Leonardo da Vinci Read online

  One picture of this period remains to be discussed, the small Annunciation in the Louvre. It is a work of unusual perfection. Unlike the Annunciation in the Uffizi, it is composed with complete mastery of spatial intervals. The handling is precise but sensitive, and some passages, such as the angel’s wing, are evidence of a steady, penetrating eye. We can praise it more unreservedly than almost any of Leonardo’s works of this period, and having done so, it may seem paradoxical to doubt its authenticity. It is now certain, however, that the Louvre picture is part of the predella of an altar-piece in the Cathedral of Pistoja, documented as a Verrocchio and executed by Lorenzo di Credi; and there is in Detroit a small panel representing San Donato of Arezzo and a tax-collector which has no great charm, but is manifestly part of the same predella. The Louvre Annunciation is thus in the position of a beautiful orphan who is suddenly discovered to have a number of undesirable relations. True, it was not uncommon for a predella to be executed by a different artist, and at a different time, to the main part of an altar-piece; and Leonardo might have been attracted by the task while the empty frame was waiting, as it did for ten years, in Verrocchio’s workshop. But a careful analysis of style supports the documentary evidence. The flowers lack Leonardo’s sense of growth, the hands and draperies are exactly similar to those in the Dreyfus Madonna; and a conclusion that it is one more example of Credi’s precocious talent seems to be irresistible.

  Looking back on the paintings done by Leonardo in Verrocchio’s studio, we see that they form an intelligible series, recognizably by the same hand as the Virgin of the Rocks. But it is not surprising that an earlier generation of critics was unable to accept them as his. They differ in many ways from his later painting, and are particularly unlike the exaggerated pupil’s work on which the conception of Leonardo’s style was formerly based. Of the scientific approach to picture-making, which expressed itself in the use of chiaroscuro and contraposto, they are almost entirely innocent; and they have little of that sense of mystery, that disturbing quality of expression which comes first to mind at the mention of Leonardo’s name. Moreover, we must admit that the early pictures are less good than we should expect them to be. Only one of them, the Liechtenstein portrait, is wholly successful as a work of art. The others must be enjoyed in detail or ‘read backwards’ in the light of his later work.

  But it would be unfair to judge the young Leonardo on his surviving paintings alone. Throughout life he was an untiring draughtsman and a larger number of his drawings have survived than of any other Re-naissance painter. It is these which allow us to follow the continuous process of his growth as an artist, and it is in the drawings of this early period that we see his promise in relation to his maturity. Nothing in his later work surpasses in spontaneity his pen and ink sketches of the Mother and Child (Pl. 10), nor in a kind of austere delicacy the silverpoint study for the head of the Madonna Litta (Pl. 19). At twenty-five Leonardo had the rapid perception and the rhythmic discipline of hand of a Watteau or a Degas. But how little this tells us about the painter of the Last Supper! In these early drawings he floats so swiftly on the stream of his talent that he is hardly aware of its depths—those unfathomable depths into which he was afterwards to peer so intently. It was not by improving or refining upon these gifts that he evolved the massive and mysterious structure of his art, but by employing them with an intellectual power of which his early work gives us hardly any indication. But before this process had begun to fade the quattrocento freshness of his vision, he was to attempt one great composition in which his genius for swift notation was for the first time controlled by his speculative intelligence: the Adoration of the Magi from San Donato a Scopeto.

  CHAPTER TWO—1481-1490

  BY grouping together Leonardo’s early pictures of the Virgin and Child, I have been forced out of strict chronology. I must now return to a period in the late 1470s to find the roots of Leonardo’s first great composition, the Adoration of the Kings, now in the Uffizi. As is the case with most great artists, Leonardo’s energies were throughout life devoted to the exploration of a limited number of subjects, each one taken up, sketched, attempted, abandoned, reconsidered, and not brought to a final shape till all its expressive possibilities were exhausted. It is in following such transformations, or perhaps I should call them excavations—for with each change a deeper layer of Leonardo’s spirit is brought to light—that we learn most of his art.

