Odoardo Fialetti, per disegnare tutte le parti 01
Odoardo Fialetti (1573 - 1638) was an Italian painter and printmaker during the late Renaissance. The Bolognese artist is a fascinating figure upon which curiously little work has been done. Though he is a rarely discussed pupil of Tintoretto, Fialetti’s oeuvre is vast (some 55 known paintings and approximately 450 prints) and incredibly diverse.
Odoardo Fialetti, per disegnare tutte le parti 02
His work encompasses religious subjects, portraits, books on drawing and sport, maps, and illustration for treatises on city defences, literary texts, and anatomy.
His work was influential for several hundred years after his death, not only in Venice and northern Italy, but also in France where his designs were used as decoration on faïence produced at Nevers, and England, where his paintings were much admired at court.
Odoardo Fialetti, per disegnare tutte le parti 03
In the realm of science, Fialetti’s influence can be deduced from his drawings of curiously animated cadavers in detailed landscapes to those of future generations of anatomists and illustrators throughout Europe.
Odoardo Fialetti, per disegnare tutte le parti 04
Fialetti’s close association with Sir Henry Wotton, and the careful copy of his drawing book made by Alexander Browne in the mid-seventeenth century, attest to his impact on the formation of an Italianate sensibility in the appreciation of the visual arts in Early Modern England.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.1)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
(Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard, 1945,trans., Colin Smith, London and New York: Routledge, 1962)
1.1 What is phenomenology? It may seem strange that this question has still to be asked half a century after the first works of Husserl. The fact remains that it has by no means been answered.
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.1)
1.1 Made and composed by Cennino da Colle, in the reverence of God, and of the Virgin Mary, and of St. Eustachius, and of St. Francis, and of St. John the Baptist, and of St. Anthony of Padua, and generally of all the saints of God, and in the reverence of Giotto, of Taddeo, and of Agnolo the master of Cennino, and for the utility and good and advantage of those who would attain perfection in the art.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.2)
1.2 Phenomenology is the study of essences; and according to it, all problems amount to finding definitions of essences: the essence of perception, or the essence of consciousness, for example.
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.2)
1.2 CHAP. 1–In the beginning, when the omnipotent God created the heaven and the earth, above all living creatures and plants for food, he created man and woman after his own image, endowing them with all virtues.
Afterwards came misfortune, through the envy of Lucifer towards Adam; who with malice and subtlety induced him to sin against the commandment of God, that is, first Eve, and then Eve deceived Adam; and God was angered against Adam, and caused him and his companion to be driven by an angel out of Paradise, saying to them, "Because you have dis-obeyed the commandment which God gave to you, by your labour and exertions shall you support your selves."
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.3)
1.3 But phenomenology is also a philosophy which puts essences back into existence, and does not expect to arrive at an understanding of man and the world from any starting point other than that of their ‘facticity’.
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.3)
1.3 Then Adam, knowing the sin he had committed, and being nobly endowed by God, as the root and origin and father of us all, discovered by his wisdom that it was necessary to find a way to live by his own manual exertions, and thus he began by digging and Eve by spinning. Afterwards be carried on many necessary arts, different each from the other, and each more scientific than the other; for they could not be all equally so.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.4)
1.4 It is a transcendental philosophy which places in abeyance the assertions arising out of the natural attitude, the better to understand them; but it is also a philosophy for which the world is always ‘already there’ before reflection begins—as ’an inalienable presence; and all its efforts are concentrated upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world, and endowing that contact with a philosophical status.
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.4)
1.4 Now, the most worthy is Science; after which comes an art derived from science and dependent on the operations of the hand, and this is called Painting (i.e. making pictures), for which we must be endowed with both imagination (fantasia) and skill in the hand, to discover unseen things concealed beneath the obscurity of natural objects, and to arrest them with the hand, presenting to the sight that which did not before appear to exist.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.5)
1.5 It is the search for a philosophy which shall be a ‘rigorous science’, but it also offers an account of space, time and the world as we ‘live’ them. It tries to give a direct description of our experience as it is, without taking account of its psychological origin and the causal explanations which the scientist, the historian or the sociologist may be able to provide. Yet Husserl in his last works mentions a ‘genetic phenomenology’ (Méditations cartésiennes, pp. 120 ff.), and even a ‘constructive phenomenology’ (See the unpublished 6th Méditation cartésienne, edited by Eugen Fink, to which G. Berger has kindly referred us).
