A Treatise on Painting/Chapter 351
Chap. CCCLI.—Which Painting is to be esteemed the best.
That painting is the most commendable which has the greatest conformity to what is meant to be imitated. This kind of comparison will often put to shame a certain description of painters, who pretend they can mend the works of Nature; as they do, for instance, when they pretend to represent a child twelve months old, giving him eight heads in height, when Nature in its best proportion admits but five. The breadth of the shoulders also, which is equal to the head, they make double, giving to a child a year old, the proportions of a man of thirty. They have so often practised, and seen others practise these errors, that they have converted them into habit, which has taken so deep a root in their corrupted judgment, that they persuade themselves that Nature and her imitators are wrong in not following their own practice[1].
- ↑ See chap. x.