ADE History

The collection of information about your use of the content, and combination with previously collected information, used to measure, understand, and report on your usage of the service. Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now. Add artist to favorites. Buy tickets Event Info. Listen to Magnificence Music provided by.

We use cookies to give you the best experience on our website. By using our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Using personal data on your device. Making a personal profile of your interests based on your use of our Website s and Platform. Sending you tailor-made ads. Sending you tailor-made content. Measuring your use of our Website s and Platform and the content we have provided to you.


  • Magnificence’s tracks.
  • Arabella Parker and the Primrose School Revolt (Arabella Parker series Book 1)!
  • Tecniche di web marketing. E-commerce digitale e social media: tutte le opportunità per le Pmi: E-commerce digitale e social media: tutte le opportunità per le Pmi (Management Tools) (Italian Edition).
  • Magnificence.
  • magnificence;
  • La Caroline du Nord en bref (French Edition).

Hence, not every type of action requires the same degree of expense. Thus, Aristotle, like Plato, consolidates the separation of the virtues of magnificence and magnanimity.

U2 - Magnificent

Drawing on Xenophon, however, he dignifies the economic aspect of a great expenditure by turning it into an ethical virtue. With Aristotle, magnificence also acquires an aesthetic dimension. A magnificent man knows that the expenditure should be large, but appropriate to who is actually spending, the circumstance, and the object of the expense. The Aristotle scholar W. Ross suggested that in this conception magnificence turns out to be mainly a matter of aesthetic good taste. Cicero introduced the ethic of magnificence to ancient Roman and Italian civilization.

In his youthful work on rhetoric, De inventione , he writes that magnificence is "the consideration and management of important and sublime matters with a certain wide seeing and splendid determination of mind" II, Liv, Thus Cicero fused the Greek and Roman traditions, transforming the Greek view of magnificence into a Roman concept.

The Latin word magnificentia comes from the expression magnum facere , which literally means "to do something great". In Cicero's formulation, it refers to the greatness of the task, the intention to realize it, and the determination to carry it through. Magnificence took on very Roman characteristics. In ancient Rome, it is a public phenomenon connected to the institutions, political power and the Roman state. The magnificence of the buildings, roads, public buildings and festivals was under the control of the aediles.

Magnificence (history of ideas)

Furthermore, magnificence has nothing to do with luxury. Whereas luxury represented the use of wealth to serve personal satisfaction, magnificence rested on traditional republican values based on respect for an appropriate relationship between private and public life. In classical rhetoric, magnificence is one of the models of the grand or elevated style. Demetrius gives a technical description of the typical features of the elevated style. Although magnificence and the sublime both belong to the grand style, there are significant differences between them.

Navigation menu

Magnificence insists more on formal correctness and stylistic solemnity. Whereas the sublime inspires awe, veneration, loss of rationality, ecstasy and pathos , the magnificent aims to impress without causing fear or indignation. The grand style of magnificence also entered terminological discourse of ancient Greek art criticism. Indeed, the Greeks drew on rhetorical terminology to describe and evaluate sculpture, painting and architecture. In his monumental De architectura , Vitruvius analyzed both the artistic-aesthetic and the philosophical-ethical aspects of the concept and enshrined magnificence in classical architecture.

The materials employed should be of the best quality and the most beautiful, which means that they are usually the most expensive. Thus, for Vitruvius magnificence is not only a typical artistic and aesthetic feature of architecture, but is also connected to the social and political prestige of the client. Architecture becomes the means by which a public or private sponsor of a building can display his honour. It is no surprise that ancient Romans granted such importance to public architecture: Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that the three greatest examples of magnificent Roman architecture were the aqueducts , the roads and the sewage system Roman Antiquities 3, 67, 5.

Strabo Geographica , V, 3, 8 and Livy History of Rome , 1, 38, ; 39; 44 celebrate the hygienic functions of the aqueducts and the cloacae. Pliny the Elder provides a moving description of the engineering skills used to rebuild Rome's great sewage system, the Cloaca Maxima , which is still in use today Natural History , 36, Thomas Aquinas left one of the most significant mediaeval interpretations of the concept of magnificence, drawing on the Graeco-Roman tradition and blending it with Christian precepts. He brings together the pagan idea of human magnificence with the Jewish-Christian mentality, according to which mankind should always be reverent towards God.

Magnificence belongs to the virtue of fortitude, or courage, because it regards the undertaking of great things and actions, and persevering even when circumstances can make their realization arduous Summa , IIa IIae q.

magnificence - Wiktionary

Then, following the traditions of Aristotle and Aquinas, Dante classifies magnificence as the fourth virtue "which regulates great expenditures, in administering them and setting limits to their size" Convivio IV, XVII, 5. With the advent of the Renaissance in Italy , magnificence underwent a deep transformation, drawing on this cultural movement which supported the rebirth of both classical culture and urban centres. The idea of magnificence and its representation had profound implications for Renaissance society in Italy. Magnificence acquires new vitality within the process of renewal of Italian cities as cultural and political centres.

Magnificence thus reflects the transformation of traditional political structures and epitomizes the flourishing of a new type of civic culture based on virtues which diverged from the previous feudal values. A novel idea of human excellence emerged which was seen as distinct from the medieval aristocratic privileges connected to birth and rank. Cristoforo Landino in De vera nobilitate describes magnificence as an aspect of fortitude.


  1. Virginia Woolf. Biography, literary background, main works analysis..
  2. Das Versteck in der Mumie (German Edition)!
  3. Navigation menu.
  4. Magnificence.
  5. Magnificence | Definition of Magnificence by Merriam-Webster!
  6. Haunted Huddersfield.
  7. The new idea of nobility emphasizes deeds and works realized by men whose behaviour is primarily governed by the cultivation of such virtues, rather than merely by noble blood and aristocratic ideals. By the first half of the 15th century, magnificence had already become a well-known and highly practiced virtue in Renaissance Italy. It concerned the custom of wealthy citizens spending large sums of money on building projects and to patronage of architecture and the arts.

    Sign up, it's free!

    In Florence, Cosimo de' Medici the founder of the Medici dynasty was actively involved in practising the virtue of magnificence from the s onwards and many other ruling families and distinguished citizens followed suit all over Italy. Magnificence regains its ancient splendour also as an aspect of works of architecture and art. In the De re aedificatoria , Leon Battista Alberti draws on both the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of magnificence.

    Many Italian Renaissance architects and artists applied magnificence both in their artworks and in their writings.