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.5)
1.5 And well does it deserve to be placed in the rank next to science, and to be crowned by Poetry: and for this reason, that the poet, by the help of science, becomes worthy, and free, and able to compose and bind together, or not, at pleasure. So to the painter liberty is given to compose a figure, either upright or sitting, or half man, half horse, as he pleases, according to his fancy.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.6)
1.6 One may try to do away with these contradictions by making a distinction between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenologies; yet the whole of ‘Sein und Zeit’ springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the ‘natürlicher Weltbegriff’ or the ‘Lebenswelt’ which Husserl, towards the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology, with the result that the contradiction reappears in Husserl’s own philosophy.
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.6)
1.6 Therefore, whether through great reverence or love, let all those persons who feel in themselves any kind or manner of knowledge, or power to help and adorn these principal sciences with some jewel, put themselves forward without any bashfulness, offering to the above-named sciences this little knowledge which God has given them.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.7)
1.7 The reader pressed for time will be inclined to give up the idea of covering a doctrine which says everything, and will wonder whether a philosophy which cannot define its scope deserves all the discussion which has gone on around it, and whether he is not faced rather by a myth or a fashion.
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.7)
1.7 A humble working member then of the art of painting, I, Cennino, born of Drea Cennino of the Colle de Valdelsa, was instructed in these arts for twelve years by Agnolo, son of Taddeo of Florence, my master, who learned the art from Taddeo his father, who was the godson of Giotto, and was his disciple for twenty-four years.
This Giotto changed the art of painting from the Greek to the Latin (manner), and brought it to the modern (style); and he possessed more perfect art than ever any one else had had.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (MP1.8)
1.8 Even if this were the case, there would still be a need to understand the prestige of the myth and the origin of the fashion, and the opinion of the responsible philosopher must be that phenomenology can be practised and identified as a manner or style of thinking, that it existed as a movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy.
Cennino Cennini, The Book of the Art (CC1.8)
1.8 In order to assist all those who would approach this art, I shall take note of all that was taught me by my master Agnolo, and of that which I have proved with my own hand; invoking first the high omnipotent God,-that is to say, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; secondly, that most delightful advocate of all sinners the Virgin Mary, and St. Luke the Evangelist, the first Christian painter, and my advocate St. Eustachius, and generally all the saints, male and female, of Paradise.
Ho messo insieme tutti i pezzi...
La grammatica delle parti
14th Century, Mandrake Man
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
2.1 Merleau-Ponty: It has been long on the way, and its adherents have discovered it in every quarter, certainly in Hegel and Kierkegaard, but equally in Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. A purely linguistic examination of the texts in question would yield no proof; we find in texts only what we put into them, and if ever any kind of history has suggested the interpretations which should be put on it, it is the history of philosophy.
14th Century, Mandrake Woman
2.1 Cennini: CHAP. 2.–How some persons study the arts from nobleness of mind, and some for gain.
It is the impulse of a hoble mind which moves some towards this art, pleasing to them through their natural love. The intellect delights in invention; and nature alone draws them, without any guidance from a master, through nobleness of mind; and thus delighting themselves, they next wish to find a master, and with him they place themselves in love of obedience, being in servitude that they may carry their art to perfection.
1494 Johannes de Ketham, Fasiculo de medicina
2.2 Merleau-Ponty: We shall find in ourselves, and nowhere else, the unity and true meaning of phenomenology. It is less a question of counting up quotations than of determining and expressing in concrete form this phenomenology for ourselves which has given a number of present-day readers the impression, on reading Husserl or Heidegger, not so much of encountering a new philosophy as of recognizing what they had been waiting for.
1501 Magnus Hundt, Antropologium de hominis dignitate
2.2 Cennini: There are some who follow the arts from poverty and necessity, also for gain, and for love of the art; but those who pursue them from love of the art and true nobleness of mind are to be commended above all others.
1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig, Liber de arte distillandi de compositis
2.3 Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology is accessible only through a phenomenological method. Let us, therefore, try systematically to bring together the celebrated phenomenological themes as they have grown spontaneously together in life. Perhaps we shall then understand why phenomenology has for so long remained at an initial stage, as a problem to be solved and a hope to be realized. It is a matter of describing, not of explaining or analyzing.
