[36]
Giovan Ambrogio Figino
Portrait of Leonardo
Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Department of drawings, engravings and prints, no. 834.
Red chalk, toched with white chalk, on red prepared paper, 416 x 282 mm.
Inscriptions: on the back at bottom left; vertically in light ink “Figino da un marmo” [Figino from a marble];
top center in black pencil: “De Vincij Effigies”.
Provenance: Giuseppe Bossi collection, 1818; Luigi Celotti 1822.
Inventorial attributions: anonymous, eighteenth century (?).
Exhibitions: Ancona, 2006, no. 10.
T
HE SHEET represents a problematic but valuable documentation associated with the representation of Leonardo’s face,
insofar as it goes back to the source of a rare illustrative typology,
which only enjoyed a certain popularity in the nineteenth century, based on the image drawn by Giuseppe Bossi (1777-1815)
who, in his considerable collection of drawings, also owned this
sheet; it might be precisely the old source of direct inspiration
copied by him in a drawing, now held at the Castello Sforzesco in
Milan (no. 1190 ff.), which in turn served for the engravings printed in Padua by Niccolò Bettoni in 1812 and engraved by Anderloni in 1820, to illustrate the biography of Leonardo in the volume
Vite e ritratti di illustri italiani (Lives and portraits of famous Italians);
the inscription “After a drawing by the Knight Giuseppe Bossi”
also appears in another print of the Iconografia Italiana degli uomini
e delle donne celebri dell’epoca del risorgimento delle scienze e delle arti
fino ai nostri giorni, a work published by G. Magonio in Milan in
1837. During the nineteenth century, the dissemination of prints
and engravings issuing from the drawing would replace the image
of Leonardo constructed on the Vasari model of 1568, by proposing
a face typology significantly remodeled on the features of Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, who, more than any other, had devoted himself to naturalistic investigation; the Leonardo-Heraclitus identification, as is observed by Tognoni (1997, p. 65), is intended to characterize the new philosopher of nature and the wise
man endowed with extraordinary qualities when it came to recognizing the interpretative keys of the natural world, hitherto unknown. Heraclitus weeping, beside Democritus smiling and the
sphere of the world, had been portrayed in a picture, never found,
but described in 1474 or thereabouts by Marsilio Ficino (Opera
636-638, Book I): Vidistis pictam en gymnasio meo mundi
sphaeram et hinc atque illine Democritum et Heraclitum, alterum
quidam ridentem, altero vero fluentem” for his Platonic Academy
in Florence. The literary source for the decoration of the gymnasium is recognized by Blankert (1966-1967) in the Epistulae of
Sidonius Apollinaris, where he is advised to decorate these places
with images of philosophers, including, it just so happens, “Hera-
clitus fletu oculis clausis, Democritus labris rit apertis”. Based on
the suggestion by Kristeller (Achademia Leonardi Vinci,VI, 1993, pp.
144-145), Pedretti proposes that the lost picture might be an early
work by Leonardo himself. The close link between Ficino and
Leonardo in humanist Florence is summed up thus by Eugenio
Garin (1993, p. 295): “The magic bond between the science of the
painter and the science of nature […] – which is the very soul of
Leonardo’s thinking – finds its roots, it just so happens, in Platonic-Ficinian philology”. It was precisely the Florentine artist who,
according to Pedretti’s hypothesis, might have inspired Bramante’s
subject for the Milanese fresco with Heraclitus and Democritus, the
first known representation of this subject which, abandoned in the
Florentine domain, found a certain continuity solely in the Lombard domain. It was indeed in Milan that the only two known
poetic compositions dedicated to the Riso de Democrito and the
Pianto de Heraclyto by Antonio Fregoso were published, in 1505. It
is once again in the Milanese domain that we find a rare and altogether innovative pictorial work, for it reproduces in the image of
Heraclitus the features of Leonardo’s face.This is the picture in the
private Milanese Benvenuti-Martinez collection (45 x 90 cm),
brought to our attention by Malaguzzi Valeri (II, 1915, pp. 636-637,
fig. 689) as a work of the “Lombard School of the sixteenth century”, “a little sombre in the shadows to the point of calling
