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Philosophical Thought
Reference:

The representation of pain and the metamorphosis of aesthetics from the Middle Ages to Early modern period

Zagryadskaya Alisa Sergeevna

ORCID: 0000-0001-8085-3887

Postgraduate

199034, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, ul. Mendeleevskaya Liniya, 5

zagryadska@mail.ru

DOI:

10.25136/2409-8728.2022.7.38464

EDN:

GVVXAA

Received:

12-07-2022


Published:

19-07-2022


Abstract: The article provides an aesthetic and philosophical analysis of the causes of historical changes in the image of pain in Western European culture. The concept of suffering arising in the Renaissance is considered as a significant reflection of the general transformation of sensuality. The main approaches to the phenomenon of pain in the humanities and various points of view on the possibility of its representation by artistic means are outlined. The focus of attention is on changes in the spatial and temporal orientations of culture, as well as the aesthetic metamorphoses caused by them, considered by the example of how artistic creativity revealed the theme of pain. The change of aesthetic consciousness from the Middle Ages to Modern period is analyzed using examples from medieval, Renaissance and Baroque art. The article examines the formation of the concept of personal existential suffering and its reflection in cultural artifacts. The novelty of the research is the concept of the aesthetic mechanism of the Renaissance, understood as a change of forms of sensuality that structure experience. Such transformations lead to the emergence of new artistic forms, which especially characterizes the Renaissance. The foundations of the metamorphoses of sensuality are found in the change in the image of reality, which formed the renaissance aesthetics and predetermined subsequent cultural trends. The social and theological reasons for these changes and their interpretation by humanist philosophers are considered. The research draws a connection between a new understanding of time and space, communicated both to the other world and to earthly life, and the deepening of personal affective experience and aesthetic component. It is concluded that the result of the new chronotoping was the strengthening of the immanent experience of suffering and the formation of a different way of representation.


Keywords:

Renaissance aesthetics, Renaissance art, sensuality, representation, pain, pain representation, space and time, chronotope, aesthetic mechanism, subjectivity

This article is automatically translated. You can find original text of the article here.

 

 

Introduction

 

Western European art has been turning to the theme of pain and suffering for centuries, gradually complicating and problematizing their personal component. Iconographic transformations of this subject can serve as a confirmation of historical metamorphoses of aesthetics. In line with the comprehension of the key Christian subjects associated with suffering, there was a deepening of subjective sensory experience — a process that caused both the unfolding of Renaissance ideals and their subsequent crisis.

The formation of the representation of pain is a vivid example of how from the image of an event through the strengthening of the mimesis of feelings there is a transition to the image of a subjective experience that affectively involves the recipient. The Renaissance folding of the aesthetic dimension paves bridges to the "dreams of the mind" of Modern Times — to the depiction of suffering through visions and out-of-body images. But also the strengthening of the subjective factor paradoxically leads to objectification: the ordering mind turns pain from a means and mediator into naked phenomenality.

The new concept of pain develops in line with the idea of the significance of individual experience as a whole, acting as the clearest expression of the uniqueness and vulnerability of the human "I". The question that arises in this connection is what formed the basis of these transformations? In three sections of the article, we will outline the main approaches to pain in modern research and justify its significance for understanding the evolution of Renaissance aesthetics; consider the reasons for the emergence of a new representation associated with a change in sensuality; give examples of how the immanentization of experience was reflected in artistic creativity.

 

Approaches to Pain in humanitarian studies

 

Since the formation of explicit aesthetics, the theme of pain has arisen in the works of various philosophers, having been comprehended as a phenomenon associated with the sublime by E. Burke and I. Kant. It also caused a dispute between I. I. Winkelman and G. E. Lessing about ancient ethics and the display of bodily experiences on the example of "Laocoon and his sons". As S. Richter notes, the dichotomy of beauty and pain is of fundamental importance for classical aesthetics, developed in the second half of the eighteenth century [1]. The aesthetics of beauty turned out to be closely connected with the problem of suffering, inevitably affecting its field.

The topic makes itself felt in today's humanitarian studies. Philosophical aesthetics increasingly turns to the nonverbal content of experience. Concepts related to rhythm, affects, perceptions, bodily sensitivity, various types of somatic experience appear; "grassroots" aesthetics are being developed, from haptics and olfactory to aesthetics. In line with the cultural and philosophical turn to somatics, there is a research area related to the theory and history of pain. General theory and philosophy are represented by the research of E. Scarry, A. Vetlesen, R. Schleifer and other authors. Pain in culture is considered p . Ray, H. Moscoso, G. Haidarova. Historical aspects are revealed in the works of J. Perkins (pain and narrative representation in early Christianity)  [2], E. Cohen (late Middle Ages)  [3], J. Burke (history from ancient times to the era of painkillers)  [4].

