Art, Society, and The Bouguer Principle

Art, Society, and the Bouguer Principle
Author(s): Michael Baxandall

Source: Representations, No. 12 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 32-43
Published by: University of California Press
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20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
of creativityinto motheringa textwould harm the child. On these matters,see the

excellentessay by Susan Rubin Suleiman, "Writingand Motherhood,"in ShirleyN.
Garner,Claire Kahane, and Madelon Sprengnether,eds., TheM(other)Tongue:Essays
Interpretation
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1985), 352 -77.
Psychoanalytic
in Feminist
ed. E. Reaume and E de Caussade,
Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, Oeuvrescompletes,
6 vols. (Paris, 1873-92), 1:122, 4:15-27.
"Recitde la Maizon et originedes des Gouttes,"Archivesd'Etat de Geneve, fol. 19'.
ed. Jean Marchand
historica
de Beuther,
Le Livrede Raison de Montaignesur l'Ephemeris
(Paris, 1948); Montaigne,Essais,book 1, chap. 35, 221.
Ibid., book 2, chap. 8, 382.
On incestas a sin againstcharity,see AugustineTheCityofGod 15.16; Emond Auger,
de mariage,book 2 (Paris, 1572), fol.38r; Davis, "Ghosts,Kin
Discoursdu saintsacrement
and Progeny,"100-103.
Montaigne,Essais,book 2, chap. 8, 383.
On, Montaigne'sconsideringrepentingof his imaginarydonation to his imaginary
sons, see ibid.,372. On the law forthe revocationof donationsbecause of ingratitude,
see Ricard,Donations,vol. 1, part 3, chap. 6. I discuss the general question of books
as giftsin Natalie Zemon Davis, "Beyond the Market: Books as Giftsin Sixteenth5th ser.,33 (1983): 69-88.
oftheRoyalHistoricalSociety,
CenturyFrance,"Transactions
Steven Rendell shows how Montaigne'suse of the metaphorof "mortgaging"his text
in his essay "De la vanite" (book 2, chap. 9) makes it impossible for the author to
reclaimhis textbeforehe dies; "MontaigneUnder theSign ofFama,"YaleFrenchStudies
66 (1984): 156-58.
Compagnon, Nous Michelde Montaigne,215ff.
MICHAEL
BAXANDALL
Art,Society,
and the BouguerPrinciple
THIS
PAPER IS REALLY
THE
ACCOUNT
of a failure,an inabilityto
finishsome yearsago an articleI wantedto writeon AmbrogioLorenzetti's

pictureof "Good Government"-thetitleis modern-in thetownhallat Siena.
in action,painted1338-40 [figs.1 and 2],
(The frescoof Good Government
coversone of threeavailablewallsin theCouncilRoomof theNine,whowere
an Aristotelian
the city'schiefmagistrates.
On the othertwowallsare firstly
inprinciple,
whichI shallnotdiscuss,and secondly
allegoryofGood Government
thisbeingtoo
a ruinedfrescoof theallegoryand actionof Bad Government,
and broadly
damaged to make very much of, except iconographically
compositionally.)
Partlybecausein waysI do not have timeto describetherewas in Siena a
of painting,but mainlybecausehere
of socialand politicalutilization
tradition
32
REPRESENTATIONS
was a case of art directlyand explicitlyaddressing society,it seemed to me that

