The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (31 page)

507.

When, Oh draughtsmen, you desire to find relaxation in games you
should always practise such things as may be of use in your
profession, by giving your eye good practice in judging accurately
of the breadth and length of objects. Thus, to accustom your mind to
such things, let one of you draw a straight line at random on a
wall, and each of you, taking a blade of grass or of straw in his
hand, try to cut it to the length that the line drawn appears to him
to be, standing at a distance of 10 braccia; then each one may go up
to the line to measure the length he has judged it to be. And he who
has come nearest with his measure to the length of the pattern is
the best man, and the winner, and shall receive the prize you have
settled beforehand. Again you should take forshortened measures:
that is take a spear, or any other cane or reed, and fix on a point
at a certain distance; and let each one estimate how many times he
judges that its length will go into that distance. Again, who will
draw best a line one braccio long, which shall be tested by a
thread. And such games give occasion to good practice for the eye,
which is of the first importance in painting.

508.

I cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for
study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous,
is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various
inventions. And this is, when you look at a wall spotted with
stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some
scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes,
beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide
valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see
battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an
endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and
well drawn forms. And these appear on such walls confusedly, like
the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you
choose to imagine.

On the size of the studio.

509.

Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.

On the construction of windows (510-512).

510.

The larger the wall the less the light will be.

511.

The different kinds of light afforded in cellars by various forms of
windows. The least useful and the coldest is the window at
a
. The
most useful, the lightest and warmest and most open to the sky is
the window at
b
. The window at
c
is of medium utility.

[Footnote: From a reference to the notes on the right light for
painting it becomes evident that the observations made on
cellar-windows have a direct bearing on the construction of the
studio-window. In the diagram
b
as well as in that under No. 510
the window-opening is reduced to a minimum, but only, it would seem,
in order to emphasize the advantage of walls constructed on the plan
there shown.]

512.

The painter who works from nature should have a window, which he can
raise and lower. The reason is that sometimes you will want to
finish a thing you are drawing, close to the light.

Let
a b c d
be the chest on which the work may be raised or
lowered, so that the work moves up and down and not the painter. And
every evening you can let down the work and shut it up above so that
in the evening it may be in the fashion of a chest which, when shut
up, may serve the purpose of a bench.

[Footnote: See Pl. XXXI, No. 2. In this plate the lines have
unfortunately lost their sharpness, for the accidental loss of the
negative has necessitated a reproduction from a positive. But having
formerly published this sketch by another process, in VON LUTZOW'S
Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst
(Vol. XVII, pg. 13) I have
reproduced it here in the text. The sharpness of the outline in the
original sketch is here preserved but it gives it from the reversed
side.]

On the best light for painting (513-520).

513.

Which light is best for drawing from nature; whether high or low, or
large or small, or strong and broad, or strong and small, or broad
and weak or small and weak?

[Footnote: The question here put is unanswered in the original MS.]

514.

A broad light high up and not too strong will render the details of
objects very agreeable.

515.

The light for drawing from nature should come from the North in
order that it may not vary. And if you have it from the South, keep
the window screened with cloth, so that with the sun shining the
whole day the light may not vary. The height of the light should be
so arranged as that every object shall cast a shadow on the ground
of the same length as itself.

516.

An object will display the greatest difference of light and shade
when it is seen in the strongest light, as by sunlight, or, at
night, by the light of a fire. But this should not be much used in
painting because the works remain crude and ungraceful.

An object seen in a moderate light displays little difference in the
light and shade; and this is the case towards evening or when the
day is cloudy, and works then painted are tender and every kind of
face becomes graceful. Thus, in every thing extremes are to be
avoided: Too much light gives crudeness; too little prevents our
seeing. The medium is best.

Again, lights cast from a small window give strong differences of
light and shade, all the more if the room lighted by it be large,
and this is not good for painting.

517.

The luminous air which enters by passing through orifices in walls
into dark rooms will render the place less dark in proportion as the
opening cuts into the walls which surround and cover in the
pavement.

518.

In proportion to the number of times that
a b
goes into
c d
will
it be more luminous than
c d
. And similarly, in proportion as the
point
e
goes into
c d
will it be more luminous than
c d;
and
this light is useful for carvers of delicate work. [Footnote 5: For
the same reason a window thus constructed would be convenient for an
illuminator or a miniature painter.]

[Footnote: M. RAVAISSON in his edition of the Paris MS. A remarks on
this passage:
"La figure porte les lettres
f
et
g,
auxquelles
rien ne renvoie dans l'explication; par consequent, cette
explication est incomplete. La figure semblerait, d'ailleurs, se
rapporter a l'effet de la reflexion par un miroir concave."
So far
as I can see the text is not imperfect, nor is the sense obscure. It
is hardly necessary to observe that
c d
here indicate the wall of
the room opposite to the window
e
and the semicircle described by
f g
stands for the arch of the sky; this occurs in various
diagrams, for example under 511. A similar semicircle, Pl III, No. 2
(and compare No. 149) is expressly called '
orizonte
' in writing.]

519.

That the light should fall upon a picture from one window only. This
may be seen in the case of objects in this form. If you want to
represent a round ball at a certain height you must make it oval in
this shape, and stand so far off as that by foreshortening it
appears round.

520.

If you should have a court yard 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, making the
sitter stand with his back to one of the walls of the court yard.
Note in the streets, as evening falls, the faces of the men and
women, and when the weather is dull, what softness and delicacy you
may perceive in them. Hence, Oh 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; or else paint a work
towards evening or when it is cloudy or misty, and this is a perfect
light.

