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LEIBNIZ CHRONICLE OF A LOST PAINTING

ON OCTOBER 12, 1704, CHARLOTTE, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA,

WROTE A LETTER TO HER MOTHER, ELECTRESS SOPHIE OF HANOVER...

"Dear Maman,

It may seem strange to you

that I should so desire

a portrait of Leibniz.

The memories of my happy days in Hanover

increasingly fade with every passing year,

and I long to return to the days

when I, as his student,

could rush to him, my Court Counselor Leibniz,

and receive answers

to my countless queries.

Today is yet another day on which

I lack the courage to face life,

and I long to have our philosopher,

at least as a painting, in my porcelain cabinet.

It would afford me the opportunity to beset him with my questions

and to dream up his answers.

Have you then commissioned Mr. Delalandre to paint the portrait?

Did he consent?

Is it indeed

completed?

Dear Maman, forgive me my melancholy.

Society at Lietzenburg

and superficial life at the local court are so tedious.

At times, it suits me not

to be the queen of the joyless Prussians.

Your ever-loyal

and obedient

loving daughter,

Charlotte."

HERRENHAUSEN PALACE MID-NOVEMBER

Not exactly a studio.

The academy easel in the light.

The painting table there.

Spanish chest here.

The backgrounds

over on that wall.

Milanese trunks here and there.

Pigments and tinctures on the right.

Grinding slab and maulstick holder on the side,

the maulstick to me.

Brushes, charcoal pencils,

palette beside the

pigments.

The stool

there.

Precisely.

Pierre Albert Delalandre.

How gratifying that you have accepted my invitation.

Well, an invitation from Your Serene Highness. Who could fail?

But I was expecting a salon overlooking the garden.

We are here in the gardener's house of our esteemed Leibniz.

I heard he was a philosopher and did not intend to portray him as a gardener.

Oh no. No, no, no.

They are in his own hand.

The Leine Canal. The great fountain.

These are the designs for the parterre en broderie.

Charlotte and I wish

that they be included in his portrait.

For seven years he worked here as master of our gardens,

and raised the horticultural art to new levels.

We often visited him as he was working,

my daughter and I.

His spirit animates everything here.

The background has long since been readied.

- So?

You wanted to show us your selection?

The presentation.

The silk sheen is my own creation.

I use incarnadine, which other painters use only for human skin.

The red in the doublet:

natural vermilion from Spain.

You should know, Maitre Delalandre,

if there is one color certainly not suitable for our Leibniz,

it is red.

Anger, agitation, love-delirium.

Unthinkable.

The wig

was painted hair by hair and shine by shine.

People will take him for a French courtier.

Is that what we want? No.

Well?

It is not him.

But it is worthy of him.

I hear the Court Counselor appreciates Parisian fashion.

Yes.

What do you think?

It is not him, but it is worthy of him.

Gold and silk lace, the specialty of my workshop.

It requires work, diligence and expensive pigments.

The green is of the finest malachite. - One is receptive.

Proceed.

"With every hour uncherished,

a part of life doth perish."

"Dearest Charlotte,

You find me the happiest person in the world,

having been chosen by you

to appear in a portrait

that is to enjoy the boon of being constantly in your dear presence.

How I am delighted to fulfill at once this wish for Your Majesty

and imbue the painting with all my thoughts, completed and incomplete,

for our daily dialog

as to the why of whys of all things in creation.

Please forgive your old teacher the inkling of a doubt

as to whether the art of painting itself can ever be able

to grasp the actual truth of a person,

that is, the uniqueness that distinguishes us.

It is easier to philosophize about the language of angels

than it is to understand

what a person and his image is..."

Court Counselor?

Please. I cannot draw your eyes if you close them.

Can you try to look neutral?

A neutral expression.

Neutral.

And more...

more internalized.

Good.

Think of nothing at all, if possible.

Not quite so rigid,

your gaze, please.

That's good.

And a little attention to your...

That's it.

And now not quite so grim, but rather...

No. Just...

Or perhaps instead think of something sad.

That is good. Yes.

And the distant gaze a little more specific.

Could you again try

just completely neutral?

That's good, yes.

But not wide-eyed if possible.

Yes, that's good.

Remain thus, please.

Perhaps your nose not quite so stuck up, right.

Attention, double chin.

Tilt your head forwards a little if you can.

Good, yes.

Proud but not arrogant.

Exalted,

not presumptuous.

Court Counselor.

You are smiling. - I am smiling?

A smile devastates dignity.

I was thinking of Her Majesty Charlotte.

If you smile lovingly, people will wonder what it concealed.

Don't you dare paint conjecture.

Even as a child, Charlotte only sought the truth.

