Preface to Readers
p. 105-111
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Texte intégral
which shows the similarity painting has with poetry, what the painter and the sculptor can learn from these books, and proof that painting is an art.
1Painting is notably similar to poetry, and vice versa. This has not been overlooked by men, who have generously left in writing that painting is a poem that is silent, and poetry is a painting that speaks.1 Therefore, we can say about these two most excellent faculties that which the philosopher2 of Logic and Rhetoric already wrote, that they live together in balance, because both of these arts imitate natural and artificial things — one represents things to the ears of mortals with words, while the other the eyes with colors.3 In addition, since the poet cannot imitate well with words that man whose actions he does not fully know, thus the painter cannot imitate well that body whose parts are not entirely visible.
2Therefore, should a poet wish to represent a Hercules, or a man of virtue similar to Hercules, he needs to know all of the achievements of that valorous captain. He also needs to know what action is appropriate for whatever virtue. In order to imitate the actions that come from a strong and fearless soul, for instance, he does not imitate the effects of liberality or temperance. Likewise, if the painter wants to imitate a strong man, he should neither make the members of a shy or generous man, nor of another vice or virtue.
3 Because nature is most wise in every operation, and the most faithful minister of God Almighty, she does not want in necessary things, nor does she lavish on those who are excessive, but makes all things in agreement to her end. Wherefore in wanting to make the sky, which continuously spreads out, here He formed an orbital shape, and wanting the air and the water ready for all animals and plants, He made them fluctuating by nature. The land became heavy and stable to be able to support the plants and animals. He made the plants with their roots in the ground so that they may be nourished from it and imbued almost all the animals with motion so that they may procure food wherever they will be.4 Lions, who were given the strongest soul, were made with strong front limbs suited to resist other’s impulses, and were armed with claws and teeth in order to attack the others. Because He made hare and deer timid and defenseless, He gave them long legs made for running.5 I would never find an end if I wanted to discuss all of the created things and their parts to prove the wisdom of nature in forming proportionate bodies appropriate to their purposes—all of these things must be imitated by poets and painters, and again by sculptors. But, because out of all things created the human creature is, after angels, the most excellent due to its form, according to the testimony of the prophet,6 it seems that it is mainly in this that the poet and painter, together with the sculptor, toil and sweat. In finally imitating that form, they consume days, months, years, and their whole lives and are happy and blessed when rejoicing at having reached such perfection that with the satisfaction and praise of viewers, they represent this divine animal. The praise is deservedly merited, for is man anything other than a compendium of all visible and invisible things? This was known to those wise Greeks who named it the Microcosm, the smaller world, because in him are all those things that there are in this entire universe.7 In writing on this topic, the pens of many writers, both profane and ecclesiastic, were drained.8 Therefore, much has been said about this noble creature, and much more is left to say, because He included in him an infinity of things and wanted him to possess endless endurance. Individual men, moreover, possess different bodies between them so that it is not possible to find two men who are so similar in the face or in all the other members, [or who] are not in some part dissimilar. This fact again demonstrates the diversity of natural inclinations. For instance, the man who has some similarities with the members of the lion is robust and strong, as seen from experience, but if he has legs similar to that of the deer, he is shy. This is also said of other members and correspondences where the diversity of the members was prudently placed in men towards endless operations. But because it is not possible for everyone to be given strength, nor for time to make up for all things, it was necessary that one was waiting for one thing and another something else. This is why some members are more appropriate to one thing than to another: it was necessary that the members of men be quite different from each other, which is expected in all men. It is certainly true that if a man has long legs, running in a race will be more convenient; if he has short legs, and robust body, he will easily carry any load possible with human strength; and if he is between them of medium stature and soft flesh, then he will be suited to contemplation and command. Porphyry has already written about those beautiful bodies worthy of empire.9 Thus we can conclude that the duty of the painter is to imitate all natural things, and principally man, because he includes within him all that is necessary and holds the complete knowledge of all sorts of bodies and their members, which mainly consists of large, small and medium, straight and bent, back and front, or right and left. All of these things are quite difficult and cannot be learned from one who does not have a well sculpted soul or well-designed body, and whose members may be called mediocre or proportionate. This, being a definite measure, allows us to know which bodies are long and which are short, which are too thick and which are too thin compared to the proportionate body. The same should be said also about each member. Therefore, those without full knowledge of well-proportioned bodies cannot know [what is appropriate] (as I said). It then seems that students of painting should first struggle with these bodies, rather than others, so that through comparison they will turn away from these in order to have their paintings accommodate bodies proportionate to the people that they want to represent. This recommendation is prudent for painters as it is certainly necessary for them to have a complete knowledge of those natural inclinations that produce the diversity of members in each man so as to represent every type of person. In their figures, they want to introduce proportionate bodies, so it seems to me that the part of the painting most pertinent to explaining human nature mainly consists in the knowledge of two things: one is in knowing how to suitably form all kinds of bodies; the other in knowing the type of person for which each of those is appropriate. From here one sees the perversion of this once illustrious and noble art in our own time.10
