Leonardo da Vinci

by Sir Kenneth M. Clark

  Such thoughts must occur to a modern critic, for Tintoretto, El Greco, Degas, and Cézanne have shown him how the greatest artists can achieve a complete and coherent style with a degree of definition no greater than that of Leonardo’s Adoration. But to Leonardo and his contemporaries these reflections would have seemed ridiculous or incredible; and in fact a great part of his Trattato della Pittura is concerned with how to bring a work in the state of the Adoration to the state of the Last Supper. For although the finest passages in the Trattato are those in which Leonardo describes the springs of the painter’s genius, a far larger part is concerned with the science of representation, and with that thorough knowledge of natural appearances without which the painter cannot assume his godlike rôle of recreating the visible world. A rendering of nature complete and learned enough to satisfy his interest in its function seemed to involve the idea of finish, and his own preternatural sharpness of eye tempted him in the same direction. Photography, reacting on the aesthetic theories of the last century, has led us to believe that he was mistaken; that all the knowledge of anatomy, botany, and geology with which he enriched his art could have been suggested rather than described, and could have found more vivid expression in a few spontaneous hints than in an accumulation of careful statements.

  We may be fairly certain that the reason why the monks of San Donato stopped payment for the Adoration is that Leonardo had gone to Milan. Apparently they continued to hope that he would return and finish it, because it was fifteen years before they called in Filippino to paint another picture—the Adoration, now also in the Uffizi—to take its place. We have no evidence of the exact date when Leonardo went to Milan, but the Anonimo Gaddiano says that he went in his thirtieth year—that is in 1482—and this is confirmed by the fact that his first documented commission there dates from 1483. Why did he go there? The Anonimo says, and Vasari repeats, that he was sent by Lorenzo the Magnificent to present the Duke Ludovico il Moro with a silver lyre in the form of a horse’s head, on which he was an exquisite performer. Since we can no longer hear the music which Leonardo produced from the lyre, we are inclined to assume that it was less important than his drawings and pictures, but to his contemporaries it may have seemed the reverse. Socially a young virtuoso musician is sure of a more enthusiastic welcome than a talented painter, and it is easy to understand why Ludovico received Leonardo as a musician rather than as a painter. Nor is there anything surprising in the fact that Lorenzo de’ Medici allowed him to leave Florence, for, although an enlightened patron of literature, Lorenzo took small interest in art, and cannot be given credit for commissioning any of the great paintings of his day. It is, perhaps, surprising that later, when Leonardo’s real greatness was established, Lorenzo made no effort to bring him back to Florence. And this, I think, can only be due to the lack of sympathy which existed between Leonardo and the Medicean circle. He was essentially a scientist and mathematician; the Mediceans were of course Platonists of an almost religious ardour. Non mi legga chi non e matematico. These words of Leonardo’s are rightly placed on the first page of Richter’s anthology. Mathematicae non sunt verae scientiae. This is the first of Pico della Mirandola’s famous theses, approved by the Florentine Platonists. Beside this Platonism, and developing out of its mystic tendencies, were the doctrines of Savonarola, with which Leonardo was equally out of sympathy—which were in fact the object of his expressed contempt.{12} By contrast, Milan was predominantly Aristotelian, which at this date still meant encyclopedic. At the court of Ludovico there were ingenious men in plenty, doctors, scientists, tacticians, mathematicians, military engineers, men of fact and experience, who could feed Leonardo’s insatiable craving for information. It is understandable therefore that as Leonardo’s scientific bias grew with his development as a painter, Lorenzo felt no inclination to recall him, nor Leonardo to return; and unless he could be sure of employment by the Medici there were many reasons why a young artist should be anxious to leave Florence. Competition was very severe, and conditions of life were continually being made difficult by war, plague, and taxation which prevented the public bodies, who were the chief patrons, from fulfilling their contracts. In fact, most Florentine artists preferred working for Kings or Popes, and left Florence as soon as they had a chance of doing so. For Leonardo, the luxurious and elaborate life of the Sforza court must have had a particular attraction. We know from all accounts that he was an exquisite, careful in dress, reserved and mysterious in manner. Such a character did not fit him for the Forum life of Florence, with its open workshops, hard sarcastic criticism and those terrible practical jokes which figure so largely in contemporary lives of the Florentine artists. Moreover, Ludovico Sforza was an admirable patron. The fact that his patronage lacked the literary element which distinguished Medicean circles, made him more sympathetic to Leonardo, who could hardly have been persuaded to paint the graceful allegories of Politian. The variety of the work which, as a man of ingenuity about the court, he was called upon to perform—the founding of cannon, the supervision of pageants, the installation of central heating—appealed to his curiosity and his love of technical experiment. For all these reasons it is easy to understand why he never attempted to leave Milan until the fall of Ludovico Sforza compelled him to do so. Yet we may regret a prosperity which kept him so long absent from the bracing air of his native country. Even Donatello admitted that his spirit began to rust when away from the keen, critical atmosphere of Florence; and the court life of Milan may have brought out a certain effeminacy sometimes perceptible in Leonardo’s art and wholly destructive of the work of his disciples.