She always wanted to know the why of the why,

and never the maybe of maybe.

But an artist senses...

- Your job is not to sense, but to portray.

Affections, vanities and amours

lead to a visage without manly dignity. - Manly dignity!

One makes a fool of oneself in a pre-painted doublet and invented wig.

What a wonderfully dignified portrayal.

Court Counselor, please. - All you need is my nose.

It can be studied even if I am bareheaded.

Excuse me, Your Honor, but a man's bearing is changed if he is in a wig.

Yes, submissus.

Because the brain ducks beneath and one's thoughts scrape and bow.

No, because only in this way does the figure become complete.

In complete communion with the fleas.

Court Counselor, please, we must carry on.

The recipe for this tincture is not yet complete, but I am working on it.

He who has no face

has not been born,

but is a monad sleeping in God.

Maitre Delalandre,

do you believe that white is the color of God?

With respect, white is not a color.

Sir Isaac Newton opines

that all colors are united in white.

I do not know the gentleman, but he cannot be a painter.

He steals other people's thunder.

Let us continue the comedy: On with the masquerade.

For Charlotte.

I need incarnadine:

Cochineal red, lead white, Cassel brown.

You are to have a young and healthy complexion.

Yes, that's what they call "the truth."

Maitre Delalandre, what is to you the highest degree of resemblance?

When a gentleman I've painted says, "Yes, it's me."

Good. He sees himself in the likeness.

But does he recognize his ego?

The two of you will be mistaken for each other.

He who mistakes himself is not himself.

His portrait cries, "Look here, that's me."

It may cry thus.

But is he his image?

In other words: Does the image know him?

Does it cry: healthy skin, or

does it cry: an upright being?

Does it cry: A beautiful doublet, or

does it cry: a fulfilled life?

All have been satisfied at every court in Europe.

You paint an external self that dissimulates for you,

i.e. a fiction, thus a lie.

If you please: I is I.

No, no.

The self is the I

as it was, as it is, and as it will be. That's what I call a portrait.

You are obviously no artist.

That takes imagination.

Patience.

Talent.

Her Majesty in Berlin desires your likeness for her own edification.

Do not think of her,

think of the approaching spring.

Have the honor of blossoming.

You are smiling again. A tree does not smile, it simply blossoms.

I have never blossomed.

Imagine you paint me very accurately,

you captured my skin's tone,

my shortsighted eyes, the rotten teeth, the gout in my foot,

well, the whole lot.

Does that make it me?

I have never painted rotting teeth. - Does that make it me?

Not flesh and blood, but... - And not...

thought, fate,

inspiration,

memory,

pain, hope, loss.

And above all, loneliness.

And yearning.

My art reproduces appearance and fate

one-to-one on canvas.

Not even my mirror image is identical with my appearance.

One egg is as the other. For example. - No.

Two eggs may be so similar that even an angel could not distinguish them,

but they differ at least in that one is this and the other that.

Is this

brush

identical to the other?

The same marten hair, the same thickness, length, width

the same ferrule, the same cut, the same handle.

No difference.

But it's evident that this brush,

we'll call it A,

is this brush: A is equal to A.

And therefore B is equal to B, is that true?

Of course. It goes without saying.

One is a brush, the other its spitting image.

That is not proven.

True is a proposition whose negation leads to a contradiction. Ad exemplum: A

is not A.

And B is not B.

That would be curious.

And evidently false.

True, conversely:

A equals A, true. B equals B, true.

A equals B, not true, as it would lead to the contradiction

that A is not A and B is not B.

Therefore A cannot be B and B cannot be A.

Captious, with respect. One can paint with both equally.

That's how it seems to you.

But not even two drops of water are the same.

Because each reflects the whole of creation but is only identical to itself.

So what then is the true image of a human?

Good Lord.

I don't know what's riding you.

I create a portrait, you are on the wall.

The work of art carries you out of here into the Berlin Palace.

All palace dwellers want to be painted by me, but you are stubborn as a donkey,

and want to be considered a philosopher.

Now stand on the pedestal and let me practice my art on you.

Have you ever thought about what you are doing?

I am rescuing mortals

from oblivion.

That is to be feared.

You're sneaking your way into history on the back of my nose.

You are the weight at the feet of angels.

That you will recant when the time comes.

By no means. I retire.

Leaving you to your wrinkles of contemplation.

The portrait!

I will tell Her Serene Highness

that painting this subject proved impossible.

You are no lover of art.

But the greatest lover of truth!

Cantor.

Finished already?

That's what I call swift painting.

In a sense.

Today's mail.

Cantor.

Court Counselor?

For how many years have I been trying to understand you?

