The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (40 page)

659.

Though you may be able to tell or write the exact description of
forms, the painter can so depict them that they will appear alive,
with the shadow and light which show the expression of a face; which
you cannot accomplish with the pen though it can be achieved by the
brush.

On the history of painting (660. 661).

660.

Hence the painter will produce pictures of small merit if he takes
for his standard the pictures of others. But if he will study from
natural objects he will bear good fruit; as was seen in the painters
after the Romans who always imitated each other and so their art
constantly declined from age to age. After these came Giotto the
Florentine who—not content with imitating the works of Cimabue his
master—being born in the mountains and in a solitude inhabited only
by goats and such beasts, and being guided by nature to his art,
began by drawing on the rocks the movements of the goats of which he
was keeper. And thus he began to draw all the animals which were to
be found in the country, and in such wise that after much study he
excelled not only all the masters of his time but all those of many
bygone ages. Afterwards this art declined again, because everyone
imitated the pictures that were already done; thus it went on from
century to century until Tomaso, of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio,
showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard
any one but nature—the mistress of all masters—weary themselves in
vain. And, I would say about these mathematical studies that those
who only study the authorities and not the works of nature are
descendants but not sons of nature the mistress of all good authors.
Oh! how great is the folly of those who blame those who learn from
nature [Footnote 22:
lasciando stare li autori
. In this
observation we may detect an indirect evidence that Leonardo
regarded his knowledge of natural history as derived from his own
investigations, as well as his theories of perspective and optics.
Compare what he says in praise of experience (Vol II;
XIX
).],
setting aside those authorities who themselves were the disciples of
nature.

661.

That the first drawing was a simple line drawn round the shadow of a
man cast by the sun on a wall.

The painter's scope.

662.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations.

An artist's manuscript notes can hardly be expected to contain any
thing more than incidental references to those masterpieces of his
work of which the fame, sounded in the writings of his
contemporaries, has left a glorious echo to posterity. We need not
therefore be surprised to find that the texts here reproduced do not
afford us such comprehensive information as we could wish. On the
other hand, the sketches and studies prepared by Leonardo for the
two grandest compositions he ever executed: The Fresco of the Last
Supper in the Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan, and
the Cartoon of the Battle of Anghiari, for the Palazzo della
Signoria at Florence—have been preserved; and, though far from
complete, are so much more numerous than the manuscript notes, that
we are justified in asserting that in value and interest they amply
compensate for the meagerness of the written suggestions.

The notes for the composition of the Last Supper, which are given
under nos._ 665
and
666
occur in a MS. at South Kensington, II2,
written in the years
1494-1495.
This MS. sketch was noted down not
more than three or four years before the painting was executed,
which justifies the inference that at the time when it was written
the painter had not made up his mind definitely even as to the
general scheme of the work; and from this we may also conclude that
the drawings of apostles' heads at Windsor, in red chalk, must be
ascribed to a later date. They are studies for the head of St.
Matthew, the fourth figure on Christ's left hand—see Pl. XL VII,
the sketch (in black chalk) for the head of St. Philip, the third
figure on the left hand—see Pl. XL VIII, for St. Peter's right
arm—see Pl. XLIX, and for the expressive head of Judas which has
unfortunately somewhat suffered by subsequent restoration of
outlines,—see Pl. L. According to a tradition, as unfounded as it
is improbable, Leonardo made use of the head of Padre Bandelli, the
prior of the convent, as the prototype of his Judas; this however
has already been contradicted by Amoretti "Memorie storiche" cap.
XIV. The study of the head of a criminal on Pl. LI has, it seems to
me, a better claim to be regarded as one of the preparatory sketches
for the head of Judas. The Windsor collection contains two old
copies of the head of St. Simon, the figure to the extreme left of
Christ, both of about equal merit (they are marked as Nos.
21
and
36_)—the second was reproduced on Pl. VIII of the Grosvenor
Gallery Publication in_ 1878.
There is also at Windsor a drawing in
black chalk of folded hands (marked with the old No.
212; _No. LXI
of the Grosvenor Gallery Publication) which I believe to be a copy
of the hands of St. John, by some unknown pupil. A reproduction of
the excellent drawings of heads of Apostles in the possession of H.
R. H. the Grand Duchess of Weimar would have been out of my province
in this work, and, with regard to them, I must confine myself to
pointing out that the difference in style does not allow of our
placing the Weimar drawings in the same category as those here
reproduced. The mode of grouping in the Weimar drawings is of itself
sufficient to indicate that they were not executed before the
picture was painted, but, on the contrary, afterwards, and it is, on
the face of it, incredible that so great a master should thus have
copied from his own work.

