On the Ordonnance and Invention of Histories
The Fifth Chapter
(1) All things consist in well-appointed arrangement*
Replete with customary virtue, that is, in the Ordonnance171
Of everything created by God, up above and here below:
Kingdoms, Lands, free Cities,
Households, and the diverse works
That rational Persons bring about.
One sees ordering, too, in mute Beasts,172
As also in resourceful Bees and industrious Ants.
(2) Ordonnance is considered most needful*
For Painters as well, for therein the Excellence
And power of the Arts lie intertwined,
As also do perfection, spirit, profound understanding,173
Attention, experience of every kind.
Thus very few are those whom we hear praised,
For having climbed above the rest in fame,
Perfect, proficient in Invention.
(3) Since this is the case, O Picturers bent on Picturing,175
Let us now attend to Ordonnance
Especially in our composition,176
Whether out-of-doors or in house or hall,
Or wherever we have to place our figures,
According to the certain Rules and Regulations
That History which we have resolved [to treat]
Shall herself see fit to enjoin.
(4) For the composition of a model or figure
Encloses many limbs within
The superficies of a Body:*
But History assembles
Her composition (according to her condition)
From models and Figures expedient to the task:177
Then see, in order to position them as properly as should be,
There are seven Actions, or axes of motion.178
(5) First, erect, standing upright,*
Directed downward, to the right side,
To the left, and moving away from or leaving us,
Then coming toward us, and occupying a space in the round,
Circle-wise. But at all times
One must adapt to the dimensions of the panel,**
And avoid having the Figures carry the frame
Or hemming them in, as if in a box.179
(6) For sweetness’ sake, position your little folks loosely;
Let your spirit not leap too wide off the mark,
Making your things so large that*
Hands and feet must needs overlap the frame,
Or lie disagreeably squeezed,
Constrained by the [available] space:
Brush out and realign, as Arts’ affordances allow.
Withal being freeborn, make no slaves of your folk.
(7) At all times freely hold to the limits of the picture,*
Not overpopulating the ground plane:
But as you set to work on your invention,
You will first take care to pay close attention
To the meaning of your intended subject,**
Through reading, rereading: it can do no harm
Firmly to imprint in your memory
The true nature of the History at hand.180
(8) Picture first according to sense your imagination181
Ingeniously with its attendant circumstances,
In order to express your material with a fine grace,*
(As good Orators do in their speeches)
Splendidly, artfully, and fittingly;
And to bring this off with greater success,
You can readily make some sketches of it,**
As many [as required] to achieve the desired end.
(9) Let your spirit flow: thereafter, to make your art verdant
You may, like the Italians, also draw
Cartoons on the model of your sketches,*
As large as the [final] work, but with confidence,
Freely not timidly. I am obliged to advise you thus
So that you avoid a manner**
Heavy and poorly disposed,
All too labored, awkward and ponderous.182
(10) Also, in your Cartoon, lest you err,
You may well bring life to bear,*
Whether in Watercolor, crayon, or coal,
Heightened and shaded—everything is
There for your choosing and pliable to your will:
But if you wish to give your ordonnance
A pleasing, fine, enticing force,
Pay heed still to various matters.183
(11) First, by investigation you shall discover
What the foundation of harmony in your ordonnance is,184
When you aptly fill either side corner of your demarcated space*
With sturdy foreground figures,
Buildings, or other staffage,185
And afterward leave the open middle ground unencumbered;
Then nothing you insert there, howsoever small,
Will fail presently to achieve a consonant effect.186
(12) For our ordonnance shall be favored
With a fine character, in fulfillment of our expectation,
If we leave open a view passing into or through there,187*
With small background figures and distant landscapes
Into which the eyes may plough.188
Accordingly, we may set our figures down,
Midway in the foreground,
And over and beyond them, leave several further miles open.
(13) But in particular, we shall secure but little grace
In our ordonnance whenever our backgrounds are190*
Otherwise than well executed;
Wherefor the Italians put us
Foreigners to use, considering Netherlanders
Deftly expert in Landscape,
If they prize us in anything,
And claiming to surpass us in Figures.
