Bernard Salomon's illustrations to Petrarch's Trionfi (7)

continued from Part VI

The theme of "Creation" in Petrarch’s

"Triumph of Eternity"

*

Eternity as a Second Creation

In his "Triumph of Eternity" Petrarch, of course, does not mention the Trinity; but the theme of the conquest over time is rendered in terms that evoke the first Creation. Petrarch’s is a second creation, however, a creation at the end of time, that is, an event coincident with the victory of Eternity over Time:

... veder me parve un mondo
novo, in etate immobile et eterna,
e ‘l sole e tutto ‘l ciel disfar a tondo
con le sue stelle, ancor la terra e ‘l mare,
e rifarne un più giocondo.

NOTE: Ed. cit., p. 95, lines 20-24.

(... I at last beheld
A world made new and changeless and eternal.
I saw the sun, the heavens, and the stars
And land and sea unmade, and made again
More beauteous and more joyous than before.)

NOTE: Wilkins, trans., ed. cit., p. 108.

The idea of a second creation at the end of time is not unusual to the Christian scheme of redemption, but turning to the Heptaplus again we see that Pico gives the theme a neo-Platonic turn. His analysis recalls Petrarch in the "Triumph of Eternity" and, in some ways, suggests the kind of imagery found in Bernard Salomon’s woodcut for the episode.

Felicity I define as the return of each thing to its beginning. For felicity is the highest good, and the highest good is that what all things seek; what all things, however, seek is that which is the beginning of all things ... Therefore the end of all things is the same as the beginning of all: one God, omnipotent and blessed ...

NOTE: Heptaplus. Bk. 7, Proem. (Library of Liberal Arts edition, p. 148).

Some bodies are borne in a straight line and some in a circle. The linear motion, by which the elements are carried to their proper places, stands for the felicity through which things are established in the perfection of their own nature. Circular motion, through which a body is carried around to the point from which it started, is the most express image of the true felicity, through which a creature returns to the beginning from which it proceeded.

NOTE: Ibid., p. 151.

Bodies do not move in circles unless they are immortal and incorruptible. No substance returns to God except the immortal and eternal.

NOTE: Ibid.

[In margin: cf. Cusa’s Maximum equals minimum.]

We see that where the beginning unites with the end both Petrarch and Pico locate the Highest Good: "If I may then behold the Highest Good" ("il sommo benne," "Triumph of Eternity," line 37) says Petrarch. In addition, both Petrarch and Pico find that the end is a return to the beginning and a return to God (implied in Petrarch), where the immortal and the eternal are at home. However, the Heptaplus introduces one new idea in this respect:

The true and perfect felicity ... carries us back to the contemplation of the face of God, which is the whole of the good ... and leads us to perfect union with the beginning from which we spring.

NOTE: Heptaplus, Bk. 7, Proem., Ed. cit., p. 151.

Pico associates "perfect felicity" (by which he means that state of happiness brought about by the knowledge of the Good found in the supra-celestial realm of divine intelligence) with the face of God. [!] This "perfect felicity" enables one to return to the eternity of one’s beginning. But for Pico this ideal of the Good fixes itself, curiously, upon the "face of God," reminding one, not so much of the Florentine brand of Platonism, but rather, of that particular blend of Platonism and mysticism characteristic of Nicolas of Cusa, for whom an icon of God’s face acts as a means of contemplating inaccessible divinity. The effect of Nicolas of Cusa upon the Lyon poets, and perhaps upon Salomon’s images, will be discussed below, but at this moment we are forced to admit that if the three-faced image of God represented in Bernard Salomon’s "Triumph of Eternity" is intended to connote God in the role of creator, as, for instance, it was intended in the Henri II manuscript, or if it is to be understood platonically, such as that idea of the Good that Pico della Mirandola finds synonymous with the face of God, the artist has left us with few clues with which to draw such a conclusion. This is not to say that the creation at the end of time is foreign to the interests of artists illustrating the Trionfi, because an investigation into the history of illustrations of the "Triumph of Eternity" does, indeed, reveal that the theme of creation (or, more properly, re-creation) is important to the Petrarchan illustrative tradition. In fact, this theme is apparent at the very beginning of its illustration history, and, from then continues.

