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How the ages of man should be depicted: that is, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, decrepitude. How old men should be depicted with lazy and slow movements, their legs bent at the knees when they stand still, and their feet placed parallel and apart, their backs bent, their heads leaning forward and their arms only slightly extended. How women should be represented in modest attitudes, their legs close together, their arms folded together, their heads bent and inclined to one side. How old women should be represented with eager, vehement and angry gestures, like the furies of Hades; the movement of the arms and the head should be more violent than that of the legs. Little children with ready and twisted movements when sitting, and when standing up in shy and timid attitudes.

How the ages of man should be depicted: that is, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, decrepitude. How old men should be depicted with lazy and slow movements, their legs bent at the knees when they stand still, and their feet placed parallel and apart, their backs bent, their heads leaning forward and their arms only slightly extended. How women should be represented in modest attitudes, their legs close together, their arms folded together, their heads bent and inclined to one side. How old women should be represented with eager, vehement and angry gestures, like the furies of Hades; the movement of the arms and the head should be more violent than that of the legs. Little children with ready and twisted movements when sitting, and when standing up in shy and timid attitudes.

Approximate author period: c. 1486 AD · medieval

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Leonardo da Vinci
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1486 AD · medieval
author lifetime midpoint (1452–1519); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Thoughts on Art and Life (1906 English edition) (1906 AD)

Thoughts on Art, complete printed unit 89; Maurice Baring translation; Boston: The Merrymount Press,1906

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Leonardo da Vinci: Drawn portrait

Represented by the complete source-numbered selections in Thoughts on Art and Life, Maurice Baring’s1906English translation, edited by Lewis Einstein. The catalogue records1452–1519; the historical collection is a selection from notebooks, not a continuous book composed by Leonardo or independent authentication of every attributed passage.

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