Divine Fury (44 page)

FIGURE 5.1.
Jean Honoré Fragonard,
Inspiration
, 1769. This stylized rendering of the inspired artist recalls a common motif of religious painting, in which the saint is startled by an epiphany or divine voice.
Copyright © RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York
.

FIGURE 5.2.
Paul Cézanne,
The Poet’s Dream
, c. 1858–1860. Despite modern skepticism toward
genii
, angels, and demons, the divine fury of inspiration continued to be represented as if creators were mysteriously possessed, perpetuating a sense that geniuses could connect with forces beyond the self.
Copyright © RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York
.

FIGURE 5.3.
The eyes of a genius, from Lavater’s
Physiognomische Fragmente
, 1775–1778.
Wellcome Library, London
.

FIGURE 5.4.
The silhouettes of “four great men” displaying the traits of “superiority of genius.” From Lavater’s
Physiognomische Fragmente
, 1775–1778.
Wellcome Library, London
.

FIGURE 5.5.
Jewish genius (
Spinoza left, Mendelssohn right
). Two images from the German psychologist Ernst Kretschmer’s
Geniale Menschen
(1929), translated into English as
Psychology of Men of Genius
. Kretschmer, who was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1930, illustrated his book with dozens of examples displaying the facial features of geniuses, testimony to the lasting influence of physiognomy.
Wellcome Library, London
.

FIGURE 5.6.
An image from the third English edition of Cesare Lombroso’s
The Man of Genius
, originally published in Italian as
L’uomo di genio
(1889). Three views of the skull of Immanuel Kant are compared to those of three Italian geniuses. Kant’s skull was disinterred and studied closely in 1880, eliciting widespread public commentary.
Yale University Library, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library
.

FIGURE 5.7.
Bigger is better. A design by the respected German anatomist Johann Christian Gustav Lucae for Wilhelm Gwinner’s 1862 hagiography of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The size of Schopenhauer’s skull (the largest) is plotted in comparison to that of six others, including Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Napoleon, the German poet Christoph August Tiedge, and a “cretin.”
Image courtesy of John M. Merriman
.

FIGURE 5.8.
“The Relation of Average Monthly Temperature to Admission of Lunatics to Asylum, and to Productions of Works of Genius.” One of many such graphs in Cesare Lombroso’s
The Man of Genius
purporting to demonstrate, with the power of modern statistics, the “stigmata” of genius and the correlations between genius and insanity, illness, and other aberrations.
Yale University Library, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library
.

FIGURE 5.9.
A hereditary “tree” of idiosyncratic nervous illness included in Jacques-Joseph Moreau’s
La psychologie morbide
(
Morbid Psychology
) of 1859. In the upper right, just a branch above that containing criminals and prostitutes, is the branch of “exceptional intelligence,” which leads to offshoots of genius in the arts, letters, music, painting, and the sciences.
Yale University Library, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library
.