Nel marzo del 1821, il poeta inglese Percy Bysshe Shelley concluse il suo scritto « Difesa della poesia » con questo concetto visionario:
«I poeti sono i gerofanti di un’ispirazione non percepita, gli specchi delle ombre gigantesche che il futuro getta sul presente, le parole che esprimono ciò che non capiscono, le trombe che chiamano a battaglia e non sentono ciò che ispirano, l’influenza che non è mossa, ma muove. I poeti sono i legislatori non riconosciuti del mondo.»
Ci proponiamo di esaminare qui, da questo punto di vista, il capolavoro di Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519, « La Vergine con Bambino e Sant’Anna », attualmente al Louvre).
Non ci si stanca mai di contemplare questo capolavoro. Il dipinto raffigura Sant’Anna, sua figlia Maria e Gesù Bambino che abbracciano un agnello sacrificale, simbolo della sua missione: liberare l’umanità dal peccato originale.
Leonardo da Vinci non creò questo dipinto per un principe, un duca, un cardinale o un papa, ma per se stesso, e come tale lo lasciò in eredità all’umanità.
Dopo aver esaminato le ricerche più recenti, Vincent Delieuvin , lo storico francese del Louvre, giunse nel 2000 a questa sorprendente conclusione: Leonardo accolse con favore il ritorno del regime repubblicano a Firenze, di cui Sant’Anna era la protettrice.1
Benché l’opera sia rimasta praticamente incompiuta alla sua morte nel 1519, sappiamo che Leonardo da Vinci iniziò a lavorarci nel 1503 (all’età di 51 anni), mentre viveva a Firenze. Re Francesco I non rubò il dipinto, ma rubò il suo creatore, che lo portò con sé in Francia per completarlo.
Lo spettatore è immediatamente colpito da un potente, quasi inquietante, senso di movimento, da una sensazione di amore supremo e di grande bellezza. Pur raffigurando delle figure delle Sacre Scritture (Sant’Anna, la Vergine Maria, Cristo) anziché illustrare una particolare sequenza liturgica (che, peraltro, non esiste), l’opera scaturisce chiaramente da una profonda concezione filosofica.
Cercherò di convincervi che esiste un « lungo arco storico » , una coerenza intellettuale tra persone e menti che non si sono mai incrociate e non si sono mai parlate, ma le cui intuizioni e i cui progressi epistemologici coincidono.
Il capolavoro di Leonardo da Vinci appare, a mio avviso, come una sorta di anello mancante tra la visione di Dio e della creazione di Niccolò Cusano e il concetto di « noosfera » di Vladimir Vernadsky, passando per l’idea di « cosmo » di Alexander von Humboldt. A prima vista, questo potrebbe sembrare azzardato, ma permettetemi di approfondire.
Un’unità
Cosa si può mai unire questi quattro brillanti intellettuali, Cusano, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander von Humboldt e Vernadsky? Tutti e quattro erano convinti che l’universo fosse un tutto vivente, unificato e armonioso.
Nel suo trattato *Sulla dotta ignoranza* (1440), il cardinale tedesco Niccolò Cusano (1401-1464) , pensatore di spicco e figura di riferimento nei grandi concili ecumenici, nonché nel Rinascimento italiano ed europeo, inizia con questo simbolo: Dio è il « massimo assoluto » e l’unità perfetta ( unio ). In quest’unità, tutte le distanze, le divisioni e le contraddizioni si trasformano e si fondono nell’unione. L’Universo è l’immagine contratta di quest’unità e di questo massimo assoluto. Come uno specchio, è il massimo « contratto » perché non comprende tutte le cose, ma solo tutte le cose al di fuori di Dio, tutte le cose create. Il filosofo usa i termini *complicatio * (avvolgimento) ed *explicatio* (svolgimento) per spiegare che tutte le cose sono avvolte in Dio (la fonte) e dispiegate nel mondo. Il mondo, il cosmo e il tempo geologico sono lo svolgimento dell’unità di Dio.
