Leonardo da Vinci Read online

  The copy with which we usually illustrate the Battle of the Standard, the grisaille by Rubens (Pl. 43), was not made at first hand, for the original painting was obliterated fifty years before Rubens could have seen it, and he may have had no more to go on than Lorenzo Zacchia’s meagre engraving. In consequence, his version is inaccurate in many details, and the intention of the figures is better shown in the direct copy. Yet we are right to study the composition in Rubens’ version, because it is by a great artist, and one who has felt so deep a sympathy for Leonardo’s design that he has been able to recreate the rhythmic force of the original and to make some appreciation of it possible. We see that the subject gave Leonardo an opportunity of returning to the patterns and problems which had occupied his mind over twenty years earlier in the background of the Adoration. His sense of form had not changed, and for the central group of his new composition he chose the same general design: two prancing horses confronting each other, their haunches and bellies and necks, with tossed-back heads, making the same pattern of energetic curves. But, following the general trend of his development, the composition became far more compact. The free and centrifugal movement of the earlier group was given up for a design almost unbearably close knit and dense. The central group could have been realized in bronze. The small pen and ink sketches for the Battle of Anghiari with their tiny, irresponsible figures, have been developed, by some intellectual process of which we have no record, into the massive complexity of the Standard group.

  These battle cartoons of Leonardo and Michelangelo are the turning point of the Renaissance, and a whole book could be written on them—their origins, their purpose, their influence. It is not too fanciful to say that they initiate the two styles which sixteenth-century painting was to develop—the Baroque and the Classical. For the Baroque elements in Leonardo, which I have already stressed, were more forcibly present in the Anghiari cartoon than in any other of his works; and Michelangelo, although he was later to become a prophet of the Baroque, showed in his Cascina cartoon the sort of classicism which formed the mature style of Raphael and Giulio Romano. If, as is inevitable, we compare the work of the two great rivals we must agree that this Baroque element has made Leonardo’s design much superior in unity. I believe that even Michelangelo felt this; and he seems actually to have copied a part of Leonardo’s cartoon—one of the parts not painted on to the wall, and so not shown in later copies, but traceable in Leonardo’s drawings. We must also admit, as all contemporaries agreed, that Leonardo excelled in richness of dramatic invention, giving a greater passion to the whole scene and to individual heads. Of this we can still judge, since several of his studies of the heads survive, and show the fury of slaughter which is so vividly described in his notes on how to paint a battle. Here again we notice one of the apparent contradictions of his nature. The famous military engineer, the inventor of monstrous war-machines, the friend of Cesare Borgia, was by all accounts a man of unusual tenderness, to whom the destruction of any living organism was repulsive. War he referred to as a pazzia bestialissima, most beastly madness. We can imagine how these feelings, conflicting with his intellectual interest in war as an art, gave to the Anghiari cartoon an added intensity in the expression of horror.

  Contemporaries were also unanimous that Leonardo excelled in the representation of horses. He had so designed the subject as to give this admitted superiority full play and Vasari tells us how these horses played a leading part in the drama, ‘for rage, hatred, and revenge’, he says, ‘are seen in them no less than in the men.’ Of this, also, we are in a measure able to judge, as some of his horse studies for the battle have come down to us (Pl. 44).

  But when all this had been granted, a Florentine of that date would have decided in favour of Michelangelo, on account of the matchless beauty of his nudes. Leonardo felt this, and during this period made a number of magnificent nude studies. It is impossible to imagine better drawings of the nude than that on Pl. 45; as an actual study of muscular torso Michelangelo could hardly have excelled it, and in fact the heroic pose and treatment shows Michelangelo’s influence. But although Leonardo could master the nude when he chose, he was not prepared to make it the main subject of a composition. It gave too little opportunity for his love of fantastic invention, his unexpected imagery—in short for the expression of that anti-classical side of his character to which I have more than once referred. The Anghiari cartoon may have had a classic firmness and coherency; but in spirit, like the Adoration, it was a romantic masterpiece—a precursor of Tintoretto, Rubens, and Delacroix. Thus it was outside the main current of its time. Contemporaries could not ignore its marvellous qualities of drawing and design, and we know that it influenced the mannerist painters of the next generation. But Michelangelo with his severe concentration on the nude, his passionate research for noble and expressive form, seemed to offer a firmer and, perhaps, a shorter way to excellence, and it was the Battle of Cascina which captivated the younger artists of the time.

