That painter who has coarse hands will portray the like in his works,
and the same thing will occur in every limb unless he avoids this
pitfall by long study. Therefore, O painter, look well on that part of
thy person which is most ugly, and by thy study make ample reparation
for it, because if thou art bestial, bestial and without intellect will
be thy figures, and similarly both the good and ill which thou hast in
thee will be partially visible in thy compositions.
78.
Men and words are already made, and thou, painter, who knowest not how
to make thy figures move, art like the orator who knows not how to
employ his words.
79.
The movements of men are as varied as the {121} circumstances which
pass through their minds; and men will be more or less actuated by
every circumstance in itself according as they are more or less
powerful and according to age; because in the same circumstance an old
man or a youth will make a different movement.
[Sidenote: Power of Expression in Painting]
80.
The imagination does not perceive such excellent things as the eye,
because the eye receives the images or semblances from objects, and
transmits them to the perception, and from thence to the brain; and
there they are comprehended. But the imagination does not issue forth
from the brain, with the exception of that part of it which is
transmitted to the memory, and in the brain it remains and dies, if the
thing imagined is not of high quality. And in this case poetry is
formed in the mind or in the imagination of the poet, who depicts the
same objects as the painter, and by reason of the work of his fancy he
wishes to rival the painter, but in reality he is greatly inferior to
him, as we have shown above. Therefore with regard to the work of
fancy we will say that there is the same proportion between the art of
painting and that of poetry as exists between the body and the shadow
proceeding from it, and the proportion is still greater, inasmuch as
the shadow of such a body at least penetrates to {122} the brain
through the eye, but the imaginative embodiment of such a body does not
enter into the eye, but is born in the dark brain. Ah! What
difference there is between imagining such a light in the darkness of
the brain and seeing it in concrete shape set free from all darkness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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