Leonardo da Vinci

by Martin Kemp

  The lowest note, squeezed in on the bottom right, tells that Leonardo has observed from “a boat” that “water within water more completely obeys the revolutions of its impacts than the water that borders on the air, and this arises because water within water has no weight, but it has weight within air.”

  “The skeins of vortices streaming out behind the rectangular obstacles in the two upper drawings irresistibly resemble flowing hair. Leonardo noted more than once this analogy between water and hair.”

  77. Studies of Water and Obstacles, with a List of Books for Leonardo’s Treatise on Water

  c. 1508, Collection of Bill Gates, Codex Leicester, 15v

  The Codex Leicester, once owned by the earls of Leicester, consists of seventy-two pages of dense writing, generally with marginal illustrations. It is largely devoted to all aspects of the science and management of water in motion, on which Leonardo had long been planning a comprehensive treatise.

  On this page, which contains thirty-eight “propositions” about water, each marked with a big capital letter, he lists the “books” that he plans to include in the treatise. He begins with the nature and physics of water, “Of the waters in themselves.” He then looks at the sea, the “veins” (water channels within the earth), and the rivers. He moves progressively toward more detailed matters: “the natures of the beds,” “the objects” (transported within the waters), “the gravels,” “the surfaces of waters” (waves etc.), and “things moving [floating] on the surfaces.” Practical concerns come next: “the repairs of rivers,” “the conduits,” “the canals,” “the instruments tuned by waters” (for example, mills), and “making water to rise.” He finishes with “things consumed by waters.” This was not the first or the last of his plans for the treatise.

  In the drawings here, he considers various kind of fixed obstacles that might be used to control the flow of water: “stationary obstacles in the rivers are the cause of the preservation of the islands, sandbanks and their depths, because they always form a firm shield against the oncoming waters.”

  The uppermost drawing demonstrates that “if the obstacle is sloping where it faces the oncoming waters . . . it will not excavate soil from its front, but on the side and back it will.” The water courses over the wedge-shaped obstacle, turbulently excavating the bed behind it. Here, as elsewhere, Leonardo is concerned about working with the power of water so that it can be persuaded to achieve his ends, rather than fighting it. At the bottom of the page he wrote, “the science of these objects is of great usefulness because it teaches how to bend the rivers and avoid the ruins of the places struck by them.”

  78. Salvator Mundi

  c. 1504–10, Abu Dhabi, Louvre

  79. Study for the Drapery on the Chest of the Salvator Mundi and for a Sleeve

  c. 1504, Windsor, Royal Library, 12525

  80. Study for the Sleeve of the Salvator Mundi

  c. 1504, Windsor, Royal Library, 12524

  The world’s most expensive work of art, sold at Christie’s in New York on November 15, 2017, for $450 million, is the first autograph Leonardo painting to appear since the early twentieth century. It was bought in 2005 for less than $1,175 at an auction in Louisiana by two dealers, Robert Simon and Alexander Parish. It was sent for sale by the Kuntz family of New Orleans, and had earlier featured in the impressive Francis Cook collection in England, heavily overpainted and unrecognizable as a Leonardo. Robert Simon oversaw its conservation and bore witness to the gradual emergence of the damaged original. In its newly restored form, it first appeared in public in the major show Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan at the National Gallery in London during the winter of 2011–12. It was then purchased by the Swiss art entrepreneur Yves Bouvier, who owns major storage facilities for valuable works of art. He was acting for the Russian collector Dmitry Rybolovlev, who subsequently consigned it for sale at Christie’s. It has been quite widely accepted as by Leonardo or substantially by him.

  There is no documentation for the commissioning of the picture, but a “Christ in the manner of God the Father” appears in the 1525 list of paintings owned by Salaì. It inspired a number of copies and versions, and was engraved by the Bohemian etcher Wenceslaus Hollar in 1650. There are also two drawings for the drapery at Windsor.

  The subject of the “Savior of the World” is traditional. The basic elements are Christ’s iconic frontal pose and gaze, his blessing hand, and the orb of the earth that he holds. The emotional tone is set by the Gospel of St. John (14:6): “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In St. Matthew (11:29), Christ invites us to “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” The bands on Christ’s chest, adapted from the crossed stoles of priests, signal the yoke we are invited to bear.

  Within this set framework, Leonardo has rethought the iconography and introduced a new kind of communicative power. The most striking innovation in the content involves the sphere, which no longer represents the earth. It is made from rock crystal, a semiprecious mineral that was prized for prestigious objects, like reliquaries. Inside the sphere, we can see the inclusions that are characteristic of rock crystal. These are small gaps that arise as the molten mineral cools. Leonardo describes with delicate precision how the inclusions catch the light. He has transformed the terrestrial globe into the crystalline sphere of the heavens, and Christ therefore becomes “Savior of the Cosmos.”

  Leonardo shows Christ’s features in “soft focus,” using fine glazes of color. Christ’s blessing hand and the fingers of his left hand are depicted more sharply, and seem to move closer to us, creating depth within what is otherwise a very shallow space. This is in keeping with Leonardo’s researches into the eye, in which he emphasizes how uncertain we are about the precise edges of forms, while recognizing that there is an optimum distance at which objects are seen more clearly (see page 131).

