A figure without fitting action is twice dead
The emotions a painter must depict, and how the body's motions answer to the motions of the mind
A clean text page of the Treatise on Painting on giving figures life through expression. Leonardo warns that a feigned figure not aided with ready acts suited to its intention is judged twice dead, and lists the emotions the painter must learn to depict — anger, grief, fear, sudden terror, weeping, flight, desire, commanding, laziness and solicitude. The compiler Melzi adds an editorial note that Leonardo, through forgetfulness or some other cause, left the promised chapters unwritten, and that the original passes to the next argument without its chapter. A chapter then distinguishes mental motions that move the body from those that do not.
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A figure without fitting action is twice dead
A feigned figure, unless its maker aids it with ready acts suited to the intention it is meant to convey, will be judged twice dead: dead because it is not alive, and dead in its action. Leonardo then turns to the further emotions the painter must render. Good depiction of feeling is what saves a painted figure from lifelessness.
The emotions the painter must learn to depict
Leonardo lists the emotions to be figured: the motion of the angry man, grief, fear, sudden terror, weeping, flight, desire, commanding, laziness and solicitude, and the like. The compiler Melzi appends a note observing that, although Leonardo promised to treat all these, he does not, as Melzi believes through forgetfulness or some other disturbance, so that in the original the next argument follows without its chapter.
Mental motions with and without the body
Some motions of the mind occur without any motion of the body, and some with it. Those without bodily motion let the arms, hands and every other part that shows life fall slack, while those with bodily motion hold the limbs in a movement appropriate to the motion of the mind. Leonardo adds a third motion that shares in both and a fourth that is neither, which he calls senseless or witless.