thepictureofferedan opportunityto studythedirectpictorialization,
so to speak,
of social facts.By pictorializationI mean the deploymentof the resourcesof the
medium-the ordering of color,tone, edge, and figure-not just the bare registrationof a subjectmatter.From this,it seemed to me, one mightbe able to get
a betterfoundation for one's view of mediated social meaning in early Renaissance paintinggenerally.
What I am going to say now falls into two parts. The firstlistsbrieflyand
crudely a handful of observationsabout pictorialpeculiaritiesof the painting
that seem to me to demand explanation, and then summarizesthe artisticand
social factswithwhichI hoped to explain them.The second is a commenton the
general problem thatmost discouraged me fromfinishingthe articlein which I
would have done so.
I
1) First,a list of some pictorial peculiarities,the desire to explain
whichis the startingpoint.
One peculiarityis the girlsdancing in the citysquare. They are sometimes
taken to be ordinary lightheartedlate-medievalpeople, on the same level of
realityas thecraftsmenand so on around. This willnotdo. They are anomalously
big in scale. The other people take no notice of them. There is a subtle shiftin
theircolor gamut. Girls of a class to wear this kind of dress did not behave like
thisin Sienese public squares in 1340.
A second peculiarityis the citywall in the center-as has oftenbeen pointed
out, a conspicuous piece of virtuosoforeshortening.But what,quite, is its role
in the structuraltotalityof the picture?
A thirdstrikingthing is the extraordinaryand precocious maturityof the
famous landscape on the right,specificallythe success with which such a vast
affairis articulatedinto one whole.
A fourththingis a component of the landscape-the hills,again famous,in
the background. These seem to have broken rightaway from the more usual
spikymountain formulasof the time. They seem precociouslymodern representationsof a kind of hill one sees oftenenough in Tuscany.
A fifthand general thingis the assertivenessand emphasis withwhich the
twohalves of the pictureare balanced-the foreshortenedwall actingratherlike
the pivoton a pair of scales. Each half is an independent compositionin depth,
but theyworkas a resonantpair. For instance,if one takes the houses of the city
and the hillsof the countrynot fortheirrepresentationalcharacterin depth but
fortheircharacterin the patternon the pictureplane, theyare one of a number
of half rhymesbetweencityand country.
Artor Society:MustWeChoose?
33
i:Ii i~fi
0.4~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There were a number of other peculiaritiesI wanted to explain, but these

willdo representatively
formypresentpurpose. They representtypes.It is from
pictorialpeculiarityone starts.
2) But whenone thinksabout explainingthem,itseemsone cannotgo straight
to the social facts.Initially,one has to place them in an art-historicalway.
The dancing girls,first,have been set in a ratherfragmentarytraditionof
dancing figuresassociated withJustice.There are dancing figuresbeneath Giotto's grisaille figure of Justice in the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua-not quite a
symbolbut a sort of attribute.In Lorenzetti'scitythey representJusticewith
structuraleffect;forJusticetheyact to unifythe centralvisual effectof the city,
withtheirsemi-rounddance and theirbringingin, as it were,of differentparts
of the cityby theirdifferentdirectionsof movementand address. They are a
structurallyinternalizedattribute.(But is it as simpleas that?Could theyalso be
at the heart of a centrifugalorder?)
Secondly,the foreshortenedcitywall belongs in a traditionof displays of
foreshorteningas a token of skill. Later, in the next century,this became the
highlymathematicaland thereforeintellectuallyprestigioussystematicperspectiveconstructionsof painterslike Uccello, stillexhibitionsof skill,particularlyin
foreshortenedviews-but fromclassicalantiquityempiricalforeshortenings
had
been signs of skill.This does not say what its role is here: thatpends.
Thirdly,the landscape. Seen historicallyit is a prodigyof large-scalearticulation. There is a view thatits components-the workingpeasants and so on34
REPRESENTATIONS
be
FIGURES 1 (opposite)
and 2. Ambrogio Lorenzetti,GoodGovernment
in theCityand GoodGovernment
in theCountry1338-40.
Palazzo del Comune, Siena. From George Rowley,
vol. 2 (Princeton,1958), plates 157, 159.
Ambrogio
Lorenzetti,
are drawnfromnorthernbook illumination.I would have argued thattheycome,

rather,out of a nativeTuscan traditionof whatcan be called municipalimageryillustrationsfound in citystatutesor chartersand in personal records of merchants and such (figs.3 and 4). This class of imageryaccounts for the components,but not for theirorganization-which again pends.
Fourthly,the hills. They are awkward to deal with: the picturewas heavily
restoredin 1880, and I suspectthattheydid not originallylook quite as likeearly
Corot landscapes as they do now. But what I would argue here is that, seen
historically,
theyare not "modern" for 1340-it was preciselythe spikycrags that
were that-but, rather,retrospective.In myview theylook back to and develop
the hill typesof such thirteenth-century
Sienese paintersas Guido da Siena (fig.
5). And I wonder what such retrospectionindicates.
Fifthlyand lastly,the emphasis on balance between town and country.An
obvious point to make here, I think,is that the assertivenessof the balance is
partlyexplicable by formatand site. I mean that in the room in Siena one is
never farenough awayfromthe pictureto see the whole simultaneouslystraight
on, as one deceptivelysees it in slides and reproductions.At any moment,any
stance,one sees part of the frescoratherend on and ratherfrombelow. So the
35
assertivenessis partlyexplicable as a device to counterthe conditionsof viewing.