(14) One must endeavor in various ways
To order well and, without losing heart all of a sudden,*
Painstakingly expend one’s time thereon,
Conforming all the Figures as necessity dictates;
Again, like the Italians, who much praise
Ordering into various groups,
That is, into clusters or troops of Figures,
Here standing or lying, and there sitting.191
(15) Here a Battle will fiercely rage;
Elsewhere, in the distance, a knot of Figures will flee;
In the foreground, Horses and Riders,
Some cleverly foreshortened, will pounce upon each other;
Here a little group lies tussling spiritedly,
And there, too, another little group lies prostrate, dejected.
Thus, to sum up: clustering Figures into little groups
Will not go amiss, as I myself have seen.
(16) It was very much Tintoretto’s usage*
To arrange in this way, with groups or knots [of Figures],193
And Michelangelo’s [J]udgment, too, is organized
Into numerous small clusters; yet some impugn
His honor, not on account of the clustering,
But because, for the sake of the Figures,
He diverged from what ordonnance has leave to require;
For no points of entry into the image are to be observed.194
(17) Not allowing there to be seen, as some should wish,*
A view opening into the Heavens,
And something large up front, as would have been preferable:
But who shall not judge this work favorably
Upon seeing how fully Buonarroti’s learned hand
Infused it with Art,
With so many actions, varied in facture, of the nude figures,195
Which he set himself the task of fashioning.
(18) Moreover, anyone can easily grasp
That Laws are ordained to serve the People,196*
Rather than the People to serve the Law:
For Laws serve the people well
In that they do them no harm:
What weight should Laws otherwise bear?
So, one may well excuse Masters [such as Michelangelo]
Who value Figures more than ordonnance.197
(19) ‘Tis very praiseworthy to strive for agreeable*
Figures and in no wise to depart from [amenity]:
But it confers an even greater abundance
Of charm when the Ordonnance
Likewise follows suit,
And just as a variety of Musical sounds
Makes for Harmony of singers and musicians,
So, too, does much variety of Figures.198
(20) Nature is beautiful through variety.199*
One sees this when, with nearly a thousand colors,
The Earth in full bloom stands displayed,
Competing for the prize with the starry throne of Heaven.
Delightful pleasure can be garnered, too,
From many other things: for people
Are inexhaustibly gladdened by a Table loaded
With food and drink of all kinds.200
(21) With reference to History also, it is a matter of great importance
That the Figures be varied*
In position, stance, performance of some action,
Form, nature, condition, and inclination,
And, as we [formerly] said about the seven axes of motion,
So, too, will some figures stand or stride
With their legs placed forward toward us,
Others with face and body [positioned] sidewise.201
(22) Some from behind, showing their*
Heels, some sitting, lying, crawling,
Climbing up, down, standing up, kneeling down;
Occasionally, as required, some figures will seem to fall,
Or secretly to steal upon the scene;
Some will look up, lean, or stoop.
It is necessary to fashion a mixture**
Of clothed, half-clothed, and naked [Figures].202
(23) Many makers of Ordonnance set great store by one thing203
Against which I likewise shall not argue:
Namely, they fully enclose the specified Scopus204*
Of their [pictured] events as if
It were ringed by a Circle,
So that a number of figures surround
The History which, as the Central point, stands amidst them,
In the form of the Person whom the others look at or entreat.205
(24) But in my view, and as I opine,*
It can scarcely anoint the Ordonnance with grace
To let half the bodies of Persons, Horses, Cattle, Calves,
Or other figures encroach upon the frame,
Unless some ground come before them,
Consisting of boulders or other such things,
Which one may suppose
To block one’s view of the rest.
