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Looking for LeonardoExplore more photos from the story |
There's nothing unusual about discoveries of lost works by Leonardo da Vinci. Every few months, it seems, a story hits the news that yet another "Leonardo" has been unearthed—the lost fresco of the Battle of Anghiari, a terra-cotta bust discovered in the attic of a 14th-century palazzo, or a self-portrait embedded in the spidery script of one of his notebooks. A recent television documentary even made a claim for the artist's authorship of the Shroud of Turin.
Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of art history at Oxford University, calls the perpetrators of such dubious attributions "Leonardo loonies" and says he gets "bombarded" with them almost daily.
What is exceedingly rare, however, is for a noted Renaissance scholar to bring forth evidence, patiently argued and carefully annotated, that a work previously thought to be by a lesser light is actually an effort by the young Leonardo. That is the case with Gary M. Radke's recent announcement that two silver figures, from a 12 1/8-inch by 16 1/2-inch altar panel made for the Baptistery in Florence, Italy, were more likely created by Leonardo than by his teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio.
The two figures in question, an angelic-looking youth holding a salver at the far left of the relief and a fierce, turbaned warrior, second from right, stand out from the others in the scene for their greater expressiveness and naturalistic detail—the way things move and react to the elements. Both qualities are hallmarks of Leonardo's work. Take the epaulets on the two soldiers on the right of the panel, says Radke. On Verrocchio's helmeted figure they are stiff and rigidly patterned, while on the turbaned soldier they appear to ripple as if in response to the figure's movements. Or the hair, which curls on both "Leonardo" figures according to the laws of nature instead of falling into predictable ringlets. A comparison of the reverse side of the relief's sculptures—never meant to be seen—shows the artist paying attention to how a leather skirt might fall instead of fashioning a cursory swath like Verrocchio's. (Leonardo fans can judge for themselves when the work is shown in the exhibition "Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius," curated by Radke, at Atlanta's High Museum, for four months beginning October 6.)
Radke, Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University, had known about the panel, which depicts the beheading of John the Baptist, since an undergraduate sojourn in Florence in 1972, but it took an encounter with the recently cleaned work at an exhibition at that city's Palazzo Medici in December 2007 to provoke the "aha!" moment.
What also swayed Radke was a drawing securely attributed to Leonardo in the British Museum, the silverpoint Head of a Warrior from the mid-1470s, roughly the same date as the altar panel (1478). "It was just so spectacularly competent in terms of the medium, and every single detail was more alive and more filled with naturalistic observation than I had ever imagined from the reproduction," he says. A simple comparison of the jowls in Leonardo's drawing with those in Verrocchio's figures reveals an attention to middle-aged skin that is foreign to the teacher.
The illegitimate son of a notary, Leonardo was born in 1452 in the tiny town of Vinci, some 40 miles west of Florence. "We really don't know what his youth was like, other than he was out in the countryside," Radke says. "He must have spent a lot of time observing the world around him." According to the 16th-century biographer Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo was said to have shown an early artistic talent and, as a youth, painted a shield depicting a smoke-breathing creature made up of various animal parts put together "in so strange a fashion that it appeared altogether a monstrous and horrible thing." Radke observes that the boy probably did not get as much formal education in rural Vinci as he would have gotten in cosmopolitan Florence. Instead, he says, "Leonardo seems to have been freer to look at the world with fresh eyes. Nature was his primary teacher."
Andrea del Verrocchio was a leading sculptor, painter and goldsmith of his day. The head of a busy workshop in Florence, he is known for his bronze David. Leonardo entered Verrocchio's workshop in his teens, placed there, Radke speculates, because his father may have had connections with the Medici, the city's greatest art patrons. The young man served a long apprenticeship, at least a decade, and by the early 1480s was presenting himself to the Duke of Milan as a master of painting and sculpture as well as a formidable military engineer.
Comments
Concerning thr articles on pages 42 and 70.
The two figuers that were obviously done by the same artist are the one on the extreem left and the one kneeling .
I pay attention to minor details, like the ones that artist use that are not different with each of their works, such as anatomical features, like toes. The toes on the two I mentioned were obviously done by the same artist.
I am not questioning whether they were, or were not, done by Da Vinci.
Your organization has the facilities to look at other Da Vinci works for the crooked big toe. To put this question to rest.
Posted by Mary L Petty on September 24,2009 | 09:56 AM
I noticed two interesting things about the youthful figure on the right hand side. For one, his head bears a striking resemblance to that of Verrocchio's David, which tradition tells us that the master used the young Leonardo as a model.So is this another portrait of a young Leonardo by Verrocchio, or a self-portrait of Leonardo?
Another interesting detail of the young figure is that his pinky fingers are bent--and foreshortened. It makes the hands more delicate, but it is also a characteristic hand pose of Leonardo's, and is very evident in his Virgin Mary paintings.
Posted by jefferson boyer on October 3,2009 | 01:56 PM
I want to konw the figure itself,maybe we could find clues in closereading.
Is it hard to imagine the relationship of the unknown figures and Leonardo?
I seconded some Mary said.
Posted by Joseph Ting on October 7,2009 | 02:11 AM
In regard to the article "Looking for Leonardo" in the Oct. 2009 Smithsonian magazine, the Leonardo drawing "Head of a Warrior" (a detail of which is shown in the article), which when seen in its entirety appears to relate to the decorated Helmet and the decoration of the upper body armor on the figure at the extreme right of the scene of the beheading of John the Baptist. The helmet of the drawing is more elaborate and comes to more of a point in front than the silver helmet. An interpretation of the drawing in silver on a small three dimensional figure would, of necessity, be simplified.
The silver figure wears lion's heads on both shoulders, replacing the lion head drawn by the artist just where the silver figure's hand rests on his chest. The decorative motif on the figure's breast plate is a derivative of the motif on the drawing's breast plate. I think there is a connection between the drawing and the figure that brings in the possibility of Leonardo's input in the design of the panel.
The remarks made in the article concerning the decorative elements on the two figures on the right seem to me to be irrelevant. Surely the finishing of the figures would be done not by the sculptor-modelers but by silver chasers.
Posted by E. S. on October 23,2009 | 06:36 PM
One of the figures attributed in the piece to Leonardo struck me as posed very similar in style to small scale contemporaneous Hindu statury.
It makes me wonder if perhaps some of that had arrived as curios to venice from the end of an Eastern trade trail in the Levant, which was a very active trade route of the day.
Artists are known Borrowers from any source (Rembrandt- Italy, Picasso-Africa, etc.)
Posted by Mike Shepley on November 24,2009 | 06:44 PM