On Weight-Bearing Feet, Fitting Limbs, and Facial Emotion
How the parts of the face register laughter, weeping, anger, and wonder
A clean fair-copy text page of the Treatise on Painting with no drawings. It opens with a note that the foot bearing a man's weight should be flattened rather than splayed, then warns the painter to suit each limb to its figure and never mix the limbs of the young with the old, the muscular with the delicate, or the male with the female. A final long passage introduces the 'mental accidents' that move the face, listing laughter, weeping, wonder, anger, and fear, and urging that gestures be restrained and the bystanders intent on the event.
On this page
Suit every limb to the whole figure
Do not take the leg or arm of a delicate person and attach it to a thick chest or neck. The painter must not mix the limbs of the young with those of the old, nor sturdy muscular members with slight feeble ones, nor those of men with those of women.
The passions that move the parts of the face
The movements of the face driven by mental states are many: laughing, weeping, crying out, singing, wonder, anger, gladness, melancholy, and fear. Laughing and weeping resemble each other in the mouth, cheeks, and closed eyes, and differ only in the brows and their spacing.
The foot that carries the body's weight
The foot that receives the weight of the man should be shown flattened and not with the toes playing or splayed, unless it were resting upon the heel.