Leonardo on Art and the Artist

399 Pages·2002·10.96 MB·English

by  Leonardo da Vinci

DOVER BOOKS ON FINE ART
GREAT DRAWINGS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PUNCH, 1841-1901,
Stanley Appelbaum & Richard Kelly (eds.). (24110-6) TREASURY OF
AUDUBON BIRDS IN FULL COLOR, John James Audubon. (27604-X)
BEST WORKS OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY, Aubrey Beardsley. (26273-1)
BLAKE’S ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE BOOK OF JOB, William Blake.
(28765-3) THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL, William Blake.
(28122-1)
SONGS OF EXPERIENCE, William Blake. (24636-1)
THE SECRET LIFE OF SALVADOR DALI, Salvador Dalí. (Available in U.S.
only.) (27454-3) LEONARDO DA VINCI ON THE HUMAN BODY,
Leonardo da Vinci. (24483-0) DEGAS DRAWINGS OF DANCERS, Edgar
Degas. (40698-9)
THE DORÉ GALLERY, Gustave Doré. (40160-X)
DORÉ SPOT ILLUSTRATIONS: A TREASURY FROM HIS
MASTERWORKS, Gustave Doré. (25495-X) DORÉ’S ILLUSTRATIONS
FOR “DON QUIXOTE,” Gustave Doré. (24300-1) DORÉ’S
ILLUSTRATIONS FOR “PARADISE LOST,” Gustave Doré. (27719-4)
DORÉ’S ILLUSTRATIONS FOR RABELAIS, Gustave Doré. (23656-0) THE
RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, Gustave Doré and S. T. Coleridge.
(22305-1) THE COMPLETE ENGRAVINGS, ETCHINGS, AND
DRYPOINTS OF ALBRECHT DORER, Albrecht Dürer. (22851-7) THE
COMPLETE WOODCUTS OF ALBRECHT DÜRER, Albrecht Dürer.
(21097-9) DÜRER’S RECORD OF JOURNEYS TO VENICE AND THE
Low COUNTRIES, Albrecht Dürer. (28348-8) ERTÉ’S THEATRICAL
COSTUMES IN FULL COLOR, Erté. (23813-X)
100 FULL-COLOR GRAPHICS BY ERTÉ, 2-volume gift set, Erté. (25292-2)
CIVIL WAR ETCHINGS, Edwin Forbes. (28043-8)
GAUGUIN’S INTIMATE JOURNALS, Paul Gauguin. (29441-2)
THE GEOMETRY OF ART AND LIFE, Matila Ghyka. (23542-4)
Los CAPRICHOS, Francisco Goya. (22384-1)
MEDIEVAL WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS: CITY VIEWS AND
DECORATIONS FROM THE NUREMBERG CHRONICLE, Carol Belanger
Grafton. (40458-7) FORM, FUNCTION & DESIGN, Paul Jacques Grillo.
(20182-1) LOVE ABOVE ALL AND OTHER DRAWINGS, George Grosz.
(Not available in Germany.) (22675-1) THE LIFE OF WILLIAM MORRIS, J.
W. Mackail. (28793-9)
RELIGIOUS ART IN FRANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY, Emile
Male. (41061-7) VINCENT VAN GOGH: A BIOGRAPHY, Julius Meier-
Graefe. (Available in U.S. only.) (25253-1) GREAT BALLET PRINTS OF
THE ROMANTIC ERA, Parmenia Migel. (24050-9) WILLIAM MORRIS ON
ART AND SOCIALISM, William Morris. (40904-X) THE COMPLETE
GRAPHIC WORK OF JACK LEVINE, Kenneth W. Prescott and Emma
Stina-Prescott. (24481-4)

(continued on back flap)

Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 2002, is an unabridged republication of the
text and illustrations from the work originally published in English translation in
1961 by The Orion Press, Inc., New York, under the title The Genius of
Leonardo da Vinci. The original publication of the work in French was under the
title Traité de la peinture, Leonard de Vinci, by Club des Libraires de France,
Paris, in 1960. The material was assembled, edited, and introduced by André
Chastel. For the 1961 Orion Press edition, the text was translated from the
French by Ellen Callmann. Plates that appeared in color in the earlier editions
are reproduced in black and white in the 2002 edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-
1519.
[Trattato della pittura. English]
Leonardo on art and the artist / Leonardo da Vinci.
p. cm.
Translated from French version of Trattato della pittura.
Originally published as: The genius of Leonardo da Vinci. New York:
Orion Press, 1961.
Includes bibliographical references.
9780486137520
1. Painting — Technique — Early works to 1800. 2. Drawing —
Technique — Early works to 1800. I. Title.
ND1471 .L4613 2002b
709’.2 — dc21
2002019776

Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501
Table of Contents

DOVER BOOKS ON FINE ART
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Figures
Introduction - Leonardo da Vinci and his writings on painting
Three Biographies of Leonardo
The Projects
The Paragone or Comparison of the Arts
The Universal Program
The Problems of the Painter
The Painter’s Studio
The Painter’s Activity
Notes
Printed Editions of Leonardo’s Writings
Table of Manuscripts
Table of Paintings
Chronological Table
References to Entries
Table of Figures
Figure 1
Introduction
Leonardo da Vinci and his writings on
painting
Leonardo stands preeminent, and in more than one respect. Different pictures
emerge when we consider what is known of him as a person, what has been
preserved of his writings, and what remains of his work. It is this diversity that
prompts us to search for the underlying unity of his activities, and this search
has given rise to the myth that now surrounds the name of Leonardo. This myth,
with its overtones of mystery and its Freudian implications, is perhaps, or has
been until now, nothing but a desperate attempt to give an all too subtle and
elusive artist and man the coherence and consistency usually found only in the
heroes of fiction. As a rule we are not obliged to go to such lengths with
Renaissance men. They stand out sharply and unequivocally against their
background. Leonardo’s contemporaries, Mantegna, Botticelli, Giovanni
Bellini, to mention the most outstanding, or even Francesco di Giorgio and
Bramante, are well-defined personalities, each one, cut, as it were, out of a
single piece of cloth. Not one of them gives us the ambiguous impression that
Leonardo does — and, it seems, already did to some of his contemporaries — as
soon as one tries to pinpoint fundamental questions, eluding all attempts at
classification.
It is surprising how few pictures he painted, particularly after his fortieth
year, and this has been remarked on ever since the sixteenth century. Equally
surprising is how soon and how assiduously his works were copied, so that one
has the feeling that whatever he did produce was observed and made use of with
disturbing persistence. The naïveté of the myth, which made him a high priest
who was something of a necromancer, a sage who could satisfy every
expectation, and a technician who could perform any feat, whether it was in
hydraulics or military machines, is actually less remarkable than the servility
and veneration which obviously surrounded him and which assured his every
whim as well as his major discoveries the same applause nowadays accorded to
the least act of Matisse or Picasso. And that, too, is unusual.
One would think that artists of a reflective turn of mind, aware of the
problems of art, would not approach Leonardo with impunity. In Florence itself,
he had two imitators or, to put it less crudely, two disciples who battened on his
motifs, ideas, and suggestions : Lorenzo di Credi, the devotee of glossy, slick
forms, always anxious to achieve a high finish, whom Leonardo was one day to
repudiate, and Piero di Cosimo, who took from Leonardo a freedom in his
activities that he pushed to the point of eccentricity, a taste for the fantastic in
nature, and the idea of “inventive vision.” Like Rubens and El Greco, Leonardo
left his mark in that later painters took up new problems and discovered new
facets of their craft. But that was not all. He initiated new deviations, pretenses,
fixations, which leads one to think that, like Gauguin or even André Masson, he
influenced through tension, disquiet, questioning, and criticism, in short,
through intellectual and nervous stimulation as much as through his work. It
was no doubt for this reason that, when he came to Rome in 1513, at the ripe
age of sixty, to reap the fruits of fame, it became impossible for him to remain in
a city ruled by Leo X and dominated by men more willing to please or more
impressive : the heroes of the hour, Raphael, Bramante, and Michelangelo.
The individual, the theorizer, and the painter are so close one to another that
they almost merge, particularly if one takes into consideration how much of
what Leonardo has left us consists of literary works ; these give the impression
of an immense circle within which this agile and demanding mind seemed to feel
he had to enclose his art. In other words, the “hero” and his activities become
intelligible if one thinks in terms of equating painting and philosophy, and
regards this equation as an advance, not the equivalent or substitute of, or,
worse, the conclusion of the philosophical system in its traditional sense. If we
can also relate this painting-philosophy to the modern concept of painting-
poetry, Leonardo will probably lose some of the false grandeur and mystery that
until now have surrounded him. This work attempts to clarify several, in
themselves simple aspects of this relationship by tracing it from the artist’s
behavior to the idea of “objective” painting, and by connecting its spell to a
specific attitude toward nature and culture.
What one generally admires and instinctively respects in Leonardo is an
unusual quality of independence in his actions. Within the framework of
patronage conditioning the lives of the artists of the period, Leonardo chose his
patrons on the basis of the opportunities they afforded him to develop his own
ideas. His very presence brought out demands which, in turn, created tasks he
could consider more or less interesting — decorations for feasts, costumes, the
arrangements of gardens and pavillions, etc. — and which satisfied his needs.
Having protected himself from the demands of clients by keeping them awed with
new and original ideas, he kept to himself and, as may be seen from the
notebooks, had his own way of seeing things.
His behavior was both self-assured and original. Cardinal Pietro Bembo, the
advisor of Isabella d‘Este, who was to order a painting for her, noted in 1501
that Leonardo lived from day to day. His behavior was unpredictable. Surely
there was merit in achieving this state of freedom and forcing princes and
leading men to accept it at a time when the standing of the painter was no better
than that of any other craftsman. Obedience to orders and subservience to
custom rather than an aloof and independent attitude were the order of the day.
Hardly anyone but Leonardo could have rid himself politely of an “abusive”
patron like Isabella d’Este. Giovanni Bellini could only get out of it by being ill,
Perugino, Costa, and others remained under her thumb and produced their
poorest works on this occasion. Nonetheless, the fifteenth century was a time
when strong personalities counted. They had some freedom of movement and
Leonardo merely carried to an extreme a proud and at times insolent manner
that other Florentine artists also manifested.
What is unique in Leonardo is his way of perceiving and of expanding the
artist’s scope as if being an artist demanded a special way of life. Delacroix
defended himself by distance and disdain, Cézanne by retreat and solitude;
Leonardo’s method is at once more tortuous and more picturesque. Like the
retiarius with his net, Leonardo overwhelms and beguiles; he beats his opponent
at his own game. To the snobs and the worldly he gives his elegance, his fine
manners, the games he invents, and the beautiful young men who surround him;
to the intellectuals, the doctrines he discusses, and the omnipresent challenge of
his superior intellect ; to soldiers, his “secrets” of the art of warfare ; to
churchmen, his “philosophy” of the world and his analysis of customs; and to
the world at large, the wonder of his paintings. Indeed, he surrounds painting
with much peripheral activity, and this is what gives him his fascination. His
independent behavior may appeal to us because it makes him seem a rebel, but
is this really the basis of his actions ? His independent behavior aims sooner at
creating an atmosphere that has much in common with feasts and pageantry, for
the great game of painting — far from being the result of cold and morbid
preoccupation — is the culmination of a constant need for spectacle, for
brilliance, and for the marvelous.