DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0194
174
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
Howbeit, if thou art painting such a silk and shadest it with one colour
(as a brown with the blue) thou must none the less shade the blue with
a deeper blue where it is needful. It often cometh to pass that such
silks appear brown in the shadows, as if one colour stood before the
other. If thy model beareth such a garment, thou must shade the
brown with a deeper brown and not with blue. Howbeit, happen what
may, every colour must in shading keep to its own class.”
The foregoing plan may have been written about the year
1512. At that time Durer’s pen was busy, as the manuscripts
printed at the end of this chapter prove. He was writing and
rewriting drafts for an introductory essay. Doubtless he did
not find it easy to express his ideas in words. His whole theory
was present, in a nebulous form, before him at once. His
tendency was to fly from point to point in the endeavour to
present it to a reader. Then he found that something material
had been omitted, to which he was forced to return. He
regarded nothing as finished because it was written. He wrote
and rewrote, interpolating, correcting, adding, abbreviating. His
manifold labours are, in part, incorporated in the volumes of
manuscript in the British Museum, but what remains probably
represents but a small proportion of what was written.
Two interesting passages, not in Durer’s handwriting, are
bound up with his papers in the fourth volume of the British
Museum Manuscripts (leaves 82 and 132). The ideas contained
in them were certainly adopted by Diirer, but the spelling is
not his, nor is the style like his. They were doubtless, therefore,
neither copied from his writing nor dictated by him. They are
full of additions and corrections, in the same crooked hand.
The leaves are much stained and the text is hard to decipher
and harder still to comprehend (see frontispiece).
The first fragment (IV. 82 a\ see below, p. 192) reads as follows.
“ I have heard how the Seven Sages of Greece taught a man that
measure is in all things, physical and moral, the best. It was moreover
so highly regarded by the Most High that He made all created things
in number, weight, and measure. Doubtless those arts and methods
which approximate most to Measurement are regarded as noblest and
most honourable; and, excepting only the sacred arts, such as Theology,
Metaphysic, and the love of natural Wisdom, there is no art by which
Measurement is more, and more variously, needed than the Art of
Painting, which not only requireth Geometry and Arithmetic, the
foundations of all Measurement, but, much more than any other art,
depends upon Perspective, Catoptrica, Geodesia, Chorographia, etc.”
durer’s literary remains.
[chap.
Howbeit, if thou art painting such a silk and shadest it with one colour
(as a brown with the blue) thou must none the less shade the blue with
a deeper blue where it is needful. It often cometh to pass that such
silks appear brown in the shadows, as if one colour stood before the
other. If thy model beareth such a garment, thou must shade the
brown with a deeper brown and not with blue. Howbeit, happen what
may, every colour must in shading keep to its own class.”
The foregoing plan may have been written about the year
1512. At that time Durer’s pen was busy, as the manuscripts
printed at the end of this chapter prove. He was writing and
rewriting drafts for an introductory essay. Doubtless he did
not find it easy to express his ideas in words. His whole theory
was present, in a nebulous form, before him at once. His
tendency was to fly from point to point in the endeavour to
present it to a reader. Then he found that something material
had been omitted, to which he was forced to return. He
regarded nothing as finished because it was written. He wrote
and rewrote, interpolating, correcting, adding, abbreviating. His
manifold labours are, in part, incorporated in the volumes of
manuscript in the British Museum, but what remains probably
represents but a small proportion of what was written.
Two interesting passages, not in Durer’s handwriting, are
bound up with his papers in the fourth volume of the British
Museum Manuscripts (leaves 82 and 132). The ideas contained
in them were certainly adopted by Diirer, but the spelling is
not his, nor is the style like his. They were doubtless, therefore,
neither copied from his writing nor dictated by him. They are
full of additions and corrections, in the same crooked hand.
The leaves are much stained and the text is hard to decipher
and harder still to comprehend (see frontispiece).
The first fragment (IV. 82 a\ see below, p. 192) reads as follows.
“ I have heard how the Seven Sages of Greece taught a man that
measure is in all things, physical and moral, the best. It was moreover
so highly regarded by the Most High that He made all created things
in number, weight, and measure. Doubtless those arts and methods
which approximate most to Measurement are regarded as noblest and
most honourable; and, excepting only the sacred arts, such as Theology,
Metaphysic, and the love of natural Wisdom, there is no art by which
Measurement is more, and more variously, needed than the Art of
Painting, which not only requireth Geometry and Arithmetic, the
foundations of all Measurement, but, much more than any other art,
depends upon Perspective, Catoptrica, Geodesia, Chorographia, etc.”