(25) For artful spirits (whenever opportunity arises)
Are wont to construct the History with an abundance*
Of Horses, Dogs, or other tame Beats,
As well as forest animals and birds:
But it is especially jolly to observe
Fresh-faced young Gentlemen and lovely young Ladies,
Old Men, Matrons, all sorts
Of Children, older or younger in age.206
(26) There besides, Landscape and architecture,
Also adornments, rigging, and ornaments,
Every kind of subtle fantasy issuing from Copiousness,
And this makes for a fine alluring Harmony207
On Picture’s home turf,
As modern Writers attest,
For example, Leon Baptista Alberti,*
And Rivius, who has similarly taken this to heart.208**
(27) But I shall here keep silent about the Velum210*
And the commentaries on it, and instead recount
How there are two types of History, the copious
And the solitary, so that each person might choose
That toward which their desire most inclines:
But amongst good Masters, the principal ones
For the most part avoid abundance and Copiousness
And rejoice to do well with a little, [opting for] the simple.211
(28) Such as these (by way of analogy) mimic
Neither the Procurators nor Advocates
Who use many words to plead their case,
But instead imitate the great Majesties,*
Kings and powerful Potentates,
Whose utterances are made with a minimum of speech,
And who make their mind known by voice or with the Pen
In but a few words.
(29) And their simple arguments companion
Their reputations with far more honor
Than would superfluous chattering and prattling
In the manner of empty vats that clatter the most loudly:
Thus it would seem that our great Masters teach us
To incline much toward simplicity,212
And they know how, with few figures,
To give their works a pleasing aspect.
(30) And, through the great perfection to be found
In their Figures, which move as if they were nearly alive,
They appear to build upon the foundations laid by the Poets
Who undertook to realize Comedy or Tragedy*
With few Characters;213
Or they follow Varro, who was not in the habit
Of casting round for a loud tumult of many Guests at table
When he used to hold a splendid banquet.214
(31) But to spread cheer, according to his design,
He did call to his banquet
A small number of select folk,
Nine or ten, so that the good spirits of one
Caused no impediment to another:
But misprized amongst simple [Histories]*
Are nearly all boisterous, frivolous subjects,
Which avail to bring no Harmony.
(32) [Subjects] such as Zephyr coming to meet Flora,
In the place where formerly they often kissed,
And winged Singers greet Aurora;215
Yea, there where the new Florets sweeten the Air,*
And the searchers after Honey, craving sweetness,
Cannot rest ever upon Adonis,216
Wishing not to miss Crocus and Smilax,217
Nor Ajax, Hyacinth, and Narcissus.218
(33) Correspondingly, the eyes, gladly grazing*
In Pictura’s garden, amidst its universal beauty,
Search out many places to amuse themselves
By going wherever desire and pleasure lead,
Hungry for more to see, both below and above,
Like pampered guests sampling all kinds of dishes:
For in variety’s artful usage
The Graces happily find their home.219
(34) Then there are some Histories that require
To be more singular, more austere,220
And yet others, more readily arranged,*
Wherein one may imitate what the peddler does,
Who displays fine wares to be ogled,
On high shelves, at the sides and below.
One may fashion the History’s [depicted] viewers similarly,
Placing them on hills, trees, or stone steps,221
(35) Or holding onto columns of buildings,
And still others, down below on the ground.
Interspersing many and various faces,*
The most distinguished of the body’s parts,
Adds a further pleasing luster to the History;
And just as the World has myriad customs,
So it shall not prove inopportune
To foreground the most attractive and delectable amongst them.
(36) The pivotal Figures will be predominant,*
Standing or sitting in an elevated position
Above the others: and those that address them
Will be stooped, showing signs of deference,
In an unassuming and subservient place:
So, on every side all our personages
Will perform that for which they have been gathered,
Like fine Comic Actors.222
(37) So they execute all their actions gracefully,223*
In going, standing, fighting, lovemaking, playing, dancing,
In dramatizing fear, wonder, and sorrow,
In revealing by their gestures the purport of their speech:
To sum up, all the lineaments of affect,
Attitude, Reflection, reverberant light,
Everything required by our Art, must all together
Be brought off in the History.
(38) It embellishes the History not a little
When one of the figures is disposed*
To turn toward the [surrounding] persons
In such a way as if with earnest entreaty
And compassion, he were conveying [news of] some misfortune,
Or of something dreadful yet to occur,
And through his predictions causing the Painting’s beholders224
Almost to overflow with mournful dismay.225
(39) In the Ordonnance one shall neither braid
Nor closely entwine arms and legs,*
Making them appear to wrangle, the one with the other;226
Rather, one shall let the parts follow respectively,
Flowing in unison, evenly, along a straight path:
I have also heard it highly praised when
Whole Figures come into view and,
Taken together, they are not truncated.227
(40) In order to keep the Arts as one’s friends,
In making a Figure or a face, as the case may be,*
We shall position another one behind it, even if it should
Seem well-nigh useless, to serve no purpose,
For then (as in a dark stable)
The shadowed background figure
Will appear to recede,
And the foreground figure to come forward.
