LEONARDO DA VINCI. - I. THE LIFE. - Poorly informed and unreliable as Giorgio Vasari is, the life of L. can be reconstructed only from secure documentary data: records, his own notes, letters of contemporaries, etc. From documents it emerges that L. was born at Vinci on 15 April 1452, the illegitimate son of ser Piero, a notary; Piero must have shown care and affection for this son of his, whom he kept with him in Florence.
In all likelihood L. attended school only briefly, and his father must have noticed his artistic aptitudes very early and set him on the path of art, placing him as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, where he still was in 1476. In the autumn of 1478 he began, as he writes in one of his notebooks, two "Vergini Mario"; in March 1481 the monks of S. Donato degli Scopeti commissioned from him, as a panel for their high altar, the Adoration of the Magi, which, left unfinished, was purchased by the Benci and then by the Medici. "He was 30 years old - says the Anonimo gaddiano - when he was sent by the Magnificent Lorenzo to the Duke of Milan to present to him, together with Atalante Migliorotti, a lyre, for he was unique in playing that instrument"; but far broader offers of service to Lodovico il Moro emerge from a draft of a letter, though not in his own hand, of Codice Atlantico: military engineering, construction of weapons, architecture, sculpture, paintings, and the bronze horse, that is, the monument of Francesco Sforza. On 25 April 1483 he undertook, together with the brothers Evangelista and Giovanni Antonio De Predis, the execution of the panel for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Conception at the church of S. Francesco: questions of price and payment dragged on for a long time; in one of the documents the painters affirm that the central panel with the Virgin (afterwards called the Virgin of the Rocks) is the work of L.; in 1508 the agreed payments were concluded. Probably between 1506 and 1508, whether or not the patrons consented, the copy now in London was made, in which, in any case, L.'s participation was limited; the original emigrated to France very soon (by tradition in the time of Francis I), the copy to England in 1785 (it entered the National Gallery in 1890). It is known from several sources that he painted the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, when she was still "of imperfect age," as Cecilia herself writes to Isabella d'Este in 1498. Later he made the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli. Of both these portraits the subsequent vicissitudes are unknown, and every identification of them is by now conjectural.
He must have begun very soon the studies for the monument of Francesco Sforza; L. himself writes: "on 23 April 1490... I recommenced the horse"; in Nov. 1493 it must have been well advanced. From studies for the casting or for the transport it is seen that the horse was at a walk, with the left foot raised. It measured more than 7 meters at the neck, and therefore presented enormous difficulties of casting which L. was unsuited to overcome, given his limited experience in this field. He lost years; in 1499 the Moor fled before the French troops, and the model was "made a target for Gascon crossbowmen"; even Ercole I in 1501 asked to buy it; his request was not granted and in a short time, shortly afterwards, it must have been completely destroyed.
From the reports of contemporaries and from documents it is known that the Last Supper of the refectory of S. Maria delle Grazie was finished between 1497 and 1498, at the end of a long and discontinuous labor. It further results that L. worked in the Castello Sforzesco on the decoration of the "Saletta negra," of which no trace remains; that he occupied himself with the tiburio of the cathedral of Milan and repeatedly with the cathedral of Pavia, with the staging of spectacles, etc. To these years belong in large part drawings of canalizations, of war machines, of mechanics, of engineering, etc. From 1497 he has an annual pension of 2000 ducats. He did not flee before the French invasion, and indeed had then his first contacts with French personalities. In any case at the end of 1499 he went to Mantua, where he made the portrait, in drawing, of Isabella d'Este, then to Venice; in Apr. 1500 he is in Florence.
From a letter of L. da Novellara to Isabella d'Este it is known that in Apr. 1501 he has already finished the cartoon for the panel depicting the Madonna with St. Anne, now in the Louvre; he has with him two pupils who paint under his guidance and with his collaboration. In Oct. 1503 he sets to work on the Battle of Anghiari for the Hall of the Council (Palazzo Vecchio): he executes the cartoon with great vigor; in 1505 he begins the painting, unfortunately with a strange technique, a pseudo-encaustic, of which he had the idea from Pliny, with abundant use of Greek pitch; the painting failed to dry and "ran"; preserved nevertheless for decades, it was destroyed in the decoration of the hall after 1550, and the cartoon too, though much admired and much studied, was dispersed. In 1506 L. is in Milan (settlement of the dispute over the Virgin of the Rocks), by now fully introduced into the circle of the new French rulers, in 1507 and 1508 he is in Florence, in 1509 in Milan, in 1513 in Rome on the payroll of Giuliano de' Medici, brother of Leo X; he will certainly remain there until the whole summer of 1516; in this Roman period he was little sought after as an artist: the most important work entrusted to him was hydraulic, that is, the study of the Pontine reclamation.
