Page 107 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

kuricus, whose treatise De sculptura of 1504 is
;nown to have been in Pirckheimer's library. 58
Hirer also gained detailed knowledge of Leo-
tardo's investigations. Some of the Dresden
tudies, such as that of the left leg of a man, are
o close to Leonardo's surviving drawings of the
49os as to indicate that they are based directly
ipon the kind of lost studies or engravings that
vere later copied by Carlo Urbino, the author of
59
he Codex Huygens. The system used by
3iirer expresses the widths of the limbs as
iliquot fractions of the total height of the fig-
ire, whereas Leonardo uses a system of frac-
rions of face-lengths. In both systems, the basic
idea—that there were fixed proportional rela-
tionships between each part of a human body
and the whole—is fundamentally similar, and
both men regarded such proportional harmo-
60
nies as akin to those of music. Diirer also
shared Leonardo's belief that a single canon of
beauty was not adequate to reflect the varied
types of the human figure in nature. However,
he took this idea much farther than did Leo-
nardo, conducting a painstaking analysis of the
different proportional systems in a wide range
fig 21. Albrecht Diirer, Proportion Study of Man with fig. 22. Albrecht Durer, Study of the of figures, from short and fat to tall and thin,
Outstretched Arms, c. 1513, pen and ink, fol 123v, Dresden Proportions of the Left Leg of a Man.
Sketchbook. Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden c, 1513, pen and ink, fol. 1G2V, Dres- and showing how the "mean" proportions of
den Sketchbook. Sachsische Landesbi- those figures which he regarded as closest to
bliothek, Dresden "true beauty" might be systematically com-
pressed and stretched to produce other bodies
61
The most surprising evidence of Diirer's operation of all aspects of the human body, consistent within themselves, Diirer's system
was accused, particularly by Michelangelo and
knowledge of Leonardo's drawings appears on which he regarded as nature's supreme creation. his followers, of being overly doctrinaire and
two folios of this sketchbook, which precisely For Leonardo, a complete understanding of man mechanical, but Diirer himself stressed that his
copy, in reverse, a group of Leonardo's ana- the microcosm, in whom the universal princi- system was directed toward achieving a com-
tomical studies devoted to the skeleton and ples of natural order were mirrored, was neces- prehensive understanding of the design princi-
56
nerves, There is no indication that the draw- sary if the artist was to depict human beings in ples of divine nature rather than toward
ings by Leonardo in question ever left his his works of art in such a way that their appear- providing precise formulae for the creation of
possession, and by the time Diirer made his ance accorded perfectly with their characters particular works of art: "If you have learnt well
versions in 1517, these particular studies had and situations. Although Diirer was as keenly the theory of measurements and attained
been rendered obsolete by Leonardo's own far interested as Leonardo in the doctrine of the understanding and skill in it, so that you can
more sophisticated later research. It is likely, four human temperaments—sanguine, choleric, make a thing with free certainty of hand, and
therefore, that Diirer was copying rare, and now phlegmatic, and melancholic—he was more know how to do each thing correctly, then it is
lost, engraved "facsimiles" of Leonardo's draw- concerned with characterizing their effects on not always necessary to measure everything/' 62
ings—hence the reversal of the images— human appearance and behavior than with Diirer also applied his method of progres-
perhaps made by the new process of "relief inquiring into the mechanisms through which sively transforming the geometrical "mean" to
etching," which Leonardo himself wrote of the four humors give rise to the temperaments. the human head, with remarkable results. He
57
using for anatomical illustration. Leonardo's In one of their areas of mutual concern, the showed how the differential compression and
studies were part of an early series executed rules governing human proportion, Diirer suc- skewing of the geometrical modules of the ideal
around 1490 in which he investigated the way ceeded in pursuing his research farther than head could result in astonishingly varied phys-
the network of "hollow" nerves communicated Leonardo. Diirer initially sought advice on the iognomies, giving systematic expression to the
with the ventricles of the brain, within whose "secret" of human proportions from Jacopo de' kind of grotesque heads that had become Leo-
cavities the various faculties of mental activity Barbari, the Venetian painter who worked in nardo's specialty. No picture better demon-
were thought to occur (cat. 179), Diirer himself, Germany beginning in 1500. However, Jacopo strates Diirer's ambition to emulate Leonardo as
in 1498, illustrated this traditional view of the did not offer him adequate guidance, so Diirer a kunstreicher meister in the field of physiog-
mental faculties in a woodcut of the caput phy- subsequently turned to a variety of written nomic expression than the Christ among the
sicum for a treatise by Pruthenius. These forays sources. He went directly to Vitruvius, as had Doctors in the Thyssen-Bomemisza Collection.
into the inner anatomical and physiological Leonardo, and to those theorists who had This is probably the picture he described to
mechanisms of body and mind were exceptional worked variations on Vitruvian ideas. The latter Pirckheimer in 1506 as a "Quadro [using the
in Diirer's work, in marked contrast to Leonar- surely included Alberti, whose writings were Italian term] the like of which I have never
do's obsessive search for cause and effect in the certainly accessible to Diirer, and Pomponius

106 CIRCA 1492