(41) We ought to take special care in the History,
As we have elsewhere noted,228
To bring a profusion of shadows together
Without rashly allowing our forceful
Hard browns to collide with the bright lights,229
Instead readily [placing] them against grayed middle-tints;*
And then we shall gather together a number of uniform lights,
Likewise letting the tenebrous brown dissolve into the gray.
(42) A confused disorder has long reigned in the past
Amongst wrongheaded Painters,
Whose Histories, seen from afar,
Look like Marble or chessboards,*
With black brought next to white, as in Printers’ prints:
But now from Italy the Mezze-tinte
Have come into use, half-colored, with gentle grays
That gradually fade into a twilit background.230
(43) Now it well behooves us not to keep silent*
About the meaning of the Histories we portray,
But instead diligently to plumb the depths;
Yet, unlike Andromeda bound to the rock,231
Continuing to luxuriate in our freedom:
For Painters, as Horace testifies,
In all they undertake or resolve [to do],
Have a power equal to that of the Poets.232
(44) We see that our Forefathers, whenever they expressly
Wished to execute a devout History,
Germanely positioned the principal Figures*
In a visibly prominent place (as is proper),
Clearly differentiating them,
So that viewers without long delay
Might well divine the History and its sense:
Following such a practice has been found useful and good.
(45) Some seek, in curious ways,
Skillfully to attach various appurtenances233
To the Historical deeds,
In such a manner that their significance could hardly be guessed,*
Even if one knew the story in advance,
Whereof I here impart an example,
As recounted by Jacopo, a Poet originating
From the City named after one of the Sirens,234
(46) Founded by the Chalcidians or the Cumaeans.
In his Arcadia, the [Poet] conveys*
How the pastoral Arcadians,
Subjects of the [goddess] Pales,
Who gathered together at her Temple on her festival day,
To make offerings on the smoking Altars,
Saw painted above the [temple] portal
Hills and woods overgrown trees.
(47) There one saw many cows grazing,
Spread out over the green meadows, and tended by
Ten dogs that companioned them round about, as Guardians,
Keeping them from straying.
Their footsteps were visible in the sand,
And one saw Herdsmen, too, loosening
The taut udders swollen with milk,
Others shearing the curly-haired fleece [of sheep].
(48) One saw some of them playing on Bagpipes.
Others, it seemed, in giving voice with their throats
Wished by singing to imitate the [instruments’] sounds.
What above all, in the eyes of many,
Had a particularly pleasing,
Graceful character,
Was a nude company of nymphs,
Half hidden behind the trunk of a Chestnut tree.
(49) They were looking at a Ram there before them,
Seized with merriment and laughing together,
Because it stood [on its hind legs], craving to gnaw
On an oaken wreath
Hung before its eyes,
And forgetting, through its idle desire,
The green grass all around its feet,
A pasture so ready to hand for its feeding.
(50) In the meantime, four satyrs,
With horned heads and the legs of goats,
Were come stealthily to peep round a mastic tree,
And plot how to grab them from behind
By their shoulders. One could at once see
How the nymphs, catching wind of their arrival and cunning intention,
Made ready posthaste to flee into the wood,
Oblivious to the brambles or thorn bushes.
(51) The quickest of them one saw climb
Up a Maple, holding in her hands*
A long branch plucked to defend herself;
Others, little prizing these earthly places of refuge,
Placed no trust in them,
But leapt into a River, swimming to flee the disgrace,
Their white bodies visible as they floated
In the translucent, billowing stormwater.
(52) With their deliverance in sight,
Having come through the water to the other shore,
Puffing and panting from their exertions,
There they sat to dry their wet hair,
And appeared from that place with one accord
Mockingly to upbraid their pursuers,
In word and deed, unrelentingly,
For having failed to seize them.