  On 30 May 1506, Leonardo was granted leave from the Signoria to return to Milan for three months, at the urgent request of the governor, Charles d’Amboise, Lord of Chaumont; and before the time was out Amboise wrote asking that it might be prolonged ‘since we still have need of the master Leonardo to furnish us with a certain work which we have had him begin’. What was the work so urgently required and so discreetly left unnamed? We have not the smallest indication. One possibility is that he was required to finish work on the London version of the Virgin of the Rocks. It is true that the tone of Amboise’s correspondence suggests a more personal interest than he would have displayed on behalf of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. Nevertheless, there is more than literary convenience in favour of discussing the picture at this point.

  In 1506 Ambrogio da Predis (acting for Leonardo) and the Confraternity finally agreed to a settlement of their long dispute. After stating that the altar-piece had been commissioned in 1483 and was to have been finished in a year; and establishing that payments had already been much in excess of the sum originally contracted, the judges go on to say: ‘Whereas the said altar-piece has not been finished at the said time, and is even now unfinished...the Master Leonardo and Ambrogio Preda...are bound and shall be obliged to finish or cause to be finished well the said altar-piece on which is painted the figure of the most glorious Virgin Mary. And this shall be done within the limit of two years from now, by the hand of the said Master Leonardo, provided that he comes to this city of Milan within that time and not otherwise.’ This was signed on 27 April; on 30 May Leonardo arrived in Milan. In 1507 and 1508 he was paid 100 lire a year by the Confraternity. We may therefore reasonably suppose that the greater part of the paint visible in the National Gallery picture was put on then. We must, however, admit that when the composition was laid in, presumably at a much earlier stage, Leonardo had already modified its quattrocento character. Thus the figures have been made larger in relation to the panel (the National Gallery panel is actually a fraction smaller, but gives the reverse impression) and the distracting motive of the Angel’s hand pointing at the Infant John has been suppressed. Probably its Florentine insistence on the Forerunner was distasteful to a body dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. An analogous change has been made in the heads, which have been redesigned under the influence of Leonardo’s later theories of painting. The types have lost their gothic freshness and naturalism, but approximate more closely to an ideal. The Infant Christ, in particular, has gained in seriousness and a sense of dawning inspiration. Contrary to the best critical opinion of the last fifty years I believe that Leonardo took a considerable share in the execution. Many of the details are drawn with a delicacy quite beyond a pupil, and with Leonardo’s own feeling for living tissue. Unfortunately much of the surface has been damaged by repainting and, even after cleaning, it is hard to say where Leonardo’s work ends and a pupil’s begins. The most difficult part to explain is the Virgin’s head. It is heavy and devoid of inner life: yet the execution
is delicate and shows the marks of thumb and palm in the thin paint, which are to be found in all the best passages in the picture.

  The angel’s head, on the other hand, which departs entirely from the Paris version, is a classic invention of great beauty (Pl. 47); and no one who has looked at it closely can doubt who was responsible for the mouth and chin, and the characteristic curves of the golden hair.

  Although much can be said in praise of the National Gallery Virgin of the Rocks, it falls far short of the Louvre picture in every kind of beauty and must be partly pupil’s work, which pupil we do not know. He is generally supposed to be Predis, owing to the references to his name in the settlement. But these seem to be of an official character. The Confraternity had never shown any enthusiasm for his work; and in fact those passages of the London Virgin of the Rocks which are clearly by a pupil are not at all in the dry, Milanese manner of Predis. The pupil whose style seems to bear most resemblance is the author of a Virgin and Child at Zürich, in which the Virgin’s head is almost a replica of that in the London Virgin of the Rocks. The Zürich picture is signed FR L T A, and Suida has suggested that this is the Spaniard Fernando de Llanos, who is more than once recorded as having assisted Leonardo on the Battle of Anghiari.

