Leonardo da Vinci

by Martin Kemp

  25. Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (or Lady with an Ermine)

  c. 1491, Kraków, Czartoryski Collection

  26. Emblematic Drawing of an Ermine and a Hunter

  c. 1490, Cambridge, UK, Fitzwilliam Museum

  The identity of the sitter is in little doubt. She is Cecilia Gallerani (1473–1536), a Milanese courtier of recognized accomplishments who became the mistress of Ludovico Sforza during her teenage years, giving birth to a son in 1491, the year in which the duke married Beatrice d’Este from Ferrara. Cecilia was married to Count Ludovico Carminati the following year at the age of nineteen. The portrait is likely to have been a gift from the duke at the time of her betrothal or marriage.

  The painting was the subject of a laudatory sonnet by poet Bernardo Bellincioni (1452–92), Leonardo’s Tuscan colleague at the Sforza court. Bellincioni’s ingenious poem asks why Nature is envious of Leonardo’s achievements. The poet reminds Nature that “the honor is yours” because the enduring portrait “allows you to partake in posterity.” The poet instructs us that we should give thanks to both Leonardo and the duke (who is the unseen recipient of Cecilia’s modest smile). “She seems to listen and not to tell,” as Bellincioni says. He concludes that “everyone who sees her thus, even later seeing her alive, will say, that this is enough for us to understand what is nature and what is art.” The narrative triangulation between the implied duke, the refined sitter, and the person in front of the picture (Bellincioni, Leonardo, or ourselves) is entirely novel in a Renaissance portrait.

  In 1498, Beatrice’s sister, Isabella d’Este of Mantua, wrote to Cecilia asking to borrow the portrait to compare it with ones by Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516), the Venetian master. Cecilia reluctantly acceded, noting that the portrait no longer resembled her since she had changed in appearance since it was painted. Two years later, with the fall of the duke’s regime, Leonardo was welcomed by Isabella at the Mantuan court.

  The portrait probably remained in the sitter’s family until it was acquired in Italy around 1800 by the Polish prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, who gave it to his mother, the great collector Izabela. It was around this time that the misleading inscription “La Belle Ferronière / Leonardo D’Awinci” was added at the upper left. It is Poland’s most famous painting.

  “The lady and the animal share their mellifluous poise and svelte elegance—underscored by the silvery play of direct and reflected light on white fur and pale skin.”

  The animal cradled in cecilia’s arms has been the subject of much contention. It has been claimed that it is too big to be an ermine. If we strictly applied this criterion of size, most infant Jesuses would not be of human origin. It may be that the ermine was originally smaller and was enlarged for the sake of pictorial and symbolic effect. According to the legends of the medieval Bestiary, the ermine represents moderation, since it eats only once a day, and also signifies purity because it “would rather die than soil itself,” as Leonardo wrote in one of a series of notes on the symbolic meaning of animals. In his little emblematic pen sketch of the ermine, opposite, he shows the animal surrendering to an aggressive hunter rather than crossing a muddy morass below the rocky ledge on which it stands. Again, the animal is oversized to underline its allegorical meaning.

  Leonardo’s beautifully painted ermine embodies the sacrificial fastidiousness for which it was famed. The lady and the animal share their mellifluous poise and svelte elegance—underscored by the silvery play of direct and reflected light on white fur and pale skin. It so happens that Ludovico Sforza was a member of the Order of the Ermine, and that the Greek for ermine, galée, puns on Cecilia’s surname. Renaissance culture much enjoyed such multiple allusions.

  The refinement of expression, pose, lighting, color, texture, and costume was hard won. Technical examination has revealed many adjustments after the design was transferred from the cartoon and during the course of the actual painting. The costume, with its elegant interlace patterns and the knotted ribbons that hold the sections of the lady’s sleeves in place, was subject to particularly radical changes. We also know that Leonardo’s handprint technique was used on the heads of the lady and the ermine.

  Emblematic Drawing of an Ermine and a Hunter, c. 1490.

