Leonardo da Vinci | A treatise on painting

Science of painting

Leonardo’s advocacy of a science of painting is best displayed in his notebook writings under the general heading “On Painting”.

The notebooks provide evidence that, among many projects he planned, he intended to write a treatise discussing painting.

After inheriting Leonardo’s vast manuscript legacy in 1519, it is believed that, sometime before 1542, Melzi extracted passages from them and organized them into the Trattato della pittura [In italian] ➤ (“Treatise on Painting”) that is attributed to Leonardo.

Only about a quarter of the sources for Melzi’s manuscript-known as the Codex Urbinas, in the Vatican Library-have been identified and located in the extant notebooks, and it is impossible to assess how closely Melzi’s presentation of the material reflected Leonardo’s specific intentions.

Abridged copies of Melzi’s manuscript appeared in Italy during the late 16th century, and in 1651 the first printed editions were published in French and Italian in Paris by Raffaelo du Fresne, with illustrations after drawings by Nicolas Poussin.

The first complete edition of Melzi’s text did not appear until 1817, published in Rome.

The two standard modern editions are those of Emil Ludwig (1882; in 3 vol. with German translation) and A. Philip McMahon (1956; in 2 vol., a facsimile of the Codex Urbinas with English translation).

Despite the uncertainties surrounding Melzi’s presentation of Leonardo’s ideas, the passages in Leonardo’s extant notebooks identified with the heading “On Painting” offer an indication of the treatise Leonardo had in mind.

As was customary in treatises of the time, Leonardo planned to combine theoretical exposition with practical information, in this case offering practical career advice to other artists.

But his primary concern in the treatise was to argue that painting is a science, raising its status as a discipline from the mechanical arts to the liberal arts.

By defining painting as “the sole imitator of all the manifest works of nature”, Leonardo gave essential significance to the authority of the eye, believing firmly in the importance of saper vedere.

This was the informing idea behind his defense of painting as a science.

In his notebooks Leonardo pursues this defense through the form of the paragone (“comparison”), a disputation that advances the supremacy of painting over the other arts. He roots his case in the function of the senses, asserting that “the eye deludes itself less than any of the other senses”, and thereby suggests that the direct observation inherent in creating a painting has a truthful, scientific quality.

After asserting that the useful results of science are “communicable”, he states that painting is similarly clear: unlike poetry, he argues, painting presents its results as a “matter for the visual faculty”, giving “immediate satisfaction to human beings in no other way than the things produced by nature herself”.

Leonardo also distinguishes between painting and sculpture, claiming that the manual labour involved in sculpting detracts from its intellectual aspects, and that the illusionistic challenge of painting (working in two rather than three dimensions) requires that the painter possess a better grasp of mathematical and optical principles than the sculptor.

In defining painting as a science, Leonardo also emphasizes its mathematical basis.

In the notebooks he explains that the 10 optical functions of the eye (“darkness, light, body and colour, shape and location, distance and closeness, motion and rest”) are all essential components of painting.

He addresses these functions through detailed discourses on perspective that include explanations of perspectival systems based on geometry, proportion, and the modulation of light and shade.

He differentiates between types of perspective, including the conventional form based on a single vanishing point, the use of multiple vanishing points, and aerial perspective.

In addition to these orthodox systems, he explores-via words and geometric and analytic drawings-the concepts of wide-angle vision, lateral recession, and atmospheric perspective, through which the blurring of clarity and progressive lightening of tone is used to create the illusion of deep spatial recession.

He further offers practical advice-again through words and sketches-about how to paint optical effects such as light, shadow, distance, atmosphere, smoke, and water, as well as how to portray aspects of human anatomy, such as human proportion and facial expressions. | Written by: Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich © Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.