Gothic Leonardo

The Gothic Leonardo: Towards a Reassessment of the RenaissanceAuthor(s): Joseph MancaSource: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 17, No. 34 (1996), pp. 121-158Published by: IRSA s.c.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483527 .Accessed: 25/07/2011 12:00

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JOSEPH MANCA

The Gothic Leonardo: Towards a Reassessment of the Renaissance

'The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extin-

guished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that digni- fied obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom."

- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

INTRODUCTION

Leonardo and the Renaissance: Traditional wisdom affirms, and not without reason, that art was reborn in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that an artistic revolution occurred at that time

embodying various aspects of classicism and opposing the medieval

style. This notion of linear progress and stylistic revolution has clear-

ly been an attractive one over the years, but the eagerness to see an organic and teleological development in Italian art has helped to

discourage investigation of retrospective aspects of Renaissance

styles. Historians have exhibited the keenest interest in recording ground-breaking paradigm shifts in Italian painting and sculpture, whereas episodes of conservatism and retrogression have proven

inconvenient to them. Specifically, in the subject treated in this

essay, aspects of the late Gothic style that survived well into the Quattrocento and beyond are often ignored in art historical literature. Indeed, the desire to chart progress in art history has led to an over-

looking of traditional elements even in painting and sculpture of the first part of the fifteenth century. For example, Gothicizing artists such as Gentile da Fabriano and Antonio Pisanello are frequently discussed less as examples of the elegant International style and more in terms of their naturalism and perceptive observation of the real world, features that the new, renascent art shared with late Gothic painting. Similarly, Masolino da Panicale's naturalism and his links to Masaccio have capture more attention than his conservative

aspects, just as Alessandro Botticelli's links to humanistic poetry and

philosophy are stressed more often than his traditional stylistic tendencies. Apparently, the movement into new art historical periods has captured the imagination of generations of observers.

Giorgio Vasari rated Leonardo as one of the leaders of the "third

part" of his Lives, and as a pioneer of the Cinquecento style. The literature after Vasari indicates this same tendency to stress the progressive aspects of the artist's oeuvre; he is almost always present- ed as an innovator. To be sure, there have been differing assessments in this regard, with some writers more willing than others to stress the traditional aspects of Leonardo's art, while others,

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especially more recent authors, have tended to concentrate attention on his more purely progressive tendencies. But it is worth

stressing and elaborating on the conservative nature of Leonardo's artwork, for however genuinely progressive in many ways, he was as drawn to the past as he was to the call of the future. He preserved or revived many of the ideals of his predecessors, reformulating the canons of beauty of an earlier age, ideals that ultimately originated in an aristocratic world removed from Leonardo's bourgeois, commercial Florence. One can say that Leonardo was a kind of Neo- Gothic revivalist, as he freely borrowed aspects of Gothic art and was perfectly at ease with the essential features of this style. Despite pronouncements by his biographers concerning the revolutionary character of his accomplishments, Leonardo had the grace to link himself to a bygone era, to tie himself to a noble tradition, and to

incorporate the old with the new. He established his art, thought, and

life-style in a historical continuum and sealed a contract with the

past, becoming genuinely progressive by looking backwards. The slighting of this facet of Leonardo has resulted in large part

from the prevailing attitude that the Renaissance was essentially anti-Gothic. Moreover, there is a propensity to believe that great per- sonalities, such as Leonardo, not only created and defined art historical periods - casting long shadows - but that they only looked forwards. The natural sciences have progressed through the advent of paradigmatic shifts, often brought about by individual geniuses, and one would apparently wish to think that art history has devel-

oped similarly. But why not instead celebrate Leonardo for his exal- tation of the recent past, and for his revival of the artistic grace, charm, and gentility of an earlier time? Leonardo embodied such sentiments in his paintings and drawings, and a look at both his life and art reveals a new Leonardo, a man of the flowering late Middle

Ages, the Gothic Leonardo who found a gracious balance between old and new.

Intentionality: In his writings, Leonardo had much to say about art and about methods for making it. We should, of course, pay heed to these passages when they are relevant. One problem, however, is that his writings have a different purpose and effect than his art, and were produced for a variety of scientific, humanistic, and literary contexts. Leonardo's writings are often relatively cold and abstract, and one frequently misses in them the aesthetic sentiments characteristic of his artworks. Freud accurately noted the emotional coolness found in Leonardo's notebooks and scientific treatises. In contrast, Leonardo conveys richer and more varied emotional effects in his visual expressions. His writings on shadowing come across

overwhelmingly as scientific and calculated directions for rendering three-dimensionality. Leonardo the author conveys little sense of the romantic, graceful chiaroscuro effects that he actually achieves and

upon which a considerable part of his artistic fame rests. The situation is similar with his perspective. In the Last Supperthere is a strik-

ing use of single-point perspective as the orthogonals descend

abruptly toward the vanishing point, correct from no point in the

room, but conveying a dramatic impact. One hardly expects this kind of emotionalizing effect from the Leonardo whose notebooks

emphasize the qualities of illusion, accuracy, and measurement involved in the representation of perspective. Nor does he discuss the signature "mysterious smile" in his writings, which were devoted more to describing the affettito be employed in convincing narrative

painting. Leonardo as author offers little clue to Mona Lisa's peculiar visage, even despite his written attention to the subtleties of human

psychology and emotional expression. It would, of course, be senseless to deny a rich correspondence

between Leonardo's words and his deeds. But to move beyond this kind of correlating, and to avoid the notorious pitfalls that exist in

connecting any artist's writings to his visual creations, our attention here will fall principally on Leonardo's artworks. This is not to invoke the tedious postmodern notion that recorded intentions count for little. Rather it is to say that written intentions and explanations account for only part of the historical truth and, in any case, what is

argued here is not the kind of subject treated by Leonardo in his writ-

ings. Leonardo could well have had Gothicizing and "anti- Renaissance" tendencies even if they did not find a place in his lit-

erary output and even if he himself did not always give these tendencies the same conscious attention that his other interests received. Rather than look for a correspondence between words and

images, this essay will treat the written word with skepticism - or rather, agnosticism; the art objects will not be gauged by Leonardo's

literary expression. Similarly, there will be no attempt to exploit the theme of this essay by documenting the numerous aspects of Leonardo's writings that are rooted in medieval optics, natural histo-

ry, or other sciences. The artistic manifestation of Leonardo's

thought will remain the central focus of discussion.

Still Gothic: It should not be surprising that essential aspects of Leonardo's art are linked to the traditional Gothic style. The late Gothic manner survived into Leonardo's time, even in Florence, in the works of both major and minor artists. Indeed, there was a curi- ous and striking Gothic revival being carried out in the second half of the Quattrocento in Florence by such artists as Botticelli and Benozzo Gozzoli, a movement abetted by a stylistic conservatism

encouraged under Medici patronage. Indeed, some of the elegant and lyrical aspects of the late Gothic mode appeared through the later part of the century across the Italian peninsula, as can be seen in the art of Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, Giovanni di Paolo in Siena, Pietro Perugino and Bernardino Pinturicchio in Umbria, and Baldassare d'Este in Ferrara. When Leonardo went to Milan in the 1480s he would have found there a thriving late Gothic style which, even if it did not actively inspire him, would at least not have dis-

couraged any Gothicizing tendencies he possessed. In short, it

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THE GOTHIC LEONARDO: TOWARDS A REASSESSMENT OF THE RENAISSANCE

would not be surprising that an Italian artist, even one born in

Tuscany in mid-century, would, like some of his contemporaries, have indulged in borrowing features of the late Gothic manner.

Leonardo a Gothic personality?: It is difficult to demonstrate that there was such a thing as a "Gothic personality," but, still, it is plausible to assume that a certain type of person living in Italy in the later fifteenth century might have been more prone than others to favor a traditional mode of artmaking. In this sense, one can argue that Leonardo's very personality would have led him to choose certain

aspects of the Gothic style for incorporation into his art.

Beginning with Vasari, Leonardo's biographers have sought to describe his personality: affable with humans, compassionate towards animals, and blessed from Heaven with many gifts, yet a bit eccentric and aloof at times owing to his obsession with scientific problems. Vasari was amazed that in his later years Leonardo did not seek out artistic commissions, preferring leisure and involvement with his own private projects; this disdain for lucrative artistic work is

fully borne out by the surviving literary and artistic evidence.

Certainly anything but an assiduous, bourgeois citizen, Leonardo was less interested in setting up a busy shop and amassing a for- tune through the marketplace than in engaging in solitary, intellectual pursuits. Indeed, even as a youth, Leonardo did not rush into the

fray of artistic competition in Florence. Evidently to the surprise of

many modern writers, Leonardo remained in Verrocchio's workshop until he was in his mid-twenties, an unusually long time for a young man to continue as an assistant or even as a collaborator with his teacher. Perhaps most tellingly of all, it was not long before he threw himself into the employment of a duke, then a pope, and finally a

king. In his maturity, Leonardo rejected the shop system and commercial world accepted by his Florentine countrymen, preferring the atmosphere of courts instead. One feels compelled to agree with Kenneth Clark, who noted that Leonardo's personal reserve and

mysterious manner made him unsuited for the "Forum life" of Florence.

On the matter of the tyrannical political arrangements that held

sway in many parts of Italy, Leonardo was not at all moved to rebel. Neither democrat nor republican, he had little use for the popular revolutions that so excited Michelangelo and other contemporaries. On the contrary, Leonardo was comfortable around despotic leaders such as the dreaded Cesare Borgia, serving him apparently without moral qualm. Leonardo was uninterested in disturbing the political order, and it is hardly surprising that he was attracted his whole life to courts, with their relative stability and calm. In short, although a poor burgher, businessman, or democrat, Leonardo was perfectly at home in a situation of economic, personal, and political dependen- cy, where his suave and gracious personality could attain its perfect expression. Courtly surroundings were most suited to him, and it was in the courts that the attitude and behavior of aristocratic life of

the late medieval world, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, was

preserved longest. Leonardo da Vinci was drawn to leisure, honor, and servitude, and was likewise at ease with dependence, homage, and hierarchy. He must have fancied himself a good courtier rather than the product of a mercantile society, and this has manifestations in his courtly artistic style. He was a failed Florentine indeed, and the wonder felt by Cinquecento writers such as Vasari was an inevitable reaction to the life of one who cared little for money and productive work, preferring to spend his time engaging in scientific pursuits, painting slowly at his own pace, and doodling various ideas such as knot patterns. The retrospective aspects of his style, which we will

explore presently, are not unlike the regressive circumstances of employment that he preferred. Leonardo was not only one of the the first modem men, as is often stated; he was also a marvelous, late encapsulation of the Middle Ages, which in his style flowered anew.

