II Criticism
Gryn. I pray you, before you favour us with a single word, let us examine the art of the picture. Velius here is half a physicist, and very skilled in knowledge of the human body.
Dürer. For some time I have perceived that I was in for being worried by you. Now whilst there are no buyers at hand, you may waste my time as you will.
Gryn. Do you call the practical knowledge of your art a waste of time? What would you call that of another’s?
Vel. First of all you have covered the top of this head with many and straight hairs when the top is called vertex, as if a vortex, from the curling round of the hair, as we see in rivers when the water rolls round and round (convolvit).
Dürer. Stupidly spoken; you don’t reflect that it is badly combed, following the custom of his age.
Vel. His forehead is unevenly bent.
Dürer. As a soldier he had received a wound at the Trebia when he was saving his father.
Gryn. Where did you read that?
Dürer. In the lost decads of Livy.
Vel. The temples are too much swollen.
Dürer. Hollow temples would be the sign of madness!
Vel. I should like to be able to see the back part of the head.
Dürer. Then turn the panel round.
Gryn. Why does Cato say amongst his other oracles: “The forehead is before the back part of the head?”
Dürer. How stupid you are! Don’t you see in every man the forehead in front of the back part of the head?
Gryn. There are some people whose backs I would rather see than their faces!
Dürer. And I gladly, e.g., such buyers as you, and soldiers!
Vel. Cato was of opinion that the presence of the master was more effective for the oversight of his affairs than his absence. For the rest, why has he such long forelocks?
Dürer. Do you speak of these hairs over the forehead?
Vel. Yes.
Dürer. For many months he had no barber at hand as we have in Spain.
Vel. Why have you covered with hair, the hairless part (glabella)83 against its etymology?
Dürer. Do you pluck out the hairs with pincers!
Vel. The hairs in the nose stand out from the nose. But you, such is your ingenuity, will throw the fault from yourself on to the barber.
Dürer. Ignorant that you are! Don’t you remember that the customs of those times were harsh, horrible, boorish?
Vel. You, too, are ignorant. Have you not read that Scipio was one of the most cultivated and polished of all the men of his age, and a lover of what was elegant?
Dürer. This painting gives his likeness as he was, when an exile, at Liternum.
Gryn. The eyebrows are large, and suitable for Latium; the eyelids too hollow, and the cheeks too much sunk.
Dürer. Naturally, from the camp-watches.
Gryn. You are not only a painter, but a rhetorician, well versed in turning off any criticism of your work.
Dürer. As far as I can see, you are well versed in finding faults.
Vel. The picture has the cheeks and lips too much puffed up.
Dürer. He is blowing the battle-trumpet.
Gryn. And you were blowing on a goblet when you painted this.
Vel. On the contrary, he was blowing into a bag made of skin. For elsewhere you have made him hairy, whilst you have scarcely painted any eyelashes.
Dürer. They have fallen off by disease.
Gryn. What was the disease?
Dürer. Seek that from his physician!
Gryn. Don’t you understand now that you must take off from your price one hundred sesterces for such lack of skill?
Dürer. Nay, for your cavils and bothersome questions I ought rather to add two hundred sesterces to the price.
Vel. You have made the pupils of the eyes grayish and I have heard that Scipio’s were blue.
Dürer. And I have heard that his eyes were blue-gray like those of Minerva Bellatrix.
Vel. You have made the corners of the eyes too fleshy and the hollows too moist.
Dürer. He was weeping because accused by Cato.
Vel. The jaws are too long, and the beard very thick and profuse. You would say the hairs are the bristles of swine.
Dürer. You are beyond measure, chatterers and talkative cavillers. Get away with you. I won’t let you have the opportunity of further criticising the picture.
Vel. Please, my Dürer, since you have no other clients, let us go on criticising here.
Dürer. What is the good to me?
Vel. We will each of us write a distich for you, whereby the picture will be more easily sold.
Dürer. My art has no need of your commendation. For skilled buyers who understand pictures, don’t buy verses, but works of art.
Vel. But your Scipio has his nostrils too much dilated.
Dürer. He was in a state of wrath at his accusers.
Vel. We see no dimple in his chin.
Dürer. It is hidden in his beard. You also don’t see his chin nor the double-chin!
