The journey of the soul and the three graces in the Florentine Renaissance
The journey of the soul and the three graces in the Florentine Renaissance
Based on a talk and seminar shared with a private audience at Anywhere Out of the World bookshop, Manchester, UK, on 14th March 2024.
The significance of triads in Platonic thought
Triads are the first thinkable structure. A simple structure with a minimum amount of complexity allows you to see things more clearly. All rational thoughts are, at a minimum, threefold. E.g. the door is red (subject, connector, predicate). The basis of the ontological world — the world of Being — is the triad. Consider that a single triad, however limited in range, can serve as a cipher for the universe, because the divine trinity has left its traces on every part of creation.
“Whichever among these you assume, it is the same with the others, because all of them are in each other, and are rooted in the One.”
— Proclus, Elements of Theology, Proposition 67.
Before Being emerges there is the first two emanations from God: the bound and the infinite. Two principles — like boundary and infinity — require something that holds them in common so they can mix and mingle and create something new. And that initial something is an affinity for the First Principle or the One. In a Pythagorean hymn this tetrad of bound, infinite, mixed is referred to as the mother of all things.
Pythagorean Hymn:
“Divine number proceeds from the retreats of the undecaying monad, till it arrives at the divine tetrad which produced the mother of all things, the universal recipient, venerable, circularly investing all things with bound, immovable and unwearied and which is denominated the sacred decad, both by the immortal gods and earthborn men.”
According to the Platonic tradition: "All multitude participates in a certain respect of the One."
In every Being there's a mixture of bound and infinite. What causes that mixture is the desirability of the One. That's why desire or eros is foundational to Platonic metaphysics. Desire is a condition of existence. Two opposites desire to come back to one thing. We see this at the material level with the desirability of the man/woman partnership and we see it in the evolution of matter toward spirit, or the desire for matter to be spiritualised.
The three graces and the soul’s journey
The sun moves down and then back up, it ascends and descends. The soul is analogous to the sun, as it too is at the centre of our world and it also has periods of flourishing and diminishing.
The Good bestows its bounty on lower beings through a kind of overflowing or emanation, which produces a vivifying rapture or conversion, whereby lower beings are drawn back into heaven and rejoin the Gods. This process can be summarized as: Procession — conversion/rapture — return.
Florentine Platonists Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola often used the three graces as an exemplary triad, an archetype on which other triads of Neoplatonism appeared to be modelled because every triad is governed by procession, rapture and return. It is an axiom of Platonic Theology that every god exerts his power in a triadic rhythm.
“He that understands profoundly and clearly how the unity of Venus is unfolded in the trinity of the Graces, and the unit of Necessity in the trinity of the Fates, and the unity of Saturn in the trinity of Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, knows the proper way of proceeding in Orphic theology.”
— Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones
Venus, as the goddess of Beauty and Love, defines the universal system of exchange by which divine grace is circulated and the Graces represent the triadic rhythm of this dance.
The medal of Pico della Mirandola includes a design of the three graces and a Florentine Platonist triad that is particularly pertinent to the journey of the soul: that of Amor, Pulchritudo, Voluptas; aka, Love, Beauty and Bliss. Voluptas is sometimes translated as 'delight' or 'pleasure' but I prefer 'bliss'.
Marsilio Ficino, in Speech two of Chapter two of his work De Amore on Plato's Symposium, describes how beauty is a divine aspect which has created love within all things. There is a kind of unending attraction between God and the cosmos.
“Thus the circle from God to the cosmos is a single circle but is given three names. Beginning from God and attracting, it is called Beauty; passing into the cosmos and drawing it, it is called Love; returning to the Author, to whom it reconnects His work, it is called Bliss. Love, therefore, arising from Beauty, ends in Bliss.”
— Marsilio Ficino, De Amore
Beauty issues from The Absolute as a kind of beacon, love enters into the world when it moves to rapture and the third returns to its maker in a state of bliss. Thus, Mirandola's graces convey the Neoplatonic triad of procession, conversion and return.
Eros inspired by Beauty propels the soul’s ascent
How is this relevant to the journey of the soul? The triad of Pulchritudo, Amor, and Voluptas — which serves as a cipher for the procession, conversion and return of all things from/toward the Good — is described in Plato's Phaedrus.
“He who has been recently initiated, and who formerly was a spectator of many blessed visions, when he beholds some deform countenance, elegantly imitative of beauty, or some incorporeal idea, at first indeed he is struck with horror, and feels something of that terror which formerly invaded him; but, from an after survey, he venerates it as a God: and if it was not for the dread of being thought vehemently insane, he would sacrifice to his beloved, as to a statue and a God.”
— Plato, The Phaedrus, 251a
A recent initiate and former spectator of many blessed visions sees a beautiful countenance and is inspired toward love. At first, "becoming pierced on all sides in a circle" he is agitated with fury and tormented, experiencing pain and sorrow which is surely associated with the descent of the soul into matter.
He comes to realize that he is in love. That love ultimately inspires both lover and beloved toward perfection.
