Lumen Picturae: A Classical Drawing Manual

LumenPicturae is a pictorial guide to classicaldrawing as exemplified by the sublime work of the influential 17th centuryDutch engraver Frederick de Wit. Presenting a carefully curated set of imagesnever before seen outside of rare book archives, Lumen Picturaerenders de Wits’ incomparable figure drawings available to the public forthe first time. In the tradition of Harold Speed’s The Practice and Scienceof Drawing, Andrew Loomis’s Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth,Gottfried Bammes’ Der NackteMensch, and George Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life,the step-by-step visuals in Lumen Picturae arean indispensible handbook for visual artists both professional and amateur, andfor readers of any age or language who want to incorporate the incomparableinsight of classical Dutch figure studies into their drawing today. |

Thanks to its exquisite pictorial material, this book familiarizes the reader with the logic and golden rules of art. It enables an understanding, on the one hand, of the keys to appreciating the works of the great masters, and on the other, of how to apply these rules to the practice of one's own creative activities.

The work begins with a number of basic explanations on how to represent and interrelate the different parts of the human body. The introduction is followed by chapters on the various possibilities for representing male and female nudes, and mythological and biblical figures, dressed and contextualized. Finally it looks at quadruped animals and birds.