  The sources of the Uffizi Adoration are to be found in sketches for a very different composition, the most important of which are three pen and ink drawings in the Musée Bonnat (Pl. 11), the Venice Academy (P. 40) and the Hamburg Kunsthalle (P. 41). These drawings, by their short firm shading, are datable about 1478. The number of studies which can be related to them show that this was an important commission. Perhaps it was for the altar-piece in the Chapel of St. Bernard in the Signoria, commissioned in 1478, but never finished. The subject of these sketches was the Nativity, and the Bonnat drawing shows the adoring shepherds forming two sides of a square in the centre of which the Virgin kneels behind the holy children. It is the type of formal composition which Leonardo would have learnt in Verrocchio’s shop, and in fact it became a favourite with his fellow pupils. Perugino used it with variations, for example, in the Villa Albani triptych, and Credi, in a picture at Berlin, imitated exactly the central figures. Closely connected by style with these drawings of the whole composition is a series of studies at Windsor of raw-boned horses, some cropping the grass with outstretched necks, and a sketch of the ox and the ass. All these studies suggest that the scene was conceived in a traditional spirit, rustic, homely, realistic. In some of the shepherds we recognize motives which reappear in the Uffizi Adoration—young men with similar gestures of wonder, and an old man in meditation. The Virgin with the children gives, as we shall see, a first hint of the composition of the Virgin of the Rocks. Yet, as a whole, the lost Adoration, in contrast to the Uffizi picture, must have come from the surface of Leonardo’s imagination.

  Externally this contrast is expressed in a change of subject. The fable of the Adoring Shepherds is abandoned in favour of the allegory of the Adoring Kings. I doubt if this change was dictated by Leonardo’s patrons, for artists at that date took great liberties with the subjects commissioned; more probably it signified a change in Leonardo himself. During his apprenticeship he had learnt the current forms of Florentine art, and his first instinct was to reproduce them, with uncommon delicacy and a certain overtone of poetry, but no striking deviation. But as Leonardo penetrated beneath the surface of professional skill, he discovered a strange visionary world, demanding expression in very different forms. This change was gradual and seems to have antedated the commission for the San Donato altar-piece, for we find in certain drawings connected with the earlier composition a hint of the rhythms which were to dominate the later. Beside prosaic horses, with angular necks stretched down to feed (P. 55), are wild ethereal horses, with nervous heads thrown back (P. 59). They are the spies and outriders of Leonardo’s imagination entering the world of conventional Florentine art, soon to be followed by the mysterious company which fills the Uffizi Adoration.

  In studying the Adoration of the Kings it is usual to take as a point of departure the drawing in the Louvre formerly in the Galichon Collection, which shows one of his early attempts to arrive at the whole composition. It is a relatively feeble drawing. The touch is weak, the emphasis diffused, as if Leonardo was thinking aloud. But already he has discovered one of the chief motives of the final picture, the flow of adoration conveyed by figures kneeling and bending forward; and this is already contrasted with the detached vertical figure of the philosopher. He has also hit on the architectural motive of the background—the courtyard of a ruined palace of which only one side, with two staircases and a gallery, remains. Like the rest of the sheet, this architectural background is drawn with curious uncertainty and lack of perspective; and to correct this Leonardo made the only other study for the whole composition which has
come down to us (Pl. 12). This sheet, now in the Uffizi, is one of the most revealing of all his drawings. Ostensibly it is an exercise in formal perspective of a type common in Florence since Brunelleschi. The staircase wall of the courtyard with its two flights and elaborate arcades was sufficient pretext for such a study and is rendered with great mastery. Actually it is our earliest evidence of Leonardo’s scientific attainments, and from the first science is made the scaffolding for his imagination. For this carefully measured courtyard has been invaded by an extraordinary retinue of ghosts; wild horses rear and toss their heads, agitated figures dart up the staircase and in and out of the arcades; and a camel, appearing for the first and last time in Leonardo’s work, adds its exotic bulk to the dreamlike confusion of forms.