(53) In one bend of the river, blond Apollo
Could be seen, sitting and leaning
Against the trunk of a wild olive. He was
A herder at this time, to be found
[Watching over] the flocks of Admetus,236
And, it would seem, was attentively staring
In the direction of a pair of sturdy bulls that greeted each other in the field,
Locking horns in a rough encounter.
(54) Not espying how subtle Mercury
(Dressed in style like a Herder, with the skin of a Goat fastened
Under his left shoulder)
Was all the while stealing his Cows for himself:
There, too, stood Battus who, discontented,
Openly betrayed this thievery,
And was turned to stone in this wise,
As if seeming to point with his finger.237
(55) Further below, beside a great boulder,
Sat Mercury, his cheeks distended,
Playing a rustic flute, his manner sly,
His eyes peering crosswise,
A white heifer standing beside him,
And he seemed, filled full with cunning,
To consider how best he might
Deceive the many-eyed Argus.238
(56) On the other side, a Herder
Lay asleep amidst his Goats, underneath
And fast beside a very tall Oak.*
There, too, a Dog was sniffing, singularly
Intent on extracting something from the [man’s] travel bag
Which lay beneath his head; but with
A wonderfully happy eye the Moon was gazing at him,
Whom one may thus presume to identify as Endymion.239
(57) Here, too, was Paris, who with a sickle
Had begun to carve [the name] Oenone241
Into the bark of an elm, but having come underfoot
Of three goddesses, and being quite unable
To finish, he left it as is,
In order to render judgment and thus forestall the quarrel
Between these three, over who was loveliest and worthy of the prize;242
And for this reason they now stood naked before him.
(58) But very ingenious, pleasing, and apposite,
Worthy to be considered and seen,
Was the great attention with which
This judicious painter of fine sharp wit,
Had made Juno and Minerva to stand,*
Each in her person exceptionally beautiful,
Each so utterly perfect that he himself could not
Have presumed to do better.
(59) Now, since he knew not how to make Venus
More beautiful than the other two, as becomes her,
He portrayed these two from the front,
But taking subtle advantage of the situation.
He, a wise artist, painted Venus with her back turned,*
By this trick of artifice licensing pleasure,
Giving one to think that were she to turn around,
She would bring the others’ beauty to distraction.244
(60) Many more niceties, diverse in kind,
Stood painted there, after the Poet’s invention,
But they proceeded to make their Sacrifices
Before the Effigy of Pales, with the exercise
Of much Ceremony, in those [sacred] precincts:
These are but mere Examples whereby to facilitate
Our copious and spirited composing
And withal our wanton poeticizing.
(61) Now, enthused [by this example], who shall not evince
A spirited Ordonnance, following in the footsteps
Of Comedies where Buffoonish clowns246
Or other personages take the stage,
Solely for the delight of the Spectators:
For unembellished works,
Lacking additions or supplements,
Are lost labor, Imperfect in nature.247
(62) Thus one may amplify the simple History,
As here exemplified for us by the text of the Poet;*
Amazed that Gentlemen such as he,
Who likely never learned to paint at first hand,
Have yet known how to write in so painterly a fashion248
About our secret devices,
I think we ought to content ourselves
With this example of how to augment [a picture].
(63) One also knows well that on the World’s stage
All sorts of personages play [their parts]:
Here one sees Kings wrangle over
Scepters and Crowns, elsewhere on the boards
Young lovers quarrel foolishly,
Here Peasants fatten up and slaughter pigs,250
There heavy-footed Peasant Women gambol and leap,
Over there flirtatious Goddesses dance a nimbler reel.
(64) As I reckon: wonderfully copious in color,
Form, and condition are the many deeds
That play out in this terrestrial Theater,
Both of idle pleasure and of careworn distress;
And as for everything else that still remains for the Painter to do,
He shall find here matter enough, all for the best,
Whereby to construct a History felicitous in its perfection,
Whatever it may be.
