Notebooks (38 page)
Authors: Leonardo da Vinci,Irma Anne Richter,Thereza Wells
Tags: #History, #Fiction, #General, #European, #Art, #Renaissance, #Leonardo;, #Leonardo, #da Vinci;, #1452-1519, #Individual artists, #Art Monographs, #Drawing By Individual Artists, #Notebooks; sketchbooks; etc, #Individual Artist, #History - Renaissance, #Renaissance art, #Individual Painters - Renaissance, #Drawing & drawings, #Drawing, #Techniques - Drawing, #Individual Artists - General, #Individual artists; art monographs, #Art & Art Instruction, #Techniques
The time for studying selection of subjects
Winter evenings should be spent by young students in study of the things prepared during the summer; that is, all the drawings from the nude which you have made in the summer should be brought together and a choice made of the best limbs and bodies from among them to apply in practice and commit to memory.
Of attitudes
Afterwards, in the following summer you should select someone who is well grown, and has not been brought up in doublets and whose figure has therefore lost its natural bearing, and make him go through some graceful and elegant movements; and if his muscles do not show plainly within the outlines of his limbs this is of no consequence. It is enough for you to obtain good attitudes from the figure, and you can correct the limbs by those which you have studied in the winter.
Of the way of learning correctly how to compose
groups of figures in historical pictures
groups of figures in historical pictures
When you have well learnt perspective and have fixed in your memory all the parts and forms of objects, you should go about and often as you go for walks observe and consider the circumstances and behaviour of men as they talk and quarrel, or laugh or come to blows with one another; the actions of the men themselves and of the bystanders, who intervene or look on. And take a note of them with rapid strokes thus—in a little book which you should always carry with you; and let this be of tinted paper; and so that it may not be rubbed out, change the old for a new one; since these things should not be rubbed out but preserved with great care; for the forms and positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them, wherefore keep these as your guides and masters.
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Whether it is better to draw in company or no
I say and insist that drawing in company is much better than alone, for many reasons. The first is that you would be ashamed of being seen among a number of draughtsmen if you are weak, and this feeling of shame will lead you to good study; secondly a wholesome envy will stimulate you to join the number of those who are more praised than you are, for the praise of others will spur you on; yet another is that you can learn from the drawings of those who do better than yourself; and if you are better than the others, you can profit by your contempt for their defects, and the praise of others will incite you to further efforts.
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Of judging your own pictures
We know very well that errors are better recognized in the works of others than in our own; and often by reproving little faults in others, we may ignore great ones in ourselves. . . . I say that when you paint you should have a flat mirror and often look at your work as reflected in it, when you will see it reversed, and it will appear to you like some other painter’s work, so you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way. Again it is well that you should often leave off work and take a little relaxation, because when you come back to it you are a better judge; for sitting too close at work may greatly deceive you. Again it is good to retire to a distance because the work looks smaller and your eye takes in more of it at a glance and sees more easily the lack of harmony and proportion in the limbs and colours of the objects.
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As the body with great slowness produced by the extent of its contrary movement turns in greater space and thereby gives a stouter blow, whereas shorter movements have little strength, so the study of the same subject made at long intervals of time causes the judgement to become more perfect and more able to recognize its own mistakes. And the same is true of the eye of the painter as it draws further away from the picture.
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Of the choice of beautiful faces
It seems to me no small grace in a painter to be able to give a pleasing air to his figures, and this grace, if he have it not by nature, he may acquire it by incidental study in this way: Look about you and take the best parts of many beautiful faces, of which the beauty is established rather by public fame than by your own judgement; for you may deceive yourself and select faces which bear a resemblance to your own, since it would often seem that such resemblance pleases us; and if you were ugly you would select faces that are not beautiful, and you would then create ugly faces as many painters do. For often a master’s shapes resemble himself; so therefore select beauties as I tell you and fix them in your mind.
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Of selecting the light which gives most grace to faces
If you should have a courtyard that you can at pleasure cover with a linen awning that light will be good. Or when you want to take a portrait do it in dull weather, or as evening falls, placing the sitter with his back to one of the walls of the courtyard. Note the faces of the men and women in the streets as evening falls and when the weather is dull, what softness and delicacy you may perceive in them. Therefore, O Painter! have a court arranged with the walls tinted black and a narrow roof projecting within the walls. It should be 10 braccia wide and 20 braccia long and 10 braccia high and covered with a linen awning when the sun is shining; or else paint a portrait towards the evening or when it is cloudy or misty; and this is perfect lighting.
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Rule to be given to boys learning to paint
We know clearly that vision is one of the swiftest actions that there is, and in one instant we see infinite forms; nevertheless, we understand only one thing at a time.
Suppose that you, reader, were to glance rapidly at all this written page, and you will quickly perceive that it is full of various letters, but in this time you could not recognize what letters they are nor what they were meant to tell. Hence you need to proceed word by word, line by line, to be able to understand these letters. Again, if you wish to mount to the top of an edifice you must go up step by step; otherwise it will be impossible to reach the top. So I say to you, whom nature turns to this art, if you wish to have knowledge of the forms of things, you will begin with their details, and not go on to the second until you have the first well fixed in memory and in practice. And if you do otherwise, you will waste your time, or certainly you will prolong your study a good deal; and remember to acquire diligence first, rather than rapidity.