4For without a precept that would guide students with certainty, they instead propose their own or copy the drawings of others. They thus reduce this whole profession, which actually marries science and practice, to practice alone, and, to thus satisfy the ignorant and vulgar, like so many amputees limping and blind people groping about, they deprive their histories of the variety of many colors, as many as were in the earliest chaos, which they [wanted] to be the source of all things; they make figures that perform many strained actions and in their members is seen no proportion, which is identified with reverence in the [great artists], who are certainly few in our time, and for that reason we can rightly mourn the loss of this noble art that once was, when those painters so greatly celebrated by Pliny, Vitruvius, and, in recent times, Ariosto, were living and especially when our Albrecht Dürer was living, for he gave so much light to this most noble faculty and art.11 But because I know there are many who do not want painting to be considered an art, arguing that it is only a practice of making or imitating what is seen, I would like them to tell me if among all painters there are not a few who paint better than others, and some adequately, while others completely poorly.12 Tell me that this is true. Now, if among all of these painters one could be found who could advise others on their process in all things, who would he be? This man would be considered better than any other painter because he would have distilled unquestionable precepts; one would say that he had found the art of painting, if it had not been there before. Likewise, the philosopher [Aristotle] stipulates that the art is a habit of making something with reason, and for Cicero, it consists in things known and fully represented, purposeful and silent, which will be conditional concerns observed by our painter.13 For example, providing precepts to form a proportionate foot from a well-proportioned standard will always serve those precepts, and the foot will come out proportioned. The same should be understood for everything else that painters wish to create. Here then students of painting, sculpture and proportion will benefit from the true precepts of the human body, which will always aide and never fail, as certain and reliable guides to the perfection of this art and as roads leading safely to the most secret seclusions of painting. These are the precepts for practicing students, or patrons of that art, which were described by the prince of Peripatetics [Aristotle] as habit made with reason, from which then the actions of figures will never be random, but rather lively and purposeful.14 In this way the prudent painter has not only considered the details in paint and all of the beautiful parts of particular bodies to reduce them to precepts, he has also led all of this back to perfection, such that one cannot improve on it in anyway, as has been written by Pliny, Vitruvius and others, on which we have reflected.15 Thus, he not only gave the precepts of well-proportioned bodies, but established rules and taught those precepts, and found proportions even in bodies that were entirely disproportionate. Rightly he knew very well that that painter (as we said above), having to unfold in painting every sort of person, and form every idea of natural inclinations in all different bodies that proportionally corresponds to their nature, again needed to form multiple precepts that would give order to all bodies and their parts, as though searching for what each person needed in order to represent them in a particular way. Moreover, whosoever deviates greatly from the true proportion found in perfect bodies will lose all of the human form and will make something completely monstrous and ridiculous. Nature also suffers from similar aberrations, which sometimes occur due to a dearth or surplus of matter. In this instance, the painter must be the imitator of nature, and yet diligent, not an ape of men who only imitates actions that are ridiculous, vile or awful. Because of this, I will not deny that the painter could create a monster, but he should make him as a monster and monstrous according to his fantasy. In ordinary bodies of common men and women, moreover, any monstrous part must not be made, nor any part not correspond to the whole body. To avoid all these craggy cliffs, diligent painters and sculptors must steer the boat of their talents towards the rivers of these precepts. Without any doubt they will surely arrive at that port where there is the glory of sailors, where there is their certain profit, and where they are adorned with immortal crowns, and through fame will remain forever alive on earth, and useful to the world as their beautiful works remain in churches, exciting some to piety and penance for their sins, others to martyrdom, others to patience, humility and chastity, and, finally, to the love of God, whose every thing returns to his great benefit and to the profit of his soul, to which belong all the good and evil made by his reason both before and after they departed from this life.
