This chapter discusses the relationship of the imagination to Christian eschatology. It gives an account of the function of eschatological imagery in the Bible, discusses the changing ways in which art and literature have engaged Christian eschatology, and concludes with an account of a distinctly eschatological imagination.

This essay introduces and explores David Tracy’s notion of ‘analogical imagination’ as something that prevents reason, theology, and social life from collapsing ‘into equivocation or else hopeless stupid conflict’. A capacious reflective reason, after Tracy, depends on imaginative habits and sensibilities that stay faithful to the discordant plurality and ambiguity of things while also acknowledging their analogies or ‘similarities-in-difference’. The essay argues that the continuing integrity and scope of Tracyean analogical imagination depends upon understanding that the negations that belong to apparently contrasting ‘dialectical imaginations’ reach ‘all the way down’ within analogical imagination itself. Aided by classic expressions of culture, furthermore, analogical imaginative possibility shades into contingent vision when organised by ‘focal meanings’ to fashion some global sense of the world. This is then brought into dialogue with Richard Kearney’s comparatively recent notion of ‘anatheism’, to help consideration of how Tracyean analogical imagination might maintain its imagination and ana- at the perilous point that it becomes also a matter of religious believing.

The essay chronicles the Protestant objections to images and the Catholic response in the decree “On the invocation, veneration, and relics, of salnts, and on sacred images” of the Council of Trent. Paintings created as ecclesiastical decoration in the wake of the decree in Italy and in the Netherlands are examined.

This chapter explores Freud’s publications on Biblical prophets in the new interdisciplinary journal Imago that Freud founded to specifically deal with non-medical applications of psychoanalysis. This chapter analyzes Freud’s anonymously published essay “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914) anew as an extension of and a direct consequence of the disputations over Jung’s Jonah-type and Maeder’s teleological function of dreams. In his essay on Michelangelo’s Moses, Freud would take up his defense in Rome, where Pope Leo X had excommunicated Luther in 1521. Disguised as “an untrained layman,” Freud sets up a new hermeneutical arena far from the site of Lutheran Biblical exegetics on Jonah and before the Catholic Renaissance master Michelangelo, an artist Jung claimed expressed the “Jonah-type” in his pietàs. Applying and parodying the aesthetic arguments Jung and Maeder utilized in their recent publicatins, Freud uses the trope of the “artless Jew” by shifting the dialogue from typological interpretations of stubborn Jewish prophets to German-language art historical interpretations of a Catholic representation of Moses.

Britten and Pears regarded their relationship as a ‘marriage’ and described it as such as early as 1943. Although comfortable with using this term privately, they were aware of the legal prohibition and social stigma that prevented them from proclaiming their partnership openly. And yet throughout their nearly forty years together they made no immediate secret among their circle of friends and relatives about living their lives as a couple. As this essay suggests, theirs was a special case, in that they lived their relationship with relative openness among those who knew them. Works such as the Michelangelo Sonnets and Canticle I were a declaration of sorts about the nature of their relationship, although it was not until after the composer’s death that Pears commented overtly in an interview about their love for one another. A decade after the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the UK, and with social discussion on homosexuality widening, Pears believed that his and Britten’s marriage need no longer be regarded as a secret.

This essay provides insight into some of the content of Britten and Pears’s book collection. It draws attention to why certain volumes were used as the source material for various musical works. The essay also emphasises how friendships with writers, such as art historian Kenneth Clark and novelist and critic E. M. Forster, influenced key aspects of Britten and Pears’s lives: their passion for fine art and their faith in pacifism. This survey of the collection underlines why their books are often useful bases of information for biographical background about both musicians. Their library tells us stories about their childhoods and discloses their interests in topics ranging from classic English literature to gardening to the developing genre of gay fiction. Additionally, it adds context to fundamental aspects of their lives, such as their anti-war stance and their enduring commitment to one another.

This chapter analyses Simmel’s worldview during his last years (ca. 1910 – 1918). It argues that under the influence of life philosophy, he developed a peculiar philosophical formula in which unity and contradictions (dualisms) coexisted on two different planes without cancelling another. Various forms in which this idea is addressed are analysed through Simmel’s writings on Goethe, Rembrandt and his essays on the First World War. The chapter argues that initially this approach allowed Simmel to subscribe to an encompassing universalism which he found in Goethe. However, via his preoccupation with Rembrandt and especially in his polemics about the First World War, he used this formula to move in the opposite direction: that is, it allowed him to justify single-mindedness and the fanaticism of action. Thus, the question of whether this worldview should be seen as the ultimate philosophical solution to the question of unity versus variety, or rather represents the highest degree of philosophical aporia, remains unresolved.

Florentines saw their excellence in visual arts as part of their identity. Giorgio Vasari encouraged many colleagues to think seriously about the study of the arts by seeking collaboration for the two editions of his monumental work Lives of the Artists. Borghini, Giambullari, Bartoli, and many others assisted in gathering information; Borghini in particular was involved in composing the sections on periodization. It resembled the narrative on language; the term “ancient” was relevant until late antiquity. The rise of the new tradition had its earliest origins in the eleventh century. It blossomed in the age of Giotto, a narrative that already had a tradition of its own. Innovation in the arts was driven, they argued, by the artist’s drive to compete and to excel. Artistic traditions themselves, like language, could be compared to a living being with a natural lifespan. Florentines founded an academy for artists, the Accademia del Disegno; its first collective task was the memorial service for Michelangelo.

Although Piero was criticised for his love of sports and footballing in the streets, sportsmanship – like cultural patronage – contributed to the soft power increasingly enjoyed by Renaissance rulers. Visits to the antiquities in the Medici palace and to the model farm at Poggio a Caiano formed part of diplomats’ tours of Florence, while the sports of horse racing and falconry provided invaluable items for gift exchanges with other rulers. So too did Piero’s famous Spanish runner Garzerano, who was regarded as a trophy (‘like some prince’, in the eyes of the royal court) when borrowed by Alfonso of Naples for his son.1 So if Piero’s sporting activities were unappreciated at home, they gave him more standing outside Florence than his critics may have realised.