Between the end of 1516 and the beginning of 1517 he moves, taking with him paintings, manuscripts, drawings, to Amboise, to the Castle of Cloux; he has a handsome pension from the King of France and is, we must think, surrounded by great esteem, although by now, paralyzed in the right hand and prematurely aged, his artistic activity is reduced, it seems, to drawing and to the guidance of pupils, among whom is the most trusted Francesco Melzi; to him, making his will on 23 Apr. 1519, he leaves his manuscripts and drawings, and to him falls the task of informing L.'s brothers that "such a man... passed from this present life on 2 May (1519) with all the orders of Holy Mother Church and well disposed... may God Almighty grant him eternal rest."
II. THE ARTISTIC WORK
We have no document and no information about the Annunciation that came in 1867 to the Uffizi from S. Bartolomeo a Montoliveto (Florence); on it, albeit slowly, in recent decades a nearly unanimous recognition has been reached that it is the first important and individual work of L.: Verrocchiesque is the highly elaborate lectern of the Virgin, but in her very figure there is a regularity and a sweetness of features, a posture simple, spontaneous and yet monumental that is not the master's; the angel is painted with colors less bright, warmer, both in the garments and in the face, with a most gradual modeling and a formal definition of supreme intensity and elegance; the landscape, seen from above, is highly intricate, well studied in its geological and botanical elements, most gradual in the bluing of the forms and in their merging into the distance.
It is, on the other hand, reported in Vasari's Vita, and even earlier, that L. colored an angel in the Baptism of A. Verrocchio now in the Uffizi; evidently the head of the first of the two angels is by L.; but, as had been thought and as radiographic examinations have proved, also the landscape with the play of great rivers and waterfalls, among sheer mountains, is a repainting, and evidently by him; nor in this painting of tormented and uneven execution is it to be excluded that L.'s brush passed over other parts. To this Verrocchiesque period also belongs the Madonna and Child of Munich, whose attribution to L. has likewise been establishing itself in recent decades (Berenson and A. Venturi, at first contrary to it, R. Longhi, etc.). As by L. is by now generally held the small Annunciation of the Louvre. One of the two Virgin Marys begun in 1478 can be recognized in the not perfectly finished Madonna Benois (Leningrad), in which the gesture, so lively and so studied, of the Child who struggles to fix his gaze on the flowers he holds in his hand, the easy and self-contained grouping, the typical features and the movements bring us back to drawings of those years; whereas after the Annunciation of the Uffizi it is reasonable to place the Portrait of a woman against a background of juniper branches from the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, in which is to be recognized the portrait of Ginevra Benci (b. ca. 1458), mentioned as by L. already by the Anonimo gaddiano, a figure of great nobility of posture, of most gradual definition and extraordinarily alive in every stroke.
The major work of L. of the Florentine period is the Adoration of the Uffizi, abandoned when the first layings-in of color had barely completed the drawing and had partially given a first chiaroscuro and a first modeling to part of the figures: the traditional hut having been gradually abolished in the preparatory drawings, it is now a tumultuous and admiring crowd around the melodious and collected group of Mary and the Child, against the background of parts of classical architecture, free of all decoration, perspectivally perfect; beyond, the mountainous landscape dear to him. The purity, the energy, the character of the figures are impressive. The populous and yet most orderly vastness of the scene is incomparable. Of the same years must be the St. Jerome of the Vatican Pinacoteca, likewise abandoned very soon, yet with a strong characterization of the head. In the Virgin of the Rocks, the most complex work finished and handed down to us not excessively damaged by time, we find again, with a fantasy new to Italian art, his repertoire of geological and botanical data; in the group of the 4 figures (the infant St. John, Mary, Jesus and the Angel) there is a most intimate and harmonious connection; in the Virgin the unfinished type of the Florentine Adoration is fully executed, in the children is realized a sense at once of liveliness and of extraordinary recollection, nudes already strong, classically euphoric, and yet felt affectionately in the character of early infancy; of great beauty is the head of the angel. The shading is even softer than in the Florentine paintings and invades a little more of the bodies; that is, the Leonardesque sfumato is already typical, which — and this should be well noted — is a means of defining the form itself down to its most subtle details.
It is not rash to recognize in the young Lady with an Ermine of the Czartoryski collection in Kraków the portrait, from the early Milanese years, of Gallerani.