Nine. - Eleven.

But for nine years, I've written when you have said:

"Liebfried, take a note." - Yes, so nine it is.

Time I raised your salary.

TWO MONTHS LATER

Electress, Your Highness once herself suffered

from having to pose for portraits day after day.

Yes.

As the princes all over Europe were fighting over me.

Almost more over my portrait than over my hand.

I met all the Dutch painters who were making names for themselves.

And their apprentices.

I remember how

my legs ached from posing for hours.

In full regalia.

I would go to any lengths for the sake of your daughter.

But Delalandre wanted his canvas to be taken for my very self.

I know little enough about me. He knows nothing.

And Charlotte

wants to see me in the picture and not his template.

Agreed.

But you will see: This young artist sees you quite differently.

Before I invited her, I examined her paintings and spoke to her.

She was forced to live in Delft disguised as a man.

The painters' guilds there are obstinately masculine.

But you trust us women to have spirit and skill.

Without question and in every respect.

She expects you to speak to her, teach her.

She is a paragon of curiosity.

And who are you?

Liebfried. - Mr. Liebfried.

Mr. Cantor. Liebfried Cantor is my name.

Mr. Cantor, it is a pleasure.

We take the holder,

and because of its firmness and heaviness

the pigment becomes one with the oil...

This, dear friend,

is Mijnheer Finn van de Meer from Delft.

A young, highly favored talent,

he is already considered a master in his Delft guild.

And he is to paint me Dutch-style now?

To which end he accompanied me here.

Well, if he has won your favor, a favor I have long enjoyed myself,

then he and I have something in common:

the good fortune of your esteem.

Certainly.

You will find his art refreshing.

Can he speak for himself?

Or did he become a painter so that he does not need to?

No.

French?

No.

Latin?

No.

Dutch? - Of course I speak Dutch.

I have difficulties with that.

Does he speak German? - Yes.

My mother spoke it.

Your mother? - My mother.

Be gentle, dear friend.

Was I not gentle?

Is that the canvas for my portrait? - Yes.

But what a dark background.

I paint from dark to light.

You will doubtless know the master Rembrandt,

and Caravaggio from Italy:

Chiaroscuro.

Always going from dark to light.

That is beautiful.

From dark to light.

It's how we should live. As close as possible to the truth.

I invited Charlotte to visit us.

What joy of hope.

I promise to serve art in every way. - Good.

Then I will leave you alone with Mijnheer Finn van de Meer.

Well, have you already joined the painters?

Not yet.

I see.

And now I am to stand on a stool so that you can paint my nose?

No.

No.

First we seek the light.

There isn't much of it here, but it will do.

My name is not Vermeer.

But rather van de Meer,

Like my mother, who never revealed to me who my father was.

Here.

This is the place.

So? - Mr. Cantor?

Please bring me the white chalk.

This is the place for the Court Counselor.

Every day at this hour.

Understood.

In which direction am I to look? - To me.

And without a footstool? - A stool will not make you tall.

Nor will the legs. It's the head.

Posture.

Character. The inner self.

But the inner self is very lively.

It can't stand still when it sees itself observed. It always needs its say.

We don't need the hourglass, Liebfried. Make a note: Just as all things

that we look at

are set in motion.

You doubtless know:

"The Art of Painting"

by Master Vermeer.

Yes, I believe I heard about it years ago.

The muse in the painting in the blue dress with the trumpet.

Her model might be my mother.

You understand?

Vermeer and his muse?

She came from Germany.

In Delft, she

married the merchant van de Meer,

who soon left her a widow, and his...

his old friends

came and went at our home.

Lens grinders. - Lens grinders.

"Dukmacher." - Dukmacher. What is Dukmacher?

Canvas. - Ah.

Canvas maker.

Canvas maker. Dukmacher.

I was already painting as a child.

Houses.

Canals.

Ships.

I have never painted.

But I scribbled a lot: bucket chains, screw mechanisms,

ellipses, cones, hyperbolas.

The generous Electress

calls you a universal genius.

Were you one as a child?

As a child?

As a child, I was a child.

You now wear a pictorial expression.

Remember.

Please.

My dear father

lay sick unto death.

He had taught at the University of Leipzig.

I was seven years old.

He called me to his deathbed and pushed

a bundle of keys across the feather blanket.

And said

very weakly,

"My son,

I herewith hand you all knowledge in the world.

Use it well."

I didn't understand.

Then I recognized his keys to the Universitas Library and I went there,

started reading,

and taught myself Latin

from an edition of Livy with pictures.

And then Greek script.

And when I went to Latin school the next year,

I could concentrate fully on mathematics

because I already knew the languages.

