How to see every painting by Leonardo da Vinci

In terms of making a mark on tradition, Leonardo is in a league of his personal. He was, in trendy phrases, additionally a theorist of artwork, a mathematician, a scholar of optics, an architectural skilled, a stage designer, an engineer (civil, navy and hydraulic), an anatomist, a geologist and a physicist. No Renaissance determine left such a wealthy legacy of drawings and manuscripts.

His legacy as a painter was a lot much less intensive, amounting to round 16 work that have been predominantly or wholly by the grasp himself, with an extra 4 or 5 works wherein he intervened. Additionally it is turning into clear that his workshop included expert painters who might use the sources of the studio (cartoons and so on) to provide what handed as “Leonardos”. Such a observe has resulted in trendy disputes about attribution.

Alongside the way in which, he produced the world’s most well-known portray, the Mona Lisa (1503-around 1516), in addition to what might be second most well-known, the Final Supper (1495–98). For good measure, his Vitruvian Man (round 1490), a nude man inscribed in a sq. and circle, is probably the most acquainted of all drawings.

On this quest to go to the important thing work, we journey to locations the place he labored, Florence, Milan and Rome, additionally France (which tends to put declare to Leonardo on the idea of his service to Francis I on the very finish of his life, and the presence of 5 work within the Louvre). An early Madonna and Baby (1490) is within the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. One other is within the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

The Nationwide Gallery in London is an important port of name—there we are able to admire the uniquely surviving cartoon of the Virgin, Baby, St Anne (?) and St John the Baptist (round 1507-16). One of many two variations of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder (round 1501-8) is on long-term mortgage to the Nationwide Gallery in Edinburgh. Particular journeys are required to Washington, DC, which incorporates the final Leonardo to be purchased by a public gallery, and to Krakow, which inherited the beautiful and animated portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (round 1490).

Frustratingly, we don’t undoubtedly know the whereabouts of the world’s costliest portray, the $450m Salvator Mundi, which has been the topic of polarised and acrimonious attribution and de-attribution—and due to this fact doesn’t make this listing.

As soon as we now have accomplished this tour, we could have born witness to extraordinary originality of visible means and narrative content material. Madonnas, within the arms of Leonardo, inform tales in a brand new sort of manner, as do portraits. Overtly narrative work report the outer mechanics of internal feelings. The depth with which Leonardo scrutinised nature finds expression in extraordinary visible results as he persuades pigments and binders on white-plastered boards to do issues they’ve by no means achieved earlier than.

However wanting again throughout the vary of his photos, every one appears to be its personal distinctive experiment, as he tackles every of his topics afresh. Not for Leonardo was Raphael’s systematic improvement of pictorial means. Given the ambitions that drove Leonardo’s need that portray ought to surpass all the opposite arts and sciences, the shock shouldn’t be that he completed so few work however that he accomplished any in any respect.

Edinburgh

The Madonna of the Yarnwinder (round 1501-8), Buccleuch Assortment, on mortgage to Nationwide Gallery of Scotland

This small Madonna is without doubt one of the greatest documented of Leonardo’s commissions. The work was ordered by Florimond Robertet, secretary to the French King who invaded Milan in 1499. It appears to not have been delivered till 1507. The Madonna and Baby tells a narrative: Christ surges throughout his mom’s lap to understand a yarnwinder, a cruciform system that symbolises the crucifixion.

The complication is that we now have two equally superb variations, one within the assortment of the Duke of Buccleuch in Scotland and different that was previously within the Lansdown Assortment however is now not traceable. Scientific examination of the 2 work has revealed comparable and fairly radical adjustments, as they advanced beside one another. Every image has completely different passages of top of the range. Plainly Leonardo used the fee to develop a saleable by-product.

Florence

The Annunciation (round 1475), Gallerie degli Uffizi

This oddly-shaped portray is wealthy in motifs taken from Leonardo’s research with Andrea del Verrocchio, the sculptor and artist in lots of different media. The Virgin’s carved lectern is especially paying homage to Verrocchio. The image is stuffed with youthful striving: the laboured perspective, the emphatically folded draperies, the carpet of wriggling flowers within the “enclosed backyard” (a sign of virginity from the Bible’s Music of Songs), the calculated curls of the angel’s hair, her birds’ wings, and, not least, the atmospheric delights of the distant maritime scene.