Lomazzo to mind”, and representing the portraits of Leonardo
and Luini, the latter identified “by family tradition” from the point
of view of Democritus; it would subsequently be attributed to
Bernardino Luini himself (Möller, 1926, p. 32; Blankert, 1966-1967,
p. 133), and then again, if dubiously, to Giovan Paolo Lomazzo (Pedretti, 1990, p. 14). This is the work most intimately close to the
drawing, because it depicts, albeit in a mirror-like manner, the
Leonardo-Heraclitus figure in an absolutely identical way, in terms
of the position, the clothing, the expression and the facial features,
down to the handkerchief folded in the hand which juts from the
folds of the clothing and to the headgear made of reversed fabric,
which leaves uncovered the broad, furrowed forehead. The artist
responsible for the drawing, entered in the inventory of the Gal-
37
lerie as anonymous eighteenth century (?), is indicated as Giovan
Ambrogio Figino, in an old inscription on the back of the sheet,
with the addition, very hard to decipher, of the source from which
the artist drew his portrait: “Figino from a marble”. We know
nothing about any alleged marble bust of the effigy of Leonardo:
if a “marble” had been produced in his lifetime, the author would
have to be sought, according to Pedretti (2003, p.4), in Briosco or
Bambaia, or among sculptors working in France, such as Antoine
Juste. Or again in Rustici, who had provided Giovio with the
physical description of Leonardo, and was working on three
bronze statues for the door of the Florentine baptistry “commissioned on Leonardo’s advice” (Vasari, 1568, ed. 1879, IV, p. 50). The
graphic style of the old inscription is the same as the one to be
found on the autograph drawings of Figino in the same collection,
which prove his interest in old marble statues, the sculptures of
Michelangelo, and the works of Raphael and Leonardo, copied
with extreme precision and fidelity: “It was […] customary for
Figino to make sketches of what came to hand on condition that
they were by excellent masters”, noted Giuseppe Bossi in his Album F, adding: “in them one sees a large number of very fine
horseman who are clearly drawn on the basis of Leonardo’s drawings”; thus emerge, with extraordinary eloquence, his numerous
studies of horses, including the equine head in watercolours (Gallerie dell’Accademia, no. 1515), obviously borrowed from the Vincinian prototype in Windsor Castle, RL 12327 r; likewise for the
anatomical studies, the faces of old men, a bald child’s head (no.
994 v), a precise recollection of that of the Madonna Benois (the
Benois Virgin), and a series of graphic formulations on the subject
of Nettuno che guida i cavalli marini (Neptune guiding seahorses)
taken from a drawing by Leonardo, dated 1578, belonging to Figino himself, who also possessed others, according to the statement
of his master Giovan Paolo Lomazzo (1538-1600): “Leonardo drew
thirty sheets in chiaroscuro which came into the hands of Ambrogio Figino […]” (Lomazzo, Trattato, 1584, ed. 1844, II, p. 251). Typologies of obvious Leonardesque origin also come from Cesare
da Sesto: Figino copied three details in red pencil on red-coloured
38
paper of the Salomé of Vienna, belonging to Lomazzo, imitating
the master’s preferred graphic technique, and his pupil’s too, which
suggests a conscious borrowing of the Leonardesque lesson. The
technique, the theme, and the precision of the subtle line all turn
out to be formal expedients of this detailed analysis of the “copies” of Figino, which lend the bust an almost plastic quality. In the
rendering of the visage appears the typical skill of the portraitist
and of his “splendid portraits which represented life”, in such a
way that “Ladies, Knights and Princes all wanted to be portrayed
by him” (Morigia, 1595, p. 462). If he is the author of the drawing,
he must also have produced the picture, given the necessary link
between the two, like the link, moreover, between the pupil, Figino, and the master, Lomazzo. It is precisely in a sheet of the Venetian collection (no. 1205), attributed to Lomazzo (Paliaga, Achademia Leonardi Vinci,VIII, 1995, pp. 143-157, in particular p. 149 and
fig. 1) that we find the sole previous motif known of the hand
which emerges from the clothing at chest height, with the palm
turned upward, in the male figure of the Quattro busti di persone che