Approaches to pain can be both phenomenological (an existential act) and cultural-constructivist (the formation of a concept by means of culture). Pain condemns the subject to loneliness, as it "enhances the feeling of separation from others in my body" [5, p. 16], but also unites people through engaging empathy, giving the possibility of compensation, and "creates communities" [4]. It can be considered as the moment of the destruction of the subject through the rupture of discursivity, the displacement of any content of the psyche [4] — or as a guarantor of sensory perception and experience in the first person, a fundamental evidence of the "truth of presence" in the virtualized world (G. R. Haidarova, V. V. Savchuk). It is often said about the methods of its development, and many philosophers agree that the displacement of pain by modern culture rather increases its negative impact, depriving a person of adaptive and compensatory abilities.

From the point of view of philosophical aesthetics, pain is a complex phenomenon that eludes an unambiguous definition, since it is both a sensory event and an emotional—affective experience (not being fully either one or the other). Pain is both a fact and an experience [7], it turns out to be both a sensation and a perception [8]. In this sense, it can be considered in the context of the relationship between sensory experience and aesthetic experience.

I. Kant in "Anthropology" divides feelings into external, related to bodily factors, and internal, related to the influence of the soul [9, p. 38]. Inner feeling or "intimate feeling" ("pure perceptual ability") he thinks separately from displeasure or displeasure. If pleasure is an intention to prolong the performance, then displeasure is an intention to interrupt the "performance in contemplation". Whereas an "intimate feeling" is a guarantee of the possibility of experiencing any idea, a way to rely on ideas. Under the influence of inner feeling as a way of self-absorption of the soul, representations given to the subject in contemplation arise.

Continuing the Kantian line of describing the mediating mechanism, R. Schleifer suggests that "the seemingly unshakable opposition between pain as a sensation/fact and pain as perception/experience" [8] can be removed through the introduction of a third agent that does not relate to either the physical or mental context. The need for it is connected with the fact that the experience cannot be described either in physical or psychological terms. This position partly corresponds to the dual, shimmering nature of pain, which is given both as a fact and as an experience in a performative experience that exists insofar as it is realized. Such a description also corresponds to the topological ambiguity of pain, which closes the subject within its boundaries and at the same time poisons everything around (mixing external and internal without reducing to the first or second).

Let's make a reservation that conscious pain is always associated with suffering, so these concepts will be used by us as synonymous. It is not for nothing that they talk about pain within the framework of the theory of emotions, assuming that such perception inevitably entails affect [10]. Scarry points out that in pain we feel our body, not the object that hurts, and in touch we go beyond the body [6]. If touch is a movement towards a meeting, then pain presupposes that there is no alternative to experience and orientation inward. Related to this is the linguistic metaphor of pain as objects acting on the body ("stabs", "cuts", etc.). Mental suffering, in turn, is often defined in terms of physical pain. At the same time, it is also characteristic of him to replace the content of the psyche, to reduce the diversity of the "I" to a painful experience. Thus, suffering is a broad psychologically semantic context for the existence of pain. It can be assumed that suffering is an aesthetic form of being perceptual pain — that is, a situation in which a sensory fact becomes an experience and is fixed by meaning.

One of the most debatable questions of pain theory concerns whether its "terrifying factuality" can be represented at all (R. Schleifer). Scarry believes that pain destroys all discursivity, and Burke speaks of it as a fundamental gap between the body and the self [4]. Whereas in classical structuralist approaches, pain experience does not have autonomy, but is given to the subject through the order of the signifier. For example, J. Lacan notes that a slap in the face can cause a whole range of culturally conditioned reactions, from a counter strike to turning the other cheek [11, p. 24].

There are assumptions that only specific forms of art can convey pain, aimed at translating its material side. As a way of "acting out" pain, Schleifer gives an example of poems that imitate a primal cry with a rhythm [8]: such a text, when read, directly affects the reader. Art in this case moves from representativeness to performativity. It is unclear, however, whether the transmission of the event is not replaced by the experience that is found in acting out. Continuing this line, it can be assumed that the best way to deal with the transmission of pain is performance, which really includes bodily effects — however, we have to conclude that in this case we are certainly not talking about representation, but about immediacy[1].

Without denying pain its existence as a full-fledged reality, it should be noted that its expression and meanings differ from context to context. In this sense, suffering is a symbolic and semantic design of perceptual pain. The change in the cultural coding of sensory phenomena gets formalized in the categories of culture and is reflected in artifacts. Various epochs depicted pain in art, and the dynamics of changes — the concretization of the physiology of suffering and mental and mental anguish - serves as confirmation of how the request for artistic translation of personal experience was formed.