Images of the Triumph of Eternity

as a second creation

In Italy Illustrations to the "Triumph of Eternity" were most often conceived as a "Triumph of the Divinity" (or the Trinity). In these, as in previous triumphs in the series, the Trinity is drawn in triumphal procession. For example, on one of the earliest cycles of this sort, the broad-manner Florentine engravings often said to be in the Style of Botticelli, the triumphal car is pulled along by the Four Evangelists to whom the platform is harnessed.

NOTE: Hind. Early Italian Engraving. B. II. 1. 1.-6. and Phillips, Early Florentine Designers ...

In such form the scheme is carried into Italian printed books (Florence, Pacini, 1499; Venice, Giolito, 1543, to name two of them), into manuscripts and cassoni (Jacopo Sellaio, Fiesole, Oratorio de S. Ansamo, with variation; Mantegna school, Munich, Alte Pinakothek), and accordingly, to France where the formula commonly appears in manuscripts (Paris, B.N. ms. fr. 594) and printed books (Lyon, Rouillé, 1550).

However, in not a few examples, but notably in the famous round cupboard (Uffizi, no. 1308) once attributed to Matteo de’Pasti, and decorated with four of the six triumphs, the "Triumph of the Trinity" deliberately evokes images of the Creation. Here the Trinity is conceived in a vertical format: God-the-Father standing behind the crucified Christ, the dove between. The entire is enveloped in a mandorla and is surrounded by seraphim. The Trinity is located in a celestial realm over the arc of the heavens and is surrounded by a consort of music-making angels. [In margin: Creation and Last Judgment imagery.] Below is a topographic impression of a virgin earth, newly formed, ringed by the sea. Between heaven and earth are the evangelical symbols. The earth, as shown, is a perspectival translation of the sort of primeval earth that God-the-Father creates in the contemporary panel by Giovanni di Paolo (Lehman Collection). [In the Margin: Speaking on the level of the schematic, this is the same program presented in the Creation image in the Hours of Henri II.]

NOTE: Once the Uffizi cupboard was thought to be the work referred to by Matteo de’Pasti in his famous letter to Piero de’Medici of 1441 in which a commission for a series of paintings based upon Petrarch’s Triumphs is discussed. Such a date would be early for illustrations to the Trionfi. Essling-Müntz (p. 139) ascribes the box to Matteo; Schubring (Cassoni, Nos. 208-211) suggests that the commission was a manuscript and gives the work to his Cassoni Master. The letter to Piero de’Medici is often discussed; see, for example, Gombrich, "The Early Medici as Patrons of Art," Norm and Form, p. 47, and D.S. Chambers, Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance, p. 94, no. 48.

Perhaps the most well-known example of this type appears on one of the two cassoni panels with the Triumphs of Petrarch in the Gardner Museum (Boston) by Francesco Pesellino, c. 1445. As in the Uffizi round chest, the sequence of triumphs leading to that of Divinity is depicted as a procession; but, here the train of triumphal conveyances is suspended for the ultimate triumph. In each panel a continuous landscape binds the other triumphs into a single scheme, but for the last, the landscape is abruptly broken. The "Triumph of Divinity" in the Pesellino panel closely resembles that of the Uffizi chest. However, now, not the Trinity, but God-the-Father sits enthroned among music making angels; below one finds the heavenly rainbow, two evangelical symbols, and finally the small island of an earth, crisscrossed by rivers. Curiously, this earth is dotted with buildings and surrounded by ships, sails at full blow -- whimsical additions, perhaps.

Details of life and habitation such as these do not appear in an otherwise similar scene in a pair of cassone panels (Schubring, 907-08) from the collection of Walter Burns (North Mimms Part, Herts) [North Mimms Park, Herts?].

NOTE: Tancred Borenius, "Unpublished Cassone Panels--V," Burlington Magazine, vol. 41, 1922, p. 104 ff.

As in the Pesellino panel the landscape continuity is broken for this last triumph, and similarly, God-the-Father sits enthroned in his heavens over the celestial arc. As in the Uffizi cupboard, in the "Triumph of Divinity" a virgin earth is perspectivally adjusted to the global sea in which it sits. In the Gardner panel the reference to the first paradise is explicit: there, between the "Triumph of Time" and that portion of the panel reserved for Divinity, is the Tree of Knowledge. Significantly, Time, pulled forward in his chariot by springing stags, turns to the rear and casts a longing glance at this tree, the symbol of the beginning, just in time to usher in the last chapter of Petrarch’s allegorical journey.

