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Leonardo grew up outside Florence, in the countryside,
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in a little village, Vinci.
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His mother was a peasant woman. He himself was illegitimate.
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But his father was a very respectable notary
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who married and had a legitimate family
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into which Leonardo was, to some extent, absorbed.
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So there was no question of him being disowned.
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And his career was supported,
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even if it wasn't necessarily going to be a reiteration of his father's career.
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And what we've seen quite often in Italian Renaissance history
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is that illegitimate sons
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have a kind of ambition that takes them to the fore.
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Renaissance Italy is very extraordinary.
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There is this intellectual driving force because, more than any other country,
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they felt the weight, or the tradition of classical antiquity.
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Rome was around them and you combined that
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with early capitalist economies, on a small scale, but very dynamic.
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You had the city states, like Venice, and so on, which had major artists,
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but Florence was extraordinary.
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In the early 1500s, you had this astonishing flowering
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of Brunelleschi, the architect,
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Donatello, the sculptor,
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Masaccio, the painter, and a host of others.
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Art was becoming, in Florence, an intellectual pursuit.
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Florence was an intensely mercantile city.
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It was a city of transactions.
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And even the great Medici had banking interests that spread across Europe.
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But they also wanted to show that they were culturally sophisticated
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and that they were using their wealth
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for the benefit of the city,
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for the benefit of their own souls,
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when they were commissioning religious works of art.
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So what you've got is this lovely melting pot
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of factions and families in competition,
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and painters who might serve one or other of them
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and who were also themselves looking over their shoulder
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all the time for what the latest innovation was.
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"Leonardo's father one day took some of his son's drawings
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to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio, who was a good friend of his,
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and directly asked him what he thought.
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Andrea was astonished by what he saw
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and arranged that Leonardo should enter his workshop."
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Giorgio Vasari, painter and historian.
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This is the Tobias and the Angel from the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio,
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a painting from the early to mid-1470s.
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It's an apocryphal story in which the Archangel Raphael comes to young Tobias
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and instructs him to take parts of the fish,
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the gall, and the liver, and the heart, I believe,
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as a remedy to cure the blindness of his father.
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It raises some very interesting questions about how workshops work
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and, indeed, how Leonardo functioned within the Verrocchio workshop.
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Verrocchio was one of the pre-eminent workshops.
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Many very important painters passed through the Verrocchio studio
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in the 1460s and '70s.
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I think one of the appeals of working with Andrea del Verrocchio
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for someone like Leonardo
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was the fact that this was, like many of these Florentine workshops,
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a production centre for all manner of objects,
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both two-dimensional, three-dimensional.
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There was drawing, there was painting, there was casting, there was carving.
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And, of course, the multiplicity of interests that Leonardo demonstrated
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in his subsequent career
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certainly had some resonance with what went on in the Verrocchio studio.
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Where this painting in particular is involved, I think,
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it's raised some very interesting ideas about collaboration and delegation,
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suggesting that some of the details of this picture
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might have been by the young Leonardo as an apprentice.
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We know that he had some sort of formal training in the Verrocchio workshop
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between 1469 and 1472.
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It's been suggested that certain elements
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that are more naturally observed,
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more realistically observed,
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have a higher degree of skill in execution,
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like the movement of the dog and the fur,
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or the fish and the way it hangs from the string so convincingly,
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might be ascribed to the young Leonardo himself.
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The traditional painting medium in the Renaissance,
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certainly at the beginning of the 15th century,
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was egg... egg used, mixed with water and pigments,
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and applied in a fine, hatched way.
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The introduction of oil painting is something that happened
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during the latter part of the 15th century.
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There were instances of pictures appearing from Northern Europe
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and I think it had a tremendous impact on the way Italian artists worked,
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both a need, or an interest rather, in learning how to paint this way,
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but also it opened up different ideas about what you could depict
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and what effects you could make.
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We can point to certain moments.
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For example, the arrival of the van der Goes Portinari altarpiece
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in Florence from Bruges
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was a revelation, I think, to Florentine artists working in that time.
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With Leonardo, it's certainly true that oil painting
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was a relatively new technique that was available.
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It certainly allowed him to explore and to depict things
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the optics of vision and the way that things go in and out of focus,
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or the way that shadows lose their colour in lower light.
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All these things you can achieve much more convincingly with the oil medium.
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That certainly was his interest,
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and it lies deep at the heart of many of the things
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he tried to do and paint later in his career.
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Leonardo thought that paintings should be able
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to show everything that was visible
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and everything that was invisible in our universe.
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He started that way of thinking
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by looking very, very closely at the world around him.
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For example, one of his very earliest drawings shows, apparently,
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a view of the Arno Valley.
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It's dated, it feels like an observation and yet there are aspects to it
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which I think most of us would now agree are almost impossible.
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So the point of his landscapes,
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the point of his observation of the human figure,
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is that he's always wanting to move from the specific to the ideal
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and from the observed to the imagined.
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Probably his earliest independent painting was The Annunciation,
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which is a long, rectangular panel,
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with the standard subject of the angel and the Virgin Mary,
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but with enormous amount of effort going into it.
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Leonardo spends a lot of time on the perspective of the Virgin's house,
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and we know from scientific examination,
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the walls, initially, are rather different
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with the window in a different place.
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So, he's saying, "Look, I can do perspective."
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The draperies are done taking a lay figure with linen,
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which is then soaked in clay and draped over the figures,
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giving a very sculptural impression.
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And, above all, he is saying, "Look what I can do with nature."
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The carpets of flowers in the enclosed garden, which is symbolic of the Virgin,
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are absolutely wriggling with life and vitality.
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And then the angel's wing is based on a bird.
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You've got this observation of the feathers.
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The primaries at the end of the wing have deteriorated a lot.
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So, there's a rather offsetting brown smudge,
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but you look at the rest of the wing,
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the secondaries, all the other feathers,
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are painted with this enormous sense of observation.
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So, this young man is saying,
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"Look what I can do. I can master all the key things in art."
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The Annunciation that Leonardo made very early in his career
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can be seen as the culmination of his apprenticeship
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in Verrocchio's workshop.
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We have continued to study and make new investigations.
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Not only looking at the finished painting
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but also understanding all the stages
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Leonardo went through to arrive at the final composition.
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Looking at the changes he made
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he clearly did not arrive immediately
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at a complete and definitive conclusion.
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There is undoubtedly on Leonardo's part
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a kind of internal challenge.
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So this is not so much a problem of wanting
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immediately to prove himself as an innovative artist
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but really the need to challenge himself
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and therefore to progress.
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One has the sense he's never satisfied by whatever he's doing.
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Therefore it's more a dialogue of Leonardo with himself
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than with the rest of artistic society.
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"Verrocchio was making a picture
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in which St. John was baptising Christ,
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and Leonardo worked on an angel who was holding some garments.
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Even though he was so young he accomplished it in such a manner
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that it was much better than Verrocchio's own figures
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that were located beside the angel of Leonardo.
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This was the reason why Andrea never again wanted to touch colours,
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dismayed that a young man understood painting better than he."
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Giorgio Vasari.
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"He's a poor pupil who does not surpass his master."
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Leonardo.
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I think that we see Leonardo in contrast to Verrocchio most clearly
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in the Baptism of Christ in the Uffizi,
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where a fairly orthodox landscape
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is changed to a remarkable degree
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as Leonardo's imagination literally floods the plain
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to bring water and movement and light into a picture
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that otherwise might have been somewhat static.
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What Leonardo does is provide a unity,
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a unifying factor that turns a good picture into a remarkable one.
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Generally speaking, and we certainly see this with Raphael later,
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the young artists tend to get commissioned
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to do smaller scale paintings.
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The less expensive ones, as it were.
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Which is Madonnas and portraits,
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and in Leonardo's case, portraits of women in particular.
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He's already getting the narrative Madonna,
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which was one of his great contributions
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to reforming "Madonna and Child" painting.
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So he's already, in these little pictures
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which are, on the whole, conventional subjects,
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he's already stretching his wings, as it were.
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"Leonardo then made a picture of Our Lady
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which was in the possession of Pope Clement VII,
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and which is very excellent.
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Amongst other things that were in it,
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he reproduced a carafe full of water containing some flowers.
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In addition to the marvellous lifelikeness of the flowers,
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he had imitated the dewdrops of the water on them,
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so that they seemed more alive than life itself."
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Giorgio Vasari.
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"Little babies are thin at all their joints,
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and the intervals located between the joints are fat,
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and this happens because the skin over the joints is without any flesh
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other than that of the nature of sinew,
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while a juicy fleshiness is found between one joint and another."
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Leonardo.
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"The first intention of the painter
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is to make a flat surface display a body
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as if modelled and separated from this plane,
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and he who surpasses others in this skill deserves most praise.
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This accomplishment, with which the science of painting is crowned,
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arises from light and shade."
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Leonardo.
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I think if Leonardo had died early,
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we would regard this little group of early pictures as being very strange.
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He's doing things that other artists weren't trying to do,
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and they're very brilliant but slightly uneven.
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If you look at Ginevra de' Benci you've got this extraordinary picture
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with this woman looking at you very directly, which is very daring.
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Normally, women were portrayed in profile.