But the motifof balance-which is denied, by the way,in the fresco of Bad
Government-is stillthere,and offersitselffor explanation.
3) Now,when one goes afterthe social factsto matchwiththesefivepictorial
peculiarities,what one findsis certainlynot a set of positivecircumstancesto be
seen as directlyregisteredin them. Aftera respectable amount of reading in
Sienese social historythe facts that seemed to me most to the point were, in
outline,these: the administrationthatcommissionedthe picturefromLorenzetti
was a high-burgessmercantileoligarchy.The personal economic base of these
men was long-distancetrade in manufacturesand commodities,and the banking
operations associated withit. But the conditionsin which theymightgovern to
theiradvantage werecomplex. One factorwas dependence on theskillsand good
will of the city'scraftsmen,who processed commoditiesinto goods mercantile
folktraded in.
Another factorwas the violentlycentrifugaland fissileand factionalnature
of the city'ssocial composition generally.There were threatsfrom the smallcraftsmanclass below and also from noble magnates above. But, as in many
Italian cities,therewas, in addition to strifebetweensocial classes verticallyconsidered, also strifemore horizontallybetweenclans. And Siena had a quite particularfactionalproblem related to the physicallayoutof the city(fig.6)-strife
betweenquartersor terzi,thirds,in whichdifferentclans tended to concentrate.
Then therewas anotherproblem. In the fourteenthcentury,Sienese history
is verymuch a matterof difficulties
withits rural territory.
There was one kind
of problem with subject towns-an aspect of the territoryto which the fresco
referslittle.There was another kind of problem with the peasants, who were
restiveand resistant.It was notjust thatthe city'sfood supplies and tax revenues
were endangered by the latter.Unrest disrupted trade and commerce. Sienese
trade depended partlyon both commoditiesand goods fromthe north passing
throughon the road to Rome and the south. They did not have to pass thatway:
therewereotherpossibleroutes.Rural unrestadded to other,external,economic
shiftsinvolvingthe whole characterof the European textiletrade,in particular,
threatenedthe trade on which mercantileSiena depended.
So the cityhad problems.It would not be surprisingif therewas a tendency
to referback nostalgicallyto the brave old days of the previous century,when
Siena was prosperous and united enough to go out and defeat -herival Florentineson the battlefield-carryingas a totem,by the way,a paintingof the Virgin
Mary,titularqueen of the city,whichacted miraculouslyon events.
4) By now it willbe obvious what sort of line my account of the social facts
related to the pictorialpeculiaritieswanted to follow,and I shall not drag things
out. In caricature,itwould have matchedthe unifyingfunctionofJustice'sdancing girlsin thetidilyround citywithcentrifugaland quartered (or thirded)Siena's
urgentneed for social cohesion in the urban sectorof the state.
36
REPRESENTATIONS
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The foreshortenedcitywall, secondly,lent itselfto expositionas something

