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And Once Again About Leonardo’s Portraits

Update: a National Geographic video report about Nicola Barbatelli’s discovered portrait of Leonardo.

Yes, again on the subject of Leonardo’s portraits, for there is an exhibition currently at Manchester Art Gallery showing ten drawings by Leonardo da Vinci that are kept at the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The exhibition marks the 60th birthday of His Royal Highness Prince of Wales, and I will be coming back to it as a subject, although I shall duly express my commendations to MAG for treating Manchester residents and visitors to what can easily be compared to Raphael’s first exhibition in England back in 2004 at the National Gallery.

In addition to the ten drawings by Leonardo, there are two more reproductions. One is a binding of the artist’s disegni (drawings), and another is a red chalk portrait by Francesco Melzi, apparently completed around 1515, just four years before Leonardo’s death in 1519 (left). And it is the latter that got me standing in front of it for several minutes thinking….

… about the personality of the sitter, for example, as well as the artist’s skill. Melzi is known as the pupil of Leonardo, and had become the artist’s heir. Leonardo’s influence cannot be denied either when we look at Melzi’s own paintings, or when we consider certain similarities between Melzi’s chalk portrait of his master and Leonardo’s Portrait of a Young Woman (right). The attention to detail (hair, particularly) and the conveyance of eye expression are present in works of both master and student. The transition of a sitter’s character onto canvas is also impressive. The young woman’s contemplative regard shows her in the state of day-dreaming. In Melzi’s sitter, on another hand, we discover a truly intelligent man; Leonardo seems either to have been caught while turning around (=looking for something/at something, being curious, or responding to something or someone), or to have had his mind sparked by something of interest.

… and I was also thinking of how similar Melzi’s sitter is to the recently discovered portait of Leonardo (left). In spite of the obviously different depiction (which most likely means that the discovered picture isn’t a self-portrait by Leonardo), the main features are the same. But rather than helping with the puzzle, the portrait by Melzi only complicates it. For Melzi’s drawing is dated to be around 1515; and this well-known self-portrait by Leonardo (right; in Turin) is dated between 1512 and 1515, and the two men portrayed could hardly be any more different. It is possible, however, to conjure that what is kept at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin may be Leonardo’s self-caricature, much in the spirit of the drawing from the Royal Library at Windsor (below, left). Or perhaps, Turin holds the great man’s contemplation of himself as an old man, which may very well link Leonardo’s work to today’s techniques of aging an image.

In general, 2009 seems so far to be the year of Leonardo da Vinci related discoveries. After Nicola Barbatelli’s victorious visit to the village of Acerenza on which The Times reported, Telegraph has had its own share of news-making. The paper has reported that

the journalist, Piero Angela, enlisted the help of art historians, Carabinieri police forensic experts and graphic artists to tease out more detail from the ghostly image (right).

The image is thought to date back to 1480s and was found in da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds, composed between 1490 and 1505.

All the above conjectures can be faint and may even collapse, and then there’ll be a thunderstorm caused by Leonardo’s having a hearty laugh upstairs. It must really be good when you conjure your own legend in such way that 500 years after your death people still twist their brains trying to figure you out. The point is not that we shall never succeed at understanding Leonardo, at unlocking all of his mysteries. The point is that, whether willingly or not, he did create this legend. Some Mancunian folk can recall the framed quote from the late Tony Wilson that we can see at The Northern in Tib St: “when people ask me whether to choose the truth or the legend, I say: choose the legend“. As for me, I like to bring up The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis (and Martin Scorsese). In one particular scene Jesus, already on the Cross, has a feverish vision of himself being saved from death, returning to life as a simple man, and one day walking in the market and seeing one of his pupils telling people about the Saviour who had died on the Cross and then resurrected. In Jesus’s vision, he was alive, so he called the pupil and asked, why he was telling the lie about Jesus, for Jesus hadn’t died. The answer of the pupil was short but clear: “they don’t need you alive“. The greatest thing about Jesus was that he resurrected after death; and even it had indeed been a lie, it wouldn’t have mattered for as long as it fed hopes and illusions.

The question, of course, is: had it not been for all those mysteries, would we have really been interested in Leonardo da Vinci? I have already heard some critical comments about his drawings. A point to remember, of course, is that we often approach the past on our terms rather than on the terms of the past. The age of Renaissance showed great aptitude as in conveying one’s individual character, as in concealing it under the layers of symbols. The fact that we’re now trying to process all this kaleidoscope of meanings into something that can be easily digested in the age of celebrity gossip is, well, sad.

The previous post about Leonardo’s portraits on this blog (and many thanks to Sheila Lennon for findings it useful and including it in her report). Also, speaking of various representations of Leonardo, check out this article. It suggests, in particular, that the Turin self-portrait may be a portrait of Leonardo’s father or uncle. Without disputing this possibility, I think we may really have the situation when Leonardo had drawn his would-be self-portrait at the late age.

Images are the couresy of The Times, Telegraph, Wikipedia, Manchester Art Gallery, and About.com.

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