It could nicely have been undertaken in Verrocchio’s workshop and even commissioned from the grasp, with whom Leonardo was nonetheless working in 1476, his twenty fourth yr.

The Adoration of the Magi (unfinished)(round 1481), Gallerie degli Uffizi

The processional richness of Florentine Adorations has been overtaken by turbulent spirituality right here, as the arrival of the divine child disturbs the world order. The crush of figures erupt in awe and confusion. Within the background, an equestrian skirmish is triggered, whereas a half-ruined Roman construction appears to vow the top of the pagan period. There had by no means been an Adoration scene like this.

The work was commissioned for the Florentine monastery of San Donato a Scopeto exterior town partitions. A doc of 1481 data that Leonardo was partly to be paid by land. It’s troublesome to think about how the unfinished image might need been accomplished—there appear to be too many gesturing actors to suit on the pictorial stage. It’s, nonetheless, magnificent and set in practice a brand new sort of narrative depth.

Krakow

Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, (‘Girl with the Ermine’,)(round 1490), Czartoryski Museum

The elegant woman proven cradling a white ermine on this portrait is at the moment recognized as Cecilia Gallerani, Duke Ludovico Sforza’s mistress. The duke is by implication current as the topic of Cecilia’s sideways look. Cecilia was a lady of refined tastes and a buddy of the main patron Isabella d’Este of Mantua, who requested to borrow the portray in 1498 to guage its deserves.

The big however svelte ermine, painted with nice refinement, is as artfully poised because the sitter. It has been included due to its allegorical significance: based on animal lore, the fastidious creature with its pure coat would relatively be captured by a hunter than tarnished by soil when escaping throughout muddy terrain. As such it signified purity.

London

The Virgin of the Rocks (round 1496-1508), Nationwide Gallery

The convoluted historical past of the 1483 fee of this scene (see itemizing in Paris part) is troublesome to comply with, however when the painter left Milan in 1499, the model destined for the altarpiece within the church of San Francesco Grande was unfinished. When Leonardo returned in 1507, he ultimately produced an image, maybe completed partly by assistants. Some good passages of paint dealing with, as within the angel’s face and hair, are accompanied by extra routine replication of such options because the rocks.

There are some minor adjustments, most notably within the elimination of the angel’s pointing gesture, although scientific examination signifies that Leonardo initially sketched in a fairly completely different composition with bigger figures and with the angel holding the toddler Christ. Within the last evaluation he sensibly resorted to portray one thing nearer to a duplicate of the Louvre model.

Milan

The Singer (or ‘The Musician’, unfinished)(round 1485), Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

Whereas in Milan, Leonardo was a lot concerned with music, which he thought to be the second highest artwork after portray. He designed theatrical settings and costumes for excellent musical occasions within the metropolis and different northern Italian courts. He was himself admired as a participant of the viola da braccio (an ancestor of the violin).

The topic of the portrait was most likely the performer and instrument-maker Atalante Migliorotti, who accompanied Leonardo from Florence. In any occasion the sitter is a singer, as is obvious from the relatively broken sheet of music. The person’s considerate head is strongly modelled, with a typical Leonardo cascade of curling hair. However, the singer’s fur stole stays as solely an underpainting.

The Final Supper (1496-around 1498) refectory of the Santa Maria delle Grazie

Leonardo devoted very sustained consideration to this mural of the momentous story of Christ’s last supper, which based on biblical accounts befell in what is named the “higher room. The coffers of the ceiling and diminished tapestries create a scientific perspective and arrange a plunging house, which is cunningly remoted from the house of the refectory by the higher cornice, behind which the coffers ascend.

Throughout the perspectival field, the crowded disciples individually react with vivid expressions and gestures to the tranquil Christ’s pronouncements on the Eucharist (the bread and wine standing for his physique and blood) and his immanent betrayal by Judas. The portray of the Final Supper coincided with Leonardo’s analysis into the way in which that the mind and nerves drive the exterior expression of internal impulses.