  27. Knot Design for Leonardo’s “Academy”

  c. 1495, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art

  Leonardo enthusiastically took up the challenge of designing elaborate interlaces and knots of the kind that were popular in North Italian courts, particularly in women’s costumes. Intricate interlaces feature in Leonardo’s Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (see page 48). The interlace pattern was appropriated as a personal motif by Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua. In 1493, her sister, Beatrice, who had married Ludovico Sforza, deemed it prudent to write from Milan to seek permission to use it on her own behalf.

  This is one of six knots that were reproduced as engravings, each accompanied by variants of the motto or caption ACADEMIA LEONARDI VINCI. There was a cultural “academy” in Milan that met in the Milanese palace of the courtier Henrico Boscano. Members included the poets Gaspare Visconti and Bernardo Bellincioni, as well as the artists Leonardo and Donato Bramante, together with eight musicians and a number of philosophers. Leonardo’s formal knot designs may signal his intention to promote his own courtly “academy.” He may also have been exploiting a pun on his own name, in which Vinci loosely puns with vincolo, a binding, both of a physical kind as in the weaving of baskets, and metaphorically as in the bonds of friendship. The design “patented” by Isabella was known as the fantasia dei vinci.

  The rhythmic geometry of knots fascinated Leonardo as a kind of visual music, and he worked patiently on many variations of curvilinear and rectilinear motifs in his notebooks, always ensuring that the threads obeyed a regular under-and-over rule. It is often assumed that all the knots are composed from a single thread. This is not the case with the most elaborate examples. The knot illustrated here comprises six discrete components locked together in a symmetrical array.

  The origin of the engravings is not known, but it is likely that they were made under Leonardo’s supervision, as testaments to his skill and intellectual ambitions. They were reproduced influentially in woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), but without the captions.

  28. Portrait of Bianca Sforza (“La Bella Principessa”)

  1494, Private Collection

  Sold at Christie’s in 1998 as an imitation of a Renaissance work by a German nineteenth-century artist, this portrait has been controversially attributed to Leonardo. Scientific examinations, above all the identification of the white lead pigment as older than 225 years, have disproved claims that it was created in the nineteenth century or is a modern forgery.

  Drawn on vellum (parchment) in ink and colored chalks, the portrait has been quite extensively restored. The technique is unusual, and Leonardo noted that he intended to consult Jean Perréal (c. 1460–1530), artist to the French king, about how to use “dry colors” on vellum. The portrait’s origins lie in a book printed on parchment in honor of the wedding in 1494 of Bianca Sforza, Ludovico Sforza’s illegitimate daughter, and Galeazzo Sanseverino, commander of the duke’s army. The book, now in the National Library of Poland in Warsaw, recounts the life of Francesco Sforza, Ludovico’s father. It contains an illuminated frontispiece alluding to the union of Bianca and Galeazzo, who are accompanied by rabbits that signal the bride’s anticipated fertility. We can see where the portrait was excised from the book, to be transformed into an autonomous work of art, probably at the request of Izabela Czartoryska, Polish owner of the Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (see page 48).

  Bianca is portrayed in profile, as was the norm for aristocratic women in the North Italian courts, and her hair is dressed in what was the standard fashion in Milan: an elaborately bound coazzone (pigtail) emerging from a knotted trenzato (net). The convincingly characterized “engineering” of her headdress supports Leonardo’s authorship, as do the very delicate, left-handed shadin
g in pen and the tender delineation of her eyes and profile. For good measure, Leonardo’s handprint technique is apparent in Bianca’s neck. The interlace on her simple and modest dress is discernibly Leonardesque, although much restored.

  Bianca was married at the age of fourteen but died within months. The portrait, in its precious volume, was transformed from a celebration of her marriage into a memorial of her early death.