Your face is now utterly different.

Other thoughts in your eyes.

I don't know.

You're a different person.

How beautiful.

I thank you for this insight into your soul.

Gladly.

I think

every person has a window, but one can only see into it if that person opens it.

Or all art is in vain.

Yes, that's a beautiful observation.

It fits with my monads.

Your... monads?

They are the smallest

units in the cosmos.

Living,

substantial atoms.

LATE AFTERNOON

The conception of a painting's composition

demands that we allow our imagination

the freedom to take flight enthusiastically

without consulting reason.

Just as we run through variants of the possible in fiction

to sharpen our sense of reality.

Finally, it is reason

that must examine, correct and smooth the work of the imagination

that something good and beautiful might be produced.

Something good

and beautiful?

My imagination

is a house of demons.

You say painting goodness

is difficult? - Yes.

Devils are easier than angels.

Evil takes precedence over good.

Are you certain?

Experience.

You presumably don't agree with me that

we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Then

we wouldn't have to pray when we're in danger.

Can you imagine the Creator as anything other than perfect?

Then I would like Him to give me free peace.

You should paint "Free Peace" on the cemetery gates,

because only the dead no longer murder one another.

But now, seriously:

God cannot have created anything worse than what He recognized in His perfection.

For His perfection excludes

failure as well as error and ill will.

One might say

his perfection compelled him to create the best of all possible worlds.

The best of all possible worlds.

How I'd like to believe that.

With all my heart.

But how then do I explain all the evil in the world?

That there are worlds where there is no unhappiness

is not particularly original,

and I doubt they would be better.

Even the best of all possible worlds has to be less perfect than its creator.

Otherwise it would be God itself.

Evil serves this distinction.

I think He could have left the distinction to us.

And He did. He did.

If evil did not exist and all were ever perfect

there would be no need to choose between good and evil.

Our ability to choose is what constitutes our freedom.

So without evil, there is no freedom.

Without freedom, the world would not be the best of all possible worlds.

What are you doing?

I think they'll end up being

demons.

They always come when I'm at a loss.

Don't be discouraged.

Mr. Cantor?

Mijnheer? - Will you render me a service?

What is it? - Four pig bladders.

From the butcher's. Well-scraped and very dry. The kind he uses for sausage.

Pig bladders? - Pig bladders. That's quite an order.

I imagine they help against demons. - No.

For storing paints.

How so?

I cut squares out of the soaked bladder skin,

spoon freshly prepared paint onto them,

gather the corners and sides at the top,

tie them tightly,

and thus have a small supply.

A pinprick in the side and I can squeeze as

much as I want from the bag onto the palette.

Wonderful. It could hardly be improved.

I have to be frugal.

A large painting takes a lot of paint.

Liebfried, get a move on, off to Butcher Klingebiel's.

Pig bladders to the glory of painting!

Four pig bladders. - Yes, I'm not joking. Off you go.

Shall we think a little together?

The last of today's daylight.

May I ask you a question?

It's getting too dark for painting.

Why is there something at all, and not nothing instead?

Nothingness scares me.

Not knowing is what scares me.

What is the reason for the existence of a pig's bladder, anyway?

The pig.

And its reason?

The sow and the boar, I suppose. - And theirs?

The same.

And so on. To the first link?

Of course. - But in the beginning?

There must have been a sow and a boar that were the very first.

That could be.

But what...

was the reason for the first ones?

Who can know that?

There must have been a reason for each and everything

for which there was no causal reason

beyond itself.

You mean

the very most

primary cause of all other causes?

Precisely.

The sufficient reason.

And if I don't know?

Everyone and no one knows.

What if I don't know that I know it?

Well...

we'll postpone the discourse until tomorrow

or the day after, or the day after that.

What I don't know...

I can paint.

Yes?

MID-JANUARY

Please excuse my tardiness.

It was upon waking that I realized you require a double-sized canvas.

By the time I had sawed and wedged the frame,

stretched the canvas and laid primer upon it...

Why does my figure now require a frame twice the size?

Your mind.

With all due respect, you are not exactly tall.

But I could hardly sleep following your great ideas.

Then, in my dream, I slid in ice skates

straight into the Oude Kerk church

onto the tomb slab of Vermeer,

with its coat of arms from the Guild of Saint Luke in the church floor.

Then I suddenly woke up

and wondered where he is.

Me? - Vermeer.

Where he might be.

Well, no longer, yet still is.

His paintings exist:

"The Art of Painting" and "The Girl with a Pearl Earring."

It was as if he wanted to tell me in a dream

that the reason for art is art itself.

Do you understand?

Your art has its reason in you.

