read at the fringe between the organizational and the
inscriptional scheme. In other words, just as the instrument-playing
and dancing angels had been relationally connected with the point of
"infinity" and transcendence of the dome, even as they were being
considered as individual phases of transformations regulating two
series of relevant features (motion vs. rest, music vs. silence, as per-
ceived through their attributes, postures, attitudes), similarly the "in-
termediate" figures will have to be studied both "circularly" and "ver-
tically": circularly, in their transformational relations within the ar-
chitectonic zone corresponding to their position, with focus on a few
features whose relevancy has to do with the recurrence principle;35
vertically, in their hierarchical and value-enhancing relations with the
angels that dominate them and with the scenes of the lower zone of
the cupola.36
According to the architectural and theological tradition, the
evangelists occupy the right angles of the cube on which the circular
cupola rests, the sides being reserved for the doctors. But the symbolic
device of this regular outlay is blurred, in this particular instance,
since the cupola is octagonal and none of the slices have any primacy
over the others as far as importance or meaning is concerned. The
doctors are on the same plane as the evangelists, and their figurative
and representative style is similar: a luminous golden niche, a mystic
mandorla with golden beams radiating from the niche, a monumen-
tally and architecturally effective posture, with feet resting firmly on
the rock-textured cloud under all of them. The evangelists are identi-
fiable only through their usual attributes-St. John's eagle on his left,
St. Augustine St. John
St. Luke St. Matthew
Fig. 2. Evangelists and Doctors (Middle Tier)

St. Mark's lion also on the left, as well as St. Matthew's angel, whereas
St. Luke's bull stands on his right: those attributes can be considered
as essential predicates identifying each of the figures, usual elements
that help enunciate their proper names.37 On the other hand, the
doctors are marked by signs of an ecclesiastical function-St. Augus-
tine and St. Ambrose, who was his master, by a bishop's mitre, St.
Gregory by the pontifical tiara, and St. Jerome draped in the full,
dark red cloak he is often seen with. Closely related, as I see it, to this
"functional" definition by the signs of their high office is one of those
distinctive features of the doctors of the Church as compared with the
apostles, namely, the fact that they are wearing shoes-even St.
Jerome. However, in addition to these differentials (the presence of
ecclesiastical functions vs. their absence), a far more significant con-
notation must be taken into account: all indications lead to the as-
sumption that the absence of shoes or ecclesiastical functional signs in
conjunction with the presence of identificatory allegorical figures sets
the evangelists back toward a more remote history than that of the
doctors, to the primeval time of the origins. Its remoteness is recog-
nizable through the signs or symbols of tradition, a tradition notable
for its stories told in texts and books where the evangelists feature
both as characters and inspired writers. In other words, through this
marked opposition between traditional symbols and the functional
signs, some of which pinpoint identification by naming, others by
"social" placing, we would be in a position to sense the opposition
between myth and history or, more precisely, between the symbolics
of the origin and the marks of history, with the added advantage that
history would recover tradition as one of the "parts" of its text,38
during and through the writing process.
Such a reading could be seen as wildly interpretive were it not for
the fact that the eight figures are linked together by persistently re-
curring differential traits that set up, in subtle yet forceful ways, the
whole problematics of writing and reading, of the enunciated histor-
ical text and its written enunciation. In attempting to isolate those
traits, we shall, along with the painter, bring to the foreground of the
iconic text and its reading such strongly specified enunciatory
characters as the quill, the book, and the scroll that feature promi-
nently in all eight representations. The following diagram spells out
their complex combinatory scheme involving only those three
elementary terms:
John Gregory Mark Ambrose Matthew Jerome Luke Augustine
Quill - + + ++ ++
Book + + - + -
Scroll - - + - + - +
! , 1 I i
Among the evangelists, John stands in opposition to the others, who

