From Alberti's virtù to the virtuoso Michelangelo. questions on a concept that moved from ethics to aesthetics through drawing

Eduardo Corte-Real

Susana Oliveira

pp. 83-93

in: Disegno, Rivista di estetica 47, 2011.

Abstract

This paper reflects on Virtue as a key concept at the source of the common, and still prevalent, classification of drawings as bad or good, which shifted from the moral or Ethical to the Aesthetics domain between 1400 and 1600. It is suggested that clarity and control were characteristics of goodness in a particular period, while fastness and chance were characteristics of goodness in subsequent times, yet both revealing the projections of the ethical over the aesthetic.