Gryn. You have saved yourself the trouble of drawing those for the sake of painting a big beard.
Vel. The straight and muscular neck pleases me, as also the throat.
Dürer. Thank the Lord that you approve of something!
Vel. But so that I should not leave something to be desired in this, I must also say the figure has not sufficient hollow in the throat. When a physiognomist noted this in Socrates, he pronounced it as a sign of slowness of mind. I should wish those shoulders to be a little more erect, and larger.
Dürer. He was not so much a fighting soldier as a general. Have you not heard of his apophthegm on the point? When certain soldiers were saying of him, that he was not so valiant a soldier as he was a wise general, he answered: “My mother bore me to be a general, not a soldier.” But, depart, if you are not going to be buyers, for I see some tax-farmers approaching.
Vel. Let us go for a walk, and let us talk on the way to one another, concerning the human body without considering Scipio, and this portrait. A flat nose does not befit a noble countenance.
Gryn. What do you think of the noses of the Huns, then?
Vel. Away with such deformities!
Gryn. People with turned-up noses are not less deformed. The Persians honoured eagle-nosed people on account of Cyrus, who, they say, had such a shaped nose.
Vel. The fore-arm and bend of the arm (ancon et campe) are to the arm what the ham of the knee and the knee are to the leg; thence the upper arm (lacertus) down to the hand, from the muscles of which also the legs are called muscular (lacertosa).
Gryn. Is not this the ell (cubitus) as used by those who are measuring?
Vel. Yes, and ancon is another name for it.
Gryn. Is not that the way the Roman king came by his name, Ancus?
Vel. It was by his curved elbow.
Gryn. The hand follows, the chief of all instruments. The hand is divided into fingers, thumb, forefinger, the middle or disreputable finger, the next to the smallest, and the smallest.
Vel. Why has the middle finger a bad name? What crime has it perpetrated?
Gryn. Our teacher said that he knew indeed the cause, yet he was not willing to explain it, because it would be unseemly. Don’t seek, therefore, to know, for it does not become a well-brought-up youth to inquire into disgraceful matters.
Vel. The Greeks named the finger next to the smallest, δακτυλικόν, i.e. to say, the ring-finger.
Gryn. Clearly so, but on the left, not the right hand, because on it, formerly, they were accustomed to wear rings.
Vel. For what reason?
Gryn. They say that a vein stretches from the heart to it. If the finger is encircled by a ring it is as if the heart itself is crowned. The knots on the fingers are called knuckles, and this word is used for a knock of the fist. Between the knots are joints and these are called by the general term, joints (artus) and knots (articuli). It has been handed down to memory, that Tiberius Caesar had such hard knots that he could bore through a fresh apple with his fingers.
Vel. Have you learned chiromantia?
Gryn. I have only heard the name. What is it?
Vel. You would have been able to interpret the lines on the hands by it.
Gryn. I have said I know nothing of it, and so it is. But if now I were to profess to know something and looked attentively on your hand, gladly you would listen willingly to me, and to a man utterly unskilled in this mode of imposture you would not altogether refuse your confidence!
Vel. How so?
Gryn. Because it is the nature of man to listen gladly to those who profess that they will announce secret things or what is about to happen.
Vel. Why are the Scaevolae so called?
Gryn. As if scaevae; from scaea, which is the left hand. They say that there are more of the female sex left-handed than in our sex.
Vel. What is vola?
Gryn. The hollow of the hand in which the lines are.
Vel. What does involare mean?
Gryn. That which you are doing. Gladly to steal, to snatch and hide as if in the hollow of the hand, and as the raving Lucretia did when she snatched at the eyes of her serving-women.
[Then follows the Latin for the different parts of the trunk of the body.]
Vel. Do you know the seat of the virtues in the body?
Gryn. No; where are they placed?
Vel. Modesty in the forehead; in the right hand faithfulness; and sympathy in the knee.
Gryn. The sole of the foot is not itself the base of the foot.
Vel. So many think.
Gryn. Pliny observes that there is a people who make for themselves at mid-day a shadow with the sole of their foot, so great and broad it is! How is it possible?
Vel. Clearly the sole in their case reaches from the thigh-bone to the toes.