A Visit to Leonardo’s Studio
We have a fascinating glimpse of Leonardo’s studio from 1501, thanks to the eyewitness account of a prominent Carmelite cleric from Mantua, the vicar general Pietro da Novellara. The redoubtable Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, asked him to see what Leonardo was doing. It so happened that Father Pietro had been invited to give the Lenten sermon during March of 1501 in the Santa Croce in Florence, so the Marchioness figured he was in the neighborhood anyway.
Why was Isabella so interested in Leonardo’s studio? The answer is that she had commissioned the artist to paint a portrait, based on a sketch that Leonardo had made in Mantua, during his travels in the Veneto earlier in 1500 (see image). Astonishingly, this drawing of the Marchioness foreshadows in many ways Leonardo’s portrait of the Mona Lisa, which he would begin less than three years later.
But that was the last time she had heard from him. Characteristically, Leonardo never followed up on the commission, not even from so august a person like Isabella d’Este, one of the leading art patrons of the Italian Renaissance.
And so, poor Father Pietro tried to do as his sovereign had instructed him, but quickly found out that Leonardo “was difficult to pin down,” since he seemed to “live from day to day.” Eventually, the priest tracked him down and visited Leonardo in his chambers, where he recorded everything he saw in a letter dated April 8, 1501.
“Since he has been in Florence, he has only made one sketch,” the cleric observed. “He has done nothing else,” he added, “except that two of his apprentices are painting portraits to which he sometimes adds a few touches. He is working hard at geometry, and is quite tired of painting.”
This reveals the true state of Leonardo’s atelier at the time. Bored with painting, he devoted himself to his newfound love: geometry and engineering, while leaving any commissioned work to be executed by his most trusted pupils. During his sojourn in Mantua, Leonardo had even spent some time with the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan monk who taught mathematics in Milan.
Pacioli was universally known for his publication Summa de arithmetica geometrica proportioni et proportionalita, a treatise which Leonardo often referred to in his notebooks, and probably inspired his geometric calculations of the human body. While still in Milan, Pacioli and Leonardo had collaborated on a book called De divina proportione, whereby Leonardo furnished the illustrations for Pacioli’s text. Finished in 1498, just two years before Leonardo returned to Florence, it was published in Venice in 1509.
A few days later, Father Pietro had a conversation with Leonardo’s pupil and companion Salaì, which gave further insight into the artist’s state of mind. “Leonardo’s mathematical experiments have absorbed his thoughts so entirely,” he wrote to Isabella, “that he cannot bear the sight of a paint-brush.”
But that was not entirely true. For Leonardo did complete a beautiful drawing, that as we shall see, would eventually produce the greatest work of his career. For more about the story, please visit www.YoungLeonardo.net or http://themonalisamyth.com/.
