The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — CompleteLeonardo, da Vinci
Science
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete
Leonardo, da Vinci
Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519 -- Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
Flesh never increases on those portions of the limb where the bones
are near to the surface.
At _b r d a c e f_ the increase or diminution of the flesh never
makes any considerable difference. Nature has placed in front of man
all those parts which feel most pain under a blow; and these are the
shin of the leg, the forehead, and the nose. And this was done for
the preservation of man, since, if such pain were not felt in these
parts, the number of blows to which they would be exposed must be
the cause of their destruction.
Describe why the bones of the arm and leg are double near the hand
and foot [respectively].
And where the flesh is thicker or thinner in the bending of the
limbs.
366.
OF PAINTING.
Every part of the whole must be in proportion to the whole. Thus, if
a man is of a stout short figure he will be the same in all his
parts: that is with short and thick arms, wide thick hands, with
short fingers with their joints of the same character, and so on
with the rest. I would have the same thing understood as applying to
all animals and plants; in diminishing, [the various parts] do so in
due proportion to the size, as also in enlarging.
367.
OF THE AGREEMENT OF THE PROPORTION OF THE LIMBS.
And again, remember to be very careful in giving your figures limbs,
that they must appear to agree with the size of the body and
likewise to the age. Thus a youth has limbs that are not very
muscular not strongly veined, and the surface is delicate and round,
and tender in colour. In man the limbs are sinewy and muscular,
while in old men the surface is wrinkled, rugged and knotty, and the
sinews very prominent.
HOW YOUNG BOYS HAVE THEIR JOINTS JUST THE REVERSE OF THOSE OF MEN,
AS TO SIZE.
Little children have all the joints slender and the portions between
them are thick; and this happens because nothing but the skin covers
the joints without any other flesh and has the character of sinew,
connecting the bones like a ligature. And the fat fleshiness is laid
on between one joint and the next, and between the skin and the
bones. But, since the bones are thicker at the joints than between
them, as a mass grows up the flesh ceases to have that superfluity
which it had, between the skin and the bones; whence the skin clings
more closely to the bone and the limbs grow more slender. But since
there is nothing over the joints but the cartilaginous and sinewy
skin this cannot dry up, and, not drying up, cannot shrink. Thus,
and for this reason, children are slender at the joints and fat
between the joints; as may be seen in the joints of the fingers,
arms, and shoulders, which are slender and dimpled, while in man on
the contrary all the joints of the fingers, arms, and legs are
thick; and wherever children have hollows men have prominences.
The movement of the human figure (368-375).
368.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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