"
Of the greatest defect in painters. It is the greatest
defect in painters to repeat the same movements and the same faces and
draperies in a composition and to make most of the faces resemble their
author. This has often surprised me, for there are some who have made
selfportraits of all their figures, all with the manners and movements
of him who painted them. And if he is lively in his speech and his
gestures, his figures are equally lively ; and if the master is devout,
the figures appear to be the same, with their necks bent ; and if the
master does little, his figures seem to be portraits of laziness
personified ; and if the master is poorly proportioned, the figures are
of the same kind, and if he is mad, this is amply revealed in his
pictures, which are deprived of all logic, the figures not attending to
what they are doing, but looking here to the right, there to the left,
as if they were dreaming. And thus, every characteristic of the painting
corresponds to a characteristic of the painter himself.
Having repeatedly thought about the cause of this defect, it seems to
me one must believe that the soul, which rules and governs the body,
also forms our judgment, even before we have formed it ourselves ; *
thus it is the soul that has shaped the whole figure of the man as it
judges best, with the nose long, or short, or flat, and in the same way
determined the height and general appearance ; and this judgment is so
powerful it moves the arm of the painter and makes him copy himself,
because it seems to the soul that this is the true way to paint a man,
and that whoever does not do as it does, is mistaken. * And when it
finds someone who resembles the body it has composed, it likes him and
often falls in love with him ; and that is why many men fall in love
with and marry women who resemble them and often the children born to
them resemble their parents.
"
No comments:
Post a Comment