ARTH218

The Debate Disegno e Colore

‘Seeing that disegno, the parent of our three arts, Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, having its origin in the intellect, draws out from many single things a general judgement, it is like a form or idea of all the objects in nature, most marvellous in what it compasses, for not only in the bodies of men and of animals but also in plants, in buildings, in sculpture and in painting, disegno is cognizant of the proportion of the whole to the parts and of the parts to each other and to the whole. Seeing too that from this knowledge there arises a certain conception and judgement, so that there is formed in the mind that something which afterwards, when expressed by the hands, is called disegno, we may conclude that disegno is not other than a visible expression and declaration of our inner conception and of that which others have imagined and given form to in their idea. … What disegno needs, when it has derived from the judgement the mental image of anything, is that the hand, through the study and practice of many years, may be free and apt to draw and to express correctly, with the pen, the silver-point, the charcoal, the chalk, or other instrument, whatever nature has created. For when the intellect puts forth refined and judicious conceptions, the hand which has practised disegno for many years, exhibits the perfection and excellence of the arts as well as the knowledge of the artist.’

Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori … (1568)

‘And certainly colouring is so important and compelling that, when the painter produces a good imitation of the tones and softness of flesh, and the rightful characteristics of any object there may be, he makes his paintings seem alive.’

Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (1557)

Important names and terms

· Disegno e colore

Study Images

· Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi (unfinished), 1481-2

· Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1510

· Michelangelo, Libyan Sibyl from the Ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, 1509-1512, Vatican, Rome

· Raphael, The School of Athens at the Stanza della Segnatura, 1509-1511, Vatican, Rome

· Giorgione, Pastoral Concert (Concert Champêtre), 1508-9

· Giorgione, Three philosophers, 1509

· Giorgione, The Tempest, c. 1505

· Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1522

· Titian, Bacchanalia, c. 1525

· Titian, The Rape of Europe, c. 1559-62

Additional Images

· Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna and Child with Saint Anne and the Young St John, 1507-8

Additional Resources

· The Metropolitan Museum of Art website has a section devoted to “Venetian Color and Florentine Design”