disegno

disegno. An Italian word that in art-historical contexts can sometimes be translated straightforwardly as ‘drawing’ or ‘design’ but which in the Renaissance often carried the broader meaning of the total imaginative concept of a work of art; in this sense, the word has been translated as ‘creative capacity’. In the 16th century some theorists used the phrase disegno interno, implying a divinely inspired idea in the artist's mind, and Federico Zuccaro punningly derived disegno from segno di Dio (‘sign of God’). Central Italian (particularly Florentine) artists and writers laid particular stress on the importance of disegno, in contrast with the Venetian emphasis on colore (‘colour’). These different approaches were formalized in 17th-century France when the Académie Royale (see academy) split into opposing factions—the Poussinists, who adhered to the intellectual approach of Poussin, and the Rubénistes, led by Roger de Piles, who admired the colour and warmth of Rubens. Echoes of the controversy lingered in the rivalry between Ingres and Delacroix in the 19th century and perhaps even in that between Picasso and Matisse in the 20th.