A significant leap in this process occurred in the Renaissance, significant for the history of the metamorphoses of sensuality. The ideas of Renaissance emancipation of the sensual principle and the self-worth of the aesthetic were concretized in the concepts of "dismantling the medieval vertical" (M. M. Bakhtin), laying the "first frontier of virtual space" (M. N. Sokolov) and "a new type of representation" (M. Yampolsky). The Renaissance opened a new page in the understanding of sensory cognition, which was continued in the ideas of A. G. Baumgarten and the birth of academic aesthetics, and then in its affective—somatic "turns".

Despite the radical ultimatum of pain, the question of its representation is not much different from the question of the possibility of displaying sensory experience as such. Every aesthetic experience has the nature of "terrifying factuality" — even when it comes to pleasure and the category of beauty, drama is associated with the impossibility of complete transmission[2]. The concept of the immanent experience of pain develops at the same time as the idea of the importance of the individual in principle. The negative aspects of this process (the complication of mental life, the atomization of people, the crises of modernity) become a payment for the acceptance of a person in his aesthetic subjectivity. But also in the Renaissance, the culture of personal empathy deepens, which involves the perceiver in the experience, allowing him to overcome the boundaries between the "I" and the other. Thus, pain opens the way for the subject not only to himself, but also to the problems of the Other, which becomes key several centuries later.

All this makes it important to study pain from a historical perspective. Tracing the changes in the Renaissance depiction of suffering allows us to judge the change in views on sensuality and get closer to understanding the aesthetic mechanism that triggered the global changes of the early Modern period.

 

Changing forms of sensuality and representation of subjective experience

 

By appealing to the sensuality and discourses of the body, the aesthetic dynamics of Renaissance Europe partly resembles the current cultural situation. It is not for nothing that in research they are often brought together under the auspices of "transitivity". In both cases, we are talking about changing the coordinate system that marks and codifies the diverse human experience, phenomenal eventfulness. Transitional, therefore, can be called epochs in which there is an active process of changing the coordinate systems ordering reality.

In the New European philosophy, such instruments were described by I. Kant as pre—experimental pure contemplations, designated in his transcendental aesthetics as a priori forms of sensuality - space and time [12, p. 65]. It is they who set the possibility of experiential cognition and sensation, ordering the phenomena of reality accessible to the senses. When disparate perceptions are ordered by synthesizing mechanisms, experience can take place as knowledge.

At the same time, we live in the space of culture, which Charles Baudelaire poetically defined as a "forest of symbols". This means that the space-time coordinates will vary for different societies and eras. Sensory experience gets fixed when it is grasped by meaning in the mainstream of the sign system. In different symbolic contours, there are different models of time and space design. Historical time was counted from the accession of the emperor, the Nativity of Christ, or, in some periods, from revolutions, and white spots turned into detailed maps. And today, time zones are shifting depending on the relations of neighboring countries; the borders of countries and the degree of openness of the world to movement are changing.

As B. G. Sokolov notes, "the symbolic coordinate system is constantly being transformed, recoding the content that it marks and collects into the integrity of the phenomenon" [13, p. 46]. When the space-time coordinates undergo a change, their content changes after them — the content of culture and the aesthetics characteristic of it. Thus, it can be concluded that the change of a priori forms of sensory perception sets the dynamics of culture. The image of reality characteristic of a particular society will depend on the vector of their displacement. Such an aesthetic mechanism also underlies the unfolding of the Renaissance with its new chronotope and type of mimesis — due to the fact that the basic ways of structuring experience are directly related to representation and artistic principles.

It is necessary to say a few words about the concept of "chronotope". If initially in the works of M. M. Bakhtin this category was understood as an intra-literary "space-time" [14, pp. 234-407], then later it received an extended interpretation associated with the description of philosophical and cultural worldview principles. Therefore, in the future we will use it as a way of describing the space-time constants of the period under consideration.

During the Renaissance, a number of significant chronotopic changes occur, which are reflected at the level of the microcosm. The popular interpretation assumes the description of the medieval model of time as a linearity defined by eschatological guidelines. This orientation to the future is described through the metaphor of an arrow, whereas a circle corresponds to natural time (circular chronotoping, however, did not completely disappear throughout the existence of agrarian societies). To the "arrow" stretched from the creation of the world to the Last Judgment in the Renaissance, an understanding of God as a driving and creative force is added, and a person realizes himself as the spiritual owner of the historical. At the same time, the personal existential experience of time, which is realized as finite, deepens and becomes more complicated, including giving rise to reflection on personal suffering and death.

