Page:
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 |
Next
Of certified paintings produced by the young genius, during his apprenticeship or in his inde pendent years at Florence (about 1470-82), very few are extant, and the two most important are incomplete. A small and charm ing strip of an oblong "Annunciation" at the Louvre is generally accepted as his work, done soon after 1470. This is not very compatible in style with another and larger, much debated "An nunciation" at the Uffizi, which manifestly came from the work shop of Verrocchio about 1473-74, and which many critics claim confidently for the young Leonardo. It may have been joint studio-work of Verrocchio and his pupils including Leonardo, who certainly was concerned in it, since a study for the sleeve of the angel, preserved at Christ Church, Oxford, is unquestionably by his hand. The landscape, with its mysterious spiry mountains and winding waters, is very Leonardesque both in this picture and in another contemporary product of the workshop, or as some think of Leonardo's hand, namely a very highly and coldly finished small "Madonna with a Pink" at Munich. The likeness he is recorded to have painted of Ginevra de' Benci used to be tra ditionally identified with the fine portrait of a matron at the Pitti absurdly known as La Monaca: more lately it has been recognized in a rather dull, expressionless Verrocchiesque portrait of a young woman with a fanciful background of pine-sprays in the Liech tenstein gallery at Vienna. Neither attribution can be counted convincing. Several works of sculpture, including a bas-relief at Pistoia and a small terra-cotta model of a St. John at the Victoria and Albert Museum, have also been claimed, but without general consent, as the young master's handiwork. Of many bril liant early drawings by him, the first that can be dated is a study of landscape done in 1473. A magnificent silver-point head of a Roman warrior at the British Museum was clearly done, from or for a bas-relief, under the immediate influence of Verrocchio. A number of studies of heads in pen or silver-point, with some sketches for Madonnas, including a charming series in the British Museum for a "Madonna with the Cat," may belong to the same years or the first years of his independence. A sheet with two studies of heads bears a ms. note of 1478, saying that in one of the last months of that year he began painting the "Two Maries." One of the two may have been a picture of the Virgin appearing to St. Bernard, which we know he was commissioned to paint in that year for a chapel in the Palace of the Signory, but never finished: the commission was afterwards transferred to Filippino Lippi, whose performance is now in the Badia. One of the two heads on this dated sheet may probably have been a study for the same St. Bernard; it was used afterwards by some follower for a St. Leonard in a stiff and vapid "Ascension of Christ," wrongly at tributed to the master himself in the Berlin museum. A pen drawing representing a ringleader of the Pazzi conspiracy, Ber nardo Baroncelli, hung out of a window of the Bargello after his surrender by the sultan at Constantinople to the emissaries of Florence, can be dated from its subject as done in December 1479.
A number of his best drawings of the next following years are preparatory pen-studies for an altarpiece of the "Adoration of the Magi," undertaken early in 1481 on the commission of the monks of S. Donato at Scopeto. The prepara tion in monochrome for this picture, a work of extraordinary power both of design and physiognomical expression, is pre served at the Uffizi, but the painting itself was never carried out, and after Leonardo's failure to fulfil his contract Filippino Lippi had once more to be employed in his place. Of equal or even more intense power, though of narrower scope, is an unfinished monochrome preparation for a St. Jerome, found accidentally
at Rome by Cardinal Fesch and now in the Vatican gallery; this also seems to belong to the first Florentine period, but is not mentioned in documents.
Leonardo was already ardently feeling his way in the work of experimental study and observa tion in every branch of theoretical or applied science in which any beginning had been made in his age, as well as in some in which he was himself the first pioneer. He was full of new ideas concerning both the laws and the applications of mechanical forces. His architectural and engineering projects were of a daring which amazed even the fellow-citizens of Alberti and Brunelleschi. History presents few figures more attractive to the mind's eye than that of Leonardo during this period of his all capable and dazzling youth.
Leonardo would even in youth seclude himself for a season in complete intellectual absorption, forgetful of rest and food. But we have to picture him as anon gathering about him a tatterde malion company, and jesting with them until they were in fits of laughter, for the sake of observing their burlesque physiognomies; anon as eagerly frequenting the society of men of science and learning of an older generation like the mathematician Benedetto Aritmetico, the physician, geographer and astronomer Paolo Tos canelli, the famous Greek Aristotelian Giovanni Argiropoulo; or as out-rivalling all the youth of the city by charm of recitation, by skill in music and by feats of strength and horsemanship; or again as standing radiant in his rose-coloured cloak and his rich gold hair among the throng of young and old on the piazza, and holding them spellbound while he expatiated on the great projects in art and mechanics that were teeming in his mind.
Ludovico Sforza.—He was ready to leave Florence when the chance was offered him of fixed service at the court of Ludovico Sforza (il Moro) at Milan. Soon after that prince had firmly established his power as nominal guardian and protector of his nephew Gian Galeazzo but really as usurping ruler of the State, he revived a project previously mooted for the erection of an equestrian monument in honour of the founder of his house's greatness, Francesco Sf orza. Ludovico employed the talents of a number of court poets and artists, who in public recitation and pageant, in emblematic picture and banner and device, pro claimed the wisdom and kindness of his guardianship and the wickedness of his assailants. That Leonardo was among the artists thus employed is proved both by notes and projects among his mss. and by allegoric sketches still extant. Several such sketches are at Christ Church, Oxford: one shows a horned hag or she-fiend urging her hounds to an attack on the state of Milan and baffled by the Prudence and Justice of Il Moro (all this made clear by easily recognizable emblems).
Engineering and Architectural Plans.—It must have been the pestilence decimating Milan in 1484-85 which gave occa sion to the projects submitted by Leonardo to Ludovico for breaking up the city and reconstructing it on improved sanitary principles. To 1485-86 also appears to belong the inception of his elaborate though unfulfilled architectural plans for beautifying and strengthening the Castello, the great stronghold of the ruling power in the state. Very soon afterwards he must have begun work upon his plans and models, undertaken during an acute phase of the competition which the task had called forth between German and Italian architects, for another momentous enterprise, the completion of Milan cathedral. Extant records of payments made to him in connection with these architectural plans extend from Aug. 1487 to May 149o: in the upshot none of them was carried out.