  The ostensible reason why Leonardo remained in Milan is to be found in a letter of self-recommendation to Ludovico which has come down to us in the Codice Atlantico.{13} It is not in Leonardo’s own handwriting, but most scholars are persuaded that it is genuine. Leonardo recommends himself almost entirely as a military engineer. ‘Most illustrious Lord,’ he says ‘having now fully studied the work of all those who claim to be masters and artificers of instruments of war...I will lay before your Lordship my secret inventions, and then offer to carry them into execution at your pleasure.’

  He then proceeds to detail under nine headings the different instruments of war which he is prepared to construct: ‘An extremely light and strong bridge. An endless variety of battering rams. A method of demolishing fortresses built on a rock. A kind of bombard, which hurls showers of small stones and the smoke of which strikes terror into the enemy. A secret winding passage constructed without noise. Covered wagons, behind which whole armies can hide and advance.’ Under a tenth heading he says: ‘In time of peace, I believe myself able to vie successfully with any in the designing of public and private buildings, and in conducting water from one place to another. Item: I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also in painting I can do as well as any man. Again, I can undertake to work on the bronze horse, which will be a monument...to the eternal honour of the Prince your father, and the illustrious house of Sforza.’

  The fact that Leonardo only speaks of himself as an artist in six lines out of thirty-four is so much at variance with the opinion of posterity as to seem like a piece of elaborate irony. We may be sure that it was not so intended. In the Renaissance war was the most vitally important of all the arts, and demanded the services of the most skilful artists. Giotto had designed the fortifications of Florence early in the fourteenth century. Michelangelo was to redesign them during the siege of 1529. Of such warlike arts the casting of cannon needed skill and experience in the handling of material found only in the most accomplished craftsmen. It was natural that Verrocchio should have been so employed by Lorenzo de’ Medici; and natural that his pupil, with an especial love of ingenious design, should have begun early to draw guns and ballistas. About twenty-five sheets of such drawings in the Codice Atlantico seem to have been done in Florence (P. 298): in a slightly later style there are over forty, and since they represent all the military devices mentioned in his letter
to Ludovico we can see that Leonardo’s offer of help was serious (Pl. 17).

  During five years Leonardo’s war machines improved. Those done in Florence are in the dry, diagrammatic style of other fifteenth-century engineering drawings, such as those by Francesco di Giorgio, and display the same rather primitive notion of cause and effect. Later the drawings become much more ambitious and so elaborate that it seems doubtful if they could ever have been constructed. In particular a series of gigantic catapults and crossbows (P. 302) seem to be beyond the technical skill of the period. It would be interesting to know if Leonardo’s war machines added to the efficacy of the Milanese forces; but that is no part of my present subject.