  With the Battle of Anghiari still unfinished Leonardo could not stay away from Florence for long, and when, in September 1506, Charles d’Amboise wrote asking for a prolongation of his visit to Milan, the Signoria sent a stiff answer. ‘May your excellency excuse us from coming to an agreement about a day with Leonardo da Vinci who has not borne himself as he ought to have done towards this republic, in that he has received a good sum of money and has made little beginning of a great work which he is under obligation to execute, and has already comported himself as a laggard; with deference to your Excellency.’ There is no evidence that Leonardo was in the least disturbed by these accusations, and he continued to work in Milan for another year. His return to Florence in the autumn of 1507 was occasioned solely by a lawsuit with his brothers following the death of his father, and he does not seem to have added another stroke to the Battle of Anghiari. During the whole of the year 1507 Leonardo was working for the King of France and we know that amongst other things he executed a Madonna and Child. Pandolfini, the Florentine ambassador at the Court of Louis XII, who was trying to effect Leonardo’s recall to Florence, describes how the King’s admiration of him was occasioned by ‘a little picture from his hand which has lately been brought here, and is held to be a most excellent work’. Pandolfini then gives an account of an interview with the King which shows in a vivid way the esteem and affection in which Leonardo was held.

  Being this morning in the presence of the most Christian King (he writes), his Majesty called for me and said: ‘Your Government must do something for me. Write to them that I want Master Leonardo, their painter, to work for me. And see that your Government are firm with him and command him to serve me at once, and not to leave Milan until I come there. He is a good master and I wish to have several things from his hand.’ I then asked his Majesty what works he desired from Leonardo, and he answered, ‘Certain small panels of Our Lady and other things as the fancy shall take me; and perhaps I shall also cause him to make my own portrait.’

  The King and the Ambassador then went on to speak of ‘the perfection and the other qualities of Leonardo’.

  His Majesty asked (says Pandolfini) if I knew him. I replied that he was a close friend of mine. ‘Then write him some verses’, said the King, ‘telling him not to leave Milan at the same time as your Governors are writing to him from Florence’, and for this reason I wrote a verse to the said Leonardo, letting him know the good will of his Majesty and congratulating him on the news.

  The letters were written, the Signoria were forced to give up their claim, and Leonardo became in a sense court painter to the King of France. His immediate patron, however, was d’Amboise, who looked after his interest, and had disposal of his pictures. Amongst these were the little panels of Our Lady, which are mentioned in a letter from Leonardo to Chaumont dated in the spring of 1508. ‘I send Salai to inform your Excellency’, he writes, ‘that I am almost at the end of my lawsuit with my brothers and hope to be in Milan by Easter and bring with me two pictures in which are two madonnas of different sizes which I have begun for the most Christian King, or for whoever shall please you.’ In an earlier draft of the letter Leonardo wrote ‘which are finished’ instead of ‘which I have begun’, and in a letter written shortly after he speaks of them as condotti in assai bon punto. Even allowing for Leonardo’s usual dilatoriness we may presume that the pictures were finished from the very fact that we have no further correspondence about them, and it is sad to think that both are lost. We have not even the academic consolation of knowing for certain what these Madonnas were like, since no drawings of the subject date from the period. But a picture known as the Madonna of the Cherries, which undoubtedly reflects a design by Leonardo, may, on grounds of costume, be dated in these years. All of the numerous replicas are by Flemish artists including Joos von Cleve, which suggests that the picture was sent out of Italy almost as soon as it was painted.