  29. Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli (?) (“La Belle Ferronière”)

  c. 1498, Paris, Louvre

  Three poems recorded in Leonardo’s notebooks in the form of Latin epigrams testify that Leonardo painted a portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli (c. 1452–1508), who became Ludovico Sforza’s mistress after the death of his wife, Beatrice d’Este, in 1497. One of the poems reads,

  She whom we see is called Lucrezia, and to her the Gods

  Gave everything with generous hand.

  How rare her beauty; Leonardo painted her, Maurus loved her:

  The one, first among painters, the other, among princes.

  The presentation of the sitter follows Cecilia Gallerani (see page 48) in exploiting the freedom of a nonprofile portrayal for a woman who was not an aristocrat. The sitter cannot at this date have been one of the Sforzas of Milan, the d’Estes of Ferrara, or the Gonzagas of Mantua. It is difficult to understand why there has been a reluctance to identify the painting in the Louvre with Lucrezia.

  The locating of the lady behind a parapet, which grants her image the air of a sculpted bust that has been painted, may seem surprising, but this is a feature of Venetian portraits, and we may recall that Isabella in Mantua had sought to compare Cecilia with one or more examples of Bellini’s mastery.

  The features of Lucrezia’s costume are characterized with compelling subtlety. We can linger on the nicely foreshortened jet and ivory beads of her necklace; the floral arabesques of her neckline; the soft puffs of white muslin that extrude between the knotted ribbons that secure her sleeves to her bodice; and the fugitive hints of the net cap and fashionable pigtail behind her head.

  At first, Lucrezia seems less communicative than Cecilia. However, she is looking submissively at someone slightly to her left and more elevated than ourselves. That person can be none other than the Maurus referred to in the above poem—Ludovico Sforza, whose nickname was “il Moro” (“the Moor”).

  The traditional appellation “La Belle Ferronière” was inherited from a different painting in a seventeenth-century inventory of the French Royal Collection. It would be good if it fell out of use.

  30. A Rider on a Horse Rearing over a Prostrate Enemy

  c. 1490, Windsor, Royal Library, 12358r

  31. Study of the Proportions of a Horse in the Stables of Galeazzo Sanseverino

  c. 1493, Windsor, Royal Library, 12319

  When Leonardo advertised his accomplishments as a military engineer in his introductory letter to Duke Ludovico Sforza (see page 33), he was aware of plans to create a great bronze equestrian memorial to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico’s father: “Work could be undertaken on the bronze horse, which will be to the immortal glory and eternal honor . . . of the illustrious house of Sforza.” He could also claim to have witnessed the making of the model by Verrocchio for the bronze equestrian memorial to the general Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice.

  Leonardo’s engagement with the project probably occupied his intermittent attention during his time in Milan from 1482 to 1499. We know that in 1489, Ludovico was losing confidence in Leonardo’s ability to undertake the mighty task. A year later Leonardo wrote that he had “restarted the horse.”

  The earliest drawings for the project indicate that he was considering a rearing horse. The drawing opposite, executed with incisive energy in metalpoint on blue paper, shows that he was considering placing a fallen warrior with a shield under the horse’s front hooves to support the weight of the horse’s forelegs, head, neck, and torso. The rider has seemingly been repositioned. He was originally pointing his baton forward, but later turns to gesture rearward, presumably to his following troops.

  Later drawings show that Leonardo abandoned the idea of a rearing steed, which would have become impossible to cast as the scale of the projected monument grew in size. Fra Luca Pacioli (c. 1445–1517), Leonardo’s mathematician friend, recorded that Leonardo was intending his horse to be 23 feet (7 meters) high. This was considerably larger than any Renaissance bronze and would have been one of the wonders of the world. The artist strove mightily to devise a workable plan to melt the mass of bronze, using multiple furnaces placed in such way as to permit the liquid metal to flow into the more remote parts of the mold. He debated whether to cast the horse upside down or on its side—and whether to cast it with or without its tail. The rider is rarely included in the drawings or discussions.

