In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was
apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea
di Cione, known as Verrocchio. Verrocchio's workshop was at the centre
of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo
of an education in the humanities. Other famous painters apprenticed
or associated with the workshop include Ghirlandaio, Perugino,
Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo would have been exposed to
a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn
drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting,
leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic
skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.
Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by
his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with
Verrocchio on his Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding
Jesus's robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that
Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.This is probably
an exaggeration. On close examination, the painting reveals much that
has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new
technique of oil paint, the landscape, the rocks that can be seen
through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus
bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.
Leonardo himself may have been the model for two
works by Verrocchio, including the bronze statue of David in the
Bargello and the Archangel Michael in Tobias and the Angel.
By 1472, at the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the
Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but
even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment
to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him.
Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of
the Arno valley, drawn on August 5, 1473.
He was commissioned to paint an altarpiece in 1478 for the Chapel of
St Bernard and The Adoration of the Magi in 1481 for the Monks of San
Donato a Scopeto. This important commission was interrupted when
Leonardo went to Milan.
In 1482 Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a most talented
musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head.
Lorenzo de’ Medici sent Leonardo, bearing the lyre as a gift, to
Milan, to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.At this
time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the
many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field
of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint.
Leonardo continued work in Milan between 1482 and 1499. He was
commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of
the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of
Santa Maria delle Grazie.While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495
Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his
taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral
expenditure suggests that she was his mother.
He worked on many different projects for Ludovico, including the
preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for
a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument
to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor. Seventy tons of bronze
were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for
several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay
model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two
large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's statue of
Gattemelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice,
and became known as the "Gran Cavallo".
Leonardo began making detailed plans for its
casting, however, Michelangelo rudely implied that Leonardo was unable
to cast it. In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for
cannons to defend the city from invasion by Charles VIII.
At the start of the Second Italian War in 1499, the invading French
troops used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target
practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his
assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan
for Venice, where he was employed as a military architect and
engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.
On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of
the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were
provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created
the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the
Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young
and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great
festival". In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the
son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer
and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.He returned to
Florence where he rejoined the Guild of St Luke on October 18, 1503,
and spent two years designing and painting a great mural of The Battle
of Anghiari for the Signoria, with Michelangelo designing its
companion piece, The Battle of Cascina. In Florence in 1504, he was
part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will,
Michelangelo's statue of David.
In 1506 he returned to Milan. Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils
or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan,
including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco
D'Oggione. However, he did not stay in Milan for long because his
father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to
sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508
he was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in
the parish of Santa Babila.
From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much
of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where
Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. In October
1515, François I of France recaptured Milan. On December 19, Leonardo
was present at the meeting of Francois I and Pope Leo X, which took
place in Bologna. It was for Francois that Leonardo was commissioned
to make a mechanical lion which could walk forward, then open its
chest to reveal a cluster of lilies. In 1516, he entered François'
service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé near the
king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he
spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and
apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, supported by a pension totalling
10,000 scudi.
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I had
become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo's
head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the
French and portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and
other French artists, as well as by Angelica Kauffmann, may be legend
rather than fact. Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo
sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy
Sacrament. In accordance to his will, sixty beggars followed his
casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of
Amboise. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well
as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects.
Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion,
Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of
Leonardo's vineyards, his brothers who received land, and his serving
woman who received a black cloak of good stuff with a fur edge.
Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, François was reported by the
goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never
been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not
so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a
very great philosopher.
Painting
Despite the recent awareness and admiration of
Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four
hundred years his enormous fame rested on his achievements as a
painter and on a handful of works, either authenticated or attributed
to him that have been regarded as among the supreme masterpieces ever
created.
These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities which have been
much imitated by students and discussed at great length by
connoisseurs and critics. Among the qualities that make Leonardo's
work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on
the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and
geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans
register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the
human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle
gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most
famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the Virgin of
the Rocks.