1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig, Liber de arte distillandi de compositis
2.3 Cennini: CHAP. 3.-What to do in the beginning of the pursuit of art.
Now then, you of noble mind, who are lovers of this good, come at once to art and adorn yourselves with this vesture,-namely, love, reverence, obedience, and perseverance. And as soon as thou canst, begin to put thyself under the guidance of the master to learn, and delay as long as thou mayest thy parting from the master.
1528 Hans von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch der Wundartzney, newlich getruckt und gebessert
2.4 Merleau-Ponty: Husserl’s first directive to phenomenology, in its early stages, to be a ‘descriptive psychology’, or to return to the ‘things themselves’, is from the start a foreswearing of science. I am not the outcome or the meeting-point of numerous causal agencies which determine my bodily or psychological make-up. I cannot conceive myself as nothing but a bit of the world, a mere object of biological, psychological or sociological investigation. I cannot shut myself up within the realm of science.
1528 Hans von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch der Wundartzney
2.4 Cennini: CHAP. 4.-How the rule shows into what parts and members the arts are divided. The foundation of the art and the beginning of all these labours of the hand is drawing and colouring.
1528 Hans von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch der Wundartzney
2.5 Merleau-Ponty: All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols of science would be meaningless. The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression.
1528 Hans von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch der Wundartzney
2.5 Cennini: To these two parts these things are necessary; namely, to know how to grind colours; to use glue; to fasten the cloth on the panel; to prime with gesso, to scrape and smooth the gesso; to make relievos in gesso; to put on bole; to gild; to burnish ; to temper colours; to lay on ground colours; to trace by dusting powder; to engrave by lines and by stamps; to carve; to colour; to adorn and to varnish pictures.
Collage of Intentional Perception
2.6 Merleau-Ponty: Science has not and never will have, by its nature, the same significance qua form of being as the world which we perceive, for the simple reason that it is a rationale or explanation of that world.
Collage of Intentional Perception
2.6 Cennini: To paint on walls it is necessary to wet them; to cover them with mortar; to embellish them; to polish (smooth) them; to design, to colour in fresco and finish in secco; to temper the colours; adorn and retouch. And this is the rule of the above-named grades, as to which, with that little knowledge which I have learned, I will explain step by step.
Collage of Intentional Perception / Instance
Let me give you a noteworthy instance. lt can happen that violence over-reaches the bounds of the taboo in some way. lt seems – it may seem – that once the law has become powerless there is nothing to keep violence firmly within bounds in the future.
Collage of Intentional Perception / Taboo
Basically death contravenes the taboo against the violence which is supposedly its cause. Most frequently the subsequent sense of rupture brings in its wake a minor disturbance which funeral rites and festivities with their ordered ritual, setting bounds to disorderly urges, are able to absorb.
Collage of Intentional Perception / Guarantee
But if death prevails over a sovereign whose exalted position might seem to be a guarantee against it, that sense of rupture gets the upper hand and disorder knows no bounds.
Collage of Intentional Perception / Behaviour
Caillois has described the behaviour of certain oceanic peoples.
"When social and natural life" he says "are summed up in the sacred person of a king, the hour of his death determines the critical instant and looses ritual licence. This licence corresponds closely with the importance of the catastrophe.
Collage of Intentional Perception / Sacrilege
The sacrilege has a social nature. It is committed at the expense of the kingship, the hierarchy and the established powers.
No hint of resistance is ever offered to the frenzy of the people. This is considered as necessary as obedience to the dead man was.
In the Sandwich lslands the people on learning of the king's death commit all the acts looked on as criminal in ordinary times: they set buildings on fire, they loot and they murder, while women are expected to prostitute themselves publically ...