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This was a matter of social decorum.
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Her flesh is painted with extraordinary subtle modelling
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and he's used his hand in the paint
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and in that sheen of hair at the top, within the juniper bush,
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absolutely daggering these sharp leaves out against the sheen,
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creating this amazing contrast.
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He trained as a sculptor, after all, amongst other things,
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but he's saying, "This is what painting can do.
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Sculpture can't do all this colouristic thing."
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Then you go into this amazing, misty landscape.
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You've got trees which fade into the background
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and, of course again, sculpture can't do these atmospheric effects
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in quite that way.
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He is much obsessed, later on,
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saying that painting is the superior art to everything, including sculpture
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and he seems to be doing this, in a way, in the portraits.
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It's a strange portrait;
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quite a lot of the Leonardos look at us very hard,
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which is always unsettling.
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The Madonna Benois is popular and will always stay popular
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because it brings you this kind of happiness
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which, in principle, is not the issue in the story of The Virgin and the Christ,
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because she knows what is going to happen to her child.
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And this young girl doesn't know, which is maybe wrong philosophically,
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because it's a story of tragedy.
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We have to understand it is a tragedy because he suffered because of us.
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It's joy, enjoyment, and she's happy.
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But art always needs some explanation
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so here we have these white flowers in the sign of a cross.
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It's for all those who are looking at it.
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If you are a Christian you see something like a cross,
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it must mean something.
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So when you see the cross, and you see the mother and child,
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you must remember that the child will be crucified on the cross.
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In Leonardo first of all he was always experimenting and experimenting,
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but also he was developing into the line of developing mystery.
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All these shadows and all these strange looks and strange smiles.
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He was developing and experimenting together.
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He was doing experiments to develop something more mysterious.
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Leonardo had an ambition of thought
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that would have singled him out in any community at any time.
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So he saw painting, which was, of course, his primary medium,
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as the way to both explore and express a new understanding,
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a new investigation of the world and of God's laws of creation.
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I think that that's the key.
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So we don't know very much about his biography at this point.
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We know that he was likely homosexual
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and that there were other things
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that would have given him a kind of slightly outsider-insider status.
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He was certainly not distracted ever by family duties.
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He was, therefore, somewhat self-indulgent in some ways.
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He was somebody who had the time
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and gave himself the space
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to undertake this extraordinary investigation of the world.
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Leonardo, the man, is very elusive.
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The notes we have of what Leonardo looked like and how he behaved...
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First of all, there is only one reputable likeness of him,
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and that's at Windsor.
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It's a profile drawing.
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Very beautiful, fine features, very beautifully dressed hair,
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which corresponds to descriptions.
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The testimony is, and we can see from his notes
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as to what he bought for his entourage to buy,
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they dressed very well, very stylishly,
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and part of Leonardo's point as a painter was the painter was a gentleman.
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He wasn't like a sculptor who sat there covered in dust like a baker,
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as Leonardo put it.
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So he aims to cultivate this very courtly, very well-mannered exterior.
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I think he inspired immense loyalty
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with this very tight circle of intimate, young men
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that he kept around him,
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but I think in other respects he's very elusive.
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Leonardo is widely understood
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as one of the great polymaths of the Renaissance.
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He was experienced and skilled in painting, sculpture, architecture,
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engineering and many branches of the sciences as well,
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study of botany, anatomy, geology and so on.
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It's important to understand that these are Leonardo's working papers;
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they are his drawings and notes towards his scientific and artistic projects.
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Leonardo was also one of the most skilled draughtsmen of the Renaissance.
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so he was able to take this wonderful vision of the world around him
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and to get it down on paper.
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And it is through his drawings that we get an insight into Leonardo the man;
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how his mind worked, how he pulled his projects together.
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It's a unique way to understand what Leonardo was doing in his daily work.
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He's left behind a record of a personality
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who is thinking through his hands at every moment of the day.
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He sees something, he sketches it.
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He wants to remember something, he writes a list on the same page,
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he makes notes to himself about what other kinds of things to study
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00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:22,520
but also what to have for lunch.
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So he doesn't separate out his artistic life, his scientific life
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from his personal life.
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He leads this extraordinarily inquisitive,
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curiosity-focused existence.
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Leonardo was fascinated by horses
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and equine anatomy throughout his career,
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and some of his first drawings of horses were done in connection
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00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:46,680
with The Adoration of the Magi,
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a commission from the convent of San Donato a Scopeto,
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which is just outside Florence, on the way to Pisa,
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and Leonardo makes a large number of studies of horses.
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Neither of these figures, and the horses,
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appear exactly as they are in these drawings in the painting.
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There are comparable figures
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but they're not in that sense studies directly for the painting.
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As images of horses, particularly, they're very contrasting.
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On one, you've got these horses ambling.
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He's obviously very interested in the position of the feet
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to suggest a sense of movement.
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The action, if you like, the energy,
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is happening in the form of the riders on top,
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who are blowing trumpets.
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He's making his mind up about which direction they're going.
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00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:45,560
And by contrast, this other drawing is just bursting with energy.
333
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:52,800
The horse lurches forward and there's this amazing billowing cloak behind him,
334
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:56,640
so there's this pool of energy between horse and rider.
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What they do have in common, I think though,
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is that he gives the horses this amazing monumentality.
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With this drawing in particular,
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00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:11,680
there are various sets of hooves there as he tries to suggest the movement
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00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:16,000
and get the position of the horse in that rearing state
340
00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:19,560
and again trying to draw this billowing,
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00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:21,320
this transparent piece of drapery,
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caught in the wind and create that sense of energy.
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It's a sort of breathlessness and a freshness
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in the way he handles the medium, which is extraordinary.
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"Leonardo da Vinci has undertaken to paint a panel
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for our main altarpiece,
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00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:53,160
which he is obliged to have completed in 24 or at the most 30 months.
348
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:58,920
He must supply his own colours and gold and any other expenses he might incur."
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00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:06,040
Contract for the Adoration of the Kings for San Donato a Scopeto, July 1481.
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If we are looking at finished and unfinished paintings,
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the first great Leonardo must be the Adoration of the Magi.
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It completely reworks that subject
353
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:54,280
and turns it into something urgent, passionate and completely novel,
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00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:57,200
in terms of the tenor of the composition,
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00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,600
the turbulence, the sheer disturbance of the arrival of Christ on Earth.
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00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,400
The Adoration of the Kings by Leonardo da Vinci
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leaves us increasingly surprised the more we look at it
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00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,560
and especially after the recent restoration
359
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,120
which was done by us here at the Opificio
360
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:21,400
we can much better understand this work
361
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:23,520
even in its unfinished state.
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00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:29,920
Here he assembles more than 70 figures
363
00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:32,800
all drawn by hand.
364
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:37,720
There is clearly an impetus on Leonardo's part
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00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:41,800
to try to create a composition
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00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:46,480
that he knows he probably can't complete.
367
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:51,440
We don't know how many of these sketched figures
368
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:54,200
would have been in the final work
369
00:35:54,280 --> 00:36:00,480
but there is clearly not the space for all of them.
370
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:16,200
The restoration of the Adoration of the Kings lasted five years.
371
00:36:20,720 --> 00:36:22,440
The biggest surprise was that
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00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:26,320
underneath all these varnishes
373
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:30,920
which had deposited one after the other on the surface
374
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:34,280
a level of transparency was recovered
375
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,040
that revealed the space.
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00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:44,160
What had seemed to be exclusively
377
00:36:44,240 --> 00:36:48,120
a painting entirely on a single plane
378
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:50,200
thus a two-dimensional painting
379
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:54,200
suddenly recovered this sense of genuine space.
380
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:00,920
Leonardo was commissioned to paint the Adoration of the Kings
381
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:03,200
by the monks of San Donato in Scopeto.
382
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:09,800
Leonardo worked for them for only a relatively short time.
383
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:12,920
We have documents that tell us
384
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:15,840
it was a few months, at most a year.
385
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:18,680
The painting remained unfinished
386
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:24,280
because Leonardo headed for Milan leaving behind the city of Florence.
387
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:32,000
In Milan Leonardo could find a way to establish himself more
388
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:35,480
perhaps more easily than he could in Florence
389
00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:37,840
where there was more competition.
390
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:57,120
In the 1480s, Leonardo decides to get out of Florence.
391
00:37:57,800 --> 00:38:00,080
He goes for a wide range of reasons.
392
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:03,720
In part he's pushed, he hasn't finished a whole lot of commissions
393
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:05,480
and he owes people some money.
394
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:12,120
In part he's pulled because Milan is this wonderful growing, vibrant city
395
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:16,200
ruled not by a legitimate Duke of Milan
396
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:18,440
but by the uncle,
397
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:24,120
Ludovico Maria Sforza, a man of enormous talent and ambition.
398
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,360
We have a surviving letter from Leonardo,
399
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,280
a draft, not in his own hand,
400
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:35,160
which explains why the duke should hire him.
401
00:38:35,240 --> 00:38:39,840
He goes through an extraordinary range of opportunities and talents
402
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:43,360
that he can offer to this new ambitious ruler.
403
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:46,640
He can provide war machines, he can do bridges,
404
00:38:46,720 --> 00:38:49,880
he can do architecture of all types.