LEONARDO'S PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS

On the surface: At first sight, the task of regarding Leonardo as a late Gothic artist might seem daunting. After all, just as his scientific thought was undoubtedly progressive and in the avant garde, some of his artworks offer little for the interpretation of Leonardo as a conservative artist. One will be disappointed in trying to see in his Last Supper, Saint Jerome (Vatican), or copies and drawings for the Battle of Anghiarievidence of a retrospective, late Gothic strain in his artistic thinking, partly because of the stylistic mode that he chose and partly because the surface technique is lost to us.

Still, there is good reason to see Leonardo as a consciously retrogressive painter. Let us turn first to his famous sfumato and morbidezza, his surfaces rendered with a generalized application of the brush and toned down with a soft, smoky haze (the two cannot be separated). Leonardo has been credited with inventing a new kind of pictorial texture, one that differed from the earlier Renaissance style and established an important aspect of the new High Renaissance manner. Fifteenth-century painters - including Andrea Mantegna, Andrea del Castagno, and Filippino Lippi - represented things in, as Vasari put it, a dry, hard, stony, and pedantic technique. Later, however, painters such as Leonardo, Giorgione, and Correggio used broader strokes, a lighter and more generalized touch, and sfumato to suggest, rather than exactly represent, various natural surfaces.

Of Leonardo (the earliest of these three painters), we might ask whether this was strictly a progressive change. He employed a generalized style, one that, although the High Renaissance is often associated with classicism, was not an antique revival (since ancient technique was essentially unknown, except through verbal descrip- tions). Rather, Leonardo's style had precedents in late International Gothic painting, the soft, delicate manner that flourished in the early and middle Quattrocento before the drier style of the Early

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2) Leonardo da Vinci, <<The Virgin and Saint Anne,, Paris, Musee du Louvre.

1) Jacopo Bellini, <<The Madonna of Humility,, Paris, Musee du Louvre.

Renaissance came about as a reaction to the sweet, softer Gothic surfaces. In his suave technique, Leonardo was not building on an

existing Renaissance tradition, but returing to an earlier, gracious manner used by Masolino da Panicale, Gentile da Fabriano, Jacopo Bellini, and Antonio Pisanello. Jacopo's Madonna of Humility of about 1430 [Fig. 1], now in the Louvre, offers a good comparison with Leonardo's works in that museum, which are similar in the soft articulation and suggestive, delicate surfaces of flesh and drapery. Characteristic especially of his earlier works, Bellini's painting has a

generalized epiderm brought about by the delicate transparencies and the subtle, veiled shadows. The work's grainy surface is quite different from the harder texture found in the work of artists such as Andrea Mantegna or, to cite a Florentine artist, Antonio del Pollaiuolo. Both Leonardo's generalized touch and the delicate

shadowing gently suggest rather than closely define the surface

aspects of natural forms. This, for Leonardo, was an inspired alter- ation of the detailed, hard, and descriptive textures prevalent during his time.

To remark that in this idealizing application of pigment Leonardo continues the form and spirit of late Gothic painting technique is not

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3) Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, <<The

Baptism of Christ,, Florence, Uffizi.

4) Detail of Fig. 3.

to say that the earlier artists used the type of sfumato Leonardo later

employed. Unlike these painters, Leonardo used oil paint, and he put far more emphasis on shadowing and the representation of

three-dimensionality than did the late Gothic artists. Still, there is a softness and pleasingly grainy application of pigment in the Intemational style that Leonardo clearly knew and drew upon for his

rejection of the tough, dry manner of his contemporaries. Leonardo's surfaces have a delicacy, morbidezza, and courtly grace reminiscent of the International Gothic technique. While his contemporaries in Central and North Italy attempted to mimic the stony Antique in their hard contours and sculptural clarity, Leonardo modeled his art on the

suavity and lightness of touch found in the rather unclassical

painters of the late Gothic age. High Renaissance painting technique thus has its roots in the Gothic style, and Leonardo was the first to revive the older manner, transforming it into moder art.

Leonardo as "il cortegiano": Vasari thought that, whereas Leonardo's art was soft and relaxed, Quattrocento painters labored

excessively, producing overstudied works that were too dry and detailed. Like the ideal courtier described by Baldassare Castiglione, Leonardo did not seem to exert great effort in his art or in his personal behavior. Castiglione's social ideal was a return to chivalric forms of behavior and a rejection of the ethics essential to the kind of assiduous mercantile society that Leonardo would have known in Florence. For his part, Leonardo's apparent avoidance of overexer- tion can be seen in his social interactions as well as in the rendering of his surfaces, typically soft and generalized, seemingly applied with ease. Moreover, his figural compositions fit together smoothly with the kind of sprezzatura recommended for the good courtier. In

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JOSEPH MANCA

6) Leonardo da Vinci, <<Saint John the Baptist>, Paris, Musee du Louvre.

5) Leonardo da Vinci, <Mona Lisa,, Paris, Musee du Louvre.

The Virgin and Saint Anne [Fig. 2], the figures are fused together in an apparently impossible position with smiling ease and graceful charm, corresponding to Castiglione's ideal of nonchalance.

Just as Castiglione's ideal was a retur, or rather a continuation, of a long-standing medieval norm, the personal style he recom- mends corresponds to essential elements of late Gothic art; a court-

ly attitude of calm, gracefulness, and amicability is characteristic of late International Gothic painting. The ideal of sprezzatura was not new to the Quattrocento and Cinquecento courts. Instead, in life and

in art it was a late manifestation of standards of behavior that exist- ed in earlier aristocratic times in feudal courts. Leonardo did not need to live in a court to embrace this ideal, for he could already have independently held this attitude; presumably it was his gracious personality that led him to embrace courtly ideals and embody them in his artistic style as in his own behavior. We might imagine that his stay in Milan reinforced these natural tendencies in his social

behavior, as well as in is art, which seems so easy and nonchalant.

The angel in the Uffizi "Baptism'" Giorgio's story is famous:

young Leonardo painted one of the two angels in Verrocchio's

Baptism of Christ [Figs. 3 and 4] and the apprentice's figure is more

progressive than the master's To invest the story with greater sig-

126


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7) Leonardo da Vinci, Studies for the "Leda? (drawing), Windsor, Royal Library.

nificance, Vasanri added that Verrocchio quit painting upon seeing the young artist's work. The dramatic contrast between the painted figures by master and pupil is appraised in the Leonardo literature as the triumphal sign of a new age (High Renaissance) surpassing the old (Early Renaissance). Apart from the hackneyed topos of Verrocchio's turning his brushes over to Leonardo, the story is essentially true, for there is a great difference in style between the younger and the older artist. Sydney Freedberg offers a poignant discussion of this contrast in his Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, arguing that here the spirit is in concert with material substance, and thus High Renaissance classicism is born, recalling the idealism of Greco-Roman art.

Let us reconsider the situation. The year is about 1472, the "High Renaissance" had not yet happened, Botticelli had yet to paint

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"High Renaissance", had not yet happened, Botticelli had yet to paint

8) Jan van Eyck, <<The Annunciation>,, Washington, National Gallery of Art.

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JOSEPH MANCA

9) Paolo Uccello, <<Saint George and the Dragon,, London, National Gallery.

his Gothicizing Primavera and Birth of Venus, and the Gothic style continued to flourish in much of North Italy. The Tuscan Renaissance was well underway, much of it standing in sharp contrast to late Gothic painting, the effects of which lingered in art across Italy. Where is Leonardo positioned in this situation? His angel is decid-

edly different from the others in Verrocchio's composition, but the novelties are grounded in past art. Verrocchio's nearby angel seems

static and prosaically simple; Leonardo's figure is alive and indeed infused with spirit, but in a manner reminiscent of late medieval

painting, where angels have an especially vibrant and active form. The delicate blue strands of ribbon that float behind the angel's head are curvilinear and light. The skin of the angel is soft, suggestive, and fluid. The hair falls in full, delicate curls, and the face of the

angel reveals a small pointy chin and tiny lips, facial features char-

128


10) Antonio Pisanello, <Vision of Saint Eustace)>, London, National Gallery.

acteristic of the International Gothic. As in the Gothic manner, Leonard here strikes a balance between the real and the ideal. The

angel's body is twisted and turned, with a kind of organic, rubbery liveliness running throughout the form. Furthermore, certain details are articulated in a way that we can associate with late Gothic painting from the north of Europe. The beads of glass on the sleeve have the delicacy and the studied quality reminiscent of Jan van Eyck's

works, and the clear perspicuous eyes also have an oltremontane, late Gothic feeling.

Obviously, Leonardo wanted to achieve a new effect here, an

escape from the simple poses and pasty technique of Verrocchio. He did so successfully by softening the surfaces, giving a curving sense to the form and ornament, making the physiognomic type more elegant and doll-like, and by endowing the angel with a final bit

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JOSEPH MANCA

11) Franco-Flemish, early fifteenth century, <Profile Portrait of a Lady,, Washington, National Gallery of Art.

of grace also derived from the late medieval world, that is, the sunny smile.

