Leonardo
da Vinci Society Newsletter
editor: Francis Ames-Lewis
Issue 18, May 2001
Recent and forthcoming events
A Symposium on
the 1651 editio princeps of Leonardo da VinciÕs Trattato della Pittura
A three-day symposium on ÔThe Fortuna of LeonardoÕs Trattato
della Pittura (1651)Õ, organised by Thomas
Frangenberg and Claire Farago, will be held at the Warburg Institute on
September 13Ñ15, 2001. The topic under discussion will be the first printed
edition, with illustrations by Nicolas Poussin, of Leonardo da VinciÕs Trattto
della Pittura, as reconstructed by Francesco Melzi
on the basis of LeonardoÕs notes, and its international fortuna. Speakers will consider how the editio princeps came into being, and how it was received in many different
countries all over Europe in the seventeenth century. We hope to publish the
definitive titles of papers in the May 2001 issue of this Newsletter; the current alphabetical list of speakers, and the provisional
titles of their papers, is as follows:
Juliana Barone (with Prof Martin Kemp),
ÔThe depiction of motion in illustrations for LeonardoÕs TrattatoÕ;
Prof Janis Bell, ÔLeonardoÕs legacy in
early seventeenth-century Italian art theoryÕ;
Hans Heinrik Brummer, ÔA gift for Queen
Cristina of Sweden - LeonardoÕs Trattato della pitturaÕ;
Dr Chryssa Damianaki-Romano, ÔTranslation
and critical fortune of LeonardoÕs Trattato in
GreeceÕ;
Dr Nicholas Davidson (to be confirmed),ÔThe
Trattato in VeniceÕ;
Dr Marcin Fabianski, ÔThe Trattato in Poland up to 1919Õ;
Prof Claire Farago, ÔLeonardoÕs writings on
pictorial composition in the abridged treatise of 1651Õ;
Prof Claire Farago with Dr Thomas
Frangenberg, ÔThe demise of the TrattatoÕ (a
round-table discussion);
Dr Frank Fehrenbach, ÔThe Trattato in Central Italy after 1651Õ;
Dr J.V. Field, ÕPerspective and the [Paris]
AcademyÕ;
Prof Francesca Fiorani, ÔThe illustrations
in the editio princeps of the Trattato;
Dr Thomas Frangenberg, ÔLeonardoÕs TraitŽ
de la peinture in seventeenth-century French art
theoryÕ;
Dr Christophe Frank (to be confirmed),ÔThe Trattato in German speaking countriesÕ;
Prof Teodoro Hampe Mart“nez and Dr
Francisco Stastny (to be confirmed), ÔLeonardoÕs Trattato and its reception in colonial South AmericaÕ;
Prof. Dr. Thomas Kirchner, ÔThe Trattato in eighteenth-century FranceÕ;
Dr Michael Kwakkelstein, ÔThe Trattato in the NetherlandsÕ;
Pauline Maguire Robison, ÔThe manuscripts
prepared under the supervision of Cassiano dal PozzoÕ;
Prof Javier Navarro de Zuvillaga, ÔThe Trattato in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish perspective and art
theoryÕ;
Dr Ulrich Pfisterer, ÔThe Trattato in eighteenth-century ItalyÕ;
Dr Geoff Quilley, ÔLeonardoÕs reputation
and the place of the Trattato in
eighteenth-century British art and aestheticsÕ;
Prof Charlene Villase–or Black, ÔRethinking
LeonardoÕs legacy in Spain: PachecoÕs art theory and the painting of
VelˆsquezÕ;
Prof Zygmunt Wazbinski, ÔLa presenza del
Codex Urbinas a la corte di UrbinoÕ;
Prof Thomas Willette, ÔThe 1733 Naples
edition of the TrattatoÕ;
Prof Robert Williams, ÔLeonardoÕs theory in
sixteenth-century FlorenceÕ;
Dr Michael Zimmermann, ÔPainterly
suggestions and hypnosis. The Trattato della Pittura at the end of the nineteenth centuryÕ.
Leonardesque
News
The XLI Lettura
Vinciana, 21 April 2001
The Renaissance musicologist Professor
Claude Palisca (Harvard University), who had originally been invited to deliver
the forty-first Lettura Vinciana in April 2001, sadly died at the beginning of
this year. The editor of this Newsletter was,
late in the day, invited to take his place, and on 21 April at the Biblioteca
Vinciana in Vinci, he gave the XLI Lettura Vinciana entitled ÔLa matita nera
nel pratica di disegno di Leonardo da VinciÕ. Francis Ames-Lewis reviewed
LeonardoÕs use of black chalk for underdrawing in preparation for pen and ink
drawings, and his recognition in his drawings from the time of the Milan Last
Supper of the potential of chalk as a tonal medium.