Collage of Intentional Perception / Consequences
In the Fiji lslands the consequences are even more clearly defined. The death of the chief gives the signal for pillage, subject tribes invade the capital and indulge in every form of brigandage and depredation.“
Collage of Intentional Perception / Transgression
George Bataille, Transgression
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura I
Gian Paolo Lomazzo (26 April 1538 – 27 January 1592; his first name is sometimes also given as "Giovan" or "Giovanni") was an Italian painter, best remembered for his writings on art theory , belonging to the second generation that produced Mannerism in Italian art and architecture.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura II
Paolo Lomazzo, Trattao dell’arte della Pittura, Milano 1584, translated by Richard Haydocke (1570 - 1642)
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura III
The Division of the Work
(1.1) There is a two-fold proceeding in all arts and sciences: The one is called the order of nature, and the other of teaching. Nature proceeded ordinarily, beginning with the imperfect, as the particulars, and ending with the perfect, as the universals.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura IV
(1.2) Now if in searching out the nature of things, our understanding shall proceed after that order, by which they are brought forth by nature, doubtless it will be the most absolute and ready method that can be imagined.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura V
(1.3) For we begin to know things by their first and immediate principles, which are well known unto us, not by mere idea, as separated from the particulars – (as some think) nor by bare imagination, as if they were seated only in our understanding (as others would have it) but as they do actually occur to the forming of the particulars which are subject to our sense, and may be pointed at with our finger.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura VI
(1.4) And this is the most certain way of knowing, amongst all the rest: It is evident then that our understanding beginning his operations from the particular, beginneth to know them by their matter and form which are their first and immediate principles, being neither really abstracted from the particulars, not yet by mere conceit placed in our understanding, as in a subject, but do actually occur to the making of a compound.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura VII
(1.5) SupposePeter or John: and may be sensible demonstrated to be in Peter or John; then the which what proof can be more evident? being drawn from the things before our eyes.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura VIII
(1.6) And this is not only my opinion but Aristotle also, who wrote, that the first principles may be proved by sense: meaning that the sensible proof is more certain than the intellectual; whence a thing may then be said to be known by nature, when it is of such a nature, that it may be seen and perceived by the other senses.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura IX
(1.7) And this is the reason why Aristotle in the beginning of his Physics said; that the particulars may be known by their own nature: all which if we could comprehend within our understanding, we should be most wise: but it is impossible, that whereas they are infinite in possibility, they should be comprehended of that which is finite in act.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura X
(1.8) Wherefore although some heavenly creature, perchance, may be capable of the understanding of all those particulars, which are actually created, yet notwithstanding because there are not so many particulars actually in the world, but that there might be a greater number created, (in so much as they whole depend upon the will of God in his providence) therefore this possibility, or (to speak more plainly) all the particulars already created and made, together with those which shall be made, and brought into the world, may be known only unto God by his prescience.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XI
(1.9) And this Aristotle in part affirmed when he said that the particulars then may be known of their own nature, meaning, perchance, to the first mover of nature, which is God.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XII
(1.10) The particulars then may be known of their own nature: Because look how much actuality they have (as the philosophers speak) so much ability they have to know: but they have an actual being; Therefore there matter is not mere possibility, but is brought into Act, by their form, which do not rest idly in the matter, but is occupied in bringing it forth into Act.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XIII
(1.11) And look what is said of individual substance, is likewise meant of individual Accidents. It is evident therefore if we do not understand the particulars, it is not because they cannot be understood of their own nature, but by reason of our own defect: because we cannot comprehend the infinite multitude of them.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XIV
(1.12) Wherefore our understanding ought not know things by the order of nature, seeing it cannot comprehend all the particulars, which are infinite. But it must begin with the order of Teaching, whereof it is capable.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XV
(1.13) This method then proceeding from the universals to the particulars, may easily understood of us, because our understanding is of that nature that is properly understands universals , in so much as the power of our mind is spiritual, and therefore willingly embraced universal things separated from their matter, and made (after a sort) spiritual by the help of the active understanding.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XVI
(1.14) Whereupon I proposing to handle the art of painting in this present discourse, mean to follow the order of Teaching.
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XVII
(1.15) And because I might purchase, commit an absurdity, if in ripping it up to high I should begin to define unto the reader what manner of thing quality is, and how many kinds thereof thereby; to teach him what Habitus and Dispositio, what forma and figura is; and how painting by diverse confederations is comprehended under that species of Quality (which appertained rather to a Logician or a Philosopher as to a Painter).
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XVIII
(1.16) Therefore I (observing Horaces precept, who would not have a man begin the history of the Trojan War at the two eggs of Leda, that is, that in handling a matter he ought not to take the beginning too far of from the present matter in hand) means first to begin with the definition of painting, which is the first, most general, and immediate principle, as most properly offering itself to our confederation:
Trattao dell’arte della Pittura XIX
(1.17) Wherein afterwards I propose to show the true genus thereof, which is the first part of the definition, and consequently all the differences occurring to the same, for the restraining of the genus which is a species of quality called Arte, and makes the most special kind of quality called painting: And because the differences which make painting a particular and distinct Arte from all others are few: viz.
