Notebooks (2 page)
Authors: Leonardo da Vinci,Irma Anne Richter,Thereza Wells
Tags: #History, #Fiction, #General, #European, #Art, #Renaissance, #Leonardo;, #Leonardo, #da Vinci;, #1452-1519, #Individual artists, #Art Monographs, #Drawing By Individual Artists, #Notebooks; sketchbooks; etc, #Individual Artist, #History - Renaissance, #Renaissance art, #Individual Painters - Renaissance, #Drawing & drawings, #Drawing, #Techniques - Drawing, #Individual Artists - General, #Individual artists; art monographs, #Art & Art Instruction, #Techniques
We now take it for granted that the private ‘notebooks’ or ‘papers’ of great individuals are of huge value in providing insights into their minds. Although drawings had been treasured since the sixteenth century, this was not the case with notebooks. Some manuscript legacies survived, such as those of Sir Isaac Newton, but they were revered as memorials or souvenirs rather than because their contents were considered to be of major importance. Richter was a pioneer in the movement that was beginning to realize the value of private writings and sketches that speak of a great mind at work, however unresolved the results might be.
There can be few if any works of historical scholarship published in the late nineteenth century that remain key sources today. An art historian and dealer, Richter was a protégé of Giovanni Morelli, the inaugurator of systematic connoisseurship. His
Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci
(1883) is an extraordinary achievement. He trawled through Leonardo’s horribly illegible texts, mostly unpublished, making a telling selection and providing the reader with parallel transcriptions and translations. Both have stood up notably well, though the translations are very much of their period, with their somewhat Shakespearian tone.
Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci
(1883) is an extraordinary achievement. He trawled through Leonardo’s horribly illegible texts, mostly unpublished, making a telling selection and providing the reader with parallel transcriptions and translations. Both have stood up notably well, though the translations are very much of their period, with their somewhat Shakespearian tone.
Richter’s selection is weighted more towards the arts than the sciences and technologies, although his choice of non-artistic texts gives a good idea of the nature of his writing on other topics. In 1938 Edward MacCurdy’s
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
in two volumes served to redress the balance, and Richter’s daughter Irma sensibly took advantage of his translated anthology. However, Richter’s earlier compilation, not least with the excellent
Commentary
published by Carlo Pedretti, remains my most frequent port of first call when I begin to research some aspect of Leonardo’s writings.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
in two volumes served to redress the balance, and Richter’s daughter Irma sensibly took advantage of his translated anthology. However, Richter’s earlier compilation, not least with the excellent
Commentary
published by Carlo Pedretti, remains my most frequent port of first call when I begin to research some aspect of Leonardo’s writings.
For general rather than specialist use, Richter’s two mighty volumes were rather ponderous—hence the rationale for his daughter’s judicious abridgement, with significant reordering and some augmentation, first published in 1952. Trained as an artist at the Slade School of Art, Irma also studied in Oxford and in Paris. As a scholar, she collaborated both with her father and her sister, Gisela, a distinguished authority on ancient art.
Making any selection from Leonardo’s 6,000 or so surviving pages (plus those that are only known in the
Treatise
) is a real problem. Which Leonardo do we present? The artist, the scientist, the engineer, the natural philosopher, the author of literary snippets . . . ? The underlying difficulty is that although Leonardo and his age would have recognized some of the terms we use, such as painter, sculptor and engineer, many of the professional categories we take for granted postdate the Renaissance.
Treatise
) is a real problem. Which Leonardo do we present? The artist, the scientist, the engineer, the natural philosopher, the author of literary snippets . . . ? The underlying difficulty is that although Leonardo and his age would have recognized some of the terms we use, such as painter, sculptor and engineer, many of the professional categories we take for granted postdate the Renaissance.
No one went to a college to learn to be an engineer or an architect. Leading masters of many trades such as Filippo Brunelleschi, builder of the dome of Florence Cathedral, sculptor and inventor, moved fluidly across what we now regard as disciplinary boundaries. Lorenzo Ghiberti, the great sculptor of the Baptistery doors, listed all the intellectual territories that learned artists should master: grammar, philosophy, medicine, astrology, optics, history, anatomy, the theory of design and arithmetic. A recipe for a Leonardo!
For his part, Leonardo defined painting as the supreme science, since it conclusively presents—as he would have said, ‘demonstrates—all the visual effects in the world in terms of their underlying causes. If we ask, is this or that text on mathematics or geology relevant to his art, the answer cannot but be yes. We would define Leonardo as having written far less about art than about other things. He would have rejected the premiss on which we would make this judgement.
Irma Richter’s selection and ordering, starting with Leonardo’s definitions of ‘True Science’, before moving to ‘The Universe’, serves the needs of the wholeness of Leonardo’s thought better than her father’s classifications. Jean Paul began with a substantial group of texts from the so-called
paragone
, the comparison of the arts, and the whole of his first volume is dedicated to texts on painting. Leonardo stressed the foundation of all visual knowledge on certain ‘principles’, and this is how Irma’s presentation begins. In all, under one-third is devoted to writings on art. Of all Leonardo’s major concerns, only engineering is conspicuously underrepresented, even allowing for the fact that the Madrid Codices were then unknown.
paragone
, the comparison of the arts, and the whole of his first volume is dedicated to texts on painting. Leonardo stressed the foundation of all visual knowledge on certain ‘principles’, and this is how Irma’s presentation begins. In all, under one-third is devoted to writings on art. Of all Leonardo’s major concerns, only engineering is conspicuously underrepresented, even allowing for the fact that the Madrid Codices were then unknown.