Comparing red and black chalk drawings of similar subjects, the lecturer
distinguished particular qualities of black chalk and demonstrated how
Leonardio exploited the opportunities offered by those qualities in studying
the three-dimensional forms and especially the psychological expressiveness of
his figures, and the representation of human feelings in their faces. Like all
others in the Lettura Vinciana series, established in 1960, this yearÕs lecture
will be published in due course.
A new Leonardo
drawing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
An important, hitherto little-known and
unpublished double-sided sheet by Leonardo da Vinci, sold at SothebyÕs on 5
July 2000, was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in early autumn last
year. It has now been discussed in detail by Carmen Bambach in an article in Apollo, CLIII no. 469, March 2001, pp. 16-23. Among a number of brief
sketches on the sheet, Dr Bambach concentrates attention on two soft black
chalk drawings showing a nude male seen from the front, on the recto, and from
the back, on the verso. Since he holds what appears to be a club horizontally
Across his body, the nude male is identifiable as Hercules. Associated with a
bolder black chalk study in Turin, the Hercules studies on the new sheet were
probably made with a work of sculpture in mind. Dr Bambach intriguingly argues
that Leonardo may have been sketching preliminary ideas for a colossal Hercules
to complement MichelangeloÕs David in both scale, Florentine imagery and
perhaps even location outside the mainentrance to the Palazzo della Signoria.
This would have been under considetration at very much the same time as
Leonardo and Michelangelo were working in competition on their two great battle
scenes for the Sala del Cinquecento in the years immediately after 1503. The
sketches may therefore Ôprovide a key piece of evidence for any reconstruction
of LeonardoÕs activity as a sculptorÕ.
Il Genio e
le Passioni.
Leonardo e il Cenacolo. Precedenti, innovazioni, riflessi di un capolavoro
As anticipated in issue 17 (November 2000),
of this Newsletter, an important exhibition that
investigates the precedents, innovations and later reflections and influence of
LeonardoÕs Last Supper opened at the Palazzo
Reale in Milan on 21 March 2001; it closes on 17 June this year. Conceived in
association with the recent unveiling after a twenty-year programme of
conservation of LeonardoÕs mural in the Refectory of S. Maria delle Grazie (see
Newsletter 16, May 2000), the exhibition is
curated by Pietro Marani, for many years the director of the conservation programme.
The
exhibition opens with a series of rooms dedicated to the iconography of the
Last Supper during the two centuries before LeonardoÕs radical reconsideration.
Examples are drawn from various regions of the peninsula and beyond, including
an exquisite French early fourteenth-century embroidered altar frontal from
Toulouse, Ugolino di NerioÕs Last Supper from
the Santa Croce altarpiece (1320s), and Taddeo GaddiÕs version from the
Sacristy cupboard also in Santa Croce, Florence. The second section of the
exhibition is devoted to Leonardo drawings, including almost all of his studies
for the Last Supper which allows for detailed
comparison of his use of different graphic techniques as he prepared the
composition. The way the works are placed allows for direct comparisons also
between the drawings and equivalent details in the Royal AcademyÕs full-scale
copy of the final composition by Giampetrino, normally to be seen in the Chapel
of Magdalen College, Oxford.
The
next section considers how Lombard and Piedmontese artists adhered to or
resisted this new paradigm of composition and emotional response, with its
powerful treatment of hand gesture and facial expression. Engraved copies of
the Last Supper were already in circulation in
the last year or two of the fiftenth century, allowing knowledge of the
composition to spread rapidly. Dominated by the Giampetrino copy, the display
includes surviving examples from two series of drawn copies of heads from the Last
Supper, the first, in Strasbourg, by an anonymous
early sixteenth-century Lombard draughtsman, and the second, less accomplished
and surely significantly later (eighteenth century?) group, divided between the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a private collection in London.
Also displayed are a striking Christ mocked by
Sodoma, drawings by Bramantino, and a variant of LeonardoÕs composition by
Bernardino Luini in around 1530.