A similar allusion to the First Paradise appears in a Florentine fine manner engraving of c. 1460-70 which places all six triumphs onto a single sheet (Vienna).

NOTE: Hind. Early Italian Engraving, A.I.24.

In this sheet the "Triumph of Divinity" is presented as a chariot pulled forward by the four evangelical symbols; but, in the rear, to the left and the right of the image of the enthroned God is the Annunciation and the Temptation, respectively.

To my knowledge no other version makes such concrete reference to the world of the first and final creation. However, in the "Triumph of Divinity" from the set of four Petrarchan subjects by Jacopo Sellaio (c. 1441-93; Fiesole; Schubring, no. 375) one finds a composition that attempts to reconcile the two iconographic types discussed above: The carriage is pulled by the Lion, Eagle, Angel and Ox and carries Christ, the Virgin and John the Evangelist [?]. In addition, above, in the heavens, sits God surrounded by a mandorla of seraphim and accompanied by angels. He rests his feet upon an armillary sphere, just the symbol needed to bind together heaven and earth.

NOTE: "Armillary sphere: An ancient instrument consisting of an arrangement of rings, of which are circles of the same sphere, used to show the relative positions of the celestial equator, ecliptic, and other circles on the celestial sphere." (Random House College Dictionary, 1968)

Even the float on which the earthly characters kneel seems to have an earthy quality, like the crust of a pizza.

In the above examples, all Italian, we see a tendency to construct the "Triumph of Divinity" around an idea that places Petrarch’s theme of a newly created world before the observer. If this theme is all but forgotten in Jacopo Sellaijo’s version, it is mostly ignored in many other examples. Thus (setting aside those ignoring the motif altogether), in an Italian manuscript executed for the Medici in 1476 (Paris, B.N. ms. ital. 545), the "Triumph of Divinity" is conceived as a large Crucifixion backed by God-the-Father.

NOTE: See Émile van Moé, "Les ‘Triomphes’ de Pétrarque d’apres le manuscrit italien 545 de la Bibliothèque nationale," in Les Trésors des Bibliothèques de France, vol. XIII, 1931, p. 3 ff. Strictly speaking this last scene is not a Trinity; there is no dove of the Holy Spirit.

The cross is supported at its foot by a diagrammatic version of the newly created world crossed by the four rivers of Paradise. This sphere, in turn, is supported by the four Evangelists who form a stable base for the entire composition. This diagram of redemption seems entirely conventional, and does not appear to be inspired at all by Petrarch’s poem.

One should not be surprised to find the Christian theme of redemption foisted upon Petrarch’s secular allegory (as it is in B.N. ms. ital. 545), for even those scenes that present images of the newly created world work this fundamental theme into their program. Petrarch, of course, makes no mention of the Evangelists, their symbols, Christ, the Crucifixion, the Trinity or angels. Given the tradition of association by which triumphal iconography for the other Petrarchan themes developed an iconography just barely rooted in Petrarch’s own images, one should be rather surprised that at least some examples of the "Triumph of Eternity" evoke the return to the beginning, such as Petrarch implied in his text.

Although Salomon’s tri-cephalic image is surely independent of the Italian cassoni tradition which presents the "Triumph of Eternity" as if it were a kind of creation of the Earth, it does not follow that the theme of creation is not implied. The tri-cephalic God, indeed, as we have seen, does appear in the role of the triune creator of the world in the Hours of Henri II. It is not impossible, therefore, that, given the tradition of creation imagery used in Italian "Triumphs of Eternity," and given the motif of the tri-cephalic Trinity with creation connotations, that these two factors could have combined to form a tri-cephalic Trinity meant to transfer the sense of the creation to Petrarch’s poem.

It is true that Henri II’s miniature was rather private and most probably inaccessible. One may respond to this objection by citing Lyon’s many intimate connections with the royal court: Marguerite de Navarre was, of course, deeply interested in Petrarchan themes. Scève had had dealings with François I^er, and was to be responsible, with Bernard Salomon, for directing the grand entrance of the new king into Lyon. This took place in 1548, but was in the planning stages much earlier. [RAB: I think the documents do not bear this out; it was planned and executed quickly, I think.] The list of connections to the court is unending.

The iconography of the Creation page in the Hours of Henri II certainly refers to Henri’s new sovereignty. Henri (The figure of God bears his features.) is the creator. France is his new realm. The connotation is that he is overthrowing the power of François, whom he hated since he was bartered into captivity in Madrid.