The broad headings under which she grouped the texts, dealing with fields of activity rather than our classification of professional disciplines, are notably different from her father’s. He saw Leonardo as dealing with ‘Physical Geography’ and ‘Astronomy’, while she signals Leonardo’s writing on ‘Microcosm and Macrocosm’. She announces ‘The Four Powers of Nature’, whereas her father used the modern term ‘Dynamics’. Looking back at her 1952 publication, I am more than ever impressed at the prescience of her editing, and its independence from the late nineteenth-century conceptual framework of her father.
Irma Richter’s compact volume of Leonardo’s writings has provided generations of readers with their most accessible introduction to Leonardo’s own voice and to key documents of his career. It is good to have her selections newly edited, with Thereza Wells’s perceptive introduction and her judicious updating, above all of the apparatus. As I tell my students, if you want to know about Leonardo, read what he wrote, and only then turn to what others have written about him.
INTRODUCTION
he laboured much more by his word than in fact or deed
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
Lives of the Artists
MOST of what we know about Leonardo da Vinci, we know because of his notebooks. Some 6,000 sheets of notes and drawings survive to show us his widely varied interests including painting, sculpture, architecture, geometry, geology, engineering, optics, anatomy, botany, hydrodynamics, and astronomy. It is thought that the surviving sheets represent as little as one-fifth of what he actually produced. Leonardo’s early biographer, Giorgio Vasari, was right: Leonardo appears to have laboured more by his word—especially words accompanied by sketches—than anything else. The notebooks are a valuable resource, incomparable to that of any other artist before or since. They tell us relatively little about Leonardo’s private life, however. If he kept a personal diary, it has not survived. Much of the biographical information we have about him and his family comes from contemporary sources and other related documents. On the other hand, what we have in his notebooks shows us how he approached his life and work, what interested him, what obsessed him and why. They are the key to understanding how he thought.
Little is known about Leonardo’s early life. He was born in 1452, the illegitimate son of Ser Piero di Antonio da Vinci, a leading notary, and Caterina, a young farmer’s daughter. His birthplace of Vinci lies in the hills of Tuscany west of Florence where agriculture dominated the economy. Leonardo would later write about exploring this countryside as a child and his love of nature, which would become a dominant feature in his later investigations, began with this early exposure. Leonardo was probably taken to Florence by his father following the deaths of his grandfather and stepmother in 1564.
Italy in the mid-fifteenth century was not the united country we know today, but a collection of many states with differing forms of government, including several northern states each run by a
signore
or lord; the Papal States under the control of the pope; larger kingdoms, such as Naples; and a number of important city-state republics including Florence and Venice. The political fragmentation of Italy meant that centres of culture grew up not only in Florence, Venice, and Rome but also in small states governed by rulers with an interest in the arts, for example the Sforza of Milan and the Gonzaga of Mantua—both of whom gave commissions to Leonardo.
signore
or lord; the Papal States under the control of the pope; larger kingdoms, such as Naples; and a number of important city-state republics including Florence and Venice. The political fragmentation of Italy meant that centres of culture grew up not only in Florence, Venice, and Rome but also in small states governed by rulers with an interest in the arts, for example the Sforza of Milan and the Gonzaga of Mantua—both of whom gave commissions to Leonardo.
Florence in this period was a prosperous banking and mercantile-based centre of around 50,000 people. It was proud to be a republic and its citizens had a strong sense of civic duty. Its wealth enabled an active and thriving artistic population to cater to the prominent families of the city. A building boom was taking place and keen patrons were keeping the workshops busy with demands for furniture, sculpture, and paintings for the home and church. On an intellectual level, in Florence and the rest of Italy, the humanist revival of classical Roman culture was well established and almost every major Italian city considered itself the daughter of Rome, using imperial or republican Rome as a model depending on their own type of government. The works of great thinkers such as Euclid, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Plato were being translated from Greek to Latin in the first half of the fourteenth century, and were therefore accessible to a wider audience, and a number of Byzantine and Greek scholars had arrived in Italy, bringing their science and philosophy books with them.
Two figures in Florence who had developed much of their thinking from a classical foundation were the architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and the architect, author, mathematician, and art theorist Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72). Brunelleschi’s design for the dome of Florence Cathedral was a monumental engineering feat and the mechanisms he devised to build the cathedral were to influence Leonardo’s own approach to mechanics. Brunelleschi also made a fundamental contribution to painting with his creation of linear perspective, the system of recording the appearance of a three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface. Alberti’s own contribution to perspective was to describe its optical rules, explained as a geometry of vision. This provided an accessible way of understanding how to successfully render the illusion of a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. He wrote a theoretical and practical guidebook for artists,
De Pictura
(
On Painting
, 1435) as well as
De Re Aedificatoria
(
On Building
, 1452, pub. 1485), ten books on architecture developed from the
Ten Books of Architecture
by Vitruvius (first century BC), the ancient Roman architect and engineer.
