Painting versus Poetry; First Principles of Painting
The power of zero, the paragone of painting and poetry, and the point-line-surface-body sequence
The folio completes the argument on zero, showing how the nought placed after a unit makes ten, then a hundred, multiplying number tenfold while being worth nothing in itself. Leonardo then lays down that no human inquiry is true science unless it passes through mathematical demonstration and rests on experience. Chapter 2 sets painting against poetry: poetry places its things in the imagination through words, while painting delivers likenesses directly to the eye as if natural. Chapter 3 names the point, line, surface, and clothing body as the first principles of the science of painting. The scanned leaf itself appears blank; the reading is grounded in the accompanying transcription.
On this page
The zero in place value and the need for mathematical proof
A zero placed after a unit makes it read ten, two zeros make a hundred, and so the number grows tenfold wherever the nought is added, though in itself it is worth nothing. Leonardo concludes that no human inquiry may be called true science unless it passes through mathematical demonstrations, since mental discourses lack the experience that alone gives certainty.
Example and difference between painting and poetry
Leonardo compares imagination to effect as shadow is to the shadowed body, and by the same proportion sets poetry against painting. Poetry places its things in the imagination through letters, whereas painting gives them really outside the eye, receiving likenesses as if they were natural, so that painting alone reaches the mind by way of the visual power.
Point, line, surface, and body as first principles
The first principle of the science of painting is the point, the second the line, the third the surface, and the fourth the body that clothes itself with such a surface. This geometric sequence grounds painting in the same order of continuous quantity set out in the opening chapter.