Mona Lisa's smile: If, among Leonardo's creations, only Mona Lisa smiled [Fig. 5], we might seek a single explanation for the

expression she bears: that she was being amused by musicians and

jesters, that she is an enigma, or that she is simply jocund, as the name Giocondo implies. But Mona Lisa is just one of many smiling figures in Leonardo's oeuvre, a group that includes both Saint Anne and the Virgin in the Louvre painting [Fig. 2], Saint John the Baptist

[Fig. 6], and the beautiful Leda [Fig. 7]. Some writers have suggested that these smiles derive from Archaic Greek art, from Eastern

prototypes, or from an internally generated ideal. It has also been noted, though it needs reiterating, that the kind of smile found in Leonardo's paintings recalls a formula used in High Gothic art

already in the thirteenth century, appearing increasingly in later

courtly Gothic style; such a smile is found in Netherlandish art of the fifteenth century, including memorable examples in the works of Jan van Eyck [Fig. 8]. The Madonna, in particular, smiles frequently in Gothic art of Northern Europe during the centuries preceding Leonardo, as do angels. This motif, derived from the courtly world of the Middle Ages, was filled with the spirit of gentility and good- humored languor that was overturned in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, when artists became interested in emotional vari-

ety, realistic story-telling, and biting narrative. Leonardo himself was

highly interested in these new trends and worked hard on his repre- sentations of the affetti. Nevertheless, the smile recurs like a leitmo- tif in his art.

It is tempting to characterize these smiles as typical of the Renaissance and progressive thought, arguing, for example, that the soul of Mona Lsa is manifesting itself in outward form, and that this is an example of the humanist ideal of the exterior representation of inner states as discussed by Alberti and many others. In another

approach, Freud sought to rationalize the smile as a reminiscence of the artist's mother, an un-art historical explanation that overlooks the visual tradition from which the motif might have sprung. Perhaps we will never know the root cause of his choice, but whatever the aeti-

ology of the motif, Leonardo had rediscovered an older idea - one found in the Gothic era - that suited his needs. The principle behind Leonardo's smiling figures is that variety is sometimes less important than idealism, and that a contented, harmonious motif can be

imposed artistically as part of a perfected pictorial vision. The ideal

person is relaxed, happy, full of grace.

Chiaroscuro: Lighting in Early Renaissance painting generally consists of even, strong illumination that floods the pictorial world

represented. Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Domenico Veneziano, and others developed a system of (usually) bright lighting based on a careful study of reflected light and color. The result-

ing impression of this system is one of rational clarity. Leonardo tured his back on this system to achieve a romantic, mysterious effect with light and dark that is arguably the most striking aspect of his style. But, again, precedents for this technique survived from the Gothic era until his own lifetime.

The melancholy mood that one frequently finds in the paintings of the late Interational style occurs when the dark, dusky back-

ground is contrasted with the more brightly lit garments and skin of the highlighted figures. The background is blackish or darkly toned, while the lit parts have an inner glow. Conservative works, like Paolo

130


12) Antonio Vivarini, (<The Adoration of the Kings,, Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemaldegalerie.

Uccello's Saint George and the Dragon in London [Fig. 9], comprise this technique of contrasting light and dark. In late Gothic painting of the fifteenth century, a shadowy pall often seems to hang over the

murky setting, offering an opportunity for strong tonal contrasts. Such is the case with the romantic, obscure surroundings found in Pisanello's Vision of Saint Eustace [Fig. 10], a painting which also shows the characteristic distinction of magical patches of light against the darker setting. In this work, the effect is not the product of the darkening of the green pigment (which has occurred to some

extent), but of a conscious distinction between the lit skin and other

bright surfaces with a duller, more matte tonality that forms the back-

ground. This method of contradistinction occurred frequently in International Gothic portraiture, as seen in a Franco-Flemish like- ness of a lady from the early fifteenth century [Fig. 11].

One widely used method to create tonal contrasts in Gothic art is through the use of actual gold. This technique, frowned on by Alberti in his De pictura, allowed a vivid contradistinction between the gold and the surrounding pigmented area, which is frequently dark or otherwise muted. One could cite numerous instances of this

contrasting, and one must choose specimens at random. For exam-

ple, when gold was used for light, as in The Adoration of the Kings by Antonio Vivarini from about 1445 [Fig. 12], the contrast between

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JOSEPH MANCA

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the shadowy field and gilded portions is particularly striking. The jux- taposition of darker tonalities with bright, burnished gold in these Gothic paintings forms a kind of natural chiaroscuro.

Leonardo's system, of course, looks different in many respects from this late Gothic tradition. His light and dark scheme is more three-dimensional and consistent than the ones previously used, and he avoids using gold, relying instead on the application of semi-

transparent oil paints. But despite these variations, Leonardo is faithful to the spirit of his models and departs from the brightly lit worlds of so many progressive, Quattrocento painters. The crepus- cular mood of Leonardo's chiaroscuro produces the minor key of his

14) Leonardo da Vinci, <<Pointing Lady,, (drawing), Windsor, Royal Library.

art, and his magically lit areas of painted flesh recall the juxtaposi- tion of light flesh or gold with a darker ground, as found in the International style [cf. Fig. 13]. The chiaroscuro of Leonardo is late Gothic in mood, form, and emotional attitude, and suggests the

melancholy, spiritual style of the waning Middle Ages as much as the brave new world of Renaissance daylight and brightly reflected color.

132

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15) Leonardo da Vinci, <Maiden with a Unicorn), (drawing), 16) Leonardo da Vinci, <(Madonna and Child,, Munich, Alte Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Pinakothek.

An enigmatic vision: No one is quite sure why a certain beautiful lady in a drawing by Leonardo is pointing [Fig. 14], but her overall physical form itself carries effective meaning. She is light of foot, and has a great, simple sweeping curve running through her body. Her smiling lips are small, her neck long, and her hair waves in the wind. The lady's garments are light, and they flutter around her body. She is, in all this, redolent of the Gothic vision, made by an artist who had studied reality more deeply than any other International artist, and who knew how to blend the spirit of late medievalism with a

knowledge of underlying anatomy. An element of Hellenism might be

present here, and Leonardo was, as we know, impressed by flutter-

ing Greco-Roman draperies, but this particular image is unthinkable without the Gothic precedents that Leonardo knew. This drawing is

a strong reminder of Leonardo's links to traditional, early Quattrocento art, and helps us to see connections with his other, similar creations. For example, his delightful dancing nymphs from a sheet in the Accademia in Venice are an ideal blend of elegant Hellenistic antiquity and nimble, fluttering Gothicism. Another sheet, a Maiden with a Unicorn [Fig. 15], contains traditionalizing style as well as a Gothic subject, the heroine gentle and passive and her head tured in a mannered fashion that is reminiscent of past art.

The Lowlands and Leonardo's early idealism: The Munich Madonna and Child is a chief work of Leonardo's early career and is

pertinent to this essay for its medievalism [Fig. 16]. There are

aspects of oltremontane art of the fifteenth century that served to

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JOSEPH MANCA

inspire the harsh and unadored realists in Italy at that time, yet in the Munich panel Leonardo took from northern art not just micro- scopic realism, but those precious and lovely elements that one associates with the waning Middle Ages: the comforting smile of the Virgin, her rounded, Schone-Madonna type, her passive, demure gaze downwards, the overall vibrant light, the glint of divine spirit on the light-struck carafe, the domestic tranquillity, the delight in the details of real objects, and the subtle joyfulness embodied in the

gentle turs of drapery and the complicated braids in Mary's hair- piece and hair. Together these elements suggest a late Gothic pres- ence likely inspired by the far north.

A refined Leda: The early lessons that Leonardo leared in his borrowings from late Gothic art stayed with him throughout his life. Although Leonardo altered, sublimated, and submerged these ideals at times, they sprang back to life full-blown in later instances. A now- lost Leda by Leonardo is preserved in its general form through several copies that largely agree in the representation of the two main protagonists [cf. Figs. 7 and 17]. The interaction between Leda and her suitor is subtle. Unlike many more vigorous versions of this subject from the Renaissance, Leonardo turns away from narrative clarity and portrays a gentle and suggestive encounter. The coolness and formalism of Leonardo's Leda have been called Mannerist or proto-Mannerist, but there is no reason to look forward in time, especially when the links to more traditional art are in evidence. No figure by Leonardo has a more obvious S-curve running through the form, recalling a widespread Gothic formula. Some have considered Leda's pose to be a kind of abstract study of contrapposto, but actually her weight does not shift as much as might be expected onto the bearing leg. Instead, she is rather floating, more in keeping with her mental pose, half-receptive, but also shying away. The two-figure group is full of undulations, and the curving swan, the swirling curls of her hair, and the fluid pose of Leda herself make this a particularly cursive and archaic composition for Leonardo. (The intricate knotting of her hair is best seen in autograph, preparatory studies; cf. Fig. 7.) The artist has also, in a traditionalizing fashion, pushed the figures flat up against the picture plane. In short, this painting hardly deserves to be seen mainly as a precursor to Mannerism, although the formal qualities, the decorativeness, and the aloof narrative are "mannered." But just as these qualities seem to presage a later art- historical period, so too do they look backward to late Gothic modes and sensibilities. If this picture is indeed a sign of movement toward a Cinquecento maniera, then the painting forms a connection between that style and pre-Renaissance modes.

Drawings and final products: Certain works by Leonardo suggest that he began with a more traditional approach than the one revealed in the final product. It is as if in his drawings he expressed an ingrained Gothicism, while in the paintings he altered the first

17) Copy after Leonardo da Vinci, <<Leda)>, Rome, Galleria Borghese.

idea to achieve more academic, "Renaissance" results. In this vein one thinks of Rudolf Wittkower's observation that Nicolas Poussin's drawings were more Baroque than the colder and more academ- ically classical final renderings in paint. With the Leda, it appears that Leonardo's drawings are even more lithe, delicate, and decorative in the faces and headpieces than the copies show of the final product [Figs. 7 and 17]. In a more certain example, unmediated by copies, we can see the same phenomemon. For the Virgin and Saint Anne in the Louvre the design by the artist for the Saint Anne differs from the finished picture [Figs. 2 and 18]. In comparing the drawing to the painting, Kenneth Clark thought that Leonardo here sacrificed some "freshness and humanity" in the oil painting, but we should

134


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also stress that in the picture the saint has largely lost the elongated neck, thin lips, and smiling compassion in the eyes, all more closely linked than the picture to Gothic traditions. Leonardo has painted Saint Anne according to a more standard idea, although the type in the picture has still not lost the relationship that it bears with late medieval idealism.