  Of Leonardo’s activities as an artist during his first years in Milan, we have interesting evidence in a list of his pictures, drawings, and sculpture, written in his own hand, and certainly dating from this period, which is to be found on a sheet in the Codice Atlantico. From the number of markedly Florentine subjects it contains, it may even be the list of the work taken with him from Florence to Milan: though it includes una testa del duca—presumably Ludovico. This list is so important for the study of Leonardo’s painting that I shall make no excuse for analysing it at some length.{14}

  First the list shows a predominant interest in the human figure. Among the sketches are measurements of a figure, many nudes, many studies of arms, legs, feet, and poses; among the subjects are those beloved of the Florentine anatomical painters such as Castagno and Pollajuolo—eight St. Sebastians, and certain St. Jeromes. Of the eight St. Sebastians there remains only a hint in two slight drawings.{15} Of the St. Jeromes there exists the unfinished monochrome in the Vatican, which on grounds of style alone should be placed in this period. Both in pose and treatment it is close to the Uffizi Adoration and, like the Adoration, it may have been unfinished when Leonardo left Florence. If so, the entry on the list may refer to studies for this picture.

  The Vatican St. Jerome is one of the few works by Leonardo whose authenticity has never been questioned (Pl. 18). But the original makes less impression than it should. This is probably due to the fact that it has been badly damaged. The two halves of the panel are said to have been discovered by Cardinal Fesch in two different places, and one was being used as a table-top. As a result the nervous drawing has been overlaid with retouchings, and some of Leonardo’s magic has evaporated; but we are still able to appreciate the composition as a whole, dominated by the grandiose gesture of the Saint. Both as an embodiment of passion and as what Roger Fry would have called a plastic sequence, this figure is a great invention. It stands midway between Signorelli and Michelangelo, recalling the former in the sharply defined planes of the torso, the latter in the rhythmic continuity of the pose. The concentration on a single theme is unusual for Leonardo. More characteristic are the accessories of the composition, the snarling lion, the landscape, and the dark cave foreshadowing the Virgin of the Rocks.

  Finally, we reach the two consecutive items, una nosstra donna finjta; un altra quasi che in proffilo, ‘our lady finished; another almost, who is in profile’. Of the first picture we know nothing, but the second I have always believed to be the Madonna Litta in the Hermitage. It is the only one of Leonardo’s Virgins which could be called ‘in profile’, and we know from drawings that the design must date from about 1480. Unfortunately, the Madonna Litta has been totally repainted at least twice, once when it was finished by a Milanese artist about 1495, and once in the nineteenth century, when it was transferred from panel to canvas. It now looks like an oleograph. But even in this ruined condition it has qualities which are not found in shop work. The Virgin’s head is still close to Leonardo’s exquisite drawing in the Louvre (Pl. 19), and the Child’s body is based on one of the studies of babies at Windsor (P. 21). The Child’s head, on the other hand, is quite unlike Leonardo, and cannot even have been designed by him. And of this we have a proof in a drawing for the head which is certainly not by Leonardo, but is perhaps an early work of Boltraffio. We can therefore give some meaning to the expression quasi finita. The pose, the Virgin’s head, and part of the Child’s body were finished; the Child’s head, details of costume and landscape were left at a stage which we can deduce from the Uffizi Adoration.

  I have left till now the masterpiece of Leonardo’s early period, the Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre. My reason for doing so is that hitherto the majority of scholars have assumed that this was the picture commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception on 25 April 1483; and in the first edition of this book I did not question this assumption. I am now convinced that I was mistaken.{16} The picture commissioned in 1483 is the version of the Virgin of the Rocks now in the National Gallery, London. We know that this was bought from the Confraternity, and had the picture been painted twice for the Confraternity, this fact would certainly have been referred to in the various legal documents in which Leonardo and the brothers Preda made claims against them for increased payment. The last of the documents, the settlement of 1506, implies that the picture originally commissioned was still unfinished and gives Leonardo two years in which to complete it. Now the Louvre Virgin of the Rocks is perfectly finished in Leonardo’s early style, whereas the Virgin of the Rocks in the National Gallery is in Leonardo’s later style, and parts of it are still no more than underpainting. It is therefore impossible to maintain, as I did in my earlier edition, that the later version was substituted for the earlier after 1506. Although there are no documents referring to the Louvre picture, we may assume that it was painted in Florence, and we may guess that Leonardo brought it with him to Milan as a specimen of his skill.

