ABSTRACT
Panofsky’s ‘friendship’ with Ficino was not ultimately motivated by his insatiable quest for sources and for iconological programs; it was legitimated, on a much deeper level, by a striking analogy in mid-Quattrocento Florence between the artistic mind and the philosophical mind. Panofsky, who is currently associated with the Neoplatonic hypothesis, saw the diffracted influence of Ficino in the artistic environment of the Renaissance in terms of the metaliteral diffusion of his Platonism and Plotinism as “a vanishing point.” In developing stylistic objections, Lightbown extended, considerably more than Dempsey, the range of his critics: Neoplatonism was now confined to metaphysics, and since metaphysics is unrepresentable, its aniconic character was transferred onto Ficino’s philosophy. In response to the capital question of Ficino’s ignorance of “the works of human hands,” postulated by Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, dated 10 April 1490. Ficino re-directed the rays of divine beauty onto humanity, and his attitude stands in contradiction with outdated dualities like soul versus body.
