The
Balance of Painters of Roger de Piles
Some persons , curious to know the degree of merit of every painter of established reputation , have desired me to make a kind of balance , where I might set down , on one side , the painter ’ s name … and , on the other side , their proper weight of merit ; so as , by collecting all the parts , as they appear in each painter ’ s works , one might be able to judge how much the whole weighs .
- Roger de Piles
Artists and art lovers alike can be baffled , if not incensed , over judges ’ verdicts in art competitions . Without clearly defined criteria of evaluation , the results can appear as little more than whimsy on the part of jurors . Some traditionalists believe that only another highly skilled artist is competent to judge the quality of artworks , or that it ’ s all a matter of intuition , which only a few people possess . Given the mystique of the whole process , it piqued my interest to come upon The Balance of Painters by Roger de Piles ( 1635-1709 ), where he proposes a points system to measure the merits of paintings based on four ostensibly objective criteria that comprise the art of painting : COMPOSITION , DESIGN , COLOR , and EXPRESSION .
This Balance of Painters appears as a short addendum to his 493-page book , The Principles of Painting ( 1708 ), an extensive treatise on the theory and practical principles of classical representational painting in the Renaissance tradition . To each of the four components of painting de Piles assigns a scale of twenty points , with 20 standing for ( unattainable ) “ sovereign perfection .” A table at the end of the book lists 57 of “ the best known painters ,” ranking them for each of the above criteria . The artists on the list all come from the late 15th through the mid-17th centuries . Included are many famous names , along with quite a few who are scarcely remembered today . ( Who ’ s ever heard of Otto van Veen or Frans Pourbus
Page from the original the Younger ?) The highest score out of a possible 80 is 65 , attained 1708 table of The Balance of Painters with scores for : only by and Peter Paul Rubens . The lowest score of 23 belonged to one Gianfrancesco Penni , with zeros for both COMPOSITION
Poussin and EXPRESSION ( nobody hears of him anymore , either ). The average score on the list is 42 . Only 11 artists scored 50 or more .
Primaticcio Raphael Rembrandt Rubens Francesco Salviati Eustache Le Sueur
David Teniers the Younger
Pietro Testa Tintoretto Titian Otto van Veen Van Dyck
The 20-point scale permits a considerable degree of nuance but how objective or useful is it ? A 2012 paper entitled “ The Extraordinary Art Critic Roger de Piles ,”* compares the numbers for the artists in the Balance with their art market values from 1740- 2010 by means of statistical analysis , leading to the conclusion that the de Piles numerical ratings have held up quite well in terms of sales records , compared with the ratings of other critics . But the Balance was not created with commerce in mind ; it is a measure of intrinsic artistic quality . An interesting question arises : would we , by comparing those ratings of the four essential parts of painting with examples of some of the artists ’ works , be able to come to the same conclusions ?
Though his Lives of the Painters ( 1699 ) contains “ Reflections on the Works of the Most Celebrated Painters ,” the comments are
42 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE