Awakening Invention: Reading Shapes in Stained Walls
How stains on walls, ashes, clouds or mud can spark landscapes, battles and figures in the painter's mind
This page carries Leonardo's celebrated precept for stimulating pictorial invention: by gazing at walls stained with blotches or at veined stone, one can see in them landscapes with mountains, rivers, rocks and trees, as well as battles, figures and strange faces to be drawn out into finished form. He compares it to finding any word one imagines in the peal of bells, and extends the method to ashes, clouds and mud, from which the mind is roused to new compositions of animals, men, landscapes and monstrous things such as devils. He cautions, however, that one must first learn to render every member of the things to be depicted. The folio is a clean scribal fair copy in a single column, with no drawings.
On this page
Stained walls as a spur to invention
Leonardo offers a device of speculation that seems trivial yet greatly awakens the mind to invention: study walls stained with random blotches or stones of mixed color. In confused, indeterminate things the mind is stirred to new inventions, as one finds any imagined word in the sound of bells.
Landscapes seen in random marks
Among the stains one may discern resemblances of diverse countries adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills in various ways. The same works from ashes of a fire, clouds or mud, prompting compositions of landscapes and monstrous forms.
Battles, faces and figures drawn from stains
The marked wall also yields diverse battles and lively actions of figures, strange airs of faces and costumes, and infinite things to be reduced into whole and good form. But first, he warns, one must know how to make well every member of the things one wishes to depict.