Leonardo da Vinci Read online

  8. Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci

  c. 1478, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art

  9. Studies of a Woman’s Hands

  c. 1478, Windsor, Royal Library, 12558

  The identity of the sitter as Ginevra de’ Benci (1457–1520) is confirmed by the presence of the spiky juniper (ginepro, in Italian) that frames her head. Portraits of women often celebrated notable events in their lives. One possibility in regard to this portrait is Ginevra’s marriage with a substantial dowry to Luigi Niccolini in 1474 at the age of seventeen.

  Ginevra was praised as a writer of poems (none survive) and belonged to a circle of cultivated Florentine women in the courtly circle of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who composed two sonnets in her honor. A series of poems from various authors was commissioned as a celebration of the courtly love directed toward her by Bernardo Bembo, the Venetian “ambassador” in Florence, probably around 1478. Bembo may well have commissioned the portrait, since the wreath of palm and laurel painted on the reverse, with a sprig of juniper and the motto virtutem forma decorat (beauty adorns virtue), is adapted from Bembo’s personal emblem. The flowery verses celebrate such delights as Ginevra’s neck, which surpasses “white snow,” and her “beautiful lips,” which eclipse “red flowers in the spring that glow like fire.” This is to say nothing of her “snow-white brow” and her “teeth like ivory.”

  There is nothing tentative about Leonardo’s first known foray into portraiture. The assertive directness of the sitter, daughter of the banker Amerigo de’ Benci, would be unusual in the portrait of a man and is exceptional, even shocking, in the image of a woman. In polite society, a well-bred young lady was not expected to offer sustained eye contact to men. The norm for Florentine portraits of women was to show them in reticent profile. Ginevra must have been complicit in this directness and it speaks of her self-aware presence in Medicean Florence.

  We know from the severing of the emblem on the reverse that the panel has been cut down, and it is likely that the sitter’s hands were included. The original format would be close to the marble half-length portrait of a Lady with the Primroses (1475–80) by Verrocchio, in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. Leonardo seems to be saying that painting can achieve visual effects far beyond those seen in the hard and monochrome stone. He delights in the textural and coloristic contrasts between the dark sharpness of the juniper and the young woman’s gleaming hair, the scintillating vortices of her curls, the soft opacity of her shawl, and her subtly diaphanous undershirt, drawn tightly across her “snowy” bosom by a tiny button.

  The retreating landscape, a feature derived from Netherlandish portraits, is no less remarkable. Painted so richly in oil that its surface has puckered, it is suffused with atmospheric elusiveness, drifting distantly into a blue haze through which we can discern two towers. It recalls the flickering suggestiveness of the “Val d’Arno” drawing (see page 4).

  Technical examination has revealed that Leonardo repeatedly pressed the edge of his hand into the drying paint, most notably in the flesh tones, to achieve the blending of transitions between light and shade. This was a signal feature of his technique before 1500. We also know that he laid in the juniper with dark-toned smears of paint, applied with surprising vigor.

  The wonderfully observed drawing Studies of a Woman’s Hands (opposite) at Windsor is very likely to have been made for the Ginevra portrait. It is executed with great virtuosity in the traditional Florentine medium of silverpoint on prepared and tinted paper with white heightening. The main modeling is hatched by Leonardo’s left hand in delicate parallel lines, while the less focused elements are laid in with a freedom that is unusual in silverpoint. The bony structure of the hand is firmly described without compromising the elegance that would be required.

  The end result in the portrait, even if all the effects are not wholly resolved, is startling in its originality, and not a little unsettling in the unabashed ambition shared by the artist and sitter to achieve something new.

  Studies of a Woman’s Hands, c. 1478

  10. Madonna and Child with a Flower (the “Benois Madonna”)

  c. 1478–80, St. Petersburg, Hermitage

  This amused Virgin belongs to a world that is quite distinct from that of the Madonna in Munich (see page 14). Mother and child are now integrated rhythmically in a lively exchange of actions, which involves the drapery no less than the poses of the figures. The Virgin’s garments simultaneously encircle her limbs and have an ancillary life of their own.

  The colors are attuned in such a way that they do not disrupt the basic scheme of light and shade that defines the structure of her pose. The light falling from the upper left has a different source—perhaps divine—from the natural light that slants through the window. It may be that the window once opened on to a landscape. Again Leonardo is attracted to the shiny gleam and diffused radiance in a glass or crystal jewel at the neckline of the Virgin’s dress.

  The emotional interplay is also harmonized to a much greater degree than in the Munich painting. The two hands of Christ and the right hand of his mother, clasping the stem of two delicate four-petaled flowers between her finger and thumb, form a little arabesque of fingers. The Virgin’s glance and delightful smile are set off by the child’s eyes, downturned to contemplate the little white blossoms from close range, as infants do.

  In addition to the flowers, the Virgin holds a sprig of leaves behind the child’s back, having apparently extracted the flowering stem from the bunch. Identifying the flower is not easy. White flowers with five petals are more common than those with four. What cannot be in much doubt is the symbolic reference. The four petals, arranged in a cross, prefigure Jesus’s sacrifice. His mother’s reaction is apparently unclouded by any premonition, but her son’s sober attempt to grasp one of the blooms may well signify his precocious acceptance of his fate.