Quotations in inverted commas are taken from Plato’s The Phaedrus, 253b-c:
Lovers of each of the Gods seek a beloved who is similarly inspired. Once they have obtained their beloved by “imitation, persuasion and elegant manners, they endeavour by all means to lead their beloved to the pursuits and idea of their peculiar God”. Not by “envy and illiberal malevolence” but by “endeavouring to conduct them to a perfect similitude to the God whom they particularly adore.”
The lover loves someone who is like 'their presiding God', the God they most adore, and becomes more pious through investigating and finding the nature of their deity through proximity of the beloved. In turn, the beloved comes to resemble the beloved's God more through gentle manners/persuasion/inspiration from the lover. It's a relationship which mutually ennobles and inspires them to convert toward the Good first and divinizes them ultimately.
The divine resemblance of the beloved is significant to this process because similitude indicates proximity. We are like that which we are close to. The first emanations from God are Gods; the highest Beings. The likeness of the beloved to a God suggests the 'spiritualization of matter' is already occurring in the case of the beloved. The attraction from lover to beloved indicates similitude. Ergo, both lover and beloved are on the 'return' arch of procession, rapture and return.
A harmony between paradoxes: La Primavera and navigating the non-dual
The wholehearted acceptance of desire and love between two individuals in the phenomenal world as a force that inspires one toward divine perfection also touches the heart of Platonic metaphysic's wholehearted acceptance of paradoxes.
The beginning of things is Super Real — everything else is illusory — everything is created by the Good — the Good is in all things — but all we know through sense perception is scattered images — but the phenomenal world is not an illusion exactly — this world itself partakes in the Good and is something to love.
Platonic philosophy requires we maintain a non-dualist approach at all stages. The soul always retains its individuality while participating in the Good. The mother isn't a soul we'll return to but rather a big sister whose Being we partake in. Platonic philosophy requires that we hold two incompatible imperatives that are equally incompatible and equally imperative within our conception of each Idea; which is the nature of a paradox. (I could do a whole other seminar on paradoxes in Renaissance art and Platonic philosophy)
“To turn away from the world with the detachment of Mercury, to re-enter the world with the impetuosity of Zephyr, these are the two complementary forces of love, of which Venus is the guardian and Cupid the agent: ‘Reason the card, but passion is the gale’… What descends to the Earth as the breath of passion returns to heaven in the spirit of contemplation.”
— Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
The entire composition of La Primavera spells out the three phases of the Neoplatonic dialectic: emanatio — conversio — remeatio; that is, 'procession' in the descent from Zephyr to Flora, 'conversion' in the dance of the Graces, and 'reascent' in the figure of Mercury.
Beyond particulars to Ideas: transcending physicality in Platonic love
However, there is still a rejection of physicality within Platonic love, as we know from its usage in contemporary English. Chastity is a requirement for love to transcend the love of a particular beauty and blossom to a love of Beauty itself — that is, Beauty as a Real Being, a God, a divine emanation and Idea.
“If, therefore, the better parts of the dianoetic power obtaining the victory lead the lovers to an orderly and philosophic mode of conduct, then they pass through the present life with felicity and concord, subduing themselves, and adorned with modest manners; the vicious part of the soul being in subjection, and the virtuous, free. But, arriving at the end of the present life, they become winged and light, in consequence of being victors in one of the truly Olympic contests; a greater good than which, neither human temperance, nor divine fury, can extend to man.”
— Plato, The Phaedrus, 256b.
The medal of Giovanna degli Albizzi, the wife of the gifted Lorenzo Tornabuoni in response to Mirandola, indicates perhaps the most philosophic court culture ever known. Like troubadours, the Platonic lovers of the Florentine Medici court were expected to choose an ideal lady, to whom they could address amorous courtesies in emblematic language. The lady would return the honor by accepting the emblem of her Platonic suitor and adapting it to her own use.
The lady’s response to a male suitor’s desire can only be Castitas — Pulchritudo — Amor (Chastity — Beauty — Love). Not only does this preserve her honour, but it also demonstrates a depth of philosophic knowledge: beauty and bliss can only coincide as transcendent graces when united by the rapture of love and projected into the beyond.
Ultimately, the Platonic love relationship results in a return to fly the starry course in a winged chariot, re-joining the Gods in their procession. That return will be an experience of divine bliss, which is where knowledge terminates.
As the structure of the whole is repeated in every part, the vital significance of Love in the soul's journey from procession to return indicates Love is itself integral to the entire divine play. Interestingly, Voluptas or bliss is the child of Cupid and Psyche (representations of eros and soul) in Apuleius' tale from The Golden Ass.
Works cited
The Phaedrus, Thomas Taylor translation, The Works of Plato III from The Prometheus Trust’s Thomas Taylor series
Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, Edgar Wind
Beyond the Shadows, Tim Addey, A Prometheus Trust Students’ Edition
On the Nature of Love, Marsilio Ficino
On the Dignity of Man, Pico della Mirandola
Fantastic overview - thanks so much for this!
As always, I'm inspired by your writing. Now the Three Graces dance into view.