– Proportion,
– Motion,
– Colour,
– Light & Perspective.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Bust of a Youth
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: I am, not a ‘living creature’ nor even a ‘man’, nor again even ‘a consciousness’ endowed with all the characteristics which zoology, social anatomy or inductive psychology recognize in these various products of the natural or historical process—I am the absolute source, my existence does not stem from my antecedents, from my physical and social environment; instead it moves out towards them and sustains them, for I alone bring into being for myself (and therefore into being in the only sense that the word can have for me) the tradition which I elect to carry on, or the horizon whose distance from me would be abolished—since that distance is not one of its properties—if I were not there to scan it with my gaze.
(Pict.:Michelangelo Buonarroti, Bust of a Youth, ca. 1530, Black chalk on tan paper
Style of Altichiero of Zevio, The Coronation of the Virgin
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 5.-In what manner to begin drawing on a small panel, and how to prepare it.
As has been said, it is necessary that you should have the habit of beginning to draw correctly. First, have a small panel of boxwood a hand length wide each way, well smoothed and clean,-that is to say, washed with clean water, rubbed and polished with sepia (bone of the cuttle-fish), which the goldsmith uses for marking.
(Pict.: Style of Altichiero (II) of Zevio, Italian, ca. 1320 - ca. 1385, The Coronation of the Virgin)
Vittore Carpaccio, Two Standing Egyptian Women
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Scientific points of view, according to which my existence is a moment of the world’s, are always both naïve and at the same time dishonest, because they take for granted, without explicitly mentioning, it, the other point of view, namely that of consciousness, through which from the outset a world forms itself round me and begins to exist for me.
(Pict.:Vittore Carpaccio, Italian, 1460/66–1525/26, Two Standing Egyptian Women, pen and dark brown ink, brush and pale gray-brown wash heightened with white gouache over black chalk, 23.2 x 12.1 cm)
Marcantonio Raimondi, after Albrecht Duerer
Cennino Cennini: When this panel is quite dry, take a sufficient quantity of bones well ground for two hours, and the finer they are ground, the better they will be. Then collect the powder, and put it into dry paper; and when you want to prime the panel, take less than half the size of a bean of this bone-dust or less, mix it up with saliva, and before it is dry spread it with the finger over the surface of the panel, and before it dries, hold the panel in the left band, and with the tip of the forefinger of the right band, beat upon the panel until you see that it is quite dry, and that the bone-dust is spread all over it equally.
(Pict.: Marcantonio Raimondi, Italian, 1470/80–1527/34, after Albrecht Duerer, German, 1471–1528, Adam, c. 1501-08. Pen and brown ink on light tan laid paper, 19.5 x 10.9 cm)
Domenico Campagnola, Legendary or Mythological Scene
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the country-side in which we have learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie or a river is.
(Pict.: Domenico Campagnola, Italian, 1500–1564, Legendary or Mythological Scene, c. 1520. Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash, 22.2 x 24.1 cm)
Baccio Bandinelli, Sketches of a Standing Male Nude
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 6.–How drawing can be done on several kinds of panels.
A tablet of old figwood is suitable (buona la tavoletta del figaro ben vecchio); also certain tablets used by merchants which are made of parchment prepared with gesso coated with white lead and oil, using the bone-dust as I have said.
(Pict.: Baccio Bandinelli, Italian, 1493–1560, Sketches of a Standing Male Nude, Seated Male Nude, and Bust of a Woman, pen and brown ink on laid paper, 33.2 x 23.9 cm)
Domenico Beccafumi, Head of a Putto
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: This move is absolutely distinct from the idealist return to consciousness, and the demand for a pure description excludes equally the procedure of analytical reflection on the one hand, and that of scientific explanation on the other.
(Pict.: Domenico Beccafumi, Italian, 1484 - 1551, Head of a Putto, 1527–1537. Brush and oil paint on brown laid paper, 20.7 x 17.4 cm)
Domenico Beccafumi, Head of a Woman
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 7.–What kind of bones are proper for priming panels.