all have a quill and a scroll but no book, whereas John has no quill or
scroll, only a book. On the other hand, among the doctors, Jerome
and Augustine, as a pair, stand in opposition to Ambrose and Greg-
ory. The latter have a quill and a book but no scroll. Jerome (like
John) has a book but no quill or scroll, and Augustine has a quill but
no book or scroll. In other words, Augustine is unique in the series of
eight figures in that he is the only one who has a quill without either a
book or scroll. John is unique in the series of four evangelists in that
he is the only one with a book. Unlike Augustine and John on the one
hand and Jerome on the other-the three figures with one
element-none of the figures possess only a scroll. In the art of writ-
ing, the scroll represents a phase twice remote from the book:
historically-hence, not surprisingly, we find the scroll associated with
three evangelists out of four-and technically, since the manuscript
precedes the typographical setting of the book.39 By the same token,
the combinatory diagram with three terms brings to our attention a
set of problems that the merely static chart of the elements, as op-
posed to a modal chart,40is unable to solve: for instance, What mean-
ing is to be derived from the association of quill and book? What value
is to be attached to the quill in isolation from the book, or still more
intriguing, from the scroll?
At this point we must become concerned not only with elements as
mere terms or attributes, or even identificatory predicates, but as inte-
gral parts of a plot, or behavior, or attitude. Only then can the term
appear-that is, be construed-as an actor, among others, of the
figurative enunciators in the representation. The full relevance of this
last statement will be better understood when we realize that in this
work the only thing involved in representation is writing, reading,
and even listening. In other words, what the iconic text shows while
showing itself showing is the enunciate of forms and conditions, both
"historical" and theoretical, of the written enunciation of discourse in
general, and theological discourse in particular.
A possible point of departure for the "circular" reading of the
representation could be the figures of the particular evangelist and
doctor that are the unique cases revealed by the combinatory dia-
gram:41 St. John and St. Augustine-St. John among the evangelists,
St. Augustine among both evangelists and doctors. St. Augustine does
not have either a book or scroll but a quill whose trimming absorbs
him entirely. So he is getting ready to write. The picture does not
involve any action, but the notion of action is present through the
potentiality mode and under the inchoate aspect. St. Luke, on the
other hand, next to him,42 is writing on a scroll which lies on his lap;
scroll and quill are components (or actors) of the figure of a scriptor
whose action is actualized into the durative aspect. However, if we
take a closer look at the evangelist, we must consider that, as he listens
to an inner voice presumably dictating a text, he is pictured on the
verge of writing. St. Augustine, trimming his quill, is setting himself
up for the physical act of writing, while St. Luke, his neighbor,
wrapped up in the listening process, is about to write, and what we
had taken to be a durative as opposed to an inchoative is actually a
particularized form of inchoative, a near approximate to the punctual
mode. The figure of St. Luke is the aspectual modal transformation
of the St. Augustine figure.
The next evangelist, St. Matthew, is going to be, in turn, the
"transformation" of St. Luke. The latter's profile presentation has
become the front view presentation of the former. The latter's inner
voice which was presupposed in order to account for the gesture and
attitude of the previous evangelist has become externalized in the
form of an angel who, rather than a mere identificatory attribute, has
become the oral source of the text being written under his dictation,
as signaled by the left hand with its raised index finger. However, with
his mouth closed, the angel seems more likely to be overseeing the
evangelical writ. The listening has already taken place: the imperative
voice has fallen silent, but what has been said is now in the process of
being written. The writing act is most clearly marked with the dura-
tive mood: with his left hand the evangelist delicately unrolls the
scroll, its reverse alone visible to the spectator. A text is taking shape,
yet only the writer and his divine inspirator are in a position to read it,
the former because he is the one who writes, the other because he
controls its correct transcription. Coincidentally, a subtle narrative
temporal dimension is inscribed in the representation, making it clear
that the dictating and listening have already taken place, that the live
act of verbal communication is now past in relation to the present of
the recording act through which the word acquires its permanent
status as text.
As we move to the third evangelist, St. Mark, the front view figure
pivots another quarter of a circle into yet another in-profile posture,
but in the other direction from St. Luke. St. Matthew's scroll has
become a page resting on the left knee of the saint, the major part of
which has already been filled with black, even lines which St. Mark is
in the process of completing.43 It is worth mentioning, however, that if
the viewer, contrary to what happened with the preceding figure, is
able to see the text whose scription is being completed, he cannot read
it: a handwriting, yet undecipherable, such as St. Mark's gospel. With
St. John, the fourth evangelist-appropriately so since he completes
the spatial cycle-we are back to a front view representation as was the
case with St. Matthew, but both scroll and quill have disappeared. The
right hand of the saint props up a wide-open book while his left hand
skims along a line (invisible to us) with an extended index finger. St.
John is reading. The whole cycle of the enunciation of the written text
has been completed in four stages: someone is going to write, is busy
writing, has completed the writing, is reading what has been written.
As one moves from the first to the fourth stage, from St. Luke's to St.
John's gospel, one has moved from the quill of the scriptor and its
manuscript scroll to the "reading" index finger and printed book, but
also from past history, from the inscription of the religious text, to the
present of its reading (as represented). The fact that this present of
the book being read-a state of legibility invisible to the viewer yet no
longer illegible as was the case with St. Mark-should be assigned
exclusively to the fourth gospel, that of St. John, the gospel of the
Spirit in St. John's sacristy, is not too much of a surprise in the twilight
years of the quattrocento, coming from an artist who was to paint the
Last Judgment scene44 of the St. Brizio Chapel in Orvieto twenty years
later. Yet the fact that the moment of the live word, that of the semi-
nal word, of the speaking of the inspired Sacred Word, should be
absent from the figural representation-this absence occurring in the
very act of "monstration"-seems to be, in view of the theoretical
problematics of the written discourse-as-text, strongly indicative of a
crisis, namely, the withdrawal of that meaning which used to radiate
from the Divine Word, instantly reaching into the most secret recesses
of a saint's inner hearing. In the figurative representation, the listen-
ing has always taken place already, and the angel who has done the
speaking is satisfied to cast a glance at the written text, the sole intent
being to control the accuracy of the transcription. More to the point
still, when the written text is visible, it is illegible to the viewer, and
when St. John reads the book attentively, nothing but the book is
visible. The meaning is mediated by the written signs which are pre-
served and enclosed in the book, which must be opened and under-
stood. The monstrating of the theory of written enunciation comes to
be invested in the representation of a crisis concerning the apprehen-
sion of meaning.
So we must consider anew the figure of St. Augustine trimming his
quill and getting ready to write: the still-unsharpened point of the
Augustinian quill has its counterpart in the point of St. John's index
finger tracing a line in the book, which partially conceals it, the in-
strument required for writing vs. the bodily instrument used in read-
ing;45 and the fact that the writer of the fourth gospel should be
satisfied with reading what he has written (or what writing has been
laid down in his book) while the doctor of the Church is absorbed in
the task of trimming his quill in order to write is somewhat ironical.
But if we focus again our attention on St. Augustine as the starting
point of a new cycle around the cupola, it is for the purpose of "mesh-
ing" the series of the doctors of the Church with that of the recently
analyzed evangelists. St. Augustine is not getting ready to write St.
Luke's gospel. Rather, he is getting ready to read-quill in hand-the
book whose hand-turned pages are being offered to public view by
Jerome opposite him. But these are blankpages. St. Augustine's quill
and the blank pages of St. Jerome's book formulate the most chal-
lenging paradox, that of a reading that qualifies as a potential hand-
writing or that of a "blank" handwriting that qualifies as potential
reading. The very book St. John is reading with eye and index finger
while holding it away from view, St. Jerome shows to us, but there is
nothing to be read there unless the manuscript intended to be pre-
served in the book be written. St. Matthew is absorbed in that very
task: we see the lines he is writing but we cannot see what he is writing
on the scroll that lies on his right knee. St. Ambrose, the next figure
around, sitting in an almost identical posture, is holding, half-open on
his left knee, a book whose printed lines are visible and which he
reads while getting ready to jot down notes, quill in hand: such a read-
ing is in fact the writing (annotation) of a reading of a writing. Thus
the open-ended cycle of interpretation of the book is set in motion.
None of the doctors of the Church is writing: the first one trims his
quill, the second reads a book with blank pages, the third reads a
printed book he is about to annotate, and the fourth has been inter-
rupted in his reading of the book he is holding ajar on his knee, its
back alone being visible; the upturned quill in his right hand, he has
finished "writing" his reading. Gregory listens to the voice of the Spirit
symbolized in concrete terms by the dove dipping toward his ear. It
is this voice he is going to write in the margins of his book, a book whose
manuscript St. Mark, who precedes him in the series, is writing, a
voice which St. Matthew is writing under the supervision of the angel
and whose transcription-the first signs of it-is being initiated on his
scroll. The incipient reading and writing processes are being inter-
rupted, and St. Gregory, like St. Augustine, neither reads nor writes,
but, unlike the bishop from Hippo (who is getting ready to write in
order to read), he does neither of the two because he is listening to the
Divine Word. There again, it is not the least instance of irony in this
figurative cycle-an irony that is perhaps an imitation of a hidden
anguish-that the most recent among the doctors of the Latin Church
be the only one who benefits from hearing the Divine Voice. He does
so, however, in a "blank" of the inscription scheme, in a suspended
communication of meaning, it being further understood, besides, that

this meaning has already been written in the book the Holy Pope
holds over his knee, half-closed.
In the intertwined wreath of the doctors and evangelists, there
seems to lie substantial evidence of both the tradition of medieval
commentary and gloss and the calling into question of this tradition,
where the production of meaning is concerned, at this particular
point in history when the emergence of the printed book together
with the discovery of philological critical inquiry of ancient manu-
scripts46set the Sacred Voice back into the primeval past of the Holy
Scriptures and into an ineffable, nonrepresentable transcendence.
The monumental figures represented by the painter around the
cupola of the vicarage sacristy at Loreto nonetheless offer to public
view and show what seemed inevitably doomed to elude visual repre-
sentation, namely, the theory of enunciation of discourse, its theoret-
ical problematics.Such a theory is evidenced through the substantial
constraints of the quattrocento pictorial techniques. Simultaneously, it
signals the epistemological crisis of the historical period, and that is
one of the interesting paradoxes of this unique work. However, if the
work, by way of this reflexivity imparted to a semiotic system it rep-
resents and acts out-even though it is a foreign one-and by setting
itself up as theoretical object, accomplishes this tour de force of visu-
ally dramatizing the enunciative acts implicit in the discourse, it is no
doubt because the discourse whose syntactical figures and repre-
sentations are being displayed is a written one, made visible somehow,
even though, as we have shown, it may cease to be legible, deciphera-
ble, interpretable at the level of its literal assertions. Because the ver-
bal discourse has become a written text-regardless of the modes and
aspects attendant upon the scriptural act-it can be shown in both the
theoretical and historical conditions which underlie the enunciations.
Coincidentally, because it has turned into a written text, this discourse
is no longer a mere communication device conveying successive mes-
sages, or at least it can no longer be treated as such on the theoretical
level.47 Such a discourse develops its own mode of signifying whose
effects are felt, in particular, in its field of visibility as iconic text,
provided that the painted image takes the iconic text as the theme of
its "discourse." If, then, due to the writing process-the written word
and the scriptural act-discourse becomes visible, the painted image
which designates this discourse in its various enunciative figures mir-
rors itself in its operative mode, its area of relevance, its identificatory
marks, and its operating mode48 as theoretical object. Incidentally,
the term theoretical here assumes its more vigorous meaning of a
contemplative vision merged with its contemplated object,49 even