ridono con un gatto (Representation of Four Busts of Figures Laughing with a Cat). Likewise in the Leonardo drawing at Windsor,
RL 12283 v, the hand emerges from the clothing at chest height,
but with the fingers bent and turned downward, a motif borrowed from classical statuary; what is more, this is the same position that is to be found in the pictorial copies of Genoa and Angers taken from drawing no. 1205, often used to be transposed into
painting, as is suggested by the holes used to remove the dust, and
the precarious state of repair; behind sheet no. 1205, at the bottom,
Giuseppe Bossi writes something interesting, namely the attribution to Leonardo himself of a picture with a similar composition:
“De Pagave wrongly attributed to Leonardo a picture with a similar composition to | this drawing which he said had passed into
the hands of the Provost Alessandro Vedani […]”. In the nineteenth century, the existence of a “picture with laughing peasants”
considered as being by Leonardo, is attested to as well by Amoretti (1804, p. 159), and by D’Adda (1882, p. 88); Lomazzo himself, in
his Trattato (1584, p. 106), reports “wishing [Leonardo] to make a
picture of peasants who must be laughing (then he did not make
one but just a drawing)”. Leonardo notes, on the back of the
drawing at Windsor, RL 19037: “[…] it describes in four stories
four universal cases of men” and the first story must have been
“joy with the different ways of laughing and […] the cause of
laughter”. The explicit reference to the male figure, on the right
in drawing no. 1205, to the “portrait from behind” invented by
Leonardo, and in its turn taken up in the Democritus of the Martinez picture, clearly shows that the idea of the composition is
closely linked with the Lombard milieu of the sixteenth century,
which was closer to the Leonardesque tradition. The composition
of drawing no. 1205 complies perfectly with the pictorial version
of the subject, which was at Novara, attributed to Lomazzo by
Paliaga (1995, p. 149). If the Venice drawing and the Novara picture
are the handiwork of Lomazzo, Giovan Ambrogio could borrow
the motif of the hand from the repertory, with which he was well
acquainted, of his master and, finding the pose suited to holding
the handkerchief, re-use this motif for the gesture of Democritus,
weeping for the ills of the world and ready to wipe his tears, as in
the picture with Eraclito e Democrito. Unless we are to suppose a
Lomazzian authorship for the drawing, too, though this would be
hard to fit into his graphic corpus; in this case, in his famous characterization of Leonardo’s face, “he had a face with long hair and
eyebrows and beard so long that he seemed a veritable picture of
nobility | of the study as formerly the Druid Ermete or the ancient Prometheus…” (Idea del Tempio della Pittura, 1590, p. 58), he
might have been referring explicitly to Heraclitus. Unless we
consider the hypothesis that the bust is a fake one of Bossi himself,
“a very remote possibility” according to Pedretti. Recently, the
motif of the hand has been interpreted by Vezzosi in the “XIII
Meeting for Improvement in Sports Medicine: Culture and Science”, held at Anghiari (Arezzo), as a document on the health of
Leonardo, afflicted by a paralysis of the right arm, during his Roman sojourn with Guiliano de’ Medici in the villa of Innocent
VIII at the Vatican. But, as Pedretti has already pointed out, the
gesture of the hand holding the handkerchief is clearly explained
in connection with the Martinez picture, where it is justified by
the act of Democritus wiping his tears. The drawing was restored
in 2002 by Loretta Salvador and published in “Soprintendenza
Speciale per il Polo Museale Veneziano. Restauri anno 2002”, in
Arte Veneta, 59, 2002, p. 271, fig.5.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci e della sua cerchia nel
Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampe delle Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia,
organized and introduced by Carlo Pedretti, catalogue by G. Nepi
Scirè and A.Perissa Torrini, Florence, 2003, no. 71, pp. 166-167 (with
previous bibliography); Alessandro Vezzosi, “Leonardo e lo sport.
Arte-Scienza grafodinamica”, in XIII Incontro di Aggiornamento
in Medicina dello sport: Cultura e Scienze, Anghiari (Arezzo), 2005;
Carlo Pedretti, “Leonardo ammalato in Vaticano”, in L’Osservatore
Romano, 27-28 June 2005, p. 3; Annalisa Perissa Torrini, 2006, pp.