No.

Long before I existed.

From the beginning, God is the sufficient reason and the greatest artist.

You don't want to understand me. - I do.

No. Mr. Cantor,

my portrait must achieve

that in it you survive yourself.

Is something wrong with your eye?

No. It's a hindrance.

We painters must transform space into plane. Two eyes are one too many.

Thanks.

Court Counselor, your light is here.

Please.

The first thing I was taught was that a true image

requires patience.

Impatience summons the demons.

I never had any patience.

If a thought was unyielding, I jumped to the next.

They say I'm like a tiger: What I don't catch

on the first, second or third pounce, I let go.

Let us wait for nothingness.

Me, too?

Your thoughts always seem to be

with Her Majesty in Berlin.

Charlotte often visited me in this room

when I was constructing the canal to supply water to the Great Fountain.

At the time, she was almost still a child,

but already a mathematical genius.

I would indeed be pleased if some aspect of her were to be found in my picture:

Her esprit,

her philosophical talent, her wisdom,

her youth.

I could pose you so that one can also see you in the mirror.

One Leibniz is enough.

Of course.

But what if the reflection didn't show you, but Her Majesty?

Your genius would appear in her form.

The Queen of Prussia, as educated by you,

would comprise your reflection.

Optically impossible.

Not in art.

You are amazing, Mijnheer van de Meer.

FIVE DAYS LATER

"Maman,

I'm sending you this letter urgently to inform you:

Friederich has finally given his consent to my Carnival journey.

I will be with you in Hanover in February.

Oh, if only it were already February

and I at your side, discussing our friend of thoughts.

Strictly between us:

I love this man.

And yet I am sometimes angry that he only lets me

access the outermost of his thoughts.

We have even discussed the language of angels,

and he promised to write a book for me about God's perfection

and human freedom.

But I sense that he keeps his essence

locked up within himself.

Who may peer into the soul of such a mind?

And me?

Will my life suffice for all my questions?

This is my acquisition from Holland.

She is to paint your portrait of Leibniz.

Her name is Aaltje van de Meer,

and she is as talented as her name suggests.

Your Highness. - Please stand.

The House of Orange need not bow to Prussians.

If you can render a facsimile of our genius

as were he in the flesh before me,

you will have done more than I have ever dared hope.

May I take a look?

It is not yet finished, Your Majesty.

That we respect.

Spare yourself. Please.

I can visit whenever you want.

Art will just have to wait.

You send for me, I come hurrying.

And if you wish, I'll read to you from my Theodicy, it's almost finished.

It is? Fantastic. How often I recall our lessons and your loving patience!

My child, you're burning up.

Maman.

- If you'd just have patience with yourself.

I shall ensure it.

Now you have met Prussia's queen.

A dark shadow lay in her eyes.

Charlotte.

It's just a cold, as so often in Hanover, Maman.

You should be in bed.

But the opera, Maman.

No, impossible.

The ball.

Finally, the pigs' bladders.

For art.

And for the Court Counselor, your mail.

My name is Aaltje.

Aaltje van de Meer.

A lady painter without master's certificate from the guild.

There is a lot of jealousy in the painters' guild.

And vanity.

But if women were admitted to the guilds, the cockerels would fight each other less.

And yet they prefer to admit unimaginative men

with mediocre brushes.

Forgive me.

I thought you would trust only a man,

and implored Her Highness the Electress to keep my secret.

Sophie's great, soft heart.

And you forgive me? - Forgive?

I am vindicated.

Liebfried

spirited women are more capable than men

to further science and peace.

Why not art as well?

Bladder number nine. Good.

Cantor, we need the blue paint.

A WEEK LATER

Might I be of assistance?

Where did you leave the Court Counselor?

He was in his dressing gown.

He is concerned about the health of Her Majesty,

who, despite her fever, yesterday celebrated

her arrival with a large banquet.

Pity. Here comes the new light,

and finds him not.

Master Leibniz is thus to be completely enveloped by light.

I now know him better.

He is light itself.

He is like...

like the sun, I do believe.

How right you are.

A question lies in the shadows, no one cares, he shines a light on it.

The next day he has the answer and implements it at once.

Though I know no Latin, I understood his principle,

which you have already heard: Theoria cum praxi.

If you only knew all his inventions,

you'd have taken a much larger canvas.

What else

would have to be in the picture so as to do him justice?

What should I mention? - Everything.

All the things he asked me to write down quickly:

For example,

the underwater ship.

A ship under the water?

Or a sailing sled driven by the wind, gliding over the icy wastes of Russia

while the sled dogs sit atop, gathering strength for windless stretches.

Then the rifle that can fire volleys without having to be reloaded.