De Pictura
(
On Painting
, 1435) as well as
De Re Aedificatoria
(
On Building
, 1452, pub. 1485), ten books on architecture developed from the
Ten Books of Architecture
by Vitruvius (first century BC), the ancient Roman architect and engineer.
Two artists who represented the evolution in art include Giotto (1267-1337) and Masaccio (1401-28). Leonardo would later praise them for their roles in the development of painting and commended them both for taking Nature as their ultimate teacher. Leonardo described Giotto’s origins in the countryside, much like his own rural upbringing, and how it guided and influenced his work (see p. 213f.). Both Giotto and Masaccio paved the way for creating the illusion of space in painting, culminating in Masaccio’s
Trinity with the Virgin, St John and Donors
(
c
.1426-7) in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. According to Leonardo, Masaccio was successful because he ‘showed with perfect works how those who take for their guide anything other than nature—mistress of the masters—exhaust themselves in vain’ (C.A. 387
r
).
a
Nature was the true teacher, and understanding this was key to understanding Nature herself. This idea is fundamental in Leonardo’s development as an artist and thinker and is many times repeated throughout his notebooks.
Trinity with the Virgin, St John and Donors
(
c
.1426-7) in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. According to Leonardo, Masaccio was successful because he ‘showed with perfect works how those who take for their guide anything other than nature—mistress of the masters—exhaust themselves in vain’ (C.A. 387
r
).
a
Nature was the true teacher, and understanding this was key to understanding Nature herself. This idea is fundamental in Leonardo’s development as an artist and thinker and is many times repeated throughout his notebooks.
These artistic and theoretical developments were very much a part of the fabric of Florence when Leonardo arrived in the late 1460s. In many ways he could not have chosen a more appropriate place to receive a foundation in what influenced and interested fifteenth-century thinkers and artistic producers. The progression towards naturalism in painting was taken up by Italian Renaissance writers on art as mirroring that of the great classical painters. Indeed, it was considered high praise to refer to an artist as the new Apelles, after the ancient Greek artist (fourth century BC), and Leonardo himself would become known as the ‘Apelles of Florence’. When Alberti wrote his treatise on painting, he echoed the ancients in emphasizing the importance of the human form in nature. He also underlined the importance of studying the structure and function of the human figure as a way of understanding and depicting it.
When Leonardo became apprenticed in the successful workshop of the artist Andrea del Verrocchio (
c
.1435-88) in around 1473 it was a bustling and wide-ranging business, producing paintings, sculpture, metalwork, chests, armour, and theatrical costumes, machinery, and sets. Considering Leonardo’s own wide-ranging curiosity, the workshop must have been an ideal place for his young mind to absorb the work surrounding him. Verrocchio’s most important engineering achievement was to create and install, in 1471, the ‘golden’ orb on top of the lantern of the dome of Florence Cathedral. The technical aspects of the project would have been complex and were recalled by Leonardo in a note he wrote some forty years later.
c
.1435-88) in around 1473 it was a bustling and wide-ranging business, producing paintings, sculpture, metalwork, chests, armour, and theatrical costumes, machinery, and sets. Considering Leonardo’s own wide-ranging curiosity, the workshop must have been an ideal place for his young mind to absorb the work surrounding him. Verrocchio’s most important engineering achievement was to create and install, in 1471, the ‘golden’ orb on top of the lantern of the dome of Florence Cathedral. The technical aspects of the project would have been complex and were recalled by Leonardo in a note he wrote some forty years later.
As an apprentice, Leonardo would have been given a foundation in the skills of an artist. He would have been taught how to mix pigments and practise drawing from models, as well as taking part in the preparation of bronze sculpture and machinery for theatrical sets. He was also exposed to the practical and engineering aspects of completing larger projects.
By the time Leonardo was nearly 30, in 1481, the city of Florence and Verrocchio’s studio had given him a foundation based on practical design, and the creation of art as a rational activity. As the earliest surviving notebooks produced by Leonardo are from his early days in Milan, we can only look at paintings and drawings to see how much he took from the current artistic approaches in Florence. His first completed independent painting, the
Annunciation
(Florence, Uffizi), displays clear stylistic influences from Verrocchio’s studio, and already shows a gifted artist with a talent for expressing movement and dynamism in his work. There is an energy in the curls of hair he paints, which Leonardo compared to moving swirls of water. Nature is already a guiding force for him. He also displays a fundamental understanding of the classical theoretical influences developed by Brunelleschi and Alberti, with a complex perspectival scheme founded on their teachings.
Annunciation
(Florence, Uffizi), displays clear stylistic influences from Verrocchio’s studio, and already shows a gifted artist with a talent for expressing movement and dynamism in his work. There is an energy in the curls of hair he paints, which Leonardo compared to moving swirls of water. Nature is already a guiding force for him. He also displays a fundamental understanding of the classical theoretical influences developed by Brunelleschi and Alberti, with a complex perspectival scheme founded on their teachings.
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