Painting Compared to Poetry, and Its First Principles
The zero and mathematical proof, the paragone with poetry, and painting's point, line, surface and body.
This leaf from the first part of the Treatise on Painting opens by describing arithmetic's zero, worth nothing in itself yet multiplying any number tenfold, and argues that no inquiry can be called true science unless it passes through mathematical demonstrations. A chapter headed 'Example and difference between painting and poetry' likens poetry to a shadow and painting to the shadowed body, since painting sets its likenesses directly before the eye. A further chapter states the first principle of the science of painting: the point, the line, the surface, and the body clothed by that surface. The page carries the running header 'PARTE' and later annotation in another hand along the lower margin.
On this page
The zero that multiplies yet is worth nothing
A zero placed after a unit makes it read ten, and two zeros make a hundred, so the number grows infinitely, always tenfold, wherever the zero is joined. Yet the zero in itself is worth nothing but nothing, and all the noughts of the universe equal a single nought in substance and value.
No true science without mathematical demonstration
No human inquiry can be called true science unless it passes through mathematical demonstrations. Sciences that begin and end in the mind are denied truth, because such mental discourse admits no experience, without which nothing gives certainty of itself.
The difference between painting and poetry
Imagination stands to its effect as shadow to the shadowed body, and so poetry stands to painting. Poetry sets its things in the imagination through letters, while painting presents its likenesses really outside the eye, as if they were natural.
The first principle of the science of painting
The principle of the science of painting is the point; the second is the line; the third is the surface; the fourth is the body that is clothed by that surface. This concerns what is feigned by painting.