405
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:54,040
At the very end of this letter we get a short line,
406
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:57,920
it says simply, "Oh, and I can paint as well."
407
00:38:58,720 --> 00:39:00,400
The Sforza family ruled
408
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:03,560
and the idea that an artist's relationship
409
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:09,520
with a great prince was emblematic of their mutual powers,
410
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:11,920
their joint creativity,
411
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:16,200
was something which would allow Leonardo a freedom of movement,
412
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:17,560
a freedom of expression,
413
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:20,720
that he would never have encountered in Florence.
414
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:14,120
"The painter who has knowledge
415
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:17,880
of the cords, muscles, and tendons
416
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:24,280
will know well in moving a limb which cord is the cause of its motion
417
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:29,840
and which muscle in swelling is the cause of the contraction of this cord,
418
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:34,560
and which cord, transformed into the thinnest cartilage,
419
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:38,480
surrounds and binds together the said muscle.
420
00:40:39,240 --> 00:40:45,760
By these means he will become a varied and comprehensive demonstrator
421
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:51,040
of the various muscles in keeping with various effects in the figure."
422
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:53,440
Leonardo.
423
00:40:57,160 --> 00:40:59,800
I love the Saint Jerome in particular,
424
00:40:59,880 --> 00:41:03,480
partly because it's a picture about vision.
425
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:08,360
Saint Jerome is having a vision of the crucifix,
426
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:13,080
as a result of his self-punishment with a rock,
427
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:15,520
so this idea that there's a connection
428
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:21,600
between the bodily and the spiritual that is being played out for us.
429
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,320
I believe that the lion in the foreground
430
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:31,200
Leone, Leonardo.
431
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:36,120
I think that the fact that the lion is so much a part of the picture,
432
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:39,000
normally he's tucked away as a kind of attribute
433
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,480
that helps identify Saint Jerome,
434
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,080
says something about how Leonardo
435
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:47,240
is placing himself in the work
436
00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:51,720
and placing himself as the observer of the saint's activity
437
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:53,520
and of the saint's vision.
438
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:58,200
Leonardo's painting technique is very particular
439
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,160
and I think the most important thing to realise about it
440
00:42:01,240 --> 00:42:03,760
is that it gave him room for manoeuvre.
441
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:07,480
Some of that is to do with the use of oil paint
442
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:11,840
that allows him to work more slowly than tempera would have done,
443
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,640
the medium that his master Verrocchio used,
444
00:42:14,720 --> 00:42:19,880
but some of it is to do with simply a kind of planning and thinking
445
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:25,600
and overlaying that is something one comes to look for in a work by Leonardo.
446
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:32,680
He talks about the capacity of a painter to find the image,
447
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:37,200
the clear image, from within almost a, sort of, muddle of ideas.
448
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:39,320
So he might plan quite carefully on paper.
449
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:43,520
He might draw a cartoon, he might transfer that to a panel,
450
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,800
but that's only the beginning for the next creative process.
451
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:50,920
He's certainly not filling in the drawing with colour.
452
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:54,160
He's continuing to work and rework.
453
00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:59,720
So it's recently been realised that the unfinished St. Jerome
454
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:05,480
contains observations of anatomy that he made in the years around 1490,
455
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:10,040
but then he came back to it in the first part of the 16th century,
456
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:14,440
when he was revisiting his first sequence of anatomical investigations
457
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:17,080
and he thought again about the neck,
458
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:20,920
the shoulder bone and all those areas in that picture.
459
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:25,720
So the paintings themselves would mirror his thinking
460
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:29,720
and his investigation as they themselves evolved.
461
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:39,520
We tend to separate out the secular from the sacred.
462
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:45,280
This is a divide that neither Leonardo nor his patrons would have recognised.
463
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:47,880
The court of Milan that Leonardo joined
464
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:53,080
was very, very interested in Platonic philosophical concepts,
465
00:43:53,160 --> 00:44:00,240
the notion that you can understand the divine through the idealised.
466
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:04,640
So in taking the best and the most beautiful
467
00:44:04,720 --> 00:44:11,280
and then idealising them in a single image you are getting closer to God,
468
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:13,680
you are getting closer to the divine,
469
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,520
you are getting closer to the truth.
470
00:45:35,720 --> 00:45:38,560
Leonardo da Vinci painted The Virgin of the Rocks
471
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:40,640
at some point after 1483.
472
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:46,040
He painted it for the Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception
473
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:50,440
for a chapel in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan.
474
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:57,360
In this picture Leonardo shows the Virgin Mary
475
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:01,680
taking St. John the Baptist under her protection
476
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:05,200
while he kneels in adoration of the Infant Jesus
477
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:07,840
who is centred at the bottom of the composition.
478
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,760
The Infant Jesus is under the protection of an angel.
479
00:46:12,720 --> 00:46:15,720
Leonardo chose a background composed of rocks
480
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:19,360
which most definitely has a symbolic meaning.
481
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:24,640
The rocks create a sort of grotto, a place of refuge
482
00:46:24,720 --> 00:46:27,040
imbued with symbolism
483
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,640
that seeks to reveal the purity
484
00:46:29,720 --> 00:46:31,720
and chastity of the Virgin Mary.
485
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:36,800
This is truly a place protected from original sin
486
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:40,720
which therefore echoes the idea of the immaculate conception.
487
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:43,160
In The Virgin of the Rocks
488
00:46:43,240 --> 00:46:46,640
we can see the great attention that Leonardo pays
489
00:46:46,720 --> 00:46:50,640
to everything concerning the natural world.
490
00:46:50,720 --> 00:46:53,320
The rocks, flowers, plants
491
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:56,080
that are scattered throughout this composition.
492
00:46:56,800 --> 00:47:00,640
So it reflects in part Leonardo's world
493
00:47:00,720 --> 00:47:04,520
but this precise representation of nature
494
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:07,080
is actually an image of the incarnation of God.
495
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:09,760
God is made man in this painting.
496
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:13,280
You see Jesus who is placed on the Earth
497
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:17,720
and Leonardo is seeking to represent this mystery of the incarnation
498
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:20,560
in the broader sense of nature,
499
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:25,120
a history that begins with God's creation.
500
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:32,000
He's showing us a humanity that is revitalised and renewed
501
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:34,080
by the arrival of Christ on Earth.
502
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:41,440
Something that's absolutely wonderful in this painting
503
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:44,400
is the use of light and shade.
504
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:49,320
The lighting is really very dark
505
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:51,800
since we have no natural sunlight
506
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,880
so the lighting is very delicate, very mysterious
507
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,480
which brings this mystery of the incarnation to life.
508
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:04,480
Leonardo also pays great attention
509
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:09,520
to the transformation of colour under the effects of light.
510
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:12,360
The Virgin of the Rocks is without doubt
511
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:14,720
the first masterpiece by Leonardo
512
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:16,360
in which one can admire
513
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:20,320
the extremely sophisticated, extremely fine way
514
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:23,040
in which this colour is rendered
515
00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:26,080
particularly the reds and the shadows
516
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:32,120
which transform the painting into a tonal vision.
517
00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:33,720
This is undeniable.
518
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:58,160
Madonna Litta is the main icon of the Hermitage for many people.
519
00:49:58,240 --> 00:50:01,120
It's very profound, it's very human,
520
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:06,400
there's a very strong feeling of sorrow, with the beautiful face of the Madonna.
521
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:08,680
It has fantastic colours,
522
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:12,120
it's the colours that also brings people to look at it.
523
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,040
It works very well together with Madonna Benois
524
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:18,640
because, you know, simple but still it works.
525
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:25,680
This is a young Leonardo and here the girl is so happy,
526
00:50:25,760 --> 00:50:28,760
she doesn't know what will happen to her child.
527
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:33,360
And there you have Leonardo of age, it was painted in Milan,
528
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:35,160
and here you have Madonna which knows
529
00:50:35,240 --> 00:50:38,120
what will happen to her child and so it is very profound.
530
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:44,360
Certainly there is some idea that maybe some of the pupils of Leonardo
531
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:46,080
participated in doing this painting;
532
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:48,080
it's very much possible.
533
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:53,600
In Madonna Litta, look at her eyes,
534
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:57,480
because her eyes and her figure in general,
535
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:01,680
this is the best pronounced idea of Madonna.
536
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:16,600
Leonardo's first posting away from Florence to Milan
537
00:51:16,680 --> 00:51:19,480
seems to have been for his musical skills,
538
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:22,040
not for his artistic or engineering skills.
539
00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:25,920
He was sent as a sort of diplomatic present to the Duke of Milan,
540
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:29,240
who apparently was very keen on the sound of the lira da braccio,
541
00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:33,320
which is a sort of violin instrument particularly good for improvising on.
542
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:37,400
And Leonardo tipped up, and supposedly played better,
543
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:39,880
according to Vasari in his Lives of the Artists,
544
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:41,840
than all the Milanese musicians,
545
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,640
which must have been intensely irritating for them.
546
00:51:45,560 --> 00:51:48,760
Leonardo says about music that it's similar to painting
547
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:53,800
because in the same way that the limbs have a proportionality between them,
548
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:56,040
seen in his Vitruvian Man, for example,
549
00:51:56,120 --> 00:52:00,400
the intervals in music had this same relationship based on maths.