Notes de bas de page
1 Plutarch, De gloria Atheniensium, ed. C. J. Thiolier (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1985), 3: 347a.
2 Among the many ancient authors Gallucci calls upon to bolster his arguments throughout his discourse, Aristotle is held up as the most authoritative philosophical source, specifically his Rhetoric and Poetics.
3 Aristotle, Poetics, transl. Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1: 2.
4 Genesis 1: 6–25.
5 The summary provided here is drawn from Pseudo-Aristotle’s Physiognomica, 5: 809b.18–40; Aristotle, Minor Works, transl. W. S. Hett (London: William Heinemann, 1936), 109; and Aristotle’s The History of Animals, transl. D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), 30: 2.9–10.
6 All of God’s created work culminated in his fashioning of man in his own image and places the earth under his dominion. Genesis 1: 26–28; Psalm 8: 4–8.
7 See Allen G. Debus, The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine (New York: Science History Publications, 1977); Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: S. Karger, 1958).
8 See Leonard Barkan, Nature’s Work of Art: The Human Body as Image of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
9 Pupil of Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus, Porphyry of Tyre (ca.234–ca.305) edited and published The Enneads, a collection of his mentor’s work. In his Life of Pythagoras, Porphyry records the training of the Samian athlete Eurymenes, “who though he was of small stature, conquered at Olympia through his surpassing knowledge of Pythagoras’ wisdom.” Porphyry, “The Life of Pythagoras,” The Pythagorean Sourcebook, transl. Louis H. Feldman and Meyer Reinhold (London: Soncino, 1935), 15. At the same time, Porphyry’s De Sole influenced the imperial propaganda and portraiture of Gallienus based on his descriptions. The emperor, like Constantine after him, sought to associate him with the god Sol and early “good” emperors from the Augustan and Hadrianic traditions. Lukas de Blois, The Policy of Emperor Gallienus (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 168–171.
10 The decline of the visual arts was foretold in biological model Vasari established in his Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568 (1550/1568). Deviation from the five established regole resulted in increasingly attenuated and complex forms with mannerism. In the last decades of the century, recognition of this crisis can be seen in the works of Bruno, Armenini, Lomazzo, and others. The evaluation was carried on in the following century when Bellori would open his own series of artist’s lives with the deplorable state of the field prior to its revival by Annibale Carracci. Vasari, Le vite…, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols (Florence: Sansoni, 1966–1987), II: 96; Giovanni Battista Armenini, Dei veri precetti della pittura, ed. S. Ticozzi (Pisa: N. Capuro, 1823), Proem, 1; Giordano Bruno, De umbris idearum (1580); see Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 1–5, 28.
11 Pliny lauds the accomplishments and Canon of the ancient sculptor Polykleitos; Vitruvius cites Leochares, Bryaxis, Scopas, Praxiteles, and Timotheus as noteworthy practitioners of the visual arts; and Ariosto Zeuxis for his creation of the portrait of Helen. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, transl. John F. Healy (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 34: 55, 58, 65; Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, transl. Morgan (New York: Dover, 1960), Book VII; Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, transl. Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 11: 71.
12 The argument ultimately derives from Plato, whose writings were rediscovered, translated and popularized by Marsilio Ficino a century earlier. Elaborated on in his Republic, Plato excludes artists from his just city-state for they deceive the ignorant by imitating appearance. On the other hand, truth is discoverable only through contemplation of true divine forms. Plato, The Republic, transl. R. E. Allen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 13: 598b–c.
13 Art is a certain “habit” of “making” governed by true reason; the absence of art, the “habit” of “making” governed by false reason. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, transl. Willliam Heinemann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 6: 4; Cicero, on the other hand, compares the art of rhetoric with that of the visual and concludes that the Romans were superior with regards to the spoken, while the Greeks the silence of statues. Cicero, Brutus, ed. Centre Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2010), 67–71.
14 The appropriate action for each figure illustrates the equilibrium of their soul and desire for virtue. Aristotle, Rhetoric, ed. and transl. Edward Meredith Cope and John Edwin Sandys (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1097b, 24–1098a, 1114b, 23–4.
15 Pliny, Natural History, transl. Healy, 34: 55, 58, 65. Vitruvius, De architectura, Book VII; Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, transl. Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 11: 71.
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