Academy of the Most Noble Art of Painting

those most excellent works of red chalk or crayon; mosaic works; glass painting; copperplate engraving; encaustic A technique using heated beeswax mixed with colored pigments.; and countless other arts, which I cease to name here out of a simple desire for brevity? Do they not all proceed from me?

An argument for superiority cannot be sought from durability.

But as for the fact that works of Sculpture enjoy greater durability than those which come from Painting, that is due solely to the material which each treats; no preeminence or nobility can be claimed from this. Otherwise, a rustic peasant, even one decrepit with old age, would have to be preferred over an Emperor who died in the first flower of his youth; or a pitch-pine or fir tree over any most precious plants; indeed, a stag or any other long-lived animal would have to be preferred to man himself. Although I am not unaware that there are effigies found in Rome made of mosaic work original: Opere musivo which, in their age, surpass the durability of all statues and colossi.

Why there are fewer Sculptors.

Furthermore, as to the abundance of Painters and, conversely, the scarcity of Sculptors; it certainly does not follow from this that more sharp-witted talents and more lively judgments are required for Sculpture. Rather, it arises at least from this: that in our time there are few lovers of Sculpture who have the mind to bestow their expenses there. Whence those who have dedicated themselves to that art, for lack of the means required for a more refined sustenance of life, find it necessary to choose some other kind of profession. Especially since it is not so easy to compose many works carved from precious stone with a light arm (because too great a price is required for this); meanwhile, however, without practice and continuous exercise, that art is learned too lightly and never sufficiently. Therefore,

Statuary ought to be learned through continuous exercise.

Sculpture, in excusing the scarcity of its craftsmen, would have done better to use this as a pretext, rather than being able to find any glory or preeminence in it whatsoever.

The works of Painters are dearer than Statues.

Here, however, it must also be noted that the statues and effigies of sculptors, although they are carved from more precious material, are nonetheless never rewarded with as great a price as many works of Painters. For what statue, whether carved or cast, was ever purchased by any Monarch at such a price as Alexander the Great purchased the paintings of Apelles? When was the work of any craftsman or sculptor valued at so many thousands of crowns? Yet we find this to be true of many paintings. And although you, Sculpture, are older, and they expressed my likeness in silver alone; by this very fact, however, at least your arrogance and the elation of your craftsmen is made manifest.

The difficulty of Art consists more in the labor of the intellect than of the hands.

If even that difficulty of labor, which arises for the Sculptor from the hardness of the material, can grant any nobility or prerogative to anyone; surely this glory will belong rather to the stone-cutters original: Laotomorum who sustain their lives with the hardest labor in the mountains and stone-quarries. Consequently, any crude and limping smith would have to be preferred to some most ingenious goldsmith. Yet by this very reasoning, one wanders far from the true mark; because all difficulty is to be estimated from the internal intellect rather than from the external labor of the hands.

Since, therefore, the Sculptor strives only to figure the external body, while the more inspired student of the art of Painting is bound to represent also the internal passions and disturbances of the soul; hence the preeminence of nobility shall be mine rather than yours, Sculpture.

More things are required for Painting than for Statuary.

Finally, it is enough for the Sculptor if he has legitimately disposed the length according to the ruler, the heights according to the plumb-line, and the angles according to the square. But from the Painter, not only that is required, but also this: that you be skilled in Perspective and Optics; that you rightly establish the distribution of persons, animals, and other things occurring in your work; and that you be able to raise the colors Highlight and sink them deeper Shadow, and legitimately establish the increments and decrements of figures according to their distances. In all of these, a thousand errors can be committed, while in a certain statue, scarcely one might creep in. Furthermore, it is enough for the Sculptor if he has knowledge of the human form and face, and can elegantly imitate and represent the limbs. To the Painter, on the contrary, it belongs to exhibit to the eyes all bodies, even those which escape the touch; and at the same time to be master of Optics, which teaches the shadows of all natural things and their reflection. Furthermore, he must temper and "break" colors Mixing colors to reduce their intensity for realism; and also elevate and express with a rounded body certain things which are depicted on a bare flat surface. Further still, he must express and dispose everything according to art for its own particular property, and represent every image with its necessary color—of which there are many thousands. Even if one considers all the flowers of the field, and the various blossomings of trees, with all the diversity of things contained in the air, the sea, and the mountain mines, yet the abundance of my colors is not yet exhausted by all of them. And nevertheless, in all these things, I am bound to inform and instruct my scholars.

It must indeed be conceded that affects Emotions or passions of the soul, movements, and appropriate manners are also to be expressed by Sculpture in statues; but truly, that is far more imperfect than in Painting. For whatever in expressing gestures exceeds this or that movement of the limbs, the threats of the face, the elevation and liberty of the arm, the body disposed for flight, and similar things; I, Painting, must express these aforementioned affects and movements of the soul following from Nature herself, through the proper change of colors in the face and other members, together with other circumstances.

A Painter is bound to represent other circumstances along with the affects.

Painting is able to imitate nature much more closely than Sculpture.

Besides, Sculptors very rarely—indeed rather never—follow in the footsteps of nature as closely as true artists in the genre of Painting. For who ever read that Praxiteles carved any fruits with such natural ease that the very birds flew down from the air to pluck them? Yet this was performed by Zeuxis. At what time did Phidias so blind human eyes that someone approaching his art tried to pull back a painted veil to see the effigy lurking beneath? Yet this was done by the Painter Parrhasius A reference to the famous contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, where Zeuxis fooled birds with his painted grapes, but Parrhasius fooled Zeuxis himself with a painted curtain..