Needing, by the very nature of his art, a slow and most finished execution, L. did not wish to use the technique of fresco in the Last Supper, but, unfortunately, resorted to a tempera with a gesso preparation on the plaster, an unsuitable procedure, given also the humidity of Milan. The painting began very soon to deteriorate; what is seen today consists of part of the surviving scales of color and of retouchings made in the various numerous old restorations. It is due to timely protective measures that it was not destroyed, like a great part of the refectory, in the aerial bombardment of Aug. 1943. Here too L. placed a very simple architecture, of great perspectival effect, clearly evident in the effects of lighting from the windows opening onto the countryside: before a long table Jesus and the Apostles, at the moment when Jesus says: "behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me at the table" (Lk. 22:21). L. imagines with a human mind the physical aspect of this essential moment of the Christian tragedy; the agitated anguish of the Apostles in contrast to the sublime calm of Christ. The fresco must have possessed — and in part still shows — an extraordinary effect of illusion, an admirable composure even in the tireless search for movement and expression of the individual figures, a great sonority of color in velvety light tones, such as in his Florentine period (e.g., Annunciation, Madonna of Munich). In the Battle of Anghiari, known from copies of the central episode, that is, the part executed in paint on the wall, and from preparatory drawings, L. repeatedly developed the theme of the horse and the rider in the impetus of motion, in the twisting of battle; here too he must have attained the greatest solidity of grouping and at the same time an illusion of momentum. The description of the cartoon of 1501 (v. above) allows us to affirm that from it L. executed the Madonna with St. Anne, now in the Louvre, while another cartoon with intimate variations and, it is thought, somewhat earlier, is preserved at the Royal Academy in London and is the greatest surviving drawing by L. The Madonna with St. Anne in the Louvre shows an atmospheric sense even more all-embracing than in the previous works, a chiaroscuro more nuanced and more penetrating in the forms. A style that at a higher and unsurpassable degree of execution is found in the portrait of a woman in the Louvre known as La Gioconda, which Vasari (though without knowing it) described as the portrait of monna Lisa del Giocondo; a miracle of definition of the human form sought in its maximum visible complexity and yet in a "harmony in a single glance." It is the works of this period that have exercised the greatest influence on imitators (v. LEONARDESCHI) and that have most impressed, now for almost a century, critics and public alike for the typical fascinating expression of the faces that seem touched by a strange smile, for the sense of great calm of the image determined with superb plasticity in an indefatigable modeling, for the backgrounds, authentic geological poems, most definite and yet fabulous.
The catalogue of L.'s works, which in the youthful period is not always easily distinguishable from Verrocchio and from Lorenzo di Credi, and which, later, as has been seen, benefits from the collaboration of pupils, includes other works of less evident greatness: such as the so-called Belle
Ferronière of the Louvre; the St. John the Baptist of the same Museum; the Madonna Litta of Leningrad; the Donna scapigliata, a sketch of the Pinacoteca of Parma attributed to L. by A. Venturi; the Madonna with Child Duveen (formerly Dreyfuss), etc. The original fragments of the talented and interesting decoration with branches, leaves and knots of the Sala delle Assi (Castello Sforzesco) have disappeared in the imitative re-execution made of it in 1901; as have now almost entirely disappeared the portraits of Lodovico il Moro, his wife and the added children, opposite the Cena, at the Crucifixion of Montorfano.
Of the greatest importance for L., as for no other painter of the Renaissance, is the body of drawings (of which several hundred sheets have come down to us, apart from the purely scientific ones): notes for machines, for architectures, very rapid sketches from life of animals, of human figures, of gestures, of groupings of figures, of landscape elements, often modulated, with an ever greater search for expressiveness and melodious ease of line, several times on the same sheet, studies of anatomy and of botany, often highly finished heads, with perfect execution; drawing activity in preparation for his paintings in order to attempt and clarify their idea, or without concern for a subsequent pictorial execution for the pure joy of capturing an impression and a memory, or as a commentary on his writings: an immense, admirable figurative diary. The expressive and evocative capacity of his most rapid drawings may be called unique in the art of every time and place; while the sense of modeling, of light, that he obtains with fully executed drawings is unsurpassable.
The reconstruction of L.'s sculptural work is, on the other hand, entirely conjectural and is based partly on sifting within Verrocchio's sculpture works that, for a new sensibility and fineness, are plausibly by the great pupil, and partly, for the following periods, on identifying works in which there is an evident and greater use of Leonardesque motifs: among the latter is the very lively small Horse in bronze of the Museum of Budapest, which connects to a type and a sense of the horse that long persisted in L.
L. grasped in the Florentine art of the period of his early youth the energy and vitality of line, the complex modulation of groupings, the tireless modeling and of great illusion, and all these values he brought to a higher degree to express a world of his own dominated by wonder and by the calm joy for the individuating and taking concrete form of things into life. This consequently to a whole mentality of his, known to us from his writings.
Giorgio Castelfranco
III. LEONARDO AS ARCHITECT
L., who in his letter of presentation to Duke Ludovico il Moro, after speaking of his art as a military engineer, added: "in time of peace I believe I can satisfy very well in comparison with any other in the composition of public and private buildings, and in conducting waters from one place to another," has not left us any realized works of architecture to which his name can be assigned without hesitation.
