Research: Franciscanism and Art: The Realistic-Creatural Kunstwollen.
In broad terms, my research intends to elucidate the essential contribution that Franciscanism—spanning the late Middle Ages and the Humanistic era—offered to modernity on an artistic level, specifically within its figurative, literary, and dramatic expressions. It follows that, to achieve a theoretically satisfactory determination of this premise, one must begin with Francis of Assisi himself. He did not philosophize; he lived. He cast aside the intellectual deepening of doctrine, which abstracts the scholar from the world, in order to "mingle" with it. It is precisely here that the extraordinary nature of Francis is found: in his capacity to engender a true "metanoia"—a reversal of values consisting in the dethroning of the "nous" in favor of "operari", of acting according to agape, and of approaching all creatures in an affective way. Once the emotional significance characterizing Francis’s Christocentric existence has been examined, my work subsequently proposes to clarify, from both a theoretical and art-historical perspective, the disruptive novitates produced by the affective "creaturalism" operating within the Franciscan sphere. On a strictly philosophical level, the Franciscan sensibility—which sacralizes existence—leads to two decisive turning points for late-medieval reflection. The first consists in the draining of the metaphysical-apophatic currents functional to the "allegorical pansemiosis" which, beginning with the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, had represented the primary medieval hermeneutic background of existence. This was shattered by Bonaventure and replaced by a creatural-figural conception of reality, profoundly different from that of Neoplatonic mysticism. The second point lies in conferring, for the first time, full dignitas veritatis to poietic creation guided by affectus, thereby undermining the framework of art’s subordination to religion that had prevailed throughout the Middle Ages from Augustine to Aquinas—with the sole, peculiar exception of the Libri Carolini. Finally, this research intends to conduct an in-depth investigation into the artistic outcomes (from the Meditationes Vitae Christi to Dante’s Commedia; from the dramatic representations of "mysteries" to Giotto's figurative constellation) deriving from this unprecedented Franciscan creatural feeling. The aim is to demonstrate how decisive this was—though many interpreters have failed to notice—for the genesis of Humanistic-Renaissance culture. In conclusion, the primary contribution this research attempts to offer to the debate regarding the pre-modern origins of aesthetics consists in showing how the conceptual elements that would later forge modern aesthetics—such as imagination and creativity, far from being products of man's emancipation from Christianity, can instead be considered outcomes of Christianity's intrinsic tendency toward secularization.
Keywords: Franciscanism, Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, creaturalism, affectus, figura, art, religion, aesthetics, Christianity, secularization.