The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Leonardo da Vinci

As I’ve previously bored you about, I had a fabulous holiday in Italy in the summer. I wrote about it a couple of months ago and promised I wouldn’t bore you too much – promise kept! However, there was one particular highlight I do want to share with you.

Whilst we were in Florence, we went on one of these walking tour things and it was fabulous. I’ve been to Florence a few times before, I’d done all the touristy things, the Uffizi, the Galleria dell'Accademia, etc. so, this time I wanted to do something a little different. I’d read about a tour that didn’t simply whisk you around all the highlights, giving you like thirty seconds to admire a piece of art that probably took two years to paint, it focused on three specific artists and went into considerable depth relative to their techniques, their particular skills, their subject matter and also their background, who they were and where they came from – it sounded really interesting and I signed up. So, whilst the friends, who aren’t quite so geeky as me, went shopping, I went for a dose of culture!

The tour lasted all day and honestly, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done! The guide we had on the day was Julia who was amazing, not just because she was German and spoke English, Italian, Spanish and French fluently, not just because she had a degree in which the subject of her dissertation was Italian renaissance art, not just because she had actually worked at the Uffizi as an archivist, not just because she oozed confidence and personality, not just because she was stunningly beautiful with an arse I would literally kill for, it was all those things in equal measure that made her amazing!

She took our group into the Uffizi and introduced us to the founding fathers, the Medici family, before announcing we would be focusing on just three artists, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo. As I say, the tour took all day so, if I told you all about it, this could be a VERY long post! Instead I want to focus on one work of artistic brilliance, the Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci is a fascinating individual, the gorgeous Julia managed to bring him to life beautifully! Did you know that during the renaissance period, many master painters and artists would get their apprentices to paint bits of their works that they were bored with? No… me neither! Leonardo da Vinci was the student of a certain Andrea del Verrocchio who was, amongst other things, a sculptor, goldsmith and painter who ran a large and successful workshop in Florence in the second half of the 15th century. Verrocchio had been commissioned to paint an altar piece for the Church of San Salvi, Verrocchio, under the cosh as he had a shed load of other commissions went for the default Baptism of Christ. Having finished the main part of the painting, Jesus having water poured over him by John the Baptist, he asked his apprentice, Leonardo to finish the work off by painting a couple of mandatory angels at the foot of Christ. After a couple of weeks, the young Leonardo was well pleased with his work and asked his teacher to come and take a look see. The story goes that Verrocchio was stunned by the brilliance of the image, so much so that he realized he would never be able to recreate anything so beautiful himself and he actually gave up painting all together!

Anyway – back to the post! Da Vinci’s Annunciation is a stunning work in its own right, beautifully composed, vibrant colours, wonderful backdrop, it’s just a marvellous work of art however, when you know a little bit more about the picture you will hopefully be as amazed as I was! As we all know, da Vinci’s real passion was for science, everyone has seen the image of Vitruvian Man, a study of human anatomy or his sketching of helicopters and other futuristic objects, essentially, he painted to pay the bills! So, when the church came knocking once more for an altar piece for Olivetan monastery of San Bartolomeo, just outside Florence you can imagine his deep sigh knowing that the fun had to stop whilst he made a few Lira! However, the young Leonardo must have thought, how can I break the monotony, I know, I’ll turn it into a study of flora and fauna. When the Bishop housed in the Olivetan monastery of San Bartolomeo ripped off the brown paper covering the painting little did he know that his beaming face was in actual fact looking at a major work of botany, Ornithology and a master class in geometry – he was simply delighted with the beautiful picture!

It’s only recently that scholars have taken a closer look at the painting and made some amazing observations. The Annunciation is another renaissance stalwart, from that perspective da Vinci’s painting hardly differed from other paintings of the same study, there’s the demur Mary chatting with the Angel Gabriel in the garden about the fact she was actually pregnant with God – by the look on her face – an everyday occurrence in Galilee! What the Bish failed to see, and in fairness, thousands of people throughout the ages missed it also, was an encyclopaedia of Tuscan nature.

As an example, when one takes a closer look at the plants in the garden, no two are the same, what da Vinci did was study thousands of plants in the local area and reproduced over one hundred and thirty in the painting, including the lily in the hand of Gabriel and the trees in the near and distant background, a local botanist has subsequently confirmed that the plants in the painting are almost perfect representations of plants that would have existed at the time of painting!

If one takes a look at the Angels wings, at first, they look a little odd, almost too birdlike, not like the long, flowing wings seen in other examples of the Annunciation. The reason why – well, da Vinci had studied the local bird life in great depth, so rather than make up some kind of ethereal example, he reproduced the wings of an eagle found flying free in the mountains of Tuscany. Again, this has been confirmed by an expert ornithologist who said on seeing them, they were the most accurate representation of this type she had ever seen!

And finally, if that wasn’t quite enough, the mountains in the background and what looks like a port below them are almost perfect reproductions of places the young Leonardo must have visited. Again it’s been confirmed by several scholars the port is exactly what Genoa would have looked like at that time and the mountains, well, you can actually see it today as they haven’t changed much in the past two million years or so, are almost perfect reproductions of a specific part of the dolomites – both the port and the mountains painted from memory, FROM MEMORY!

I came away completely in awe of the brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci and I now look at his works such as The Virgin of the Rocks at the national with a new reverence, a new respect and with an eye looking much deeper trying to spot the cheeky scientific flourishes!

Michelangelo demonstrated similar brilliance and at some point in the future I’ll tell you some of the amazing things the beautiful Julia told us about his David!

What’s on this week?