in deluxe manuscripts of his works. There is one image of Ficino sitting at his desk with his writing instruments working away in silence, presumably on his Platonic Theology.12 Something else is at play, however, in most other manuscript illuminations of Ficino, even when they are manuscripts of his translations of the works of others. He is frequently depicted holding a book, sometimes closed but often open. In the latter case, when the book is open, both Ficino and his book are always portrayed facing the reader, as if inviting him or her to read or converse.13 Moreover, Ficino is frequently shown with a group of persons, almost always ancient Greeks (identified as such by their beards and clothing) and at times with contemporary humanists. He is thus engaged in figural conversation with ancient philosophers and fellow intellectuals. The illuminations inscribe Ficino within a philosophical family.
FIGURE 2. An illuminated portrait of Plato—done by Ficino himself—in the capital initial of Plato’s name in a manuscript owned and copied by Ficino. MS. Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 709, f. 13r.
FIGURE 3. An illuminated portrait of Ficino in the capital initial of Plato’s name in the dedicatory copy of Ficino’s Platonic Theology for Lorenzo de’ Medici. MS. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 83.10. f. 1r.
FIGURE 4. MS. Florence, Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 82.10, ff. 2v–3r.
FIGURE 5. Detail of the illumination of Marsilio Ficino in MS. Florence, Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 82.15, f. 1r.
Whether the manuscript contains the works of only one author or of many, the identification of Ficino’s intellectual vocation remains the same. For instance, in the volume of the Enneads (Figure 4) given to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Plotinus (204/5–70 CE), the author, is shown in an illumination by Attavante degli Attavanti (1452–1525) with numerous other figures (Plotinus is perhaps the figure on the right holding the open book in Figure 4), while Marsilio, the translator and commentator, is in the illuminated initial.14 In another manuscript given to Lorenzo de’ Medici, containing the works of several philosophers and Neoplatonists, one finds an illumination, once more by Attavanti, of only one person: Ficino (Figure 5). Attavanti depicts him facing the reader with an open book. His hand is proportional both to his image in the illumination and to the size of a normal nota bene manicule indication in manuscript margins. It therefore points both to the text of the book in the illumination and to the text of the actual book in which the illumination is drawn: “Synesius, Psellus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, and other Platonists long ago came into your most distinguished household, and saluted your ingenious sons, and indeed until now they seem to have acted honorably. Because they departed without saluting you, however, they also seem to have acted imprudently and to have left unhappy. Therefore, recognizing at some time at last their imprudence they are happier, and they now look upon your threshold once more to become acquainted with the father, and in turn to be acknowledged as children together with the father.”15 His hand identifies Ficino as an interpreter, and it points directly to “father,” “patrem,” the central link in the letter. More than a mere statement about patronage, the dedicatory letter’s theme weaves together patronage and philosophy; the Medici with the Platonic family. In 1489 Ficino had indeed dedicated a volume containing the works of Iamblichus (c. 240–c. 325 CE), Synesius (c. 373–c. 414 CE), Porphyry (234–c. 305 CE), and Proclus (412–85 CE) to Lorenzo’s son Giovanni (1475–1521), who later became Pope Leo X, when the thirteen-year-old boy was elevated to the position of cardinal. Later, Ficino writes to Lorenzo that Priscianus Lydus (fl. sixth century CE) and Theophrastus (c. 371–c. 287 BCE) join their company. These philosophers might have saluted Lorenzo’s son in the previous edition dedicated to Giovanni, but now they return to the father Lorenzo. Lorenzo, however, is not the only father in the letter. Ficino intertwines Neoplatonic philosophy into the rhetoric of his dedicatory letter. He is playing with Plotinus’s similes that the descent of souls from their source in a higher hypo stasis is like individuals proceeding out of a palace, and like children taken from their father who are ignorant of their parent.16 With the new edition dedicated to Lorenzo these philosophers return to their father and become happy, like souls returning to their divine fatherland. The whole structure of the letter follows the Neoplatonic metaphysical triad of procession, return, and remaining—an order that, as will be seen in this book, Ficino often employs.
Ficino continues to pile layers of meaning into the imagery. Punning on books (liber, -bri) and children (liber, -beri), he further identifies himself, in the manner intended by Plato in the Phaedrus, as the father of these books and/or philosophers. Ficino asks that they be allowed to cross the threshold to Lorenzo’s house and be recognized as legitimate members of the Medici household. The metaphor of the threshold and the home is closely related to the idea of a family in the construction of an intellectual identity. Ficino describes an economy of philosophers, delineating who is in the philosophical family and (implicitly) who is not.17 When he writes about books as people in this manner he is employing a prosopopoeic device that allows him either to make ancient works speak to contemporary audiences or to place them in conversation with one another. There is a dialogic quality to this that is evident in the letter’s closing sentence: “Farewell our greatest patron before all others, and happily hear so many philosophers conversing with you.”18 Instead of being a symbol meant only for private study, Ficino’s nota bene manicule in the margins inscribes his work with dialogic traits.
Ficino’s philosophical identity had a centripetal force to it that often placed him at the center of intellectual communities. Yet the same conversations and writings also held a centrifugal force that carried the danger of alienating him from other communities. Around the beginning of 1487 Ficino wrote a letter to Marco Barbo (1420–91), the Venetian cardinal of San Marco who, previously in his ecclesiastical career, had been asked in 1468 by his distant cousin Pope Paul II to investigate the Roman Academy of Pomponio Leto (1425–98), Filippo Buonaccorsi (1437–69), and Bartolomeo Platina (1421–81) concerning allegations of (among other things) conspiracy against the pope, heresy, and paganism.19 It appears that Cardinal Barbo helped secure the release of some of the supposed conspirators and even gained a reputation for being a patron of humanists. The cardinal was the acquaintance of such learned men as Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64), Theodore Gaza (1400–75), and Platina, and his secretary Antonio Calderini (d. 1494) was a friend of Ficino. Ficino writes to the cardinal: “Pythagoras and Plato composed a precious treasure vault of divine mysteries so great that they judged that it should be entrusted (commendandum) not to brittle sheets of paper but to eternal minds, and indeed in those minds deserving eternity. Thus they did not write down their greatest mysteries about the divine but taught them orally. I also recommend myself (commendatum) to you to such an extent that it is not so much through trifling letters as through the serious minds and conversations of friends that I daily commend (commendem) myself to you.”20 In the letter, Ficino puns when asking for a recommendation by comparing it to the trust (commendatus) that Pythagoras and Plato placed in oral communication over the written word. In the late 1480s Ficino’s work on Plato and the Neoplatonists had gained the attention of Rome. Writing to Cardinal Barbo and Calderini, Ficino was probably trying to reach out for support and patronage from the cardinal with the hope of mitigating any ecclesiastical suspicion toward his Platonic projects. The third book of his De vita might have sparked this specific controversy, since his Neoplatonic explanations for how one can draw influences from the heavens and achieve union with the divine had gained unfavorable scrutiny.21 As the present book explains, Ficino challenged orthodoxy in two ways in particular. First,
