1093. OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS.
Leonardo da Vinci (Florentine: 1452-1519).
There is no more fascinating and illustrious name in the annals of art than Leonardo, of Vinci, a town in the Val d'Arno below Florence. He has been well called, from the many-sidedness of his efforts, the Faust of the Renaissance. The great public which knows him best by his few pictures and many drawings does not always remember that he was also musician, critic, poet, sculptor, architect, mechanist, mathematician, philosopher, and explorer. In a letter addressed to Ludovico il Moro, Prince of Milan, in whose service he lived for sixteen years (1483-1499), he enumerates as his chief qualification his skill in military engineering, and throws in his art as an incidental accomplishment. "I will also undertake any work in sculpture, in marble, in bronze, or in terra-cotta; likewise in painting I can do what may be done as well as any man, be he who he may." The range and amount alike of his theoretical discoveries and practical ingenuities were extraordinary. He divined the circulation of the blood. He anticipated Copernicus in propounding the theory of the earth's movement. He declared that "motion was the cause of all life." He forestalled Lamarck's classification of vertebrate and invertebrate. He takes his place, in virtue of his researches into rocks and fossils, with the masters of modern science who have proclaimed the continuity of geological causes. He was the first inventor of screw propulsion. He made paddle-wheels. He attacked the problem of aerial navigation. He invented swimming belts. He anticipated by many years the invention of the camera obscura. He was great alike as a civil and a military engineer. He watered the Lombard plain by the invention of sluices; he was one of the first to recommend the use of mines for the destruction of forts, and he anticipated the inventions of our time in suggesting breech-loading guns and mitrailleuses. He shrank neither from the highest speculations nor from the humblest contrivances. For centuries after his death the burghers of Milan minced meat for their sausages with machines invented by the painter of "Monna Lisa."
This marvellous curiosity in science and invention could not but profoundly influence Leonardo's work as an artist. One result is as obvious as it was unfortunate. He paid the penalty of versatility in undertaking more than he could fulfil. His dilatoriness is well known. He went once to Rome, but the Pope, Leo X., offended him by exclaiming, "Ah! this man will never do anything; he thinks of the end before the beginning of his work" (He had made elaborate preparations for varnishing his picture before he began it.) Many of his works were thus unfinished, and others, owing to premature experiments in material, are ruined—especially his famous Last Supper at Milan, of which there is an original drawing at the Royal Academy. "Leonardo's oil painting," says Ruskin,—not, however, without a touch of exaggeration—"is all gone black or to nothing." "Because Leonardo made models of machines, dug canals, built fortifications, and dissipated half his art-power in capricious ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him;—but no picture of importance on canvas, and only a few withered stains of one upon a wall" (Queen of the Air, § 157). But Leonardo's curiosity, his wide outlook, his sense of the immensities, added something to his art which otherwise it might not have contained, and which is intensely characteristic of it. Who, for instance, has ever penetrated the secret of Leonardo's smile?—of the ineffable, mysterious, plaintive, and haunting smile that has fascinated and perplexed the world century after century in the portrait of La Gioconda? That unfathomable smile, with so much of mystery and with something of weirdness in it, was the reflection of Leonardo's mind, which had explored the depths and heights, and ever came back from the pursuit with the sense of the inscrutable Mystery beyond. "What is that," he asks, "which does not give itself to human comprehension, and which, if it did, would not exist? It is the infinite, which, if it could so give itself, would be done and ended." In the "Last Supper," says M. Müntz, "he had realised his ideal." Leonardo himself would not have said so. His was one of those lofty minds before which an unattainable ideal ever hovers. "It is of a truth impossible," said a friend of the master to him, "to conceive of faces more lovely and gentle than those of St. James the Great and St. James the Less. Accept thy misfortune, therefore, and leave thy Christ imperfect as He is, for otherwise, when compared with the Apostles, He would not be their Saviour and Master." Leonardo took the advice, and never finished the head of Christ. But he fixed the outward type of Christ for succeeding generations. Apart from the credit due to Leonardo as an ennobler of style in art, he stands out further in the history of painting as the first who investigated the laws of light and shade. There are "three methods of art, producing respectively linear designs, effects of light, and effects of colour. In preparing to draw any object, you will find that practically you have to ask yourself, Shall I aim at the colour of it, the light of it, or the lines of it? The best art comes so near nature as in a measure to unite all. But the best art is not, and cannot be, as good as nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some of the colour, some of the light, or some of the delineation. And in consequence, there is one great school which says, 'We will have delineation, and as much colour and shade as are consistent with it.' Another, which says, 'We will have shade, and as much colour and delineation as are consistent with it.' The third, 'We will have the colour, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it.' The second class, the Chiaroscurists, are essentially draughtsmen with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint, but always with some effort and pain. Leonardo is the type of them" (compressed from Ariadne Florentina, §§ 18-21).