The drawing of Christ's head, in the Brera palace at Milan was
perhaps originally the work of Leonardo's hand; it has unfortunately
been entirely retouched and re-drawn, so that no decisive opinion
can be formed as to its genuineness.

The red chalk drawing reproduced on Pl. XLVI is in the Accademia at
Venice; it was probably made before the text, Nos._ 664
and
665,
_was written.

The two pen and ink sketches on Pl. XLV seem to belong to an even
earlier date; the more finished drawing of the two, on the right
hand, represents Christ with only St. John and Judas and a third
disciple whose action is precisely that described in No._ 666,
Pl.
4.
It is hardly necessary to observe that the other sketches
on this page and the lines of text below the circle (containing the
solution of a geometrical problem) have no reference to the picture
of the Last Supper. With this figure of Christ may be compared a
similar pen and ink drawing reproduced on page
297
below on the
left hand; the original is in the Louvre. On this page again the
rest of the sketches have no direct bearing on the composition of
the Last Supper, not even, as it seems to me, the group of four men
at the bottom to the right hand—who are listening to a fifth, in
their midst addressing them. Moreover the writing on this page (an
explanation of a disk shaped instrument) is certainly not in the
same style as we find constantly used by Leonardo after the year
1489.

_It may be incidentally remarked that no sketches are known for the
portrait of "Mona Lisa", nor do the MS. notes ever allude to it,
though according to Vasari the master had it in hand for fully four
years.

Leonardo's cartoon for the picture of the battle of Anghiari has
shared the fate of the rival work, Michaelangelo's "Bathers summoned
to Battle". Both have been lost in some wholly inexplicable manner.
I cannot here enter into the remarkable history of this work; I can
only give an account of what has been preserved to us of Leonardo's
scheme and preparations for executing it. The extent of the material
in studies and drawings was till now quite unknown. Their
publication here may give some adequate idea of the grandeur of this
famous work. The text given as No._ 669 _contains a description of
the particulars of the battle, but for the reasons given in the note
to this text, I must abandon the idea of taking this passage as the
basis of my attempt to reconstruct the picture as the artist
conceived and executed it.

I may here remind the reader that Leonardo prepared the cartoon in
the Sala del Papa of Santa Maria Novella at Florence and worked
there from the end of October 1503 till February 1504, and then was
busied with the painting in the Sala del Consiglio in the Palazzo
della Signoria, till the work was interrupted at the end of May
1506. (See Milanesi's note to Vasari pp. 43—45 Vol. IV ed. 1880.)
Vasari, as is well known, describes only one scene or episode of the
cartoon—the Battle for the Standard in the foreground of the
composition, as it would seem; and this only was ever finished as a
mural decoration in the Sala del Consiglio. This portion of the
composition is familiar to all from the disfigured copy engraved by
Edelinck. Mariette had already very acutely observed that Edelinck
must surely have worked from a Flemish copy of the picture. There is
in the Louvre a drawing by Rubens (No. 565) which also represents
four horsemen fighting round a standard and which agrees with
Edelinck's engraving, but the engraving reverses the drawing. An
earlier Flemish drawing, such as may have served as the model for
both Rubens and Edelinck, is in the Uffizi collection (see
Philpots's Photograph, No. 732). It seems to be a work of the second
half of the XVIth century, a time when both the picture and the
cartoon had already been destroyed. It is apparently the production
of a not very skilled hand. Raphael Trichet du Fresne, 1651,
mentions that a small picture by Leonardo himself of the Battle of
the Standard was then extant in the Tuileries; by this he probably
means the painting on panel which is now in the possession of Madame
Timbal in Paris, and which has lately been engraved by Haussoullier
as a work by Leonardo. The picture, which is very carefully painted,
seems to me however to be the work of some unknown Florentine
painter, and probably executed within the first ten years of the
XVIth century. At the same time, it would seem to be a copy not from
Leonardo's cartoon, but from his picture in the Palazzo della
Signoria; at any rate this little picture, and the small Flemish
drawing in Florence are the oldest finished copies of this episode
in the great composition of the Battle of Anghiari.