  This drawing must date from an advanced stage in the development of the composition, since Leonardo has decided to transfer the staircase to the left, a decision involving some certainty in the disposition of the foreground figures. It is an indication of the immense pains he took over all his work that in the final version this elaborate drawing was not used. The ruined staircases were retained on the same plan, but in a different perspective.

  In addition to these composition studies we have a number of drawings which can be related to the Uffizi Adoration. The most magical of these are silverpoint studies of horses (P. 64, P. 65), in which the delicate medium is used to give a curious lunar quality of light (Pl. 13). The figure sketches are in pen and ink, drawn with the light rapid stroke of Pollajuolo (P. 43). They are notes of action, and some are simply leaves from sketchbooks of about this date, to which he naturally turned for suitable poses, following that practice which he was afterwards to recommend in the Trattato (95) of collecting and composing, in the long winter evenings, the nude studies done in the preceding summer. Others were done with the Adoration in mind, and show him preoccupied with two figures in particular, the youth bending forward with an expression of wonder, and the old man standing aloof in meditation (P. 48). Both appear in perfected forms in the Uffizi picture, but for most of the figures no preliminary sketch survives. Our drawings for the Adoration, relatively abundant, can only be a fraction of the whole.

  The final composition has been made the subject of much ingenious analysis, some of it more exhaustive than the unfinished state of the picture will allow (Pl. 14). But I may point out how the simple parallelism of the earlier compositions has been entirely superseded. Instead, the main lines form a triangle backed by an arc. The right side of the triangle is a relatively straight line from the kneeling King’s foot to St. Joseph, and is echoed in the background by the line of the staircases. The left side rises in a series of curves, which are repeated in the arcades of the ruin, and supported by the leading gestures and glances. Round this triangle, an arc of shadowy figures flows like the Stream of Ocean of Ptolemaic geography. To stabilize this restless pattern Leonardo has placed four verticals, the two trees near the centre of the triangle, the two upright figures at its bases.

  Even this bare, geometrical analysis of the composition gives a hint of its dramatic meaning. The symbolical homage of wisdom and science to a new faith is firmly expressed by the main figures; but pressing round them, like ghosts from the magical paganism of Apuleius, are those evasive creatures which writers on Leonardo are content to call angels. In the background, agitation of spirit inhabits the half-ruined construction of the intelligence. There remain the two figures at the sides, which seem to stand outside the scene, like leaders of a Greek chorus.{10} To the left is the philosopher, whose noble form we saw in evolution. Morally and materially he has the grandeur of one of Masaccio’s apostles. Opposite the Masaccio is a Giorgione: for no other name will fit the deeply romantic figure of a youth in armour on the right. He looks out of the picture with complete indifference, and as is usual with such detached figures a tradition has grown up that Leonardo has here portrayed himself. Whether or not this is true in a literal sense we cannot tell but the student of Leonardo may feel that in these two figures of youth and age, moral and physical beauty, active and passive intelligence, he has indeed represented his own spirit, symbolizing his dual nature as he does in those familiar expressions of his unconscious mind, the contrasted profiles (see p. 70).

  The Adoration is an overture to all Leonardo’s work, full of themes which will recur. Joseph has the emphatic grimace of St. Andrew in the Last Supper; the bearded King who raises his hand to his head anticipates St. Peter; the beautiful profile of a young man standing one away from him is very close to St. Philip, as we know him in the Windsor drawing (Pl. 33). Between them an old man with sunken eyes bears an obvious resemblance to the Vatican St. Jerome; and amongst the angels is one who raises his hand to point upward his outstretched finger (Pl. 15), a gesture which so obsessed Leonardo that his imitators made it into a sort of trade mark. Most remarkable of all is the skirmish of horsemen in the background, which derives from an earlier project of mounted men fighting a dragon and was used again twenty-five years later as the central motive of the Battle of Anghiari. This recurrence of relatively few forms, noticeable in the work of all great draughtsmen, does not of course spring from a poverty of invention, but serves, rather, to distinguish art from imitation. Out of the wealth of nature only a few shapes can be made to fit the artist’s inner vision, and so become recreated images; and the development of such an artist as Leonardo is not marked by the frequent discovery of new forms but by the rendering of inherent forms more finally expressive.