Ideas about time and space change under the influence of a number of factors. In accordance with the classical formula of J. Burckhardt, it is possible to identify factors that relate to 1) the "discovery of the world" in travel and social changes and 2) the "discovery of man" in religious and philosophical concepts. Thus, we are talking about both historical phenomena (geographical discoveries, rhythms of everyday life) and events from the "Renaissance world of the imaginary".

The social changes of the High Middle Ages gave rise to new life practices, and with them new chronotopes. The town Hall clock replaces the bell, setting new meanings of time, justified by trade relations [15]. The world is expanding from local habitat zones to spaces measured by days of travel, which have a price in monetary terms. The leading ways of sensory perception are changing: the primacy of hearing is replaced by New European opticocentrism. With the Renaissance, great geographical discoveries, coupled with an interest in antiquity and archaeological finds, contribute to the spatial alignment of the world and correlate themselves with past generations, finding a place in historical time.

On the part of theology, the formation of the belief about purgatory, which was formed in the Middle Ages and dogmatically fixed in the Renaissance, seems significant for aesthetic consciousness [16]. Before the formation of this dogma, the coordinates were set by the chronotope of the earthly world and the heavenly kingdom of eternity; now a "third place" is added to them, where time flows in a special way. The fact that the stay in purgatory is temporary has become the reason for theological treatises devoted to reducing the period of redemption. Against the background of these calculations, an idea of measured and personal time develops. Global spiritual changes begin with the redistribution of spiritual landscapes, their completion and terraforming in the treatises of theologians and art. Purgatory adds a new dimension to medieval space-time, and to the perception of the world — the characteristic of speculation (completion through imagination) and reflexively experienced personal experience. It is significant that the soul in purgatory is turned towards itself, reflecting on its earthly actions, which is a factor in strengthening subjectivism and self-reflection (the establishment of the institute of confession of the laity became an analogue of this spiritual work). As a result, a new image of reality and the subject in it arises.

The emergence of the "third place" is associated with the entry of the Renaissance into the aesthetic dimension. A new "virtual" chronotope is added to the real chronotopes — the space and time of the artwork. Thus, Dante's Divine Comedy, based on theological treatises, in turn, influenced the consolidation of purgatory in the Catholic tradition. Visualization of otherworldly spaces goes hand in hand with the emergence of new art forms. The artistic consequences of the "third place" and the additional coordinate of existence include the appearance of volume, perspective, and the special role of the creative arbitrariness of the artist as a result of the deepening of self-reflection of the Christian.

The revision of the ancient theory of mimesis presupposes a transition from imitation of nature to "poetic inspiration", as suggested in the treatise "Poetics" by Francesco Patrizi. From here you can start counting virtual reality in a broad sense: artistic, creative, media. It is not surprising that a frame appears in the Renaissance [17], both physical (framing the picture) and semantic — an addition, a comment — which is reflected in the writings of Renaissance humanist theorists. In literary creativity, semantic frames and meta-narratives are also formed. Thus, the figures of the picaresque novel described by M. M. Bakhtin appear voluminously from stable social forms.

The type of representation that develops in the Renaissance, M. Yampolsky defines as a "mimesis" of the ghosts of the "soul" [17, p. 7]. This method can also be defined as a mimesis of sensuality and imagination. The subjective experience of the characters is increasingly prominently displayed in art, involving the recipient — in accordance with J. Burke's idea of "creating a community" in the shared experience of pain. The mimesis of sensations and experiences in Renaissance art is often carried out through dramatic images. Many mythological, religious subjects of Renaissance art are associated with suffering, whether it is ancient tragedy, the theme of likening Christ or Mary mourning him. This is how a method of representation is born, aimed at an immanent mode of experience: from symbolic images of the early Middle Ages, there is a transition to subjectivity and affectivity.

Thus, changes in the coordinates of existence, which turn an unmarked experience into knowledge and an event, lead to changes in aesthetic consciousness. Sensory experience begins to be experienced as affective-existential. It can be concluded that pain, as long as it fixes the existential presence, acts as the key to self-reflection and the birth of "my body" (V.Podoroga). In many ways, a person learns about himself through suffering, which is proved by the history of Western European art.

 

Images of pain from the Middle Ages to Modern Times

 

Tracing the history of Western European art, we will find dynamics in the depiction of pain, which confirms the aesthetic mechanism described above. As A. Y. Vetlesen notes, "an individual's attitude to pain does not depend entirely on himself" [5, p. 6] — such an attitude is set by the topography of reality and symbolic design. If in the statin antique chronotope suffering was considered as the result of divine fate, and the focus of the artists' attention was the plot, and not the influence on the viewer, then with the development of Christian culture, the need for "mimesis of feelings" increases.

