Leonardo da Vinci by Sir Kenneth M. Clark

Author:Sir Kenneth M. Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2017-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX—1497-1503

BETWEEN the completion of the Last Supper and Leonardo’s departure from Milan, there remained rather less than two years, and we know that these were largely filled with official employments. In the summer of 1498 Leonardo was given a property outside the Porta Vercellina of Milan, and at the same time he was appointed ingegnere camerale. The Duke anticipated the coming French invasion, and much of Leonardo’s time was occupied in planning defences for Lombardy. Of his work as an artist, two undertakings date from these years. The first is his co-operation with Luca Pacioli in his celebrated work Divina Proportione. Pacioli, one of the leading mathematicians of his time, was a native of Borgo San Sepolcro, and had been the friend and pupil of Piero della Francesca, whose researches into perspective and the five regular bodies he incorporated, without acknowledgement, into his own publications. He arrived in Milan in 1496, and we know from Leonardo’s notebooks that the two men were soon on intimate terms. By 1497 they were collaborating on the Divina Proportions. We can trace Leonardo’s influence in some parts of the text, and there is no doubt that he drew the figures which illustrate the 1509 edition: Pacioli says so more than once. These figures consist of capital letters, constructed on a system of proportion, and a number of more elaborate figures of solid geometry. That Leonardo should have devoted so much time to these abstract designs is an instance of how much his creative gifts were dominated by his intellect. I said, when referring to his architecture, that for a Tuscan he was unusually devoid of the sense of abstract harmonies. Yet Pacioli, who had known Piero della Francesca, is never tired of praising Leonardo’s skill. With Piero proportion was a function of the spirit, with Leonardo of the intellect. Piero could not have drawn two lines without giving them some harmonious relationship, just as Leonardo was almost incapable of drawing a line which had not the quality of organic life. Yet by sheer intellectual power, Leonardo was able to conquer this branch of art which was naturally foreign to him.

During these years the only commission of which we can be certain is the decoration of the Castle. This must have been done in the summer of 1498, for on 23 April the scaffolding was removed from the Sala delle Asse. There is evidence that Leonardo was engaged in decorating another room, the Saletta Negra, but the Sala delle Asse is the only one which has survived. I say survived—but that is not the right word, because when the vault was freed from plaster in 1901, the remains of Leonardo’s fresco was entirely and thickly repainted by an artist named Bassani. He seems to have followed closely the original traces of drawing, for it remains a complex and powerful design, worthy of Leonardo’s ingenuity, but he has completely lost the feeling of light and substance which is characteristic of Leonardo’s studies of plants, and

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