Leonardo da Vinci

Of the greatest defect in painters. It is the greatest defect in painters to repeat the same movements and the same faces and draperies in a composition and to make most of the faces resemble their author. This has often surprised me, for there are some who have made selfportraits of all their figures, all with the manners and movements of him who painted them. And if he is lively in his speech and his gestures, his figures are equally lively ; and if the master is devout, the figures appear to be the same, with their necks bent ; and if the master does little, his figures seem to be portraits of laziness personified ; and if the master is poorly proportioned, the figures are of the same kind, and if he is mad, this is amply revealed in his pictures, which are deprived of all logic, the figures not attending to what they are doing, but looking here to the right, there to the left, as if they were dreaming. And thus, every characteristic of the painting corresponds to a characteristic of the painter himself.
Having repeatedly thought about the cause of this defect, it seems to me one must believe that the soul, which rules and governs the body, also forms our judgment, even before we have formed it ourselves ; * thus it is the soul that has shaped the whole figure of the man as it judges best, with the nose long, or short, or flat, and in the same way determined the height and general appearance ; and this judgment is so powerful it moves the arm of the painter and makes him copy himself, because it seems to the soul that this is the true way to paint a man, and that whoever does not do as it does, is mistaken. * And when it finds someone who resembles the body it has composed, it likes him and often falls in love with him ; and that is why many men fall in love with and marry women who resemble them and often the children born to them resemble their parents