CHAPTER V

POETRY AND PAINTING IN THE RENAISSANCE

Reversing the maxim _ut pictura poesis_, the Renaissance believed that painting should be poetical. Indeed the term _poesia_ is commonly applied to all painting of a mythological or idyllic sort. Angelo Poliziano’s unfinished but very popular poem on the joust of 1468 is lavish in descriptions, of which the painters made use. Botticelli surely got more than a hint for the Birth of Venus from stanzas xcix-ci of _La Giostra_, though the mood of the picture is wholly Sandro’s own and unlike the pagan joyousness of Poliziano.

“One saw Born in the sea, free and joyous in her acts, A damsel with divine visage Driven ashore by the ardent zephyrs Balancing on a shell; and it seemed the heavens rejoiced thereat.”

“True the foam and true the sea you would have said True the shell, and the blowing of the winds true. You would have seen the gleam of the Goddess’ eye And the heavens laugh about her, and the elements. And the Hours in white garments on the strand, And the winds toss their spreading soft locks.”

· · · · ·

“You could swear that you could see the goddess coming from the waves Wringing out her hair with her right hand And with the left covering the sweet mount of desire, And the sand, once trodden by her feet, Clothing itself with grass and flowers. Then with joyous and expectant glance You would have seen her clasped by the three nymphs And wrapped in a starry robe.”

Botticelli’s charming and even slyly humorous picture of Venus with sleeping Mars, at London, follows afar and discreetly _La Giostra_, I. stanzas cxxii-iii, but Botticelli has taken the motive out of doors and otherwise considerably subtilized it. Venus is

“Seated in bed outside the covers Just released from the arms of Mars Who, lies backward on her lap

· · · · ·

“Above them and around the tiny loves Played naked, flying now here now there

· · · · ·

“One fills the quiver with fresh flowers Then comes and empties it on the bed.”

Poliziano also supplied to Raphael the theme of the Galatea, in the Farnesina, _Giostra_, I. cxviii (Fig. 192a)

“Two shapely dolphins draw a car; On it is Galatea who holds the reins, And they swimming breathe with equal breath. Around circle the more amorous throng. One spits out the salt wave, the others circle round; One seems to play at love and dallies. The fair nymph with her trusted sisters Laughs charmingly at their hoarse singing.”

Titian, too, may have had in mind the _Giostra_, I. cxi, when he composed his Bacchus and Ariadne. (Fig. 260)

“Comes upon a car covered with ivy and rushes Drawn by two tigers—Bacchus And with him it seems that fauns and mænads Tread the deep sand and shout with raised voices. One we see staggering; others seem to stumble, One clashes the cymbal; others seem to laugh. One drinks from a horn, one from his hand. One has grabbed a nymph, and one turns handsprings.”

LEONARDO AND THE ACADEMIC IDEA OF PAINTING

The extraordinary mixture of liberality and dogmatism, of naturalism and taste in Leonardo is best illustrated from his own _Trattato della Pittura_. I quote from the standard edition of H. Ludwig, Vienna, 1882, using his paragraph numbers:

MODELLING IN CHIAROSCURO AS THE PAINTER’S FIRST OBJECT

¶ 412. “The first object of the painter is to make a flat plane appear as a body in relief and projecting from that plane, and he who in such art excels the others, deserves the greater praise, and such research, or rather crown of such science, is born from light and shade, or I mean chiaroscuro. Then he who flees from shadows, flees also from the glory of our art among noble spirits and gains it with the ignorant herd, which desires nothing in painting but beauty of colors, forgetting entirely the beauty and wonder of showing a flat thing as if it were in relief.”

ON JUDGING A PAINTER’S WORK

¶ 483. “The first thing is that you consider the figures, if they have the relief which the place and light demand....

“The second is that the scattering, or rather distribution of the figures be made according to the way in which you wish the story to be.

“The third is that the figures be alert and intent on their particular purpose.”

ON THE MOVEMENTS THAT MARK THE EMOTIONS

¶ 122. “The most important thing which can be found in the theory of painting are the movements appropriate to the mental state of each being,—as desire, scorn, wrath, pity and the like.”

THE STEPS IN A PAINTER’S EDUCATION

¶ 82. “Draw first designs of a good master made in the fashion of nature and not mannered; then from a relief, in the presence of a drawing made from that relief; then from a good natural object.”

JUDGMENT VERSUS DEXTERITY

¶ 62. “That painter who does not doubt learns little. When the work surpasses the judgment of the worker, that worker acquires little, and when the judgment surpasses the work, that work never ceases to grow better, unless avarice prevents it.”

ON USE OF MEMORY IN THE NIGHT WATCHES

¶ 67. “Also I have proved it to be of no little use to me, when you find yourself in bed in the dark, to repeat in the imagination the things studied earlier, or other things of notable sort comprised in subtle thought, and this is truly a laudable act and useful in fixing things in memory.”

ON SELECTIVE IMITATION

¶ 58a. “The painter should be solitary and think over what he sees and discuss with himself, selecting the most excellent parts of the species of whatever he sees, acting after the fashion of a mirror which transmutes into as many colors as there are things what is set before it. And so doing he will seem to be himself a second nature.”

