The Learned Eye

‘In painting one has to have learned eyes.’ 

 This is one of the

 Paradoxa

formulated by Cicero,

1

a phrase that was taken up eagerly by authors writing on painting in theItalian Renaissance, looking for classical authorities to quote from.

2

It was alsorephrased by Dutch theorists of the seventeenth century and adapted to the art of their time. Franciscus Junius, in the Dutch edition of his

The painting of the ancients,

talks about the necessity of

‘een Konst-gheleerd oogh’ 

– ‘a learned eye’.