Leonardo da Vinci
Page 20
{3} For a reasonable and scholarly explanation of this passage, which deprives it of most (not quite all) of its interest to the psychoanalyst, cf. Meyer Schapiro in Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XVII, No. 2, April 1956, pp. 147-178.
{4} This must have been one of the principal works in hand when Leonardo entered Verrocchio’s workshop. The ball was hoisted into place, to the singing of Te Deum, on 27 May 1471.
{5} Verrocchio was not the only artist to influence Leonardo through his sculpture. He also took something from the rival workshop, that of Antonio Pollajuolo, whose energetic linear style is reflected in Leonardo’s first pen drawings; and he seems to have looked with particular attention at the work of Desiderio da Settignano.
{6} This is, of course, a typical legend of master and pupil, repeated by Vasari apropos of Cimabue and Giotto, Francia and Raphael. It may, however, be true of Verrocchio and Leonardo.
{7} Or at least done from the same series of studies on linen, two of which, in the Marquis de Ganay’s collection, are remarkably close to the drapery of the Virgin’s robe.
{8} Also known as the Anonimo Magliabecchiano, ed. Frey, Berlin, 1892, p. III.
{9} In Italian ginepro; in Romance dialects genevra.
{10} A more pronounced and probably more conscious use of this devise is in the Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds in Berlin, which is clearly inspired by the scene of a miracle play.
{11} Dr. Jens Thiis, whose Florentine years of Leonardo da Vinci contains the fullest analysis of Uffizi Adoration, thinks he has counted sixty-six figures and eleven animals, more, that is to say, than in Raphael’s School of Athens. The model for such crowded, but controlled, compositions was Ghiberti’s relief of Solomon and Sheba on the second doors of the Florentine Baptistery, which undoubtedly influenced Leonardo’s Adoration.
{12} Cf. Trattato della Pittura di Leonardo da Vinci. Ed. Borzelli, Naples, 1914, §74.
{13} For an account of the Codice Atlantico, see p. 61.
{14} head, full face, of a young man with a fine head of hair
many flowers, drawn from nature
a head, full face, with curly hair
certain figures of St. Jerome
the measurements of a figure
drawings of furnaces
a head of the Duke
many drawings of knots
four drawings for the painting of the holy angel
a small composition of Girolamo da Fegline
a head of Christ done with a pen
eight St. Sebastians
many compositions of angles (or angels!)
a chalcedony
a head in profile with fine hair
some barrels (or jars) in perspective
some machines for ships
some machines for water
a portrait head of Atalanta raising her face
the head of Geronimo da Fegline
the head of Gian Francesco Boso
many throats of old women
many heads of old men
many complete nude figures
many arms, legs, feet, and poses
a madonna finished
another almost, which is in profile
the head of our Lady ascending into Heaven
the head of an old man with a very long neck
a head of a gipsy
a head with a hat on
a scene of the Passion made in relief
a head of a girl with knotted hair
a head with hair elaborately coiled
{15} A silverpoint in the Bonne Collection and a pen and ink drawing at Hamburg (P. 213b). Both seem to be of about the date of the list. A picture of St. Sebastian by Marco d’Oggiono in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, evidently derives from a Leonardo drawing similar to the Hamburg sketch.
{16} I owe this change to Mr. Martin Davies, whose thorough and inflexible examination of the documents is contained in a publication of the London Virgin of the Rocks, published by the National Gallery, 1947.
{17} Rocks of this kind occur in the Nativity by Fra Filippo Lippi in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, which also includes the youthful Baptist, and in other pictures of the fifteenth century. They seem to have been the accepted iconographical symbol for a wilderness.
{18} The picture has been transferred from panel to canvas and therefore can-not be cleaned without exposing much damage.
{19} It is worth noting that Antonello da Messina was court painter in Milan in 1475, and Leonardo must have studied his portraits carefully.
{20} In the 1932 edition, however, it appears as a Leonardo.
{21} The documents are accessible in Horne’s Leonardo, p. 12.
{22} See p. 143.
{23} Richter, § 1210, from Windsor Anatomical MS. C, II, 14, and so datable c. 1513.
{24} Cf. Richter, § 1210, and Trattato, § 29.
{25} Begun by an architect named Cola da Caprarola in 1508. The drawing by Leonardo which it resembles most closely is actually in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, no. 2037.
{26} Richter, § 1401, from S.K.M., II, 2. 78b.
{27} Now in the Morgan Library, New York. Cf. E. Panofsky, The Codex Huygens, London, 1940.
{28} It seems possible that Cellini’s copy also contained Leonardo’s treatise on perspective now lost. Cf. John White in Warburg and Courtauld Journal, 1949, p. 70.
{29} Cod. Vaticano Urbinate 1270. I have used the convenient edition of Angelo Borzelli, Lanciano, 1914. The standard critical edition is by H. Ludwig, Vienna, 1882. (Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte, vols. XV-XVII.)
{30} Lomazzo, Trattato, 1584, p. 158, says that this was written at the request of Ludovico Sforza to answer the question which was the nobler, painting or sculpture. Leonardo’s Paragone has been printed separately with an English translation and introduction by Irma A. Richter (Oxford, 1949).
{31} Indeed it was not even one of the seven canonical Mechanical Arts, though usually thought to be subsumed under them, cf. Cennino Cennini.
{32} Trattato, § 8.
{33} Ibid. § 19.
{34} Ibid. § 25, 26.
{35} Ibid. § 27.
{36} Trattato, § 121; see also ibid. § 133.
{37} Trattato, § 90.
{38} P. 214. Dürer copied some of the drawings on this sheet in his Dresden Sketch Book, ff. 130 verso and 133 verso. His copies are in reverse and differently distributed on the page.
{39} MS. K, 109 verso (so datable c. 1505).