40-42; Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo & io, Milan, 2008, pp. 536-544 (with
reproduction between p. 440 and p. 441).
39
[40]
Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco Melzi
Study of Flowers
Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Department of drawing, engravings and prints, cat. no. 237.
Metal point, pen, ink, slightly browned white paper, 183 x 201 mm.
Inscriptions: in the upper left corner the apocryphal inscription, in pen: “Leonardo”; in the upper right corner “24”.
Provenance” Giuseppe Bossi collection, 1818; Luigi Celotti, 1822.
Marks: Lugt 188.
E
ACH AND every unique aspect of nature, according to Leonardo, is worthy of being observed and reproduced in painting
“the sole imitator of all the evident works of nature” and, he added,
“we know that painting embraces and contains in it all the things
that nature produces […] it seems to me [that he is] a sad master
who only paints a figure well […] do you not see how many different animals, but also trees, grasses and flowers [there are]…?”
(Ms. A, f. 82 r). His interest in the world of plants is thus based, in
large part, on painting, but his botanical drawings are such detailed
analytical studies that they take on a scientific value; they are executed with a critical attitude towards the microcosmic structure
of nature. For these innovative details, his botanical investigations,
while not guided by any systematic research, stand out from earlier
representations of flora, at once descriptive and stylized, and create a new naturalism on an empirical basis, which would become
the most far-reaching and important base for the future birth of
the still life, in Milan, it just so happens, where the legacy he bequeathed would influence following generations. Many writings
by the artist in the Book on Painting (chapters 812-916) are devoted
to the study of flowers, plants, trees and leaves, while certain annotations on the parts of flowers and seed systems in the Windsor,
RL 12247 of 1508-1512, reveal a desire to systematically organize
his plant studies, perhaps with a view to compiling an illustrated
botanical treatise, and call to mind the Discorso sulle erbe (Discourse
on grasses) sketched on a sheet of anatomical studies of about
1513 (Windsor, RL 12121 r). The fact that these investigations are
based on scientific knowledge is an observation highlighted by
Emboden and confirmed by Carmen Bambach and Linda Wolk
Simon.The oldest known drawing is the lily at Windsor, RL 12418,
where eleven other outstanding sheets are held, with studies of
plants and flowers, RL 12419-12431.
In the sheet of the Venetian collection, reproduced for the first
time by Gerli in 1784, five violets are drawn (Viola odorata) and at
bottom left a flowering with spikes, typical of the Graminaceae,
probably a Briza maxima. The three buds along the upper margin
are very like those of certain species of Ranunculus. The first study
at top right might represent a specimen of the family of Liliaceae
or Ranuncolaceae, on the left. The flower in the middle resembles
the genus Aquilegia. We can also recognize the variety of Pyrus
comunis and other Rosaceae (Baldacci, 1914, p. 231; De Toni, 19201922, p. 17; Morley, 1975, pp. 355-356). The absence of attention to
botanical details, to the detriment of the “scientific calligraphy”
present in Leonardo’s last works, as noted by Emboden (1987),
prompted Loeser to be the first to reckon that the drawing was a
copy of a Leonardo original, whereas Pedretti, in 1977, after due
consideration of the engraving technique, proposed the name of
Francesco Melzi. In any event, based on Selvatico, the Vincinian
autography remains somewhat divided, with even Venturi emphasizing that “the pen seems to become an engraving style in the
rendering, with sovereign confidence, of the outlines of the petals, after having prepared them by a few touches of silver point”.
According to Heydenreich, on the other hand, the painter, still
young, tends deliberately “to accentuate certain forms which, of
little importance from the artistic and aesthetic viewpoint, typify
the botanical species depicted”, quite different from the arid and
fixed way of certain Vincinian copiers. A certain coldness in the
graphic execution led Goldscheider to express certain doubts, refereed to in the 1952 exhibition catalogue, based on a comparison
with the violet plant drawn on f. 14 of Manuscript B at the Institut
de France, in Paris. Adolfo Venturi, as we have seen, stressed the
“sovereign confidence” of the pen in the rendering of the outlines
of the petals. Clark links the study to the flowers painted in the
foreground of the Virgin of the Rocks, a comparison confirmed by
Popham, while Carotti regards it as connected with the decoration of the crowns of the lanterns above the Last Supper and Luisa
Cogliati associates it with the research undertaken in works such
as the Annunciation in the Uffizi. In 2003, Pedretti confirmed his
attribution to Melzi, once again proposing the comparison with
a very meticulous small drawing on a late sheet of the Codex
Arundel, 243 r, that can be dated to about 1510, which reproduces
the bud already drawn at top left of the same sheet, before the
written notes, since these latter surround the bud; the drawing is
41
executed with fine dextrorsum hatching, easily copied by Melzi
in his period of apprenticeship, already under way at that time.