Monstrousjokes and drawings: Smiling, nonchalant, suave, and idealized types represent only one aspect of Leonardo's late medievalism; his grotesque monstrosities and bestial jokes were also Gothic in spirit. The monsters that he created in his spare time, such as lizards fixed with "dragon wings," were like medieval gar-

19) Copy after Leonardo da Vinci, <Monster), (drawing), Windsor, Royal Library.

goyles. Only superficially frightening, they were meant to amaze by the fantastic ingenuity that went into their making. The creation of such droleries filled Leonardo's hours later in life, and linked him to the fantastic world of terrific marvels and creatures from Gothic architecture, sculpture, and manuscript illuminations.

Some of Leonardo's grotesques were practical jokes, while

many more took artistic forms. He drew a wide variety of monstrosities, such as the one that has sacs hanging from his jaw, and horns

springing from his forehead [Fig. 19]. In his notes he imagined a fantastic creature with "the head of a mastiff or a hound, the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the brow of a

lion, the temples of an old cock, and the neck of a turtle." Leonardo

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enjoyed designing dragons, as one sees in other drawings [Figs. 20 and 21], and other designs show monstrous mixtures of animals and humans. Through these chimerical creations - all jocular, witty, ter- rible, and ingenious contrivances - Leonardo again stands as a

linking agent between the Middle Ages and Cinquecento Mannerism.

22) Leonardo da Vinci, (<Caricature of a Man with Bushy Hair>, (drawing), Malibu, The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Caricature: Scientific and progressive interpretations are often

given for Leonardo's caricatures [Fig. 22]. First, that he saw in the streets strange looking people, followed them, and recorded their features as they were. This constitutes a naturalistic explanation. Secondly, caricatures were, according to other arguments, lordly and tongue-in-cheek alterations of reality, evidence of a growing sense of consciousness of man's ability to re-arrange Nature; Leonardo was aware of the power of art itself, and expressed this in his bizarre and fanciful heads. Finally, the caricatures are sometimes

regarded as psychological studies, growing out of his sketches of real individuals, and only becoming caricatures as an outgrowth of his penetrating analysis of the human psychology.

Various artists, including Albrecht Durer, Leonardo, Annibale Carracci, and Gianlorenzo Berini, have been credited with invent-

ing or advancing the art of caricature. Again it is necessary to ask:

136


was there anything retrogressive or retrospective about Leonardo's caricatures? The answer is that they go against the idealizing tendencies of the Renaissance, and, like some of his actual monstrosities, they hark back to an older tradition of dr6leries, gargoyles, grotesques, and wild men... in short, to Gothic fantasy. Indeed, dr6- leries appear in Italian manuscripts through the Quattrocento, especially during the first three-quarters of the century, and Leonardo's

"doodling" of his caricatures significantly places them as amusing marginalia in his works, recalling the marginalization of late medieval caricature types. Leonardo did not shy away from idealism in his art, f of course, but there was a part of him that sought the inventiveness, the bizarreness, and the wit found in medieval distortions of Nature.

Clearly, these earlier medieval examples are not always distortions of real types; one is more often struck instead by their caprice and unreal fantasy. A profile of an old lady, wih her jutting lower jaw, flat J

nose, and absurdly high headpiece, is typical of this kind of imagi- native, unnatural invention [Fig. 23]. Similarly, some of his caricatures have the bestial quality reminiscent of his animal grotesques. In his caricatures, we see evidence that Leonardo was looking backward to a more free and capricious age. His caricatures are con-

sciously bizarre, distorting reality and linking him with the fantastic : , and inventive past.

Imagination and action painting: It could be said that Leonardo

developed his own form of "action painting" when he noted that one can see battles, strange faces, costumes, and so forth in stains on a wall or in stones with a variegated pattern, just as one can hear the names of people or familiar words in the sounds of bells. This is a sensuous attitude, the result not only of his genius and artistic abili-

ty, but also of the quality of his mind, which was ever ready for the

play of imagination. This creative process, based on sense, stimula- tion and randomness, differs markedly, for example, from the Platonic idealism of Michelangelo's method. It also contradicts the

stereotypical view of the Renaissance Man as controlled, proud, and rational. Indeed, we might imagine Leonardo as having been satis- fied with the creative nature itself of throwing an ink-soaked sponge against a surface, his mind delighting in the flat, amorphous forms that then came to life in the mind's eye as vivid shapes. It is not nec-

essary to believe him when he said that this process was largely intended to inspire other, larger compositions. His words suggest an emotional and visceral sensibility.

In this creative play, Leonardo again comes across as a medieval man. He delighted in sensuous, decorative surfaces, and marvelous two-dimensional patterns, all this appealing to the artist's

ingenuum. Here again Leonardo forms a bridge between medieval to Mannerist fantasy.

Rocky landscapes: Among the most spectacular aspects of 23) Leonardo da Vinci, (Illl-Matched Couple? (drawing), Leonardo's style are his rocky backgrounds, so prominent in the Mona Windsor, Royal Library.

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JOSEPH MANCA

24) Leonardo da Vinci, View in the Sala delle Asse, Milan, Castello Sforzesco.

Lisa, Virgin of the Rocks, and elsewhere. These landscapes are usu-

ally thought to be a reflection of his interest in geology, and are thus

placed in the context of his scientific proclivities. These mountains and rocks are related, though, to the fantastic, stylized types found in Gothic illuminations and panel paintings. Marvelous mountains continue to appear in painting and illumination in North Italy, a trend fostered by late Gothic miniaturists still active in the later fifteenth centu-

ry. Earlier examples of fantastic rocks and mountains can be found in

landscapes by Pisanello (paintings and medals), Jacopo Bellini [cf.

Fig. 1], Masolino da Panicale, and others from their generation. Even Kenneth Clark, otherwise not disposed to detecting a "Gothic Leonardo," suggested this connection. He noted that the artist's mountains are transformations of the "fantastic rocks of Hellenistic and medieval tradition," seeing the medievalism as blended with a classical source. It is true that Leonardo changed the late Gothic lega- cy left him by infusing it, based on his researches, with a naturalistic and scientific foundation based on his field studies, but - as with

many of his other medieval borrowings - the spirit of the traditional

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25) Leonardo da Vinci, View in the Sala delle Asse, Milan, Castello Sforzesco.

models is still palpably present. The sense of fantasy, escapism, and otherwordliness of Leonardo's rocky backgrounds is very much in the character of medieval art, and as usual contrasts with the rational, regular landscape and mountain backgrounds of those artists, such as Piero della Francesca, who more than Leonardo exemplify a scientific, calculating attitude toward the representation of landscape.

The "Sala delle Asse": One widely acknowledged aspect of Leonardo as a retrospective artist is his Sala delle Asse in Milan.

This room for Lodovico il Moro in the Castello Sforzesco was decorated by Leonardo in the 1490s in the manner of an arboreal garden, adorned with trees and knotted, intertwined ropes, the trunks rising up and the branches spreading out overhead in a manner that some have compared to the columns and ribs of Gothic vaulting [Figs. 24 and 25]. Beyond any architectural comparison, the delight in the flat, verdant, and intricate decoration is in the spirit of late medieval art, recalling murals, tapestries, and easel paintings. There were numerous precedents for this kind of wall decoration in earlier art.

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JOSEPH MANCA

26) Anonymous, North Italian, mid-fifteenth century, Room of the Sibyls, Ferrara, Casa Romei.

Examples of foliated, trellised rooms in Gothic art of the Trecento and early Quattrocento survive in the Palais des Papes in Avignon, the Palazzo Datini in Prato, and the Casa Romei in Ferrara [Fig. 26], and such rooms were widespread in courtly habitations of North

Italy. Because of their location in Florence, especially relevant are two fourteenth-century chambers in the Palazzo Davanzati, one with

foliage and knots designs on the walls, and another with foliage and a decorative, angular strapwork patter on the four walls [Figs. 27 and 28]. Mural painters of the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

replaced the earlier verdant chambers with painted, architectonic structures, such as Andrea Mantegna's Camera Picta, which is formed of a framework of fictive classical architecture. As in

Mantegna's room, Cinquecento murals characteristically comprised painted architecture and views into the distance, sometimes includ-

ing narratives set in well-defined space. Leonardo's arboreal room for Ludovico il Moro belongs to the earlier, pre-Renaissance tradition.

In the Sala delle Asse, Leonardo has, nonetheless, been

regarded as a Renaissance innovator. He is said to be reviving here

primitive tree-architecture as described by ancient Roman writers, to be an arboreal scientist, and to have emphasized, in good High Renaissance fashion, the muscular strength of trees as they burst out from rocks and spread forth. Others see the room, which before the heavy-handed restorations of the nineteenth century was more linear and obviously intertwined, as an intricate symbol of the com-

plexity of Leonardo's own mind, or a reference to the patron. While some of these interpretations for the Sala delle Asse could well contain some truth, it is important not to overlook that in creating this chamber Leonardo looked back at a decorative type found frequently enough in North Italy and Norther Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Despite the scale and some of the dynamic stylistic innovations that he employs, Leonardo depicts a traditionalizing arrangement in the Sala delle Asse. His trees are placed rather

evenly around the room, and there is a delicately balanced, floating golden rope that laces through and around the branches, reaching the Sforza arms - the iconographic highlight of the sala - in the center of the ceiling. He has not created deep space here, but that was not his goal, and he maintains relatively two-dimension and conservative decoration. Even the roots that break forth from the

garden rocks on the lowest level, however energized and apparently characteristic of the High Renaissance they appear, recall the whimsical branches and trees that appear in Gothic paintings and

manuscript borders. Whether or not his patrons actually gave him

specific instructions for painting such a room, Leonardo clearly rel- ished this assignment, and the product must be counted among the last, great examples of interior Gothic mural decoration in Italy.

