art comparison

In this chapter, Leonardo da Vinci places painting above sculpture and poetry as the best form of art. Painting, in da Vinci's opinion, is the most like to nature because it exclusively involves the sense of sight, which he considers to be the most significant human sense. According to Leonardo da Vinci, poetry is secondary to painting because it depends on the words that poets hear through their sense of hearing, which is a secondary sense. Da Vinci claims that the poet hears what the painter has previously seen. To elaborate this point, da Vinci reiterates that had the historians, poets or mathematicians never seen things; they wouldn't have been able to put them in their writings. The point that I found most interesting is the way da Vinci differentiates between the paintings and sculptors. Although at first, he says that the sense of sight is the nobler sense, and the art of sculpturing and painting both depend on the sense of sight. He goes on to say that the sculptors require a specific light from specific angles to manifest their essential idea so that the onlooker can appreciate it completely. Painting, on the other hand, is devoid of such limitations, and it contains every color in itself, independent of the external conditions.


The Notebook is a collection of papers, also called The Codex Arundel, written by da Vinci during the period 1478-1518. It has the writings of da Vinci regarding a broad range of topics dealing with science and art. This was the prime period of The Renaissance in Europe. And da Vinci epitomizes the ultimate Renaissance artist because da Vinci was an extraordinarily talented man and this is evident by the fact that besides being a painter and a sculptor he also worked extensively in the fields of astronomy, biology, music, mathematics and so on. Hence, he is regarded as the ‘Renaissance Man.' Renaissance was a period of intellectual, cultural, scientific and literary revival in Europe. The renaissance started from Italy, and from there it spread to the rest of Europe.

The chapter ‘Comparison of the Arts’ from da Vinci’s Notebooks, when analyzed against the backdrop of Renaissance, presents da Vinci's inclinations towards the visual arts. And this inclination towards the visual arts can be viewed as a characteristic of the Renaissance period because the main idea that underlined the Renaissance period was the restoration of supremacy and nobility of man. Before the Renaissance, dignity, reality and nobility were attributed to the deity. But Renaissance saw the dawn of man. Renaissance brought the same ideas from the medieval deity and gave it to the Renaissance man, who is considered to be the epitome of rationality. And rationality is based on human experience. In this chapter, da Vinci delineates that painting is a superior form of art because the sense of sight is a better experience of nature as compared to the sense of hearing.

Furthermore, the chief theme explored in this chapter is the superiority of visual arts. Da Vinci elaborates the significance of visual arts by giving an example of a situation and then asking a rhetorical question. According to the exemplified situation, if a scene of a battle is described in a poem and a painting also, and if both of these pieces of art are displayed at the same place, which one is going to get more popularity? According to da Vinci, it is the painting that will satisfy the people because a painting depicts the expressions and emotions of the soldiers better than a poem. This mirrors the famous Chinese proverb i.e. "a picture is worth a thousand words." Moreover, according to da Vinci, it is easier to get a glimpse of reality from painting as compared to poetry.


Da Vinci belongs to the time when art was used as a representation of reality. This is also known as realism. And the idea that a painting can represent reality better than words derives its source from this notion. As da Vinci explains in this chapter that “painting embraces within itself all the forms of nature, you have omitted nothing except the names, " and according to him, names are not ‘universal', forms are, i.e., humans have different names all over the world but the human form is the same. And the art of Renaissance specifically focused on the experience of nature and reality by an individual (Vinci, 1955).

In addition to that, the way da Vinci differentiates painting from sculpture points towards the remarkable genius of this artist. Da Vinci is famous for his unrivaled expertise in the depiction of shadow and light and also the physical relationship between the figures and their surroundings. Moreover, he was fairly acquainted with the both forms of art, i.e., painting and sculpturing. So, his judgment is an authentic one as it is coming from the experience.

Another modern that is ahead of his time characteristic of da Vinci is evident by the way he has presented his views in an argumentative manner. His answer to the criticism that a painting is superior because it brings more money to its creator as compared to the money generated by writing poems is an extremely sound and modern one. Similarly, his way of addressing the criticism that painting is a ‘mechanical’ art is also very insightful.

This chapter, if read without the background of the era it was written in and the biography of its author may appear to be presenting an unsound judgment by comparing the representation of reality by poetry and painting; because painting and poetry do not only serve the purpose of representing reality. But the arguments given in this chapter by da Vinci are very sound if read under the context.

In modern times, this statement that painting is a higher form of art has lost its relevance. This is because art has extended its tentacles to broader horizons now. For instance, abstract painting does not represent the physical nature or reality. Moreover, poetry in modern times is easier to make sense of as compared to the painting. To quote a very specific example, a very famous painting of a pipe, known as the Treachery of Images, by a famous surrealist artist Rene Magritte is aided by a line underneath the painting that says, "this is not a pipe." To go into the details of this painting would be redundant and irrelevant for this analysis but to cut the long story short, this painting is completed by the ‘words' and its whole essence cannot be understood without this line.


Furthermore, the point of the higher durability of words and sculptors over paintings would not have arisen in modern times. Because, there are a variety of mediums now that can render durability to any form of art, may it be a painting, sculpture or poetry. Finally, it would suffice to say that without going into the historical relevance of this chapter, its views were quite unusual and they seemed to be representing a narrow point of view regarding the different forms of art. But after going into the historical context, da Vinci’s views are quite tenable. In fact, they seem to be a work of a genius, which da Vinci certainly was.

Reference

Vinci, L. D. (1955). Comparison of the Arts. In The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci(pp. 852

856). New York , NY: New York : Braziller.