550
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:04,320
And so, in the same way that painting is science made visible,
551
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:06,680
science is made audible in music.
552
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:55,320
"Music is not to be regarded other than as the sister of painting,
553
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:58,640
inasmuch as she is dependent on hearing,
554
00:52:58,720 --> 00:53:01,480
second sense behind that of sight.
555
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:07,440
She composes a harmony from the conjunction of her proportional parts,
556
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:10,520
which make their effect instantaneous,
557
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:16,600
being constrained to arise and die in one or more harmonic intervals.
558
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:21,520
My approach shall be just as the musician's is with notes."
559
00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:23,880
Leonardo.
560
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:31,720
Leonardo is a highly experimental painter
561
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:35,800
but he's not stupid, he's also going to produce the kinds of work
562
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:40,520
that his patrons want and that his patrons will pay for.
563
00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:45,680
So he develops a highly characteristic style of his own
564
00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:48,760
which reflects not simply his understanding
565
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:51,360
of how people look and see
566
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:55,160
but also of what they want to see in front of them.
567
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:09,880
We don't really know why this painting was created.
568
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:16,560
Most likely it was a commission from Leonardo's patron
569
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:21,000
Duke Ludovico Sforza, requesting a portrait of his mistress.
570
00:55:21,920 --> 00:55:28,840
In this painting we see a beautiful woman
571
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:33,040
who is in love and committed to Ludovico Sforza.
572
00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:37,400
We know she was a well-educated person
573
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:39,360
who wrote poetry
574
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:42,440
while at the same time she was lauded
575
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:47,000
and considered a muse by other artists.
576
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:53,760
I think that her extraordinary attributes and unique qualities
577
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:59,480
led to her achieving an exceptional position in Ludovico's court.
578
00:56:00,720 --> 00:56:05,840
Leonardo's painting is remarkable
579
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:10,720
in the way that it deals
580
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:14,760
with a subject in motion.
581
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:19,680
Cecilia Gallerani is turning towards someone
582
00:56:19,760 --> 00:56:23,440
who is outside the painting's frame.
583
00:56:23,520 --> 00:56:28,680
We are dealing with a snapshot,
584
00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:33,400
a portrait which shows one specific moment.
585
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:37,840
The painting is exceptional due to its intimacy.
586
00:56:37,920 --> 00:56:41,240
It is exceptional thanks to the technique used
587
00:56:41,320 --> 00:56:46,480
but it also carries an enormous emotional charge.
588
00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:49,320
Thinking about its history
589
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:55,440
but also about the story of Cecilia Gallerani
590
00:56:55,520 --> 00:56:59,000
we can contemplate pure beauty.
591
00:58:01,600 --> 00:58:06,440
"If the poet says that he can inflame men with love,
592
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:10,840
which is the central aim in all animal species,
593
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:16,760
the painter has the power to do the same, and to an even greater degree.
594
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:23,240
In that he can place in front of the lover the true likeness of the beloved,
595
00:58:23,320 --> 00:58:26,320
often making him kiss and speak to it."
596
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:28,880
Leonardo.
597
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:33,840
La Belle Ferronni?re is a painting
598
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:40,080
about which we know relatively few historical details.
599
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:43,560
Nevertheless there is enough evidence
600
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:46,400
to help us understand where and when
601
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:49,240
Leonardo painted this lovely portrait.
602
00:58:50,200 --> 00:58:52,520
The young woman in the painting
603
00:58:52,600 --> 00:58:55,440
is dressed in clothing that was the height of fashion
604
00:58:55,520 --> 00:59:00,160
in Milan towards the end of the 1480s and 1490s.
605
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:05,000
We can therefore be absolutely certain
606
00:59:05,080 --> 00:59:07,760
that Leonardo painted this portrait
607
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:11,840
when he was living under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza.
608
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:16,240
One of the most appealing theories for La Belle Ferronni?re
609
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:19,320
is that it may be a portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli,
610
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,760
Ludovico Sforza's final mistress.
611
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:29,400
Her gaze may at first seem to be looking at us
612
00:59:29,480 --> 00:59:34,120
but it isn't directed at the viewer, it slightly eludes us
613
00:59:34,200 --> 00:59:36,600
and is turned to her left.
614
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:41,240
So you have the impression of a body in movement.
615
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:46,440
Ultimately this extremely seductive woman is slipping away from us.
616
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:49,760
She doesn't look at us and is turned away.
617
00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:58,480
Much has been imagined and written about this gaze which escapes us.
618
00:59:58,560 --> 01:00:02,000
Maybe this was something that Leonardo's patron wanted.
619
01:00:02,080 --> 01:00:07,080
Maybe Ludovico Sforza, if the subject is one of his mistresses,
620
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:12,840
wanted to show in this painting that her gaze belongs only to him
621
01:00:12,920 --> 01:00:15,760
and must elude any other viewer.
622
01:01:50,360 --> 01:01:52,760
The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci
623
01:01:52,840 --> 01:01:59,080
is a ghost in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.
624
01:02:00,160 --> 01:02:05,480
It's a hint of what it must have originally looked like.
625
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:09,880
It's hard for us today, given the number of copies that exist,
626
01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:12,360
given the influence that it has had
627
01:02:12,440 --> 01:02:17,800
to really understand how radical it was in the period itself.
628
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:21,160
It was radical in the way it was painted
629
01:02:21,240 --> 01:02:26,600
using highly experimental and unfortunately not very good techniques
630
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:28,680
in terms of its long-term survival.
631
01:02:28,760 --> 01:02:34,360
It was radical in terms of the way that the apostles and Christ interact.
632
01:02:34,440 --> 01:02:37,520
It was radical in the facial features that were pictured,
633
01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:39,200
in the gestures,
634
01:02:39,280 --> 01:02:45,040
in the astonishing interactivity of all of those characters.
635
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:48,360
And now we can only get a hint
636
01:02:48,440 --> 01:02:52,680
of just how beautiful it must have once been.
637
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:27,480
This is an academic copy
638
01:03:27,560 --> 01:03:30,400
made for posterity, as well as,
639
01:03:30,480 --> 01:03:34,160
perhaps, by one of Leonardo's pupils trying to come closer to the master.
640
01:03:35,240 --> 01:03:38,240
But looking at the composition of this
641
01:03:38,320 --> 01:03:42,760
and looking at where Leonardo sited the original,
642
01:03:42,840 --> 01:03:46,440
it's something to do with the level of ambition,
643
01:03:46,520 --> 01:03:51,120
the illusion, the notion that all art requires a leap of faith.
644
01:03:51,200 --> 01:03:54,760
But this one, perhaps unlike anything that's happened before,
645
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:58,880
would have seemed to the people who saw it as miraculous.
646
01:03:59,000 --> 01:04:01,200
This really did suggest another room,
647
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:06,440
another space, in which recognisable human beings were eating.
648
01:04:06,520 --> 01:04:09,800
The idea that that would be sited in a dining room
649
01:04:09,880 --> 01:04:13,720
where monks would look up to it has additional resonance.
650
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:20,320
And it's something to do with the sum total of Leonardo's explorations
651
01:04:20,400 --> 01:04:23,160
both into the human face, into the human figure,
652
01:04:23,240 --> 01:04:26,360
theology, architecture, optics.
653
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:28,480
It's his masterwork.
654
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:33,560
It's clear that this is a heftily contracted work
655
01:04:33,640 --> 01:04:36,640
between Leonardo and Ludovico Sforza
656
01:04:36,720 --> 01:04:40,400
but, at the same time, it's clear that Leonardo either has license to
657
01:04:40,480 --> 01:04:44,360
or pushes at the boundaries of what had been produced
658
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:46,000
in images of the Last Supper before.
659
01:04:46,080 --> 01:04:49,880
So it starts with conventional theology, the moment where Christ says,
660
01:04:50,000 --> 01:04:51,800
"One of you will betray me,"
661
01:04:51,880 --> 01:04:53,440
but, even as you look at the work,
662
01:04:53,520 --> 01:04:58,680
you realise it conflates a series of mini-narratives into one image.
663
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:02,240
It has this kind of underlying rhythm that binds it together.
664
01:05:02,320 --> 01:05:08,080
It has this central figure and actually everything emanates from Him.
665
01:05:08,160 --> 01:05:12,080
So you see Saint James throwing his arms out.
666
01:05:12,160 --> 01:05:14,680
You see Saint Thomas pointing upwards as if to say,
667
01:05:14,760 --> 01:05:16,560
"Is this the will of God?"
668
01:05:16,640 --> 01:05:20,680
And actually Judas is always interesting in the Last Supper,
669
01:05:20,760 --> 01:05:23,480
and not just in the way that he carries the bag of silver,
670
01:05:23,560 --> 01:05:25,400
it becomes the symbol of his betrayal,
671
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:31,720
but the way that Peter leans across to whisper manically in Saint John's ear;
672
01:05:31,800 --> 01:05:35,360
he pushes Judas away but towards us,
673
01:05:35,440 --> 01:05:38,320
so he's both of the scene and separated from it.