More important is the manner in which celestial imagery found in the Henri II miniature implies meanings closely connected to Petrarch’s own idea of Eternity. For example, turning once again to the Heptaplus (that handy reservoir of neo-Platonism) we read the following:

Above the nine spheres of the heavens, that is, the seven planets and the eighth sphere, which is called that of the fixed stars, and the ninth sphere, which is apprehended by reason, not by sense, and which is first among the bodies that move, there is believed to be a tenth heaven, fixed, quiet, and at rest, which does not participate in motion.

NOTE: Bk. 2, ch. 1., ed. cit., p. 95.

This last sphere, above everything, even above reason, according to Pico, is the empyrean, the crystalline heaven, the source of Divine light, what Moses means by the word "heaven" in his account of the Creation. It is in a passage such as the above that one discovers the mystical foundation of Pico’s brand of neo-Platonism. According to Pico, Moses’s idea of heaven is secretly a neo-Platonically conceived heaven: It does not participate in anything earthly. It is from this sphere that God acts, or, rather, creates the Earth, separates the waters (earthly) from the firmament (heavenly). The lack of motion in Pico’s empyrean layer corresponds to the cessation of movement, time and is formed by the fusion of past, present, and future as portrayed in Petrarch’s definition of Eternity.

Both the celestial vision of Pico’s version of the first creation and Petrarch’s vision of Eternity owe generally to the neo-Platonic literature from Pseudo-Dionysius onwards, but perhaps most specifically to Saint Augustine’s notion of Time before Creation.

Petrarch and Saint Augustine: Time and Eternity.

If an image such as Salomon’s tri-cephalic divinity is meant to convey the idea of "Eternity," admittedly a rather abstract and non-visual concept, it would be best to understand Petrarch’s own conception of it and its foundation in Augustinian thought.

It is well known that among Italian humanists of the Renaissance Petrarch is one of the first to find St. Augustine. Petrarch, in large measure rejected the elaborate Medieval scholastic tradition built on top of Augustine and reverted directly to the Saint’s own works, for much the same reasons that he, and his era, became interested in the remains, both literary and visual, of classical antiquity.

NOTE: For Augustine’s influence on Petrarch see Franco Simone, The French Renaissance, p. 46, 47, 55.

Whereas Petrarch’s exposure to St. Augustine’s writings in Avignon (available in the Papal library) was made possible by Augustine’s continuing importance for Medieval scholasticism; later, in France, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Augustinian tradition was maintained in part by the author’s importance to the neo-Platonists. Ficino’s history of Platonism includes a section of St. Augustine. The line from Ficino leads to Marguerite de Navarre, to Maurice Scève, and to Pontus de Tyard, among others -- all of whom were represented in Jean de Tournes' catalogue of published books. Thus, in France, Augustinian thought rightly should be considered to have dual roots: in the continuous Medieval tradition and in the Platonic revival.

NOTE: See Frances Yates, French Academies, passim. where is documented the importance of Augustine in French sixteenth-century academic thought.

Augustine’s idea of Time and Eternity as it applies to Petrarch’s "Triumph of Eternity" may be summarized as follows: Time, or the sensation of Time, implies change, and as such is perceived by the human mind. The Eternal mind, however, that is, God, is above change. In this state of Eternity is combined the memory of the past, the intuition of the present and the expectation of the future. In his perspective God sees past, present and future combined in a single term which is apprehended by Divinity as if it were an eternal present: "...if the present were always present, and would not pass into the past, it would no longer be time, but eternity."

NOTE: Confessions, Ch. 11.

The indebtedness of Petrarch to Augustinian ideas on time and eternity may be seen by comparing the following representative tracts from Saint Augustine’s writings, first, from the City of God:

The distinguishing mark between time and eternity is that the former does not exist without some movement and change, while in the latter there is no change at all ... ...since God, in whose eternity there is absolutely no change, is the Creator and Ruler of time, I do not see how we can say that He created the world after a space of time had elapsed unless we admit, also, that previously some creature had existed whose movements would mark the course of time. ...

... the world was made not in time but together with time. For, what is made in time was made after one period of time and before another, namely after a past and before a future time.

... the world was made simultaneously with time, if with creation, motion and change began.

