No More Learning

Zeuxis and Parrhasius are said to be
contemporaries; the first found out the reason of lights and shadows in
picture, the other more subtlely examined the line.

_De stylo_. --_Pliny_. --In picture light is required no less than shadow; so
in style, height as well as humbleness. But beware they be not too
humble, as Pliny pronounced of Regulus's writings. You would think them
written, not on a child, but by a child. Many, out of their own obscene
apprehensions, refuse proper and fit words--as occupy, Nature, and the
like; so the curious industry in some, of having all alike good, hath
come nearer a vice than a virtue.

_De progres. picturae_. {93} Picture took her feigning from poetry; from
geometry her rule, compass, lines, proportion, and the whole symmetry.
Parrhasius was the first won reputation by adding symmetry to picture; he
added subtlety to the countenance, elegancy to the hair, love-lines to
the face, and by the public voice of all artificers, deserved honour in
the outer lines. Eupompus gave it splendour by numbers and other
elegancies. From the optics it drew reasons, by which it considered how
things placed at distance and afar off should appear less; how above or
beneath the head should deceive the eye, &c. So from thence it took
shadows, recessor, light, and heightnings. From moral philosophy it took
the soul, the expression of senses, perturbations, manners, when they
would paint an angry person, a proud, an inconstant, an ambitious, a
brave, a magnanimous, a just, a merciful, a compassionate, an humble, a
dejected, a base, and the like; they made all heightnings bright, all
shadows dark, all swellings from a plane, all solids from breaking.
See
where he complains of their painting Chimaeras {94} (by the vulgar unaptly
called grotesque) saying that men who were born truly to study and
emulate Nature did nothing but make monsters against Nature, which Horace
so laughed at. {95} The art plastic was moulding in clay, or potter's
earth anciently. This is the parent of statuary, sculpture, graving, and
picture; cutting in brass and marble, all serve under her. Socrates
taught Parrhasius and Clito (two noble statuaries) first to express
manners by their looks in imagery. Polygnotus and Aglaophon were
ancienter. After them Zeuxis, who was the lawgiver to all painters;
after, Parrhasius. They were contemporaries, and lived both about
Philip's time, the father of Alexander the Great. There lived in this
latter age six famous painters in Italy, who were excellent and emulous
of the ancients--Raphael de Urbino, Michael Angelo Buonarotti, Titian,
Antony of Correggio, Sebastian of Venice, Julio Romano, and Andrea
Sartorio.

_Parasiti ad mensam_. --These are flatterers for their bread, that praise
all my oraculous lord does or says, be it true or false; invent tales
that shall please; make baits for his lordship's ears; and if they be not
received in what they offer at, they shift a point of the compass, and
turn their tale, presently tack about, deny what they confessed, and
confess what they denied; fit their discourse to the persons and
occasions. What they snatch up and devour at one table, utter at
another; and grow suspected of the master, hated of the servants, while
they inquire, and reprehend, and compound, and dilate business of the
house they have nothing to do with. They praise my lord's wine and the
sauce he likes; observe the cook and bottle-man; while they stand in my
lord's favour, speak for a pension for them, but pound them to dust upon
my lord's least distaste, or change of his palate.

How much better is it to be silent, or at least to speak sparingly! for
it is not enough to speak good, but timely things. If a man be asked a
question, to answer; but to repeat the question before he answer is well,
that he be sure to understand it, to avoid absurdity; for it is less
dishonour to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are
excused, the understanding is not.