Millefleurs: Leonardo's floral creations have come under the same kind of interpretation as the Sala delle Asse: they have been "de-Gothicized," seen as manifestations of Leonardo's naturalistic and scientific interests, and read as pictorial equivalents of literary, iconographic ideas. Yet it is restricting to see the rich flowering in the Annunciation in the Uffizi [Fig. 29] as no more than a catalogue of

plant forms and an excuse for an encyclopedic display of iconography; they form a beautiful foreground and are reminiscent of Gothic

tapestries and other decoratively flowered painted works. Even the flowers and plant forms in the Virgin of the Rocks in Paris [Fig. 30] recall this earlier tradition, one being revived by Botticelli and others at this same time. Of course, Leonardo does not always paint floral

settings, as he also depicts rocky, forbidding elements as his back-

drops. Yet, he was attracted to the studies of flowers and plants on a scientific level, and in his art this intellectual interest manifests itself once again in a late Gothic form. In Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra de' Benci [Fig. 31], he places her before a rich backdrop of

foliage, a typical late Gothic device utilized in portraits by Pisanello and others of his generation [Fig. 13]. Moreover, the spray of juniper and other vegetable elements on the reverse of the panel form a

delightful touch [Fig. 32]. One associates such delicacy and fine

quality with European painting of 1400-1430 both north and south of the Alps, in manuscript illuminations as well as in panel painting.

Geometric games: Leonardo's notebooks, in particular his CodexAtlanticus, are filled with simple, flat designs of various kinds. Some of the ones that appear most consistently in his notebooks are

140


27) Anonymous, fourteenth century, bedroom murals, Florence, Palazzo Davanzati (third floor).

designated with various names: curvilateral stars, lunulae, or referred to more generally as geometric games [cf. Figs. 33 and 34]. They are essentially. traditionalizing and conservative: spaceless, simple, and repetitive. They are also endowed with the decorative

quality that one associates with such forms from the fourteenth and

early fifteenth centuries and even earlier. One would have to pick at random from among the numerous instances in which similar element appears in earlier art. Shapes akin to Leonardo's were a well-

established form that appears in decorative arts and architecture from the previous 500 years in Europe, and they endured in decorative contexts well after Leonardo's time. Lunulae appear as oma- ment on Romanesque fumiture, Gothic buildings, and they continued to flourish for centuries as fumiture orament.

One can want to see these as progressive and Renaissance in

spirit, since they are linked to Leonardo's interests in mathematics and geometry (Leonardo planned at one point a study of "continuous

141

JOSEPH MANCA

28) Anonymous, fourteenth century, bedroom murals, Florence, Palazzo Davanzati (second floor).

quantity" that would have comprised an analysis of shapes like those of the curvilateral stars), but they also closely resemble the flat decoration prevalent in Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture. Once again, Leonardo shows himself to be drawn to traditional forms that have little to do with typical Renaissance interests or visual culture. His expressed interests in such "games" were indeed mathematical and geometrical, as we might expect, but as with so

many other aspects of his works the result is visually pleasing and is

tied to traditional medieval forms. As with his notes on shading, the passages in his writings reveal only a precise, mathematical, and rather cold interest in the geometric formation of the lunulae; but the visual result is pleasing and is linked to a whole tradition in the medieval decorative arts, a transformation of obsession with numbers into pretty adomment characteristic of the Gothic age and earlier. We will see other flat, decorative, and traditional decorations in a consideration of Leonardo's knot designs.

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29) Leonardo da Vinci, <<Annunciation)>, Florence, Uffizi.

LEONARDO'S KNOTS

First Considerations: There were several leitmotifs in Leo- nardo's art. Some, such as the representation of varied and studied emotional expression, three-dimensional shadowing, and the ren-

dering of perspective, are consistent with the attitudes that Leonardo shared with progressive artists and theorists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But Leonardo also had a Gothic side to his work; he was a transitional artist, and many aspects of his life and art make best sense when regarded as manifestations of the late medieval mind. Among the several retrospective leitmotifs of his art were his knots, which appear in many forms in his artistry. Leonardo was fascinated, almost obsessed, with knots. Vasari noted the Leonardo used to '"aste his time" with the trifling task of designing ornate knots, and they appear in a series of engravings that are inscribed with the name of an "Academy" dedicated to his name

[Figs. 35-38 and 40; cf. also Fig. 39]. In the 1480s, Leonardo recorded in a notebook that he owned knot designs of Donato Bramante. When he left Florence for Milan in 1482 he had in his possession some of his own designs of "many drawings for knots." Throughout his career, in sheets that can be dated in a span from five decades,

Leonardo drew knots of various kinds and for numerous purposes. (These knots are most often referred to in Italian as nodi, or sometimes, as Leonardo called them, gruppi a groppi). Knots appear in

drawings by Leonardo for floor tiles [Fig. 41], sword handles, ceiling decorations, tooled leather and metal work, and in many abstract, independent studies and doodles [Figs. 42 and 43]. Various nodiare also embroidered along the edges of garments of many figures in Leonardo's paintings, from the Mona Lisa to the Salvator Mundi

[copy; Fig. 44] to the Cecilia Gallerani [Fig. 45]. As we have seen, knotted ropes also appear among the branches in the Sala delle Asse [Figs. 24 and 25].

The knot engravings: form and authorship: Before discussing these knots in general, it would be useful to consider certains

aspects of his knot engravings, which among Leonardo's invention of this type are his most striking and well-known. There are six of them, and they survive in a very limited number of impressions. Albrecht Direr was attracted to these designs, and he copied the whole series, embellishing them with foliate additions; these wood

engravings by the German artist helped to make the essential knots

designs known across Europe [cf. Fig. 39].

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JOSEPH MANCA

31) Leonardo da Vinci, <<Ginevra de' Benci>, Washington, National Gallery of Art.

30) Leonardo da Vinci, <Virgin of the Rocks,, Paris, Musee du Louvre.

Like the designs elsewhere in his oeuvre, the knots in Leonardo's engravings are non-representational, not intended to be vines, twigs, serpents, and so forth. The threads themselves are

essentially flat, and have only the barest indication of three-dimen-

sionality produced by a black line on one side. Each of Leonardo's

engravings includes a main circular element enclosing the intricate

designs, and four separate comer decorations are also in knots. These main circular sections are approximately 20 centimeters across in the six engravings. Each engraving includes a puzzling reference in abbreviated Latin to an "Academy of Leonardo da Vinci," a matter that we will return to shortly.

The question of Leopardo's authorship of these knots is undoc- umented and should not be taken for granted, although the attribu- tion to him is usually assumed. Still, it does seem, despite any doubts that one might have, that Leonardo was responsible for the invention of these sheets, even if he did not cut the plates himself. It would be tedious to indicate the Morellian< similarities between the elements of these engravings and Leonardo's autograph paintings and drawings of knots. Suffice it to say that looping ends of rope in the Sala delle Asse, the thin, abstract knots on his embroideries in

paintings, and the form of knots found in his drawings strongly suggest that Leonardo designed the six engravings, all characterized by similar turnings, density, and thinness of the interwoven lines. There

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is no documentary evidence for this, but there is one sixteenth-cen-

tury source, Giorgio Vasari, who attributed the design of the engravings to Leonardo. A look at a knot drawn into his CodexAtlanticus by another hand will serve to illustrate the different results that can come about by an attempt to imitate his ideas [Fig. 46].

The threads in the main part of each engraving are arranged in a circle with elements around it divided into axes in multiples of 6 or a There is a very wide array of designs by Leonardo based on this division of a circular form, from designs for water wheels and lifting devices [Fig. 47], "lunulae" or "curvilateral star" decorations [cf. Figs. 33 and 34], ecclesiastical floor plans, and even studies of shading [Fig. 48]. This is not to say that the engravings are necessarily linked to these other designs in idea, only that they stand as further evidence that the same person who invented the overall form of these

designs also authored the knot engravings. While the invention that appears in the series can be ascribed

to Leonardo, it is possible that the execution of the engravings is the work of pupils or of executors of the incised plates. It could be that some assistants who fancied that they belonged to an "Academy of

Leonardo da Vinci" - which they did in the sense that, like pupils of the philosophers of antiquity, they followed the teachings and instructions of a master thinker and teacher - aided in producing the engravings. Pupils or followers of Leonardo created a rather cold

bust-length image of a young woman with a similar "academic"

inscription [Fig. 49]. Such assistants might, as is often the case in collaboration, be responsible for certain aspects of the production of Leonardo's engravings, from the size of the images, to certain

aspects of the modeling and design, to the choice of the type and color of the paper, and other minor aspects of the presentation, but there is little reason to doubt that it was Leonardo who made some kind of master drawings that were tumed into the six engravings by collaborators.

Analyses of the engravings: The engravings of gruppi have been given a broad number of interpretations concerning their

meaning and possible function. Characteristically for the state of Leonardo scholarship, they are usually considered as expressing some humanistic, scientific, philosophical, or other progressive

145

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ideas. For example, Ananda Coormoraswamy has argued that the six engravings of Leonardo are symbols of the universe. He stated that as they are made up of one thread each; they signify the unity of all creation, a conceit that he traces to other cultures and diverse

philosophies, citing references to knots by Homer, Plato, Dante, and

many others. Similarly, Franco Berdini, basing his judgments on the notion the knots are formed of one line that has no beginning or end, regarded the engravings as symbols of the thread of human destiny, the chain of existence, and the cosmos itself.

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The problem with these interpretations is that the main, central

parts of the engravings are not formed of one line: even the larger designs themselves (not counting the four comer embellishments) are made up of several patterns that overlap each other. Each

engraving has a different number of separate, endless threads that intertwine with the others; the numbers of these threads are 6 [Fig. 35], 2 [Fig. 36], 6 [Fig. 37], 31 [Fig. 38], 21 [Fig. 39], and 18 [Fig. 40]. There is apparently no consistent numerological symbolism intended here - that is, no meaningful standard determining the number of threads. Similarly, the central designs come to a differing number of points or protruding turnings of the knots on the perimeter. These are sometimes based on multiples of 6 (6 or 12) and sometimes on multiples of 8 (8, 16, and 32), but there again seems to be no basic

numerological principle involved beyond Leonardo's preference for the division of circular forms into these particular numbers. It would be exciting to find some mathematical, astrological, or musicological

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symbolism here, but no such intentions appear to be at work. One must conclude that the appeal of the engravings must be sought in their visual qualities. At any rate, the knots surely are not formed of

single lines, and therefore do not connote or suggest the eternity of a divinely unending thread.