NOTE: City of God, Bk. XI, Ch. 6 (Tr. G.G. Walsh et al., ed. V.J. Bourke, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1960, p. 211-12.

Similar concepts were spelled out in the Confessions:

NOTE: The following quotations are from the Confessions, ed. tr. John K. Ryan, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1960, p. 285 ff.

Who will catch hold of it [i.e. time], and made it fast, so that it stands firm for a little while, and for a little while seize the splendor of that ever stable eternity ..., that in the eternal nothing can pass away but the whole is present, that no time is wholly present? Who will see that all past time is driven back by the future, that all the future is consequent on the past, and that all past and future are created and take their course from that which is ever present?

NOTE: Ed. cit., Ch. 11, p. 285.

... if nothing were passing away, there would be no past time, and if nothing were coming, there would be no future time, and if nothing existed, there would be no present time. ... But if the present were always present, and would not pass into the past, it would no longer be time, but eternity. ... [RAB: repeats quote above]

NOTE: Ed. cit., Ch. 14, p. 287.

... there are three times, past, present, and future. But perhaps it might properly be said that there are three times, the present of things past, the present of things present and the present of things future. These are in the soul, but elsewhere I do not see them: the present of things past is in memory, the present of things present is in intuition; the present of things future is in expectation.

NOTE: Ed. cit., Ch. 20, p. 292-93.

Augustine’s notion of the measurement of time is the measurement of "distended" time or time held in the mind. "I measure time, I know. Yet I do not measure the future, because it does not yet exist, I do not measure the present, because it is not extended in space, I do not measure the past because it no longer exists. ... "Neither future, nor past, nor present, nor passing times do we measure, and still we measure tracts of time." "It is in ... my mind that I measure my times."

NOTE: Ed. cit. Ch. 26, p. 298-300.

"It is not ... future time that is long, but a long future is a long expectation of the future. Nor is past time, which is not, long, but a long past is a long memory of the past."

NOTE: Ed. cit., Ch. 28, p. 301.

In these passages we see Augustine showing us that past, present, and future time is a sensation, that it exists within human perception, memory and expectation, but does not exist outside of human perception. Finally, he draws his argument to a close by identifying God with the Eternal, that is God is he who known all time and is outside of all time: "... and understand that you are before all times, the eternal creator of all times, and that times are not coeternal with you, nor is any creature such ..."

NOTE: Ed. cit., Ch. 30, p. 303.

"Surely, if there is a mind possessed of such great knowledge and foreknowledge, so that to it are known all things past and future, just as I know one well-known psalm [know past, present and future as it is recited], then supremely marvelous is that mind and wondrous and fearsome. From it whatever there is of ages past and of ages to come is no more hidden than there are hidden from me as I sing that psalm what and how much proceeded from its beginning and what and how much remains to the end."

NOTE: Ed. cit., Ch 31, p. 303.

But far be it that you, creator of the universe, creator of souls and bodies, far be it that in such wise you should know future and past. ... It is not as emotions are charged or senses filled up by expectation of words to come and memory of those past in one who sings well-known psalms or hears a familiar psalm. Not so does it befall you who are unchangeably eternal, that is, truly eternal, the creator of minds. Therefore, just as in the beginning you have known heaven and earth without change in your knowledge, so too "in the beginning you made heaven and earth" without and difference in your activity.

NOTE: Ed. cit.

It is true that Augustinian concepts of time has so permeated the Medieval world that one need not point directly to St. Augustine to attribute the influence of these ideas on Petrarch. For example, in Boethius’s treatise De Trinitate, the Augustinian notion of God’s eternity, constituting knowledge of the future, is used to address the question of free will. Boethius concludes that foreknowledge is a human term and that God’s vision, "which is always present, concurs with the future quality of an action."

NOTE: Quoted from Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: vol. 2: Medieval Philosophy, part I: Augustine to Bonaventure, p. 118.

But let is be noted that when Petrarch, in the "Triumph of Eternity" emphasizes the suspension of past, present and future and the ultimate triumph of an eternal present which combines past, present and future into an unchangeable essence, he is very close to Augustine’s ideas"

... non avrà loco "fu," "sarà," né "era,"
ma "è" solo, in presente, ed "ora" ed "oggi"
e sola eternità raccolta e ‘ntera; ...

NOTE: Petrarch, I Trionfi, Milan, Rozzoli, 1956, p. 97, lines 67-69. 1545 ed: "& hora, & hoggi."