though it retains its singularity and unity as a historical, cultural, and
social investment.
This investment we now have to consider by introducing the great
syntagm involving the figures of reading and writing into the
paradigm of the vertical hierarchical order that also regulates the
cupola according to the upper and lower values, those of Heaven and
Earth. Evangelists and doctors are mediating agents between the
instrument-playing and dancing angels and the "terrestrial" zone
occupied by scenic sites featuring matched pairs of apostles. Over
each of them seems to watch a musician or dancer that could be seen
as regulating the activity of reading or writing, as if writing and read-
ing, or rather writing one's reading, consisted in transcribing into
signs or tracing the signs that transcribe the melodies based on the
unspeakable tonal values of Heaven, or the rhythms of the dizzying
motion of the spheres. Thus we could trace the scheme of tradition;
and the cupola, in its upper and intermediate zones, would be mas-
terminding the relations between the voice and the writing-reading
activity according to the inspirational hierarchy of the Sacred Word.50
An interesting difference in the stylistic treatment of the apostles
and doctors is worth mentioning from this point of view. While the
latter are all "entitled" to an instrumentalist angel (St. Augustine and
St. Gregory get lutenists, St. Ambrose a psaltery player, and St.
Jerome a violinist), the apostles are individualized both as a group and
as individual figures by four angels, two of whom-
instrumentless-represent the extreme poles of motion and rest (St.
Luke and St. John, respectively), while the other two are linked to
particularized cases of instrumentalists, since one dances to the sound
of a tambourine vigorously enough to bare his body, while the other, a
lutenist, is coming to a rest or stirring up from a rest by tuning his
instrument. As a result, only the doctors hear or seem to hear music
articulated into sonorous signs, whereas the apostles either hear
nothing, without viewing anything in compensation, or hear only the
percussive beat of a rhythm or the preparatory sounds for music. In
other words, cued by the angels assigned to them by the correspond-
ing slices of surfaces between two filets of the cupola, the hierarchy of
evangelists and doctors seems to be inverted, the latter being "closer"
to signified meaning than the former.
As previously stated, St. Luke is going to write the voice he has
heard; St. Matthew is going to write a text that is hidden from us
under the watchful eye of an angel who has spoken to him; St. Mark
also writes a text, a visible though illegible one; and finally, St. John
reads a book, following the lines with his index finger. Now, as it
happens, above the first one an angel dances, twisting on himself;
above the second an angel is tuning his lute, an ear close to the strings,
a hand on the pegs; above the third a half-naked angel dances to the
rhythm of a tambourine, with a beat and a flourish; and above the
fourth a motionless angel pauses, his hands joined. On closer exami-
nation, the two angels who dominate the two architecturally opposed
apostles, St. John and St. Matthew, exhibit the same remarkable fea-
ture: both seem to read what is written in the book held by the hermit
from Patmos or on the scroll of the evangelist. The former is getting
ready to sing the words inscribed in the volume; the other is about to
start playing the melody, transposing into music what the identifi-
catory angel had said and was checking for accuracy. On the other
hand, between St. Luke and St. Mark and their "appropriate" angels,
another relationship seems to emerge: St. Luke's angel seems to turn
away from the evangelist in a twisting motion from left to right com-
bined with a front-to-back leaning motion, while St. Mark's angel
moves in the direction of the scriptor, also with a turning motion, this
time a back-to-front one, as if to try to read, between his two extended
arms, the text St. Mark has just finished writing. Again the traditional
hierarchy is inverted: within the celestial sphere and the intermediate
heavens of the cupola, all indications are that the sacred writers and
the doctors-readers with their quills are writing in their books and
scrolls, using signs from the human language, musical scores and
choreographies which the divine angels are deciphering in order to
play or dance them. Indeed, the dazzling and infinite point of the
empyrean marking the keystone of the cupola had been preempted
by the signature of the sponsor who was having the building painted.
As it turns out, the Divine Discourse, albeit a transcendent one, can
only be enunciated through the channel of this intermediate zone
occupied by the double set of figures, the scriptors of the gospels and
their learned readers and commentators, by their texts and written
words: that which is enunciated, theology, is a discourse on God that
endows God with a spoken word, as opposed to a discourse of God
(from God) that would give man's spoken word its underpinning of
truth and justice. Using more general terms, we can say that this
reversal, or rather this challenging of the traditional hierarchy, estab-
lishes the fundamental primacy of writing and reading (itself
mediated through writing) over the voice and the live spoken word,
even over the unmediated expression of a meaning whose articulation
would remain ineffable but whose certainty and truth God would
warrant and authenticate.
VI. The Confronted Disciples and the Conversion

We now have to move down to the "terrestrial" tier where, below
the mediating evangelists and doctors, below the celestial angels, the
apostles of Jesus confront each other in pairs, as authorized guides
have it, pending their confrontation with the Master Himself,51 on two
of the seven painted panels (see fig. 3). It is easy to understand why
the figures have been read as those of the apostles. Two of the scenes
call for a straightforward interpretation: the conversion of St. Paul
above the entrance door opposite the window that lets natural light
flow into the sacristy, directly above a mural fountain of sculptured
stone, and that of doubting Thomas meeting the risen Christ on the
right, opposite the entering viewer. The remaining figures are
grouped by twos in five "scenic sites" occupying each of the five
panels. It was tempting to identify in those panels the ten disciples on
the day following the Resurrection, grouped around Thomas, who
confronts Jesus on his own in the sixth.52
As we have already pointed out, the inferior level of the cupola has
a characteristic space of its own. Gone is the numinous darkness that
picks off the radiant golden nimbi of the divine angels; gone are the
luminous niches with their seated evangelists and doctors surrounded
by winged, mystic angel heads flitting among golden rays. No longer
then do we have a spatial organization based on a background in-
terspersed with symbolic marks signaling theological transcendence
or historical, even mythical, distance. On this lowest level, what has
been constructed and represented is a doubly realistic space: ar-
chitecturally realistic since the scenic sites are deceptively framed by
two pairs of pilasters and a cradlelike ceiling decorated with gro-
tesques; picturally realistic, one might say, since a depth-creating land-
scape veduta with a low horizon (a foreshortening effect) is outlined
behind the scenic ground. The realistic illusion suffers one
exception-about which more will be said later-when we come to the
panel where Thomas Didyme confronts Jesus: against a dull
background a luminous door opens, framing the risen Christ, who
has just entered, the breaking light merging with the glory of the
golden mandorla that glows softly behind the stranger. It will be
noticed, as a further exception to the realistic illusion, that the eighth
panel is taken up by a real element of the building, the window letting
in the natural light, opposite the door through which the visitor enters
and leaves-the most likely visitor being the priest, before or after the
holy mass, if the building's original designation is indeed that of a
sacristy.
Doubting Thomas and Jesus (Panel F) Two Apostles (Panel E)
Two Apostles (Panel A) Two Apostles (Panel D)
Fig. 3. Lower Tier

The space in this last tier is then truly a sensuous one, be it illusory
because painting is the medium used, or real because it is inscribed
within the architecture of the building; whatever the impact of the
break that the window turns out to be in the decorative ordering of
the sacristy, we should nonetheless count it as the eighth or the first
panel of the room, final or initial, first seen for whoever enters, last
seen for whoever leaves, the site of an opening, the opening where
light, the material, physical condition of all visibility, real or natural,
becomes manifest. So an essential architectonic axis running from
door to window regulates the viewer's movement within the space
represented by the building and its concave volume, and also reg-
ulates the viewing of the orderly series of representations on the
surfaces of this multifaceted volume. The viewer marks the rep-
resentation of St. Paul's conversion above the door; he views the rep-
resentations near the sculptured stone fountain intended for purifica-
tion ablutions below the window.
All we need is to stress the iconographical value assumed by the
viewer of St. Paul's conversion represented above the door, where the
well-known narrative from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:1-19)
combines and transforms all the elements whose relevance we have
tried to show with regard to the iconic text as a whole and the building
where it is displayed. The conversion scene is also significant in rela-
tion to the "real" architectonic door-to-window axis: first the light shed
from on high enwraps; the voice, which is heard but whose source is
not yet visible, though identified by its name; the blinding or impaired
vision that follows; last the movementof descent to the tomb (three days
of continuous night, with no food or drink, in imitation of Jesus), of
transit through death, previous to the Resurrection, that is, the return
of eyesight and the advent of the Holy Spirit. In other words, what is
taking place between door and window within the terrestrial space-
between St. Paul's conversion, featured prominently above the door,
and the natural light of day passing through its architectural instru-
ment (the window); between the "real" condition of the viewer's
movement (entry into and visit around the building) and the similarly
"real" condition of his viewing (decorated wall surfaces)-is a sort of
repeat performance of what occurred at the apex or keystone of the
cupola, between the transcendent (implex-complex) point of infinity
and the circular crown of dancing and playing angels, except that now
it spans the major diameter of the octagonal construction plane.
The architectonic diametrical axis articulates the meaning of rep-
resentations even as it exhibits the thinking processes through which
that meaning is produced: the "conversion" of St. Paul-that is, the
blinding of Saul by the invisible transcendent Voice-is only made

