The Eye, Window of the Soul: Painting Surpasses Poetry
Painting is understood as if it spoke; the eye reports nature more nobly than the ear
Continuing the paragone, Leonardo answers the charge that painting is a mute poetry needing someone to explain it: the poet's book, he says, stands worse, for even read aloud it shows nothing of its subject, while a well-composed painting is understood as if it spoke. Chapter [19] then declares the eye the window of the soul and the principal way the mind considers nature, with the ear only second and ennobled by recounting what the eye has seen. He insists historians, poets, and mathematicians could not report what they had not first seen. A marginal annotation appears at the right that the transcription does not include.
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Painting understood as though it spoke
Answering the charge that painting is a mute poetry needing a speaker, Leonardo replies that the poet's book stands worse off: even when a man reads it aloud, nothing of the thing itself is seen. A painting whose actions are well proportioned to their mental affections will be understood as though it spoke.
The eye, window of the soul
Chapter [19] declares the eye the window of the soul and the principal way by which the common sense considers the infinite works of nature, with the ear only second and made noble by recounting what the eye has seen. Historians, poets, and mathematicians could not report in writing things they had not first seen with the eye.
Mute poetry against blind painting
If the poet calls painting a mute poetry, the painter may answer that poetry is a blind painting, and Leonardo asks which affliction is worse, the blind or the mute. The painter with the brush makes a story easier to grasp and less tedious than the poet's pen, and the poet's fictions, though free, satisfy men less than paintings do.