Learning

[Frederic Leighton]

There is no easy method of learning difficult things. The method is to close the door, give out that you are not at home, and work.

..with some photos of private study rooms.

[Tutumulut]

Dear Frederic

Thank you very much for sharing. What an inspiration to build a proper study. And if a study is a mirror of the soul (is it?), how revealing, uplifting but sometimes also depressing these insights are.

T

[Frederic Leighton]

The subject concerning which you question me was once clear to my mind, and required no thought, so thoroughly had I mastered it. But I have not tested my memory of it for some time, and therefore it does not readily come back to me. I feel that I have suffered the fate of a book whose rolls have stuck together by disuse; my mind needs to be unrolled, and whatever has been stored away there ought to be examined from time to time, so that it may be ready for use when occasion demands.

Let us therefore put this subject off for the present; for it demands much labour and much care. As soon as I can hope to stay for any length of time in the same place, I shall then take your question in hand. For there are certain subjects about which you can write even while travelling in a gig, and there are also subjects which need a study-chair, and quiet, and seclusion (*).

Nevertheless I ought to accomplish something even on days like these, – days which are fully employed, and indeed from morning till night. For there is never a moment when fresh employments will not come along; we sow them, and for this reason several spring up from one. Then, too, we keep adjourning our own cases by saying: "As soon as I am done with this, I shall settle down to hard work," or: "If I ever set this troublesome matter in order, I shall devote myself to study."

Below: the Urbino studiolo. Four metres? That's plenty.

Made in 1476 for Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino [..], this room, less than 4 metres square, was the most private and luxurious in the huge palace of this most famous of all Condottieri, twice Papal general or Gonfaloniere, who defeated his long-time rival Malatesta in 1462 and was the hidden force behind the 1478 anti-Medici Pazzi Conspiracy. (source).





(*) lectum et otium et secretum.

[Luca]

There is a similar, very nice one in the palace in Perugia.