visible through the natural light of the window whose correlative is the
supernatural light of the narrative or the artificial light of representa-
tion. But it is the door-to-window axis that is to become transformed,
through displacement, in the panel next to the window, where the
confrontation between Jesus and Thomas is told according to St.
John's gospel (20:24-29). The narrative gives direct access into what
the representation represents. Unlike St. Paul's conversion, it does not
concern the conditions of visibility or utterability of representation in
the building's architecture, but the "represented" itself. It describes
what is told by the narrative (more specifically, John 20:28: "Thomas
answered him: 'My Lord and my God' "), unless, in this verse, the
narrative says what the representation enunciates narratively.
To this extent the doubting Thomas episode can be considered as
the "diametrical" (or opposite) transformation of the conversion
episode: outdoor light and space in the latter, closed doors in the
former; invisible questioning voice identified by a name in the latter, a
visible individual who orders and is recognized by all others in the
former; and finally, a lethal blinding as a prelude to the belief process
as against an actual sight mediated through touch, and through which
belief is instantly achieved. In the last analysis, all seems to verify the
assumption that the panel displaying the representation of the
episode in St. John's gospel, if considered on the level of conversions
(passage from Doubt to Faith), simultaneously displays the transfor-
mation of the episode in the Acts of the Apostles (also a conversion,
only in reverse terms, and with processes reversed) and effects the
transformation of the real building's window, with the natural light
that flows through it, into God's supernatural light or the painter's
artificial one.
On the basis of the elements in this arrangement of both building
and representations, one could infer quite plausibly that the ar-
chitectural diameter has pivoted one-half turn around its center. In
the same way that the window and the natural light of eyesight have
been transformed into the supernatural touch-sight of Faith, repre-
sented on the panel on the right side of the window (for the viewer
entering the sacristy), similarly the lethal blinding and the invisible
voice arising from an "other world" light (a temporal prelude to the
supernatural Belief), which marks the door, come to be transformed
into the whole series of representations decorating the other five
panels, featuring, each of them in its own way, a stage (hence a deter-
minate transformational phase) toward the touch-sight and instant
faith of Thomas the doubter.
How are we to pass from Paul's conversion to that of Thomas, or

vice versa? Such would be the question to be answered through an
examination of the scenic sites of the lower tier figures of the sacristy.
A further motivation for such an investigation would be that, unlike
all the other panels, including the one with the window opening, only
those of the door with St. Paul's conversion and the episode of
doubting Thomas possess a quotable referential narrative whose rep-
resented sequence can be plotted with precision. They alone are au-
thenticated by a written text, the Scriptures themselves, none of
which, however, is registered at any site, or any book other than the
cultural memory of the viewer or the religious uses of the building.
All the other "scenes," featuring disciples set in pairs against their own
"scenic sites," may of course be involved in a potential narrative: the
emerging story will be a product of the viewer's fantasy, without proof
or authentication, devoid of any textualfides, that fountainhead of the
supernaturalfides.53 On the other hand, each pair will present, as they
are being represented, the instrumental elements of eruditio, books;
furthermore, excluding the conversions of Saul and Thomas and with
only one exception, each pair will stage attitudes, behaviors, and ges-
turing signals involving the book as a pretext, a cause, or an end. In
other words, the written document, the writing act, nay, the Holy
Scriptures have disappeared as meaning and referent of representa-
tion, have ceased to document and authenticate such representation,
faded as its proof and guarantee-the very purpose that moved the
evangelists to listen to the ineffable voice and to write on their scrolls,
and the quill-trimming doctors to scribble notes and commentaries on
the books they were reading at the intermediary level. But the written
word (the writing act and no doubt the Holy Scriptures) recurs in
representation as one of the represented figures, not as a metaphysi-
cal entity, for the Book now contains in black and white the narrative
of Saul's and Thomas's conversions. Bearing the representation of a
determinate narrative, the two conversion panels happen to possess
an ambiguous status, since they stand as both the origin and the
terminal point of the other five. On the one hand, because they be-
long to a different order, they are able to instill meaning and spiritual
value into them, spell out the order of their structural functioning
and even the generic identity of their characters. On the other hand,
they are an integral part of the object which the other five insistently
represent, the book, since within the span of two of its pages or
paragraphs they can be considered as quotations, only iconic quota-
tions, of the Sacred Text contained therein. The resulting uncer-
tainty of status is part of the question raised by the whole cupola,
complete with its figurative decor, which sets forth the general prob-
lematics of the conditions underlying written enunciation and dis-
course-made-text.
What are we to think of the book, the written page, and the writing
act in general? What is the status, in relation to Truth, of what lies
inscribed within the book's volume? Does it qualify as an event: a
unique referent lost in the past, yet having taken place, incontrovert-
ibly, since "it is written," and on this very wall represented? Or as a
quotation from a text, itself enclosed within the volume of a book and
taking on the semblance of living reality through the deceptive pres-
tige and magic, mesmerizing power of imagery? Could it be that an
ever-renewed presence is being felt through a form of representation
that, of itself, establishes its truth and authenticity-as with a fantasy
or even a simulacrum? The gesture of Thomas or the blinding of
Paul, because they are enclosed within the book through the imma-
nent self-reflectivity of the text, are none other than the sequential
steps of a narrative written in the books held by their companions; or,
alternatively, they are part of a structural transformational process in
which the conversions of Thomas and Paul are pivotal "repre-
sentations" because they show, in and through the book and by the
gesture of a hand aimed at a marked body, that the book's validity is at
an end, and also, in and through imagery and by the dimmed light of
an eye open on its inner visions (Acts 26:15-16),54 that there is an end
to imagery.
What in the end is the meaning of this confrontation between pairs
of apostles on, about, or with regard to books? What close reader of
the Sacred Book is going to find in these pages the corresponding
referential episode? What strange regressive or progressive meta-
morphosis is going to turn those disciples into doctors of The Law or
leaders of The School, or talmudic rabbis or scholastic theologians?
Time has now come to approach the reading of the five panels where
the apostles confront each other in pairs. For indeed their postures,
attitudes, and gestures are those of a confrontation: whatever their
location on the wall surfaces of the building, the ten characters are
obviously linked together through the transformation of the same
fundamental figure, that of Thomas in the encounter with Jesus, so
that such an encounter would figuratively or figurally55 constitute the
general principle of the syntagmatic transformation. The five groups
can indeed be classified as to whether they have two, one, or no book
at all; whether the books are open or closed; whether one, both, or
none of the characters speak; whether they face each other or face the
viewer, as a pair, or singly, or whatever; also, according to what they
are pointing at with their finger, if at all, and so forth. Before going
into a detailed combinatory diagram featuring, as will be noticed,
selective relevant traits that differ very little from those selected on
account of their "obstinate" recurrence at the beginning of our study,
it is most significant that two pairs stand rigorously opposed: in A, the
two characters, in profile, each holding an open book, face each other,
one of them speaking and pointing to a line in the book, while in E,
the other panel, the two characters are represented in profile, without
any books: one of the characters is silent, his back turned to the other,
his right hand over his eye, visorlike, his left hand holding on to the
tail of his cloak; the other, partly opening a hand in the direction of
his departing companion, the other arm folded over his breast in a
speechless, questioning gesture, confirmed by the expression on his
face.
Each of those two scenes with dual characters stands opposed to the
other by the following features: face-to-face profile vs. face-to-back
profile; two open books vs. no books; one character speaking vs. two
silent characters; two signaling gestures vs. no signaling gesture. If
one were to sum up these contrasts with a title, one could say that
communication challenged (over the two books)-A-stands opposed
to communication refused by the two characters-E.
As far as the presence vs. absence of books is concerned, one will
bear in mind the following variants, which, in the five panels, spell out
a specific transformation. Let us consider A, B, C, D, and E as the five
panels, F being the sixth (with Thomas and Jesus). The distribution of
books among the different panels is as follows:
A B C D E F
two books + +
one book - - + -
no books - - - - + +
If, as a further refinement, we consider the variant open vs. closed