Fixing attention on didactics or interpreting pain in the heroic mode, the space of myth was relatively indifferent to the affective side. "The feeling of suffering is barely indicated, so that the viewer has no danger of being involved in his experience" [20, p. 196], describes K. D'Orazio kilic with the scene of the punishment of Atlas and Prometheus. This corresponds to the ideals of ancient moral philosophy. Suffering, like excessive pleasure, should be kept at a distance, not allowing feelings and affects to take over. This approach determined the desired behavior of both the experiencer and the observer, prompting him to abandon spontaneous sentimentality for the sake of intellectual freedom.

Entanglement, which was recognized by Greek ethics as an "involuntary passive state" [21, p. 63], puts the subject in a situation where an action is carried out not by himself, but with him; this is an event of sensory experience to which he becomes a witness and participant. In this regard, it is clear how significant changes in the aesthetics of the recipient occur subsequently, with the development of affective inclusion practices. Empathy for the hero, blurring the boundaries between the "I" and the "other", can occur only where the representation of experience is carried out.

As S. S. Averintsev noted, "the Old Testament God is characterized not just by mercy, but by "womb" maternal pity towards those whom he pities" [21, p. 64], as well as manifestations of anger, the evidence of which is full of the Old Testament. In contrast to the ancient world, Christian culture eventually legitimizes the embrace of passion and dissolution in sensual sensation, if it occurs in the aspect of resolution from sin. Christianity introduces the idea of the torment of the incarnate God, who shares the earthly burden with man. Suffering is transcended, becomes mediatic — a guide to the divine [19, p. 20]. It is not for nothing that the image of the suffering Christ was shown in medieval hospitals for consolation, and in Renaissance Italy, convicted criminals were shown tavolettes with a Crucifixion and scenes of the torment of saints [22]. Such a confessional ritual was intended to provide a form of living pain, taking it out of the enclosed space of immanence.

In the era of the first centuries of Christianity, subjective pain was not yet reflected in aesthetics, and the attitude towards it was influenced by the categories of ancient ethics [2]. And subsequently, for a long time, the art of the Middle Ages shunned realism as a method: in miniatures, the faces of sufferers express equanimity. "We can say that the people of antiquity (as if) did not experience pain, did not suffer from it" [19, p. 17]. First of all, the representation of suffering concerned the plot of the Passion of Christ and the martyrdom of saints, but in the early Middle Ages they were devoid of physiology. U. Eco connects the development of the plot of the crucifixion with discussions about the human and divine nature of Christ and the accompanying struggle with heresies. In the early Middle Ages, simplified, schematic images of the Crucifixion were common, which become more detailed over time. There was also a heroic and warlike image of bodily pain, presented in chivalric novels (Wolfram von Eschenbach and others) and images of battles - for example, in the Crusader Bible (1240-1250) — and the plots of hellish torments had a didactic nature and were an edification for the unrepentant.

According to E. Cohen, in the Middle Ages, pain could be a symbol of holiness, illness or sin, a didactic indication to a moral life, a punishment or a way of healing [3]. In all cases, the representation of pain fits into the general principle of medieval incorporeality, and the psychological state of the characters is not the subject of attention. The transcendent mode of pain does not imply fixation on subjective suffering. At the same time, it is within the Christian tradition that the concept of personal experience of pain and its affective description develops. The representation of mental and mental anguish develops in parallel with the representation of the physiology of suffering - together they indicate a growing attention to subjectivity.

In Renaissance cosmology, the supersensible illuminates the earthly world, and the "horizontal" aspects of existence become noteworthy. The story of the Savior's sufferings develops in painting, the images of the Crucifixion are detailed. The new anthropological model provides for personal sympathy for Christ, who, in turn, endures suffering as a person. The same applies to the images of saints: "In the Renaissance and the subsequent period, in an atmosphere of increased interest in the human body and its beauty, there is a tendency to "embellish" physical pain, so that the focus is not so much the torment as the courage with which the Saint endures it" [23, p. 56].

The artistic thought of Quattrocento is characterized by the aestheticization of bodily suffering. Verified compositions inspired by antique models of the figure — these are the signs of such images of the XIV–XV centuries. Under the influence of ancient ideals, figures acquire proportionality and volume, and the attitude to suffering is mediated, among other things, by the principle of calocagacy: wounds and traces of beatings are given schematically, beauty serves as a reflection of moral perfection (for example, St. Sebastian in a fresco by Pietro Perugino in 1458). The mediating role of pain is realized through beauty, which expresses moral fortitude.

