dublinka

I've been the reading the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci on and off for a while now. Among an array of books in his possession around 1498, were Sonnets by Burchiello,the Quadriregio (a religious scientific poem by the Dominican, Federigo Frezzi, Petrarch and the Acerba of Cecco d'Ascoli (an encyclopedia in verse).

Leonardo rated poetry highly, but not it seems as high as painting:

"Suppose the poet is set against the painter to represent beauty, terror or a base, ugly monstrous thing, whatever the forms he may in his way produce, the painter will satisfy the more."

"Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions his creations do not give so great a satisfaction to men as painting do; for though poetry attempts to describe forms, actions, and places in words, the painter employs the actual similitude of the forms, in order to reproduce them"

Humorously, in the particular notes from which these quotes are extracted (A comparison of the arts) Leonardo labours the point so much, that he leaves the lasting sense that he has just been mugged in a pub debate over which of the two art forms are superior.