Practice without science: perspective as the painter's guide
Chapters on learning to draw from nature, and why no one should copy another's manner
A clean text page of the Treatise on Painting gathering several short chapters on how a painter should learn his art. Leonardo warns that practice without science is like a helmsman without rudder or compass, and insists that painters imitate nature rather than another master's manner. Two further chapters set out the order in which one should learn to draw and prescribe standing three times an object's size away when drawing from life. The left margin also carries small cross-reference notes (book and folio pointers) in a finer hand beside the chapter headings.
On this page
Practice without science is a ship without a rudder
Those who fall in love with practice without science are compared to helmsmen who put to sea without rudder or compass and never know where they are going. Practice must always be built upon good theory, and of that theory perspective is the guide and gateway. Without it, Leonardo says, nothing in painting is done well.
A son of nature, not a nephew: never copy another's manner
No painter should ever imitate the manner of another, for he would be called a nephew and not a son of nature in matters of art. Since natural things exist in such wide abundance, one should have recourse to nature rather than to the masters who themselves learned from her. This counsel is aimed not at those who seek riches but at those who desire fame and honour from the art.
The order of learning to draw, and the distance from the model
The learner should first copy the drawings of a good master made after nature and not from mere practice, then work from relief alongside a drawing taken from that relief, and finally draw from good nature itself. When drawing from life, the artist is told to stand at a distance three times the size of the thing being drawn.