With the interpenetration of the upper and lower worlds, a person begins to be presented as a unity of the bodily and spiritual. Ancient theories and the cultural experience of antiquity serve to renew the Christian tradition. It can be said that the artistic culture of the Quattrocento reflects the philosophy of anthropocentric humanism, as it is seen in the life-affirming project "Speeches on the Dignity of Man" by Pico della Mirandola: "You, not constrained by any limits, will define your image by your decision, into whose power I leave you" [24, p. 507].

The apology of sensual pleasures in the philosophy of humanists includes the aversion to suffering in the line of Epicureanism. The maxim, immutable for today's Western ethics, that pain should be evaluated exclusively negatively, required substantial evidence. One of them is undertaken by Cosimo Raimondi, based on the requirement of integrity: "those are also worthy of ridicule who, when considering human happiness, separates the body from the soul and considers happy the one whose body is tormented and tormented" [25, p. 71].

The art of the Renaissance reflects interest in man in his various manifestations, but as the ideals of humanism unfold, the process of grace and harmony give way to first hidden, and then more and more obvious anxiety. Its source is in the deepening of individual experience, which narrows the possibility for transcending the experience. Changes in the chronotope of the epoch and general metaphysical principles determine the features of individual chronotoping, set a personal existential horizon.

Although some signs of affective suffering can be found already in the painting of the Proto-Renaissance (for example, the emotional power of the fresco "Mourning for Christ" by Giotto), as the internal crisis of the harmonious ideals of the Renaissance increases, the subjective mode of pain increasingly comes to the fore in art, depriving the serenity of physicality. Interpretations of martyrdom are becoming more complicated, which is now perceived not only as a path of physical torment, but also as a struggle with passions in the territory of the immanent. If before the Holy Hieronyms looked like worry-free ascetics, then Leonardo da Vinci depicted a hermit in ecstatic self-torture (1480).

Opening the Baroque era, Michelangelo Buonarotti turns more and more clearly not to harmony, but to disharmony and affects. These motives were fully manifested in the fresco of the Sistine Chapel "The Last Judgment" (1536-1541). The artist brought to life the moods that became possible as a result of a global revision of aesthetic values. By the XV century, the concept of a general posthumous trial evolved to the idea of an individual decision of fate, which is conducted over a particular soul at the moment of death, replacing the collective eschatological drama [26]. The restless intensity of the fresco, its emotional strength and physiology set fundamentally new interpretations of sensuality, after which a return to the ideals of the Quattrocento was impossible. "The figures created by Michelangelo became models for all future generations of artists, since he managed to achieve an unprecedented intensity of expression of suffering until then" [20, p. 218].

Significant for the aesthetics of pain is the discovery in 1506 on the Esquiline Hill in Rome of the sculptural group "Laocoon and his sons". Knowing about the statue from the writings of Pliny, Renaissance intellectuals expected to see a work full of harmonious beauty, but they found figures bent in suffering. The group is a Hellenistic work of rare expressive power, resonating with the revision of the harmonic principles of the XV century. The way the find coincided with the artistic trends of the era became a reason for doubts about its authenticity [27]. Subsequently, for the aesthetics of Romanticism, "Laocoon" became an occasion for reflection on the nature of sensuality and reflections on the foundations of Western culture [28].

The main Christian plot — the sufferings of Christ - also acquires a new dramatic sound. First, the paintings reflect the life of the spirit: "Crucifixion" of 1460 by Piero della Francesca, "Mystical Crucifixion" by Botticelli, written under the influence of Savonarola's sermons in the late 1490s - early 1500s. However, at the beginning of the XVI century, Matthias Grunewald created the Isenheim altar with frightening details of the Crucifixion scene, and Hans Holbein Jr. painted the dead body of Christ, seen from inside the burial grotto. The representation of vulnerable physicality in the main religious plots reinforces the existential experience of torment.

According to F.According to Ariez, by the time of the Quattrocento, the concept of "one's own death" (la mort de soi) was being formed, which after a while was reflected in art. In individual death, there is "the discovery of the individual, awareness at the hour of death or in the thought of death of his own identity, personal history, both in this world and in the other world" [26, p. 232]. The affective experience of pain, as well as the growing popularity of the topic of physical decay, understood at a new personal level of "one's body", mark the Renaissance crisis. "The images of the last judgment replace the physical fact of death" [26, p. 253]. Arjes states that despite the impoverishment of faith in eternal life, death does not disappear anywhere, generating macabre images in culture.