You must now know what bones are proper. For this purpose take the bones of the thighs and wings of fowls or capons; and the older they are the better. When you find them under the table, put them in the fire, and when you see they are become whiter than ashes, take them out, and grind them well on a porphyry slab, and use it as I say above.
(Pict.: Domenico Beccafumi, Italian, 1484 - 1551, Head of a Woman, ca. 1529-1535. Brush and oil paint on brown laid paper,22.7 x 16.3 cm)
Parmigianino, Torso of a man in armor
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Descartes and particularly Kant detached the subject, or consciousness, by showing that I could not possibly apprehend anything as existing unless I first of all experienced myself as existing in the act of apprehending it. They presented consciousness, the absolute certainty of my existence for myself, as the condition of there being anything at all; and the act of relating as the basis of relatedness.
(Pict.: Parmigianino, Italian, 1503–1540, Torso of a man in armor, pen and brown ink, brown wash, highlighted with white ink on pink prepared paper, 21.1 x 10.6 cm)
Battista Franco, Dead Christ supported by an Angel
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 8.–In what manner you should begin to draw with a style, and with what light
The bones also of the leg and shoulder of mutton are good, burnt as before directed. Then take a style of silver or brass, or anything else provided the point is silver, sufficiently fine (sharp) and polished and good. Then, to acquire command of hand in using the style, begin to draw with it from a copy as freely as you can, and so lightly that you can scarcely see what you have begun to do, deepening your strokes little by little, and going over them repeatedly to make the shadows. Where you would make it darkest go over it many times; and, on the contrary, make but few touches on the lights.
(Pict.: Battista Franco, Italian, ca. 1510 - d. 1561, Dead Christ supported by an Angel, pen and brown ink on cream laid paper, 16.7 x 11.9 cm)
Pordenone, Standing Saint Roch
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 8.–In what manner you should begin to draw with a style, and with what light
The bones also of the leg and shoulder of mutton are good, burnt as before directed. Then take a style of silver or brass, or anything else provided the point is silver, sufficiently fine (sharp) and polished and good. Then, to acquire command of hand in using the style, begin to draw with it from a copy as freely as you can, and so lightly that you can scarcely see what you have begun to do, deepening your strokes little by little, and going over them repeatedly to make the shadows. Where you would make it darkest go over it many times; and, on the contrary, make but few touches on the lights. And you must be guided by the light of the sun, and the light of your eye, and your hand; and without these three things you can do nothing properly. Contrive always when you draw that the light is softened, and that the sun strikes on your left hand; and in this manner you should begin to practise drawing only a short time every day, that you may not become vexed or weary.
(Pict.: Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio de Sacchis), Italian, 1483/4–1539, Standing Saint Roch, ca. 1525–26, red chalk on cream laid paper, squared in red chalk, 26.3 x 15.6 cm)
Giacomo Francia, Cleopatra
I am the absolute source
the horizon to scan with my gaze
–
the habit of beginning
–
Scientific points of view
are always both
naive and at the same time
dishonest
–
take a sufficient quantity
of bones
well ground for two hours
–
mix it up with salvia
(Pict.: Giacomo Francia, Italian, before 1486 - 1557, Cleopatra, pen and brown ink, with border in darker brown ink, 26.1 x 18.5 cm)
Luca Cambiaso, The Stigmatization of St. Francis
return to things
themselves
–
made of parchment
prepared with gesso
–
You must now know
what bones are proper
–
the bases of relatedness
(Pict.: Luca Cambiaso, Italian, 1527–1585, The Stigmatization of St. Francis, pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, 33.3 x 24.9 cm)
Luca Cambiaso, Female figure holding an oblong object
begin to draw
so lightly that you can scarcely see
what you do
your strokes little
by little
the light of the sun
and the light of your eye
and your hand
you should begin to practise
drawing only a short time
every day
that you may not become vexed
or weary
(Pict.: Luca Cambiaso, Italian, 1527–1585, Female figure holding an oblong object (Fortitude), pen and iron gall ink, 40 x 22.6 cm)
Jean Cousin the Younger I
Jean Cousin the Younger (1522-1593), Livre de Portraiture (published in Paris 1608)
Jean Cousin the Younger was born in Sens, France around 1522, the son of the famous painter and sculptor Jean Cousin the Elder (ca. 1490–ca. 1560) who was often compared to his noted contemporary, Albrecht Dürer. Having trained to become an artist under his father, Jean the Younger showed as much talent as his father, and their work is nearly indistinguishable even to the expert. Just before his death, Jean the Elder published his noted work Livre de Perspective in 1560 in which he noted that his son would soon be publishing a companion entitled, Livre de Pourtraicture.
