Notebooks (35 page)

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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

BOOK: Notebooks
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The musician claims that his art is equal to that of the painter, for it, too, is a body composed of many parts—the graces of which may be contemplated by the observer in as many harmonic rhythms as there are, and with these rhythms which are born and die it delights the soul of man within him. But the painter answers and says that the human body composed of many members does not give pleasure through harmonic rhythms in which beauty has to vary and create new forms, nor is it composed in rhythms which constantly require to be born and to die, but he makes it to last a great number of years and of such excellence that it keeps alive that harmony of proportion which nature with all its force could not keep. How many paintings have preserved the image of divine beauty of which time or sudden death have destroyed Nature’s original; so that the work of the painter has survived in nobler form than that of Nature, his mistress.
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Timbals to be played like a monochord, or the soft flute.
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Music has two ills, one of which is mortal and the other wasting; the mortal is ever linked to the instant which follows that of its utterance; the wasting lies in its repetition making it hateful and vile.
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There is the same difference between the poet’s and the painter’s representation of the human figure as there is between dismembered and united bodies. Because the poet in describing the beauty or ugliness of any figure can only show it to you consecutively, bit by bit, while the painter will display it all at once. . . . And the poet’s way may be compared to that of the musician who all by himself undertakes to sing a composition which is intended for four voices and first sings the part of the soprano, then that of the tenor, then the contralto, and finally the bass. Such performances cannot produce the beauty of harmonious proportions set in harmonious divisions of time. . . . Also music when setting her suave melodies in rhythmic divisions of time, composes them in her various voices. But the poet is debarred from such harmonious discrimination of voices—he is unable to give an equivalent of musical harmony, because it is beyond his power to say different things simultaneously as the painter does in his harmonious proportions where the component parts are made to react simultaneously and can be seen at one and the same time both together and separately. . . . For these reasons the poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
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If the poet knows how to describe and write down the appearance of forms, the painter can make them so that they appear enlivened with lights and shadows which create the very expression of the faces. Herein the poet cannot attain with the pen what the painter attains with the brush.
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And if the poet serves the understanding by way of the ear, the painter does so by the eye—the nobler sense; but I will ask no more than that a good painter should represent the fury of a battle and that a poet should describe one and that both these battles be put before the public; you will soon see which will draw most of the spectators, and where there will be most discussion, to which more praise will be given and which will satisfy the more. Undoubtedly the painting being by far the more intelligible and beautiful will please more. Inscribe the name of God and set up His image opposite, and you will see which will be more revered. Painting embraces within itself all the forms of nature, while you have nothing but their names which are not universal as form is. If you have the effects of demonstrations we have the demonstrations of the effects. Take the case of a poet who describes the beauties of a lady to her love and a painter who portrays her; and you will see whither nature will the more incline the enamoured judge. Surely the proof of the matter should be allowed to rest on the verdict of experience.
You have set painting among the mechanical arts. Truly were painters as ready as you are to praise their own works in writing, I doubt whether it would endure the stigma of so base a name. If you call it mechanical because it is by manual work that the hands design what is in the imagination, your writers set down with the pen by manual work what originates in your mind. And if you call it mechanical because it is done for money, who fall into this error—if error it can be called—more than you yourselves? If you lecture for instruction, do you not go to whoever pays you the most? Do you do any work without some pay? And yet I do not say this in blame of such views, for every labour looks for its reward. And if a poet should say I will write a story which signifies great things, the painter can do likewise, for even so Apelles painted the Calumny.* If you were to say that poetry is more lasting, I say the works of a coppersmith are more lasting still, for time preserves them longer than your works or ours; nevertheless they display little imagination; and a picture can be made more enduring if painted upon copper in enamel colours.
We by our art may be called the grandchildren of God.
If poetry treats of moral philosophy, painting has to do with natural philosophy. If poetry describes the working of the mind, painting considers the working of the mind as reflected in the movements [of the body]. If poetry can terrify people by fictions of hell, painting can do as much by placing the same things before the eye. Suppose the poet is set against the painter to represent beauty, terror or a base, ugly monstrous thing, whatever the forms he may in his way produce, the painter will satisfy the more. Have we not seen pictures so closely resembling the actual thing that they have deceived both men and beasts.
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How Painting surpasses all human works by the subtle
speculations connected with it
The eye which is called the window of the soul is the chief means whereby the understanding can most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen. If you, historians, or poets, or mathematicians had not seen the things with your eyes, you could report but imperfectly of them in writing. And if you, O poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness, and less tedious to follow. If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Consider then which is the more grievous defect, to be blind or dumb? Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions his creations do not give so great a satisfaction to men as paintings do; for though poetry attempts to describe forms, actions, and places in words, the painter employs the actual similitude of the forms, in order to reproduce them. Consider, then, which is nearer to the actual man, the name of the man, or his image? The name of the man changes with change of country; but his form is not changed except by death.
