ABSTRACT
This chapter explores aspects of Pico's Neoplatonism, particularly his understanding of Platonic exegesis. His most interesting works are a seven-part treatise on the six days of the Mosaic creation, the Latin Heptaplus, written and published in 1489 and dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, and a youthful endeavor and his first work, the Italian Commento. Pico's Heptaplus may first strike one, for all its boldness, as an essentially medieval work in which the theological concerns take precedence over a concern with the recalcitrant variety of the physical world, though this is very much the theme of the first exposition. Furthermore, like other medieval and indeed ancient texts, and like Pico's own Commento, have seen, its central engagement is with another authoritative text, in this case the Bible's opening verses. Pico performs a sleight of hand by attributing Mind's Saturnian regard upward to its act, its Saturnian regard self-ward to its act and potency, and its Jovian regard downward to its potency.
