The text discusses how listeners should engage and position themselves for effective listening. Actions during listening should reflect respect, especially when listening to dignitaries, compared to listening to more trivial speakers. The text also describes physical postures and attitudes of attentive listeners and how these can be naturally depicted, emphasizing the relevance of classical principles in art.
Real Activities
While listening attentively, hands should not be engaged in tasks that require some attention because then one cannot listen attentively. This shows that images with modest actions given to hands and feet, and the management of the eyes will seem more focused to listen attentively. The actions during listening should be more or less respectful and modest, depending on the dignity of the speaker or the subject matter discussed. Greater attention and enthusiasm are required when a King, Prince, or Teacher is speaking in an assembly, compared to when listening to a quack or a poet making some remarks. All these matters should be observed generally and specifically.
Other listeners, wanting to view a distant subject, and sometimes entranced by a remarkable comment from the speaker, seem to listen as if from two sides at once. Such people have broken or mixed attention, which can be rendered quite naturally, when their face is turned towards the primary subject, yet their eyes peer elsewhere, and their head is turned, giving to both subjects.
Those who stand listening often have their arms crossed over their chest or their fist with the thumb on the belt, girdle, or resting on the hip. They may also place both hands on the buttocks, although that is more boorish than respectful. And just as good painting art always makes use of antiquity, the abundance of
Translation Notes
Quak-salver: Refers to a charlatan or mountebank who falsely claims to have health remedies.
"Aars": In a historic context, this term can translate to "buttocks" or "rear", often used in a more literal and less decorous way.