1. Natural Talent. In his History of Modern Criticism
René Wellek said: “The terms 'genius,' 'inspiration,'
poeta vates, furor poeticus are the stock in trade of
Renaissance poetics, and even the most rigid critic...
never forgot to say that poets need 'inspiration,' 'imag-
ination,' 'invention'.... They believed in a rational
theory of poetry but not that poetry was entirely ra-
tional.” All the terms here mentioned are closely tied
up with the concept of genius, but the key to the ideas
later associated with original genius is to be found in
the irrational element always acknowledged in poetry
and art. The idea that the poet is born with his talent
had first taken shape in Hellenistic thought, when
writers and artists first became conscious of the vital
importance of individual artistic endowment (Schweit-
zer, 1925). The concept appears in the writing about
art theory even before the publication in 1554 of
Longinus' Peri hupsous (On the Sublime), which ex-
erted a steadily growing influence on literary criticism
(Monk, 1935). According to Leonardo painting “cannot
be taught to those not endowed by nature” (Richter,
1939). The great Aretino was a passionate champion
of inborn artistic genius; he voiced his view repeatedly
and in a letter of 1547 expressed epigrammatically:
“Art is the gift of bountiful nature and is given to us
in the cradle” (Aretino, 1957). His friend Lodovico
Dolce, also a Venetian, in his
Dialogue on Painting
(1557) made this opinion his own, and later art critics
such as G. P. Lomazzo (1590) reiterated that “those
who are not born painters can never achieve excellence
in this art.” Thereafter this view became an often
repeated
topos (Kris and Kurz, 1934).
If the artist owes his individual talent to a gift of
the gods, his art, too, defies rational analysis. Ancient
authors—Cicero, Quintilian, Pliny—made allowance
for the irrational element in works of art and called
it venustas (“grace”). From the sixteenth century on-
ward classical art theory was permeated with this
concept. “Grace” for the Italians from Baldassare
Castiglione to Vasari and beyond was un non so che,
which in the French theory of the seventeenth century
became the je ne sais quoi and in England, in Pope's
immortal phrase, “A Grace beyond the Reach of Art”
(Monk, 1944).
Critics and artists of the Renaissance had definite
ideas of how talent ought to be displayed. Pedantic,
slow, laborious execution smacked of the artisan's craft.
The work of the artist richly endowed by nature cannot
be measured and valued in terms of working hours
spent on manual execution. As early as the mid-
fifteenth century a distant “rumbling” may be noticed.
The Archbishop Saint Antonino of Florence explained:
“Painters claim, more or less reasonably, to be paid
for their art not only according to the amount of work
involved, but rather according to the degree of their
application and experience” (Gilbert, 1959). But it was
not until well into the sixteenth century that artists
stated with vigor that the compensation for a work
of art depended on the ingenuity and not on the length
of time that had gone into its making. Thus Michel-
angelo supposedly said to Francisco de Hollanda: “I
value highly the work done by a great master even
though he may have spent little time over it. Works
are not to be judged by the amount of useless labor
spent on them but by the worth of the skill and mastery
of their author” (Holt, 1947).
The modern artist had to perform in a way that
matched his new status, and thus we find from the
second half of the sixteenth century onward most the-
orists insisting on facility of execution, on a manner
of painting that would give the impression of rapid
work and effortless skill hiding the toil that had gone
into the making of the work of art. As early as 1550
Vasari made the memorable observation that “many
painters... achieve in the first sketch of their work,
as though guided by a sort of fire of inspiration...
a certain measure of boldness; but afterwards, in finish
ing it, the boldness vanishes” (Wittkower, 1967).
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
a number of progressive artists attempted to preserve
something of the brio of spontaneous creation, with
the result that the finish itself became sketchy. The
masters working with a free, rapid brushstroke assumed
steadily greater importance and led up to the position
of painters like Delacroix, for whom the first flash of
the idea was “pure expression” and “truth issuing from
the soul.” It was in the context of this development
that the painter's sketch as well as the sculptor's
sketchy clay model (bozzetto) were conceded the status
of works of art in their own right. The appreciation
of individual manner and style in the drawing, the
sketch, and the bozzetto—first savored by the eight-
eenth-century virtuoso—cannot, of course, be sepa-
rated from the recognition of genius emerging at the
same time.