674
01:05:40,520 --> 01:05:45,440
Because of publishing and mechanical reproduction, photography,
675
01:05:46,400 --> 01:05:49,640
we have a much greater sense of histories of art
676
01:05:49,720 --> 01:05:51,920
and what's important because of reproduction,
677
01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:56,040
but we forget that actually it was only the most public of monuments
678
01:05:56,120 --> 01:05:57,800
that had that broad appeal.
679
01:05:57,880 --> 01:06:00,120
A lot of art was produced for private spaces
680
01:06:00,200 --> 01:06:03,040
churches.
681
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:07,120
This work was produced for a private dining room of a monastery in Milan
682
01:06:07,200 --> 01:06:10,600
and yet, in its lifetime, stories spread.
683
01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:14,360
The work became an object of curiosity. People wanted to see it.
684
01:06:15,360 --> 01:06:18,560
In the way we look at the Renaissance,
685
01:06:18,640 --> 01:06:24,080
there's no doubt that this work is a major pivotal moment.
686
01:06:32,320 --> 01:06:36,320
We should take into account Leonardo did lots of other things.
687
01:06:36,400 --> 01:06:40,640
One of his roles was as an impresario, visual things at the court,
688
01:06:40,720 --> 01:06:42,800
doing stage scenery and so on.
689
01:06:42,880 --> 01:06:46,760
The one glimpse of this we have, really, from finished, surviving works,
690
01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:49,160
is the Sala delle Asse.
691
01:06:49,240 --> 01:06:54,080
This is a big, corner room in this majestic Sforza castle.
692
01:06:55,160 --> 01:06:58,480
It's very battered, it was completely overpainted at one point.
693
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:00,400
So, it was completely covered in.
694
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:02,600
It's now undergoing more restoration
695
01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:05,800
and there are some bits that absolutely speak of Leonardo.
696
01:07:05,880 --> 01:07:08,120
He conceived a scheme of decoration
697
01:07:08,200 --> 01:07:12,440
with trees coming up from a rocky substratum,
698
01:07:12,520 --> 01:07:13,920
and you can see the roots.
699
01:07:14,040 --> 01:07:17,520
There are drawings for the roots amongst these horizontal rocks.
700
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:20,600
They rise in the form of great trunks,
701
01:07:20,680 --> 01:07:23,680
and then these ramify through the ceiling,
702
01:07:25,840 --> 01:07:30,120
Ludovico Sforza's nickname was il Moro,
703
01:07:30,200 --> 01:07:33,080
which is the mulberry, or the black man.
704
01:07:33,160 --> 01:07:36,720
So, this is emblematic of Ludovico il Moro.
705
01:07:37,440 --> 01:07:39,600
There is a gold chain running through them.
706
01:07:39,680 --> 01:07:42,880
Again, a knotted chain, which is almost certainly reference
707
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:46,400
to the d'Este family, his wife was Beatrice d'Este,
708
01:07:46,480 --> 01:07:51,600
and in the centre there is the dynastic shield of Ludovico and of Beatrice.
709
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:03,000
"Leonardo has just finished a little picture
710
01:09:03,080 --> 01:09:07,080
he is doing for one Robertet, a favourite of the King of France.
711
01:09:07,160 --> 01:09:11,880
It is of a Madonna seated as if she were about to spin yarn.
712
01:09:12,840 --> 01:09:16,279
The child has placed his foot on the basket of yarns
713
01:09:16,359 --> 01:09:18,640
and has grasped the yarnwinder
714
01:09:18,720 --> 01:09:23,160
and gazes attentively at the four spokes that are in the form of a cross.
715
01:09:24,279 --> 01:09:28,600
As if desirous of the cross he smiles and holds it firm,
716
01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:31,240
and is unwilling to yield it to his mother
717
01:09:31,319 --> 01:09:33,640
who seems to want to take it away from him.
718
01:09:35,160 --> 01:09:37,680
This is as much as I could get from Leonardo."
719
01:09:38,559 --> 01:09:39,760
Fra Pieto.
720
01:10:12,200 --> 01:10:17,040
Leonardo was around in 1499, when the French arrived
721
01:10:17,120 --> 01:10:18,520
and, Florimond Robertet,
722
01:10:18,600 --> 01:10:21,760
who was Secretary of State to three successive French kings,
723
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:25,559
was amongst the invaders and he commissioned a small Madonna
724
01:10:26,480 --> 01:10:29,840
and we have an eye witness, Fra Pietro da Novellara,
725
01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:34,080
the Head of the Carmelites in Mantua, writing a letter to Isabella d'Este,
726
01:10:34,160 --> 01:10:36,240
who describes what Leonardo is doing.
727
01:10:36,320 --> 01:10:41,040
He describes a little dramatic picture, and we had two versions of that.
728
01:10:41,840 --> 01:10:43,240
You can see what's happening,
729
01:10:43,320 --> 01:10:47,040
that these two pictures are on the easels in the studio
730
01:10:47,120 --> 01:10:50,840
and Leonardo develops a bit in one, he develops a bit in another,
731
01:10:50,920 --> 01:10:54,920
and you can almost see, step by step, how these are resulting.
732
01:10:56,320 --> 01:10:58,720
They come out as very beautiful pictures
733
01:10:58,800 --> 01:11:01,840
with some studio participation, undoubtedly.
734
01:11:01,920 --> 01:11:06,200
But it's a fascinating insight to say he's doing this for Robertet,
735
01:11:06,280 --> 01:11:09,760
so why don't we do another very saleable one beside it?
736
01:12:43,440 --> 01:12:47,080
If there's one thing that everyone can agree on
737
01:12:47,160 --> 01:12:51,400
it's that the Mona Lisa is truly the most famous painting in the world.
738
01:12:52,440 --> 01:12:54,760
Not only the most famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci
739
01:12:54,840 --> 01:12:57,559
but of all time, by any artist.
740
01:12:59,559 --> 01:13:05,720
This painting is quite extraordinary, for various reasons.
741
01:13:05,800 --> 01:13:09,200
Leonardo himself created a myth around this painting.
742
01:13:09,280 --> 01:13:12,240
Then its theft at the beginning of the 20th century.
743
01:13:12,880 --> 01:13:15,400
Then its reinterpretation by various artists
744
01:13:15,480 --> 01:13:17,559
and its use in advertising
745
01:13:17,640 --> 01:13:21,840
means that it has become the embodiment of painting,
746
01:13:21,920 --> 01:13:26,600
the most famous image of all the pictures ever painted.
747
01:13:27,600 --> 01:13:31,040
There's been much discussion about the identity of the sitter
748
01:13:31,120 --> 01:13:35,600
but I think that we can state with some certainty
749
01:13:35,680 --> 01:13:40,880
that the Mona Lisa depicts a Florentine woman
750
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:44,559
called Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo.
751
01:13:45,680 --> 01:13:49,920
We know that she was born in Florence in 1479
752
01:13:50,040 --> 01:13:53,520
although the family was from the surrounding areas of Florence
753
01:13:53,600 --> 01:13:55,200
around Siena.
754
01:13:55,280 --> 01:13:59,320
We know she married a certain Francesco del Giocondo
755
01:13:59,400 --> 01:14:03,080
who was a silk merchant and whose business was doing very well
756
01:14:03,160 --> 01:14:04,920
so it really was a decent marriage.
757
01:14:05,720 --> 01:14:09,840
We can assume that Leonardo had a special relationship with this family,
758
01:14:09,920 --> 01:14:11,920
maybe with this woman
759
01:14:12,040 --> 01:14:15,440
and that her face and her personality
760
01:14:15,520 --> 01:14:21,840
was of sufficient interest to encourage him
761
01:14:21,920 --> 01:14:27,080
to paint her and make this one of his greatest masterpieces.
762
01:14:29,680 --> 01:14:31,720
The extraordinary thing about the Mona Lisa
763
01:14:31,800 --> 01:14:34,559
is the subtlety of her expression.
764
01:14:35,440 --> 01:14:37,520
People have always said that she is smiling
765
01:14:37,600 --> 01:14:41,040
but the smile isn't very pronounced.
766
01:14:41,559 --> 01:14:45,680
Some people have seen a touch of melancholy
767
01:14:45,760 --> 01:14:48,440
or other human expressions.
768
01:14:50,040 --> 01:14:54,840
Leonardo brings this subtle smile to life
769
01:14:54,920 --> 01:15:00,440
thanks to his technique, known as sfumato.
770
01:15:03,520 --> 01:15:05,640
No edges can be seen.
771
01:15:05,720 --> 01:15:08,160
There is an initial edge, or rather lines
772
01:15:08,240 --> 01:15:13,840
but Leonardo blurs these by overlaying layers of paint in glazes.
773
01:15:13,920 --> 01:15:18,920
These are layers of extremely transparent oil paint
774
01:15:19,040 --> 01:15:23,240
and this is what creates this sense of vibration,
775
01:15:23,320 --> 01:15:26,720
this extremely vibrant effect that the smile has.
776
01:15:26,800 --> 01:15:29,520
And this is what gives subtlety
777
01:15:29,600 --> 01:15:34,160
and mystery to the expression.
