The artist, the shoemaker, and the sandal

[Joel S. Berson]

For the forthcoming Yale Book of Proverbs?

"A shoemaker in his criticism must not go beyond the sandal."

Or is this just a variant (or vice versa) of "the cobbler should
stick to his last"?

 From another list (probable typos corrected):
>Ne sutor ultra crepidam--Apelles and the cobbler, as told by Pliny
>(Natural History, Bk 35, 84-85):
>
>"Another habit of his [Apelles, the great Greek artist] was when he
>had finished his works to place them in a gallery in the view of
>passers by, and he himself stood out of sight behind the picture and
>listened ot [to] hear what faults were noticed, rating the public as
>a more observant critic than himself. And it is said that he was
>found fault with by a shoemaker because in drawing a subject's
>sandals he had represented the loops in them as one too few, and the
>next day the same critic was so proud of the artist's correcting the
>fault indicated by his previous objection that he found fault with
>the leg, but Apelles indignantly looked out from behind the picture
>and rebuked him, saying that a shoemaker in his criticism must not
>go beyond the sandal--a remarked [remark] that has also passed into a proverb."

14 Google Books hits.

Joel

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