But in the Venice flowers, Pedretti continues, the pupil also imitated the senestrorsum hatching, as in the two other sheets of
the same collection (nos. 227 and 229) which reproduce original
caricatures of Leonardo. Giovanni Nepi Scirè, considering it stylistically close to the anatomical studies of the 1490s, formulated
the hypothesis that Leonardo started to trace, with metal point,
the leaves and flowers, leaving them unfinished, and that, at a
later date, Melzi, whose skill as a “great miniaturist” was already recognized by the sources (Lomazzo, 1584, p. 106) would
have finished them by imitating even the senestrorsum lines.
In fact, the extreme care of the line, peculiar to a miniaturist,
and the metallic quality of the finishing touches by pen, almost
42
worthy of an engraver, lead one to suppose a later intervention
by Francesco Melzi on an original initial work by Leonardo.
The sheet found its way into the collection of graphic works at
the Gallerie dell’Accademia in 1822, following the acquisition of
the collection of Giuseppe Bossi, with more than twenty other
autograph drawings by Leonardo and some fifty by his school. It
was restored by Loretta Salvador in 1999.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci e della sua cerchia nel
Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampi delle Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia,
organized and introduced by Carlo Pedretti, catalogue by G. Nepi
Scirè and A.Perissa Torrini, Florence, 2003, no. 3, p. 95 (with previous bibliography); Annalisa Perissa Torrini, 2005, pp. 49-51.
Leonardo da Vinci
Three Dancing Female Figures and a Head
Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Department of drawings, engravings and prints, cat. no. 233
Traces of black pencil, lead point, brown ink, fine brush,
slightly yellowed white paper, 98 x 149 mm
Provenance: Giuseppe Bossi collection, 1818; Luigi Celotti, 1822.
Inventorial attributions: Inventory 1870, no. 30, Leonardo
Exhibitions:Venice, 1913, no.9; London, 1930, no. 71; Milan, 1939, p. 153;Venice, 1966, no. 12;
Venice, 1980, no 17;Venice 1992, no. 44;Venice, 1999, no. 25.
T
HIS SUPERB graphic work is a fine expression of Leonardo’s extraordinary skill in rendering, with a slight pen stroke,
harmonious and perfect forms in extremely small dimensions.
“Angels dancing”, as Loeser defines it, while Bodmer proposes
that the artist was inspired by Mantegna’s Parnaso. Venturi links it
with a hypothetical group of angels for the side parts, “the wings
in the triptych of the Virgin of the Rocks”. Richter quotes a passage
from Leonardo in Ms. A in Paris (f. 98 r), of about 1492, relating
it to this drawing: “you will discover the true size of the limbs of
a nymph or a cherub which one imagines clad in light clothing
raised and drawn by the gust of wind on the limbs of these figures”. In his Book on Painting (chap. 533), too, the artist advises the
painter to imitate “as much as he can the Greeks and Latins with
their way of uncovering limbs, when the wind comes to rest on
their clothes”. Meller was the first to advance an interpretation
relating in particular to the Pointing Lady drawn at the back of a
landscape in a sheet at Windsor (RL 12581), in which he sees a direct relationship with the Venetian sheet; he identifies, in the aerial
figure, the mysterious figure of Matelda, the one who suddenly
appears to Dante at the beginning of his journey to Purgatory, and
accompanies him until he meets Beatrice, who takes her place.