Nevertheless, there are very numerous drawings by him in which are very clearly set out not only his tastes as an architect but also, very often, the elements useful for their practical realization. In other words, these are not architectural fantasies, but true architectural projects in which are reflected not only his faculties as an assimilator and elaborator of stylistic data gradually acquired and variously elaborated, but also his taste as a practical experimenter and his mechanical interests in utilitarian solutions. These are drawings ready to be translated into models of houses, palaces, stables, laundries, fortifications, and above all churches, with complex centralized structures, with one or more domes in which is evident also an assiduous spatial research pursued essentially through a continuous play of shadows and lights generated by the centralized or opposed plastic masses, living forces of the structural organism.
The great models of the architecture of the Romans and of the Florentines of the 15th century, of Brunelleschi above all, are at the basis of his architectural culture, which nevertheless soon turns to the Lombard tradition, in which he most authoritatively inserts his name alongside that of Donato Bramante, who undoubtedly knew and developed in his works some ideas of L. Thus some of his ideas were probably used in the construction of the cathedral of Pavia, while others were developed by Cristoforo Solari in the presbyterial area of the cathedral of Como. On the other hand, contemplating the beautiful S. Maria della Consolazione in Todi, whose idea is generally assigned to Bramante and whose realization is due in large part to Cola di Matteuccio da Caprarola, it is still the great name of L. that returns to mind with greater insistence.
Emilio Lavagnino
IV. THE SCIENTIFIC STUDIES
L.'s interest in the natural and biological sciences was very great and persistent throughout his life — in a will toward knowledge that was at once encyclopedic and unified — and he cultivated them through reading, observation, experiments, etc.
1. Geology
Among his assertions most admired as anticipations of modern science are those on the movements of subsidence and emergence of lands; and from this comes the explanation of the presence of shells, fish skeletons, and fossil algae in emerged stones and earths. In this he had been set on the path by Greek (Aristotle) and medieval science: in any case he follows with great clarity the fossilization of organic remains congealed in the "silt," which, rising, petrifies and incorporates them. He studies the geological history of the Valdarno, which he holds to have originally consisted, from the Gonfolina (gorge between Lastra a Signa and Montelupo) upward, of two lakes, and, below the Gonfolina, already of sea; he affirms the alluvial origin of the Po Valley, and he glimpses geological changes even in remote regions (Persia, Syria, etc.). He pays extreme attention to the effects of meteorological agents, to the appearance of rock formations, on which he insists in numerous drawings, to the formation of clouds, rains, storms, floods, etc. Let it not be forgotten that he was a good topographer and cartographer (maps of Tuscany, of the Pontine Marshes, of Imola, etc.) and an uncommon excursionist, especially in the Lombard Alps (Monte Rosa).
2. Botany
As a botanist, he, besides a vast morphological knowledge, poses certain new problems of plant biology: that is, he was the first to observe and define the arrangement of leaves with respect to their insertion on the stems and their branchings (phyllotaxis); he made observations on the absorption of water by the roots of plants, on the structure in concentric layers of trunks from which the age of the plant can be deduced, etc.
3. Zoology
As for what was his activity as a zoologist, anatomist and biologist in general, it has not yet been well distinguished what he owes to the scientific culture of his time from what were his authentic discoveries. He practiced widely and relentlessly the dissection of human bodies and also, to a lesser extent, of animals; he executed very numerous anatomical drawings (using various sections for a given organ) generally with an exactness exceptional for his times; he used the method of injections of solidifiable liquids into hollow organs, especially for the brain, and on the anatomy and functions of the brain (and of the connected nervous system), of the heart, and of the eye he insists particularly. Among animals he studied the horse better than any other, especially in connection with the Sforza monument, although there exist groups of drawings certainly from life of horses in free motion, not in preparation for this work.
Giorgio Castelfranco
4. Geometry
Given the notable perfection of the elements set forth by Euclid and Archimedes, L. had no occasion to insist on fundamental questions, but rather developed criteria for the application of geometry to the resolution of problems in the various sciences, beginning with purely geometric ones, such as the quadrature of lunes, the volumetric equivalences of different solids, to the more complex ones of mechanics. He also devised a whole series of geometric instruments such as the proportional compass, the compasses for tracing ellipses and parabolas with continuous motion and the oval lathe for tracing and possibly engraving given ellipses on a rotating disc with a special stylus; all of a structure analogous to instruments and tools still in use.