It is tempting indeed to find a cosmic significance in knot decorations, but whether in the works of Leonardo or others, it often tums out that the basis is lacking for such an interpretation. The knotting pattern in Raphael's altar in the Disputa could reasonably be thought of as allusive to eternity, order, and earthly harmony, since the altar links Heaven with the simple geometry of earthly existence. But the

37) Leonardo da Vinci, c<Knot, (engraving), London, British Museum.

motif appears frequently in Raphael's paintings, as it does in the works of other Umbrian artists of the time, including those of his teacher, Perugino. Similarly, in Mantegna's Madonna of Victory (Pars, Louvre) a knot design hovers over the Virgin's head as if, it would seem, it were some kind of celestial symbol. Yet Mantegna also used similar knot patterns on the car of Julius Caesar in the

Hampton Court Triumphs of Caesar, on the oriental carpet in his Introduction of the Cult of Cybele to Rome (London, National

Gallery), and on the fictive cloth hangings in the Camera Picta in Mantua. Similarly, knots appear in Leonardo's oeuvre in many different contexts, and any theory that attempts to give too specific an

147

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explanation for them all will inevitably miss the mark in some

respect, since the contexts are different for each application of the

design. Nor is there any written evidence on his part to suggest that the engravings or any of his other gruppi designs have any lofty iconographic significance.

On a different level, some have given practical explanations of the actual use of Leonardo's engravings. They have been thought to be entrance tickets to philosophical disputations, or as prizes for

winning such a debate, as the reference to an "academy" on some of them seems to allude to the existence of an intellectual institution that might have sponsored such an event. It has even been suggested that the discussions were held in the Sala delle Asse, where similar knots appear as ropes in the painted decoration [cf. Figs. 24 and 25]. But there is no evidence that there was any formal, regular "Academy of Leonardo da Vinci." It is most probable, as Hind and others argued long ago, that there was, at most, an informal gather- ing of artists near to Leonardo who perhaps met from time to time and who liked to imagine that they constituted an academy. Nor it is

39) Albrecht Durer, after Leonardo da Vinci, <<Knot,, (woodcut), Washington, National Gallery of Art.

likely that these engravings, bulky as they are for such a purpose, would have been useful as entrance tickets of any sort.

More likely is the notion that these engravings were meant to serve as models for the decoration of books, since there are numerous book-coverings from the Quattrocento that are decorated with knots of one type or another, often with a main section adomed with four separate comer knots. This is not a stylistic observation, but it is one that throws a plausible light on their function. Still, the question of why Leonardo was interested in this form of decoration over another remains unanswered; nor does the explanation account for the numerous other knots that appear in his oeuvre. In any case, the connection of Leonardo with books and printing seems to be forcing a kind of literary or humanistic explanation of the knots. After all, there are no known early bookcovers that are based on Leonardo's

148

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41) Leonardo da Vinci, <Design for a Floor Tile)> (drawing), Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex Atlanticus, f. 701 r.

40) Leonardo da Vinci, <(Knot> (engraving), Washington, National Gallery of Art.

knot engravings, and no documented evidence or indication that any have ever been made.

The knot engravings have also been thought to refer to the artist's own name, the "vincoli" (knots or fetters; "vincire" = to fetter or knot) acting like a signature and personal emblem. Again, this

suggests that the design communicates a progressive and typically Renaissance idea, namely, an aggrandizing and proud expression of the Self that combines the creator's identity with the artwork itself. Yet knots frequently appear in the works of other artists, even those not from Vinci, and this theory thus unnecessarily isolates Leonardo. Nor does it consider the variety of the nodi within Leonardo's own oeuvre, or the style and aesthetic qualities of his knot drawings or

engravings. The notion of the knots as signatures cannot be refuted, and it could well contain some truth, but it is rather narrow, occupy-

ing only a part of the overdeterminate response that would account for the broader picture. Particularly, this explanation does not

attempt to account for the origins of the obvious aesthetic delight that Leonardo took in designing such forms, and why they appear so often as doodles in his notebooks, where any idea of a public signature would be unnecessary.

It has been pointed out that medieval artists sometimes signed their names in labyrinthine decorations. Several architects of Gothic cathedrals used such devices, thought to have symbolized the

labyrinth of Daedalus. It would be easy to exploit this apparent sim-

ilarity in a study of a Gothic Leonardo, but the argument is uncon-

vincing. At any rate, despite the medieval context of this practice, the connection of this usage with Leonardo again could arguably constitute a progressive idea: that he was identifying himself as a creator, that he was insistent on "signing" his works, and that he was like the classical Daedalus in his labyrinthine inventiveness. Yet, it is important to emphasize that no knots by Leonardo form actual labyrinths. Moreover, only his engravings - with their rounded form and "signatures" in the middle - are even superfically close to Gothic

149

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labyrinth signatures (for example, his garment border designs have a very different visual effect). The knots of Leonardo do knot form mazes, and the connection with Daedalus is off the mark.

One could argue that knots of the later Quattrocento, including Leonardo's, were made in imitatione antiquitatis, inspired by white vine motifs, believed in the Renaissance to reflect an ancient Roman motif. But knots appear in the arts of many different periods and countries, and Leonardo surely knew Westem medieval and Islamic knots, just as he was aware of knotted covers for humanistic books. Knots had a long history before Leonardo, appearing in numerous forms, including Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts, Islamic decorations, and Carolingian and Romanesque manuscript illuminations. Most

43) Leonardo da Vinci, <<Knot Designs, (drawing), Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex Atlanticus, f. 1066r.

importantly, the intertwining motifs so favored for supposed all'antica manuscripts in the Quattrocento were, as J.J.G. Alexander put it, norther and medieval rather than truly classical. Indeed, by the sixteenth century it became clear that elaborate and intricate knots were not a genuine part of classical decoration, and the motif went into disuse as an all'antica element. To be sure, it is of great interest that this white vine tradition was thought to be based on classical ideas, but it is also telling that these fifteenth-century illuminators, and Leonardo, too, were actually imitating medieval decorations.

It is significant that Quattrocento artists thought that the white vine motif was a classical one, but more telling still is that they engaged in a practice that was medieval. The question of the con-

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tinuation of decorative motifs from the Middle Ages through the Early Renaissance indicates that there was a continuity of taste from one

period to the other. Leonardo shared in this continuing tradition, as did many of his contemporaries. It is, in any study of Leonardo, highly significant that knots appear in the art of Verrocchio and his circle, and a delight in the intertwining of ropes appears in Verrocchio's

sculpture as well, in the tomb of Giovanni and Piero de' Medici in the Old Sacristy. Leonardo surely received from Verrocchio an early interst in elegant, interlacing design. Elsewhere in Italy, the idea of knots circulated most widely among painters who retained some lin-

gering Gothic elegance in their works, including Verrocchio,

Leonardo, Pinturicchio, and Raphael. Even the rather inelegant Mantegna was drawn to knots, suggesting that the survival of a traditional, linear patter was widespread indeed in the fifteenth centu-

ry. h Andrea's art, the energizing linearity of knot pattems corre-

sponds to some (if not all) aspects of his liney design mentality, and serves as a reminder that the linearity of Quattrocento painting is not unrelated to the rhythmic contours and flowing design of medieval art. This attraction to linear design greatly lessened during the

Cinquecento, replaced by a compositional approach based more on mass and form than on lively line. Again, as in so many other

aspects of his style, Leonardo stood at the center of this time of

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change, a transition point from old to new, with a large part of his artistic personality rooted in tradition.

In short, the supposed connection between Quattrocento and antique knot designs is less important than the spirit of design that lies behind it. What matters is not the false idea that the knot was used in antiquity, but that (we can say in historical retrospect) fif-

teenth-century artists were attracted to the same motif as their medieval predecessors or their Muslim contemporaries. Knots of the Quattrocento, including Leonardo's, can be viewed for their delicacy, graceful linearity, and sense of decoration, ideals that had passed from the Gothic era to the time of Leonardo. The fragile, clever, curvilinear knots used by Quattrocento artists are not inconsistent

47) Leonardo da Vinci, ((Designs for Water Wheels), (drawing), Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex Atlanticus, f. 1062r.

with the spirit of Gothic forms and represent the application of medieval and Islamic traditions.

The spirit of Leonardo's knots: Leonardo's knots - wherever they appear in his art, from doodles to garment borders to engravings - might not have a determinate iconographic meaning or a specific physical function that links them to progressive humanistic circles, but their very visual appearance is indicative and allusive. First, they are decorative: his gruppiare delicate, linear, and fragile. Like late Gothic drapery, ribbons, and vegetation, knots twist and turn in a graceful, curvilinear manner. Unlike the many twig-like knots designed by some artists, Leonardo's are non-representational, and defy attempts at verbal translation and iconographic analysis. The notion of beauty as an entity from which nothing can be added or take away is at odds with Leonardo's knotty inventions. Knots, especially on garments, are quite expendable and unnecessary, and in their use reveal a decorative mentality. They are delightfully orna- mental, and are fully consistent with Leonardo's links to Gothic and other medieval art. His knots are not overtly geometricizing or three- dimensional, and go against the more academic emphasis on plas- tic and regular shapes that appears elsewhere in his art and writings.

Leonardo's knot designs are witty. They are literally intricate, and appeal to the mind of those who would crack puzzles. His

designs, composed of webs of abstract lines, reveal his own inge-

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nius inventiveness; indeed, Leonardo's knots are generally more intricate and detailed than those of his Quattrocento colleagues. While this ingenuum approaches a Renaissance mentality, such cleveress is characteristic of the lighter aspects of Gothic design. The nodiengravings have all of the delicacy and flat abstraction of a

tracery window, of an arabesque, or of a Hibemo-Saxon carpet page. Leonardo's works convey the sense of delicate line, unity, and

organic order that appears in late Gothic architectural plans [Fig. 50], the patters on Islamic ceramics, or knots in early medieval manu-

scripts [Fig. 51]. We have seen that similar patterns were used in late Gothic murals in the Palazzo Davanzati [Figs. 27 and 28], a Trecento Florentine expression of the design principles that had flourished for centuries and which would achieve a spectacular, late

flowering in the hands of Leonardo in the Sala delle Asse. Like medieval illuminators and Arab designers, Leonardo invented his own intricate rules, joining the ranks of his decorative predecessors. He lived at a time of transition in Italy, and he was among those of his contemporaries who fostered a flowering of Gothic lyricism, lin-

earity, grace, and wit. The representation of knots well expresses the overall artistic

intentions of Leonardo's life, revealing his fascination with abstract forms and his love of regularity and ordered principles. Moreover, a

penchant for the beautifully complex takes an especially graceful expression in his nodi. Like late Gothic architecture, one senses in

49) Circle of Leonardo da Vinci, <<Profile of a Young Woman>, (engraving), London, British Museum.

