The Art of Painting

Overview

Leonardo's writings on painting form the backbone of his intellectual legacy. After his death, his pupil Francesco Melzi compiled many of these passages into the Trattato della Pittura (Treatise on Painting), which became one of the most influential art texts ever published.

But the raw notebook material is richer and stranger than Melzi's polished compilation. Leonardo argues passionately that painting is the supreme art — superior to poetry, music, and sculpture (the famous paragone, or comparison). He gives practical instructions for the working painter alongside philosophical reflections on the nature of vision, the relationship between art and nature, and what it means to truly see.

The passages below draw primarily from the Precepts of the Painter (ms. 2038, Bibliothèque Nationale), one of the largest coherent bodies of Leonardo's art theory.

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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 2 r.

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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 2 r.

Painting is concerned with all the ten attributes of sight, namely: darkness, brightness, substance and colour, form and place, remoteness and nearness, movement and rest; and it is with these attributes that this my small book will be interwoven.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 1 r.

Which 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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 1 r.

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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 8 v.

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, following the rules which will presently be given.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 10 r.

He who draws from relief ought to take his position so that the eye of the figure he is drawing is on a level with his own. And this should be done whenever a head has to be drawn from nature, because generally figures or people whom you meet in the streets all have their eyes at the same level as yours, and if you make them higher or lower you will find that your portrait will not resemble them.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 10 r.

That part of the fold which is farthest from the ends where it is confined will return most closely to its original form. Everything naturally desires to remain in its own state. Drapery being of uniform density and thickness on the reverse and on the right side, desires to lie flat; consequently, whenever any folds or pleats force it to depart from this condition of flatness, it obeys the law of this force in that part of itself where it is most constrained, and the part farthest away from such constraint you will find return most nearly to its original state, that is to say, lying extended and full.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 4 r.

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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 10 r.

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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 10 r.

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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 9 v.

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.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 9 v.

Among shadows of equal strength that which is nearest to the eye will seem of less density.

ms. 2038 Bib. Nat. 9 v.