Beauty in woman: analysed and classified : with a critical view of the hypotheses of the most eminent writers, painters, and sculptors / by Alexander Walker.
- Alexander Walker
- Date:
- 1892
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Beauty in woman: analysed and classified : with a critical view of the hypotheses of the most eminent writers, painters, and sculptors / by Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![not to be attributed to the imagination of the poet.”^ Bossi, having no glimpse of the great principles for which Leonardo sought in vain, says, “ Since then, this great man could not satisfy himself in the difficult task of dimensions, whilst on other points he seems to dread no censure, it should give us a strong idea of the difficulty of determining the laws of beautiful symmetry, and preserving it in works with that harmony which is felt, hut cannot he ex- 'plained, and which varies in every figure according to the age, circumstances, and particular character of each. “ And when we recollect that, though Leonardo sought successfully in Yitruvius the proportions which Yitruvius himself seems to have drawn from the Greeks, he yet lamented that he did not possess the ancient symmetry, it is easily seen that he did not mean by this science, as already stated, a deter- minate general measure for man, but that harmony of parts tvhich is suited to each individual, according to the respective circumstances of sex, age, character, 1 “ Sembra che dentro di sentisse di non giungere alia eccel- lenza di que’ ineravigliosi antichi, de’ quali si protestava ammiratore e discepolo. “Era poi cura e studio speciale di Leonardo di avvicinarsi per quanto poteva agli antichi nella vera e bella imitazione della natura colla scorta della filosofia. “ Perb, 0 fosse la mancanza de’ grandi esemplari, o non ne pene- trasse, secondo ch’ egli credeva, ahbastanza gli artifizj, o che tropjDo tardi giungesse a comprenderli, egli lagnavasi modestamente di non aver posseduto 1’ antico magistero delle proporzioni. Si protestava poi d’ aver fatto il poco che aveva potuto, e chiedeva perdono alia posterity, se non aveva fatto di piu. Ecco i sentimenti che il Platino espose neir epitaffio che qui trascrivo, [as above]. “Ognun vede che sensi si fatti non si possono attribuire all’ invenzione del poeta.”—Ibid. 18](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28050964_0307.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