(65) One can further augment simple*
Histories in diverse ways:
For instance, one might amplify
A plain sacrifice of Abraham**
By devising allegorical Figures
That embellish the Sacrificial offering,
Each of these standing ready to assist—
Namely, Faith, Hope, and Love.251
(66) Faith might constrain Isaac,
Holding him bound by rope. Abraham might
Hold his hand outstretched while Hope hands him the sacrificial knife:
For he hopes: “I may receive him back,*
Since God can also awaken the dead.”252
And through Faith, he took himself to the place [of sacrifice].
Love and her children might devote themselves to tending the flames,
For [she and they] burn like red-hot coals.
(67) Here, too, the example of Zuccaro’s Annunciation,*
Augmented by Angels and Prophets;254
And described in Vasari’s life of Rosso [Fiorentino],
We read about an image of Mary
With the serpent trod underfoot,
Also our first Parents seated in chains
Beside the tree of sin; and [Mary] was seen to wrest sin,
Portrayed by an apple, from out of their mouths.255
(68) And, still painted by Rosso,
As a sign that she was clothed with the Sun and Moon,
Two nude Figures, Phoebus and Diana,
Flew in the sky overhead;
Although such things are wont to be used
Not merely to amplify, but may also be designated
Figurative images: Poetic contrivances
That allude to a specific meaning, signifying it.256
(69) Nealces, admired amongst the ancients,
Was accomplished in artful Invention,
As he made known with his Brush,
Having painted a naval battle in which*
Persians fought against Egyptians
On the River Nile.257
But he fretted for a long while
About how to portray the water of the Nile.
(70) This seemed to him impracticable for the reason
That the Nile and Seawater look alike;
And so, he painted a Crocodile
That appeared to peer, entirely still,
At an Ass on the shore, which had
Wandered down to dip
Its snout in the River, its head sunken,
As if having just taken a drink there.
(71) He did all this to ensure that everyone could easily guess
Where this clash of Arms played out,
On the River Nile:
For this is the food and the place that
Crocodiles particularly like.
Such Natural features, signifying
Persons or Cities, as well as Rivers,
Give to our works a fine adornment.
(72) Be it Water, Sea, Lake, River, or Fountain,
The Ancients formerly assigned it
Some pure Divinity,
And as a rule, by virtue of likeness of character,
Let a particular effigy258
Body it forth in human form:
Amongst such effigies, one Example
Is the Nile, [carved] in white Marble.
(73) Be it worked by the hands of Greeks, Italians,
Or Egyptians,
That antiquity, let it not be gainsaid, is beautiful.
It lies in Rome, in the Papal courtyard at the Vatican,
Under the blue sky,
And it is wonderful and worthy of note
How artfully the Nile’s disposition,
Nature, and works are portrayed.259
(74) As described by Herodianus,260
The upper body is nude, and to portray
A measure of mystery, his hair and beard
Hang down lengthily;
On his body and legs, as if rollicking,
Sit sixteen little children,
Each as long as the distance of his arm from hand to elbow;
Its significance is to be drawn from Philostratus.261
(75) Describing the Images of the Gods,
He concerns himself, too, with these Children,
[Telling] how the Nile waxes in such wise
That it comes flooding over Egypt,
High above its shoreward Limits,
Reaching sixteen els or Cubits:
Thus these sixteen Children signify
That the Nile’s flood reaches [just] such a high-water mark.
(76) It occurs once each year at a certain time,
But when the number is four Cubits or less,
Then are the people of Egypt not content,
For thereupon they expect on both banks
To be burdened the following year by a time of scarcity;
And so, the sixteenth child was made
To sit high upon the Cornucopia,
As the measure of a fruitful Year.
(77) Along the right arm he lets the cornucopia,
Overflowing with fruits, drop downward,
While with his left arm he leans on a creature
Which many have mistakenly thought to be a Sphinx,*
Resembling a Lion at the rear, and a Maiden at the front;
But it signifies that in that land the Earth
Is submerged when the passage of the Sun
Occupies its place in Leo and Virgo.
(78) All round the edge, the base is carved
With a variety of such plants of the marsh
As Reeds, papyrus, trees, Colocasiae,264
Also the diverse Animals that graze there,
Such as the hippopotami which splash there in the water,
Their backs and full-grown manes like a Horse’s,
And their tail and teeth like a wild swine’s,
The muzzle blunt and the feet cloven like an Ox’s.