5. Statics
Statics, concerning the construction of buildings, domes, bridges, etc. and the simple instruments needed for this, had been notably studied by the ancients and L. certainly knew the treatises of Aristotle, Archimedes, Hero, and Vitruvius and the more recent ones of G. Nemorarius; L. reworked and extended many concepts, in particular the fundamental one of the moment of a force with respect to a point, which he applied in very many cases and in particular to the study of the so-called simple machines, inclined planes, screws, pulleys, hoists, etc., drawing from them conclusions rediscovered shortly afterward by Guido Ubaldo del Monte. L. also achieved notable progress in the consideration and determination of the centers of gravity of geometric figures (tetrahedron, round pyramids, polygonal ones, etc.) and of real bodies, distinguishing them into three types, natural, accidental, and of volume, which indeed correspond to those still considered by modern technique. Likewise, completing G. Nemorarius's considerations on the decomposition of the force (weight) of a heavy body supported by a cord suspended between two points with the determination of the tension in the two branches of the cord itself, he arrives first at the reciprocal notion of the preceding one, that is, at the notion of the composition of any two concurrent forces. Thus likewise, after having drawn from problems of Aristotle the fundamental condition for the stability of the balance, L., with bold generalization, arrives at the discovery of the condition for the stability of any body placed on a plane: that is, that the vertical passing through its center of gravity falls within the polygon traced between the outermost points of support of the body itself.
6. Dynamics
Dynamics, considered by the ancients less useful and interesting than statics and by them erroneously conceived and set forth, began shortly before L.'s time to arouse greater interest as a doctrine necessary for the study of the motion of projectiles; but immediately the lack of reliable previous studies was felt. L. arrived at the first sufficiently precise notions of several of the necessary elements, that is, of force, of percussion, of impetus, and, by his simple definition of force, he placed himself outright against Aristotle as regarded the motion of projectiles and arrows, affirming decisively that the medium (the air) not only does not favor it but rather slows it and shortens it. L. must have deeply meditated on these questions, made difficult by widespread erroneous preconceptions supported by the authority of Aristotle, and it was thus that he arrived at the notion that we now call the inertia of material masses; his assertions, besides the whole of his considerations, leave no doubt on the matter: "Every motion attends to its maintenance, or rather every body moved always moves itself, as long as the power of its mover is preserved in it" and "Every motion will follow the path of its course in a straight line as long as the nature of the violence done by its mover endures in it." Thus was definitively established the first of the three classical laws of motion. L. did not, however, succeed in clearly deducing the second, which we now call the Galilean-Newtonian one, while in compensation he had a clear idea of the third concerning the equality of action and reaction. Yet, despite the not yet complete knowledge of the laws of motion, L. succeeded in fixing many of the characteristics of the phenomenon of the free fall of bodies; the proportionality of the velocity reached and the time taken; the independence of this velocity from the weight of the body; the deviation of falling bodies toward the east (because of the earth's rotation). He was also able to determine the relations between free fall and fall on inclined planes and to observe that the fall along given stretches of curves is always slower than the fall along the respective chords.
7. Resistance of materials
In this field L. distinguishes among the various kinds of resistance (to tension, to compression, to bending, etc.) and for their determination follows the only criterion then possible, that of comparison. He thus arrives at establishing a whole series of true laws relating to vertical supports of various cross-sections (square, circular, etc.) loaded from above, to horizontal beams fixed at one end and loaded at the other, to beams fixed strated at both ends, to beams supported at the ends, determining for the latter partially also the law of flexure for a median load. For the execution of the necessary measurements and for the experimental checks, L. devised various devices, among which a test bench for the traction of metal wires. The accurate drawings of these devices, executed about 450 years ago, show a surprising resemblance to those of analogous modern devices.
8. Science of building and mechanical construction
L. undoubtedly had a clear idea of what that difficult discipline should be, which often proposes antithetical aims such as the strength of constructions and the economy of materials. In fact, he attempted a first theory of the circular arch already used since the most remote times, with and without tie-rod, realizing its thrusts, its critical or most stressed points, also for asymmetrical loads. Considering the contrast between the strength of the complete arch and the weakness and instability of the two halves that constitute it taken in isolation, he describes the arch as "a fortress caused by two weaknesses." The devices devised by L. to facilitate great constructions, to raise great weights, to facilitate excavations, etc., are very numerous. Equally very interesting are his studies on friction, which he distinguishes into sliding and rolling, and of which he experimentally determines, on specially built test benches, some law with criteria analogous to those still employed three centuries later by C. A. Coulomb in his classic researches.
