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Acknowledgements
I presented an earlier version of this essay at the conference “Looking for Meaning in Renaissance Art,” organized by Peter Mack at the Warburg Institute in 2011. I am grateful to Prof. Mack for the invitation.
Notes
1 The novelist takes the opposite position. Here is Julian Hawthorne, as quoted by Belton, Literary Manual, 186: “With truth scientific, moral, religious, I am at present in nowise concerned. Only I have no respect for weakness that will outrage a promising bit of narrative for the sake of keeping to the facts. Imbecile! the facts are given you, like the block of marble or the elements of a landscape, as material for the construction of a work of art. Which would you rather be, a photographer or Michael Angelo? Non vero ma ben trovato should be your motto.”
2 Maunder, Treasure of Knowledge, 54.
3 King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 489.
4 Belton, Literary Manual, 185–6.
5 Fennell, Stanford Dictionary, 713. Compare Harbottle and Dalbiac, Dictionary of Quotations, 412 (“If it be not true, it is marvelous well invented”); and Benham, Book of Quotations, 737 (“If it is not true, it is very well invented”).
6 Latham, Famous Sayings, 235.
7 Rouff, Standard Dictionary, 266.
8 Lejeune, Concise Dictionary, 235.
9 Adeleye, World Dictionary.
10 Sutherland, Curiosities of Literature, n.p.
11 For the etymology, see Pianigiani, Vocabulario etimologico, II, 1477; for the historical range of meaning, Tommaseo and Bellini, Dizionario della lingua italiana, XIX, 711, which lists, among older senses of the word trovare “poetare, comporre poesie” and “escogitare, in buono e mal senso.”
12 Pianigiani, Vocabulario etimologico, I, 718. See the recent discussions in Copenhaver's introduction to his edition and translation of Polydore Vergil's On Discovery, esp. xi; Atkinson, Inventing Inventors, esp. chapter 2; and Roberts, Printing a Mediterranean World, esp. 181.
13 King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 489, writes that it was “apparently a common saying in the 16th century,” noting that it occurs in Italian translations of Don Quixote. Harbottle and Dalbiac give examples from Anton Francesco Doni's Marmi and from the Giordano Bruno's Eroici Furori, Dictionary of Quotations, 412.
14 Gilio, “De le parti morali,” 31r: “Mi pare che voi biasimate vna de le piu lodate parti, che possa cadere in vn lettereato: perche se tutti quelli, che per l'addietro hanno trouato cose noue, se ne fussero stati contenti de le presenti, ò de le passate, considerate vn poco di quanto bene, & vtile si mancherebbe il mondo? Se il Colombo se ne fusse stato contento di que’ termini, che i Romani, ò altri prima di loro posero al mare di Spagna, e d'Inghilterra, il nuouo mondo con tutte le sue ricchezze ancora si starebbe incognito? [ … ] Se Magagliane se ne fusse stato contento de’ termini del nuouo mondo trouati da'l Colombo, quell grande stretto che dal nostro Oceano entra nel mar del Sur, ancora non si saperebbe. Se il gran Michelangnolo Buonaroti, se ne fusse stato contento de la maniera del pingere de’ pittori del suo tempo; non sarebbe al mondo con tanto honore hoggi la pittura, ne si saperebbe la forza, ne la vaghezza de l'arte.”
15 Pliny's Natural History had provided a model for thinking about the history of art as a history of inventions; see the discussion in McHam, Pliny and Artistic Culture. Polydore Vergil dedicated a chapter of his 1499 book De Inventoribus Rerum to the discoveries of painters.
16 Jamnitzer, Neuw Grottesken Buch, n.p.: “Ob nun wol ich mit obgedachtem Columbo im wenigsten nit / vil weniger aber diss mein new Grottesken Wercklein im geringsten mit seinem Invento zu vergleichen / auch dise histori deswegen mit nichten angezogen / sondern allein zu bescheinen und probiren / dass / wann etwas erfunden und new ans liecht kommen allezeit nasswissige / auffgeplasene Spoetter und Kluegling sich herfuer thun / die solches verachten / oder es selbsten an Tag zu bringen / und besser zu machen / wider ir vermoegen / scienz und conscienz sich vermessen:”
17 On the identification of the grotesque with invention, see the essential studies by Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, and Morel, Les grotesques, both with further references.
18 Montaigne, Essays, 135.
19 Wind, “Michelangelo's Prophets and Sibyls,” 49 (emphasis mine).
20 Ibid., 50–51.
21 Ibid., 51.
22 Ibid., 53–54.
23 Wind, Art and Anarchy.
24 Ibid., 60.