(... "Has been," "shall be," and "was" exist no more,
But "is" and "now," "the present" and "today,"
"Eternity" alone, one and complete.)

NOTE: The Triumphs of Petrarch, trans. Ernest Hatch Wilkins. Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 1962, p. 110.

E le tre parti sue vide ristrette
ad una sola, e quella una esser ferma
sì che, come solea, più non s’affrette; ...

NOTE: Ed. cit., p. 95. 1545 ed. "quell’una affrette?"

(Past, present future [le tre parti]: these I saw combined
In a single term, and that unchangeable:
No swiftness now, as there had been before.)

NOTE: Ed. cit., p. 108. Wilkins, tr.

It is possible that Augustine’s idea of God as Creator outside of time influenced the iconography of medieval creation imagery as in those scenes where God stands outside of the created world. Indeed, in several places Augustine links Eternity (coextensive past, present and future) with God as Creator: In the City of God one reads: "... the world was made simultaneously with time, if with creation, motion and change began."

NOTE: See note above.

And in the Confessions (Ch. 31) Augustine states that "... just as in the beginning you have known heaven and earth with change in your knowledge, so too ‘in the beginning you made heaven and earth’ without and difference in your activity."

NOTE: See note above.

It does not seem too much to presume that Petrarch’s re-creation of the world at the Triumph of Eternity depends upon Augustine’s connection between Time and the First Creation. This can be seen in the previously quoted passages. "... I, at last beheld / a world made new and changeless and eternal. / I saw the sun, the heavens, and the start / and land and sea unmade, and made again / more beauteous and more joyous than before."

NOTE: Petrarch, "Triumph of Eternity," Wilkins trans., ed. cit., p. 108.

Given the connotations of the text, it would not have been inappropriate for illustrators of the text to link Petrarch’s secularized image of "Eternity" (qua Eternity) with an image of God of the Creation, especially as filtered through the common heritage of Augustinian metaphysics.

This brings the reader back to the problem at hand, which is to determine whether a three-faced image, such as the one presented by Bernard Salomon, normally, and nominally (or more accurately -- presumably) connoting the Trinity, could have been meant to carry other, although related meanings. In the Henri II manuscript Hours it has been shown that a tri-cephalic image could be used as an image of God in his role as Creator of the Universe. Further, the substantial tradition of representing the Trinity as responsible for the Creation, has been demonstrated by Adelhard Heimann. But it is not at all clear whether the tri-cephalic Trinity, pictorially isolated from the iconography of creation, could imply meanings derived from Augustine’s and Petrarch’s ideas of time and creation.

When Augustine, speaks of the Trinity in the City of God (Bk. XI, ch. 24) he connects the Trinity with the Creation: "It was the Father of the Word who said: ‘Let it be made"; and what was made when he spoke was man without doubt, by means of the Word ...

NOTE: Ed. cit., Walsh, tr., p. 233.

A tri-cephalic image may have been considered an appropriate emblem with which to convey the idea of the triune god of Augustine. Whereas the Greek Fathers before Augustine tended to think of the Trinity as "three Persons having the same nature [Augustine] thought of one single divine nature subsisting in three Persons."

NOTE: Edmond J. Fortman, The Triune God: A historical study of the Doctrine of the Trinity. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972, p. 140-41. Sources cited: City of God, 11.10; Trinity, 1.24.

For Augustine the Trinity embodies "a divine unity of one and the same substance in an individual equality." (Trinity, 1.4.7).

NOTE: Quoted from Fortman, ibid.

Augustine emphasized the essential one-ness of the Trinity in contrast to some contemporary tendencies to subordinate two persons of the Trinity to the Person of God-the-Father.

If the iconography of the triune faces or similar imagery is any indication of attitudes toward the Trinity, an image such as the one published by Didron

NOTE: Ed. cit., p. 596, fig. 147.

which is taken from a Florentine edition of Dante of 1491 (Paradisio, fol. CCLXXVII) would tend to indicate the idea of subordination: Clearly the head of God-the-Father is primary and the other two which appear diminished in size and. [RAB, truncated?] Continuing such logic, the triune face of the type which typifies the Salomon’s tri-cephalic head must have been thought to epitomize an Augustinian notion of the Trinity’s indivisible unity. This may be the reason why a similar image was used in Lippi’s earlier-cited painting of Augustine in his cell meditating upon the mystery of the Trinity.