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On King Mathias’s* birthday a poet brought him a poem composed in praise of the event which he said was for the benefit of the world; and a painter presented him with a portrait of his beloved. The King quickly closed the book of the poet and turning to the picture fixed his eyes on it with great admiration. Then the poet very indignantly said: ‘O King, read, but read, and you will learn matter of far weightier substance than a mute picture.’ And the King, resenting the reproach that he was admiring mute things, said: ‘Silence, O poet, you do not know what you are saying; this picture serves a nobler sense than your work which might be for the blind. Give me something that I can see and touch and not merely hear, and do not blame my choice when I put your book under my arm and am holding the painting with both hands for my eyes to enjoy; because my hands chose of their own accord to serve the nobler sense and not the sense of hearing. I myself am of the opinion that the painter’s art is as far above the poet’s as the sense he serves is nobler. Do you not know that our soul is composed of harmony and that harmony is only produced when proportions of things are seen or heard simultaneously? And do you not see that in your art there is no simultaneous reaction of proportions, but one part produces another in succession so that the latter is not born before the former has died. Therefore, in my opinion, your invention is much inferior to the painter’s for the sole reason that there is no composition of harmonious proportions. It does not satisfy the mind of the listener or beholder like the proportions of the beautiful forms that compose the divine beauties of this face here before me, which being all joined together and reacting simultaneously give me so much pleasure with their divine proportions that I think there is no other work of man on earth that can give greater pleasure.’
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2. TIME AND SPACE
Proportion in all things
Proportion is not only found in numbers and measurements but also in sounds, weights, times, spaces, and in whatsoever power there may be.
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Describe the nature of time as distinguished from the geometrical definitions. The point has no part; a line is the transit of a point; points are the boundaries of a line.
An instant has no time. Time is made by the movement of the instant, and instants are the boundaries of time.
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Although time is numbered among continuous quantities,* yet through its being invisible and without substance it does not altogether fall under the head of Geometry, which represents its divisions by means of figures and bodies of infinite variety, as may constantly be seen to be the case with things visible and things of substance; but it harmonizes with these only as regards its first principles, namely as to the point and the line. The point as viewed in terms of time is to be compared with the instant and the line may be likened to the length of a quantity of time. And just as points are the beginning and end of the said line so instants form the end and the beginning of any given space of time. And whereas a line is divisible to infinity, a space of time is not unlike such a division; and as the divisions of the line may bear a certain proportion to each other, so may the parts of time.
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3. SOUND AND SPACE
Just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air; so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself.
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I say that the sound of the echo is reflected to the ear after it has struck, just as the images of objects striking the mirrors are reflected into the eyes. And as the image falls from the object into the mirror and from the mirror to the eye at equal angles, so sound will also strike and rebound at equal angles as it passes from the first percussion in the hollow and travels out to meet the ear.
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Every impression continues for a time in the sensitive object that receives it, and that which was of greater power will continue in its receiver for a longer time, and the less powerful for a shorter time. . . .
The sensitive impression is that of a blow received on a resounding substance such as bells and like things, or like the note in the ear, which, indeed, unless it preserved the impression of the notes, could never derive pleasure from hearing a voice alone; for when it passes straight from the first to the fifth note the effect is as though one heard these two notes simultaneously, and thus one perceived the true harmony which the first makes with the fifth; for if the impression of the first note did not remain in the ear for some space of time the fifth which follows immediately after the first would seem alone; and a single note cannot create any harmony, and therefore any note sung alone would seem devoid of charm.
Likewise the radiance of the sun or other luminous body remains in the eye for some time after it has been seen, and the motion of a single firebrand whirled rapidly in a circle causes this circle to seem one continuous uniform flame.
The drops of rain seem continuous threads descending from the clouds; and herein one may see how the eye preserves the impressions of the moving things which it sees. . . .
The voice impresses itself through the air without displacement of air, and strikes upon objects and returns back to its source.
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The painter measures the distance of things as they recede from the eye by degrees just as the musician measures the intervals of the voices heard by the ear. Although the objects observed by the eye touch one another as they recede, I shall nevertheless found my rule on a series of intervals measuring 20 braccia each, just as the musician who, though his voices are united and strung together, has created intervals according to the distance from voice to voice calling them unison, second, third, fourth, and fifth and so on, until names have been given to the various degrees of pitch proper to the human voice.*
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