In his Life of Raphael, Vasari tells us that Raphael copied certain
works of Leonardo's during his stay in Florence. Raphael's first
visit to Florence lasted from the middle of October 1504 till July
1505, and he revisited it in the summer of 1506. The hasty sketch,
now in the possession of the University of Oxford and reproduced on
page 337 also represents the Battle of the Standard and seems to
have been made during his first stay, and therefore not from the
fresco but from the cartoon; for, on the same sheet we also find,
besides an old man's head drawn in Leonardo's style, some studies
for the figure of St. John the Martyr which Raphael used in 1505 in
his great fresco in the Church of San Severo at Perugia.

Of Leonardo's studies for the Battle of Anghiari I must in the first
place point to five, on three of which—Pl. LII 2, Pl. LIII, Pl.
LVI—we find studies for the episode of the Standard. The standard
bearer, who, in the above named copies is seen stooping, holding on
to the staff across his shoulder, is immediately recognisable as the
left-hand figure in Raphael's sketch, and we find it in a similar
attitude in Leonardo's pen and ink drawing in the British
Museum—Pl. LII, 2—the lower figure to the right. It is not
difficult to identify the same figure in two more complicated groups
in the pen and ink drawings, now in the Accademia at Venice—Pl.
LIII, and Pl. LIV—where we also find some studies of foot soldiers
fighting. On the sheet in the British Museum—Pl. LII, 2—we find,
among others, one group of three horses galloping forwards: one
horseman is thrown and protects himself with his buckler against the
lance thrusts of two others on horseback, who try to pierce him as
they ride past. The same action is repeated, with some variation, in
two sketches in pen and ink on a third sheet, in the Accademia at
Venice, Pl. LV; a coincidence which suggests the probability of such
an incident having actually been represented on the cartoon. We are
not, it is true, in a position to declare with any certainty which
of these three dissimilar sketches may have been the nearest to the
group finally adopted in executing the cartoon.

With regard, however, to one of the groups of horsemen it is
possible to determine with perfect certainty not only which
arrangement was preferred, but the position it occupied in the
composition. The group of horsemen on Pl. LVII is a drawing in black
chalk at Windsor, which is there attributed to Leonardo, but which
appears to me to be the work of Cesare da Sesto, and the
Commendatore Giov. Morelli supports me in this view. It can hardly
be doubted that da Sesto, as a pupil of Leonardo's, made this
drawing from his master's cartoon, if we compare it with the copy
made by Raphael—here reproduced, for just above the fighting
horseman in Raphael's copy it is possible to detect a horse which is
seen from behind, going at a slower pace, with his tail flying out
to the right and the same horse may be seen in the very same
attitude carrying a dimly sketched rider, in the foreground of
Cesare da Sesto's drawing._

If a very much rubbed drawing in black chalk at Windsor—Pl.
LVI—is, as it appears to be, the reversed impression of an original
drawing, it is not difficult to supplement from it the portions
drawn by Cesare da Sesto. Nay, it may prove possible to reconstruct
the whole of the lost cartoon from the mass of materials we now have
at hand which we may regard as the nucleus of the composition. A
large pen and ink drawing by Raphael in the Dresden collection,
representing three horsemen fighting, and another, by Cesare da
Sesto, in the Uffizi, of light horsemen fighting are a further
contribution which will help us to reconstruct it.