  The name “Benois” refers to the architect Leon Benois (1856–1928) from the noted Russian family, who owned the painting before it was donated to the Hermitage.

  “The emotional interplay is also harmonized to a much greater degree than in the Munich painting. The two hands of Christ and the right hand of his mother, clasping the stem of two delicate four-petaled flowers between her finger and thumb, form a little arabesque of fingers.”

  11. Studies for a Madonna and Child with a Cat, recto and verso

  c. 1478–80, London, British Museum

  This small sheet of studies—5.2 × 3.8 inches (132 × 96.5 mm) in its trimmed state—is one of the most significant drawings in the history of art, although Leonardo’s project for a painting of the Mother and Child with a cat never seems to have been realized (see also page 25). It signals a new way of designing compositions. Artists had made free and sketchy drawings before, but no one had overlaid multiple alternatives in a single drawing. This not only is a way of brainstorming interlocked poses but also allows new arrangements to emerge by chance from the maelstrom of lines, using a form of imaginative projection.

  In a paragraph drafted for his proposed Treatise on Painting, Leonardo asked:

  Have you ever reflected on the poets who in composing their verses . . . think nothing of erasing some of the verses in order to improve upon them? Therefore, painter, decide broadly upon the positions of the limbs of your figures and attend first to the mental attitudes of the living beings in the narrative rather than to the beauty and quality of the limbs. . . . I have in the past seen in clouds and on walls stains that have inspired me to beautiful inventions in many things.

  On one side of the sheet, within an arch-topped frame, he impetuously used a pen and a blank stylus with a sharp point to dash down the main outlines of the three participants, with particularly dynamic alternatives for the Virgin’s legs. The cat is portrayed with notable vigor, writhing in the child’s overeager embrace, tail thrashing, as cats are wont to do.

  Clarification was needed. Leonardo transferred the designs to the rear of the sheet (using a stylus or holding it
up to the light?) and resumed brainstorming. The Virgin’s head was inclined to the right, away from the mini-drama, and the frame was repositioned. The cat became less agitated. Appearing more or less content, Leonardo used a dark wash applied with a brush to pull forms out of the scribbling. The “Benois Madonna” (see page 20) is closely related to this campaign of drawings for the standard subject that he has so dramatically reformed.

  12. Studies for a Child with a Cat

  c. 1478–80, London, British Museum

  Obviously related to his project (probably unrealized) for a small painting of the Madonna and Child and a cat, this series of studies shows how Leonardo’s creative imagination could be captured by a particular motif, expanding beyond the functional demands of the envisaged picture. The relationship of the child and the cat has assumed a high degree of independence from the Virgin. It is difficult to see, for example, how the central motif of the stroked cat could be fitted into the planned composition. We may also doubt whether a cat in obvious discomfort would have worked within the framework of a devotional image.

  In the upper and central studies, the cat is having a nice time, submitting to the child’s hug—at least for the moment—and clearly enjoying a gentle stroke, with arched back and raised paw. In the studies below, the cat is progressively turned over, which is bound to result in the kind of struggling that we witness, miraculously described with a few scratchy strokes of the pen, after some light sketching with a leadpoint and blank stylus.

  The more-or-less illegible smudges on the upper and middle right have resulted from the seepage of ink from the other side of the sheet, on which the studies are the other way up. The scribble beside the stroked cat is caused by a dense tangle of undecipherable motions as the cat reacts with furious agitation to the unwanted attention.

  It cannot be doubted that the entertaining studies result from intensely careful and sympathetic observation of how infants and cats interact. It is unlikely that such transitory motions are drawn from life, but they are certainly based on vivid memories of seen interactions.

  Why should a cat have been introduced at all in a Madonna painting? There was a legend that a cat gave birth in the manger at the very moment when the baby Christ emerged into the world.

  “This series of studies shows how Leonardo’s creative imagination could be captured by a particular motif, expanding beyond the functional demands of the envisaged picture.”

  13. Adoration of the Kings (or Magi)

  c. 1481–82, Florence, Uffizi

  14. Perspective Study for the Adoration of the Kings

  c. 1481–82, Florence, Uffizi

  The Adoration of the Kings was not Leonardo’s first large-scale commission. In 1478, he was asked to paint the altarpiece for the Chapel of San Bernardo in the government palace in Florence, but he does not seem to have made substantial progress on what was a prestigious contract.

  The large square altarpiece of the Adoration was assigned to Leonardo in March 1481. It was a strange commission. Simone, father of Brother Francesco—an Augustinian monk in the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, outside the city walls to the south—had bequeathed a property to the monks. A third of this was to be granted to Leonardo as a “fee” for painting the altarpiece. The painter, having received his share of the property, was then obliged to deposit a sum in the dowry bank for the daughter of a certain Salvestro, which he failed to do.