On various helps in preparing a picture (521-530).

521.

To draw a nude figure from nature, or any thing else, hold in your
hand a plumb-line to enable you to judge of the relative position
of objects.

522.

When you draw take care to set up a principal line which you must
observe all throughout the object you are drawing; every thing
should bear relation to the direction of this principal line.

523.

Have a piece of glass as large as a half sheet of royal folio paper
and set thus firmly in front of your eyes that is, between your eye
and the thing you want to draw; then place yourself at a distance of
2/3 of a braccia from the glass fixing your head with a machine in
such a way that you cannot move it at all. Then shut or entirely
cover one eye and with a brush or red chalk draw upon the glass that
which you see beyond it; then trace it on paper from the glass,
afterwards transfer it onto good paper, and paint it if you like,
carefully attending to the arial perspective.

If you want to acquire a practice of good and correct attitudes for
your figures, make a square frame or net, and square it out with
thread; place this between your eye and the nude model you are
drawing, and draw these same squares on the paper on which you mean
to draw the figure, but very delicately. Then place a pellet of wax
on a spot of the net which will serve as a fixed point, which,
whenever you look at your model, must cover the pit of the throat;
or, if his back is turned, it may cover one of the vertebrae of the
neck. Thus these threads will guide you as to each part of the body
which, in any given attitude will be found below the pit of the
throat, or the angles of the shoulders, or the nipples, or hips and
other parts of the body; and the transverse lines of the net will
show you how much the figure is higher over the leg on which it is
posed than over the other, and the same with the hips, and the knees
and the feet. But always fix the net perpendicularly so that all the
divisions that you see the model divided into by the net work
correspond with your drawing of the model on the net work you have
sketched. The squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of
the net as you wish that your figure should be smaller than nature.
Afterwards remember when drawing figures, to use the rule of the
corresponding proportions of the limbs as you have learnt it from
the frame and net. This should be 3 braccia and a half high and 3
braccia wide; 7 braccia distant from you and 1 braccio from the
model.

[Footnote: Leonardo is commonly credited with the invention of the
arrangement of a plate of glass commonly known as the "vertical
plane." Professor E. VON BRUCKE in his
"Bruchstucke aus der Theorie
der bildenden Kunste,"
Leipzig 1877, pg. 3, writes on this
contrivance.
"Unsere Glastafel ist die sogenannte Glastafel des
Leonardo da Vinci, die in Gestalt einer Glastafel vorgestellte
Bildflache."
]

524.

Place a sheet of not too transparent paper between the relievo and
the light and you can draw thus very well.

[Footnote: Bodies thus illuminated will show on the surface of the
paper how the copyist has to distribute light and shade.]

525.

If you want to represent a figure on a wall, the wall being
foreshortened, while the figure is to appear in its proper form, and
as standing free from the wall, you must proceed thus: have a thin
plate of iron and make a small hole in the centre; this hole must be
round. Set a light close to it in such a position as that it shines
through the central hole, then place any object or figure you please
so close to the wall that it touches it and draw the outline of the
shadow on the wall; then fill in the shade and add the lights; place
the person who is to see it so that he looks through that same hole
where at first the light was; and you will never be able to persuade
yourself that the image is not detached from the wall.

[Footnote:
uno piccolo spiracelo nel mezzo
. M. RAVAISSON, in his
edition of MS. A (Paris), p. 52, reads
nel muro
—evidently a
mistake for
nel mezzo
which is quite plainly written; and he
translates it
"fait lui une petite ouverture dans le mur,"
adding
in a note:
"les mots 'dans le mur' paraissent etre de trop.
Leonardo a du les ecrire par distraction"
But
'nel mezzo'
is
clearly legible even on the photograph facsimile given by Ravaisson
himself, and the objection he raises disappears at once. It is not
always wise or safe to try to prove our author's absence of mind or
inadvertence by apparent difficulties in the sense or connection of
the text.]

526.

If you wish to draw a figure or any other object to look 24 braccia
high you must do it in this way. First, on the surface
m r
draw
half the man you wish to represent; then the other half; then put on
the vault
m n
[the rest of] the figure spoken of above; first set
out the vertical plane on the floor of a room of the same shape as
the wall with the coved part on which you are to paint your figure.
Then, behind it, draw a figure set out in profile of whatever size
you please, and draw lines from it to the point
f
and, as these
lines cut
m n
on the vertical plane, so will the figure come on
the wall, of which the vertical plane gives a likeness, and you will
have all the [relative] heights and prominences of the figure. And
the breadth or thickness which are on the upright wall
m n
are to
be drawn in their proper form, since, as the wall recedes the figure
will be foreshortened by itself; but [that part of] the figure which
goes into the cove you must foreshorten, as if it were standing
upright; this diminution you must set out on a flat floor and there
must stand the figure which is to be transferred from the vertical
plane
r n
[Footnote 17:
che leverai dalla pariete r n
. The
letters refer to the larger sketch, No. 3 on Pl. XXXI.] in its real
size and reduce it once more on a vertical plane; and this will be a
good method [Footnote 18: Leonardo here says nothing as to how the
image foreshortened by perspective and thus produced on the vertical
plane is to be transferred to the wall; but from what is said in
Nos. 525 and 523 we may conclude that he was familiar with the
process of casting the enlarged shadow of a squaring net on the
surface of a wall to guide him in drawing the figure.