778
01:15:35,880 --> 01:15:38,920
I've been lucky enough to see the Mona Lisa out of its frame
779
01:15:39,040 --> 01:15:41,160
and in a light that penetrated
780
01:15:41,240 --> 01:15:44,200
its current, very brown varnish,
781
01:15:44,280 --> 01:15:49,480
to reveal a range of colour that is absolutely astonishing.
782
01:15:49,559 --> 01:15:55,280
It has not just the gravity, the timelessness,
783
01:15:55,360 --> 01:15:58,559
the eternal feminine that people talk about,
784
01:15:58,640 --> 01:16:04,400
but it has a kind of immediacy, a sense of a real personality.
785
01:16:04,480 --> 01:16:07,320
So the Mona Lisa is both Leonardo's ideal
786
01:16:07,400 --> 01:16:12,240
and a real Florentine woman who he chose to represent that ideal.
787
01:16:12,320 --> 01:16:15,880
I think that's the part that sometimes gets left out.
788
01:16:16,000 --> 01:16:19,920
She's become so emblematic, so iconic,
789
01:16:20,040 --> 01:16:23,080
that we don't see the human being anymore.
790
01:16:24,480 --> 01:16:26,800
Artists work in a number of different ways
791
01:16:26,880 --> 01:16:30,880
and one thing that one can say unquestionably about Leonardo
792
01:16:31,000 --> 01:16:35,480
is that he worked slowly and extraordinarily thoughtfully,
793
01:16:35,559 --> 01:16:37,200
as well as erratically.
794
01:16:37,280 --> 01:16:40,480
So all of his pictures, I think,
795
01:16:40,559 --> 01:16:43,400
were the result of tremendous planning
796
01:16:43,480 --> 01:16:49,320
and then a process that was of continual creativity,
797
01:16:49,400 --> 01:16:52,240
to a point where it was never really clear
798
01:16:52,320 --> 01:16:55,559
when a picture was actually finished and when it wasn't.
799
01:16:56,360 --> 01:17:00,680
What happened, to my mind, in Mona Lisa is it begins as a portrait,
800
01:17:01,440 --> 01:17:04,280
and Leonardo progressively, over the years,
801
01:17:04,360 --> 01:17:09,680
poured everything he knew about the painting and poetry
802
01:17:09,760 --> 01:17:11,760
into that single picture.
803
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:14,840
So it becomes a very remarkable, complicated thing.
804
01:17:14,920 --> 01:17:16,920
You've got the optics.
805
01:17:17,040 --> 01:17:20,240
He is looking, at that time, at the complexity of the human eye,
806
01:17:20,320 --> 01:17:24,200
and he says, "The eye does not know the edge of any body."
807
01:17:24,280 --> 01:17:27,880
This extreme blurring and indefiniteness is a scientific thing
808
01:17:28,000 --> 01:17:30,080
but it's also a poetic thing.
809
01:17:30,160 --> 01:17:34,040
It also corresponds to this poetic, beloved lady
810
01:17:34,120 --> 01:17:36,400
who is always out of reach.
811
01:17:36,480 --> 01:17:38,760
You can look at the physics of drapery.
812
01:17:38,840 --> 01:17:41,880
He is interested in how different thicknesses of drapery
813
01:17:42,000 --> 01:17:44,440
compress and curl, and so on.
814
01:17:45,160 --> 01:17:48,920
You've got the mountainous landscape, which is full of geology.
815
01:17:49,040 --> 01:17:51,080
You've got a high lake and a low lake,
816
01:17:51,160 --> 01:17:55,080
and he says at one point "the Arno Valley was like that."
817
01:17:55,160 --> 01:17:59,720
The amount he puts into it in terms of science is just extraordinary,
818
01:17:59,800 --> 01:18:02,920
the amount he puts into it in terms of poetry and psychology,
819
01:18:03,040 --> 01:18:04,320
it's just extraordinary.
820
01:18:04,400 --> 01:18:07,800
So it becomes what I call a "universal picture."
821
01:18:07,880 --> 01:18:11,520
Everything he can do in painting is all put into that
822
01:18:11,600 --> 01:18:15,680
and even if we only get out a fraction of it as a spectator,
823
01:18:15,760 --> 01:18:17,640
it is still very remarkable.
824
01:19:51,320 --> 01:19:53,720
To me the extraordinary thing about the Salvator Mundi
825
01:19:53,800 --> 01:19:57,000
is that it precisely demonstrates
826
01:19:57,080 --> 01:20:00,800
how Leonardo's observation of natural phenomena
827
01:20:00,880 --> 01:20:05,800
can be used at the service of the creation of a vision of God.
828
01:20:07,160 --> 01:20:10,000
For example, looking at the hands,
829
01:20:10,080 --> 01:20:12,600
which have an immediacy and a presence,
830
01:20:12,680 --> 01:20:16,760
they practically break out of the painting into our realm,
831
01:20:16,840 --> 01:20:18,840
and how that's contrasted with this
832
01:20:18,920 --> 01:20:22,080
almost spectral quality for the face of Christ.
833
01:20:23,640 --> 01:20:26,320
I think what Leonardo's doing there is showing that,
834
01:20:26,400 --> 01:20:31,600
as an artist whose talent was, as he would have believed, God-given,
835
01:20:31,680 --> 01:20:37,080
that he has access to a vision of Christ which was beyond the norm,
836
01:20:37,160 --> 01:20:40,000
which was almost miraculous in its own right
837
01:20:40,080 --> 01:20:44,680
and he's bringing Christ into the present,
838
01:20:44,760 --> 01:20:46,840
into our imaginations,
839
01:20:46,920 --> 01:20:50,280
through the power of his imagination.
840
01:20:50,360 --> 01:20:55,480
He creates a whole world around that crystal orb,
841
01:20:55,559 --> 01:21:01,360
and he chooses to both represent the world as you see it
842
01:21:01,440 --> 01:21:08,040
and to then edit and distort in order to arrive at a greater truth.
843
01:21:08,120 --> 01:21:15,520
To me, at least, Leonardo is all about arriving at the greater truth.
844
01:21:24,800 --> 01:21:28,320
The image itself, the idea of the Salvator Mundi subject
845
01:21:28,400 --> 01:21:31,520
is actually rather archaic, it's an old one.
846
01:21:31,600 --> 01:21:35,440
That is a frontal portrayal of Christ blessing with one hand,
847
01:21:35,520 --> 01:21:37,800
holding an orb in the other.
848
01:21:37,880 --> 01:21:42,120
But what Leonardo does is take something that is very traditional
849
01:21:42,200 --> 01:21:46,400
and creates something much broader and deeper with it.
850
01:21:46,480 --> 01:21:49,680
In the orb, taking something which is normally...
851
01:21:49,760 --> 01:21:52,680
Let's say it began as a representation of the Earth
852
01:21:52,760 --> 01:21:56,040
and then not just turning it into a glass sphere
853
01:21:56,120 --> 01:22:00,480
but into a crystal sphere and something that really represents the Universe
854
01:22:00,559 --> 01:22:03,000
rather than just the Earth.
855
01:22:03,080 --> 01:22:08,640
In the same way the image of Christ is not one of a forbidding figure,
856
01:22:08,720 --> 01:22:13,840
it's one of someone that one can relate to in this very personal way,
857
01:22:13,920 --> 01:22:15,760
even in an emotional way.
858
01:22:15,840 --> 01:22:20,200
So I think what he's done here is given this new life and new meaning.
859
01:22:23,000 --> 01:22:25,000
My own sense with this picture is that
860
01:22:25,080 --> 01:22:26,920
it was painted over a long period of time,
861
01:22:27,040 --> 01:22:29,559
as many of Leonardo's pictures were.
862
01:22:29,640 --> 01:22:32,440
So it may well have begun as a commission
863
01:22:32,520 --> 01:22:36,080
but it would seem that it's a picture that began
864
01:22:36,160 --> 01:22:39,280
in the very first years of the 16th century
865
01:22:39,360 --> 01:22:42,200
and that he had with him when he died.
866
01:22:42,280 --> 01:22:45,480
So if there were a specific patron at the beginning
867
01:22:45,559 --> 01:22:47,160
there certainly wasn't one at the end
868
01:22:47,240 --> 01:22:51,559
and I think it allowed Leonardo to do whatever he wanted to.
869
01:22:54,360 --> 01:22:57,360
One aspect I think that's particularly interesting
870
01:22:57,440 --> 01:23:00,440
is looking at the picture in relation to The Last Supper,
871
01:23:00,520 --> 01:23:02,160
because, of course, in The Last Supper,
872
01:23:02,240 --> 01:23:05,720
the figure of Christ is not terribly well preserved.
873
01:23:05,800 --> 01:23:09,559
And early on it was said in written accounts
874
01:23:09,640 --> 01:23:13,640
that Leonardo couldn't bring himself to portray Christ,
875
01:23:13,720 --> 01:23:16,240
that it was just somehow beyond him.
876
01:23:16,320 --> 01:23:19,720
I think that we know that's not necessarily the case now,
877
01:23:19,800 --> 01:23:25,120
because here he has tackled this most challenging subject
878
01:23:25,200 --> 01:23:29,200
and created this indelible image of Christ
879
01:23:29,280 --> 01:23:32,640
as a figure who is both divine and human.