book, we find that in A both books are open while in B only one is
open. Similarly, C stands opposed to D in that the former shows the
book open, the latter closed.
For the spoken word and the pointing gestures-other gestures
such as clenched fist or half-open hand are not recorded-the com-
binatory diagram spells out as follows, with the understanding that 1
is the character on the left and 2 the character on the right:
A B C D E F
spoken word 1 + - - - - +
2 - + - - +
gesture 1 + - - - +
2 + - + + - +
It will be useful here to point out that the narrative of the encounter
between Thomas and Jesus is frozen by the painter at verse twenty-
eight of chapter twenty in St. John's gospel, which registers simulta-
neously Thomas's enunciated faith-"My Lord and my God"-at the
very instant he extends his hand toward Jesus' side and gets ready to
kneel down, and the commentary of the standing Jesus: "Because you
see me, you believe. Blessed be those who believe without seeing,"
with his right hand pointing toward Heaven. The representation reg-
isters two utterances and two gestures. In that sense there is a total
contrast between F and E, and if the latter scene pictures a com-
munication refused between two characters, then F will picture total
communication between the two figures of Thomas and the risen
Christ, and its spiritual name would be communion in Faith, instant
conversion of the heart.
With regard to posture and attitude, transformational relations set
themselves up in the following manner, with an "intermediary" posi-
tion showing as a separate rubric, "profile-face":
A B C D E F
face 1 - +
2 - - + +- +
profile 1 + - + + + +
2 + - - - + -
face-to-face + -
side-by-side - +
face-to-back - - - - +
profile-face - - + + - +
It will be noticed that panels C, D, and F display their figures in a

similar posture called "profile-face": the one on the left in profile, the
one on the right in front view, or at least three-quarter front view. But
in all three cases, the figures are engaged in a dialogue whose modali-
ties will have to be spelled out, for they combine the "face-to-face"
feature-the postural mode of dialogue-with the side-by-side
feature-the postural mode of noncommunication-which would be
contradictory were not communication reestablished by a specific
gesture. A typology of gestures, giving priority to pointing gestures,
becomes imperative, specifying what is being designated in the
pointing move.
In frame A, one of the characters points to a passage in the open
book he is holding, while the other points to a scene outside the
frame. The whole attitude of the first figure conjures up a query
involving the interpretation of the book, calling for an answer no
longer to be read out of the half-open book held by the second figure,
but to be shown outside the represented picture, in a place lying outside
both text and icon.
In frame B, the left-hand character, shown in front view, reads a
book he is holding wide open, while his companion on the right,
holding a closed book in his left hand, verbally asserts an enunciate,
with lips parted, reinforcing the assertion with a clenched-fist hand
gesture. A silent reading from an open book on the one hand, a verbal
pronouncement with book closed on the other: the presumption is
that the first figure is verifying in the book read the assertion enun-
ciated by the second, all bookshaving been read.
In frame C, the right-hand character, facing the viewer in whose
direction he is looking-as in frame A, the reference lies outside the
frame, only this time a gaze has replaced the pointing gesture-shows
an open book to the viewer, while talking and pointing to it (or to one
of its pages). This very page or passage is about to be read by the
character on the left, who shows a keen interest in it as evidenced by
his half-open left hand and the inclination of his head toward the
book. Yet with his closed right hand he is pounding his chest; he shows
himself, he designateshimself. "Am I really the one referred to in the
passage of the book which you are showing me/us? Can anyone find
himself involved in the book he reads?" The question asked is no
longer about the enunciate and its potential truth as substantiated by
the reading of the book, as was the case in the preceding frame; it
involves rather the enunciated ego, inscribed-written in the book,
which the person saying "I" reads as "myself." Even if that myself-
in-the-book may be that of the wondering apostle, it may just as well
be that of the viewer to whom the viewing process is addressed-
however illegible the book, through the designation of that passage,
seemingly intended for him. Who is that "I" already written and
shown-written in the indecipherable book? Could it be me?
Frame D is the argumentative variant of frame B. One of the two
books, the open book read as evidence in the verification process, is
no longer there, and the other book, open and held out for inspection
to both the apostle and the viewer in frame C, is now closed as was the
case in B. Only its trimmed edge is visible. The figure carrying it
designates the index finger of his companion, or more precisely, in-
tercepts the gesture he is making. By seizing the latter's left index
finger between the thumb and index finger of his own right hand, he
indeed accomplishes the coded gesture which, a second ago, accom-
panied the enunciation of the first of his arguments in the disputatio
which pits him against the other character. The latter is getting ready
to answer it by pinning down with a quasi-anaphoric gesture of his
index finger the point of the debate which the apostle had not quite
finished explaining. All books being closed, we are left with an oral
dispute in which the painter managed to freeze his characters at the
joint between two arguments, one already enunciated, the other on
the verge of enunciation, so that they come to be shown to us only
through the gestural imprint which one of them has just left behind
and the other anticipates. If in B and D we were presented with
variants of verified or argumentative "enunciates," with or without
help from the book, when it comes to C and E problems encountered
in the enunciation itself are being dramatized, either in the interroga-
tive mood with regard to the book (in C) or in the negative mood with
regard to speech (in E, just analyzed).
It is now time to bring the examination back full circle to panel A
and to the double pointing gesture performed by its two figures in
their face-to-face confrontation of speech, looks, and open books.
One of the figures shows the written book; the other, bypassing book
and text and breaking outside its own represented space, points to
another picture, that of the seventh panel, where the aporia of textual
and philological eruditio as well as the paradoxes of the philosophical
and theological disputatio and all problems involving enunciate or
enunciating process are finally resolved: doubting Thomas with the
risen Christ. Thomas leaning forward, totally absorbed yet already
bending his knee, is pointing not to a certain passage in the text (as in
A), not to the page of a book (as in C), not even to the argumentative
gesture (as in D); in brief, he is not pointing to any written signs of
knowledge in books, or to gestures involving them, but to a unique
mark on the unique body of the risen Christ, a mark whose "inscrip-
tion" on Jesus' side he verifies like the apostle in B who verified his
companion's assertion in the book-a mark that carries its own evi-
dence, not within the sphere of eruditio or disputatiobut within that of
fides; instantly, within range of a finger, a faith is born that knows not
abstractly through general concepts or propositions, but identifies an
individual, a unique being, by immediate contact: "My Lord and my
God!" "Because you see me you believe." Thomas, seeing him as
Jesus, believes because indeed he has touched; for his part, Jesus, thus
recognized, raises his right hand toward Heaven, with three fingers
extended (thumb, index finger, major finger) and two folded in. He
shows, he does not assert with clenched fist, as in B; he does not
argue, scoring his first proof as in D; he does not show himself,
pounding his own chest as in C. He shows the elsewhereof infinity,
whose bodily emanation he is and into which he is to ascend in all his
glory, that is to say, into the cupola of the sacristy, into that upward
draught toward the keystone where the architectonic framing mem-

bers converge as well as the planes of representative surfaces. In a
sense he shows himself, but only as the noncreated Word, by image-
forming, by signifying, through his very gesture, the Trinity he is a part
of. But it can also be said that, having conquered Death, he enunciates
the motto "Blessed be those who believe without seeing," while
monstratingthe enunciating process by the solemn gesture of the judge
which Michelangelo was to remember one day in the malediction
scene on the rear panel of the Sistine Chapel. The book, the written
text, the discourse-text has become a body marked by its history, a
body not intended for reading, or reading mediated through writing,
but for touching in the plainness of its contingent, singular
existence-in other words, intended to be shown, taken, and con-
sumed in the act of Faith.
VII. Conclusion
The conversion scene of Thomas the doubter, whose relation to the

natural light source of the window and the Saint Paul conversion
episode has been demonstrated, embodies the rule of syntagmatic
circular transformation, and at the same time, through the upward
pointing gesture of Jesus-the only figure whose pointing two fingers
"encroach" upon the illusory decor of the scenic site-anchors in the
vertical dimension the hierarchically ordered paradigm which regu-
lates the representational scheme as it develops along the planes of
architectural space. But this anchoring is marked by a double uncer-
tainty. On the one hand, as it is located on the lower tier of repre-
sentational decor, it cannot benefit from the traditional valorization of
the vertical dimension. The painting of Thomas and Jesus is but one
of the seven paintings that decorate the "terrestrial" space, imparting
its rhythm to that space, even if the posture, attitude, and gesturing of
its figures help define the rule of transformation on the other paint-
ings and expose at the same time, through self-reflexivity, the general
conditions of pictorial enunciation. On the other hand, it refers the
meaning of the paradigm heavenward through the upper tiers
featuring the evangelists and doctors, then the dancing and
instrument-playing angels, to the final point where the architectonic
filets and decorative planes merge together, an abstract, surfaceless
point sealed by the signature of the sponsor. The paradigmatic
structure of representation in the cupola is lacking any solid founda-
tion, nor does it have a definite finality, since both its upper and lower
anchoring sites elude their specific designation by substitution (the

