The Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook

"The seven deadly sins are pride, envy, anger, sloth, gluttony, greed, and lust. The seven virtues are prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice, faith, hope, and love. 'The Virtues and Vices in the Arts' brings all of them together and for the first time lays out their history in a collection of the most important philosophical, religious, literary, and art-historical works.
Starting with the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian antecedents, this anthology of source documents traces the tradition of virtues and vices through its cultural apex during the medieval era and then into their continued development and transformation from the Renaissance to the present. This anthology includes excerpts of Plato’s 'Republic', the Bible, Dante’s 'Purgatorio', and the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and C.S. Lewis. Also included are works of art from medieval manuscripts; paintings by Giotto, Veronese, and Paul Cadmus; prints by Brueghel; and a photograph by Oscar Rejlander. What these works show is the vitality and richness of the virtues and vices in the arts from their origins to the present."

Table of Contents

"List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A House Divided
Virtues, Vices, Sins, and Gifts of the Spirit
Constellations

Part I
Foundations
Human Potential and Protection I
Human Potential and Protection II
Plato’s The Republic
Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics
Cicero’s Of Duties
Proverbs
Isaiah
Matthew
Paul’s Letters

Part II
Codification of the Virtues and Vices
Tertullian’s The Shows
Prudentius’s Psychomachia
Evagrius of Pontus’s On the Eight Thoughts
Gregory the Great’s Morals on the Book of Job

Part III
The Medieval Apex
Divine Endowment
The Struggle
Contraries Cured by Contraries
The Summa
Psychomachia Illustrations
Illustrations of the Speculum Virginum
Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum
Notre Dame of Amiens Twelve Virtues and Twelve Vices
Giotto’s Virtues and Vices in the Arena Chapel
Dante’s Purgatorio
Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Paintings in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
William Langland’s Piers Plowman
Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Parson’s Tale”

Part IV
The Transformation of the Virtues and Vices
Divine Endowment II
Struggle II
The Virtues and Vices in Everyday Life and in Death
The Vitality of Vice
Piero del Pollaiuolo’s Seven Virtues
Andrea Mantegna’s Minerva Chases the Vices from the Garden of Virtue
Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince
Bernaert van Orley (Designer) and Workshop of Pieter van Aelst (Weaver) The Honors
Peter Brueghel the Elder’s Virtues and Vices
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

Part V
The Tradition Extended
The Struggle III
The Virtues and Vices in Everyday Life and in Death II
The Vitality of Vice II
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and The Antichrist
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Seven Deadly Sins
C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity
Paul Cadmus’s The Seven Deadly Sins
Epilogue
Appendix: Key Virtues and Vices Works
Bibliography
Acknowledgment of Copyright
Index