To his artistic genius and intellectual alertness, Leonardo added great personal beauty ("the radiance of his countenance, which was splendidly beautiful, brought cheerfulness," says Vasari, "to the heart of the most melancholy") and great physical strength. He could bend a door-knocker, we are told, or a horse-shoe as if it were lead. He was left-handed and wrote from right to left. Besides his physical strength, Vasari mentions his kindness and gentleness, and tells us how he would frequently buy caged birds from the dealers, in order to give them back their liberty. Scandalous accusations were at one time brought against him, but researches made in the archives during the last few years have effectually disposed of the charge. One curious trait in the character of Leonardo remains to be noticed. In his art he created a feminine type of extraordinary and haunting beauty. "And yet," says his latest biographer, "Leonardo, like Donatello, was one of those exceptionally great artists in whose life the love of woman seems to have played no part.... The delights of the mind sufficed him. He himself proclaimed it in plain terms. Cosa bella mortal passa e non arte.' Fair humanity passes, but art endures.'" This extraordinary man was the son of a peasant-mother, Caterina, and was born out of wedlock, his father being a Florentine notary; and amongst Leonardo's manuscripts is a record of a visit to Caterina in the hospital, who soon after his father's death had married in her own station, and of expenses paid for her funeral. His life has three divisions—thirty years at Florence, nearly twenty years at Milan, then nineteen years of wandering, till he sinks to rest under the protection of the King of France. (1) Leonardo was the pupil of Verrocchio (see 296), "a master well chosen, for in his earnest and discursive mind were many points of contact with that of his illustrious pupil." Leonardo seems to have retained his connection with Verrocchio until 1477, but the records of his Florentine period are very scanty. His earliest undoubted work is the unfinished "Adoration" in the Uffizi. To this period also belongs the head of the "Medusa" in that collection, celebrated in Shelley's verses—a work, says Mr. Pater, in which "the fascination of corruption penetrates in every touch its exquisitely finished beauty." (2) In 1483 Leonardo removed to Milan to take service with Ludovico Sforza. He served his patron in those multifarious ways for which his talents fitted him,—as musician and improvisatore, as director of court pageants, as sculptor, painter, and civil and military engineer. To this Milanese period belong two of the master's most celebrated productions—the present picture and the "Last Supper," executed in oil colours on an end wall of the refectory in the Dominican Convent of S. Maria della Grazia. At Milan, Leonardo founded the famous Vincian Academy of Arts over which he presided, which attracted so many pupils, and which may be said to have established a new Milanese School. For his Academy he made the elaborate notes for a Treatise on Painting which were posthumously published.(3) In 1500, consequent upon the flight of the Duke before the French army, Leonardo left Milan and returned to Florence. His stay, however, was not long, for he took service for a time with Cæsar Borgia as architect and military engineer. He was again in Florence in 1503, and was commissioned with Michelangelo to paint the Hall of Council in the Palace of the Signory. His subject was the Battle of Anghiari. The painting was begun but never completed. The cartoon, now lost, remained and excited the greatest admiration, "The man who had presented the solemn moment of the Last Supper with a dignity and pathos never equalled, who could portray feminine loveliness with a sweetness and grace peculiar to his pencil, was no less successful in bringing before the eye the turmoil of battle and the fierce passions inspired by the struggle for victory." One great work of his of this period (1504) happily survives—the famous portrait of Monna Lisa, known as La Gioconda, in the Louvre. For the next ten years (1506-1516), Leonardo alternated between Milan, Florence, and Rome. Other works of this period are the "St. Anne" and "St. John," also in the Louvre. In 1516 he accompanied the French King, Francis I., to France, who lodged him and his faithful friend Melzi in the Château de Cloux, near Amboise. Three years later he died, having made his will (the text of which has recently been discovered) a week before the end—"considering the certainty of death and the uncertainty of the hour, of its approach." He was buried, by his own instructions, in the church of St. Florentin at Amboise. Of Leonardo as a young man, no authentic portraits exist. In the Royal Collection at Windsor and at Turin there are portraits of himself in red chalk; and on the Sacro Monte at Varallo, one of Gaudenzio Ferrari's sculptured figures is a portrait of the great master. Leonardo's drawings are very beautiful and numerous—the Windsor Collection being the richest; they show us with what infinite searching the master drew near to his ideals. The picture before us makes upon the spectator the impression of rapid and spontaneous creation; but the drawings for it show that it was in fact one of the most laborious of Leonardo's works (see on this subject Müntz's Leonardo da Vinci, i. 162 in the English translation. This is the best life of the master. The most penetrative study of Leonardo remains Mr. Pater's, in his Renaissance).
