Rough Composition, Stains That Spark Invention, and Colour
The poet's freedom in composing figures, then the treatise turns to accompanying colours
A pivotal text leaf of the Treatise on Painting that closes the section on composing narrative scenes and opens the section on colour. Leonardo likens the painter to the poet who freely crosses out and improves his verses, urging that the limbs be composed roughly with first care to movements fitting the mental accidents, since an uncultivated composition that suits its invention satisfies all the more once perfected. He recalls seeing in stains on clouds and walls the spur to beautiful inventions, then, marked 'End. Begin on colours,' introduces the rule that one colour lends grace to a neighbour as the sun's rays do in the rainbow.
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Compose roughly, as the poet freely reworks his verses
As poets are untroubled by fine lettering and freely cross out and better their verses, so the painter should compose the limbs of his figures roughly, attending first to movements fitting the mental accidents of the figures rather than to the beauty of their limbs. An uncultivated composition that suits its invention will satisfy all the more once adorned with the perfection proper to its parts.
Stains on clouds and walls awaken invention
Leonardo recalls having seen in clouds and on walls stains that roused him to beautiful inventions of various things. Though those stains were wholly without perfection of any single member, they did not lack perfection in their movements or other actions. The section then closes with 'End. Begin on colours.'
One colour lends grace to another, as in the rainbow
To make the nearness of one colour give grace to the colour bordering it, use the rule seen in the sun's rays in the composition of the celestial arc, by another name the iris. Its colours are generated in the motion of the rain, because each little drop transmutes into its colours.