Or then again,

and strange perhaps, but useful for citizens in a hurry:

the jumping shoe

with a built-in spring for a swift gait.

A mattress, hollow, made of leather, the seams tightly waxed,

that you can fill with air

so a soldier can lie on it softly in the field.

Before my time, he built in the Harz a horizontal wind work, as he calls it:

a windmill that the wind assails from all directions and without interruption.

Sorry, am I tiring you?

No.

I can see all that you recount with my eyes closed.

On one of our journeys, we had to watch as our inn burnt down.

That's when my master invented the fire hose, attached to a long leather tube.

To reach the source of the flames:

We had to watch the inn burn down

because the spray from the wooden pipes couldn't reach the flames.

On the way back, my master invented the fire insurance fund,

into which everyone pays, since it can happen to anyone.

With such funds, to which everyone must contribute,

widows, orphans, and in fact anyone struck by misfortune,

could be saved from starvation and ruin.

That he founded academies in Berlin and Vienna and in Saint Petersburg

is perhaps inevitable.

But he is more concerned with alleviating everyday hardships.

Recently, he came up with a nail

the shaft of which is slanted upwards like a saw,

so it goes easily into wood,

but not... - ... back out again.

Yes.

Or the travel chair on which you sit.

Snap,

snap:

Flat for the coach. - No.

It can then be reconstituted when required as a place of leisure and contemplation.

Strictly between us.

Open sesame.

Our black chamber.

Cantor?

Liebfried?

Are you still there?

I'm returning from the future.

He calls it his second head.

All of it his?

He's a note-taker.

All his inventions and ideas are protected here from the ink-fading sun.

I wrote most of them for him with my own hand.

One single week.

In total, 24,000. - Concealed in darkness.

Who could know all this?

And remember it?

This is his most amazing invention.

A machine that calculates independently.

He need only still invent the brush that paints by itself.

One sets the required calculation, cranks the handle,

and the machine adds, subtracts, divides, multiplies, as required!

Twenty-four times thirteen.

Twenty-four.

The two in the tens.

The four in the ones.

Transferred to the reckoner.

Twenty-four. - Times two.

With one turn of the crank.

Forty-eight.

Forty-eight plus twenty-four

a third time.

Four plus eight

are twelve.

The one carried over.

Two plus four are six, plus the one carried over.

Seventy-two.

Three times twenty-four

plus ten times twenty-four.

Crank the ten through once,

multiply by a second crank.

Three hundred and twelve.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Court Counselor. - Don't bother with that damn thing.

Damned how? - It's treacherous.

It let me down in London.

It first behaved well at the Royal Academy,

then skipped at a thousand.

It jammed.

Embarrassed me.

And Europe's best watchmakers can't fix its stubborn fault.

But I'm working on a much better machine now.

It functions exclusively in the mind,

and works only with zeros and ones.

No. - Yes.

And two and three, what becomes of them?

Two is now written one and zero.

And ten and thirteen?

One-zero-one-zero is ten, one-one-zero-one is thirteen, it's simple.

Can I count that way too? - Of course.

Only I don't have the time to introduce you to binary today.

I actually only came to apologize.

Charlotte isn't feeling well.

Please.

Just one attempt.

I've discovered a light

that will reach you from two sides at once.

Please.

Here.

Liebfried, please get up on the stepladder.

We must adjust the angle of the light.

Excuse me.

That's our garden.

Tree, leaves, branches.

A camera obscura.

I'm familiar with it. Not on this scale, but the principle is the same.

Come here.

You are touching the light. - You, too.

What do we have bodies for?

The mind is dark and its bottom sinister.

We need bodies so that our minds can touch the light.

Only through the body do our souls find visible expression.

Inside, darkness reigns

in which we toss and turn incessantly like a sleeper.

Through the body,

we awaken to the light

and are released from pain.

Remain as you are.

Your Majesty.

Your Majesty.

Your Majesty.

Leibniz. - Your Majesty.

Do you have a few minutes for me, please?

You should rest. - Yes, in just a moment.

Is something troubling you?

As you know,

I invited John Toland to Lietzenburg.

Against my advice.

We were discussing John Locke,

whom he admires. - That does not surprise me.

He talked about the soul.

I asked if it was independent of the body.

He said no.

Would it live on after death?

He said no. Even the soul consists of atoms.

And everything that has come into being also disintegrates.

Toland.

He would do better to be more reticent.

His treatises,

which he borrows from Lucretius and calls philosophical,

are novels.

But the soul, Leibniz.

What do you say?

Your Majesty, it seems I started with you as

a philosopher and am ending as a theologian.

But...

But the soul, Leibniz.

