Sunday Word: Sprezzatura

[sallymn]

sprezzatura [sprets-uh-toor-uh]

noun:
1 seemingly effortless grace in manner or careless stylishness in dress; casual charisma or allure
2 a cultivated attitude of detachment or studied indifference, as if one's mastery requires no visible labor or concern

Examples:

True genius was defined by a quality of sprezzatura, creating brilliant work without any toil. (The many ways art goes missing, The Economist, May 2018)

In one of the marvelous essays in her posthumous collection The Unforgivable, Italian writer Cristina Campo (April 29, 1923-January 10, 1977) offers the 16th-century Italian term sprezzatura for that ineffable quality of being upon which our deepest emotional, intellectual, moral, and aesthetic longings tremble. (Maria Popova, Finding Sanity in sprezzatura: The Lost 16th-century Italian Art of Living with Fluency, Serenity, and Openness to Wonder, The Marginalian, March 2026)

Today, it’s a 19-room hotel owned by my best friend, Marie-Louise Sciò, who has preserved its vintage glamour while borrowing some of the sprezzatura from her family’s other property, the iconic Hotel Il Pellicano. (11 Hotels to Visit in Your Dreams, New York Times, November 2020)

Of course, in this advanced age of the handheld vocabulary, everyone on earth knows what sprezzatura means, but in 2000 I had no idea, and I reached for an Italian dictionary. (John McPhee. Frame of Reference, The New Yorker, March 2015)

The modernist era was pure international sprezzatura. TS Eliot and Ezra Pound invented polylingual constructions, with polylingual traditions. (Adam Thirlwell, All the world’s a page, Times Literary Supplement, May 2016)

No poet has created a world of larger and nobler images, designed with the sprezzatura of indifference to mere gracefulness, but all the more fascinating because of the artist's negligence. (John Addington Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece)

Origin:
The word sprezzatura is borrowed from Italian, and it dates back to the 1500s, during the Renaissance. It was used to describe a desirable quality amongst the nobles - making difficult things appear easy and acting in a cool, nonchalant manner. Today, the word is often used in the arts, especially in fashion, where it refers to a relaxed but stylish look that seems like you didn't really bother (but you did) - eg, a partially untucked shirt, a slightly crooked tie, a fancy dress paired with sneakers. (Vocabulary.com)