Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In zoology, the pattern of coloration; the mode or style of coloring of an animal. Pictura differs from
coloration in noting the disposition and effect of coloring, not the color itself. - noun The art of painting; style of painting.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) Pattern of coloration.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun zoology A
pattern ofcoloration .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The tradition of ut pictura poesis, described in Horace's Art of Poetry, and Aristotle's mimesis historia, the imitation of human events discussed in Poetics, is embedded in Alberti's articulation of istoria.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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In the second book of De pictura, Alberti forms an analogy between painting and writing, comparing design with plot and colors with characters.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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The orthography of the quattrocento musical score is akin to the reticulation of the velo, in which a view (prospettiva) was subdivided into quadrants of information that could more easily be translocated by an artisan from a sketch to a finished work, as Alberti recommends in De pictura.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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As such, the pictura offered apertures for entry into thought.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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Note 312: In De pictura, Alberti stresses the influence of paintings on human memory: Through painting, the faces of the dead go on living for a very long time.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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Note 17: In a fall 2000 lecture at New York University, Lina Bolzoni used this phrase in discussing the tradition of ut pictura poesis.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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Note 13: In the first passage of De pictura, Alberti borrows a Ciceronian proverb (from De amicitia 5.16) concerning the "coarse senses of Minerva" to distinguish the sensate knowledge of a painter from a mathematician's abstract mensurations (see Kemp, "Introduction," 12).
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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The historical interdependence of linguistic and visual figures, articulated in Horace's Art of Poetry, thrives in Alberti's definition of istoria in De pictura and in Castiglione's self-deprecating description of the Book of the Courtier as a "picture" by a "humble painter" (from the dedicatory letter to Lord Dom Miguel de Silva, bishop of Viseu).
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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In De pictura, Alberti is as concerned with what should be depicted in a work, its subject or historia, as with its instrumental execution.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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It is cited frequently in Alberti's De pictura and would be translated into Italian by Alberti's protégé, Cristofero Landino (see Grayson's translation of De pictura, 98n12).
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
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