Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci
It is the duty of painters to depict two things:
1.) man and 2.) the intentions of his mind."I think it is no small attraction in a painter to be able to give a pleasing air to his figures, and whoever is not naturally possessed of this grace may acquire it by study, as opportunity offers in the following manner: be on the watch to take good parts of many beautiful faces of which the beautiful parts are established by general repute rather than by your own judgement, for you may deceive yourself by selecting faces that resemble your own, since it often seems that such similarities please us; ...so therefore choose the beautiful ones as I tell you and fix them in your mind."
"Affective gestures pointing to things near either in time or space should be made with the hand not very far from the body of the person pointing; and if these things are distant, the hand of the painter should be more extended and the face turned toward the person to whom he is addressing the demonstration."
"Let the poses of people and the parts of their bodies be so disposed that they display the intent of their minds."
"Make your faces so that they do not all have the same expression, as one sees with most painters, but give them different expression, according to age, complexion, and good or bad character."
"Never make heads straight on the shoulders, but turn them aside to the right or to the left, even though they look down, or upward, or straight ahead, because it is necessary for them to look lively and awake and not asleep. And do not depict the front or rear half of the whole person so that too much straightness is displaced, one half above or below the other half; and if you should wish to use stiff figures, do so only in portraying old people."
"I say that in narrative paintings one should mingle direct contraries close by, because they produce strong contrasts with one another, and all the more so when they are very close together; that is, the ugly next to the beautiful, the big to the small, the old to the young, the strong to the weak; in this way you will vary as much as possible and close by."
"Let the painter composing narrative pictures take pleasure in wealth and variety, and avoid repeating any part that occurs in it, so that the uniqueness and abundance attract people to it and delight the eye of the observer. I say that a narrative painting requires ( depending on the scene), wherever the eye falls, a mixture of men of diverse appearances, of diverse ages and dress, combined together with women, children, dogs, horses, buildings, fields, and hills."
"For those colors that you wish to be beautiful, first prepare a very white ground, this I say with regard to transparent colors, for a bright ground is not an advantage to those that are not transparent. An example of this is shown by colored pieces of glass which when they are held between the eye and the luminous air, display great beauty, but which they do not have when the air behind them is shadowy air or some other obscurity."
Sfumato: Shadows painted as if viewed through a "smoky veil." This was the soft effect that Leonardo created in his paintings.
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