The Sala dell’ Asse (round 1498-99), Castello Sforzesco

The wall and vault portray within the spacious “room of the boards” within the Sforza fort was Leonardo’s largest surviving courtly ornament. A set of 16 mulberry bushes (symbolic of Ludovico) rise at ground stage from strata and rocks, branching out in mathematical knots within the vaults and ceiling. An interwoven gold thread signifies Beatrice, the duke’s spouse, whose union can also be celebrated within the heraldic defend on the centre of the ceiling.

Current restoration of the broken murals has given some perception into the botanical accuracy of the arboreal fantasy. Shut examination exhibits that Leonardo required assistants to finish the repetitive motifs based on a decent timetable.

Munich

Madonna and Baby (round 1477), Munich Alte Pinakothek

As in The Annunciation (see itemizing within the Florence part), there’s a sense of a younger and gifted painter stretching his pictorial muscular tissues on this most standard of topics. The Virgin’s face and knotted braids of hair are straight from the Verrocchio repertoire. We catch our first glimpse of Leonardo’s blue mountains. Nature has additionally been introduced indoors, within the type of the blood-red carnations that the Baby makes an attempt to discover, and a posy of shining flowers in a glistening glass vase. Leonardo has notably loved the scintillating gentle on and within the crystal clasp of the Virgin’s gown. The kid shouldn’t be posed elegantly or for candy enchantment. The crimson flowers could signify Christ’s sacrifice to return.

Paris

The Virgin of the Rocks (begun in 1483), Musée du Louvre

The Virgin of the Rocks is the primary portray after Leonardo’s emigration to Milan below the Sforza. The fee was granted collectively to the artist and two Milanese brothers in 1483. It concerned painted panels and polychroming for an enormous carved altarpiece meant for the church of San Francesco Grande, Milan. Leonardo’s central panel of the holy figures immersed in a mysterious grotto was unprecedented.

Leonardo’s depiction of the Madonna and Christ encountering the toddler St John the Baptist and an angel on their journey to Egypt appears to not conform to the strict stipulations of the contract. There was a authorized dispute with the commissioners, centred upon Leonardo’s failure to ship the work. The confraternity had a protracted wait for his or her image: the alternative was not acquired till 1508.

It appears possible that the Duke of Milan commandeered this authentic masterpiece in 1494 as a marriage current for Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan and the Emperor Maximillian II.

Portrait of a Girl (‘La Belle Ferronnière’, or Lucrezia Crivelli) (round 1486), Musée du Louvre

At first sight, this portrait of a girl appears much less spectacular than the Cecilia Gallerani (see the Krakow part of this listing), but it surely has its personal quiet deserves. The sitter equally appears sideways to our proper, once more by implication at Duke Ludovico Sforza, her lover. Using a parapet behind which the sitter is seated, establishing the sitter relatively like a sculpted bust, was trendy motif within the northern Italian courts and Venice. The type of the sitter’s head is painted with a virtuoso’s conviction. As at all times, the jewelry is realised with extraordinary optical precision.

Views on the sitter’s id have fluctuated unnecessarily. Courtroom poems report Leonardo having painted an completed portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, a later mistress of Ludovico. Plainly Leonardo was favoured for intimate portraits, whereas extra formal ruler portraits of the duke and his household have been assigned to common courtroom artists.

Mona Lisa (Portrait of Lisa del Giocondo)(1503-around 1516), Musée du Louvre

This most well-known of work started in 1503 as a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, an impoverished Florentine aristocrat and the spouse of the dealer Francesco del Giocondo. Extra necessary tasks intervened and the work was not accomplished in Florence. The unfinished portrait travelled with Leonardo to Rome in 1513, the place his patron, Giuliano de’ Medici expressed curiosity in it. The panel accompanied Leonardo to France in 1513, the place, by way of circuitous routes, it entered the gathering of Francis I.

Throughout this time the portrait advanced to develop into a “common image” into which Leonardo poured his optical data of sunshine and shade, atmospheric perspective, the physics of material, the “physique of the earth”, the physique of a lady, and the “look” of moist eyes, delicate pores and skin, pink lips and cascading hair. The lady assumed the position of the “beloved woman” of Florentine poetry—beguiling however inaccessible.