Leonardo's knots the underlying, ordered structure that expresses itself in a complicated, intricate intertwining of delicate and fragile forms. One cannot help but be impressed in viewing his gruppiwith their sheer beauty, delightful complication, and the loveliness of their turn of line. The knots are not anomalies in his style; rather, they epit- omize it.

The knot engravings, in their flat intricacy, bear a superficial sim-

ilarity to the paving pattern designed by Michelangelo for the

Capitoline Hill, a comparison often pointed out in the literature [Fig. 52]. Rather than see both as bearing a cosmological symbolism (more likely for Michelangelo's work than for Leonardo's), it would be more fruitful to compare the formal qualities of the two.

Michelangelo's patter is aggressive, with the explosion of a jagged- edged starburst around the statue of Marcus Aurelius, and an irreg- ular undulation and radiating movement of the other lines. The

paving of the Capitoline Hill perfectly encapsulates the expression- ism of Michelangelo's style, consisting of sharp points and a baffling series of odd shapes. Leonardo's knot engravings also capture the

153

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essence of his manner. As in his architectural drawings and figural compositions, there is a great central section to each, and the small- er parts play off the large form. Above all, the intertwining of the lines reveals his sense for lithe harmony and intricate interlacing, showing his suavity and elegance.

The principle of the knot infiltrated Leonardo's overall style. It

might seem that knots are an oddity in his oeuvre, because of their flatness, lack of representationalism, and opposition to the notion of

dynamic grouping. Yet his knots constitute an emblem of his style, not just because they remind us of the numerous Gothic and decorative features of his art, but because their formal principles appear throughout his works. Vasari commented on the difficilissimo and beautiful invention of the knot engravings, and certainly in his paintings Leonardo often represents a difficult intertwining of figures that is carried out in an easy, beautiful manner. Such an intertwining appears in the Virgin and Saint Anne in the Louvre [Fig. 2] and in the

Burlington House cartoon (London, National Gallery), where the

working together of figures suggests the idea of the knot, but is exe-

51) Insular, c. 680, Book of Durrow, <Lion>>, Dublin, Trinity College, MS 57, f. 191v.

cuted most gracefully. Vasari had the perspicacity to call the Battle of the Standard in the Battle of Anghiari a "gruppo," as the soldiers and horses are tightly knotted together. Leonardo took the idea of the knot - intricate, clever, and decorative - and worked it into his entire aesthetic output. Above all, but in a point not to be belabored here, in the studies of the movements of water, in the braiding of Leda's hair [cf. Fig. 7], and in drawings and paintings of vegetation, one can see the principle of the knot. Leonardo himself compared the movement of water to the knotting of hair, evidence that this form was embedded in his scientific as well as artistic thinking. In sum, Leonardo's knots are fully consistent with his other art, serving not

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CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY

Gothic in the Renaissance: The great revolution of the 1410s and 1420s, expressed in the tough, realistic, heroic art of Donatello, Nanni di Banco, and Masaccio, was not to everyone's taste, and it can hardly be expected that all artists would have followed a course

so narrowly conceived. There were great historical reasons that the Gothic manner developed and flourished as it did, and it is unlikely that the movement would have been entirely wiped out by the innovations of the early fifteenth century.

In his expression of traditionalizing art forms, Leonardo was not

acting alone, and can be thought of as part of the Gothic revival and survival in later Quattrocento Italy. Indeed, as part of his own training, a lyrical and conservative element was handed down to him from Verrocchio that included smiling figures, small lips, lyrical linearity, and a pleasure in intricate embellishments. Also, Leonardo's person-

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ality seemed inclined toward the essential elegance and grace of the Gothic style. It is hardly surprising that he rejected the tough and dry style of the Early Renaissance artists, including the manner of con-

temporaries such as Antonio del Pollaiuolo. Leonardo was one whose circumstances, training, and personality led him to traditional solutions, although he was also attracted to creating new ideas. Leonardo apparently found many aspects of his contemporary art and society unsatisfactory, perhaps even common and vulgar, and he revitalized art by drawing on the best of the not-too-distant past. To the painters and sculptors who strove too hard, whose foreshorten-

ings 'Were as ugly to look at as they were difficult to execute" (Vasari), and whose technique was hard and stony, Leonardo had a response: he built his art on the soft surface texture, romantic chiaroscuro and dark backgrounds, graceful smiles, and decorative foliage of Gothic art. He instilled his works with many other late medieval features, from clever, intricate knot decorations to caricatured types and, overall, he developed a graceful, serene style that had the idealism and

tranquillity of an earlier generation's art. Leonardo looked backwards, and thereby bestowed grace on himself.

Leonardo was not the only one to preserve or revive the past in the Quattrocento - that would be the subject of a larger and

Acknowledgments: I wish to thank the American Council of Learned Societies for a grant-in-aid that provided opportunities for research on this essay. I have also received generous support from Judith Brown, the Dean of Humanities at Rice University.

The following is not a complete bibliography, but rather a selection of reading for some of the issues dealt with in this essay.

Leonardo's technique: There is a considerable amount of literature on Leonardo's technique. Two important studies dealing with broad issues concerning his theory and practice of color and light are John Shearman, "Leonardo's Colour and Chiaroscuro," Zeitschrift for Kunsgeschichte, XXV (1962), pp. 13-47, and Claire J. Farago, "Leonardo's Color and Chiaroscuro

longer story - but he is the most spectacular because of his

greatness and because the critical, art-historical response has turned almost exclusively towards his progressive and innovative

aspects, in both his art and his writings. A re-evalution of Leonardo's life helps us to dismantle the "paradigm shift" mentali-

ty that rules in art history, and helps us to see the bridges that con- nect the Gothic, Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, and Mannerist art. Above all, it allows us to see that the classical revival of the Quattrocento should share attention with the hardy survival of medieval art forms.

Frederick Hartt argued that the Early Renaissance began in

painting when Masaccio represented on the walls of the Brancacci

Chapel the realistic, practical, coarse, and heroic common man of Florence in the 1420s, showing him as tough enough to resist the attacks occurring at the time against the Florentine Republic. If that is so, then Leonardo can be said to have helped put an end to that form of Early Renaissance art. His figures are not drawn from life, but from an idealized vision that he shared with artists who were artistic rivals and contemporaries of Masaccio. Leonardo was pow- erfully drawn to the Gothic style, as he was no man in the street, and no mere calculating Florentine.

Reconsidered: The Visual Force of Painted Images," Art Bulletin, LXXIII, no. 1 (March 1991), pp. 63-88. It is sometimes asserted that Leonardo and other High Renaissance artists were aware of a dark atramentum (varnish) applied in antiquity, as described by Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 35.36. 79-80), who noted that Apelles toned down his colors with a murky, final glazing (see E.H. Gombrich, "Dark Varnishes: Variations on a Theme from Pliny," Burlington Magazine, CIV [Jan. 1962], pp. 51-55, and his "Controversial Methods and Methods of Controversy," Burlington Magazine, CV [March 1963], pp. 90-93; see also K. Weil-Garris Posner, Leonardo and Central Italian Art, 1515-1550, New York, 1974, pp. 18-22). Certainly it is possible that Leonardo thought that his shadowing was done in imitatione antiquitatis, but the passage from Pliny is open to interpretation and the similarity of the ancient method to Leonardo's is

156


unclear. There were more recent precedents for Leonardo's murky veil and chiaroscuro contrasts in Late Gothic painting, although Leonardo's light and dark contrasts are far greater and more carefully considered than anything found in late medieval painting. Leonardo's reading of Pliny or other ancient authors might possibly have helped him to develop his light and dark technique, but he could have arrived at his final results through looking back at late Gothic models and enhancing the results with his extensive natural studies of chiaroscuro.

An enigmatic vision: For a recent catalogue entry on the pointing lady see Jane Roberts, in Leonardo e Venezia, ed. Giovanni Nepi Scire and Pietro Marani, [exh. cat., Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, 1992], Milan, 1992, cat. 43, with bibliography. For a catalogue entry on the drawing of dancing women in the Gallerie dell'Accademia see cat. 44 by Roberts in Leonardo e Venezia, cat. 44.

Smiles in Leonardo's art: References to the possible Gothic origins of Leonardo's smiling figures are widespread; see, for example, Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, Harmondsworth, 1959 [revised from 1939], p. 112, and Roy McMullen, Mona Lisa: The Picture and the Myth, Boston, 1976, pp. 76- 78). Paul Baroisky, Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari, University Park, 1991, pp. 62-64, emphasized the play on her name as an allusion to her jocundity.

