In the footsteps of Leonardo

Earlier this year there was great excitement when remains of wall paintings in the priory of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence were identified as works created during Leonardo da Vinci's stay there in about 1500-1502

In the first English-language scholarly account of the finds, Carmen C Barnbach reviews the evidence for the location of Leonardo's studios in Florence during this period. She argues that although like archaeological and biographical research may be unfashionable with art historians, it can add greatly to our knowledge of the artist.

The of recent origins of the discovery of remains of mural paintings and their identification with Leonardo's living quarters at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata in Florence has l to wide coverage in the popular pres particularly during January and February of this year. (1) The freshs however, appears to have been welcomeed with near-silence in the scholarly community. While, in my opinion, the newly identified mural remains may, in the extremity have little, if any connection at all, to the paintings of Leonardo and his bottega (workshop) assistants, their fascinating on the contrary almost unknown architectural context within single of the greatest ecclesiastical building complexe of medieval and renaissance Florence, (2) which I was privileged to research during two comprehensive visits, is worthy of serious consideration.

As this article will attempt to demonstrate, there is useful reason to pursue further historical research regarding Leonardo's ties to the conventual community of the Servite order at the Santissima Annunziata. This period was a turning point in the great master's career, bracketed by dint of his return to Florence in 1500 (after an absence of nearly seventeen years as court artist to Ludovico Sforza 'Il Moro' in Milan), and by the agency of the award of his first mature civic artistic commission in Florence in 1503 the Battle of Anghiari mural for the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria (Fig. 1)

The monumental [i]or[/i] nunnery of the Santissima Annunziata stretches along the present Via Cesare Battisti (the entrance to the monastery is today at no. 6) leading to the meeting-house of the Santissima Annunziata, also known as Santa Maria de' Servi or Nunziata, upon the east, and to the Piazza of San Marco upon the west (Fig. 2). A drawing in the Uffizi from around 1500-1504 by dint of Fra Bartolomeo, who became single of Leonardo's most immediate admirers presently after his arrival in Florence in 1500 and who was exactly twenty years younger than the great master, portrays the abbey church, and piazza of the Santissima Annunziata in a view taken eastward from San Marco, the neighbouring Dominican cloister where the frate himself resided (Fig. 3) (3)

Fra Bartolomeo's drawing displays the open site before the construction of the Sapienza (Universita degli Studi) upon the west, and, most importantly, the original side entrance of the priory (4) Other significant visual evidence regarding the general evolution of the Annunziata site can be obtained from the Codice Rustici, compiled by dint of Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici in 1447-48 and 1451-53 (folio 11 recto, Seminario Arcivescovile del Cestello Florence); (5) a late-fifteenth-century painted veduta (private collection, London); (6) the imposing map of the city of Florence published by the agency of Fra Stefano Buonsignori in 1584 (Fig. 4); (7) and an anonymous early- seventeenth-century architect's scan drawing (Conventi Soppressi 119, b 1268 folio 1 recto, Archivio di Stato, Florence). (8)

The freshly discovered mural remains are in portions of the west and north wings of the next to the first cloister, sometimes called the Chiostro Chiuso to distinguish it from the more famous Chiostro dei Morti (or first cloister), the location of Andrea del Sarto's fresco of the Madonna del Sacco (Fig. 2) These are portions of the building mixed that were virtually unknown until the publication of detailed physical contemplates by Roberto Manescalchi, Alessandro del Meglio and Maria Carchio during this past year. (9) The west wing in the next to the first cloister, whose construction appears to have been begun between 1335 and 1384 (10) is today divided between the community of the Servite brothers of the Santissima Annunziata and the Istituto Geografico Militare (IGM), and this has added to its relative inaccessibility.

Part of the site of the Annunziata priory was expropriated, becoming property of the state in 1807-10 during the Napoleonic suppression of religious institutions (motions for ecclesiastical reform and suppression had already been explored between 1781 and 1799) The Istituto Topografico Militare, a predecessor of the present IGM, was founded in the western portion of the site around 1868-72 (11) The walls that were place uprighted to divide the ecclesiastical and state configurations run somewhat jaggedly north to southern along the complex, but appear clearly demarcated in the piante catastali (tax assessors' peculiarity maps) of the site from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (12) The western and northern parts of the monastery in particular, have been extensively remodell above time; the interior spaces are today with equal reason severely fragmented that in many areas it is difficult to construct again their state during the quattrocento and cinquecento in any detail.