880
01:23:35,480 --> 01:23:40,320
How one defines Leonardo in looking at the picture is a hard thing to define.
881
01:23:40,400 --> 01:23:42,800
One aspect is certainly the quality of the picture
882
01:23:42,880 --> 01:23:47,720
and the absolute phenomenal way in which optical effects are conveyed,
883
01:23:47,800 --> 01:23:51,720
whether it's the shadow on the fingernail of the blessing hand
884
01:23:51,800 --> 01:23:57,840
or whether it's the change in tonalities across the skin tones of Christ.
885
01:23:57,920 --> 01:24:00,840
But beyond that I think it's the effect,
886
01:24:00,920 --> 01:24:05,000
it's this emotional direct connection that one has
887
01:24:05,080 --> 01:24:11,080
between the viewer and this man who painted this picture 500 years ago.
888
01:24:11,160 --> 01:24:14,040
That's really something that can't be imitated.
889
01:26:05,600 --> 01:26:08,800
For a long time it was thought that the monks of the brotherhood
890
01:26:08,880 --> 01:26:11,320
had rejected the painting of The Virgin of the Rocks
891
01:26:11,400 --> 01:26:13,800
for iconographic reasons.
892
01:26:13,880 --> 01:26:16,720
But they didn't reject the painting,
893
01:26:16,800 --> 01:26:19,800
they just didn't agree to pay Leonardo more for it.
894
01:26:21,000 --> 01:26:25,880
Nevertheless he adapted it, changing it for another buyer.
895
01:26:26,000 --> 01:26:29,160
This painting passed to another art lover,
896
01:26:29,240 --> 01:26:31,120
possibly the Duke of Milan himself.
897
01:26:31,200 --> 01:26:36,040
But ultimately Leonardo was bound by the contract from the Immaculate Conception.
898
01:26:36,120 --> 01:26:38,120
So he painted a second picture,
899
01:26:38,200 --> 01:26:41,400
the version which is now in the National Gallery, London.
900
01:26:42,680 --> 01:26:46,440
One of the key evolutions between this work and the one in the Louvre
901
01:26:46,520 --> 01:26:49,320
is the fact that he's thought about the way
902
01:26:49,400 --> 01:26:51,720
he might unify the space
903
01:26:51,800 --> 01:26:54,440
and make a more convincing depiction of the grotto,
904
01:26:54,520 --> 01:26:57,840
which goes up above, to the top of the composition.
905
01:26:57,920 --> 01:27:01,720
There's no sky above, as in the Louvre work,
906
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:05,840
and the way he can make quite dramatic use of dappled lighting
907
01:27:05,920 --> 01:27:08,160
to fall across the forms in certain ways,
908
01:27:08,240 --> 01:27:12,440
like the way it catches the front of the Baptist's left foot
909
01:27:12,520 --> 01:27:16,280
or falls across the arm of the angel and you see the void behind.
910
01:27:16,360 --> 01:27:20,040
All those things, I think, are based and rooted in observation,
911
01:27:20,120 --> 01:27:21,920
and then twisted, I think,
912
01:27:22,040 --> 01:27:24,880
to enhance the kind of expressive qualities of the work.
913
01:27:26,160 --> 01:27:29,680
The advance in this work has to do with the kind of guiding intelligence
914
01:27:29,760 --> 01:27:32,360
about how the whole is orchestrated,
915
01:27:32,440 --> 01:27:35,200
how the rich dark-brown under-modelling
916
01:27:35,280 --> 01:27:37,600
that lies beneath the whole thing is brought up in a way
917
01:27:37,680 --> 01:27:41,000
that it makes the use of selective colour
918
01:27:41,080 --> 01:27:44,000
much more effective and believable.
919
01:27:44,080 --> 01:27:47,400
You have here an interest, of course, in giving the Virgin
920
01:27:47,480 --> 01:27:50,680
the most brightly coloured, the most strongly saturated hues
921
01:27:50,760 --> 01:27:54,000
but the angels are wearing similar colours in a lower key.
922
01:27:54,080 --> 01:27:58,200
All of that colour, kind of being corroded by shadow
923
01:27:58,280 --> 01:28:00,680
is very, very carefully worked out.
924
01:28:01,480 --> 01:28:04,800
I certainly look at the way the materials are used in the angel,
925
01:28:04,880 --> 01:28:07,720
where it's the concentration of effort
926
01:28:07,800 --> 01:28:09,559
to create the effect that he wishes
927
01:28:09,640 --> 01:28:14,120
when you have this kind of brownish, almost grisaille under-modelling
928
01:28:14,200 --> 01:28:19,240
that's really exploited and left to tell very strongly in the angel's costume.
929
01:28:19,320 --> 01:28:22,559
Then it's a selective area where he's built up the highlights,
930
01:28:22,640 --> 01:28:25,800
and where he's put the fine detail, and where it's not there.
931
01:28:25,880 --> 01:28:29,160
I think those choices are the things that are truly thrilling
932
01:28:29,240 --> 01:28:32,080
and speak absolutely to the hand of Leonardo.
933
01:28:33,000 --> 01:28:36,400
He thought about audience probably less than many artists
934
01:28:36,480 --> 01:28:40,040
because I think he didn't seem to be a "people-pleaser"
935
01:28:40,120 --> 01:28:42,800
in terms of looking at the history of his commissions.
936
01:28:42,880 --> 01:28:47,920
One has the sense that his interests were his own concerns
937
01:28:48,040 --> 01:28:50,880
and how he might express those.
938
01:28:51,000 --> 01:28:52,440
The paintings themselves
939
01:28:52,520 --> 01:28:55,680
are almost an illustration of his intellectual endeavour
940
01:28:55,760 --> 01:28:57,040
rather than an end product,
941
01:28:57,120 --> 01:28:59,680
and so I think "finish" meant something different to him.
942
01:28:59,760 --> 01:29:01,600
It certainly feels that way.
943
01:29:01,680 --> 01:29:04,680
I don't think it's the same single-minded pursuit
944
01:29:04,760 --> 01:29:08,320
of fame and reputation you might find in other artists
945
01:29:08,400 --> 01:29:12,680
who were more concerned with success in the conventional sense.
946
01:29:13,720 --> 01:29:16,640
I think this was a devotional object, obviously,
947
01:29:16,720 --> 01:29:20,160
but I think it also always would have been understood
948
01:29:20,240 --> 01:29:23,600
by the more educated or the more enlightened viewers
949
01:29:23,680 --> 01:29:27,160
in the late 15th century as something that had these other artistic,
950
01:29:27,240 --> 01:29:29,760
intrinsic artistic interest as well.
951
01:29:31,920 --> 01:29:36,160
its impact in religious, philosophical, or psychological terms.
952
01:29:36,240 --> 01:29:39,760
I think in some ways there's an essential truth that still survives
953
01:29:39,840 --> 01:29:43,240
and comes to us even in a gallery in the 21st century.
954
01:30:54,520 --> 01:30:58,040
St. John the Baptist remains quite a mysterious painting
955
01:30:58,559 --> 01:31:01,320
but we can assume that Leonardo
956
01:31:01,400 --> 01:31:04,920
worked out its composition between 1506 and 1508
957
01:31:05,040 --> 01:31:07,880
when he was living between Florence and Milan.
958
01:31:08,640 --> 01:31:12,840
St. John the Baptist was very popular in Florence,
959
01:31:12,920 --> 01:31:15,280
indeed he's one of the patron saints of the city.
960
01:31:16,160 --> 01:31:19,480
Did he paint this picture for a Florentine art lover?
961
01:31:19,559 --> 01:31:22,880
Or could it be that he painted this picture for himself?
962
01:31:23,000 --> 01:31:24,600
As an act of devotion
963
01:31:24,680 --> 01:31:27,200
and also as an act of artistic research?
964
01:31:27,280 --> 01:31:28,280
It's possible.
965
01:31:30,040 --> 01:31:31,920
What is wonderful about St. John the Baptist
966
01:31:32,040 --> 01:31:37,480
is that it reveals a huge amount about Leonardo's research into light.
967
01:31:38,160 --> 01:31:42,680
St. John the Baptist is an extraordinarily economical painting.
968
01:31:43,320 --> 01:31:45,320
There is practically no colour.
969
01:31:45,400 --> 01:31:48,760
There are only transitions from shadow to light.
970
01:31:50,120 --> 01:31:53,920
And this St. John the Baptist is perhaps the most beautiful illustration
971
01:31:54,040 --> 01:31:57,440
of the first words of the Gospel according to St. John,
972
01:31:57,520 --> 01:31:59,800
namely words uniquely centred
973
01:31:59,880 --> 01:32:03,920
on the appearance of light in darkness.
974
01:32:05,040 --> 01:32:08,720
The first light announcing the arrival of Jesus Christ
975
01:32:08,800 --> 01:32:11,240
but a light that will disappear.
976
01:32:11,320 --> 01:32:14,720
And Leonardo shows us this here.
977
01:32:15,800 --> 01:32:18,920
We are faced with an apparition
978
01:32:19,040 --> 01:32:21,760
but an apparition that is destined to disappear.
979
01:32:21,840 --> 01:32:23,840
And that is the ambiguity of this painting.
