Yesterday was the 499th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s passing. He died in the manor of Cloux, today called the Manor du Clos Lucé, a comely little chateau near Amboise, France, that the French King, François I, had given him. The photo above shows Leonardo and his faithful assistant, Melzi, on the set of the upcoming film “In Search of the Mona Lisa,” now shooting on location in Europe.
In the weeks and days before his death, Leonardo was tormented by the idea that he had wasted his life in endless pursuits, without an overarching focus, a governing principle. Had his life been a waste? Or did he regret the fact that though he had discovered so much with his God-given talent and intelligence, he’d never found time to organize his data properly? Vasari abetted that notion by writing that, as he lay on his death bed, he confessed “how much he had offended God and mankind in not having worked at his art as he should have done.”
It is certainly plausible that near the end of his life, Leonardo regretted his lack of focus on the one talent that had brought him near-universal fame: his revolutionary approach to painting. His “fatigue of the brush,” as Fra Pietro had phrased it in 1501, now came back to haunt him. And yet, as the world knows, he need not have worried. Though less than twenty paintings are ascribed to the master today, Leonardo single-handedly revolutionized the course of Italian painting, and indirectly, the art of Europe altogether.
Though his own oeuvre was small, his ‘imitators’ — principally Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio and Giorgione — introduced his style into the mainstream of the High Renaissance. That subject — of how Leonardo’s pupils and imitators carried his style throughout Italy and beyond, is the subject of our new series of postings, starting this Monday. So stay tuned! For more about Leonardo, please visit https://www.youngleonardo.net/.