  Even when I believed that it was the picture of the Commission, I recognized that the Louvre Virgin of the Rocks belongs essentially to Leonardo’s first Florentine period. By its twilit tones and delicate naturalism it is connected with the sequence which began with the Uffizi Annunciation. In conception, too, it sums up a series of projects and experiments which go back to the period of the early Adoration. The motive of the Virgin kneeling before the holy children can be traced back to the drawings in the Bonnat Collection and the Venice Academy. But in them she is surrounded by adoring shepherds, and above her head is a ring of flying angels. A few years later Leonardo returned to the subject of the kneeling Virgin and children, this time without shepherds and angels. A drawing in the Metropolitan Museum shows him searching for a motive which would give unity to the group, and finding it in the protective gesture of the Virgin, who spreads her arms above the children like the Madonna della Misericordia of traditional iconography (Pl. 20). This sheet is often considered as preparatory to the Virgin of the Rocks, but before arriving at the final composition, Leonardo took one of the groups—that in the bottom left-hand corner—and made it into a separate picture known in several replicas, the best of which, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, must give a clear idea of Leonardo’s original. The Virgin kneels with hands stretched over the two children who are playing around her; the infant John grasps his lamb, while the infant Jesus peeps at him from behind the sleeve of his mother’s mantle. It is an allegro grazioso preluding the adagio of the Virgin of the Rocks; for the later picture is conceived in a mood of great solemnity (Pl. 21). The children no longer play as equals. St. John kneels in adoration, shielded by the Virgin’s cloak, for he typifies the human race in need of protection. Apart from him, and in front of the Virgin, sits the infant Christ, supported by divine inspiration in the form of an angel. His pre-eminence is marked by the two hands which are poised above his head like nimbs, giving him the isolation of a vertical in the pyramid of the whole composition. He blesses mankind. The angel who, by his glance, invites us to take a part in these mysteries, is himself the most mysterious figure. Why does he point so emphatically at the St. John? Towards whom are his eyes directed? We only know that in the more formal London version, where hand and outward gaze are omitted, the picture loses some of its magic. Like deep notes in the accompaniment of a serious theme the rocks of the ba
ckground sustain the composition, and give it the resonance of a cathedral. Aesthetically their meaning is clear. Have they a further significance? Was Leonardo thinking of some legend of the apocryphal gospels in which the Holy Family during the flight into Egypt seek refuge in a cave and are visited by the youthful Baptist? Behind most of the curious subjects in Renaissance art He myths and symbols long since forgotten; but in the enthusiasm of discovery their importance can be overrated. Viewed more closely in the creative process, pictorial symbolism can be a pretext rather than an end in itself, and so the rocks, whatever their apocryphal justification, may have originated in the memory of a childhood expedition to the caves of Monte Ceceri.{17}

  The Virgin of the Rocks is Leonardo’s last quattrocento picture and still shows the graces of that enchanted interval. Mastery of execution has not overlaid the freshness of the types. The balance between natural and ideal beauty is perfectly held: indeed the process of idealization has given an added life, as can be seen by comparing the angel’s head with the silverpoint study for it at Turin (Pl. 22). The drawing—one of the most beautiful, I dare say, in the world—aims at the fullest plastic statement. The painting is sweeter, lighter, more unearthly. This is still idealization in the Gothic sense. The same is true of the Madonna’s head, but here our standard of comparison must be the National Gallery version, which, although perhaps not entirely executed by Leonardo, was certainly designed by him. In comparing the two heads, the delicate imaginative beauty of the first, the waxen chiaroscuro of the second, we cannot help feeling how far Leonardo’s theories of painting led him away from our affections. A comparison of the two St. Johns yields the same result. Only in the later angel’s head do we feel that Leonardo, by sacrificing freshness to regularity, gained a new quality of classical completeness, though, to our eye, the gain is not worth the sacrifice.