Aesthetics of Law as ‘Iconic Legal Theology’: Legendre, Schmitt and Vico

Abstract

The article locates the aesthetics of law within modern legal knowledge, moving from the analysis of Kelsen’s and Schmitt’s theories. Schmitt’s reading of Hobbes becomes the starting point in which political theology can be understood as an iconic legal theology, since the image of Leviathan. Legendre expands the reconstruction of the legal aesthetic model to the entire second millennium, moving from the appropriation of the imperial role of the Roman Pontiff. The article reads the frontispiece of Vico’s Scienza Nuova as a possible alternative to the Hobbesian model and as the foundation of contemporary visual legal studies.