DEFENCE OF PAINTING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 535, 23 September 1949, Page 19

DEFENCE OF PAINTING

PARAGONE, by Leonardo da Vinci; introducduction and English translation by Irma R, Richter. Oxford University Press, London. English price, 18/-. OTES for a treatise on painting, by Leonardo da Vinci, were brought together in an edition of the master’s literary works. They have now been reprgnted in a- separate. and most handsome volume. According to the editor, Paragone (or Comparison of the Arts) "foreshadows the beginning of comparative criticism." If this hint can be remembered, some of the opinions may seem less extravagant to readers who are familiar with aesthetics and psych-

ology. Comparisons between the _ arts were dogmatic in an age when painters and _ sculptors worked with an almost divine assurance: the theory, like life itself} stayed close to the surface. Leonardo was

quite certain that painting was the highest of the arts (music was only a younger

sister, dependent on hearing, "a sense second to sight"), and he prepared his case with supreme confidence. His notes have the true Renaissance quality; the writing is strong and persuasive, and some of the best passages are full of sunlight. It is impossible to forget, while studying ideas that have been superseded, that we are in touch with a great mind, There are 12 half-tone plates, including a reproduction of The Last Supper; and these are arguments so powerful that they make much of the text seem

superfiuous.

M.H.

H.