THE ANCIENT ART OF MEMORY AS A REFERENCE FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTWORKS. PART I

Résumé

In this article, we begin by addressing the ancient art of memory (ars memoriae), which spanned classical antiquity as part of rhetoric, and whose invention is attributed to the Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos in the pre-Socratic era. We review its origins – as well as providing an extensive description of its general principles and rules, contained mainly in three Latin sources by Roman rhetoricians – and its subsequent developments and transformations, before moving on to an exhaustive analysis of Giulio Camillo's Theater of Memory, a major representative of the changes that took place in the tradition of the art of memory during the Renaissance, under the influence of the main philosophical current of that period, whose ideas it would adopt: the Christian Neoplatonic movement. Finally, we analyse several contemporary artistic works that take the art of memory as a reference, particularly Giulio Camillo.