The text discusses the importance of studying anatomy and the function of muscles for artists, in order to accurately depict life rather than rigid or lifeless figures. It mentions the limitations of learning solely from statues, which lack dynamic expression, and emphasizes the need for artists to study the living form to understand movement and expression. The discussion highlights the complexity and variety of muscle forms that cannot be captured through static sculptural representations.
Utility of Human Studies.
If life brought him there, he would just see through a foreign lens: he would not understand the most important things in life before he thoroughly understood anatomy, and the function of every sensory muscle in any action.
A painter of our time used to say that they gazed too much and too boldly at statues; often adopting stiff propriety and sluggish motion in their figures, resembling the stones themselves. I would rather, he said, see the seizing of the statues showing rigidity than have my eyes bewitched with such lifeless figures. Surely a painter who does nothing but follow the contours of beautiful limbs and statues' muscles in his drawing and form, will find himself very embarrassed when he must depict something truly demonstrating the required expression, and no other. Indeed, he will find himself deficient in human studies, if he only draws academic figures, unable to observe how the muscles portray life through practice, and parties (groups), working with his model, performing over in agreement.
Since muscles can have infinitely different shapes due to countless actions; those cannot be learned from statues or ornamental images.
Translation Notes:
- "Menschkunde" is translated as "human studies."
- "Partyen" likely refers to "groups" or "sections."