  This optical uncertainty renders Christ’s features elusive, in spite of their assertive frontality. This indefiniteness suggests that Christ, even though he has assumed human guise, belongs to an ineffable realm distinct from ours. In this the work shares much with the St. John the Baptist on page 188.

  Although the paint surface has suffered as the result of the cracking of the walnut panel and some crude earlier restorations, there are passages that bear witness to Leonardo’s unrivaled skills. The shiny curls of Christ’s hair, particularly on his left, exhibit the vortices that Leonardo described as shared with water in motion (see page 183). The rivulets of drapery that flow down his chest recall those in the Mona Lisa. The play of light on Christ’s fingertips in front of the orb is beautifully described. His blessing hand is realized with understated anatomical conviction—something that the copyists always miss. The angular interlace on Christ’s crossed yolks, on the upper band of his tunic, and on the central plaque with its translucent jewel, are incisively drawn and lit in the best-preserved areas. The geometry of the interlace recalls Islamic patterns Leonardo would have seen in Venice in 1500.

  The folds of the drapery on christ’s chest are studied in a very subtle drawing in red chalk on red paper (opposite, right), which anticipates the soft effects in the actual painting. Leonardo was working out the way that one of the crossed bands would affect the patterns of folds. The second study on the page, heightened in white, may present an early idea for the sleeve of Christ’s raised arm.

  The other drawing (opposite, left), in the same refined medium, is definitely for Christ’s right sleeve, and the outer folds are quite closely followed in the painting. However, in the drawing, the upper part of the sleeve is gathered into a band around his wrist. The configuration was adopted in one of the closer copies of the Salvator, whose location is now unknown. What this indicates is that the painting underwent a prolonged genesis, and motifs that were not to appear in the final work seeped into the awareness of a painter in Leonardo’s immediate circle. This leaking of abandoned motifs also happened with Madonna of t
he Yarwinder (see pages 102–5).

  Study for the Sleeve of the Salvator Mundi, c. 1504.

  Study for the Drapery on the Chest of the Salvator Mundi and for a Sleeve, c. 1504.

  81. Virgin of the Rocks

  c. 1495–1508, London, National Gallery

  The panel of the Virgin, Child, St. John, and the Angel Uriel in the Louvre (see page 40)—intended for the center of the large altarpiece for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan—was never installed. It seems likely that it was commandeered by Ludovico Sforza in 1494.

  When Leonardo left Milan in 1499, the Confraternity still had not received a painting of the Madonna as specified in the contract of 1483 (see page 41). In 1506, when Leonardo was still absent from Milan, arbitrators were appointed to resolve the tangled dispute. A year later, a long document summarized the complex sequence of events, noting that the painting was still to be completed. In 1507–8, after Leonardo had returned to Milan, the replacement painting was finally installed in the altarpiece. This painting was purchased for the Marquis of Lansdowne in 1785 and subsequently entered the National Gallery in London.

  Technical examinations of the London picture have revealed an underdrawing that portrays the kneeling Virgin on a much larger scale and in a style similar to that of the disciples in The Last Supper. It seems that the replacement picture was begun in a revised form in the mid-1490s, but was later completed in a way that makes it closely resemble the first version. The main compositional change is that the angel’s pointing hand has been removed.

  How far did Leonardo himself paint what is essentially a copy? Many of the most important features of the painting testify to Leonardo’s handiwork, not least the angel’s diaphanous draperies, scintillating curls, and refined facial features, the subtle modeling of which display his distinctive handprint technique. The plants and vegetation are characterized by the more synthetic quality of his nature studies after 1500. However, the more generalized qualities of the rocks, which are less geologically differentiated, may indicate that Ambrogio played a role in the execution of the painting. The angel’s hand and Jesus’s back remain unfinished, apparently unnoticed by the Confraternity.

  82. Study for a Seated St. John the Baptist

  c. 1508–13, formerly Museo di Sacro Monte, Varese (lost)

  This very battered drawing was stolen from the Museo di Sacro Monte in 1974.

  To show St. John naked or nearly naked in a landscape is exceptional at this time. The direct communication of the saint is consistent with Leonardo’s exploration of how painted figures can be set in dialogue with the spectator in such a way that we become participants in completing an implicit story. The saint stares at us as intensively as Christ in the Salvator Mundi (see page 148) or the Louvre St. John (see page 188). He points to the cross on his staff as an unmistakable allusion to Christ’s sacrifice.

  Allowing for its condition and for its being known only through old black-and-white photographs, the drawing (which was in red chalk on red paper) seems to be by Leonardo himself. The pose is skillfully articulated in space, and the saint’s anatomy is modeled in the nonemphatic manner that Leonardo recommended for youthful figures. The stratified rocky seat and the rapidly drawn, curving strata at the saint’s feet are typical of Leonardo. The mountainscape in the distance and the trees are like those in the Louvre St. Anne (see page 160).