(79) Further, Mongooses, Ibises, and Skinks,
Moreover, the small, ill-formed dwarves
From the Egyptian province of Tentyrites,*
Who from their little ships, like valiant Princes,
Vex and bait the Crocodiles,
So that faced by these lionhearted Heroes worthy of praise,
They must give way and hide themselves.
And there is yet another effigy of the Nile about which we have read.265
(80) In his thirty-sixth Book, Pliny recounts
How the Egyptians found
A kind of Marble in Ethiopia,
Like Iron in color, difficult to cut,
Named Basalt; in olden days,
Vespasian caused an effigy of the Nile,
Made of this Marble on account of its qualities,
To be set up in Rome at the Temple of peace.267
(81) By this Effigy one again saw sixteen children
Comporting themselves joyfully and gesticulating with mirth,
As signs of this river’s [annual] resurgence,
But one of the aforementioned beasts, a Crocodile,
Formed part of this other Effigy, too, where, set amidst the children,
It strengthened the forceful effect of the figured images,268
As the whole of any Painter’s spirit is free to do.269
Now it will serve to speak about the Roman Tiber.
(82) The effigy of Tiber is to be found in the very same courtyard,270
In the City of Academies of the Pictorial Arts:
Appearing full of kindly affection,
A She-Wolf lies there, portrayed with a like art,
And gives suck to two little children
At her side, Romulus and Remus;
But on his head, [Tiber] wears a wreath of leaves,
And bears in his right hand the full-laden cornucopia,
(83) Filled with Corn, bunches of Grapes, and Fruits,
While his other hand clasps a rudder,
Signifying that along his waterways
Great Ships and Barges
Ply their way between Rome and the Sea,
Back and forth, and, to make this point more clearly,
His plinth likewise incorporates
Depicted Ships sailing up and down.
(84) Eutychides, too, was able*
Long ago to portray an Effigy of Eurotas,
Which is the River of the Lacedaemonians,
So artfully that all who saw it
Said that the work, brimful with the arts,
Flowed more illustriously than the
Aforesaid River’s waters, which, because of their turbulence,**
Were held sacred to the Furies of Hell.271
(85) All Rivers, all surging tides
Turn in and out, bending as they flow,
And therefore, to interpret it thus,
Are pictured as horned, which may embolden us,
To the benefit of our spirit, when we set about the task of portraying;
For in his Books, Ovidius, too, invokes*
The horned Numicius,
Who washed away the mortal remains of Aeneas.272
(86) One may also portray Cities and Lands,
As Parrhasius did of old,*
Whose learned hands painted
The Image of Athens, wherein was apparent
Such a command of shrewdly wrought figuration,
That one there saw conveyed the manners of the Athenians,
Their every kind of condition, the nature of their moral conduct,
And their daily customs.273
(87) Rome, the capital city of the World, was
Portrayed as Pallas, helmeted on account of her valor,
Sitting armed on a pile of armor
And other weapons fitted for combat,
With a Spear or Lance in her right hand
And also a figure of Victory wreathed in
Laurel, and, in her left, a Palm frond
After the seigneurial fashion.274
(88) Young students eager to be taught, you have followed
My many footsteps, learning how to compose a History,
And how to depict various things along with their
Peculiar properties. Now let us be pleased to descend
This stair and transport ourselves to what follows.
Assuming I have time and my desire is quickened,
We shall once more, in another place,
Expand upon this great Subject at greater length.
End of Ordonnance.
Footnotes
*
All things need ordering, which is maintained, too, by Animals.
*
Ordonnance is essential for Painters.174
*
The Superficium is the outline; what History or Ordonnance is.
*
On the seven Actions, or movements, to be cultivated in the ordonnance.
**
One must adapt to the size of the panel or canvas.
*
That one shall not make Figures too large for a small piece, or too compressed.
*
On looseness in ordonnance.
**
First read or consider well that which you wish to picture.
*
To portray everything gracefully.
**
First make little sketches.
