Nor is the painter praiseworthy who does but one thing well, as the nude figure, heads, draperies, animals, landscapes or other such details, irrespective of other work; for there can be no mind so inept, that after devoting itself to one single thing and doing it constantly, it should fail to do it well.
[Footnote: In MANZI’S edition (p. 502) the painter G. G. Bossi indignantly remarks on this passage. “Parla il Vince in questo luogo come se tutti gli artisti avessero quella sublimita d’ingegno capace di abbracciare tutte le cose, di cui era egli dotato” And he then mentions the case of CLAUDE LORRAIN. But he overlooks the fact that in Leonardo’s time landscape painting made no pretensions to independence but was reckoned among the details (particulari, lines 3, 4).]
Taken from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.