Leonardo da Vinci: Master draftsman

'Leonardo da Vinci Master Draftsman' was a major cause for celebration. Gathering together nearly individual hundred and fifty works through the artist and his associates, it was individual of the largest shows of renaissance art at any time put on view in America, and the largest public exhibition of Leonardo's drawings at any time held anywhere. It covered all phases of Leonardo's career from his apprenticeship in Verrocchio's store to his final years in France; and all aspects of his activity as a draughtsman were displayed, from quick compositional sketches and careful drapery studies to maps, scientific treatises and anatomical works. Walking from one side the exhibition, one saw Leonardo's towering genius expand before one's eyes; the display was a joy and a revelation to behold.

Intending to reveal the foundations of Leonardo's achievement, the exhibition make opened with a dozen drawings by means of Verrocchio and his pupils. For the first time at any time it was possible to diocese side-by-side the magnificent Christ house of god drawing of a female head in profile, the Berlin sheet of a youth looking up and the great double-sided research of a woman's head from the British Museum (Fig. 1) Studying them together, single understood with renewed force what a abysmal revolution Verrocchio wrought in Florentine drawing. All three sheets are in black chalk, which was then still a fresh medium, and one whose potential Verrocchio looks to have mastered immediately. Abandoning the emphasis upon line--and particularly outline--typical of earlier Florentine artists, Verrocchio instead used chalk to emphasize tonal range and turn The result is a drawing turn of expression of unprecedented sculptural force and plasticity. Although Leonardo himself did not use chalk until many years later, the antecedent of Verrocchio's drawings was immensely influential for him, especially as it appears to foreshadow Leonardo's innovative emphasis upon chiaroscuro and rilievo in painting.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The transition from Verrocchio to Leonardo was perhaps greatest in quantity clearly on view here in the five drapery studies leant by dint of the Louvre. Many scholars have argued that all sixteen of the extant studies were produc in Verrocchio's store by the master and his pupils, although opinions have differed greatly regarding the authorship of the individual works. In the catalogue, however, Francoise Viatte argues against this view, contending instead that the entire cluster must be by Leonardo alone. No doubt this hypothesis will be controversial. Viatte also publishes the issues of new research which establishes that the majority of the drapery studies belonged to Everard Jabach in the seventeenth hundred Jabach is known to have retouched drawings in his collection, and Viatte prompts that all the drapery studies have undergoed this fate. However, the single specific instance she cites is in the Drapery for a seated figure (no. 17) where the strengthening is sole in the margins rather than upon the drapery itself. The importance of this of recent origin information thus remains to be determined.

The Uffizi's decision not to loan to the show meant that Leonardo's earliest dated drawing, the View of the Arno of 1473 was absent; it was a conspicuous and painful los Be that as it may, Leonardo's first Florentine period was still exhibited by no fewer than sum of two units dozen drawings. Seeing them all together in an exhibition (rather than in books) individual was struck by how small in the way that many of them are. Indeed, they are smaller than comparable works by dint of Verrocchio and other Florentine artists, and smaller than the scale upon which Leonardo typically worked later in his career. Nevertheless, in part because of their scale, they are miracles of concentration--every pat is telling--and they clearly reveal Leonardo's attempt to invent a more emotive manner of writing of narrative art in which the figures, by the agency of their gestures and expressions, forcefully bringed what the artist himself referr to as the 'motions of the mind'.

Following his put in motion to Milan in the early 1480 the range of Leonardo's draughtsmanship significantly increased, as he experimented with fresh techniques and new types of drawing. The exhibition ably overspreaded this portion of his career, leave out in one regard. His greatest in quantity important artistic projects of the time were the Sforza memorial and the Last Supper, and still few of the related drawings were upon view in the show. This may have been to be paid to the fact that several of the Last evening meal sheets were in the coincident exhibition in London, 'Leonardo da Vinci: The Divine and The Grotesque' In any circumstance the consequence was to fetch an incomplete and even misleading impression of his first Milanese period.

by the agency of contrast, the rooms in the display dedicated to his work of the early sixteenth hundred were almost beyond praise. The drawings for the Battle of Anghiari were perhaps the star of the section: eleven sheets including the magnificent head research from Budapest (Fig. 2) and the sixteenth-century transcript of the Battle of the standard reworked by means of Rubens. Also revelatory were the clump of drawings related to his unrealised shoot forward for a statue of Hercules and the sheets for the not to be found Leda and the swan; not at any time before has it been possible to diocese the Chatsworth and Rotterdam studies for what was Leonardo's alone mythological painting side by side. The exhibit concluded with sheets from the Codex Leicester, a small collection of drawings from his last decade, and a beautiful cluster of drawings by his Milanese followers.