This beautiful picture is very characteristic of Leonardo in its effects of light and shade, in grace and refinement of delineation, in felicity of gesture, and in the curious beauty of the types. Leonardo makes out of his subject a charming idyll, into which the spectator may read his own meanings. "In St. John the Baptist," says Lomazzo, writing in 1584, "we may see the motive of obedience and child like veneration, as he kneels with joined hands and bends towards Christ; in the Virgin, the feeling of happy meditation as she beholds this act; in the angel, the idea of angelic gladness, as he ponders the joy that shall come to the world from this mystery; and in the Infant Christ we behold divinity and wisdom. And therefore the Virgin kneels, holding St. John with her right hand and extending her left, and the angel likewise supports Christ, who, seated, regards St. John and blesses him." A modern poet, adding to the picture a beautiful thought of his own, has suggested that in the valley of the shadow of death the Virgin brings the soul of a dead child for her son's blessing (see an interesting discussion of "The Louvre Sonnets of Rossetti," by W. M. Hardinge, in Temple Bar, March 1891):—
Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea
Infinite imminent Eternity?[212]
And does the death-pang by man's seed sustain'd
In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend
Its silent prayer upon the Son, while He
Blesses the dead with His hand silently
To His long day which hours no more offend?
Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols,
Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
Amid the bitterness of things occult.
D. G. Rossetti: Sonnets and Ballads.
The landscape from which the picture takes its title is remarkable. Leonardo, a pioneer in so many other things, was a pioneer also in Alpine exploration, and has even been credited with a first ascent in the Monte Rosa range. However this may be, it is clear from his pictures and drawings that his mineralogical and geological studies attracted him to the curious rocks and peaks which he had observed among the mountains of North Italy.[213] "In him," says Mr. Pater, "first appears the taste for what is bizarre or recherché in landscape; hollow places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks, ridged reefs of trap-rock which cut the water into quaint sheets of light; all solemn effects of moving water; you may follow it springing from its distant source among the rocks on the heath of the 'Madonna of the Balances,' passing as a little fall into the treacherous calm of the 'Madonna of the Lake,' next, as a goodly river below the cliffs of the 'Madonna of the Rocks,' stealing out in a network of divided streams in 'La Gioconda' to the sea-shore of the 'St. Anne.' It is the landscape not of dreams or of fancy, but of places far withdrawn." Notice also the flowers of the foreground. "Leonardo paints flowers with such curious felicity that different writers have attributed to him a fondness for particular flowers, as Clement the cyclamen, and Rio the jasmine; while at Venice there is a stray leaf from his portfolio dotted all over with studies of violets and the white rose." "This work," says Ford Madox Brown, "seems to have been laid in entirely with ivory black, which, as its wont is, has come through the upper painting to the extent of leaving only to look at a picture in black, heightened, in the lights, with a little faint yellow. So much is true, and also that the rocks, from which the picture takes its name, are of the most singular formations, such as no modern geologist would care to lecture on, the herbage being much the same as to its botanical value. But in spite of these and other objections, such is the intrinsic power of the work in style of drawing and beauty of expression, that nothing known, not by the greatest masters, can do more than hold their own against it. Just stand a little way off, study the heads, and see what they tell you—most supreme master of the human face divine" (Magazine of Art, 1890, p. 135).
There is, as everyone knows, a very similar picture to this in the Louvre; and during the last few years an Anglo-French dispute has raged furiously in artistic circles with regard to the authenticity, priority, and relative merits of the two pictures. The pedigree of our picture is singularly complete, and there can be no doubt that it is a veritable work by the hand of Leonardo. It agrees minutely with the description given by Lomazzo (in 1584) of a painting by Leonardo, which in his time was in the chapel of the Conception in the church of S. Francesco at Milan. The picture in the Louvre differs from Lomazzo's description in the one essential difference between the two pictures. In the Louvre picture the angel looks towards us and points to St. John, thus connecting the spectator with what is taking place. In our picture, on the other hand, there is no such connecting link. The action is complete within itself. The spectator is not invited to participate in what is to him a divine vision. It is clear therefore that our picture is the one which, in 1584, was in S. Francesco at Milan, and which passed for a work by Leonardo. External evidence has come to light during the last few years proving what had hitherto only been taken for granted, namely, that Leonardo did execute the central composition of the altar-piece for that church. This is a memorial from Ambrogio di Predis and Leonardo da Vinci to the Duke of Milan, praying him to intervene in a dispute which had arisen between the petitioners and the brotherhood "della Concezione" with regard to the price to be paid for certain works of art furnished by them for the chapel of the brotherhood in S. Francesco. The brotherhood had priced the oil-painting of Our Lady executed by Leonardo at only 25 ducats, whereas it was worth 100 ducats, as shown by the account and proved by the fact that certain persons were found willing to purchase it at that price. No evidence is forthcoming as to the settlement of the dispute. We have then these facts: that Leonardo painted a picture of Our Lady for S. Francesco, that such a picture was in the church in 1584, and that our picture precisely agrees with Lomazzo's description of it. The picture remained in the chapel until some time between 1751 and 1787. In the latter year Bianconi, in a guide-book to Milan, states that the two side panels (1661, 1662) were still there, but that the picture "by the hand of Leonardo" had been removed. In 1777 our picture was brought to England by Gavin Hamilton, and sold by him to the Marquis of Lansdowne, from whom it afterwards passed by exchange into the collection of the Earl of Suffolk at Charlton Park. From Lord Suffolk it was bought in 1880 for the National Gallery, the price being £9000.
It will thus be seen that the external evidence in favour of this picture being a veritable work by Leonardo is unusually strong. Internal evidence is more difficult to bring to the test, resting as it does on æsthetic considerations, the force of which depends on the authority of the witness and the competence of the court to which he appeals. Several critics, it may be explained, had convinced themselves long ago that the Louvre picture was the original and ours a copy. The discovery of the new document above referred to seemed at first to strengthen the authenticity of our picture. But the point was ingeniously turned by the following gratuitous and entirely unsupported theory. Leonardo, says Dr. Richter, must have sold the original to the French king, and let the church have a copy at the low price agreed upon. Supporting this theory in turn by internal evidence, the enemies of our picture declare it to be "an entirely wretched performance" (Richter); "superficial," "insipid," "heavy," "woolly," "lacking in elevation," "feeble," in short, "a work in which we do not feel the real presence of the master" (Müntz). Those who thus disparage our picture suppose it to be a copy by Ambrogio di Predis. To this theory, an effective retort has been given by the purchase for the Gallery of the two wings that used to flank the central picture. It is impossible to suppose that the painter of No. 1662 was capable of producing our picture, of which the skilful delineation and mysterious beauty delight all spectators who have no preconceived theory in the matter. It should be stated that some of the faults found with our picture are admitted by the authorities of the Gallery. "The ill-drawn gilt nimbi over the heads of the three principal figures, as well as the clumsy reed cross which rests on St. John's shoulder, are additions of a comparatively late period, probably of the 17th century." Again, "the hand of the Virgin resting on St. John's shoulder is obviously the mere daub of a picture restorer."
Those who support the authenticity of our picture do not feel called upon to carry the war into the enemy's camp, though both Sir Frederick Burton and Sir Edward Poynter notice various defects and repaintings in the Louvre picture, and the former points out that its pedigree does not extend back beyond 1642. The fact seems to be that neither picture can properly be called a copy of the other. The most striking difference—that in the attitude of the angel—is fundamental, and not such as a copyist would venture to make. There are many other differences; indeed no single part of the groups is really alike; and those differences (as Sir Edward Poynter shows) are such as an artist would make in working from different studies. Studies for portions of both pictures exist. A further question in dispute is which of the two versions is the earlier. To Sir Edward Poynter "it seems that our picture shows traces of Leonardo's training in the school of Verrocchio, and that it is the Louvre picture which has more of the idealised refinement of type on which Luini formed his style." To Mr. Claude Phillips, on the other hand, the angel of the Louvre looking straight out of the picture seems to be essentially Florentine, and to belong specifically to the school of Verrocchio (see 296 in our Gallery). The variation in the angel's attitude, as given in our version, is in conception a distinct improvement: it makes the picture more self-contained. "One can imagine," says Mr. MacColl, "Leonardo, on second thoughts, judging that the Louvre angel drew too much attention to himself by his pointing hand, and was better within the picture with downcast eyes than when inviting the attention of the spectator by his regard." (The very interesting discussion summarised above is contained in the following English publications: Dr. Richter, in the Art Journal for June 1894; replied to by Sir Edward Poynter in the same magazine for August, and by Sir F. Burton in the Nineteenth Century for July 1894. See also Eugene Müntz's Leonardo da Vinci, vol. i. ch. vi.; the Catalogue of Milanese Pictures at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1898, pp. li.-lvi.; Mr. Claude Phillips in the National Review, Dec. 1894; and "D. S. M." in the Saturday Review, May 28, 1898, and Feb. 18, 1899. The English articles contain references to the articles on Dr. Richter's side by Motta, Frizzoni, and others.)