God alone can destroy it.

He who created it.

It forever retains traces

of all that has ever happened to it,

but cannot always recall them.

These traces are independent of the body.

The soul

is a mirror of the universe.

It is a special expression of divine omniscience.

And consequently immortal.

The whole cosmos is the body of God.

But...

But how is it immortal? And where?

As a sleeping monad,

and part of the great monad God.

And where?

Everything unfolds into the greater as into the smaller.

Constantly.

There is no end to the unfolding

among the stars and in the atoms.

The One ever again contains the Whole.

Enough room

for waking and sleeping monads, I say.

I'm saved.

Without doubt?

Yes.

Then you should rest now. Immediately.

May I accompany you?

Yes.

THE NEXT DAY

She was here all night.

Then perhaps the picture is...

We're not allowed to. - Just a glance.

The Court Counselor as a letter writer.

White scraps of paper covered with numbers spilling from people's mouths,

as if they no longer wanted to discuss but instead only count

so as to end the dispute.

She's virtually painted my mathematical characteristica universalis,

which even the Emperor in Vienna could not understand.

Here, the reflection...

Charlotte's dear reflection.

We arrived only a moment ago.

I was able to paint by candlelight until eleven struck,

before convincing the night watchman of the innocence of art

and the impatience of Her Highness the Electress,

then slept,

woke after dawn, applied fresh paint,

and as I wondered

what your monad of God might mean,

and how I should paint

that everything is somehow

contained in everything and yet not connected,

I fell asleep over the question:

How can the abstract

become a picture?

Through the recognition that the abstract is concrete.

But I don't just have to recognize your ideas, I also have to find forms for them.

If you'll allow me, I can recommend to you my personal wake-up exercise.

One names

as rapidly as possible all the objects that one...

sees,

and repeats the exercise in several languages: Flemish, German, French.

And to increase the effect, you can spin around

while so doing.

But then you must loudly and clearly enounce the names of the objects.

Brush, canvas, window, fireplace, wall, travel chair,

chaise longue, blackboard, staircase, wall,

wig, orangery, glass, wall,

dark chamber, canvas, light, window,

brush,

blackboard, fireplace,

chair, chaise longue.

I'm dizzy.

But it did indeed wake me up.

I bring you the Queen's regards. She is resting.

The doctor came early this morning. He bled her.

She is feverish, is breathing heavily.

How sorry I am to hear it.

Nevertheless, she wants to attend the banquet and the opera this evening.

She wants to see me at her table. The fever's making her euphoric.

I am worried.

You will not find me dancing for joy today.

In our picture, I'm trying to preserve the hours we have spent together.

For all times.

In vain, dear artist.

Time does not exist on the plane.

Movement and event are time.

It does not exist on its own.

No tomorrow,

noon, evening,

yesterday?

Because we call them that.

Because the sun moves with the whole universe around the monad of God,

and we move around it.

Distance is space,

distance covered is time.

Do I understand you correctly?

Not only

is a still life devoid of time,

but every painting is as soon as I have finished it?

In two dimensions, an immobilized moment.

Liebfried, a note:

A picture

is without space,

motionless,

and therefore

the frozen present of an earlier point in time.

Unless I agree with Mr. Newton

that time runs around in the picture yet also comes and goes.

I can make little of that.

If I might contradict you,

I think

a picture doesn't contain

just a moment of frozen present,

but rather a lot of past time.

Being which? - Yours.

Mine.

Mr. Cantor's.

In other words the time

we spend

while the picture is created.

All this time, what should I call it,

the "painting time,"

is contained in the picture.

And the time that our earth needed

to form the lapis lazuli from which Cantor ground the blue paint for me.

Right?

Please continue. - Well,

if then our time,

the time of all of us,

is contained in the picture,

and in paint the earth's time required for the pigments...

The implication? - Would then your portrait

be a frozen present, as you put it? I think

it is far more a collected past.

In the painted picture,

in the painted canvas,

even in the frame,

is all the time we have spent on it.

If there is time in the picture,

there should also be space between the objects in the picture

which there is not. - But there is.

What else is perspective?

And if Her Serene Highness Queen Charlotte

every day seeks the advice of your portrait in her porcelain cabinet,

are you not present

even though you have passed into the picture and are not in the room yourself?

Would that not mean

that your portrait

is both past and present simultaneously?

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1705

Court Counselor.

Liebfried,

the clamp.

Of course.

The Queen is unwell.

He and the Electress shared the vigil.

Now he's in agony from the gout in his leg.

With this clamp, he inflicts pain to his left

leg if his right is suffering from gout.

Like that? - Harder.

That helps?

