Divine Fury (58 page)

41
. Erwin Panofsky, “Artist, Scientist, Genius: Notes on the ‘Renaissance-Dämmerung,” in
The Renaissance: Six Essays
(New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 171–173; Huarte,
Examen de ingenios
(1594), 201–202. Huarte cites a Latin translation of Aristotle’s
Nichomachean Ethics
, 1095 b 10, as follows: “Optimum ingenium est illud quod omnia per se intelligit.” Needless to say, Aristotle did not employ the term
ingenium
, though he does observe, citing Hesiod, “Far best is he who knows all things himself” (
Nichomachean Ethics
, 1095 b 10, in
The Basic Works of Aristotle
, ed. Richard Mckeon, intro. C. D. C. Reeve (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 938). Huarte adds that Adam alone was born with “all sciences infused”: “Sólo Adán (dicen los teólogos) nació enseñado y con todas las ciencias infusas” (201).

42
. Huarte,
Examen de ingenios
(1594), 202–203; John Hope Mason,
The Value of Creativity: The Origins and Emergence of a Modern Belief
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 45–49.

43
. Ficino is cited in Kaske and Clark, eds., “Introduction,”
Three Books on Life
, 22; Alberti is cited in Emison,
Creating the “Divine” Artist
, 33.

44
. Brann,
Origin of Genius
, chap. 6.

45
. Calvin is cited in Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham, “Migrations of Angels in the Early Modern World,” in
Angels in the Early Modern World
, eds. Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 57.

46
. Giovanni Mario Verdizotti,
Genius, sive de furore poetico
(Venice, 1575); Zilsel,
Enstehung des Geniebegriffes
, 288–299.

47
. C. S. Lewis, “Wit (with Ingenium),” in his
Studies in Words
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 86–111; Jean Nicot,
Thresor de la langue françoyse tant ancienne que moderne
(Paris: Editions A. et J. Picard, 1960), 313. This is a modern reprint edition of the 1621 version of Nicot’s text, but the definition contained in the original 1606 edition is identical. The entry for “genius” from Elisha Coles’s
An English Dictionary
(1676) may be found in the Scolar Press facsimile edition (Menston, UK: Scolar Press, 1971); Henry Cockeram,
The English Dictionarie of 1623
, intro. Chauncey Brewster Tinker (New York: Huntington Press, 1930), 78; John Dryden,
A Parallel of Poetry and Painting
(1695), in
The Works of John Dryden
, eds. Edward Niles Hooker et al., 20 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956–2000), 20:61.

48
. Giorgio Vasari, “Michelangelo,” in
The Lives of the Artists
, trans. and intro. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 415. “Saintly old man” is Vasari’s description, cited in the “Introduction” to
The Divine Michelangelo: The Florentine Academy’s Homage on His Death in 1564. A Facsimile Edition of the Esequie del Divino Michelagnolo Buanorriti
, trans. and intro. and annotated by Rudolf Wittkower and Margot Wittkower (London: Phaidon Press, 1964), 14. The text is a bilingual edition of Jacopo Giunti’s
Esequie
, or “obequies,” of 1564, a chronicle that draws heavily on contemporary sources and accounts of the funeral rites of Michelangelo. The description of the opening of the casket is that of Don Giovanni di Simone, from a letter dated March 18, 1564, cited in “Introduction,”
Divine Michelangelo
, 16. Michelangelo died on February 18, 1564, and so, in truth, had been dead only twenty-two days. For descriptions of the “life-like” body, see Giunti,
Esequie
, in
Divine Michelangelo
, 74–77; Vasari, “Michelangelo,” 486. The first edition of the
Lives
appeared in 1550, and the second, revised edition in 1568, four years after Michelangelo’s death.

49
. On the “incorruptibility” of the bodies of saints, see Michel Bouvier, “L’incorruptibilité des corps saints,” in
Les miracles, miroirs des corps
, eds. Jacques Gélis and Odile Redon (Paris: Presses et Publications de l’Université de Paris-VIII, 1983), 193–221; Caroline Walker Bynum, “Bodily Miracles and the Resurrection of the Body in the High Middle Ages,” in
Belief in History
, ed. Thomas Keselman (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 68–106. On Michelangelo and Saturn, see Rudolph Wittkower and Margot Wittkower,
Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists
(New York: New York Review of Books Classics, 2006 [1963]), 104–106, though some scholars have questioned whether Michelangelo was in truth Saturnine. See Don Riggs, “Was Michelangelo Born Under Saturn?”
Sixteenth Century Journal
26 (1995): 99–121, and the full consideration in Piers Britton, “‘Mio malinchonico, o vero . . . mio pazzo’: Michelangelo, Vasari, and the Problem of Artists’ Melancholy in Sixteenth-Century Italy,”
Sixteenth Century Journal
34, no. 3 (2003): 653–675. The line on “living form” is that of the poet Bartolommeo Panciatichi, cited in
Divine Michelangelo
, 81. The string of wondrous contemporary adjectives evoked by Michelangelo’s art is discussed in David Summers,
Michelangelo and the Language of Art
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 171–176.