Paintings of the 1480s
In the 1480s Leonardo received two very
important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of
ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Unfortunately two
of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it
was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One
of these paintings is that of St. Jerome in the Wilderness. Bortolon
associates this picture with a difficult period of Leonardo's life,
and the signs of melancholy in his diary: "I thought I was learning to
live; I was only learning to die."
Although the painting is barely begun the composition can be seen and
it is very unusual. Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the
picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His
kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to
the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite
direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and
Leonardo's anatomical studies.Across the foreground sprawls his
symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across
the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the
sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is
silhouetted.
The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and
personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the
Adoration of the Magi, (see above [Magi]) a commission from the Monks
of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a very complex composition about 250
square centimetres. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory
studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined
classical architecture which makes part of the backdrop to the scene.
But in 1482 Leonardo went off to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’
Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro and the painting
was abandoned.
The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks
which was commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the
Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of
the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece,
already constructed. Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of
the infancy of Christ when the Infant John the Baptist, in protection
of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene,
as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the
Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful
figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild
landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water.While the painting is
quite large, about 200 × 120 centimetres, it is not nearly as complex
as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four
figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than
architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact,
two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the
chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away
to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de
Predis their payment, until the next century.
Paintings of the 1490s
Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, also
painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by
Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death. It shows
specifically the moment when Jesus has said "one of you will betray
me". Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement
caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.
The novelist Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that
some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat,
and then not paint for three or four days at a time. This, according
to Vasari, was beyond the comprehension of the prior, who hounded him
until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how
Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of
Christ and the traitor Judas, told the Duke that he might be obliged
to use the prior as his model.
When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design
and characterisation, but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a
hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined".
Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used
tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface
which was subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting
has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies
being made in every medium from carpets to cameos.
Paintings of the 1500s
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1505/1507)—Louvre,
Paris, France |
Among the works created by Leonardo in the
1500s is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or "la Gioconda",
the laughing one. The painting is famous, in particular, for the
elusive smile on the woman's face, its mysterious quality brought
about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the
corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the
smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work
is renowned came to be called "sfumato" or Leonardo's smoke.
Vasari, who is generally thought to have known the painting only
by repute, said that "the smile was so pleasing that it seemed
divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find
that it was as alive as the original". |
Other characteristics found in this work are the
unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from
other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world
seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the
extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils,
but laid on much like tempera and blended on the surface so that the
brushstrokes are indistinguishable.Vasari expressed the opinion that
the manner of painting would make even "the most confident master ...
despair and lose heart."The perfect state of preservation and the fact
that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is extremely rare in a
panel painting of this date.
In the Virgin and Child with St. Anne the composition again
picks up the theme of figures in a landscape which Wasserman describes
as "breathtakingly beautiful" and harks back to the St Jerome picture
with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting
unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary
is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to
restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of
his own impending sacrifice. This painting, which was copied many
times, was to influence Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto,
and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition
were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and
Veronese.
Drawings
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St.
John the Baptist (c. 1499–1500)—National Gallery, London |
Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he
was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small
sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that
took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many
studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as
preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi,
The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper. His earliest dated
drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the
river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it
in great detail. |
Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man,
a study of the proportions of the human body, the Head of an Angel,
for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre, a botanical study of Star
of Bethlehem and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on
coloured paper of the The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John
the Baptist in the National Gallery, London.This drawing employs the
subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa.
It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest
similarity being to The Virgin and Child with St. Anne in the Louvre.
Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred
to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be
based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that if Leonardo
saw a person with an interesting face he would follow them around all
day observing them.There are numerous studies of beautiful young men,
often associated with Salai, with the rare and much admired facial
feature, the so-called "Grecian profile". These faces are often
contrasted with that of a warrior. Salai is often depicted in
fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for
pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous,
drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo's
ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another
often-reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo
in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernardo Baroncelli, hanged in
connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de'Medici,
in the Pazzi Conspiracy. With dispassionate integrity Leonardo has
registered in neat mirror writing the colours of the robes that
Baroncelli was wearing when he died. |