Rovere coat of arms) or by reference to a transcendent elsewhere
(Jesus' gesture).
The same happens with regard to the circular syntagmatics.
Granted that the conversion of Thomas embodies the rule of trans-
formation governing the paintings of the terrestrial zone; granted
also that the right-hand disciple in the pair that disputes the in-
terpretation of their open books (frame A) points in the direction of
the risen Christ facing Thomas as toward the moment when all ques-
tions find their answers, the aporia its way to rationality, the paradoxes
their clarification. In the sea of ever-multiplying signs, of texts, com-
mentaries, glosses, and counterglosses through which the Truth sails,
without ever coming to port, Thomas's gesture shows and touches,
along with the singular mark on the unique body, the locus of all
immediate postverbal or preverbal certainty. As a result, Jesus' motto
"Blessed be those that believe without having seen" takes on tragically
ironic overtones, for who can ever see and believe, hic et nunc, unless a
miraculous shaft of blinding light strikes a transcendent vision into
him who walks the Damascus path, as goes the event reported in King
Agrippa's presence, along with Jesus' words to Paul (Acts 26:12-19)?
The conversion scene of Thomas is both the point of arrival and the
point of departure in the series of transformations, in which each of
the representations exhibits a specific problem.56 As a regulating fig-
ure it shows the field where tensions are resolved, but it may equally
well designate the field where the problematics is set up. In this sense
each of the other paintings can be considered either as the lingering
imprint or an anticipatory hint of that anchor painting, in the viewer's
sensibility, depending on which perspective is established. To be more
precise, this painting, seen as both representation and "metarep-
resentation," inserted as it is into the totality of the cupola's decor and
the architectural space it defines, truly constitutes the cupola as that
theoretical object in which the work reflects itself while enunciating
both the theoretical and historical conditions of its enunciation. In the
whole cupola, from angels to disciples, the main emphasis is on enun-
ciates and enunciation, things said and the act of saying them, and to
an even greater extent, on the written word, the writing process, the
reading of writing, and the writing of reading-the only exception
being those two conversion scenes of Paul and Thomas, where vision
turns to blindness and voice becomes inaudible, where the text be-
comes a tortured body, where the sign becomes an open wound and
the writing-reading becomes touch and penetration, blinding and
exhaustion. True, those two exceptions do not concern knowledge (of
a truth) but belief. But here again, as in the paradigm of the value-
enhancing hierarchy, the structural scheme we have outlined per-
petually hesitates between the reference to an episode of the
Scriptures-a referential "rock" based on truth and reality, bestowing
upon the representation of disciple confrontation a sense of finality
and establishing as well a pattern of meaningful interaction between
those confrontations-and, on the other hand, a reference to an
image illustrating both texts subject to disciple controversy, possibly
lending one more argument in the arsenal of glosser's and commen-
tator's disputatio and eruditio, but, more significantly, presenting an
"argument" which, unlike those put forward by scholars, would turn
the written or read page into a painted image subject to contempla-
tion. In this perspective, we have an illustration or, to put it more
aptly, an iconic quotation, escaped from the volume of a book, from
the drab confusion of written signs, to stand as an autonomous, fully
significant painting. As a result, while reflecting, through the content
of its enunciates, the enunciating conditions of discourse-text in
general-representation, enunciation, and monstration being simul-
taneously perceived-such a painting signals the spectacular advent
of a cardinal mode of painting that makes it possible, thanks to its
miraculous power to conjure up the dead which Alberti once com-
mented upon,57 for "those who have not seen" nevertheless "to be-
lieve." Because it works at the substantial level,58 this pictorial art
asserts (through monstration) the enunciating acts of discourse-
made-written-text; it sets forth the latter's theoretical problematics in
the structural scheme which organizes and regulates the arrangement
of its figures. The theory of such an arrangement is probed through
means peculiar to the pictorial mode, and underscores the essential
characteristics of the historical and ideological crisis of humanistic
discourse at the end of the quattrocento, even as it voices criticism of
the last nominalism,59 whose essential themes seem to be developed by
Luca Signorelli's cupola between the instrument-playing angels and
dancers and the conversion scenes of Paul and Thomas. But in the
process, as it unfolds the text of its icons-that is to say, the set of its
syntactical transformations-and the paradigmatic order of its rep-
resentations in a building whose architectural structure is rigorously
organized, this pictorial art upholds its forceful autonomy, its potent
questioning ability, and the glory of its images.
ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN

SCIENCES SOCIALES, PARIS
(Translated by Lionel Duisit)

