“Your life should always be arranged just as if you were studying theology, or philosophy, or other theories, that is to say, eating and drinking moderately, at least twice a day, electing digestible and wholesome dishes, and light wines; saving and sparing your hand, preserving it from such strains as heaving stones, crowbar, and many other things which are bad for your hand, from giving them a chance to weary it….Then always go out alone, or in such company as will be inclined to do as you do, and not apt to disturb you.”
-Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’arte, c. 1400
“We see and interpret our modern world, including the world of art, with the same old Pleistocene sensory system and brain whose primordial functions included seeing moving prey, avoiding branches, keeping warm and dry, finding and eating food, understanding spatial relations, procreating and loving children, making tools, surviving, and generally eating a few sweet berries in the brief interval between birth and death.”
-Robert Solso, “Cognition and the Visual Arts”
Here’s to the sweet berries.
16th century stylin’
Portrait of Queen Anna of Hungary and Bohemia, 1519
Hans Maler
oil on oak panel
“I tell you, sir, it’s the end of the world. There have never before been such excesses from the students. It’s these damned modern inventions that are ruining everything,…and most of all the printing press, that plague out of Germany. There’ll be no more manuscripts, no more books! Printing is killing the booktrade. The end of the world is coming.”
-Andry le Musnier (from Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