  The saint’s relatively high degree of finish suggests that this drawing was intended as a model for a devotional picture of the kind generated in the workshop. Two paintings of St. John, “large” and “small,” appear in the Salaì list of 1525. A painting, right, corresponding to the drawing, survives in the Louvre—albeit much altered. It was recorded in the French royal collection at Fontainebleau in 1625, but was overpainted as a Bacchus in the late seventeenth century. It may have been felt that the image was too sensual in tone for a saint. St. John’s cross has been transformed into Bacchus’s thyrsus (a wand of giant fennel topped by a pine cone). He also has ivy in his hair and a leopard skin. The painting in its present state suggests that it was a studio picture based on the now-lost drawing.

  St. John the Baptist, known as Bacchus, Italian School, workshop of Leonardo da Vinci?, sixteenth–seventeenth century.

  83. Cartoon for the Virgin, Child, St. Anne, and St. John the Baptist

  c. 1507–8, London, National Gallery

  84. Drawing for the Cartoon of the Virgin, Child, St. Anne, and St. John the Baptist

  c. 1507, London, British Museum

  Leonardo was much occupied with paintings of the Virgin, Child, and St. Anne after his return to Florence. In 1501, Fra Pietro da Novellara described the painting to Isabella d’Este, saying that Leonardo was

  portraying a Christ Child of about a year old who is almost slipping out of his Mother’s arms to take hold of a lamb, which he then appears to embrace. His Mother, half rising from the lap of St. Anne, takes hold of the Child to separate him from the lamb (a sacrificial animal) signifying the Passion. St. Anne, rising slightly from her seated position, appears to want to restrain her daughter from separating the Child from the lamb. She is perhaps intended to represent the Church, which would not have the Passion of Christ impeded. These figures are all life-size but can fit into a small cartoon because they are all either seated or bending over and each one is positioned a little in front of each other and to the left-hand side.

  As with the Madonna of the Yarnwinder (see page 103), Fra Pietro was exceptionally responsive to the new kind of narrative Madonna invented by Leonardo.

  In his “Life of Leonardo da Vinci” (1550 and 1568) entry in Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari describes how Leonardo produced a cartoon after returning to Florence in 1501 that included the infant St. John as well as the lamb, which the painter exhibited in an unprecedented manner for two days, to much acclaim. It is unclear if Vasari was describing a different cartoon from that seen by Fra Pietro or if he was conflating two separate compositions, one of which was the cartoon that was to lead into the Louvre painting on page 160.

  Such cartoons very rarely survive, and this one has suffered much wear and tear, including a shotgun-blast assault in the National Gallery by an ex-soldier in 1987. It does not correspond precisely to the versions described by either Fra Pietro or Vasari, in that it includes St. John but no lamb. The implicit narrative in this case involves Jesus blessing and comforting St. John while supported by the smiling Virgin, as St. Anne knowingly points heavenward to remind her daughter that everything is divinely ordained. It is possible that St. Anne is actually St. Elizabeth, the mother of St. John.

  This kind of highly modeled, full-scale drawing was pioneered by Leonardo. In his hands, it transcends its functional nature and becomes a work of formal beauty and emotional engagement in its own right. The characteristically unfinished passages also reduce its functionality. The three-dimensional monumentality of the densely integrated figure group is typical of his second Florentine period.

  A remarkable drawing in the british museum (opposite) shows Leonardo working out the complex group in a frenzy of invention. Within a drawn frame that has a measured scale across its base, he brainstormed so intensively in black chalk and two colors of ink that it is difficult to see what is emerging in the more tangled areas. He then took up a sharp instrument and pressed the preferred elements of the design onto the reverse of the sheet (not shown here). Below the larger group on the front side of the sheet, he sketched the figures on a small scale in black chalk and pen, and extracted component parts of the composition for improvised study.

  The little sketches of hydraulic engineering also drawn on the sheet include a waterwheel and a braced structure that could resist water. The incomplete note on the bottom left reads, “make locks where the water . . .” The sketches in the left corner are similar to those in the Codex Leicester, in which Leonardo was much concerned with the management of water (see pages 146–47), confirming the date of c. 1507–8. In the note to the right he reminds hi
mself to ask “Paolo of Talvecchia to see the stains in the German stones.” This probably refers to the kind of pebbles with colored veins that appear in the foreground of the Louvre St. Anne on page 160, and were likely intended for the painting he was planning in the cartoon (on page 156).

  Drawing for the cartoon of the Virgin, Child, St. Anne, and St. John the Baptist, c. 1507.

  85. Virgin, Child, St. Anne, and a Lamb

  c. 1508–16, Paris, Louvre

  86. Study for Head of St. Anne

  c. 1508–10, Windsor, Royal Library, 12533

  87. Study for the Drapery of the Virgin

  c. 1508–10, Paris, Louvre

  The culmination of the various projects for a Virgin, Child, and St. Anne is the painting in the Louvre. It almost certainly stands at the end of the series of drawings and cartoons on the subject, and was probably the only finished painting. We have the cartoon described by Fra Pietro da Novellara in 1501, the one that features in Vasari’s biography of Leonardo, and the surviving cartoon in London depicted on page 156. No cartoon or compositional study is known for the Louvre painting, although the version described by Fra Pietro was obviously similar in concept.