If there was one word to describe Leonardo, it is “Versatile.” Unlike Michelangelo, whose genius, though various, was mostly limited to the arts, Leonardo excelled at not only painting, and sculpting, but also in engineering, mathematics, and science. He is considered to be one of the greatest artists, as well as thinkers of the Renaissance. His contributions are enormous, helping to advance the fields of physics, philosophy and anatomy, among others. He was always pondering the secrets of the universe and making his own experiments. His ideas were way ahead of his time, even predicting airplanes, helicopters and other machines which would not be thought of for centuries.
Leonardo was born in Tuscany in 1452 and received a wide range of education, with training for decorative arts, sculpture and techniques of painting. He considered painting to be the sum of all the sciences, which led to a knowledge of the world from a recreation of it. From a very young age he was observing the world around him, in all its peculiarities and composed ways of expressing it with paint.
Disliking the art scene of the Tuscan workshops, Leonardo moved away and sought patronage from Ludovico the Moor in Lombardy, where he would spend the next twenty four years of his life. As a risk taker he was constantly trying new things, so when he received a commission by Ludovico he decided to disregard conventional methods of fresco in an attempt at a more subtle effect. Unfortunately this would result in the recent deteriorating of the Last Supper, which luckily has been recently restored. Besides using a new technique, other conventionalities were dropped as well. Traditionally the scene of the Last Supper was painted with a wall behind the table with Judas seated separately from the others. Here, Leonardo chose an open space with receding perspective, leading to windows, behind the group of apostles sitting in groups of three. The scene is the moment when Christ announces one of their betrayals. The instant we observe is the variety of emotions of the disciples ranging from shock, anger, disbelief, pain, dismay and fear, which Leonardo called, “The emotions of the soul.”
Besides being an inventor in the sciences, Leonardo was an innovative painter. His technique of sfumato comes from the Italian, “smoky,” and describes the effect of layers upon layers of thin paint added subsequently. This way subjects, particularly people, can be portrayed how they truly appear, without hard lines and borders. One of the best examples of this is the Mona Lisa, with as much as 40 layers of paint indicating what could or may not be a subtle smile.
His ideas toward portraying a sitter in a psychological way created the idea that a painter can be a thinker more than just a simple artisan. The Mona Lisa, as well as other portraits such as Lady With an Ermine (seen above), along with the Last Supper, are revolutionary in the sense that human emotion was not previously a selling point in a painting. Rather than simply painting people, Leonardo painted the passions of their inner souls.
Leave a comment