The medieval analysis of artistic creation has given way to different solutions: on one hand a
strongly affirmed mistrust for the poetical written word (fabula), on the other a complete acceptance
of the pictorial, sculptorial or mosaic image. Long before the beginning of the struggle against
iconoclasty, for which various reasons of social and political order have been found, it is possible to
recognise the proof of a philosophical origin of such an attitude. Some passages from Plotinus’
Enneads define the artistic image as the direct connection to the Nous, thus being a clear invitation
to represent objects in such a way as to underline their “form”, therefore avoiding all shadows and
perspective issues. The result is an artistic program which has many similarities and correspondences
with the Christian art of painting and sculpting of the first centuries, that clearly did not receive
these aesthetical indications directly from Plotinus, but rather from the Fathers of the Church, who
resumed many neo-platonical issues. Agostinus from Ippona, in a not very well known passage, states
that the written text, once seen, requires a competent interpreter, whereas painting is of immediate
comprehension. The written text therefore creates a further gap between its truth and the reader,
while images, and in a certain sense also theatrical and mimic representations, have a ratio bifrons,
as stated in the Soliloquia, in the sense that they are at the same time true and false: false because
they are similar to the true and true because they are false.
