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Notes on the famous ‘sponge passage’ in A Treatise on Painting

In his work A Treatise on Painting, Leonardo da Vinci mentions Sandro Botticelli’s ‘sponge’ anecdote on landscape painting.

In this passage, Leonardo da Vinci laughs at Botticelli over his methods of depicting landscape — asserting that for Botticelli a sponge full of colour thrown against the wall sufficed to produce one of his “melancholy landscapes” (tristissimi paesi).

The book Experimental Approach to Projective Techniques (1965, depicted above) was the first to make the connection between the ‘sponge passage’, Rorschach’s research on ink blots and the interpretation of ambiguous forms.

English translation of the Da Vinci ‘sponge passage’:

as our friend Botticelli remarks, [landscape painting] is but a vain study ; since, by throwing a sponge impregnated with various colours against a wall, it leaves some spots upon it, which may appear like a landscape. It is true also, that a variety of compositions may be seen in such spots, according to the disposition of mind with which they are considered; such as heads of men, various animals, battles, rocky scenes, seas, clouds, woods, and the like. It may be compared to the sound of bells, which may seem to say whatever we choose to imagine. In the same manner also, those spots may furnish hints for compositions. —Rigaud translation of A Treatise on Painting

Italian original

disse il nostro Botticella […] solo gettare di una spugna piena di diversi colori in un muro, essa lascia in esso muro una macchia, dove si vede un bel paese. Egli è ben vero che in tale macchia si vedono varie invenzioni di ciò che l’uomo vuole cercare in quella, cioè teste d’uomini, diversi animali, battaglie, scogli, mari, nuvoli e boschi ed altre simili cose; e fa come il suono delle campane, nelle quali si può intendere quelle dire quel che a te pare. Ma ancora ch’esse macchie ti dieno invenzione, esse non t’insegnano finire nessun particolare. (Leonardo da Vinci “Il Trattato della Pittura”)

A basket full of phalluses (Greek vase painting)

While researching the Malleus Maleficarum I stumbled upon a particularly amusing passage in the most famous medieval treatise on witches. The passage is concerned with a nest of disembodied penises, taken from their owners by witches. The citation comes from from chapter VII and bears the title “How, as it were, they Deprive Man of his Virile Member”:

“And what then is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report?

For a certain man tells us that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said : You must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest.”—tr. Montague Summers[1][2]

While searching for an appropriate image to illustrate this fine passage, I hesitated to go for Louise Bourgeois’s Cumul I, or the the image on the cover of Medieval Obscenities (but I have previously[3] featured it so, no) and finally settled on “Nude woman holding a bird and uncovering a basket full of phalluses decorated with eyes”[4] (see above), taken from The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (New York: Harper & Row, 1985) by Eva Keuls.

There are more examples of phallic humor on vase-paintings from that book here [5].

The “nest of penises” will one day make its way in the chapter on disembodied genitalia in the book Metamorphic Genitalia and Fantastical Sexual Images. Until that day, enjoy it here.

P.S. If you are really interested in this kind of imagery, a must-read is The flying phallus and the laughing inquisitor: penis theft in the Malleus Maleficarum by American scholar Moira Smith.

“What You see Might Not Be Real,” by Chen Wenling

Designs from Méthode pour apprendre à dessiner les passions (1698) by Charles Le Brun

(left: „extrême désespoir “, and right: „colère mêlée de crainte “).

(left: „Eusserste Verzweifflung“, and right: „Zorn mit Forcht vermischt“).

Translation:

(left: „Extreme despair“, and right: „Anger mixed with fear“).

They were engraved by Bernard Picart and Étienne Picart

Frits Van den Berghe (1883-1939) - Vruchtbaarheid - in het Kunstmuseum aan Zee te Oostende, België [1]

See Belgian avant-garde

“A young boy is contemplating a violin that rests on a table in front of him”[1] (mirror image) [2] (correct) is the informal title given to the first card in the Thematic Apperception Test, a projective psychological test.

The drawing is a copy of a photograph of the young violinist Yehudi Menuhin by the New York photographer Samuel Lumiere.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec at the beach at Le Crotoy, Picardie in 1898[1][2] is a series of photos of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, photographed in 1898 at Le Crotoy by his friend, the gallery owner Maurice Joyant. They were later published as postcards.

The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Most of yesterday was spent on researching genre painting, and more specifically genre painting of the Low Countries. One of the big mysteries in art history is the painting The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Why would anyone paint a picture of peasants eating drab bread, porridge and soup, served in plates that are carried on a door off its hinges? Why would anyone want to depict this instance of ugliness?

In Brueghel’s time, the Roman Catholic Church was the most important patron of the arts. But starting with Bosch and Brueghel, genre paintings became a much more important genre in the Low Countries than it was in the rest of Europe. Many of these paintings are quite charming amusing (think Vermeer’s Milkmaid and The Smoker by Joos van Craesbeeck), not so this Peasant Wedding. Did Brueghel paint this work for himself? The peasants themselves could obviously not afford the painting. Was it commissioned by someone else? That’s the mystery.

Update: Brueghel the wedding crasher

I consulted the ultimate reference to Early Netherlandish painters, Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck and I found quite a telling passage on Brueghel. Possibly the painting was made as a commission.

“…He [ Pieter Brueghel the Elder ] did a great amount of work for a merchant by the name of Hans Franckert, a noble and worthy man who liked to chat with Breughel. He was with him every day. With this Franckert, Breughel often went on trips among the peasants, to their weddings and fairs. The two dressed like peasants, brought presents like the other guests, and acted as if they belonged to the families or acquaintances of the bride or of the groom. Here Breughel delighted in observing the manners of the peasants in eating, drinking, dancing, jumping, making love, and engaging in various drolleries, all of which he knew how to copy in color very comically and skillfully, and equally well with water-color and oils; for he was exceptionally skilled in both processes. He knew well the characteristics of the peasant men and women of the Kampine and elsewhere. He knew how to dress them naturally and how to portray their rural, uncouth bearing while dancing, walking, standing, or moving in different ways. He was astonishingly sure of his composition and drew most ably and beautifully with the pen. He made many little sketches from nature…” —Dutch and Flemish Painters, 1936.

Portrait de Jeune Fille[1] by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825)

Louis-Léopold Boilly’s Gabrielle Arnault as a Child[1] (c. 1815)

It reminds me of Portrait of a Little Girl[2] by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin