After a long detour, we are once more on the high road. Perugino, with his simple and gracious symmetries, had shown the painting of the end of the century what ailed it. But his cure was too obvious to be acceptable until a youngster of Raphael’s entirely modest intelligence should come along. The reform, as often in other than artistic affairs, had to be made from within, and was conducted by one who had much sympathy with the random richness of the Early Renaissance style, Leonardo da Vinci.[[50]]
Leonardo’s discoveries, pursued with the most patient and gradual care, shocked no one and were quickly taken up. He was nearly thirty before he reached consciousness of his mission, and having attained his artistic end, he dropped painting, with a kind of scorn, for mathematical and scientific investigation. In his admirable “Tractate on Painting” he has left the fullest and most eloquent records of his ideals. The first is that the painter must know clearly what he is about. “Without good theory no good practice is possible.” Next the artist should be in a filial relation to nature, admiring and imitating her directly, and not through the eyes of other artists. As to the main object of painting, Leonardo wavers between two definitions. Repeatedly he insists that that painting is greatest which through the postures of the body shows the emotions of the soul. As often, he uses a more technical definition—the chief business of painting is to create a sense of relief or projection where there is none. This relief is effected by delicate and accurate distribution of light and shade. Light and dark are conceived in a double fashion, as factors in relief and as offering intrinsic beauties in their gradations. We have a refinement on the method of Masaccio, which is merely structural and dramatic and without much intrinsic charm. But the new beauty of chiaroscuro soon turns out to be incompatible with the old beauty of frank color. Pictures become dusky and mysterious, tending to black and white values. Ever since Leonardo, academic painting has had the sore limitation of regarding shadow as negation of color. It is the defect of his teaching and practice.
On broader matters, however, Leonardo is profoundly right. Seeing is a mental process and should be selective. Represent all the muscles emphatically, and your nude will look like a sack full of nuts. Accuracy is necessary, but is of no value without accompanying dignity and grace. Choose the most gracious aspects of reality, the pervasive moderate light of evening rather than the sharp glare of the overhead sun. Observe deaf-mutes so that you may learn the possibilities of expression through gestures. Seek equilibrium and an active and vital balance whether in the pose of the single figure or in the relations of the figures to each other. Get the action right, and afterwards add the details. These are some of the precepts which Leonardo scribbled off about the year 1500 when he was nearing fifty and his work as a painter was almost over. He is really describing the principles under which, while accepting the richness and variety of the early Renaissance style, he had once for all put it in order.
Of course this was a very gradual process. To the end Leonardo retained something of a primitive quality, and he was by no means precocious. He was born in 1452, the lovechild of a peasant girl of Vinci and a young Florentine notary, Piero da Vinci. His earliest recollections must have been of the hills and distant mountain prospects of his native hamlet of Vinci, between Florence and Pisa. But he was soon taken into his father’s home at Florence, and given an education which hardly exceeded the proverbial “Three R’s”. Just when he was put with the painter and sculptor, Andrea Verrocchio, is uncertain, but it can hardly have been later than Leonardo’s thirteenth year, 1465. As a painter, Verrocchio exists for us chiefly in the work of his pupils. As a sculptor, however, he is a definite enough figure. His aim was plainly to infuse the new realism with an aristocratic elegance. What a young patrician is his David composing himself for the ordeal with a restrained well-bred smile! There is a splendid dandyism in his valor. Or consider the Madonna in terra-cotta, with her ornate head-dress, rich brooch, and carefully arranged robe, her almost too sweet self-possession. She is a clue to the fastidiousness of Verrocchio. Again consider the proud hard face and the marvelously firm and delicate hands of the unknown lady Verrocchio cut in marble. These things are dominant for the early development of Leonardo, as the alert, powerful and aggressive Colleoni monument is for his later heroic creations. Something of Verrocchio’s scrupulous and eminently dilatory character also passed over to his brilliant pupil. Verrocchio remained a bachelor and wholly devoted to his art, yet he took eighteen years to give to his famous bronze group of Christ and St. Thomas its dignity and sensitive feeling. Leonardo remained some ten years or more with Verrocchio, painting many works that are lost to us, and a few, I believe, that we may identify. In this most contested matter I follow in the main the views of Dr. Sirén.
Fig. 146. Leonardo da Vinci, Head at Left; Verrocchio, Head at Right. Details from Verrocchio’s Baptism.—Uffizi.
Fig. 146a.> Verrocchio and Leonardo. Baptism of Christ.—Uffizi.
Fig. 147. Leonardo da Vinci under Verrocchio’s Direction. Annunciation.—Uffizi.