multivalent-the attentionis drawn to the centerof balance; the city'strue protectionlies in craftskill (here exemplified);the securityof cityfromcountryis
perhaps a matterof illusion (like thisforeshortening);and so on-an enjoyable
sectionto write.
Then the landscape is articulatedby a sense of territorybeing something
thatproduces food-in the yearthe picturewas startedtherewas a serious grain
shortage-but more particularlysomethingthatboth food supplies for the city
and commerceshould be able to traversein tranquilfashion.The legend on the
scroll of the flyingfigureof Securitas above nearly says this: "Withoutfear let
everyonetravelfreely... ," it begins,and then goes on: "and let each workand
sow the fields."Ten years before the picturewas painted, the upkeep of roads
and bridgeshad been transferredfromthecivilto the militaryauthorityin Siena.
"There is what belongs to peace and how the merchandisegoes secure withthe
greatestsecurityand how men leave it in the woods and how theyreturnforit":
thatis the picturefor the fifteenth-century
criticLorenzo Ghiberti.
How far I would have pressed the matterof the retrospectivehill formula
being resonant with a general nostalgia I am not sure. On the other hand, it
would not have been enough to presentthe balanced relationof townand countryas the matterof demographic fact it was-each side having populations of
the order of 50,000. The dominant motifof balance seems to point less to fact
than to an urgentsocial aspirationfor stability.
I am being a littleunfair on myselfby caricaturingthe intended article in
this way,but not very unfair.Something like this-hedged and qualified and
augmentedwithotherthingsabout the pictureand, of course, documentedupwas what I had in mind. But I did not writeit,and I now want to go on to why.
II
1) There were a number of problems,but again I shall listjust five.
They appeared initiallyas verbal problems,but I came to feel theypointed to a
general conceptual awkwardnesslyingbeneath.
One was the lack of any pictorial indication of whether a depicted social
conditionwas factor aspiration,representationor compensation.There were no
pictorialtags or markerssayingplus or minus,so to speak. To know whethera
depicted conditionwas positiveor negative (or, in what proportions,both) one
had to appeal outside the pictureto writtenrecords of social history.
Another problem was a tendencyfor mytwo terms,Sienese art and Sienese
society,to polarize into very artificialand arid entitiesI did not want to work
with-namely a desocietized art and a de-art-edsociety.I share Stephen Greenblatt'slack of interestin these.
38
REPRESENTATIONS
l-
6. Map of Siena.
From Langton Douglas,
A HistoryofSiena
(London, 1902).
-- - -- - --
...... ........................
....
.A
.... .. ...
.....
.....F
........
.. .-..
. B..
^.........
..l
SIENA.
FIGURE
..".;
hi
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$1
..
*.... .... ......
F.~~-
A... ............Ad
...
............
_..
je.
A third problem was that each time I tried to match a piece of the picture
and a social fact I felt uneasy. There was somethingwrong about anything
approaching a one-to-onerelationbetweenpictorialthingand socialthing.There
seemed somethingmeretriciousabout the way I linkedthem withterms.
Sometimeswiththese linkingtermsI found myself-fourthproblem-prevaricating.The prevaricationtook the formof using termsof relationthatmade
a weak half-claimto some stricterrelation-of causalityor signification
or analogy
or participation,these four particularly-which one was not in a position to
or
uphold. Examples of these four classes of prevaricatingwords were reflect
or followor comeoutof.You havejust heard me using them.
represent
At other times I found myself-fifthproblem-equivocating. The equivocation took the formof uncontrolledword play,shiftingbetweendifferentpossible denotations of a word. For instance,you heard me use the word balance
both of the compositionof the pictureand of a desired social relationbetween
town and country.These are verydifferentreferencesof the word balance,and
what underlies what they have in common is very abstractand not very interArtor Society:MustWeChoose?
39
esting-unless one pursues it into usage of the term contemporarywith the

