Painting and Sculpture: Permanence, Light, and Illusion
The sculptor's claim to durability; sculpture's dependence on natural light
This leaf continues the paragone and opens two short new chapters. Leonardo grants that sculpture's greater permanence belongs to the material, not the sculptor, and claims that painting fired on terracotta with glazes would outlast it. He then argues that a statue lit from below looks monstrous, whereas a painting carries all its illumination within itself, and that painting's first marvel is to seem detached from a flat wall, so that the painter must knowingly harmonise shadows with lights while nature supplies this to the sculptor for free. The page is a single column of clean transcription with marginal chapter references.
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Durability belongs to the material, not the sculptor
Answering the sculptor's boast of more eternal works, Leonardo says this is a virtue of the sculpted material and not of the sculptor who carves it; and if the painter paints on terracotta with glazes, that will be more eternal than sculpture.
A statue lit from below appears monstrous
In the chapter 'Of the obligation that sculpture has to light, and painting has not,' Leonardo observes that if sculpture receives its light from below it will appear a monstrous and strange thing; this does not befall painting, which carries all its parts of illumination with it.
Painting's marvel: to seem detached from the wall
The first marvel of painting is that it seems to stand out from the wall or other flat surface, deceiving subtle judgments with something not divided from the plane. Hence the painter must perform the office of knowledge in the shadows, making them companions to the lights, a science the sculptor does not need because nature colours his work light and dark of itself.