  It is one of the ironies of art history that the Adoration, the most revolutionary and anti-classical picture of the fifteenth century, should have helped to furnish that temple of academic orthodoxy, Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura. When in 1509 Raphael embarked on his first great compositions, Leonardo’s Adoration was already twenty-eight years old; yet it remained the most dramatic and most highly organized composition of its kind, and Vasari tells us how Raphael stood before it speechless, wondering at the expressiveness of the heads and the grace and movement of the figures. This quality of vital grace he strove to imitate by borrowing directly poses and expressions from the Adoration: and as with the Madonna groups he was able to assimilate them to his own style, so that at first we are hardly conscious that the figures bending and kneeling to the left of the Disputà owe anything to Leonardo. But the School of Athens shows us that this process of assimilation was gradual. In the great cartoon for this composition in the Ambrosiana the Leonardesque borrowings are very obvious. Two figures in particular, an elderly Pythagorean and an oriental, are not only Leonardo’s types, but have retained some of his peculiar intensity, which strikes a disturbing note in the general calm of the composition. Raphael has not been able to shake off what Blake would have called the outrageous demon of Leonardo. In the final fresco, by subtle modifications of emphasis, order is restored, and the disturbed shades of Leonardo are transformed into Raphael’s noble, confident humanity.

  By his contract with the monks of San Donato a Scopeto, dated March 1481, Leonardo undertook to finish the altar-piece in twenty-four or at most thirty months. During July and August he was paid regularly, but after 28 September there is no further payment, and we can infer that the picture had reached its present stage. The Uffizi Adoration is the work of seven months: a fact which forces us to reflect on the significance of the word finish. No doubt the picture is unfinished; parts of it are lost in darkness—many of the heads and hands have no bodies; and parts are merely sketched on the ground, so that they seem to be dissolved in light. The central figure of the Virgin and Child is little more than a large drawing. Moreover, the whole clarity of the composition depends on leaving the Virgin and chief magi blank against the circle of dark figures; and an academic critic might say that Leonardo has made the common mistake of young painters who attempt large compositions: he has made the greater part of it too dark. All this would be relevant if the creation of works of art were a sort of obstacle race, in which that painter won who overcame the greatest number of dif
ficulties. But finish is only of value when it is a true medium of expression. To have carried the Adoration any further without depriving it of magic would have taxed even Leonardo’s genius, and would have taken him seven years instead of seven months. For one tiling the composition is immensely ambitious. The precepts of classical art had warned the painter above all things to avoid representing a crowd; but the figures in the Adoration are innumerable—as we begin to count them they vanish and reappear, like fish in a muddy pool.{11} To have brought every one of them to the conventional degree of finish, without destroying the unity of the whole, would have required years of labour and mature skill. Moreover, the whole subject is conceived in a spirit opposed to clear statement. It is an allegory, with an allegory’s equivocations; a dream, with the dissolving protagonists of a dream. The Virgin and Child, Joseph and the chief magi, these are clear enough, and capable of further elaboration (Pl. 16). But in that circle of adorers, peering, swaying, gesticulating, are many of those half-formed thoughts which must remain inarticulate unless they are expressed by a hint or a cadence. Nowhere else in Italian art, unless perhaps in the Tempesta of Giorgione, are intuitions so remote and so fragile given visible shape. Could they have survived the Florentine ideal of finish?