Jean Cousin the Younger II
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: It is true that the act of relating is nothing if divorced from the spectacle of the world in which relations are found; the unity of consciousness in Kant is achieved simultaneously with that of the world.
Jean Cousin the Younger III
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 9.–How to arrange the light, and give chiaroscuro and proper relief to your figures.
If by accident it should happen, that when drawing or copying in chapels, or colouring in other unfavourable places, you cannot have the light on your left hand, or in your usual manner, be sure to give relief to your figures or design according to the arrangement of the windows which you find in these places, which have to give you light, and thus accommodating yourself to the light on which side soever it may be, give the proper lights and shadows.
Jean Cousin the Younger IV
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: In Descartes methodical doubt does not deprive us of anything, since the whole world, at least in so far as we experience it, is reinstated in the Cogito, enjoying equal certainty, and simply labelled ‘thought of . . . But the relations between subject and world are not strictly bilateral: if they were, the certainty of the world would, in Descartes, be immediately given with that of the Cogito, and Kant would not have talked about his ‘Copernican revolution’.
Jean Cousin the Younger V
Cennino Cennini: Or if it were to happen that the light should enter or shine right opposite or full in your face, make your lights and shades accordingly; or if the light should be favourable at a window larger than the others in the above-mentioned places, adopt always the best light, and try to understand and follow it carefully, because, wanting this, your work would be without relief, a foolish thing, without mastery.
Jean Cousin the Younger VI
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Analytical reflection starts from our experience of the world and goes back to the subject as to a condition of possibility distinct from that experience, revealing the all-embracing synthesis as that without which there would be no world. To this extent it ceases to remain part of our experience and offers, in place of an account, a reconstruction.
Jean Cousin the Younger VII
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 10.–The manner and process of drawing on parchment and on paper, and how to shade with water-colours.
Let us return to our subject. You may also draw upon parchment, and paper made of cotton.
Jean Cousin the Younger VIII
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: It is understandable, in view of this, that Husserl, having accused Kant of adopting a ‘faculty psychologism’ (Logische Untersuchungen, Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, p. 93.), should have urged, in place of a noetic analysis which bases the world on the synthesizing activity of the subject, his own ‘noematic reflection’ which remains within the object and, instead of begetting it, brings to light it is fundamental unity.
Jean Cousin the Younger IX
Cennino Cennini: On parchment you may draw or sketch with the above named style, first rubbing and spreading some of the powdered bone-dust over the parchment, scattered thinly and brushed off with a hare's foot, and powdered like writing-powder or resin (i.e. pounce, or powdered resin).
Jean Cousin the Younger X
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The world is there before any possible analysis of mine, and it would be artificial to make it the outcome of a series of syntheses which link, in the first place sensations, then aspects of the object corresponding to different perspectives, when both are nothing but products of analysis, with no sort of prior reality.
Jean Cousin the Younger XI
Cennino Cennini: If you like, when you have completed your drawing with the style, in order to make it clearer, you may fix the outlines and necessary touches with ink, then shade the folds with water-colour made of ink, that is, water about as much as a nutshell will hold, into which are put two drops of ink, and shade with a brush made of tails of the minever, blunt and nearly always dry.
Jean Cousin the Younger XII
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Analytical reflection believes that it can trace back the course followed by a prior constituting act and arrive, in the ‘inner man’—to use Saint Augustine’s expression—at a constituting power which has always been identical with that inner self. Thus reflection is carried off by itself and installs itself in an impregnable subjectivity, as yet untouched by being and time. But this is very ingenuous, or at least it is an incomplete form of reflection which loses sight of its own beginning.
Jean Cousin the Younger XIII
Cennino Cennini: And then, according to the shades required, you must blacken the water with a few drops of ink. In the same manner you may shade with colours and clothlet tints (Bits of rag were stained with transparent pigments to be extracted in water as required /pezzuole), such as miniature painters use; mix your colours with gum, or with the clear or albumen of an egg well beaten and liquefied.