  The unfinished painting, on a crude assembly of ten narrow planks, is one of the great feats of imagination in Western art. The tranquil Virgin and her calm child are surrounded by a cacophony of awed figures, who sense the momentous birth of the new world order from the visible ruins of the old. The kings kneel and stoop at the Virgin’s feet with intense reverence, the one to the right receiving Christ’s blessing as he presents a fine chalice.

  The other figures within the curved throng, with the strange exception of a slumbering Joseph (directly below the horse’s head at left), react with vividly varied emotions: amazement, awe, bewilderment, fear, reassurance, and piety. On either side stand two intermediaries: to the left, a contemplative elder meditates on the mystery, and the young man on the right turns to a realm beyond the pictorial field.

  The background is no less tumultuous. A once magnificent structure of piers, arches, vaults, and stairs has largely collapsed. It provides a stage set for female figures (sibyls?), men, and lively horses, while at the top of the steps two or more men seem to be involved with some initial rebuilding. To the right, two warriors on rearing horses fight with unbridled ferocity. Above them, in a lower level of paint, is the surprising outline of a distant elephant.

  The emotional tenor is very different from the tradition of Adorations in Florence. The change does not involve the large press of figures who accompany the Magi or the ruined pagan architecture. Florentine paintings of the subject had become very densely populated in a processional manner. Leonardo’s break is to portray the arrival of the Redeemer as something beyond our comprehension.

  All this emerges from a painting that not only is unfinished but is in a chaotic state of varied levels of definition. On the panel primed with gesso, Leonardo laid in the scaffolding of his composition and drew the first outlines of the active figures and animals. One or more layers of underpainting were to follow across the picture. Sections that were to be predominantly dark were painted in very deep brown, from which figures emerge as ghosts. The Virgin and Child with their three kings were exempted from the dark underpaint. The shadows of their garments are signaled in pale blue-green and they await bright glazes of color, probably using organic dyes. There remain areas of startling lack of resolution. It is difficult to see how the mélange of gesturing hands and urgent faces could all be endowed with convincing bodies, particularly on the right.

  The stage on which this chaos unfolds was constructed with cool calculation. A drawing in the Uffizi, opposite, elaborately constructed with a straightedge and compass using a blank stylus, metalpoint, charcoal, pen and ink, dilute ink wash, and traces of white, constructs the perspective of a tiled pavement with minutely designed precision to regulate the geometrical space occupied by the desperate participants. One of the foreground tiles is marked with ten tiny horizontal subdivisions. Nowhere in Leonardo’s drawings do we see a more vivid demonstration of the way that his vision merges scienza and fantasia in the remaking of nature in his works of art.

  Perspective Study for Adoration of the Kings, c. 1481–82.

  “Nowhere in Leonardo’s drawings do we see a more vivid demonstration of the way that his vision merges scienza and fantasia in the remaking of nature in his works of art.”

  15. St. Jerome

  c. 1481–82, Rome, Vatican

  Another unfinished painting, this one very much aligns with the Adoration (see page 26)in its level of finish, style, and intensity of expression. It was presumably abandoned at the same time Leonardo left for Milan in c. 1482.

  A long list of works (mainly drawings) that Leonardo jotted down on a sheet of paper dating from shortly after his arrival included “certain St. Jeromes,” in addition to “many throats of old women, many heads of old men, many complete nude figures, many arms, legs, feet and poses . . .” These studies are entirely in keeping with the emphasis placed upon anatomical painting in Florence. St. Jerome was a popular Florentine subject and provided ample opportunity for the demonstration of a painter’s command of the human body as a vehicle for spiritual expression.

  The saint is portrayed in a barren, rocky landscape of unrelieved harshness, where he lived for four penitential years. As recounted in legends of his life, he is about to strike his breast with a stone in extreme remorse for his previous allegiance to pagan culture and his sexual desires. The subject of his agonized stare is a vision of the crucified Christ, barely visible at the right edge of the panel. He is accompanied by the lion that continued to reside with him after he had removed a thorn from its foot. Jerome’s companion echoes the level of fierce resolution that
drives the saint’s spiritual valor—rather like the roaring lion in the drawing of a Helmeted Warrior (see page 12).

  In the unpainted section to the right of the saint’s head, Leonardo has sketched the outlines of a church. It is unclear if he intended this to become visible in the distance under the overhanging rock formation, or if it was an unrelated sketch, like the unexpected asides that appear in his notebooks.

  That the panel survives at all is a miracle. At one point it was cut into five sections in such a way that the head and neck of the saint comprised a separate picture. The fragments were reunited in the nineteenth century.

  16. Studies of a Mechanism for Repelling Scaling Ladders

  c. 1475–80, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codice atlantico, 139r

  After Leonardo arrived in Milan, probably in 1492, he boasted in a letter of introduction to Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508) that he had devised an extensive range of “instruments for war . . . beyond the common usage,” and many civil designs for use “in time of peace.” He laid out his inventions under ten headings, ranging from “easily portable bridges” to “boats that will resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon.” Only at the end of the letter did he mention that he was able to produce paintings and sculpture as well as anyone.