In Baroque art, faces distorted by torment are increasingly appearing in art — Caravaggio's "Medusa Gorgon", Giovanni Bernini's "Cursed Soul". The inner experience is expressed in unfiltered horror and screaming. It is important, however, that here we are talking about mythological monsters and sinners, but not about saints — stoic-Christian constants of pain representation continue to exist in culture and make themselves felt to this day.

Also, in the enlightened medical discourse, the body is objectified — in the anatomical engraving, suffering seems inappropriate [19]. It was during the Enlightenment that physical pain appeared in the language of culture. However, taking shape as a concept, pain turns from a means (redemption, ecstasy, feat) into a bare fact. According to Descartes, existence is constituted only through a cogito, a cognitive faculty detached from impotent extended matter. The same Cartesian division into body and spirit legitimizes the symbolic representation of mental suffering — images of "dreams of reason" and madness, as in the frescoes of Goya. The subject seems to disintegrate into engravings with separated bodies and gloomy images of the House of the Deaf, losing unity.

 

Conclusion

 

The study of pain images from the Middle Ages to the sunset of the Renaissance allows us to conclude about the roots of the inner mode of experience, which is key for today's subject. Long before the philosophical reflection of Modern times, this immanence was formed within the Christian tradition and reflected in painting. The modern concept of pain is laid in the Renaissance, on the territory of art: not yet described in the language of Enlightenment, immanent pain already existed in the paintings of da Vinci and Michelangelo. Having barely reached the harmonic ideal of the Quattrocento, the representation of suffering shifts to baroque inner drama.

The changes were the result of increased subjectivism caused by a paradigm shift at the level of non-sexual forms of sensuality. The dynamics of the culture of pain exists in line with the general aesthetic mechanism of the Renaissance: with the change of the basic coordinates of being (spatio-temporal vision of the world), the image of reality and the person in it changes. The understanding of pain laid down as a result of the Renaissance revaluation of sensuality determines the subsequent representation of suffering and its cultural vision, which has recently (in historical perspective) pore revisits affective-somatic "turns".

The ambivalence of pain, which is much talked about in modern research about it — its position between phenomenal inexpressibility and an indifferent sign that only refers to experience — is also determined by the historical development of sensuality. On the one hand, a person, as a "closed monad", is left alone with pain. This situation was the result of the New European immanentization of experience and objectification of the suffering body. On the other hand, the ways of rethinking the situation may be rooted in historical experience. Examples of pain transcending, aestheticization (which had a moral meaning), its separation from others open the way to overcoming it through the return of the intermediary role, through the "community" and the reduction of the gap between the "I" and the "other" in compassion.

 

 

