Treatise on Painting: outlines, shadow, and the three perspectives
Book II — serpentine contours, avoiding a 'wooden' finish, relief, and choosing beautiful faces
A text-only leaf of Book II of the Trattato della pittura, headed PARTE, with a marginal gloss in a later hand beside the chapter on linear painting. It closes chapter 133 (calling drawing a deity that repeats God's evident works), then in chapter 134 urges careful study of a body's outlines and their serpentine turns, whether circular or angular. Chapter 135 warns that shadows discerned only with difficulty should be left unfinished rather than rendered 'wooden'. Chapter 136 sets the first part of painting as showing bodies in relief through the three perspectives of diminishing form, size and colour, and the second part as varied poses so that figures do not look like brothers, before chapter 137 opens on the choice of beautiful faces.
On this page
Judging outlines and their serpentine turns
Chapter 134, 'Of linear painting', directs that the outlines of any body be considered with the utmost diligence, together with the manner of their serpentining, judging whether their turns partake of circular curvature or of angular concavity.
Leave ill-seen shadows unfinished, not 'wooden'
Chapter 135, marked with a letter 'b', warns that shadows you discern only with difficulty and whose outlines you cannot make out — seized with confused judgment and transferred into the work — should not be rendered finished or terminated, lest the work turn out of a wooden result.
Relief and the three perspectives
Chapter 136 makes the first part of painting the showing of bodies in relief, with their surrounding fields seeming to enter the wall, by means of the three perspectives: diminution of the figures of bodies, of their magnitudes, and of their colours. The first perspective originates from the eye, the other two from the air interposed between the eye and the objects it sees.
Varied poses and the choice of beautiful faces
The second part of painting in chapter 136 is the acts, appropriate and varied in stature, so that the men do not appear brothers. Chapter 137, marked 'd', opens the theme of the choice of beautiful faces, praising as no small grace the painter who (the sentence continuing on the next folio).