The Virgin, Baby and St Anne with a Lamb (round 1507-16), Musée du Louvre

Tasks for the troublesome composition of the Virgin, Baby, St. Anne (or Elizabeth) and both St John the Baptist or a sacrificial lamb appear to have occupied Leonardo from round 1500 onwards. On his return to Florence from Milan, he proved his powers by exhibiting a cartoon of the Virgin, Baby, St Anne and a Lamb. There isn’t any surviving portray. There’s a second later cartoon that does survive (London, Nationwide Gallery), wherein the toddler St John options, which means that the older of the ladies is Elizabeth, St John’s mom.

This leaves the portray within the Louvre. The three tender figures and captive lamb are rhythmically built-in in a manner that disguises their bodily improbability. The hazy mountain-scape manifests Leonardo’s intense research of historical geologies. It was value ready for.

St John the Baptist (round 1508-16), Musée du Louvre

If St John shouldn’t be the final of Leonardo’s work, it needs to be. It’s a meditation on the final word unknowability of the non secular world from the angle of our earth-bound senses, very a lot in tune with Dante.

The saint factors in a literal method to the heavenly supply of non secular energy, whereas his mysterious smile teases us that we can not know what he is aware of. If this appears too mystical for our customary characterisation of Leonardo, we should always observe his unqualified reward of the “Holy Books”.

Paradoxically, the visible method he makes use of is scientific. Islamic optical science, above all Ibn al-Haytham’s On Appearances, as transmitted although medieval philosophy. This didn’t a lot affirm the geometrical certainty of optics because it emphasised the complicated ambiguities of seeing. St. John is slippery—visually and spiritually.

Rome

Saint Jerome within the Wilderness (unfinished) (round 1481 and possibly later), Vatican Museums

One other unfinished portray, and it has additionally been mutilated. The portion of the walnut panel containing the saint’s agonised face had as soon as been lower out as a separate image. The rest of the panel was lower into 4 items. Improbably, cardinal Joseph Fesch, a significant collector and potent cardinal within the Napoleonic period, claimed to have discovered the separate fragments and reunited them.

The injury to this work—which is little greater than a tonal underdrawing—appears to underscore the ravaged state of the saint in a harsh panorama as he prepares to beat his penitential breast with a stone, a self-inflicted punishment for his pagan tendencies. He’s joined by a silhouetted lion, from whose foot—based on the legend—he had beforehand eliminated a thorn.

St Petersburg

The Madonna and Baby (the ‘Benois Madonna’) (round 1480), State Hermitage Museum

Right here Leonardo engages in a brand new drawing fashion which permits the interweaving of type and movement. The draperies are actually extra concertedly rhythmic and conscious of the underlying our bodies. The strongly directional gentle additionally serves to combine the varieties. The figures’ expressions—one smiling and the opposite rigorously observing—converge on the complicated knot of touching arms that centre on a bunch of small white flowers. The blossoms, considerably are cross-shaped. She smiles innocently. He intuits the long run.

The clean window within the darkish room is surprising. There isn’t any signal that it as soon as enclosed a panorama, and it could as an alternative be a approach to focus consideration on the fitting higher quarter of the composition.

Washington, DC

Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci (round 1476-78), Nationwide Gallery of Artwork

Ginevra, a part of a outstanding Florentine household, was a favoured member of the Medici courtroom. Her direct, detached stare was fairly distinctive for a portrait of a lady right now. Leonardo once more favours dazzling particulars within the medium of oil paint, not least within the electrical curls and sheen of his topic’s hair, set off towards the spiky branches of juniper (ginepro) that pun on her identify. The sharpness of the foreground is about off by the elusive, watery panorama within the distance.

We all know from an ornamental wreath on the reverse of the panel that patron was the Venetian ambassador, Pietro Bembo, who’s talked about in formulaic Medicean poetry as her lover.

The wreath additionally tells us that the decrease third of the panel has been lower down, Ginevra’s arms most likely taken with it.

Martin Kemp is an artwork historian and emeritus professor of artwork historical past on the College of Oxford