Renaissance Memory: The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo

After talking about Vitruvius, Plato and Alberti, now it’s time to talk about Yates.In his reading he talked about the impact of Renaissance in architecture work of arts, more specific about ‘The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo’. He was an Italian philosopher.

We can talk about some similarities that Camillo takes from the others, like: from Vitruvius’ theatre he takes the material and time-bond resistance, from plato he is based in Timaeus to explane the hierarchy of numbers, the number harmony of Plato’s universe can be seen in the use of the harmonic number 7, as seven planets by Camillo.

As we said before the sections were based in the seven planets. The seven tiers that rose up from them, coded by motifs from classical mythology, represented the seven spheres of the sublunary down to the elementary microcosm. On each of these stood emblematic images and signs, next to compartments for scrolls. The second grade of the theatre is really the first day of creation, imaged as the banquet given by Ocean to the gods, the emerging elements of creation, here in their simple unmixed form, third grade will have depicted on each of its gates a Cave, which we call the Homeric Cave to differentiate it from that which Plato describes in his Republic, fourth stage is associated with the figure of man, fifth grade, the soul of man joins his body, sixth grade of the Theatre has on each of the gates of the planets, the Sandals, and other ornaments, which Mercury puts on when he goes to execute the will of the gods, as the poets pretend,seventh grade is assigned to all the arts, both noble and vile, and above each gate is Prometheus with a lighted torch.

As we are talked about the Renaissance, we can see some similarities of that period in Camillo’s theatre, he interpreted the magic of the egyptian statues in an artistic sense: a perfectly proportioned statue becomes animated with the spirit, becomes a magic statue. Renaissance theory of proportion was based on the “universal harmony”, the harmonious proportion of the world, the macrocosm, reflected in the body of man, the microcosm.

To conclude, Camillo brings new art in theatres jn reanessance period, tuning the classical art of memory into an occult art. The images of Camillo's Theatre seem to be supposed to have in them something of this power, enabling the ‘spectator’ to read off at one glance, through ‘inspecting the images’ the whole contents of universe.