The Ingenium Radiancy. Cosmological Representations and Nature Generative Power during the Renaissance

Abstract

This paper offers an approximation to the notion of ingenium in the context of art and philosophy during the European Renaissance. Given its lexical recurrence, its visual representation and the spectrum of ideas covered by it, the ingenium is a paradigmatic notion that calls the attention of specialists in the history of philosophical concepts and researchers in the field of the cultural history of knowledge. To demonstrate this idea, the article intertwines philosophical commentary, mainly, on Marsilio Ficino’s works, with references on theories about artistic creation, mainly, on Alberti’s De Pictura. As compelling center of the argument, the text interrogates an image: “The judgment of Paris”, the famous engraving made in Rome by Marco Antonio Raimondi (1480-1534) from a drawing by Raphael (1483-1520). As a conclusion, the paper aims at presenting how the notion of ingenium was, at the dawn of modernity, philosophical framework for thinking and describing the productive power of both earthly nature and human existence.