NOTES
1 For a summary of discussions involving the notion of Renaissance and its historical
and theoretical relevance, see among others: Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought
(New York, 1965); Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascencesin WesternArt (Stock-
holm, 1960); Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, Renaissance and Revolution: The Remaking of
European Thought (London, 1965), together with its bibliographical notes.
2 See Andre Lalande, Vocabulairetechniqueet critiquede la philosophie (Paris, 1926).
3 This approach was adopted, for instance, by Michel Serres, who applied certain
models of thermodynamic theory to the work of Zola (e.g., Feux et signaux de brume,Zola
[Paris, 1975]), or information theory to Carpaccio's painting (Esthetiquessur Carpaccio
(Paris, 1979), pp. 335-46.
4 On this double historical and epistemological definition of semiology, see Emile
Benveniste, Problemesde linguistiquegenerale, I (Paris, 1966), 3-45, and II (Paris, 1974),
11-40, 43-66. For a possible distinction between semiotics and semiology, see A.J.
Greimas and Joseph Courtes, Semiotique,dictionnaire raisonne de la theorie du langage
(Paris, 1979), pp. 335-46.
5 For a position germane to the one suggested here, see Noam Chomsky, Cartesian
Linguistics:A Chapterin the Historyof Rationalist Thought (New York, 1966), although the
objects of study, Grammairegenerale et raisonnee and I'Artde penser (1662-1685), are on
the same epistemological "level" as contemporary theory of generative and transfor-
mational grammar, which finds its way into the previously mentioned work, at least as
far as its general philosophical assumptions are concerned.
6 This objection has been raised mostly in connection with history. See Karl Popper,
The Open Societyand Its Enemies, rev. 5th ed. (Princeton, 1966); ObjectiveKnowledge:An
EvolutionaryApproach(Oxford, 1972); and, going back further, The Povertyof Historicism,
2nd ed. (London, 1960); see also Raymond Aron, Introductiond la philosophiede l'histoire:
essai sur les limites de l'objectivitehistorique (Paris, 1948) (Introductionto the Philosophyof
History:An Essay on the Limitsof Historical Objectivity,tr. George J. Irwin [Boston, 1961]).
For a slightly different approach, yet germane to ours, see Michel Foucault, L'Ar-
cheologiedu savoir (Paris, 1969) (The Archaeologyof Knowledge, tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith
[New York, 1972]), and Les Mots et les choses(Paris, 1968) (TheOrderof Things [New York,
1970]).
7 On this notion of "work" as applied to a text, see, among others, my Critique du
discours (Paris, 1975), and more recently, Antoine Compagnon, La Secondemain: ou, Le
travail de la citation (Paris, 1979), pp. 38-39, and my article "Ecrire-repeter ou le livre en
souffrance," Critique, 36, No. 395 (April 1980), 355-69.
8 See, on this question, the problematics set forth by Eugene Vance in his "Mervelous
Signals: Poetics, Sign Theory, and Politics in Chaucer's Troilus,"New LiteraryHistory, 10
(Winter 1979), 293-337.
9 Theoretical literature on the subject is abundant. Let us mention in particular:
Benveniste, Problemes,I, 227-57, and II, 67-88; Francois Recanati, La Transparenceet
l'econciation (Paris, 1979); Oswald Ducrot, Dire et ne pas dire: principes de semantique
linguistique (Paris, 1972); Ducrot et al., Les Mots du discours (Paris, 1980); and finally,
Ducrot, "L'argumentation par autorite," in L'Argumentation(Lyon, 1981), pp. 9-11.
10 Ducrot, "L'argumentation," pp. 11-12.
11 Recanati, Transparence,pp. 20 ff.
12 In the theoretical subject-object we are trying to define in relation to a theory of
enunciation and the semantic-pragmatic possibilities of the language, we can readily
recognize certain features of Jakobson's phatic dimension with its emphasis on the
code, but only at a higher level of generality, since the enunciates involving the code
cover only a fraction of the enunciative range which is coextensive with any and all uses
of language, and also because the enunciates involving the fact of enunciation that help
constitute the theoretical object cover a lot more factors than are included under the
designation of code in communication theory.
13 On the paradoxes inherent in the theory of enunciation as set forth by Benveniste,
see my "Remarques critiques sur l'enonciation: la question du present dans le discours,"
Modern Language Notes, 91, No. 5 (1976), 939-51.
14 On the distinction between locutor and enunciator, see Ducrot, "L'argumenta-
tion," p. 12.
15 On "deixis" and deictic as characteristics of the enunciative process in language,
see Benveniste, Problemes,I, 251-57, 262. See also, inL'Arc, No. 64 (1976), 28-41, my
article "Parler, montrer, manger." On the relation between "saying" and "showing" in
the Indo-European "language," see Emile Benveniste, Le Vocabulaire des institutions
indo-europ&ennes,Vol. II: Pouvoir, droit, religion (Paris, 1969); more specifically, pp.
107-10, on Greek deiknumi and Latin dico.
16 Presumably to elude the metaphor effect implicit in any deixis, Ducrot substitutes
the term (dire)2for montrerand monstration.
17 In the sense Hjelmslev gives to the term substance.
18 On the innumerable variations of Horace's Ut pictura poesis, painting as dumb
poetry, and poetry as painting with spoken words, see in particular Robert J. Clements,
Picta poesis (Rome, 1960), pp. 173 ff.
19 Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors,and Architects,ed. Ernest Rhys, tr.
A. B. Hinds (New York, 1927), Vol. II, pt. 2, p. 147.
20 On this question, see Adolfo Venturi, Luca Signorelli (Florence, 1922). Going back
further, Maud Cruttwell, Luca Signorelli (1899; rpt. St. Clair Shores, Mich., 1972), and,
more important, Robert Vischer, Luca Signorelli und die italienischeRenaissance (Leipzig,
1879). Recent scholarship shows Pietro Scarpellini, Luca Signorelli (Milan, 1964), and
M. G. la Coste-Messeliere, Luca Signorelli (Brussels, 1975).
21 The proposed analysis is mostly a blueprint for a study to be pursued further,
especially since we select only those segments of the iconic text that mirror themselves,
and since we conduct our description only at the level where the iconic text is consti-
tuted as a theoretical object and theory assumes the form of a historical event and
ideological and cultural monument.
22 See Giulio Carlo Argan, Brunelleschi, tr. Macula (Paris, 1981), pp. 55 ff., 145-46,
148. For the distinction between geometrical plane (projective) and the (material) sub-
surface, see pp. 71-72. A comparison with the cupola of St. John's sacristy, painted at
approximately the same time by Melozzo da Forli (1477-1493), would be highly
suggestive by the striking differences it would reveal.
23 On this particular point, see my own observations in Detruire la peinture (Paris,
1977); see also Hubert Damisch, "L'origine de la perspective," Macula, No. 5-6 (1979).
24 On this question, see E. H. Gombrich, "The Early Medici as Patrons of Art,"
Italian Renaissance Studies (1960), rpt. in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renais-
sance (London, 1966), pp. 35-57.
25 On the notion of structure as a group of transformations, see in particular Claude
Levi-Strauss, Anthropologiestructurale (Paris, 1958) (Structural Anthropology, tr. Claire
Jacobson, Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, and M. Layton, 2 vols. [New York, 1963-76]),
and his article "Le Temps et le mythe," in Histoire et Structure (AnnalesE.S.C., No. 3-4
[May-August 1971]).
26 On the crisis of Humanism toward the end of the quattrocento, among many texts
let us mention Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Renaissance, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1955);
Eugenio Garin, Der ItaliensicheHumanismus (Bern, 1947), and its English translation by
Peter Munz (Oxford, 1965), pp. 78 ff.; Andre Chastel, "L'Apocalypse en 1500:lr
fresque del'antechrist a la chapelle St.-Brice d'Orvieto," Bibliothequede l'Humanisme et de
la Renaissance, 14 (1952), 124-40, rpt. in Convivium, 33 (1964), 24-40.
27 On the semantic value of this "category," see Michael Baxandall, Painting and
Experience in Fifteenth-CenturyItaly (Oxford, 1972), pp. 121 ff.; also bibliographical
references, pp. 159-60.
28 For instance, the dove that stands for the Holy Spirit has deserted the "point" of
infinite implication-complication of the building whose breathing symbol it might have
been, to appear, at least on the face of it, plunging toward St. Gregory's ear, as a mere
identification predicate of the doctor of the Church, not to mention the role it is about
to play in the great historical and ideological questioning that surfaces in the prob-
lematics of discursive enunciation.
29 See Michael Baxandall on the subject.
30 Consult on the subject St. Augustine De musica libri sex, ed. and tr. (in French) Guy
Finaert and F.-J. Thonnard (Paris, 1947), specifically 6.12.34, later used by Marsilio
Ficino in Theologia Platonica, Opera (Basileae, 1576), I, 278 ff. See also Kristeller, Re-
naissance Thought, II, 142 -62, and Rudolf Wittkower, ArchitecturalPrinciplesin theAge of
Humanism, 3rd rev. ed. (London, 1962), esp. pp. 117-26, 132-42. The key role of
Dante's reading in this matter cannot be ignored. Consult in particular Mario Apollonio
and Pasquale Rotondi, Temi danteschiad Orvieto (Milan, 1965), or P. Scarpellino, "L'is-
pirazione dantesca a orvieto," B.Ist. Stor. Art. Orvietano,21 (1965). Paradise, rather than
Hell or Purgatory, would seem to offer the main references. As H. Longnon wrote in
the preface to his translation of The Divine Comedy(Paris, 1966), pp. 356-57: "While
Inferno's poetic visions were ... essentially carnal and Purgatorio abounded in scenes
and pictures modeled on beauties from the plastic Arts, in Paradisio light, music, and
dance feature prominently."
31 On the subject, consult Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instrumentsand Their Symbolism
in WesternArt, 2nd ed. (New Haven, 1979), ch. 11, "On Angel Concerts in the 15th
Century: A Critical Approach to Realism and Symbolism in Sacred Paintings," pp.
137-49. Also Reinhold Hammerstein, Die Musik der Engel, Untersuchungen zur
Musikanshauungdes Mittelalters(Munich, 1962).
32 On coincidentia oppositorum, see Nicholas of Cusa De docta ignorantia 1.21-22.
33 On "soft" and "strong" music, see Winternitz, pp. 145 ff.
34 This expressivity through opposites is one of the characteristics Vasari underscores
in his biography of Signorelli, together with the credit he gives him for inventing how to
paint the nude: Lives, II, 145 ff.; consult also Baxandall, pp. 17 ff.
35 Those features single out their postures and attitudes, their attributes or iden-
tificatory predicates, even their behavioral patterns or the activity they are engaged in
and the instruments through which those activities are carried out.
36 The scope of this analysis does not allow for a full treatment of this aspect.
37 Yet such attributes may play all sorts of roles in the representation of the figure.
For instance, St. Matthew's angel, with his raised index finger, inspires the text the
evangelist is writing, while St. Mark's lion or St. Luke's bull seem to serve rather as a seat
or arm rest.
38 On history and tradition, see Michel de Certeau, L'Ecriturede l'histoire(Paris, 1978),
pp. 18-30. For history and historiography in the Renaissance and more particularly in
Humanism, see Myron P. Gilmore, Humanists and Jurists: Six Studies in the Renaissance
(Cambridge, Mass., 1963), and Nancy E. Struever, The Language of Historyin the Renais-
sance (Princeton, 1970).
39 See Ernst R. Curtius, "Le Symbolisme du livre," in La Literatureeuropeenneet le
Moyen Age latin (Paris, 1956), ch. 16, pp. 368-428, esp. the section on Dante. See also
Lucien Febvre and Henri J. Martin, L'Apparitiondu livre, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1970), more
particularly pp. 41 ff., 349-78.
40 On the notion of modality, see, among others: Benveniste, Problkmes,II, 187-92;
Langages, No. 43 (1976), a special issue on "Modalites: logique, linguistique et
semiotique."
41 See Venturi, who gives only these two figures as the work of Signorelli, the others
resulting from a cooperation between G. Genga and Pier d'Ancona.
42 Provided one reads the circle of figures clockwise, or left to right.
43 He has just started a line that will develop from right to left. Could he be writing in
Hebrew?
44 On the "historic" relations between Signorelli and Michelangelo, see Vasari, p. 147,
and Chastel.
45 On this reading process, consult St. Augustine, Confessions,tr. R. S. Pine-Coffin
(Harmondsworth, 1961), Bk. VI, ch. 3: "When [Ambrose] read, his eyes scanned the
page and his heart explored the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was
still.... Perhaps he was afraid that, if he read aloud, some obscure passage in the
author he was reading might raise a question in the mind of an attentive listener, and he
would then have to explain the meaning or even discuss some of the more difficult
points. If he spent his time in this way, he would not manage to read as much as he
wished" (p. 114).
46 These new developments, as is well known, are fundamental to the Humanist
movement of the Renaissance, particularly in Italy. Consult on the matter, Kristeller,
Renaissance Thought, II, 5-8; Garin, pp. 5-7; and Garin, Die Kultur der Renaissance
(Berlin, 1964), in its French translation by Marc Baudoux, La Renaissance (Paris, 1970),
pp. 21-77.
47 See Ann Banfield, "Where Epistemology, Style, and Grammar Meet Literary His-
tory," New LiteraryHistory, 9 (Spring 1978), 415-54.
48 Consult Benveniste, Problemes,II, 43-66.
49 See Plato Letter VII 342a-343d, in which the definition of theory is at the same
time proposed as the very object of knowledge in its ontological truth, identified with
knowledge itself, yet tends to be disqualified in its verbal expression, and even more in
its written transcription.
50 See E. Wind, "Michelangelo's Prophets and Sybils," Proceedings of the British
Academy,51 (Oxford and London, 1960), in which the author proves the importance of
combining a "vertical" and a "horizontal" reading of the prophets, sybils, and angels, or
the ignudi assigned to them. Now the historic and aesthetic function of Luca Signorelli's
work in the case of Michelangelo is well known.
51 It is interesting to note at this point that Maud Cruttwell supposes that Jesus is also
present in panel E. According to her, he would be addressing reproaches to St. Peter.
52 The count of eleven rather than twelve apostles does not come as a surprise since
Matthias, the substitute for Judas Iscariot the traitor, was called upon to join them only
after Jesus' ascension (Acts 1:15-26). Through this reference, we were able to correct
Cruttwell's error of interpretation concerning Jesus' presence not only in the doubting
Thomas episode, but also in the fairly improbable "scene" of Jesus addressing re-
proaches to St. Peter.
53 On the dichotomy fides-eruditio, see Myron P. Gilmore, ch. 4, pp. 87-114.
54 A closer reading will justify this concept of an "inner vision" in the conversion
panel with Paul. Simply stated, the image of Christ in the upper right-hand corner
appears in an intense, bright light, his finger pointed at Saul who, sprawled on the
ground, after surrendering the grip of his half-drawn sword, shields his open,
rolled-up eyes with his hand as if to protect them. Noteworthy also is the narrative, even
anecdotic integration of the sword, that identificatory attribute of St. Paul.
55 In the sense Jean Francois Lyotard gives to this term in Discours, Figure (Paris,
1971).
56 See Levi-Strauss, Anthropologiestructurale, "La voie et les masques," a chapter al-
ready mentioned, for an exemplary application of this method.
57 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, tr. John R. Spencer (New Haven, 1956), p. 63
(end of the second book).
58 See n. 17 above.
59 As is broadly recognized, William of Ockham considers intuitive knowledge, as
rooted in contingent existence, to be the model of all immediate certainty, as opposed to
knowledge based on prerequisite essences. He wrote in Sentent. Prol. qu. 1: "Intuitive
knowledge of a thing is knowledge that puts one in a position to know whether that
thing exists or not. ... In general, it is any noncomplex knowledge of one or several
terms, of one or several things, through which one can gain access, with certainty, to a
contingent truth pertaining particularly to the present." Knowledge deals essentially
with the particular, and understanding grasps intuitively the thing perceived so that
certainty is achieved. It focuses directly on the object. With the added consideration
that, to Ockham, a term can only be universal through the signifying process or as a
sign or symbol, and that it is to be defined as a function rather than an object, one may
conclude that the encounter between doubting Thomas and the risen Christ, as repre-
sented within the circular dialectic of the book and the text, is a rigorous illustration of
Ockham's theses. On the importance of nominalism and, more particularly, of Ock-
ham's philosophy of knowledge in the humanistic crisis of the Renaissance, consult
Antoine Compagnon's fine book, Nous, Michel de Montaigne (Paris, 1980).

