Da Vinci On Painting

Da Vinci on Painting Leonardo da Vinci

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OVERVIEW Leonardo da Vinci, a master painter of the Renaissance and one of the great artists of all time, is probably best remembered for the Mona Lisa, a portrait he completed in 1503. The following excerpts are from da Vinci’s notebooks on the rules of painting. GUIDED READING As you read, consider the following questions: • What was the purpose of painting at that time? • What do you think was the social position of the painter?

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hich is the more difficult: light and shade or good design? I maintain that a thing which is confined by a boundary is more difficult than one which is free. Shadows have their boundaries at certain stages, and when one is ignorant of this his works will be lacking in that relief which is the importance and the soul of painting. Design is free, in so much as if you see an infinite number of faces they will be all different, one with a long nose and one with a short; the painter therefore must also assume this liberty, and where there is liberty there is no rule. PAINTING The mind of the painter should be like a mirror which always takes the colour of the thing that it reflects, and which is filled by as many images as there are things placed before it. Knowing therefore that you cannot be a good master unless you have a universal power of representing by your art all the varieties of the forms which nature produces,—which indeed you will not know how to do unless you see them and retain them in your mind,—look to it, O Painter, that when you go into the fields you give your attention to the various objects, and look carefully in turn first at one thing and then at another, making a bundle of different things selected and chosen from among those of less value. And do not after the manner of some painters who when tired by imaginative work, lay aside their task and take exercise by walking, in order to find relaxation, keeping, however, such weariness of mind as prevents them either seeing or being conscious of different objects; so that often when meeting friends or relatives, and being saluted by them, although they may see and hear them they know them no more than if they had met only so much air. The various contrasts of the different degrees of shadows and lights often cause hesitation and confusion to the painter who aspires to imitate and reproduce the things that he sees. The reason is that if you see a white cloth

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side by side with a black one, it is certain that the part of this white cloth which is next to the black will seem whiter by far than the part that is next to something whiter than itself, and the reason of this is proved in my Perspective. PRECEPTS OF PAINTING Let the sketches for historical subjects be rapid, and the working of the limbs not too much finished. Content yourself with merely giving the positions of these limbs, which you will then be able at your leisure to finish as you please. Among shadows of equal strength that which is nearest to the eye will seem of less density. All colours in distant shadows are indistinguishable and undiscernible. In the distance all colours are indistinguishable in shadows, because an object which is not touched by the principal light has no power to transmit its image through the more luminous atmosphere to the eye, because the lesser light is conquered by the greater. For example, we see in a house that all the colours on the surface of the walls are visible instantly and clearly when the windows of the house are open; but, if we go out of the house and look through the windows at a little distance in order to see the paintings on the walls, we shall see instead of them a uniform darkness. The painter ought first to exercise his hand by copying drawings by good masters; and having acquired facility in this under the advice of his instructor, he ought to set himself to copy good reliefs. OF THE WAY TO DRAW FIGURES FOR HISTORIES The painter ought always to consider, as regards the wall on which he intends to represent a story, the height of the position where he intends to place his characters, so that when he makes studies from nature for this purpose he should have his eye as much below the thing that he is drawing as the said thing appears in the picture above the eye of the spectator: otherwise the work will be deserving of censure. WHY A PAINTING CAN NEVER APPEAR DETACHED AS DO NATURAL THINGS Painters oftentimes despair of their power to imitate nature, on perceiving how their pictures are lacking in the power of relief and vividness which objects possess when seen in a mirror, though as they allege they have colours that for clearness and depth far surpass the quality of the lights and shadows of the object seen in the mirror, arraigning herein not reason but their own ignorance, in that they fail to recognise the impossibility of a painted object appearing in such relief as to be comparable to the objects in the mirror, although both are on a flat surface unless they are seen by a single eye. And the

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reason of this is that when two eyes see one thing after another, as in the case of a b seeing n m, m cannot entirely cover n because the base of the visual lines is so broad as to cause one to see the second object beyond the first. If however you close one eye as s, the object f will cover up r, because the visual line starts in a single point and makes its base in the first object, with the consequence that the second being of equal size is never seen. Every bodily form as far as concerns the function of the eye is divided into three parts, namely substance, shape and colour. The image of its substance projects itself farther from its source than its colour or its shape; the colour also projects itself farther than the shape, but this law does not apply to luminous bodies. The above proposition is clearly shown and confirmed by experience, for if you see a man near at hand you will be able to recognise the character of the substance of the shape and even of the colour, but, if he goes some distance away from you, you will no longer be able to recognise who he is because his shape will lack character, and if he goes still farther away you will not be able to distinguish his colour but he will merely seem a dark body, and farther away still he will seem a very small round dark body. He will appear round because distance diminishes the various parts so much as to leave nothing visible except the greater mass. The reason of this is as follows:—We know very well that all the images of objects penetrate to the imprensiva through a small aperture in the eye; therefore if the whole horizon a d enters through a similar aperture and the object b c is a very small part of this horizon, what part must it occupy in the minute representation of so great a hemisphere? And since luminous bodies have more power in darkness than any others it is necessary, since the aperture of the sight is considerably in shadow, as is the nature of all holes, that the images of distant objects intermingle within the great light of the sky, or if it should be that they remain visible they appear dark and black, as every small body must when seen in the limpidity of the air. [Images in the air] All bodies together and each of itself fill the surrounding air with an infinite number of their images which are all in all this air, and all in the parts of it, bearing with them the nature of the body, the colour and the form of their cause. Perspective is the bridle and rudder of painting. Shadows which you see with difficulty, and whose boundaries you cannot define—but which you only apprehend and reproduce in your work with some hesitation of judgment—these you should not represent as finished or sharply defined, for the result would be that your work would seem wooden. OF THE THREE KINDS OF PERSPECTIVE Perspectives are of three kinds. The first has to do with the causes of the diminution or as it is called the diminishing perspective of objects as they recede from the eye. The second the manner in which colours are changed as

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they recede from the eye. The third and last consists in defining in what way objects ought to be less carefully finished as they are farther away. And the names are these: Linear Perspective Perspective of Colour Vanishing Perspective. OF THE FEW FOLDS IN DRAPERIES How figures when dressed in a cloak ought not to show the shape to such an extent that the cloak seems to be next to the skin; for surely you would not wish that the cloak should be next the skin, since you must realise that between the cloak and the skin are other garments which prevent the shape of the limbs from being visible and appearing through the cloak. And those limbs which you make visible, make thick of their kind so that there may seem to be other garments there under the cloak. And you should only allow the almost identical thickness of the limbs to be visible in a nymph or an angel, for these are represented clad in light draperies, which by the blowing of the wind are driven and pressed against the various limbs of the figures. OF THE WAY TO PRESENT DISTANT OBJECTS IN PAINTING It is evident that the part of the atmosphere which lies nearest the level ground is denser than the rest, and that the higher it rises the lighter and more transparent it becomes. In the case of large and lofty objects which are some distance away from you, their lower parts will not be much seen, because the line by which you should see them passes through the thickest and densest portion of the atmosphere. But the summits of these heights are seen along a line which, although when starting from your eye it is projected through the denser atmosphere, yet since it ends at the highest summit of the object seen, concludes its course in an atmosphere far more rarefied than that of its base. And consequently the farther away from you this line extends from point to point the greater is the change in the finer quality of the atmosphere. Do you, therefore, O painter, when you represent mountains, see that from hill to hill the bases are always paler than the summits, and the farther away you make them one from another let the bases be paler in proportion, and the loftier they are the more they should reveal their true shape and colour.

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Da Vinci on Painting

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