Jean Cousin the Younger XIV
the spectacle of the world
when drawing
the relation between subject and the world
because, wanting this, your work would be a foolish thing
it ceases to remain part of our experience
Let us return to our subject
in place of a noetic analysis*
you may draw or sketch with powdered bone-dust
the object corresponding to different perspectives
When you have completed you drawing
identical with that inner self
mix your colours with the clear of an egg
Jean Cousin the Younger XV
* „In a peak experience, the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. The knowledge came to me directly — noetically. It was not a matter of discursive reasoning or logical abstraction. It was an experiential cognition.“
Edgar Dean „Ed“ Mitchell (1930 – 2016); as the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14, he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface, making him the sixth person to walk on the Moon.
Hokusai Brush Drawing I
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: When I begin to reflect my reflection bears upon an unreflective experience; moreover my reflection cannot be unaware of itself as an event, and so it appears to itself in the light of a truly creative act, of a changed structure of consciousness, and yet it has to recognize, as having priority over its own operations, the world which is given to the subject because the subject is given to himself.
Hokusai Brush Drawing II
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 11.–How to draw with a leaden style.
It is possible also to draw on parchment without bone-dust with a style of lead; that is, with two parts of lead, and one of tin, well beaten with a hammer.
Hokusai’s Educational Book I
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The real has to be described, not constructed or formed. Which means that I cannot put perception into the same category as the syntheses represented by judgements, acts or predications.
Hokusai’s Educational Book II
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 12. How, when drawing with a leaden style, an error may be corrected.
You may draw on paper also with the above mentioned leaden style,' either with or without bone dust; and if at any time you make an error, or you wish to remove any marks made by the leaden style, take a little crumb of bread, rub it over the paper, and efface whatever you please. And on this kind of paper, in the same manner, you may shade with ink, or colours, or clothlet tints (pezzuole), with the before mentioned vehicle.
Hokusai’s Educational Book III
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: My field of perception is constantly filled with a play of colours, noises and fleeting tactile sensations which I cannot relate precisely to the context of my clearly perceived world, yet which I nevertheless immediately ‘place’ in the world, without ever confusing them with my daydreams.
Hokusai’s Educational Book IV
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 13.–How drawing with the pen should be practised.
When you have practised drawing in this manner one year, either more or less, according to the pleasure you take in it, you may sometimes draw on paper with a fine-pointed pen.
Hokusai’s Manga I
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Equally constantly I weave dreams round things. I imagine people and things whose presence is not incompatible with the context, yet who are not in fact involved in it: they are ahead of reality, in the realm of the imaginary.
Hokusai’s Manga II
Cennino Cennini: Draw lightly, working up your lights and your half-lights and your shades gradually, retouching many lines with your pen. And if you would have your drawing more highly finished use a little water-colour, as before directed, with a blunt-pointed mineever brush.
Hokusai’s Manga III
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: If the reality of my perception were based solely on the intrinsic coherence of ‘representations’, it ought to be for ever hesitant and, being wrapped up in my conjectures on probabilities.
Hokusai’s Manga IV
Cennino Cennini: Do you know what will be the consequence of this practice of drawing with the pen ? It will make you expert, skilfull, and capable of making original designs.
Hokusai’s Manga V
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: I ought to be ceaselessly taking apart misleading synthesis, and reinstating in reality stray phenomena which I had excluded in the first place. But this does not happen.
Hokusai’s Manga VI
Cennino Cennini: CHAP. 14.–How to make a pen for the purpose of drawing.
If you would know how to make a pen of a goosequill, take a firm quill, place it on the two fingers of the left hand, the under side of the quill upwards; take a good sharp penknife, and cut away about the width of a finger along the length of the quill, and cut it drawing the penknife towards you, taking care that the cut should be even and in the middle of the pen.
Hokusai’s Manga VII
Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849) was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. Hokusai is best known as author of several woodblock print series.
Hokusai’s Manga VIII
About: Katsushika Hokusai, Ryakuga haya-oshie, Quick Guide to Drawing, 1 volume 1812
In one of his educational book, Hokusai taught student to “evolve pictorial forms out of calligraphic pictograms.”
The other interesting example in this book is the technique of using circles and straight lines drafting the shape. Here we can see the “rudimentary kind of cubism avant la letter“.