The hypothesis was immediately concurred with by Pedretti, and
shared by Jane Roberts, insofar as it corresponds to the description
made by Dante of his first encounter with Matelda (XXVIII, 4647), which occurred on the far side of a water course – the river
Lethe –while, as she sang, she gathered flowers in the Earthly Paradise, where “it is forever spring and all fruit”; the woman is talking
with the visitors and it is probable that she may have indicated with
her arm the surrounding countryside; in addition, in the drawing,
the girl seems to be holding a bunch of flowers tight against her
breast, with her right hand. In the following canto (XXIX), Dante
describes the procession with the triumphal float of the church in
which are “three women in in a circle, coming dancing from the
right wheel”; commentators on Dante in the fifteenth century, in
particular Cristoforo Landino, identified them as being the three
theological Virtues, to be associated with the three dancing fig-
ures of this study. In 1480, an edition of the Divina Commedia was
published, with commentary by Landino, and funded by Lorenzo
Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Botticelli’s patron, who produced the
manuscript with 91 illustrations. Between his unfinished plate, for
canto XXVIII as it happens, and the drawings of Leonardo, we
can note, in effect, a close similarity with the type of female figure,
the lightness of her look, and the movement of the fabrics which
give glimpses of the forms. Defending this thesis, Meller supposes
that Leonardo was in Florence in 1503, and was in contact with
Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, and that the Windsor drawing might
well have been appropriated for Isabella d’Este, for both women,
Isabella and Matelda, bore the title of countess of Mantua. But, as
Jane Roberts very rightly observes, the style and technique appear
to be later than 1503 and are undoubtedly closer, stylistically speaking, to one of the drawings of the Deluge held at Windsor, no. 12376,
produced in the latter years in France, in about 1518, and the illustrations of the Mascarade, also at Windsor, in relation to the events
of 1515-1518 (Pedretti and Shearman). But how are we to link – the
specialist Roberts quite reasonably asks – the refined drawings
with the last years that the artist spent in France? We can merely
consider that all the illustrations of Dante by Botticelli were found
in France and that Pierfrancesco de’ Medici had connections with
that country; in any event, the specialist concludes, the “precise
sense will never be known, but one can without any doubt see a
certain allegorical significance, with Dantean overtones, in each of
the drawings”; this also includes the third fragment, no. 258, which
she also reckons to have been definitely included in the same issue.
Pedretti adds that there is a precedent in mural painting recalled
by the sources in the basements of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan,
carried out in 1490 or thereabouts, and depicting a group of dancing figures, outdoors after a mighty storm, possibly an allegory of
the “tempo nemboso” (cloudy weather) mentioned in Ms. H, f. 98
r, of 1494; it is thus probable that the same subject was taken up
at a later date, just as it is documented that in 1518, in France, the
Feast of Paradise, organized in Milan in 1490, was borrowed, and he
suggests, in addition – and Goldscheider goes along with him on
43
[44]
this – that Leonardo was directly inspired from ancient sculptures. Subsequently, the specialist shows how Leonardo in his
last lost work, the Abduction of Proserpina, broaches the theme of
rape which in the classical fable, redeems itself as a tribute to the
power of woman. Giglioli proposed identifying in a bas-relief
from the Hellenistic period the common source of inspiration
for Leonardo as well as for Mantegna. Marani, on the contrary,
identifies a possible illustrative source in three bas-reliefs, bases
of candelabras, romans works of arts of befor Christe at the Archaeological Museum in Venice, coming from the collections of
Cardinal Grimani. The interpretation of the subject is not the
only one to be disputed, and the same goes for the dating of the
drawing. Venturi suggests that it belongs to the first Milanese
period, Heydenreich and Popham situate its execution between
1504 and 1508, while most other critics opt for a later dating.
A more advanced chronological situation is shared by Pedretti,
on the basis of a stylistic affinity with Windsor drawing RL
12581, dated after 1513, a comparison from which, according to
Luisa Cogliati, there emerges a significant affinity, be it with
the drapery or the way of arranging the hands and headgear;
but the specialist is not totally convinced of such a later dating.