  Leonardo seems to have spent the winter of 1507-8 in Florence engaged in the lawsuit with his brothers, and the British Museum MS. opens with the note, ‘begun in March 1508 in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli’. In the same house lived Gian Francesco Rustici, the sculptor, author of the famous group of the Baptist between a Pharisee and a Levite which stands over the north door of the Florentine Baptistery. ‘While Gian Francesco was at work on the clay model for this group’, says Vasari, ‘he wished no one to come near him except Leonardo da Vinci who in making the moulds, preparing the armature, and in short at every point, right up to the casting of the statues, never left him; hence some believe that Leonardo worked at them with his own hand, or at least helped Gian Francesco with advice and good judgement.’ Vasari repeats this in his life of Leonardo. ‘In statuary he gave proofs of his skill in three figures of bronze which stand over the north door of the Baptistery executed by Gian Francesco Rustici, but contrived with the counsel of Leonardo.’ We can see at once that Vasari’s statement is correct. In type and gesture the figures are profoundly Leonardesque. The Pharisee stands in the contemplative attitude of the old man in the Uffizi Adoration. The frowning, hairless Levite is very close to the Budapest studies of heads for the Battle of Anghiari. In both, the drapery is so close to the draperies of the various St. Annes that it was either executed by Leonardo or taken directly from his drawings, and the pose of St. John is a variation of the angel in Leonardo’s lost picture which used to belong to the Grand Duke Cosimo. The work of Rustici would therefore seem to be our best guide to Leonardo’s sculpture at this period, and it is worth examining a group of small pieces in various materials which have been reasonably attributed to Rustici.{68} These represent struggles of mounted men, and are conceived with a passion and a close-knit complexity of movement which derive from the cartoon of Anghiari. I think it possible that Leonardo himself executed small wax figures of horses with which to build up the composition of his cartoon. Some such practice is suggested by a note beside one of his drawings (P. 202), ‘make a little one of wax about four inches long’, and this may be the explanation of a small bronze which has been widely accepted as being Leonardo’s own work, the horse and rider in the Museum of Budapest. The horse is very like some of those which appear in the studies for Anghiari, and reproduces almost exactly the pose and character of a horse on a sheet of studies at Windsor (Pl. 46). But although the Budapest bronze is so Leonardesque in movement, the surface modelling shows a lack of tension hardly conceivable in Leonardo’s authentic work, and I am inclined to think that it is the work of a pupil who had before him one of Leonardo’s smaller wax models. He has been able to reproduce the character of the original, but with a certain emptiness natural to an enlargement.

  One of the few recorded pieces of Leonardo’s sculpture is the lost terracotta head of the
child Christ which the sixteenth-century painter and theorist Lomazzo describes as being in his own collection. Of this I believe we have a relatively clear record in two red chalk drawings at Windsor (P. 170, 171a). These are studies of a child’s head and shoulders in a sculpturesque pose and in each Leonardo has cut off the body with a horizontal line drawn just below the breasts, a device wholly uncharacteristic of him unless he had in mind a piece of sculpture. One of them (P. 170), shows the head and shoulders in profile; the child’s head is very like that of the infant Christ in the London Virgin of the Rocks, and the same drawing was evidently used for both; the other (P. 171a) shows the child’s bust drawn from both back and front in exactly the same pose, further indication that these are studies for sculpture. The handling of the chalk suggests a date about 1500, but the connexion with the second version of the Virgin of the Rocks would make the drawings later. These drawings suggest that the terracotta was modelled with that extreme morbidezza of surface which must have characterized Leonardo’s sculpture. It is precisely the absence of sensitive surface modelling which prevents us from attributing to Leonardo’s own hand the wax bust of Flora in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. This insensitiveness is partly due to the restorations of a sculptor named Lucas, whose son afterwards claimed that his father had fabricated the whole piece. The claim was widely believed at the time, and made the pretext of malicious attacks on Dr. Bode, but it cannot be substantiated. Nothing in Lucas’s work suggests that he was capable of the noble movement of the Flora, and the evidence advanced of his authorship only proved that he had subjected the bust to a severe restoration. The original texture is still visible in the breast, and presumably Lucas reduced the head to its present dull uniformity of surface. Bode was right in seeing this piece as a clear indication of Leonardo’s later sculpture, in which he gave plastic expression to the problems of form attempted in the Leda and the later St. John. The solution of these problems, in the St. John at least, loses something of its clarity through Leonardo’s interest in the counter-problem of chiaroscuro, and in the Flora, before her restoration, we should, perhaps, have been able to enjoy Leonardo’s formal invention with less distraction than in his late painting. In her present condition she is only another of those mutilated documents through which, alas, so much of Leonardo’s art must be reconstructed.