The pain I inflict on myself of my own free will

vanquishes the other pain that means to bend me.

Harder, master? - Yes.

The Court Counselor is strong willed.

I see and demand a court of justice for Europe.

I see it in Amsterdam,

founded by all and honored by all,

which will raise peace to a general legal duty.

And before this court, the kings and

princes will resolve their disputes per jure,

instead of spilling the blood of their people on the battlefield.

Charlotte,

I naturally know that none of our elevated contemporaries will accept any court.

Those that have will always want more.

Charlotte,

I see that people will be taught to see:

I see a teatrum naturae et artis

with libraries and arenas, animal enclosures, temples, mines,

museums and grottoes

into which everyone might gain admission and see and grasp new things.

In which all of nature, all of human knowledge,

all monuments of architecture, all inventions are on display.

Charlotte,

a freely roamable academy

of all creation.

The ability or inability to read

will no longer be the line dividing life's fortune.

Everyone will see what was and is and will thus know

and consider what should still yet be.

As a result, contemplation will occur as if by itself.

And with such contemplatives,

a general, lasting, good and wondrous peace will grow, and with it prosperity.

And happiness.

Charlotte,

Yes.

Happiness.

Happiness.

What's that?

They call him Fritz.

What Fritz?

The emu that lives in the garden.

I can't see him.

Now he's gone.

Sadly, there is no pain-clamp for the soul.

And so I vanish into the dark.

Court Counselor, the last time I saw you thus

was after your audience with Emperor Leopold.

Afterwards, you were ill for a long time. - Back then. When I failed, as ever.

You were all but appointed Imperial Advisor.

Yes, all but.

President of the Academy in Vienna and in St. Petersburg.

All but.

Advisor to the Emperor. All but. Hence not.

With all due respect, you forget your Berlin Scientific Society.

Without members and honorarium. - With you as president.

President Wageless.

You make it hard to lead you from this vale of tears.

You really had an audience with His Majesty Emperor Leopold in Vienna?

Seven years ago.

No suggestion was heard. They were deaf.

For fear that the ponderer might become pioneer.

The day before the audience, we were instructed in Spanish court etiquette.

With which, thank God, we're not familiar in Hanover.

I was drilled like a circus horse.

You played along with the imperial court ceremonies as if you were serious,

I could barely contain my amusement. - I was serious.

Serious?

That pompous farce?

With Your permission, I will refresh Your memory.

Be seated.

Consider me the court's Grand Master of Ceremonies.

An actor?

I've never seen you like this.

Court Counselor Leibniz,

you will execute your first bow here

when the double doors to the audience hall open.

You will then enter with measured steps.

Between the door, which is now behind you, and His Majesty the Emperor,

who will be sitting up there, you will bow a second time,

a little lower than the first time, please.

Not too low!

It must remain possible to build up to the third bow.

This third bow you will execute closer to his Majesty,

but at a respectful distance. Far enough that you cannot expect a handshake.

Here, the deepest expression of your servility is required.

Your reverence is a single, deep bow.

Not too long, not too short.

Now.

After your presentation,

you will withdraw from the Emperor, performing two bows

at a distance of three steps, but walking backwards. Backwards!

Very few manage to find the door with their backs.

Avoid a zigzag course or you'll look peculiar.

A lackey will be at your side to guide you.

The door will be opened in time.

You will walk backwards through it and remain standing there

until the wings are closed again.

Do I make myself clear?

Yes.

Yes, I...

That's...

My dear, dear Cantor,

that was a most brilliant performance.

I shudder still.

During the audience, the Court Counselor brought up

all the matters that would have served

both the court and humanity.

But during the presentation, and this is no lie,

he was dragged backwards out of

the audience hall by the tails of his coat.

They dragged me out of the imperial barn like a head of cattle.

That same day, you were seized by a fever.

Excuse me.

Charlotte.

FOUR DAYS LATER

I feel as if my own life has been snatched from me.

She is in God's hands.

She is in everything.

I thought you were on your way home to Delft.

It had to come out.

Out?

Out of my head.

Out of my hands.

In the end, it was all very simple.

Suddenly my hands knew

that everything about him can be read in his face.

In his travel chair.

Nothing can stop him.

His eyes are following me.

Did he just smile?

Take a note, you say?

Liebfried, it is only a likeness.

Has God never betrayed you?

He couldn't do so

even if He wanted to.

He is not free to act against His own perfection.

But if He is,

in you, dear friend, He has a superb advocate.

Whom He requires not.

LEIBNIZ CHRONICLE OF A LOST PAINTING

Subtitle-Copyright: Way Film GmbH Translation: Thomas Cooper, Matthew Way