NOTE: A similar triple-faced vision appears to St. Augustine in a sixteenth-century cycle in the Kloster Newstadt. Illus. Kirfee [sp?], fig. 168, pl. 57, opp. p. 160.

However, one must be careful not to assume that the presence of a tripartite face necessarily implies the Augustinian Trinity; the important point is that such an image is not necessarily incompatible with the elements of St. Augustine’s doctrine as set forth above.

If the triune face were to refer simultaneously to the Trinity and to "Eternity" one would expect to find these ideas equated. Petrarch, of course, does not mention the Trinity in the "Triumph of Eternity" but Augustine indeed made the connection. Sometimes his references are made in passing, as, for example, in his treatise On Christine Doctrine: "All three [Persons] have the same eternity, the same immutability the same majesty and the same power."

NOTE: On Christian Doctrine, I, 5. Edition trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. (The Library of Liberal Arts) Indianapolis & N.Y.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958, p. 10. And Fortman, op. cit, p. 145. [In margin (in another hand): See Augustine’s commentaries on the Psalms.]

Such a statement hardly suffices to warrant using an image of the Trinity to imply "Eternity," nor does the context of the statement necessarily connote "Eternity" in a pre-temporal sense. Augustine, however, does come closer to identifying the nature of the Trinity as an essence which exists out of time and before time. In The Trinity (Ch. 15) he states:

... this Trinity in the nature of the divinity, or it may be better to call it the Godhead, is that which it is, is mutually unchangeable and always equal; there never was a time when it was not, nor when it was otherwise, neither will there ever be a time when it will not be, nor when it will be otherwise.

NOTE: St. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna, Ed. Charles Dollen, Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1965, p. 290-91.

This last chapter of De Trinitate ends by associating the processions of the Persons of the Trinity with the past, present and future of non-temporal Eternity:

Where time does not exist ... can we ask whether the Holy Spirit had already proceeded from the Father when the Son was born, or whether He had not yet proceeded, and whether He proceeded from both after the Son was born ...? Such questions cannot be proposed there, where nothing begins from time in order that it may be perfected at a later time. We cannot think of these processions in terms of time, which consists of before and after, because time does not exist there at all.

NOTE: Ed. cit. Ch. 15, p. 295-96.

Thus for Augustine the connection among the Persons of the Trinity is much the same as his notion of the relationship among past, present, and future in pre-temporal eternity -- both are combined in a single term. It is more than likely, therefore, that any Augustinian iconography could use an image of Eternity (whatever that image may prove to be) as a symbol of Divinity or the Trinity, and vice versa. That the Eternity/Trinity analogy was important for Augustine is indicated by its location at the end of the concluding chapter of De Trinitate, placed just prior to the Prayer of Faith which closes the work. De Trinitate was written toward the close of Augustine’s career (it is contemporary with the Confessions) and may be considered a manifestation of his developed opinion on the subject.

If the union between the image of the three persons of the Trinity and the three times (past, present, and future) are only suggested in Augustine’s philosophy, it is made explicit in the works of Maurice Scève, the editor of Jean de Tournes’ edition of Petrarch that carried Salomon’s images.

***

[The following quotation is stuck in my notes here:

from Elton. Reformation Europe, p. 193.

file Augustinism during the Reformation. Protestant use of Augustine.

ref in particular to Scève’s Augustinism in le Microcosme and Salomon’s Augustinian Eternity image. (bold italics, mine)

... Medieval theology had rarely been monolithic, and in the later middle ages in particular the variety of possible view[s] on leading problems of the faith was distinctly bewildering ... The learned often differed widely on crucial points, and one may distinguish four major schools surviving into the sixteenth century: the pure Tomism of St. Thomas Aquinas himself, mainly professed by his own order, the Dominicans; the modified dissent from Thomism of Duns Scotus (via antiqua which was very influential in many universities; the skeptical and often antirational attack on Thomism called Nominalism (Via moderna) derived from William of Occam and possessed of affinities with late-medieval mysticism; and the rigorous tradition of St. Augustine which Aquinas’ synthesis of theology and Aristotelian philosophy and pushed into the shadows, but which not only survived especially among the Augustinian friars but also came to be the chief weapon of sixteenth-century Protestantism against the stultified scholasticism of the dying middle ages.

[NOTE: Source for above needed?]