9. Mechanics of fluids
In his very numerous hydraulic works, especially in Lombardy, L. evidently does not content himself with following the ancient empirical rules resulting from analogous works carried out over the centuries, but seeks to give as good an account as he can of what concerns the statics and dynamics of fluids (liquids or aeriforms). Of hydrostatics he states the fundamental principle, which he applies to communicating vessels with liquids of different density, and gives the exact interpretation of the hydrostatic paradox. Of the dynamics of flowing waters, L. arrives at the fundamental principle of constant flow, which affirms that in a watercourse with variable cross-sections, in steady regime, the velocities are everywhere inversely proportional to the cross-sections. Of aeriforms, L. has exact ideas concerning compressibility and weight. He is the first to interpret the flight of birds on the basis of the replacement of the air beneath the moving wings, with respect to the surrounding air, with sufficient velocity, noting the interesting fact that the said velocity must be greater than that of the air that flees. L. also states the general principle that today is called that of aerodynamic reciprocity.
10. Physics
L. certainly also knew the other branches of the physics of his time, but he occupied himself only incidentally with their further development; he used it instead extensively to solve the numerous problems that presented themselves to his mind. Thus it was that from the reflection of light on a spherical surface he drew a notable interpretation of the ashen light of the moon; that from the knowledge of the camera obscura, already known to the Arabs, he was led to discover in every eye a small dark chamber that is by now considered the primary element for any vision. He also interested himself in the interpretation of light which he admits propagates in air and in the ether by waves analogous to those of sound, but at first instantaneously and then almost instantaneously.
11. L.'s inventions, that is, his new complex contrivances capable of achieving determined practical results, are incredibly numerous and varied: from some machine tools analogous to those reinvented in the 19th century, to every sort of lifting apparatus: from the perfected canal locks, to swing bridges; from augers and drilling machines driven by gears, to rolling mills; from chimney cowls that rotate according to the wind to prevent the return of smoke, to roofs with movable vanes of windmills; from chains that we today call Galle chains, like those used today for bicycles, to suspensions for compasses reinvented by Cardano; from printing presses, to mechanical roasting spits, etc. L.'s studies of military interest are also numerous, from those for assaulting fortresses to those relating to winch-operated cannons and to machine guns.
12. The problem of mechanical flight occupied L.'s mind for a long time and was often considered one of his utopian fixation: a judgment that the achievements of this century proved rash. It is true that L. could not have the satisfaction of seeing any practical result of his ideas on flight; but today we know that what was essentially lacking was not knowledge of the phenomenon of substitution, which he on the contrary was the first to interpret fairly correctly, but the impossibility of having at his disposal the necessary dynamic power, or, in more popular language, a sufficiently powerful and light engine. Some express surprise that L. did not immediately understand the futility of his efforts, given that impossibility. But to gain a serious understanding of this difficult question one must consider that the problem of flight involved two orders of difficulty: that of understanding whether and how a thing heavier than air could fly mechanically; and that of supplying it with the mechanical power required. Birds, heavier than air, fly, and today we know that they fly very economically with respect to the expenditure of energy. It was therefore logical to try to imitate them. But man does not have within himself the devices necessary for a substitution, and must procure them artificially: in other words, in order to fly he had to carry with him in flight the necessary supporting organs and therefore have at his disposal a dynamic power far greater than his own. Nature has endowed birds with a strength, relative to their weight, greater than that of men; and yet it is barely sufficient for them to rise in flight; moreover, when they are in flight the perfection of the wings furnished them by nature allows them to sustain themselves with little expenditure of strength: but it is well known that the great fliers, eagles themselves, cannot begin their flight unless they have before them a certain free space which they traverse, aided also by their feet. This being premised, one understands why L. did not immediately intuit the necessity of powerful auxiliary motors; the problem involved the resolution of a question no longer qualitative but quantitative, physical and physiological, for which one must have recourse to the universal conservative principles of which only around the middle of the last century was an exact notion obtained. Along with countless other flight devices L. also sketched an apparatus fundamentally analogous to the modern helicopter. There can be no doubt that an apparatus thus constituted and provided with a sufficient motor could have risen.
Paolo Straneo
V. THE WRITINGS
The legend of a secret and almost sorcerer-like scientific and intellectual activity on the part of L. must be dispelled: it is known that he showed his writings to friends with justifiable pride (letter of Antonio De Beatis); unfortunately he had not had a youthful education such as to learn a suitable order of composition; not only does he repeat and take up again at random from his various notebooks, but he corrects himself by repeating himself. Another obstacle was his curious handwriting, to which he, being left-handed, took already as a young man, out of a combination of logic and eccentricity rather than out of a desire for secrecy; such handwriting, which at first appears indecipherable, is in fact legible without excessive difficulty with the help of a mirror. In his notebooks various subjects accumulate, drawings, notes from readings, his own thoughts, etc.
