h best expresses the passion of its mind.

73.

The good painter has two principal things to depict: man and the
purpose of his mind. The first is easy, the second is difficult, since
he must do it by the gestures and movements of the limbs, and this is
to be learnt from the dumb, who more than all other men excel in it.

[Sidenote: The Dumb Man guides the Painter]

74.

The figures of men have gestures which correspond to what they are
doing, so that in seeing them you understand what they are thinking of
and saying; and these will be learned well by him who will copy the
gestures of the dumb, for they speak by the gestures of their hands,
their eyes, their brows and their whole person, when they wish to
express the purpose of their mind. And do not mock me because I
suggest a dumb teacher for the teaching of an art of which he is
himself ignorant, because he will teach you better by his gestures than
all the others with their words. And despise not such advice because
they are the masters of gesture, and understand at a {118} distance
what a man is talking of if he suits the actions of the hands to the
words.

[Sidenote: Advice to the Painter]

75.

It is a great fault in painters to repeat the same movements, the same
faces and manners of stuffs in one subject, and to let the greater part
of his faces resemble their creator; and this has often been a source
of wonder to me, for I have known some who in all their figures seem to
have depicted themselves. And in the figures the actions and ways of
the painter were visible. And if they are prompt in action and in
their ways the figures are likewise prompt; and if the painter is
pious, the figures with their twisted necks appear pious likewise, and
if the painter is lazy the figures seem like laziness personified, and
if the painter is deformed so are his figures, and if he is mad it is
amply visible in figures of his subjects, which are devoid of intention
and appear to be heedless of their action, some looking in one
direction, some in another, as though they were dreaming; and therefore
every manifestation in the picture corresponds to a peculiarity in the
painter. And as I have often thought over the cause of this fault, it
seems to me that we must conclude that the spirit which directs and
governs everybody is that which forms our intellect, or rather, it is
our intellect itself. It has {119} devised the whole figure of man
according as it ha