  Leonardo devoted considerable effort to mastering the anatomy and proportions of horses. Two of the surviving drawings specifically record measurements taken from fine horses owned by Galeazzo Sanseverino, husband of Bianca Sforza. One shows a Sicilian horse, while the drawing opposite was made from “the large jennet [a compact Spanish horse] of Messer Galeazzo.” The finely calibrated measurements are minutely recorded in units of one head and a sixteenth of a head, which is then broken down into sixteenths, with further subdivisions of sixteenths. Leonardo was looking to extract a kind of visual music from nature’s design of an exemplary horse. None of his drawings of the proportions of the human figure exceed in detail those of Galeazzo’s prized stallion.

  In the second of the Madrid codices, he promised on May 17, 1491, that “here a record should be kept of everything related to the bronze horse, presently under construction.”

  By 1493, the clay model of the huge horse (without a rider?) was displayed in Milan Cathedral during the celebrations of the marriage of Bianca Maria Sforza to the emperor Maximilian, and it seems that the mold was subsequently made. The large quantity of bronze was set aside, and it looked as if the casting would be attempted. However, military matters intervened. The bronze was sent to Duke Ercole I d’Este in Ferrara for the casting of cannon in the face of the French invasion of Northern Italy. Things dragged on. Leonardo wrote resignedly to Ludovico that he “knows of the times.” In 1499, the French, under King Louis XII, entered Milan. Leonardo recorded that “the duke lost the state, his property, and liberty.”

  The massive model was shot to pieces by invading Gascon archers. The failure of this greatest of artistic projects was to color his contemporaries’ view of Leonardo’s career.

  Study of the Proportions of a Horse in the Stables of Galeazzo Sanseverino, c. 1493.

  “Leonardo was looking to extract a kind of visual music from nature’s design of an exemplary horse. None of his drawings of the proportions of the human figure exceed in detail those of Galeazzo’s prized stallion.”

  32. The Sala delle Asse (Room of the Boards)

  1498, Milan, Sforza Castle

  Interlaces of trees featured in vault decorations in North Italy before Leonardo, but none had approached his level of inventive and intellectual ambition. Leonardo’s all-embracing scheme of wall and vault decorations was part of Ludovico’s campaign late in the century to create appealing rooms in the northeastern corner of his rambling castle. We have letters from court officials in spring 1498 about work in the “large room of the boards.” They express impatient hope that Leonardo will be finished by September.

  The immersive scheme depicts roots of trees insinuating themselves into strata of rocks on the lower part of the sidewalls, with hints of landscapes and distant buildings on the land above. Trunks of eighteen trees emerge from the rocks; those in the middle and corners of the walls pass across the vaulted ceiling toward the round central oculus. Four trees are bent and “pruned” around the two windows, while the other ten ramify into the vaults. The branches intertwine as a complex bower with symmetrical interlaces of gold thread. The shield at the center combines the arms of Ludovico il Moro and his d’Este wife, Beatrice. Their conjug
al union was symbolized by the interlocking of the mulberry trees (the mulberry is genus Morus, while “mulberry” in Italian is moro) and the gold interlace of the d’Este court. The four shields on the mid-axes of the walls record key events in Ludovico’s rise to power from 1493 to 1496, with particular emphasis upon his allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian.

  Today we are faced with impressive ghosts of Leonardo’s conception. The roots and strata survive only as underdrawings, while the trunks and branches were overpainted, later uncovered, and subjected to more than one radical campaign of restoration and repainting. A recent restoration has disclosed some lovely, vivacious leaves in some areas in the ceiling, of a quality to match those in the lunettes of The Last Supper. The original effect must have been breathtaking in its airy lightness, compelling naturalism, geometrical complexity, and imaginative brilliance.

  33. Studies for The Last Supper, Architecture, the Construction of an Octagon, and Two Columns of Numbers

  c. 1496, Windsor, Royal Library, 12542

  We do not know when Leonardo was told to paint a Last Supper on the end wall of the refectory in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. In June 1497, Ludovico Sforza wrote to Leonardo, expressing his hope that the work would soon be finished. In March of the following year, similar hopes were still being expressed by one of the duke’s administrators.