The chronology suggested by Jane Roberts is around 1515, on
the basis, it just so happens, of a comparison with the splendid
Pointing Girl on the banks of a stream, comparable, in the character of the model, with the drawing of the Deluge in Windsor,
RL 12376, which can be dated to around 1518. This, then, is the
last ethereal incarnation of female figures, admirably repeated
in drawing no. 258, dancing, one clad, the other in transparent
veils; and, as Pedretti underlines, almost running, to the point of
conjuring up the verses of the last scene of Angelo Poliziano in
his Orpheus: “do not flee, damsel [...]”, which also helps to explain the presence of the horse, as it appears, precisely, in the first
illustrated editions of this Orpheus, the same one that Leonardo
was to portray in Milan in 1506-1508. The drawing was restored
in 1992 by Loretta Salvador.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci e della sua cerchia nel
Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampi delle Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia,
organized and introduced by Carlo Pedretti, catalogue by G. Nepi
Scirè and A.Perissa Torrini, Florence, 2003, no. 26, p. 127 (with previous bibliography); Zöllner, 2003, fig, 404.
45
[46]
Leonardo da Vinci
Study of a horse and two figures
Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Department of drawings, engravings and prints, cat. no. 258.
Traces of black pencil, lead point, brown ink, fine brush, slightly yellowed white paper, 88 x 50 mm.
Provenance: Giuseppe Bossi collection, 1818; Luigi Celotti, 1822.
Inventorial attributions: Inventory 1927-30: Leonardo.
Exhibitions: London, 1930, no. 70;Venice, 1966, no,. 17;Venice, 1980, no. 21;Venice, 1992, no. 45;Venice, 1999, no. 26.
P
IETRO SELVATICO, in the first printed catalogue of the
drawings of the Gallerie of 1854, does not take into consideration the fragment with the sketch of a horse and two figures,
whereas Uzielli and Loeser regard it as an autograph. Adolfo Venturi excludes it, on the other hand, from the edition of the Vincinian Commission for the drawings of Leonardo. Popham also
disregards it, and it is not included by Berenson among Leonardo’s
drawings until the second edition of 1938. In effect, Heydenreich,
in confirming this authorship, observes that the drawing “has not
hitherto been sufficiently taken into consideration”.The dating of
the study has also been discussed by the critics. Berenson, in linking it with the preparatory studies for the Battle of Anghiari, regards
it as executed between 1503 and 1505, while Heydenreich puts the
execution at between 1504 and 1511, noting that “the heavy forms
of the horse, the way of drawing the figures, almost in chiaroscuro,
suggest a very late dating”; this opinion is shared by Luisa Cogliati
who opts for circa 1510. Jane Roberts stresses the difficulty involved
in making deductions about the dating based on the subject, for
the horse is one of the recurrent themes in Leonardo’s artistic
output, starting with the background of the Adoration of the Magi,
held in the Uffizi, up to the sheet at Windsor, RL 12331, depicting
St. George and the Dragon, thirty years later. On the other hand,
Pedretti suggests that the presence of a horse beside a nymph running might call to mind the mythological themes popular with the
Fontainebleau school, like, for example, the Abduction of Proserpina
by Niccolò dell’Abate, which, in its turn, might be inspired by
a lost picture by Leonardo dealing with the same subject, mentioned, as it happens, in the 1642 Fontainebleau inventories. The
fragment is certainly part of a larger sheet, possibly the one which
also included the study with dancing figures, no. 233 of the same
Venetian collection, based on the hypothesis that Pedretti was the
first to propose, back in 1979. The right margin of this latter and
the left margin of the former actually overlap almost from top
to bottom, a fact confirmed by the continuity of the respective
columns, as verified during the latest restoration, carried out by
Loretta Salvador (1992, p. 424). But despite the existence of one or
two coincidences, in the current state of investigation, it cannot be
claimed that the two fragments were originally one, and not, on
the contrary, separated from each other; nor can it be said exactly
to what degree they were separated. Consequently, for this exhibition, the two fragments are placed in the same passe-partout and
slightly closer together to suggest the idea of a hypothetical link.
Anyway, the fact of regarding the two sheets as part of a single large
sheet leads us to consider that their execution was contemporary,
and thus connected, with the French period around 1517-1518.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Disegni di Leonardo da Vinci e della sua cerchia nel
Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampi delle Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia,
organized and introduced by Carlo Pedretti, catalogue by G. Nepi
Scirè and A.Perissa Torrini, Florence, 2003, no. 25, p. 126 (with previous bibliography).
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