Responses
to the Cenacolo by Milanese sculptors follow, headed by Tullio LombardoÕs
marble version in Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Venice. Included here are a group
of rhetorically-expressive Apostles by il
Bambaia for the tomb of Gaston de Foix (d.1512), and a magnificent Last Supper
group of life-sized polychromed wood figures by Andrea da Milano and Alberto da
Lodi, commissioned in 1531 for the Sanctuary at Saronno. The next section
traces sixteenth-century reflections of the Last Super in the Veneto, Florence
and Rome. Although regrettably the Giorgione Concert could not in the final analysis be lent from the Palazzo Pitti, the
early Venetian response is represented amongst others by a fine Rocco Marconi Christ
and the Adulteress, and Last Suppers by Titian, now in Urbino, and by Jacopo Bassano (Rome, Galleria
Borghese). Florence is represented by six vigorous red chalk drawings by Andrea
del Sarto for his Last Supper in the Refectory
of San Salvi.
The
exhibition now moves north of the Alps: to DŸrerÕs responses to the
Leonardesque engraved Last Supper by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, via a Goltzius engraving, to
a beautiful early Van Dyck (Madrid, private collection), a very close copy of
LeonardoÕs figures and drama located however in a very different, entirely Van
Dyckian, setting. This copy was probably based on a drawing made by Rubens on
his return through Italy in 1607, which served as prototype also for etched
versions by Pieter Claesz Soutman. Coming closer to the present day, the
exhibition includes copies of LeonardoÕs heads by Italian academic draughtsmen
such as Giuseppe Bossi (1777-1815), early books on the Cenacolo, the late
nineteenth-century photographic record, and the celebrated celluloid parodies
of the Last Supper in PasoliniÕs Mamma Roma (1962) and
Bu–uelÕs Viridiana (1961). These last deftly
demonstrate the iconic status gained by the Cenacolo in the last century, and
with a group of 1980s pop-art reflections foreshadow the continuing hold that
we may expect the composition to have over the twenty-first century
imagination.
The
splendid exhibition catalogue, edited by Pietro Marani, includes beautiful
colour plates and detailed catalogue entries on almost all the 236 exhibits,
introductory essays to each section of the exhibition, four major scholarly
essays by Pietro Marani, Carlo Bertelli, Cristina Acidini Luchinat and Martin
Kemp, and a Preface by Sir Ernst Gombrich.
The exhibition
of ÔLeonardo e la LedaÕ in Vinci announced in issue 17 (November 2000)
A reminder
to all readers who will be in Tuscany this summer that an exhibition entitled
ÔLeonardo e la LedaÕ is to be held at the Palazzino Uzielli del Museo
Leonardiano in Vinci from 23 June to 23 September 2001. Organized by the Comune
di Vinci in conjunction with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici
delle provincie di Firenze, Pistoia e Prato and with the Ministero dei beni
Culturali, it is jointly curated by Gigetta Dalli Regoli (Professor of the
History of Art at the Universitˆ di Pisa), Romano Nanni (Director of the
Biblioteca e Museo Leonardiano di Vinci) and Antonio Natali (Director of the
Department of Renaissance and Mannerist Paintings at the Uffizi, Florence). The
exhibition will consider the relationships between classical representations of
the story of Leda, the choices and reasons underlying LeonardoÕs compositions,
and the alternative solutions to LeonardoÕs, especially those devised early in
the sixteenth century. For further detail, please refer to issue 17 (November
2000) of this Newsletter.
Recent publications on Leonardo da Vinci and
related topics
An
English translation of Manuscript I
The Ente
Raccolta Vinciana has issued the second in its series of English translations
of the Leonardo da Vinci manuscripts. The Manuscripts by Leonardo da Vinci
in the Institut de France: Manuscript I, translated
and annotated by John Venerella, was published earlier this year, with the
continuing support of the Getty Grant Program. Manuscript I includes several
pages of LeonardoÕs exercises, probably undertaken between 1494 and 1497, in
Latin vocabulary and grammar, based on his study of Niccol˜ PerottiÕs Rudimenta
gramatices (first published in Rome in 1474). It
also contains parts of LeonardoÕs studies of Euclid, undertaken under the tutelage
of Luca Pacioli perhaps from 1496. The errors in his Latin at this stage
indicate that Leonardo was not yet in a position to commprehend Euclid without
help. His work with Pacioli, which resulted also in his drawings of the
polyhedra that illustrate PacioliÕs De divina proportione (dedicated to the Duke of Milan in Spring 1498), has been seen as a
turning point in his career, since before 1496 his knowledge and understanding
of geometry was relatively primitive. There is also in Manuscript I an important
series of notes on isues associated witht he flow of water.
Essays
in memory of Augusto Marinoni
The city
of Legnano counts the late Augusto Marinoni, one of the principal Leonardo
scholars of the second half of the twentieth century, amongst its famous sons.
