Pictor in fabula

We are to consider the places where we lay the scene of the picture, etc. This is what Monsieur de Chambray calls, to do this according to Decorum. See what he says of it, in his book of the Perfection of the Painting. ’Tis not sufficient that in a picture there be nothing found which is contrary to the place, where the action which is represented, passes ; but we ought besides, to mark out the place and make it known to the spectator by some particular address, that his mind may not be put to the pains of discovering it, as whether it be Italy, or Spain, or Greece, or France ; whether it be near the seashore, or the banks of some river, whether it be the Rhine, or the Loyre ; the Po, or the Tiber ; and so of other things, if they are essential to the history. Nealces, a man of wit and an ingenious Painter, as Pliny tells us, being to paint a naval fight betwixt the Egyptians and the Persians, and being willing to make it known that the battle was given upon the Nile, whose waters are of the same colour with the sea, drew an ass drinking on the banks of the river, and a crocodile endeavouring to surprise him.

Thus Nature, on this account, is so much inferior to Art, that those artists who propose to themselves only the imitation or likeness of such or such a particular person, without election of those ideas before-mentionned, have often been reproched for that omission. Demetrius was also blamed for drawing men like us, and was commonly called ἀνθρωπογράφος, that is, a painter of men. In our times, Michel Angelo da Caravaggio was esteemed too natural : he drew persons as they were ; and Bambocchio, and most of the duch painters, have drawn the worst likeness. Lysippus of old, upbraided the common sort of sculptours, for making men such as they ought to be : which is a precept of Aristotle, given as well to poets as to painters.

Now as this idea of perfection is of little use in the portaits, or the resemblances of particular persons, so neither is it in the caracters of Comedy and Tragedy, which are never to be made perfect, but always to be drawn whith some specks of frailty and deficience ; such as they have been described to us in history, if they where real characters ; or such as the poet began to shaw them, in their first appearance, if they were only fictitious, or imaginary. The perfection of such stage characters consists chiefly in their likeness to the deficient faulty Nature, which is their original ; only in such cases there will always be found a better likeness and a worse, and the better is constantly to be chosen ; I mean in tragedy, which represents the figures of the highest form among mankind : thus, in portraits, the painter will not take that side of the face which has some notorious blemish in it, but either draw it in profile, as Apelles did Antigonus, who had lost one of his eyes, or else shadow the more imperfect side ; for an ingenious flattery is to be allowed to the professors of both arts, so long as the likeness is not destroyed. It is true, that all manner of imperfection must not be taken away from the characters; and the reason is, that there may be left some grounds of pity for their misfortunes : we can never be grieved for their miseries who are thoroughly wicked, and have thereby justly called their calamities on themselves : such men are the natural objects of our hatred, not of our commiseration. If, on the other side, there characters where wholly perfect, such as, for exemple, the character of a saint or a martyr in a play, his or her misfortunes would produce impious thoughts in the beholders ; they would accuse the Heavens of injustice, and think of leaving a religion where piety was so ill requited. […] Sophocles has taken the just medium in his Œdipus : he is somewhat arrogant at his first entrance, and is too inquisitive through the whole tragedy ; yet these imperfections being balanced by great virtues, they hinder not our compassion for his miseries, neither can they destroy that horror which the nature of his crimes have excited in us. Such in painting the warts and moles which, adding likeness to the face, are not, therefore, to be omitted ; but these produce no loathing in us : but how far to proceed, and where to stop, is left to the judgement of the poet and the painter. In Comedy there is somewhat more of the worst likeness to be taken, because that is often to produce laughter, which is ocasioned by the sight of some deformity ; but for this I referr the reader to Aristotle.