The "Sala delle Asse": There have been a number of studies of the room by Leonardo in the Castello Sforzesco, offering varied and sometimes arcane iconographic interpretations of the room. None of the various interpretations necessarily contradicts an analysis of the room as a characteristic work of late Gothic decoration, although it is noteworthy that the traditional nature of the room is often overlooked in favor of discussion of its contextual or iconographic significance. An important early study of the room, with numerous references to other knot designs by Leonardo, is Luca Beltrami, Leonardo da Vinci e la "Sala delle Asse" nel Castello di Milano, Milan, 1902. Another early study appears in Woldemar von Seidlitz, Leonardo da Vinci. Der Wendepunkt der Renaissance, Berlin, 1909, I, pp. 251-256. Joseph Gantner, Leonardos Visionen von der sintflut und vom untergang der welt, Bem, 1958, pp. 133-136 suggested that the complexly intertwined decoration possibly refers to the eternity of existence and expresses an organic sense of nature. Eva Borsch-Supan favored an arcane reading of the room, suggesting various cosmological and Neoplatonic symbolism (Garten, Landschafts- und Paradiesmotive im Innenraum, Berlin, 1967, pp. 244-251); her study includes mention of earlier arboreal rooms in Italy (pp. 219-232). Volker Hoffmann, "Leonardos Ausmalung der Sala delle Asse im Castello Sforzesco," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XVI (1977), pp. 51-62 interpreted the room as a "locus amoenus" that is redolent of antiquity, like Tempe. That the room is formed of "moro" trees and is therefore an emblem of Ludovico il Moro, is argued by Pietro Marani, "Leonardo e le colonne ad tronchos: tracce di un programma iconologica per Ludovico il Moro," Raccolta vinciana, XXI (1982), pp. 103-120. The Sala delle Asse is interpreted as a reference to the silk industry by Dawson Kiang, "Gasparo Visconti's Pasitea and the Sala delle Asse," Achademia Leonardi Vinci, II (1989), pp. 101-109; he identified the trees as mulberry and interpreted the golden rope as a reference to spun silk threads. John Moffitt, in "Leonardo's Sala delle Asse and the Primordial Origins of Architecture," Arte lombarda, XCII-XCIII, nos. 1-2 (1990), pp. 76-90, argued that Leonardo was illustrating Vitruvius' idea that early men lived in huts made of trimmed saplings and twigs woven together; this had been suggested earlier by Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, Cambridge

[Mass.], 1981, pp. 181-189. Kemp's study stressed the political symbolism of the room, with its references to the Sforza in its trees (recalling family emblems) and tablets with inscriptions recording important historical events. Since the room contains knot decorations, the Sala delle Asse is discussed in much of the literature cited below for "Knots."

Geometrical designs: Remarks on Leonardo's geometric designs appear in Pedretti's commentary in The Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci, New York, 1978, passim, and Leonardo all'Ambrosiana: II Codice Atlantico. I Disegni di Leonardo e dell sua cerchia, Milan, 1982, by Augusto Marinoni and Luisa Cogliati Arano (cats. 20, 22, 32, and 33, pp. 34-35 and 42-43). For Leonardo's geometric games see Gigetta delli Regoli, "Order and Fantasy: Fra' Domenico de' Fossi and Leonardo," Achademia Leonardi Vinci, I, 1988, pp. 11-15; she noted that in the early Cinquecento that geometrical design lost ground to figurative decoration. For Leonardo's geometric designs in his last years see Carlo Pedretti, "Leonardo da Vinci: Manuscripts and Drawings of the French Period," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, LXXVI (Nov. 1970), pp. 285- 318. For more on Leonardo's geometric games, see James E. McCabe, "Leonardo's Curvilateral Stars," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 83 (March 1974), pp. 179-186, with an analysis of the mathematical basis of the stars, based on a study of Leonardo's own notes on the subject; see also McCabe's "Lunona and Cornilunoli," Achademia Leonardi Vinci, 1, 1988, pp. 49-59.

Caricature: A.E. Popham (The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, New York, 1945, p. 43) noted that caricature was a genre that "a certain kink in Leonardo's nature induced him to develop." Ernst Gombrich saw the grotesques of Leonardo's as expressions of his belief in the power of art (see The Heritage of Apelles, Ithaca, 1976, pp. 57-75). For more discussion of some of Leonardo's caricatured figures, see Kenneth Clark, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (London, 1968), "Profiles, Caricatures, and Grotesques," in vol.1, pp. xxlii - xliv; Luisa Cogliati Arano, 'Teste di carattere da Leonardo a Giorgione," i Leonardo e Venezia, ed. Giovanni Nepi Scire and Pietro Marani, Milan, 1984, pp. 308-333; and Flavio Caroli, Leonardo: Studi di fisiognomia, Milan, 1990, passim.

Knots:The literature on Leonardo's designs of knots is quite large. In addition to the references cited in this section, see the bibliography for the Sala delle Asse above. Much of the literature on Leonardo's knots refers to the six engravings. In an early study, Girolamo d'Adda, "Essai bibliographique sur les modeles de lin- gerie, dentelles et tapisseries," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XVII (Nov. 1864), pp. 434-436 discussed the engravings in the context of cloth patterns of the time. Ananda Coomaraswamy, 'The Iconography of DOrer's Knots and Leonardo's Concatenation," Art Quarterly, VII (1944), pp. 109-128, mistakenly argued that in the engravings "one line is used to form the whole design" (p. 118). Whether or not one saw these engravings formed of one or several lines, it is common to see them as symbolic of eternity; see, for example, Joanne Snow- Smith, The Salvator Mundi of Leonardo da Vinci (Seattle, 1982, pp. 52 and 63), who cited knot designs by Mantegna, Raphael, and Leonardo as suggestive of the eternal. The misperception about a "single thread" has a long history. Vasari, writing about at least one of the designs for the knot engravings, noted that Leonardo wasted his time ("perse tempo") making "gruppi di corde con ordine", and that at least one of these knots was engraved and had at its center the inscription "Leonardus Vinci Academia" (Vite, Florence, 1976, ed. Barrocchi and Bettarini, IV, p. 18; the reference appears from the 1568 edition). Vasari implied that the engraving that he saw was made of one single line drawn continuously from beginning to end; this error has been repeated by many later writers. G. Egger, "Zur analyse der sechs Knoten von Albrecht DOrer,"

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Das Antiquariat, VIII (August 1952), pp. 28-30 emphasized that the engravings are not formed of single lines, but of a number of overlapping continuous threads. For Leonardo's engravings, see also no. 7 in Leonardo e I'incisione, ed. Clelia Alberici, Milan, 1984, exh. cat. Milan, Castello Sforzesco, January-April 1984), p. 21. Carlo Pedretti, "L'organizzazione simbolica dello spazio nelle cartelle dell'Accademia Vinciana," in La prospettiva rinascimentale, ed. M. Emiliani, Florence, 1980, pp. 261-266, emphasized the rapport between Leonardo's engravings and pavement decorations designed by himself and others. Marcel Brion, "Les Noeuds de Leonard de Vinci et leur signification," in L'art e la pensee de Leonard de Vinci: Communications du Congres International du Val de Loire (7-12 Juillet 1952), Paris-Algiers, 1953-1954, pp. 69-81, found models for knots in medieval art, and concludes that Leonardo's knot engravings and Sala delleAssewere intended as labyrinthine references to Daedalus; see also his "Le theme de I'entrelacs et du labyrinthe dans I'oeuvre de Leonard de Vinci," Revue d'esthetique, V (1952), pp. 18-38. Berdini's comments on Leonardo's knot engravings appear in his La Gioconda chi e, Rome, 1989, pp. 25-33. In addition to the analysis summa- rized above in the text, he noted connections between the knot engravings and the cabala, seeing in the 32 points of the outer parts of some of the circles reference to the '32 Secret Roads of Wisdom." A recent, in-depth discussion of the knots of Leonardo in his engravings and elsewhere is found in Carmen Bambach Cappel, "Leonardo, Tagliente, and Durer: 'La scienza del far di groppi,"' in Achademia Leonardi Vinci, IV (1991), pp. 72-95. The article contains an extensive bibliography on the subject. She convincingly connects Leonardo's knot designs to a wider revival in Northern Italy of traditional designs and in an interest in Islamic moreschi; see also her footnote 5, pp. 73-74 for literature on earlier and contemporary knots designs in the history of art. She regarded the engravings to be most useful as models for pupils, not as tools in formal instruction, but as learing aids for various kinds of patterns. For other discussion of Leonardo as a designer of knots see Carmen Bambach Cappel and Lucy Whitaker, 'The Lost Knots," Achademia Leonardi Vinci, IV (1991), pp. 107-110. See also Zdzistaw Zygulski, Jr., "Costume Style and Leonardo's Knots in the Lady with an

Ermine," in Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519): "Lady with an Ermine", ed. Jozef Grabski and Janusz Walek, Vienna and Cracow, 1991, pp. 24-27, with reference to exotic aspects of the costume in Leonardo's portrait in Cracow, and with more general remarks on Leonardo's knots and his reliance on Moorish and Turkish patterns. Discussion of the influence of Leonardo's knots designs on other artists appears in Carlo Pedretti, "Nec ense," Achademia Leonardi Vinci, III (1990), pp. 82-90. Play on the words "vinci" and "vincoli" as a possible explanation of the knots by Leonardo is discussed by A. M. Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engraving in the British Museum, London, 1910, 405, followed by G. Goldscheider, Leonardo da Vinci the Artist, Oxford, 1943, pp. 6-7. Goldscheider also suggested that the engravings formed tickets or prizes for philosophical disputations at the Sforza court (p. 6). The relationship between the knots of Leonardo, especially the engravings, and book design is frequently made. In a catalogue by Jay Levenson, he notes that the shape is most suitable for use on book covers as they were in numerous contemporary and earlier works (Jay Levenson, Konrad Ober- huber, and Jaquelyn Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1973, pp. 283-285). As for the supposed all'antica nature of the knot designs for book covers and margins, see J.J.G. Alexander, Italian Renaissance Illuminations, New York, 1977, pp. 12-13, and the essential Otto Pacht, "Notes and Observations on the Origin of Humanistic Book-Decoration," in Fritz SaxI, 1890-1948: A Volume of Memorial Essays from his Friends in England, ed. D.J. Gordon, London, 1957, pp. 184-194; Pacht (p. 189) noted that it is "unmistakably the Italian twelfth-century initial with its fillings of intertwined and twisted almost leafless scrolls which was the forerunner of the interlaced vine-scroll pattern of humanistic books." In short, it was medieval, not ancient, designs that Quattrocento artists were imitating in their knotted decorations. It is widely agreed that the reference to an "Academy of Leonardo da Vinci" on these engravings refers only to a rather informal group who fancied that they formed a kind of art school; see, for example, Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, London, 1948, V, p. 84; cf. also Cappel, 1991, pp. 87-88, with citations of further literature.

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