picture,which puts one into another game.
2) Lyingbeneath these problemsseems to me a terriblysimplefact.It is that
art and societyare analyticalconceptsfromtwo differentkindsof categorization
of human experience. Each is a constructand refersto a system,and the systems
or scienceis withart.
is withsociety
are not as compatibleas, say,economy
There are many differentdefinitionsof "work of art,"but most refer to a
class of physicalobjects and the mental statesassociated with them. There are
various definitionsof "society"too, but most come down to describingit as the
complex of institutionsthroughwhich an individualfindsa relationto a collective.These are not so much differentthingsas systematically
differentregisters
of thinkingabout things,partlythe same things.
The relationof a workof art to a societyis not the relationof part to wholelike the relation of apple to apple tree. It is not the relation of two analogous
systems,like the relation of flowerto tree. It is much more like the relationof,
say,a chemical entitylike carbon to the tree. Clearlycarbon is deeply involvedin
a tree, as part of the input, part of the fabric,and so on. Similarlya tree acts
withand on carbon. But each term takes its meaning frombelonging to a differentset of categorizationsof systems-one being chemical, the other being
biological or botanical. Carbon takes its meaning out of a differencefromand
relationto other chemical concepts-hydrogen and oxygen and so on. "Tree" is
one of a set of classes of a biological system.
Now obviouslyif one discusses Art and Society-or Tree and Carbon-in
general terms one can cope betterwith this kind of conceptual awkwardness,
withoutfallinginto typeor categoryconfusions.What I am sayingis thatwhen
we are dealing withtherelationof complex particulars-a pictureand a societythe underlyingconceptual awkwardnessis liable to lead one into the kinds of
problem I listed fiveofjust now.
In short,"art" and "society"are unhomologous systematicconstructionsput
upon interpenetrating
subject matters.
3) So what do we do? We follow what I shall call the Bouguer principle.
Pierre Bouguer, afterwhom I call it, was the eighteenth-century
scientistwho
firstdeveloped a reasonable means of measuring light,and he seems to me a
paladin of the art of relatingto each other thingsdifficultto relate. His problem
was that,before the development of photoelectricor other physicalmeans of
measuring light,everythinghad to be done by eye and mind-like art history.
sized candles, the mind could
And, given two unequal lights,say two differently
not come to a precise conclusion about the quantitativerelation of one to the
other: itcould not say,"candle A is 27 percentstrongerthan candle B." Bouguer's
elegantlysimple solutionwas to observe that,while the mind could not do that,
it could decide verypreciselyjust when two lightsmatcheach other.So he took
one candle, moved it closer or furtherawayuntilit matchedthe other,measured
40
REPRESENTATIONS
the differencebetween the distances from the eye of the two now matching
candles, and fromthisdifferenceworked out (withthe law of inversesquaresthough thatis no part of the analogy) the relativestrengths.
So, very generallyspeaking, the Bouguer principleis: in the event of difficultyin establishinga relationbetweentwo terms,modifyone of the termstillit
matches the other,but keeping note of what modificationhas been necessary,
since thisis a necessarypart of one's information.
4) This is what we do, I think,but-and that is whyI am puttingthe point
in thisform-we are not alwaysaware thatwe are manipulatinga term,moving
a candle, to get a match.And moreoverwe may move now one candle, now the
other,so thatwe have a kind of double vision.
In one mood we manipulate Societyinto what, for lack of a betterterm, I
shall call Culture. But I should make it clear that I am using Culture not in the
anthropologist'ssense (which seems to come near to embracing Society) but in
the sociologist'ssense: thatis, classically,the skills,values, beliefs,knowledge,and
means of expression of a society.As we all know,the modulationfromsocietyto
cultureis problematicand debatable, and we would differin our viewsabout it,
but at least one can have a view and take a position.And besides it is undeniable
that a societycoincides with a culture. The relation of a culture to a work of
art is relativelystraightforwardto handle because the relation is participative: a whole of which a picture is a part is a culture. We can state relations
decentlyhere.
In the other mood we move the other candle. We close in on those aspects
of art thatcan be considered in the lightof the functioningof institutionsor on
art as institutional.We extractfromthe complex of institutionsthatconstitutes
a societythose thatseem relevantto art. Again, the relationbetweensocietyand
those institutionsseeming to bear on art is participativeand relativelystraightforward.And again, though the relationbetweeninstitutionsand workof art is
debatable, because for instance we may disagree in how far we see the artistas
actingon institutionsas well as being acted on by them,we can have and take a
position.
I had betteremphasize thatwhat this is all about is not subject mattersbut
our own intellectualconstructions.Manyof the same subjectmattersare treatable
in eithermood. Visual skills,forinstance,can be considered eitheras an element
in a culture or as a functionof social institutions.An artist'straininghas both
culturaland institutionalfaces. So have artisticgenres. But we look at the same
thingsin differentways.
What neither mood accommodates is a direct matchingof the form of a
pictureand the formof a society.Some of what I wanted to sayabout Lorenzetti's
picture could be reworked throughone or another of the indirectmoods, but
not all.
5) Finally,perhaps I should spell out the bearing of what I have been saying
41
on the question in our rubric: "Art or society:mustwe choose?" My position is