The most orderly part of the composition must have been that on painting, which seems to have been completed as early as 1498. Of the autograph only a few fragments remain today, but copies were already circulating around the middle of the sixteenth century, among them ms. Vat. Urb. no. 1270, which gives us the most faithful and least incomplete text of it. The Urbinas manuscript was followed in the edition of Manzi (Rome 1817) and has been the standard text. But until then, from other redactions there had been as many as 20 editions and translations, the first of which in 1651, edited by R. Du Fresne. This Trattato della pittura consists of 935 chapters: general concepts, observations on optics, on actions and subjects, on transitional elements, shadows, plants, trees, etc.; it undoubtedly contains some of the most important pages of L.; but, by itself, it does not give us an exact sense of his mentality, and the reading of it must be completed with that of the fragments scattered in the other manuscripts.
Alongside the Trattato, the greater bulk of Leonardo's writings is made up of the 1600 sheets of various formats (and therefore coming from various notebooks and on various subjects) assembled by Pompeo Leoni, gluing them onto large sheets of paper, without any order, in a thick volume, called the Codice Atlantico, at the Ambrosiana since 1637. From the Ambrosiana the Napoleonic dispersals brought to the Library of the Institut de France another 12 volumes on various subjects; of notable size is the manuscript of the Arundel collection of the British Museum (560 sheets), the others smaller; altogether some thirty manuscript volumes and notebooks have come down to us, besides small groups of sheets, an imposing document of L.'s mental activity, even if far from complete. Their publication, accompanied by facsimiles, was begun by Ch. Ravaisson Mollien in 1881 for the manuscripts of the Institut de France; the publication of the others followed within a few decades, from various quarters.
VI. PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
Although one may hesitate to speak of a philosophical Leonardo, given the fragmentary and unsystematic character of his writings, a philosophical thought is nonetheless clearly recognizable in numerous fragments.
Leonardo is persuaded of a reason that "lives infused" in the world, a world forged by it in the immensity of time in a perpetual dying and being born of things and forms; and man is capable of comprehending the cosmic Reason because his spirit partakes of the spirit of the world, his soul is a spark of the soul of the world. "This is the true rule, how the investigators of natural effects must proceed; and although Nature begins from reason and ends in experience, we must follow the opposite course, that is, beginning from experience and by means of it investigating reason" (E. 55 r.). The activity of the spirit thus traverses a cycle; the cosmic Reason descends, realizing itself, to the single fact; human reason ascends from the single fact to the cosmic Reason.
And although there is no lack of hints, inevitable in his time, of an obstetrically veristic and imitative [art], it appears clear elsewhere that his most deeply rooted and profound thought, consonant with his entire mentality, is that of an art which creates new beauties, new imagined and desired visions, according to the very laws of nature: "What is in the Universe by essence, presence and imagination, he (the painter) has first in his mind and then in his hands." For Leonardo, that is, it is not a matter of mechanically capturing aspects of a nature foreign to the painter, but of representing new things as growths of the "mind of nature," a poetic continuation of the same natural reasons. Such a mentality explains the extreme laboriousness and complexity of each of his works of art, the slowness, the small number, as has been seen, of his works of painting and sculpture, almost halved moreover by technical uncertainties and unfortunate events.
VII. THE LITERARY STYLE
As regards L.'s style, its merits are beginning to be widely recognized: where irregularities of composition do not hinder it too much, his sentence structure is ample and of fine breath; his language rich and choice; in descriptions of countryside, scenes, animals, his word has unforeseen precision, one feels the image being born from the discovery of forms. Of great taste and elegance in faces, fables, allegories, where there is often evident use of texts easily accessible to him: a writer of authentic originality and personality, not popularizing, nor following established literary models. — See plates LXXII-LXXIV.
