it is next to the "divine" sage48 and the "divine" Caesar49; but the "divine" artist next to them is invisible, he is not visible. The situation is different at the end of the Renaissance. Even during Michelangelo's lifetime, everyone was so accustomed to calling him "divine" that Aretino can already play on this cliché in his notorious letter to Buonarroti of November 1545, where he, after a flood of reproaches and denunciatory innuendos, suddenly concludes conciliatorily: "I only wanted to show you that if you are 'divine' (divino = di vino = 'wine'), then I am not a 'waterman' (d'acqua)."

The ancients composed epigrams in abundance for works of art - only, as a rule, not for the artists themselves. In the "Palatine Anthology" there are 42 epigrams on the "Cow" of Myron and 13 epigrams on "Aphrodite Anadyomene" of Praxiteles - but not a single epigram on Myron or Praxiteles! And now, in the Renaissance, Poliziano himself, the first poet of the Quattrocento, composes an epigram on Giotto's tomb in Saita Maria del Fiore, beginning with the words:

Ille ego sum, per quern pictura extincta revixit...

("I am the one through whom the faded painting came to life"51)

One must feel all the incomparable weight and solemnity of the Latin ille in order to appreciate such a beginning, which rehashes at least two famous beginnings: first, the apocryphal, but at that time attributed to Virgil, lines prefaced by the Aeneid:

Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena

Carmen, et egressus silvis vicina coegi

Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,

Gratum opus agricolis... 52;

во-вторых, начальные слова поэтической автобиографии Овидия:

Ille egoqul fuerim, tenerorum lusor amorum...53

Поэт мог так говорить о себе в античной литературе, но художнику это было "не по чину". Теперь гордое Ille ego произносится от имени художника.

Здесь мы имеем шанс уловить важную деталь: лексический ряд, применяемый с эпохи Ренессанса к художникам, взят из древней практики восхваления поэтов и особенно риторов. (Ритор для античности

356