It has therefore sponsored, with a contribution from the Ente Raccolta
Vinciana, the publication of a commemorative volume entitled ÒHostinato
rigoreÓ. Leonardiana in memoria di Augusto Marinoni,
edited by Pietro C. Marani, which appeared at the end of last year. The motto
Ôhostinato rigoreÕ, is inscribed beside the plough impresa on a sheet in the Royal Library (RL 12282), which serves also as
the logo for our Society. It was selected as an appropriate epithet to call to
mind the well-known simplicity and rigour of MarinoniÕs life and scholarship.
Several studies published here refer to aspects and qualities of MarinoniÕs own
researches on Leonardo and associated subjects, and also include a tribute by
Carlo Pedretti. Others offer new material or original interpretations in
specialist areas.
Pietro
C. Marani, Leonardo da Vinci. The Complete
Paintings (New York, 2000)
First
published in Italian in 1999, Pietro MaraniÕs new monograph appeared late last
year in an English translation (by A. Lawrence Jenkens) published by Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., New York. Described by the author as Ôan interpretive essay on
the evolution of LeonardoÕs artÕ, this large-format book includes superb colour
plates of all LeonardoÕs paintings, with many details, and a large number of
his related drawings; a documentary appendix with new transcriptions (by
Edoardo Villata) of all primary sources on, or associated with, LeonardoÕs
paintings; and an annotated chronological catalogue of LeonardoÕs paintings
with full technical data and brie summaries of the historical record of each
work. The text includes original discussions of the problem of the two versions
of the Virgin of the Rocks, of LeonardoÕs
portraiture, and of his debts to classical antiquity. It constitutes a beautifully
produced and important contribution to Leonardo da Vinci studies.
The
Codex Leicester in facsimile
A fine
facsimile of the Codex Leicester (until recently also known as the Codex
Hammer) has been produced in conjunction with the exhibition Leonardo da
Vinci: Codex Leicester Ñ notebook of a genius. This
display at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia from 5 September to 5
November 2000 was timed to coincide with the Olympic Games held last year in
that city. Since soon after the Codex Hammer was acquired (and given its former
name once more) by William H. Gates III (a.k.a. Bill Gates) in 1994, it has
been travelling around the world, and has been displayed in Venice, Milan,
Rome, Paris, New York, Seattle, Lisbon, Munich, Berlin and last autumn, Sydney.
The Powerhouse Museum is an appropriate venue for the exhibition: established
in 1880, it is a museum of decorative arts, design, science, technology and
social history. The catalogue has a general introduction, designed to inform
and appeal to the exhibition visitor who is new to Leonardo and his
achievements in both art and science, and a brief codicological study of ÔThe
structure and dating of the Codex LeicesterÕ by Carlo Pedretti. Prof. Pedretti
has also written detailed explanatory notes to each page of the facsimile
reproduction. In conjunction with the exhibition, a multimedia CD-ROM guide has
been produced by the Corbis Corporation. This leads users through the
intricacies of the manuscript, reproducing every sheet so that it can be
examined in detail. With a unique translation tool, the Codescope, the user can
reverse LeonardoÕs mirror writing and read his notes in a translation from
LeonardoÕs Italian into contemporary English.
The Leonardo da Vinci Society
We would
always be grateful for suggestions of material, such as forthcoming
conferences, symposia and other events, exhibitions, publications and so on,
that would be of interest to members of the Society for inclusion in this Newsletter or on the webpage, which can be visited at <http://giorgio.hart.bbk.ac.uk/davinci/>
President:
Dr J.V. Field, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck
College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H.0PD; e-mail: jv.field@hart.bbk.ac.uk
Vice-President:
Professor Francis Ames-Lewis, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media,
Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H.0PD; 020.7631.6108; e-mail:
f.ames-lewis@bbk.ac.uk
Secretary/Treasurer:
Dr Thomas Frangenberg, Department of History of Art, University of Leicester,
University Road, Leicester, LE1. UK; e-mail: tf6@leicester.ac.uk
Committee
members:
Rodney
Palmer, 88 Ifield Road, London SW10.9AD;
e-mail: rodpalmer63@hotmail.com
Frank
A.J.L. James, Royal Institution Centre for the History of Science and
Technology, Royal INstitution of Great Britain, 21 Albemarle Street, London
W1X.4BS; e-mail: fjames@ri.ac.uk
Please send items for publication to the
editor of the Leonardo da Vinci Society Newsletter, Francis Ames-Lewis, School of History of Art, Film and Visual
Media, Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD; fax: 020.7631.6107;
e-mail: f.ames-lewis@hart.bbk.ac.uk