*
To make Cartoons.
**
To avoid a heavy manner.
*
Also, to use life in drawing the Cartoons.
*
On filling well the corners at either side.
*
On leaving a vista open, whenever it proves serviceable.189
*
Poorly executed Landscape backgrounds disfigure the work.
*
On the ordering of various groups of Figures, and leaving open ground between them.192
*
Example of Ordonnancers.
*
Michelangelo in his [J]udgment paid more attention to the Figures than the ordonnance.
*
Laws serve Persons for the best.
*
It is good when Ordonnance and Figures have charm, and make for a fine Harmony.
*
Through variety is Nature beautiful.
*
On much variety in the ordering of Figures.
*
Ordering of the Figures in a variety of motions.
**
On mixing the clothed and the unclothed.
*
On ordering ring-wise, with the scopus in the middle.
*
I write this to express my good opinion, and not to fault any great Master who has not followed it.
*
On richly filling the Ordonnance.
*
Leon was a Florentine who wrote in the year 1481.209
**
Gualterus Rivius, mathematician; his Book was published in the year 1547.
*
I have discussed this Veil in the Chapter on Delineating; on copious and simple Histories.
*
Great Masters rarely fashion copious Histories; they are like great Lords who speak little but with great deliberation.
*
Example of simple Histories, by analogy with Comedies and Banquets.
*
Boisterous subjects are not to be prized in simple Histories.
*
Analogy between a Painting and a field rich with Flowers, where the eyes, likened to little Bees, disport amongst diverse, artfully differentiated florets.
*
It is a real pleasure to see many varieties of things fashioned well together.
*
On distributing Figures high and low.
*
On bringing many faces to the fore in the work.
*
On making the noble Figures prominent, and the others submissive.
*
In the History, everything that our Art can encompass and comprehend will be brought to bear.
*
On fashioning a figure that appears to address the people and show them some lamentable thing that will soon take place.
*
On refraining to entwine Figures so closely in the History that they obstruct one another, and on striving to show as much of each Figure as possible.
*
Also, how one must attend to Figures that stand behind the principal foreground figures, their manner of standing or sitting on the ground, and further, how to fashion a shadowed face behind one coming forward before it, in order to make the latter more pronounced.
*
How to place a steady light in the fore- or middle ground, which conversely recedes from gray into brown.
*
Works in which the brown is placed hard by the light, compared to a chessboard.
*
Beforehand, it behooves one to look well into the meaning of the Histories, while yet attending solely or above all to a pleasing arrangement: for Painters and Poets exercise a like power.
*
To give prominence to the Figures in a Devout History.
*
How some portray their Histories curiously, making them virtually unrecognizable, whereof an example drawn from Sannazzaro, Poet of Naples.
*
Here follows as an example a fictive painting in the Temple of Pales, which teaches how to amplify.
*
Carpinus.235
*
Cerrus.240
*
Now, this is the scopus of the History, that is, the judgment of Paris.243
*
Note here this pleasing device, copied from the life of Timanthes, which makes the beholder think that Venus, were she to be seen head-on, would be the most beautiful of all, in the way that Agamemnon, his head covered, was judged to be the saddest of all.245
*
Sannazzaro was a Neapolitan Nobleman, who knew how to write thus about painting; how to amplify in a Poetic fashion.249
*
In addition, how one may amplify a simple History, either allegorically or in another fashion.
**
Example of the History of Abraham’s sacrifice.
*
Hebrews 11:19.253
*
Example of the Annunciation by Zuccaro, and a Marian image by Rosso, on which more follows in his life.
*
Note here an Example of ingenuity in portraying a River or place.
*
No Sphinx is fashioned without bird’s wings, and from behind it is a Dog with a Dragon’s tail.262 Pliny, Book 5, chapter 9 and Book 18, chapter 18.263
*
Ptolemy, Books 4, 5, 68; Pliny, Natural History, Book 8, chapter 25.266
*
Pliny, [Natural History], book 34, chapter 8.
**
Pliny, [Natural History], book 4, chapter 8.
*
Metamorphoses, book 14.
*
Petrus Messius, book 2, chapter 16.