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The subject of the study of the article "The representation of pain and the metamorphosis of aesthetics from the Middle Ages to Modern Times" is the change in human self-awareness and self-representation that occurred in the late Middle Ages. The author of the article focuses on the awareness and expression of pain in various cultural practices as not a biological and bodily, but an existential and aesthetic experience. The hypothesis of the work is the assumption that the transformation of the self-perception of the self, which can be traced through the textual and visual representation of pain, was based on the changes taking place in European culture during the transition from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. The research methodology is based on historical analysis, which makes it possible to detect the connection of changes in the representation of pain with the socio-cultural situation in which this representation occurs. The culture of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are taken as milestones of different attitudes to pain. The author analyzes philosophical and artistic texts containing descriptions of pain of various etymologies (both physical and mental), and also emphasizes the changes taking place in the visualization of pain in sculpture and painting. The author does not specifically specify the methodology used to analyze the works in order to identify their relationship to pain. And if the use of hermeneutical methodology is obvious in the analysis of texts, then the methodology of analyzing visual sources remains not obvious. In modern humanities, visual research is becoming one of the priorities and the underdevelopment of the methodology of analysis, including for philosophical conclusions, is a brake on their transition to a new qualitative level. Unfortunately, the author of the article also discovers this methodological gap. The study of the visual image, and even more so its analysis, which will allow us to draw conclusions about the ideological features of its creators, requires further study. The relevance of the study can be determined by two points. Firstly, the problem of understanding the place of pain in culture is quite new for the domestic humanitarian discourse, and, at the same time, it is important for the transition of anthropological research to a higher level. Secondly, as the author of the article correctly notes, "the aesthetic dynamics of Renaissance Europe partly resembles the current cultural situation," which can be described as a change in ideological paradigms, "changes in coordinate systems that order reality." Therefore, familiarity with the experience of transforming the self-perception of a Renaissance person contributes to a better understanding of the ideological situation of "fluid modernity". The scientific novelty is connected with the original formulation of the problem, which refracts the study of the attitude to pain in European culture from a double perspective – from the perspective of its dynamics and connection with socio-cultural changes in European society. The statement about the transformation of "pain" as an existential human condition into "suffering" as an aesthetic phenomenon looks interesting and quite new. Style, structure, content. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the structure of the article is presented in three parts, which consider the theoretical, methodological and factual aspects of the stated topic. In the first part, "Approaches to pain in humanitarian studies," the author identifies the main approaches to pain in modern research and substantiates its importance for understanding the evolution of Renaissance aesthetics. The second, "Images of pain from the Middle Ages to the New Age," examines the causes of the emergence of a new representation of pain, the main one being a change in sensuality. The third part, "Changing forms of sensuality and the representation of subjective experience," provides examples of how the immanentization of experience has been reflected in artistic creativity. With regard to the last part, I would like to make a comment, which, perhaps, in the future will allow the author to correct the work on the topic. According to the author, the analyzed changes in the representation of pain "were the result of increased subjectivism caused by a paradigm shift at the level of basic forms of sensuality. The dynamics of the culture of pain exists in line with the general aesthetic mechanism of the Renaissance: with a change in the basic coordinates of being (spatio-temporal vision of the world), the image of reality and the person in it changes." And this statement is beyond doubt, however, the changes observed in Renaissance art are also associated with a change in attitude towards the image as such, an artistic image that begins to distance itself from both the creator and the viewer. It is in the art of Renaissance that an image (primarily a visual image) is formed as an independent reality, not depicting something former or described, but a reality created by the creator, which later has an independent existence (see for example. Mondzain M.-J. Image, icone, economie: Les sources byzantines de l'imaginaire contempo- rain. P.: Seuil, 1996. 183 p., or De Man P. Slepota i prozrenie: Stat'i o ritorike sovremennoj kritiki [Blindness and Insight: Articles on the Rhetorical of Contemporary Criticism). The peculiarities of the relationship with this way are considered, for example, by Merleau-Ponty M. in the work "The Eye and the Spirit". The article combines a scientific style of presentation and accessibility, ease of reading. I would like to note the correctness of the author's work with the categorical apparatus, the logic and reasonableness of the research results. The bibliography is represented by 28 titles, including domestic and foreign studies of the problem, classic works on the topic of study. As a suggestion, I would like to point out a number of works devoted to the study of the image as such, which might be of interest to the author and the reader. This is, first of all, the first comprehensive study of the image of Boulding K. E. The Image: knowledge in life and society. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. 1956., as well as articles by T. Mitchell - Mitchell W. J. T. Showing seeing: a critique of visual culture // Journal of Visual Culture. 2002. Vol. 1. No. 2. P. 165-181., which drew attention to the polysemanticism of visual images that can be "read" in different ways in different time and cultural contexts, Keith Moxey - Moxey K. Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn // Journal of Visual Culture. 2008. Vol. 7(2) P. 131-146., developing a theory of the iconic nature of the visual image and various ways of interpreting it. P. Bourdieu - Bourdieu P. The Cult of Unity and Cultivated Differences // Bourdieu P. Photography: A Middle-brow Art. Oxford: Polity Press, 1998. pp. 13-31.; and Griselda Pollock - Pollock G., Florence P. Looking Back to the Future: Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 2001. 203 p., showing the need to include visual research in social theory and the general principles of such research. Appealing to opponents is the strong point of the article. The author presents a wide range of opinions on the issue under discussion, from the classics - E. Burke, I. Kant, I. I. Winkelman, G. E. Lessing, to modern researchers of pain as a cultural phenomenon - E. Scarry, A. Vetlesen, R. Schleifer, R. Ray, H. Moscoso, G. Haidarov, J. Perkins, E. Cohen, J.. Burka et al . Conclusions, the interest of the readership. The author concludes that "the modern concept of pain is laid down in the Renaissance," not only in philosophical treatises, but also in works of visual art – "in the paintings of da Vinci and Michelangelo." The author's conclusion is beyond doubt that "the dynamics of the culture of pain exists in line with the general aesthetic mechanism of the Renaissance: with a change in the basic coordinates of being (spatio-temporal vision of the world), the image of reality and the person in it changes." However, it is important to distinguish between the reflection of pain occurring in the texts of the Renaissance and the visual image of pain present in painting and sculpture, despite the fact that the very attitude to pain and suffering is certainly unified, and initiated by the worldwide transformations of culture. The author intuitively feels the difference in understanding and depicting pain, but does not bring this distinction to a clear verbalization. The article is of undoubted scientific importance and will be of interest to a wide range of interested readers.