50
. On the use of the adjective “divine,” see Zilsel,
Enstehung des Geniebegriffes
, 276; Emison,
Creating the “Divine” Artist
, 288–289; Martin Kemp, “The ‘Super-Artist’ as Genius: The Sixteenth-Century View,” in
Genius: The History of an Idea
, ed. Penelope Murray (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 32–53. Mourners are cited in
Divine Michelangelo
, 77, 85–86; Benedetto Varchi,
Orazione funerale di Messer Benedetto Varchi fatta, e recitata da lui pubblicamente nell’essequie di Michelagnolo Buonarroti in Firenze nella chiesa di San Lorenzo
(Firenzi, 1564), published as e-text no. 3 in the series
Quellen und Dokumente zu Michelangelo Buonarroti
, ed. Charles Davis, accessed July 4, 2012,
http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/volltexte/2008/643/
.

51
. The anecdote of the bedknobs is in Emison,
Creating the “Divine” Artist
, 5. In addition to Emison’s fine study, see A. Richard Turner’s
Inventing Leonardo
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), for a skillful example of this approach.

52
. Vasari, “Michelangelo,”
Lives
, 472.

53
. Eugène Delacroix,
Journal (1822–1863)
, preface Hubert Damisch, intro. André Joubin (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1980), 43 (entry for Tuesday, December 30, 1823). On the Romantics’ reading of the Renaissance and its long influence on scholarship, see the careful discussion in Emison,
Creating the “Divine” Artist
, esp. “Appendix: The Historiography of
Ingegno
,” 321–349.

54
. Vasari, “Leonardo,”
Lives
, 284. I have altered the translation slightly here, substituting “makes himself known as a thing endowed by God” for “makes himself known as a genius endowed by God.” This is a more literal rendering of “si fa conoscere per cosa (como ella è) largita da Dio” and also avoids the anachronistic use of “genius” referred to above.

55
. On Vergil, see Brian Copenhaver’s excellent introductory essay to Polydore Vergil,
On Discovery
, trans. and ed. Brian P. Copenhaver (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), vi–xxx. Scaliger and Tasso are cited in William J. Bouwsma,
The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550–1640
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 31. See also Vasari, “Preface,”
Lives
, 3; Vasari, “Michelangelo,”
Lives
, 472, 454. “Mortal God” is the sixteenth-century humanist Paulo Pino’s expression for both Michelangelo and Titian, cited in Zilsel,
Enstehung des Geniebegriffes
, 277.

56
. Vasari, “Michelangelo,”
Lives
, 465; Ficino,
Platonic Theology
, 4:177 (13.3.6). This remarkable passage comes in the midst of a discussion of poetry and invention.

CHAPTER 3

1
. René Descartes,
Meditations on First Philosophy
, in
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
, ed. David Weissman, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 62–65. The original Latin and French versions were accessed July 3, 2012, from
Descartes’ Meditations
, A Trilingual HTML Edition, edited by David B. Manley and Charles S. Taylor,
www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/
.

2
. Stuart Clark,
Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 174; Alice Browne, “Descartes’s Dreams,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
40 (1977): 256–273; Michael H. Keefer, “The Dreamer’s Path: Descartes and the Sixteenth Century,”
Renaissance Quarterly
49, no. 1 (1996): 30–76; Geoffrey Scarre, “Demons, Demonologists and Descartes,”
The Heythrop Journal
31, no. 1 (1990): 17–18.

3
. Antoine Galland’s French translation of the Arabic classic
Les mille et une nuits
, published in twelve volumes beginning in 1704, made frequent use of the word “
génie
,” a convention that was subsequently adopted in English translations, where “genius” and “
genie
” remain commonplace to this day. See Voltaire, “Génies,”
Dictionnaire philosophique
, in
Œuvres de Voltaire
, ed. Adrien-Jean-Quentin Beuchot, 72 vols. (Paris: J. Lefèvre, 1829–1840), 30:39–40.

4
. Voltaire, “Ange,”
Dictionnaire philosophique
, in
Œevres de Voltaire
, 26:383–384; J. G. A. Hamann,
Socratic Memorabilia
, trans. James C. O’Flaherty (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 170–171.

5
. [Antoine Furetière], “Génie,”
Dictionnaire universel, contenant généralement tous les mots français tant vieux que modernes et les termes de toutes les sciences et des arts
(1690), Slatkine reprint edition, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1970), 2: n.p. Note that one may find even earlier instances of “genius” employed in this way. In 1662, for example, the English author John Evylen referred to the Dutch natural philosopher Christiaan Huygens as a “universal mathematical genius,” though such examples are comparatively rare. See Giorgio Tonelli, “Genius from the Renaissance to 1770,” in
The Dictionary of the History of Ideas
, ed. Philip P. Wiener, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 2:293–297 (citation on 294).

6
. Abbé Paul Tallemant, “Eloge funebre à Charles Perrault,”
Recueil des harangues prononcées par Messieurs de l’Académie françoise, dans leurs réceptions, & en d’autres occasions differentes, depuis l’establissement de l’Académie jusqu’à présent
, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1709), 2:593. I am grateful to Oded Rabinovitch for bringing this reference to my attention. See also
Nouveau dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise
, 2 vols. (Paris, 1718), 1:754 (emphasis added); G. Matoré and A.-J. Greimas, “La naissance du ‘génie’ au dix-huitième siècle: Etude lexicologique,”
Le Français Moderne
25 (1957): 268.