clearlythatyes,we must-in thatwe mustchoose at least which of the two,the
pictureor the society,we are going to give an account of, since we cannot give
an account of both. "Art" and "society,"I claimed, are unhomologous systematic
constructionsput upon interpenetratingsubject matters."Art" points to a class
of objectsthattake theirmeaning fromtheirstructureand organization;to treat
Lorenzetti'spictureforan unstructuredcollectionof representedobjects would
be to ignore the kinds of organizationthat make it art and the special kinds of
informationart carries."Society,"ifit is to have any effectivemeaning at all, must
also be a concept analyticalof a structureand organization,the systemof interactive institutions-class, kinship,property,economic, political,religious,educational institutions-thatexisted in pre-Black Death Siena. I could not give an
account of Sienese societyexcept by respectingand followingthe pattern the
societalstructureoffered.Withoutthe structure-the complex interrelationsof,
forinstance,economic and class and politicalinstitutions-"society"isjust a sort
of mush of thingsthatare not "art."
But no more can I give an account of Lorenzetti'spictureexcept byfollowing
the promptingof the picture'sstructure,as I apprehend it. If I respect the
structureof one, my address to the other is desultory,astructural,anecdotal,
thisor thatfragment.What the art historiancan deploy
extractingout-of-system
are materialsplucked out of the materialsof social history-"certain materials
from the social realm,"as Natalie Davis put it-not society.And, so far as the
studentof societyis concerned, vice versa.
I do not-pace Tom Crow-find thisa pessimisticconclusion,nor optimistic
either.Obviouslywe willcontinueto make pointsabout worksof art by referring
to extra-artistic
circumstances.The issue is what we are doing when we do this.
A student of societywould just snigger if we told him we were talkingabout
society.
Afterword
Some people tookthispaper as an argumentagainstreferenceto social
matterin art history(or to works of art in social history).I cannot thinkwhy.
What I understood myselfto be arguingwas: 1) "art" and "society"are analytical
constructionsput upon human behavior; 2) the behaviorsdenoted byeach interpenetrate,and each constructiondepends foritscogencyon positinga structure
in the object of study,but 3) the structuresand so the constructionsare not
homologous; 4) this,while fairlyclear and manageable at a high level of generality,causes confusion at the level of explication of complex particulars,so 5)
what we do to get neat matches(Bouguer principle)is to work throughderived
middles between "art" and "society,"namelya) "culture"and b) thatelement in
42
REPRESENTATIONS
or as a functionof institutions;
"art"thatcan be seen as institutional
6) itis helpful
to know this; 7) a quite practical corollaryis that when we set out to give an
account of a particularwe have to choose, as a matterof explanatoryloyalty,
betweena work of art and a society-since, when our account of the one is an
adequate expositoryacknowledgmentof the structurethatgivesit meaning,our
referenceto the other willbe sporadic, fragmenting,and functionallyantistructural.If thebalance of myemphasisand tone constitutedsomethinglikea subtext
(as I have been told theydid), it was, I hope, thatwe mightdo whatwe do rather
betterif we were clearer about what it is we are doing. It was certainlynot that
we ought not to referout froma picture(or a society)to thisor thatothermatter.
That would be absurd. But perhaps misunderstandingarose out of my taking
the conceptof "society,"
whichis powerfully
and specifically
constructive,
seriously.
43

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Art, Society, and the Bouguer Principle

Author(s): Michael Baxandall

of creativityinto motheringa textwould harm the child. On these matters,see the

finishsome yearsago an articleI wantedto writeon AmbrogioLorenzetti's

was a case of art directlyand explicitlyaddressing society,it seemed to me that

There were a number of other peculiaritiesI wanted to explain, but these

are drawnfromnorthernbook illumination.I would have argued thattheycome,

assertivenessis partlyexplicable as a device to counterthe conditionsof viewing.

The foreshortenedcitywall, secondly,lent itselfto expositionas something

*.... .... ......

esting-unless one pursues it into usage of the term contemporarywith the

on the question in our rubric: "Art or society:mustwe choose?" My position is

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