The High Renaissance

§ 6. Leonardo da Vinci (1452—1519)

The history of western civilization records no man as gifted as Leonardo da Vinci. He was outstanding as painter, sculptor, musician, architect, engineer, scientist and philosopher, and was unquestionably the most glittering personality of the High Renaissance in Italy. Leonardo was renowned in a period that produced such giants as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian, and his fame, unlike that of many of the great masters has suffered no eclipse to this day.

Leonardo da Vinci was born in Tuscany, the illegitimate son of a successful notary and a peasant mother. By 1469 Leonardo was living in Florence where he served an apprenticeship with Verrocchio, who, to quote an old story, "gave up the brush when his pupil proved a greater artist than he." Even as a youth he dis­played an aptitude for all manner of achievement, a winning charm, and a personal strength and beauty which have become almost legendary.

Few of Leonardo’s paintings have come down to us: only about eighteen in all, some left unfinished, some damaged or deteriorat­ed as a result of his experimental techniques, and others ob­scured by discoloured varnish.

Before Leonardo, there had been two parallel trends in Ital­ian painting: the monumental scientific side represented by Masaccio and the more decorative, linear and poetic side, expressed in Botticelli. Leonardo achieved a combination of these two trends. His impressive idealised forms are worked out with every consideration for scientific knowledge, and yet seem surrounded by an aura of poetic sentiment. By the 'eighties of the fifteenth century, however, he far outshone his predecessors and contemporaries in the monumental composition of his paintings and the stress he laid on visual plasticity.

The earliest work from Leonardo's hand which we know today is the angel in profile at the left in Andrea del Verrocchio's "The Baptism of Christ", painted probably in the early 1470's when Leonardo was still in Verrocchio's workshop. In Verroc­chio's workshop Leonardo could obtain the best education of his time, not only in art but in independent and scientific think­ing. In those days the artists had to do everything themselves without outside help; they got ready suitable panels or canvases, ground and mixed pigments, prepared oils, varnishes, and glues. It was Verrocchio who not only transmitted the artistic ideals of Donatello to Leonardo, but who also transmitted to him many technicalities of scientific research and the love of science.

In Verrocchio's studio Leonardo nourished his mind and exercised his skill in every possible way. It seems that his ear­liest efforts were in the field of drawing and sculpture, yet he had also begun to paint, and his first masterpiece "The Adoration of the Magi" was produced shortly after leaving Verrocchio's work­shop in 1481. It was not finished and it remains today as Leo­nardo left it, with only the first brown underpainting laid on.

Unfortunately, he was too busy with a host of other projects to finish many pictures. One of the greatest of the few he left is "The Madonna of the Rocks". Here, in one painting, are the qualities that make Leonardo a typical artist of the late or High Renaissance: an increasingly idealised portrayal of human beings and a formal, mathematical arrangement of the persons in the pic­ture. The conception of the children in this picture, the gently smiling angel and the otherworldly Madonna, all contribute a feeling of more than human nobility and perfection. The figures move in a dignified, restrained way, their gestures have a solem­nity and poise that are seldom found in ordinary people.

The most characteristic device of almost all High Renaissance artists is to fit the figures into a specific geometrical pattern: a pyramid in this conception of the Madonna, a circle in Bot­ticelli's pictures, a parallelogram or a circle in Raphael's. This gives a systematic and ordered quality to the works of the High Re­naissance.

In Milan Leonardo worked on many important projects in­cluding "The Madonna of the Rocks" and The Last Supper". The latter (perhaps the best-known painting in the world) offers

one of the finest instances of a rigid geometric enclosure. Every­thing turns inward toward the head of Christ, even the expressive gestures of his own hands. In spite of the great excitement with­in the work, complete formal control is maintained. We can appreciate the artist's way of presenting the human drama where Christ discloses to his followers quietly that soon one of their number is to betray him and their cause. It is the reaction of the followers, the study of people and their attitude to a shocking announcement that the great artist is concerned with.

In fact, Leonardo's main contribution to art was the way he rendered the real world around him. He made a human being look as if you could step into the flat surface of the picture and walk around behind it. This was possible because of his understanding of light and shade and of perspective. In the profound composition, the calm of the figure of Christ is in poignant contrast with the tragic turmoil his words have caused among his disciples. The figures of the apostles standing out as in high relief are illuminated by a clear and penetrating light, behind them are shadow and the orderly architectural details of the room, and beyond the win­dows, a landscape bathed in twilight glow. There is, in "The Last Supper" an imposing grandeur of conception and a powerful plas­ticity in the forms.

Unfortunately he tried out some new ideas with the paint that he used and this was to prove most fatal as the picture began to peel and blister only a few years after it was finished. "The Last Supper" is now only a ghost of its original self. It was painted on a wall of the refectory of the Convent of Dominican Friars, in Milan, at the order of Lodovico Sforza. It was painted not in true fresco but in an experimental oil technique and in a short time began to deteriorate because of the dampness of the wall.

However, no matter how badly preserved Leonardo's paint­ings may be, they all command our attention by a strange and in­timate fascination. Unlike other Renaissance painters who sought to convey a clear and understandable message through their paint­ings, Leonardo created an enigma, a problem to which he gives no answer. There is a deep and complex inner life to his figures that finds a parallel only in those of Rembrandt.

The personality of Mona Lisa, for instance, impresses itself upon us vividly but there is always something about her which we cannot grasp. "Mona Lisa" is one of Leonardo's greatest works because of its plasticity, the delicate rendering of light and shade, and the poetic use of his so-called "sfumato" to emphasize the gentleness and serenity of the sitter's face and the beauty of her hands. It is the supreme example of Leonardo's unique ability to create a masterpiece which lies between the realm of poetry and the concrete realism of a portrait. That is why the painting is so disquieting and why it has aroused so many divergent theories. Actually, the portrait is the fusion of Leonardo's artistic beliefs: the idea that it is humanly possible to represent nature visually in all the fullness of its realism; the deep nostalgia, characteris­tic of Leonardo's generation, for a calm and remote beauty; and the individual characterisation which was the aim of Renais­sance portraiture. The landscape background is a splendid page of romanticised geology, a natural lock, below, holding back the blue lake and the river.

Leonardo's facility of execution is without limit. Nature seems to present no problem that he does not solve. His draughts­manship is always effortless and perfectly accurate whether in flowers, as in the foreground of "The Virgin of the Rocks", in the human figure or in distant mountains, as in the background of "The Saint Anne". The forms are strong and convincing. They are modelled with extraordinary subtlety so that the surface has a delicate living quality, an excellent example of which is the strange mobile smile of Mona Lisa. The use of half light and soft shadows increases this effect. The important parts of Leonar­do's paintings are emphasized by greater clarity of light where­as the background is treated in mysterious half shadows.

Little is known about his colour, but judging from the recent cleaning of the London version of "The Virgin of the Rocks" it was generally subdued for the sake of the greater delicacy of modelling with occasional brighter accents of cold contrasting tones that add to the strange and mysterious atmosphere.

The only authentic self portrait of Leonardo done in red chalk in his last years is executed in a firm, clear style.