Methinks it is no small grace in a painter if he give a pleasing air to his figures, a grace which, if it be not one's own by nature, may be acquired by study, as follows. Try to take the best parts from many beautiful faces, whose beauty is affirmed by public fame rather than by your own judgment, for you may deceive yourself by taking faces which resemble your own. For it would often seem that such similarities please us; and if you were ugly you would not select beautiful faces, and you would make ugly ones, like many painters whose types often resemble their master. Therefore, take beautiful features, as I tell you, and commit them to your memory. Monstrous is he who has a very large head and short legs, and monstrous he who with rich garments has great poverty; therefore we shall call him well proportioned whose every part corresponds with his whole. _On the Choice of Light_ If you had a courtyard, which you could cover at will with a canvas awning, this light would be good; or when you wish to paint somebody, paint him in bad weather, or at the hour of dusk, placing the sitter with his back to one of the walls of this courtyard. Observe in the streets at the fall of the evening the faces of men and women when it is bad weather, what grace and sweetness then appear to be theirs. Therefore, you should have a courtyard, prepared with walls painted in black, and with the roof projecting a little over the said wall. And it should be ten _braccia_ [ten fathoms] in width, and twenty in length and ten in height; and when the sun shines you should cover it over with the awning, or you should paint an hour before evening, when it is cloudy or misty. For this is the most perfect light. _Of the Gesture of Figures_ You should give your figures such movement as will suffice to show what is passing in the mind of the figure; else your art would not be praiseworthy. A figure is not worthy of praise if it do not express by some gesture the passion of the soul. That figure is most worthy of praise which best expresses by its gesture the passion of its nature. If you have to represent an honest man talking, see that his action be companion to his good words; and again, if you have to depict a bestial man, give him wild movements--his arms thrown towards the spectator, and his head pressed towards his chest, his legs apart. _The Judgment of Painting_ We know well that mistakes are more easily detected in the works of others than in one's own, and often, while censuring the small faults of others, you do not recognise your own great faults. In order to escape such ignorance, have a care that you be, above all, sure of your perspective; then acquire full knowledge of the proportions of man and other animals. And, moreover, be a good architect; that is, in so far as it is necessary for the form of the buildings and other things that are upon the earth, and that are infinitely varied in form.