{40} Trattato, § 105.
{41} Ibid. § 35.
{42} Trattato, § 84.
{43} Ibid. § 169. See also ibid. § 175.
{44} Ibid. § 175.
{45} Trattato, § 116.
{46} Trattato, § 144, 145, from the Ashburnham Codex, given in Richter, § 606, 601.
{47} Ibid. § 143, From the Ashburnham Codex, 17a, given in Richter, § 604.
{48} Ibid. § 63.
{49} Trattato, § 32.
{50} Ibid. § 48.
{51} The Codex Huygens (see p. 72) contains fourteen drawings of horses copied from Leonardo, of which only three survive in the original. The extreme complexity of the system may be judged from the fact that he dealt in fractions 1/900 of the total length of the horse. There are frequent referenced in the early sources to a treatise on the anatomy of the horse. Lomazzo says that it was burnt during the troubles in Milan in 1499. Vasari says: ‘By Leonardo we have the anatomy of the horse.’ No anatomical drawings of horse, in the strict sense of the word, have come down to us, and it is probable that Vasari was thinking of the measured drawings.
{52} Only two year earlier this wall had been covered with a fresco of the Crucifixion by a provincial Lombard named Montorfano; and dry and incompetent as this is, Ludovico can hardly have wanted Leonardo to paint over it. He probably refers to the portraits of himself and his family which occur in the fresco and seem to have been executed by Leonardo. These are now so completely effaced that no certainty is possible.
{53} Since this was written the fresco has been cleaned once more by Mauro Pellicioli, and this time the early restorations have really been removed and the little that remains seems to have been painted by Leonardo.
{54} Trattato, § 136.
{55} South Kensington Museum, Forster MS. no. II, ff 1 verso and 2 recto.
{56} These engravings present two unsolved problems. Did Leonardo execute them himself? And what is meant by the inscription? It seems to me unlikely that Leonardo practiced engraving, though one of his pupils seems to have done so with considerable skill. Cf. Blum in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, August—September 1932, pp. 89 et seq. The inscription has been taken to mean that Leonardo was head of an academy, but more probably means that the engraving was an academic exercise.
{57} Milanesi, IV, p. 93. This passage does not appear in the 1550 edition, and so was probably added as a result of Vasari’s conversations with Titian and other Venetian painters in 1566.
{58} One of them by Luini in the Poldi Pezzoli presumably has the same relation to Leonardo’s original as Luini’s Virgin and St. Anne in the Ambrosiana bears to the Burlington House cartoon.
{59} In The Study and Criticism of Italian Art, Third Series, 1916, pp. 1-37.
{60} In the Collections of Robert W. Reford, Montreal, and the Duke of Buccleuch. The latter has been claimed as the original by Möller, but seems to be a fine studio replica. The landscape, which has not been overpainted, shows that it was by a Florentine artist.
{61} At Windsor, P. 209a, 209b, 210 and P. 211 (Pl. 41).
{62} This curious hairdress is a wig, not a plaiting of Leda’s own hair. It is clearly shown as such in the Borghese copy and in Leonardo’s own drawings, beside one of which (P. 209b) he writes ‘this kind can be taken off and put on again without damaging it’. Here again we have a reminiscence of Verrocchio, who seems to have made such wigs for statues in the Medici Palace; cf. the entry in the inventory of Tommaso quoted in Cruttwell, Verrocchio, p. 86.
{63} The Chatsworth drawing may be a copy. The Rotterdam drawing is authentic.
{64} It was seen by Carducho, Dialogos de la pintura, Madrid, 1633, and described as being in the house of Giovanni Gaddi in Pisa.
{65} In the garden of Woolbeding House, Sussex, and came from Cowdray.
{66} Ed. Frey, p. 114. The account is full and circumstantial, but in the book of Antonio Billi (ed. Frey, p. 52) it is said that Leonardo was cheated over the linseed oil che gli fu falsato.
{67} This is one of the parts of Leonardo’s surviving manuscripts also included in the Trattato, § 145.
{68} Examples are in the Bargello, Louvre (Camondo Collection), Horne Museum, Florence.
{69} I now (1957) disagree with the whole of this passage. I am convinced that the picture was painted almost entirely by Leonardo himself and that the change in St. Anne’s head was part of the desire for idealization characteristic of his later work.
{70} Codice Atlantico, f. 179a, printed in Richter, § 725. On the same sheet is a study for the left hand of the Louvre St. John which confirms the late date of the estimate.
{71} The cross-hatching of sculptors’ drawings, familiar in the numerous drawings attributed to Bandinelli, but probably going back to Donatello, is of a different kind.
{72} In a note written at about this date, C.A., 159, recto C, he writes ‘il medici me creorono e desstrussono’. This may refer to doctors, but Calvi is strongly of the opinion that it refers to the Medici, Calvi, Arch. Stor. Lombardo, Anno XLIII, fasc. iii, p. 417.
{73} See the article by A. Rosenthal in Burlington Magazine, 1936, vol. 69, p. 82.
{74} Freud notes the prosaic brevity with which Leonardo records the death of his father, and, as Freud surmises, his mother.
{75} Curiously enough this practice is recommended in L. B. Alberti’s della Pittura ed. Janitschek, 1877, p. 131, which, as noted on p. 75, was well-known to Leonardo.
{76} As a matter of fact St. John points upwards, but iconographers have usually interpreted the turn of his body as implying a figure behind him.
{77} For example, British Museum MS. 270 verso.
{78} In the Codice Atlantico, f. 43 v. a. For these architectural projects for Francis I, cf. L. H. Heydenreich in Burlington Magazine, XCIV, 1952, pp. 277 ff.
{79} Destra, presumably meaning his working hand, although Leonardo was left-handed.