¶ 98. “Winter evenings should be used by young painters in the study of things prepared in summer, that is bring together all the nudes which you have made in the summer, and make a choice of the better limbs and bodies and practice from them and fix them in mind.”

ON HIGH STANDARDS

¶ 59. “If you painter will seek to please the first painters, you will make your pictures well, because they alone can guide you truthfully, but if you wish to please those who are not masters, your pictures will have few foreshortenings and little relief or alert movement, and thereby you will fail in that part in which painting is held to be an excellent art, that is in giving an effect of relief where there is nothing in relief.”

ON AVOIDING HARSH SHADOWS AND SUNLIGHT EFFECTS

¶ 87. “The light cut off from the shade too clearly is greatly blamed by painters. Hence to avoid such a fault, if you paint bodies in the open country, you will not make the figures as lighted by the sun, but imagine some sort of mist or transparent clouds to be interposed between the object and the sun, whence, since the figure is not emphasized by the sunlight, the demarcations of light and shade will not be emphasized.”

ON THE MOST PLEASING LIGHT

¶ 138. “If you have a court yard that can be covered as you wish with a linen awning, that will be a good light; or when you wish to draw anyone, draw him in bad weather, towards nightfall, and make the sitter stand with his back to one of the walls of this court. In the streets set your mind towards nightfall on the faces of the men and women, in bad weather, how much grace and sweetness appears in them.”

ON COUNTERPOISE OF THE FIGURE

¶ 88. “Do not have the head turned the way the breast is, nor the arm the way the leg is; and if the head is turned over the right shoulder make the parts lower on the left than on the right” [and vice versa].

At first blush this stylistic counsel flatly contradicts Leonardo’s principle that poses and emotions should express state of mind, but as a matter of fact many expressive movements obey this law of counterpoise or active equilibrium. Leonardo himself generally finds motives for such poses. Such successors as Raphael and Andrea del Sarto habitually used such poses without other excuse than that of their own inherent gracefulness.

ON FREEDOM IN MAKING A COMPOSITION

¶ 189. “Have you never considered the poets composing their verses? They take no trouble to make fine letters, nor do they mind cancelling some of the verses and making them better. Do you, then, painter, make the limbs of your figures roughly and attend first to the movements appropriate to the mental state of the beings composing your story, rather than to the beauty and rightness of their members, because you must understand that if such a composition in the rough will meet the needs of the invention, it will please all the more after it has been adorned with the perfection appropriate to all its parts. I have seen in the clouds and spots on the wall what has aroused me to fine inventions of various things, since these spots though entirely without perfection in any part, did not lack perfection in their movements and other actions.”

PAINTING THE GRANDCHILD OF NATURE

¶ 12. “If you shall despise painting, which is the only imitator of all the apparent works of nature, assuredly you will despise also that careful investigation which with philosophical and careful speculation considers all the qualities of forms: the sea, place, plants, animals, herbage, flowers, which are enveloped in light and shade. And truly this speculation is science and the legitimate child of Nature, since painting is born of this nature. But, to speak more correctly, we will say grandchild of nature, since all apparent things are born of Nature, of which things painting is born. Hence rightly we shall call it the grandchild of this nature and the kinsman of God.”

THAT THE PAINTER SHOULD BE SOLITARY

¶ 50. “The painter, or rather designer, should be solitary, and especially when he is intent on speculations and considerations which continually appearing before the eyes give matter to be well kept in memory. And if you are alone, you will be entirely yours. And if you shall be accompanied by a single companion you will be half yours, and so much the less as the indiscretion of your companionship shall be the greater ... And if you would say ‘I will do in my fashion, I will hold myself apart’ ... one cannot serve two masters. You will fulfil badly the duty of a companion, and worse the aim of reasoning on the art ... And if you say ‘I will withdraw myself entirely,’ ... I tell you you will be held a madman, but, lo, thus doing you will at least be alone.”

Here Leonardo takes sharpest issue with the easy-going sociable methods which for generations had held in the painter’s bottega, and shows himself an individualist of modern type.

RUBENS’ PRAISE OF LEONARDO

Peter Paul Rubens, who had copied Leonardo’s battle-piece, has left the following perceptive tribute to the genius of his predecessor:

“Nothing escaped him that related to the expression of his subject: and by the heat of his fancy, as well as by the solidity of his judgment, he raised divine things by human, and understood how to give men those different degrees, that elevate them to the character of heroes.

“The best of the examples which he has left us is our Lord’s Supper, which he painted at Milan, wherein he has represented the apostles in places that suit with them, and our Saviour in the most honourable, the midst of all, having nobody near enough to press or incommode him. His attitude is grand, his arms are in a loose and free posture, to show the greater grandeur, while the apostles appear agitated one side to the other by the vehemence of their inquietude, and in which there is, however, no meanness, nor any indecent action to be seen. In short by his profound speculations he arrived to such a degree of perfection, that it seems to me impossible to speak so well of him as he deserves, and much more to imitate him.”

_The Art of Painting ... Translated from the French of Monsieur De Piles_, London about 1725. p. 107 f.

[Illustration:

FIG. 167. Raphael. Count Baldassare Castiglione, author of “the Courtier.”—_Louvre._ ]

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