Marin - 1983 - The Iconic Text and The Theory of Enunciation - (New Literary History - v14n3)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Marin - 1983 - The Iconic Text and The Theory of Enunciation - (New Literary History - v14n3)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Iconic Text and the Theory of Enunciation: Luca Signorelli at Loreto (Circa 1479-1484)

Author(s): Louis Marin and Lionel Duisit

HE SPECIAL ISSUE which New LiteraryHistory, after its exploration

* For Hubert Damisch.

tinct methodological approaches with their axiomatic set of principles,

II. The Historical Text as Theoretical Object

The topic proposed by NLH would seem somewhat arbitrary or,

perceived to exist and construed between the object to be explained,

guishing between the theoretical effects inherent in the historical

probing it, unsuspected potentialities of the theoretical energy spe-

expressive, and so forth. But in addition, any enunciate says some-

discourse-text. But when it does appear in the text, it stands separate

after Simonides,18 whose finality is exhausted in its presentation or

III. The Cupola: Architecture and Setting

large fresco of the Last Judgment in Orvieto, Luca Signorelli painted

IV. The Angels and the Coincidence of Opposites

Fig. 1. The Dancing and Instrument-Playing Angels

even their two human imitations-instruments and voices on the one

In order to analyze the composition of the "orchestra" in structural

means of this visual figuration articulated through a complex group

V. Evangelists and Doctors:

St. Augustine St. John

St. Luke St. Matthew

Fig. 2. Evangelists and Doctors (Middle Tier)

Among the evangelists, John stands in opposition to the others, who

communication of meaning, it being further understood, besides, that

contemplative vision merged with its contemplated object,49 even

VI. The Confronted Disciples and the Conversion

Doubting Thomas and Jesus (Panel F) Two Apostles (Panel E)

Two Apostles (Panel A) Two Apostles (Panel D)

Fig. 3. Lower Tier

blinding of Saul by the invisible transcendent Voice-is only made

How are we to pass from Paul's conversion to that of Thomas, or

If, as a further refinement, we consider the variant open vs. closed

It will be noticed that panels C, D, and F display their figures in a

draught toward the keystone where the architectonic framing mem-

The conversion scene of Thomas the doubter, whose relation to the

anchoring sites elude their specific designation by substitution (the

ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN

(Translated by Lionel Duisit)

You might also like