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That diligence should first be learnt rather than rapid execution
If as draughtsman you desire to study well and to good purpose, accustom yourself to work slowly when you are drawing, and discriminate in the lights which have the highest degree of brightness, and likewise in the shadows, which are those that are darker than the others and in what way they join one another; and then their dimensions and the relative proportions of one to another; and note in the outlines which way they are tending, and in the lines what part of them is curved to one side or the other, and where they are more or less conspicuous and where they are broad or fine; and finally that your shadows and lights blend like smoke without strokes or borders: And when you shall have schooled your hand and your judgement by such diligence, you will acquire rapid execution before you are aware.
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These rules are to be used only in testing the figures; since every man makes certain mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not cannot amend them. Therefore, you being aware of errors test your work and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. But if you try to apply these rules in composition you would never make a beginning and would cause confusion in your work.
These rules are intended to give you a free and good judgement; since good judgement proceeds from clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes from reason derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the daughters of sound experience—the common mother of all the sciences and arts. Therefore bearing in mind the precepts of my rules, you will be able, merely by your amended judgement to judge and recognize everything that is out of proportion in a work, whether it is in the perspective or in the figures or other things.
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Many who have not studied the theory of shade and light and of perspective turn to nature and copy her; they thus acquire a certain practice simply by copying without studying or analysing nature further. There are some who look at the objects of nature through glass* or transparent paper or veils and make tracings on the transparent surface; and they then adjust their outlines, adding on here and there to make them conform to the laws of proportion, and they introduce chiaroscuro by filling in the positions, sizes, and shapes of the shadows and lights. These practices may be praiseworthy in him who knows how to represent effects of nature by his imagination and only resorts to them in order to save trouble and not to fail in the slightest particular in the truthful imitation of a thing whereof a precise likeness is required; but they are reprehensible in him who cannot portray without them nor use his own mind in analyses, because through such laziness he destroys his own intelligence and he will never be able to produce anything good without such contrivance. Men like this will always be poor and weak in imaginative work or historical composition.
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The painter who draws by practice and judgement of the eye without the use of reason is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without knowledge of the same.
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Those who are enamoured of practice without science are like the pilot who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never has any certainty where he is going. Practice should always be based on sound theory, of which perspective is the guide and gateway, and without it nothing can be done well in any kind of painting.
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How the painter is not worthy of praise unless he is universal
It may be frankly admitted that certain people deceive themselves who call a painter a ‘good master’ who can only do the head or the figure well. Surely it is no great achievement if after studying one thing only during his whole lifetime he attain to some perfection. But since we know that painting embraces and contains within itself all things which nature produces, or which result from the fortuitous actions of man, and in short whatever can be comprehended by the eyes, it would seem to me that he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well. For do you not see how many and how varied are the actions performed by men alone? Do you not see how many different animals there are, and also trees and plants and flowers? What variety of mountainous regions and plains, of springs, rivers, cities with public and private buildings, instruments fitted for man’s use; of divers costumes, ornaments, and arts? All these things should be rendered with equal facility and perfection by whomever you wish to call a good painter.
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How in works of importance a man should not trust so entirely
to his memory as to disdain to draw from nature
to his memory as to disdain to draw from nature
Any master who should venture to boast that he could remember all the forms and effects of nature would certainly appear to me to be graced with great ignorance, in as much as these effects are infinite and our memory is not of so great capacity as to suffice thereto. Hence, O painter, beware lest the greed of gain should supplant in you the renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than is the renown of riches. Hence for these and other reasons which might be given, you should first strive in drawing to present to the eye in expressive form the purpose and invention created originally in your imagination, then proceed by taking off and putting on until you satisfy yourself; then have men arranged as models draped or nude in the way in which you have disposed them in your work; and make the dimensions and size as determined by perspective, so that nothing remains in the work that is not so counselled by reason and by the effects in nature. And this will be the way to make yourself renowned in your art.
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That painting declines and deteriorates from age to age,
when painters have no other standard than
paintings already done
when painters have no other standard than
paintings already done
Hence the painter will produce pictures of small merit if he takes for his standard the pictures of others, but if he will study from natural objects he will bear good fruit. As was seen in the paintings after the Romans who always imitated each other and so their art constantly declined from age to age. After these came Giotto, the Florentine, who was not content with imitating the works of Cimabue his master, being born in mountain solitudes inhabited only by goats and such beasts and being guided by nature to his art, he began by drawing on the rocks the movements of the goats which he was tending; and thus he began to draw all the animals which were to be found in the country, and in such a way that after much study he excelled not only the masters of his time but all those of many bygone ages. Afterwards this art declined again, because everyone imitated the pictures that were already done; thus it went on deteriorating . . . until Tomaso of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard anyone but nature—the mistress of all masters—weary themselves in vain. And similarly, I would say about these mathematical studies that those who study only the authorities and not the works of nature are descendants but not sons of nature, the mistress of all good authors. Oh how great is the folly of those who blame those who learn from nature, leaving uncensured the authorities who were themselves the disciples of this same nature.
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