Bibliography
Critical editions of L.'s writings. The most important for the bulk of published manuscripts are: Ch. Ravaisson Mollien, I manoscritti A-M della Bibl. dell'Institut, 6 vols., Paris 1881-91; G. Piumati, Il Cod. Atlantico, Milan 1894-1904; (see also: Indice per materie del Cod. Atlantico, ibid. 1939; Dizionario leonardesco. Repertorio delle voci e cose contenute nel Cod. Atlantico, ibid. 1939); R. Commissione Vinciana, Cod. Arundel 263, Rome 1923-30; id., Il Cod. Forster, ibid. 1930-36. Drawings: R. Commissione Vinciana, Disegni di L. da V., edited by A. Venturi, 6 fascicles, Rome 1928-49; Il Trattato della pittura (from Vat. Urb. 1270) was published by G. Manzi, Rome 1817; ed. and trans. by H. Ludwig, Vienna 1882; ed. A. Borzelli, Lanciano 1914. — Leonardesque anthologies: J. P. Richter, The Literary Works of L. d. V., London 1883 and London-New York 1939; L. d. V., Frammenti letterari e filosofici trascelti da E. Solmi, Florence 1900; L. d. V., der Denker, Forscher u. Poet, trans. and intro. by M. Herzfeld, Leipzig 1904, Jena 1906; L. d. V.'s note books arranged... edited by E. McCurdy, New York 1923-46; G. Fumagalli, L. prosatore, Milan 1915; id., L. omo senza lettere, Florence 1938. Studies: On the life and artistic work of L.: G. Uzielli, Ricerche intorno a L. d. V., 1st-2nd series, Florence 1872 and Rome 1888; P. Müller-Walde, L. d. V., Munich 1889-90; W. Pater, The Renaissance, London 1893; Ital. trans., de Rinaldis, Naples 1925; Ital. trans. Praz, ibid. 1946; E. Müntz, L. d. V. L'artiste, le penseur, le savant, Paris 1899; B. Berenson, The drawings of the florentine painters, London 1903 and enlarged, Chicago 1938; This Jens, L. d. V., Kristiania 1909, English trans., London 1914; W. v. Seidlitz, L. d. V., der Wendepunkt der Renaissance, Berlin 1909; O. Sirén, L. d. V., Stockholm 1911, English trans. London 1916, French trans. Paris 1928; Venturi, VII, iv (1915), p. 931; IX, 1 (1925); X, 1 (1935), p. 1; L. Beltrami, Doc. e mem. riguardanti la vita e le opere di L. d. V. in ordine cronologico, Milan 1919; G. Poggi, L. d. V. La vita di G. Vasari, commentata e illustrata, Florence 1919; L. Venturi, La critica e l'arte di L. d. V., Bologna 1919; A. Venturi, L. d. V. pittore, ibid. 1920; A. De Rinaldis, Storia dell'opera pittorica di L. d. V., ibid. 1926; W. Suida, L. u. sein Kreis, Munich 1929; H. Bodmer, L. Stuttgart 1931; B. Degenhart, Di alcuni problemi di sviluppo... della pittura nella bottega di Verrocchio... in Rivista d'arte, 2nd series, 3 (1931), pp. 263-403; K. Clark, A cat. of the drawings of L. d. V... at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1935; C. Calvi, Vita di L., Brescia 1936; K. Clark, L. d. V., Cambridge 1939; Mostra di L. d. V., Catalogo, Milan 1939; R. Marcolongo, L. d. V., artista scienziato, ibid. 1939; L. d. V., edited by the Mostra di L. d. V., ibid. 1940 (39 essays by various authors on various subjects); L. Bonari, L., Bergamo 1942; L. H. Heydenreich, L., Berlin 1943; O. H. Giglioli, L., iniziazione alla conoscenza di lui, Florence 1944; R. L. Douglas, L. d. V., Chicago 1944; A. E. Popham, The drawings of L., London 1947; P. Valéry, Stendhal e altri autori, Toute l'oeuvre peinte de L. d. V. (colour reproductions), Paris 1950. On the writings and the scientific and philosophical activity: G. B. Venturi, Essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de L. d. V., Paris 1797;
G. Libri, Hist. des sciences mathématiques en Italie etc., ibid. 1838; E. Solmi, Studi sulla filosofia naturale di L., Modena 1896; id., Nuovi studi sulla fil. naturale, ibid. 1905; id., Scritti vinciani, collected and edited by A. Solmi, Florence 1924; P. Duhem, Etudes sur L. d. V., 3rd series, Paris 1906-13; B. Croce, L. filosofo, in Conferenze fiorentine, Milan 1910; L. Olschki, Gesch. d. neusprachl. wissenschaftl. Lit., Heidelberg 1918; G. Gentile, G. Bruno e il pensiero del Rinascimento, Florence 1920, p. 242 ff.; G. Calvi, I manoscritti di L. d. V., Bologna 1925; E. Cassirer, Individuum u. Kosmos in der Phil. der Ren., Leipzig-Berlin 1927; Ital. trans., Florence 1927, pp. 180-211; R. Marcolongo, La dinamica di L. d. V., in Rend. del Sem. Mat. e Fis. di Milano, 3 (1920), p. 109; id., La meccanica di L. d. V., in Atti della R. acc. delle scienze di Napoli, 2nd series, 19 (1932), pp. 1-150; E. McCurdy, The mind of L. d. V., London 1934; R. Giacomelli, Gli scritti di L. sul volo, Rome 1936; A. Uccelli, Vicende e metodi delle ricostruzioni vinciane, in Il Politecnico, 1937, p. 329 ff.; A. Farinelli, L. e la natura, Milan 1939; E. Panofsky, The cod. Huygens and L. d. V.'s Art Theory, London 1940; F. Bottazzi, La mente e l'opera di L. d. V., Vatican City 1941; A. Momigliano, La prosa di L., in Cinque Saggi, Florence 1945, p. 109 ff.; L. Venturi, Storia della critica d'arte, ibid. 1948; R. Dugas, Hist. de la mécanique, Paris-Neuchâtel 1950, p. 71 ff.
Giorgio Castelfranco