How to Recognize a Good Painting; The Mirror as Master
Five marks of a good picture, and why the flat mirror teaches the painter light, dark and foreshortening
A text leaf from Part Three of the Treatise on Painting. It closes a passage arguing that a picture with shadows and lights stronger than a mirror's will appear as natural as a scene seen in a great mirror, then opens a chapter listing five qualities of a good painting: fitting movement, relief adjusted to distance, limb-proportions matching the whole, decorum of setting matching the action, and limbs suited to the figure's build. A further chapter holds that the flat mirror is the painter's true master, showing light, dark and the foreshortening of any object.
On this page
The five marks of a good painting
The chapter enumerates what one must judge to know a good painting: first, that the movement suit the mind of the mover; second, that greater or lesser relief of shadowed things be adjusted to the distances; third, that the proportions of the limbs answer to the proportionality of the whole; fourth, that the decorum of the setting match that of the actions; fifth, that the limbs suit the figure's condition.
The flat mirror as the painter's master
The mirror of flat surface contains the true painting on that surface, and a perfect painting on any flat material is like the mirror's surface. Painters are told to find in flat mirrors their master, which teaches the light, the dark and the foreshortening of any object, the colours having one brighter than the lit parts of the reflected image.
Fitting the limbs to the figure's build
Among the five qualities, the limb-formations must suit the condition of the body they belong to: gentle limbs to gentle bodies, coarse limbs to coarse, and fat limbs to fat, likewise.