The Pagan Agenda

[The following is an excerpt from my undergraduate thesis, which I am including on my blog for two reasons 1) I am lazy and need to copy from myself 2) there are some key reference points in this passage that I will refer to in latter discussions on aesthetics. My past thoughts on aesthetics can be read here]

In the etymology of the term ingegno from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century a significant alteration was made to introduce an idea of genius beyond the boundaries of manual
skill and the mastery of rational rules. In Quattrocento art literature, Martin Kemp observes that “there was a general distrust of the kind of fervent and spontaneous inspiration which may be categorized as ‘poet’s madness.’ This concept of ‘poet’s madness’, (or furor, as it was frequently referred to in records of this period) has its origins in Plato’s Phaedrus, where it is stated that “The greatest of blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods.” With the renewed appreciation of Plato’s works, particularly within the Medicean circle, the positive connotations of furor resurfaced. Ficino’s publication of De Vita Longa (1489), the first treatise on the health of Intellectuals, was arguably the most decisive factor of this resurfacing. In it he declares that natural melancholy is a determinant of genius, “a unique and divine gift.” Prior to this publication the notion of melancholy lacked any positive connotations, such a trait was belittled or pitied in the sick and aged: Castiglione prescribed that the elderly should “accompany the gravity of their years with a certain amusing and measured humour.” With the publication came an established notion of the temperamental genius whose sub-rational traits contribute to, rather than impede, his mastery. The book went through nearly thirty editions (last ed. 1647) and influenced artists and art theorists as far as the Netherlands, as attested by Albrecht Durer’s famous print of a temperamental genius of divine status in his Melancholia I (1514). The infallibility of this new species of genius was challenged by Cinquecento art theorists, most notably in Pietro Aretino’s exasperated correspondence with Michelangelo, as both artist and theorist vied for rhetorical license in their sphere of specialty. Kemp suggests that perhaps the Ficinian idea of the artist-genius as divine and infallible was marginalized near the end of the sixteenth century

out of the institutional need of art academies, which were gaining prominence at this time, and required their own rhetorical license to exist.

At its most optimistic, the notion of the artist-genius attained a quasi-divine status. Cinquecento art theorists were constantly struggling to establish a properly unified and articulated conceptual definition of painting, which led to various musings upon an open-ended quality of art thought to be grasped only at an intuitive or spiritual level. This gap in theory was addressed in different ways: Vasari, in the preface to his third and penultimate age of art, referred to this quality as grazia, which in Vasari’s use of the term denotes a divine achievement by the artist beyond the science of art; Dolce referred to this quality as “charm” (e questa è la venustà) in concordance with the Plinian ideal assigned to Apelles, which, lacking explicit spiritual import, derived its significance from the pleasurable effect caused by its own indefinable nature. The spiritual dignity of art-making was evoked in various treatises, due largely to the devotional role of images in the rituals of the Catholic Church. The notion of the divine artist was not simply a rhetorical flourish, as certain usages of the term divino seem stronger and more deliberate; an example is
Anton Francesco Doni’s explicit mention of the religious ramifications of his belief in
Michelangelo in the following statement, from a letter of 1543: “Your marbles and your colors deserve more honor and more reverence than the gods themselves, so that you should be adored by men and without dying be raised by angels to one of the most splendid thrones of Paradise…and certainly I take you to be a God, but with license from our faith”. The transition from the adept artist relying on rote practice of antique and natural models as a repertory of ideas, to the artist relying on inner visions, or fantasia, grew in importance throughout the sixteenth century. As Erwin Panofsky writes, “It was assumed that the artistic
mind was able to transform reality into an Idea, to affect an autonomous synthesis of the objective data, and such a mind no longer needed such regulations, valid a priori or empirically confirmed, as mathematical laws, the concurrence of public opinion, and the testimonials of ancient writers.” Placing the emphasis on the image-forming faculty of the mind the artist-genius became ever more like God the creator, creating anew rather than copying from his work. From a Neo-Platonist standpoint, this image-forming faculty was able to

channel the true essence of things from the cosmic mind. Naturally, Michelangelo endorsed this emphasis on the mind in his popular dictum that the artist must possess ‘compasses in his eyes rather than in his hands.’ This would also have a rhetorical benefit for the aging Michelangelo, as theory-based styles were thought to be more closely aligned with the soul than rote practice, and hence less corruptible by aging. Technorati Tags: artist-genius, Vasari, Michelangelo