980
01:32:26,040 --> 01:32:28,400
Is this an appearance or a disappearance?
981
01:32:28,480 --> 01:32:31,040
Leonardo shows us both.
982
01:32:32,120 --> 01:32:33,880
This is one of the most beautiful
983
01:32:34,000 --> 01:32:37,360
and extraordinary works from a pictorial perspective
984
01:32:37,440 --> 01:32:39,720
in terms of its economy
985
01:32:39,800 --> 01:32:42,840
and truly as an artistic creation.
986
01:32:47,800 --> 01:32:54,120
Leonardo, from 1507 to 1513, is in Milan and he is a painter,
987
01:32:54,200 --> 01:32:56,440
an engineer, to the French king, Louis XII.
988
01:32:56,520 --> 01:33:00,160
So, he has very strong links with the French.
989
01:33:00,240 --> 01:33:03,000
He then goes to Rome under Medician patronage.
990
01:33:03,080 --> 01:33:07,600
Leo X, Giovanni de' Medici, became the very young Pope
991
01:33:07,680 --> 01:33:12,680
and Leonardo's patron was Giuliano, who was Pope Leo's brother.
992
01:33:14,440 --> 01:33:16,440
You've certainly got the younger artists.
993
01:33:16,520 --> 01:33:18,520
You've got Michelangelo in Rome,
994
01:33:18,600 --> 01:33:21,800
he had finished the Sistine ceiling by the time Leonardo arrived,
995
01:33:21,880 --> 01:33:25,360
and Raphael is doing amazing narratives.
996
01:33:27,320 --> 01:33:33,559
Giuliano dies, he dies quite young, and Leonardo is left without a patron.
997
01:33:33,640 --> 01:33:35,480
He then got a very good offer.
998
01:33:36,240 --> 01:33:40,440
He was paid a huge amount by Francis I, the French king,
999
01:33:40,520 --> 01:33:43,880
basically Francis had bought a star,
1000
01:33:44,000 --> 01:33:46,600
like a football club would now buy a star striker.
1001
01:33:46,680 --> 01:33:48,760
You had bought your star artist.
1002
01:33:51,600 --> 01:33:53,440
Leonardo crossed the Alps
1003
01:33:53,520 --> 01:33:56,360
and he carried three masterpieces
1004
01:33:56,440 --> 01:33:59,920
which are the Mona Lisa, St. Anne, and St. John the Baptist.
1005
01:34:01,000 --> 01:34:06,280
It was a long journey and certainly his last.
1006
01:34:07,120 --> 01:34:12,320
The king gave him the use of the ch?teau
1007
01:34:12,400 --> 01:34:16,120
with an income of a thousand ?cus which was a fortune
1008
01:34:16,200 --> 01:34:22,000
and the freedom to work on royal commissions.
1009
01:34:23,920 --> 01:34:25,360
He was expected to do things,
1010
01:34:25,440 --> 01:34:28,440
but the pressure in Florence was for hand to mouth,
1011
01:34:28,520 --> 01:34:30,760
you know, of doing a painting and being paid.
1012
01:34:30,840 --> 01:34:32,200
He wasn't well suited for that.
1013
01:34:32,280 --> 01:34:37,280
So, being an ornament of the great Renaissance court of Francis I
1014
01:34:37,360 --> 01:34:38,680
suited him very well.
1015
01:34:39,400 --> 01:34:41,120
Like Henry VIII in Britain,
1016
01:34:41,200 --> 01:34:45,440
part of Francis' ambition was to attract in big artists.
1017
01:34:45,520 --> 01:34:48,840
They saw themselves as great Renaissance princes
1018
01:34:48,920 --> 01:34:51,880
buying into the new learning in visual arts,
1019
01:34:52,000 --> 01:34:54,280
in literature, in music, and so on.
1020
01:34:54,360 --> 01:34:57,200
So Francis is immensely important,
1021
01:34:57,280 --> 01:34:59,600
and I think a very gracious patron to Leonardo
1022
01:34:59,680 --> 01:35:02,400
in the last three years of his life.
1023
01:35:07,000 --> 01:35:10,800
"The king, who had often lovingly visited him,
1024
01:35:10,880 --> 01:35:14,440
arrived one day, and out of reverence,
1025
01:35:14,520 --> 01:35:18,240
Leonardo raised himself in bed to a sitting position,
1026
01:35:18,320 --> 01:35:22,080
speaking of his illness and the symptoms he was exhibiting,
1027
01:35:22,160 --> 01:35:25,160
and above all how he had given offense to God
1028
01:35:25,240 --> 01:35:26,680
and to the people of the world
1029
01:35:26,760 --> 01:35:29,880
for not having worked on his art as he should have done.
1030
01:35:31,400 --> 01:35:37,520
Leonardo expired in the arms of the king."
1031
01:35:38,880 --> 01:35:40,320
Giorgio Vasari.
1032
01:36:53,880 --> 01:36:56,600
Of Leonardo's last paintings
1033
01:36:56,680 --> 01:36:59,360
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne is doubtless the most ambitious.
1034
01:37:02,480 --> 01:37:05,280
St. Anne, the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus.
1035
01:37:07,080 --> 01:37:10,800
And Leonardo kept on working on this history scene
1036
01:37:10,880 --> 01:37:12,400
right up to the end of his life.
1037
01:37:15,160 --> 01:37:18,240
This painting is also hugely important because
1038
01:37:18,320 --> 01:37:19,760
of Leonardo's last paintings
1039
01:37:19,840 --> 01:37:23,360
it is this one that offers an extremely rich
1040
01:37:23,440 --> 01:37:25,280
and global vision of nature.
1041
01:37:27,440 --> 01:37:31,280
The painting contains Leonardo's finest landscape
1042
01:37:31,360 --> 01:37:34,360
because it has a monumental quality that is extraordinary,
1043
01:37:34,440 --> 01:37:37,080
even more imposing than the landscape in the Mona Lisa.
1044
01:37:38,200 --> 01:37:41,040
And the ground, made up of layers of rock,
1045
01:37:41,120 --> 01:37:42,719
is absolutely extraordinary.
1046
01:37:44,360 --> 01:37:45,760
Without doubt
1047
01:37:45,840 --> 01:37:47,840
if you want to study Leonardo da Vinci
1048
01:37:47,920 --> 01:37:50,160
when you look at his work as a whole
1049
01:37:50,240 --> 01:37:52,240
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne should be regarded
1050
01:37:52,320 --> 01:37:53,880
as the culmination of his research
1051
01:37:54,000 --> 01:37:55,680
and the work that best reveals
1052
01:37:55,760 --> 01:38:00,080
his scientific, poetic and artistic investigations.
1053
01:38:03,040 --> 01:38:05,240
But I would say that there's a second aspect
1054
01:38:05,320 --> 01:38:07,400
that I particularly like in this painting
1055
01:38:07,480 --> 01:38:09,280
and that is the Virgin Mary's face.
1056
01:38:10,400 --> 01:38:14,000
Here again Leonardo has achieved something extraordinary,
1057
01:38:14,080 --> 01:38:16,280
this understanding of the human expression.
1058
01:38:17,880 --> 01:38:21,200
Leonardo died before he could put
1059
01:38:21,280 --> 01:38:25,240
the final layers of glaze on the Virgin Mary's face.
1060
01:38:25,320 --> 01:38:29,320
It was the most subtle face and expression in the entire painting
1061
01:38:29,400 --> 01:38:34,240
and he was trying to express the moment of the Virgin Mary's conversion.
1062
01:38:34,320 --> 01:38:37,040
The moment when the mother of Jesus
1063
01:38:37,120 --> 01:38:39,840
accepts the death of her son.
1064
01:38:39,920 --> 01:38:41,040
From being a mother,
1065
01:38:41,120 --> 01:38:43,520
someone who wishes to prevent this death,
1066
01:38:43,600 --> 01:38:45,840
she becomes instead the mother of God.
1067
01:38:45,920 --> 01:38:49,559
She accepts this destiny and his journey towards death.
1068
01:38:50,760 --> 01:38:53,600
And so we have this smile
1069
01:38:53,680 --> 01:38:56,680
which emerges from an expression of sadness
1070
01:38:56,760 --> 01:39:00,680
and it's only Leonardo, with his understanding of humanity,
1071
01:39:00,760 --> 01:39:02,600
of the human expression,
1072
01:39:02,680 --> 01:39:05,920
who is capable, with this poetry, this simplicity
1073
01:39:06,040 --> 01:39:07,840
of revealing such sentiments.
1074
01:39:09,800 --> 01:39:11,280
It was incredibly moving
1075
01:39:11,360 --> 01:39:15,440
when we restored the painting between 2010 and 2012
1076
01:39:15,520 --> 01:39:20,440
to discover Leonardo's final brushstrokes
1077
01:39:20,520 --> 01:39:25,639
on the Virgin Mary and on St. Anne's dress.
1078
01:39:26,719 --> 01:39:30,719
This really was for him his ultimate work
1079
01:39:31,600 --> 01:39:34,040
and the painting for which he never stopped
1080
01:39:34,120 --> 01:39:38,480
imagining additional refinements and new ideas
1081
01:39:38,559 --> 01:39:41,400
each one more sublime than the last.
90246
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