Sulle orme di Cusano, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) affermò con forza: « Comprendete che ogni cosa è connessa a ogni altra ». Per lui, il progresso significava unificare campi diversi come l’arte, l’anatomia e l’ingegneria in una comprensione completa e coerente. L’artista-ingegnere incoraggiò i suoi contemporanei a imparare a percepire i legami che uniscono la natura, l’arte, la scienza e l’anima umana. L’osservazione permise a Leonardo di scoprire le cause invisibili dietro gli effetti visibili e di immaginare e verificare ipotesi creative. In particolare, postulò che il corpo umano potesse essere una versione in miniatura (microcosmo) della Terra (macrocosmo), osservando che la ramificazione dei vasi sanguigni nell’uomo rispecchia gli affluenti dei fiumi, così come i movimenti del corpo imitano le maree. A suo avviso, la Terra è un organismo vivente con « carne » (il suolo), « ossa » (gli strati rocciosi) e « sangue » (le vene d’acqua). Studiò il volo degli uccelli e il movimento dell’acqua, convinto che entrambi obbedissero alle stesse leggi della fisica dei fluidi. L’arte è una scienza e la scienza è un’arte, entrambe strumenti per comprendere le leggi fondamentali del mondo. Per Leonardo da Vinci, i pittori dovevano possedere l’intero cosmo nella mente e nelle mani per riflettere veramente la bellezza, l’armonia e la complessità della natura. Per lui, il movimento è l’essenza stessa di un universo vivo e in continua espansione. Studiò i motivi a spirale presenti in ogni cosa, dai fiori ai riccioli dei capelli ai vortici dell’acqua, nel tentativo di comprendere come la forza vitale generi forme diverse. Infine, considerava la stagnazione una forma di declino, osservando che « il ferro arrugginisce per mancanza di utilizzo » e che « l’inazione prosciuga il vigore della mente ».
Anche il naturalista e rivoluzionario tedesco Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) si sforzò di comprendere come i vari fenomeni naturali, nonostante la loro apparente indipendenza, formino un sistema armonioso e unificato. Parlò di un « sistema terrestre » in cui clima, flora, fauna e vita umana sono interdipendenti. Humboldt credeva che esistesse un « legame intrinseco » tra il generale e il particolare, che gli permetteva di percepire l’interconnessione tra diverse regioni e climi. Nella sua ultima opera in cinque volumi, Cosmos (1845-1858), descrisse la natura come un « soffio di vita » e un « tutto organico », e vide l’intero universo – fisico e celeste – come un « sistema magnificamente ordinato e armonioso ». Come Cusano e Leonardo da Vinci, sostenne che una comprensione scientifica dei processi naturali accresce il nostro apprezzamento per la loro bellezza.
Per il geofisico russo-ucraino Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) , la vita è eterna e inseparabile dal cosmo, non solo dalla Terra. Considerava la materia vivente come un « fenomeno cosmico » sorto altrove o da sempre esistente, che plasma l’ambiente chimico dei pianeti. La biosfera circonda la Terra come un « involucro saturo di vita », dove organismi viventi e materia inerte interagiscono costantemente, inseparabilmente e dinamicamente. La fase successiva dell’evoluzione è descritta come la transizione dalla biosfera alla « noosfera », dove l’attività umana razionale, la scienza e la tecnologia diventano la principale forza geologica che modella il pianeta. Vernadsky era convinto che il futuro dell’umanità dipendesse dal riconoscimento di questa unità, suggerendo che il pensiero umano fosse una naturale estensione dei processi geologici e cosmici.
Ora diamo un’occhiata al dipinto
È tenendo presente questo « lungo arco di storia » che l’osservatore attento può scorgere l’ombra di Vernadsky nella Sant’Anna di Leonardo.
Decifrare:
Lo sfondo del dipinto raffigura creste scoscese dall’aspetto preistorico, ispirate agli studi di Leonardo sulle Dolomiti e sulle Alpi. Questo paesaggio arido, roccioso, quasi lunare, è stato descritto dagli storici come « fantastico » o « metafisico ». Come testimoniano i suoi taccuini, Leonardo era interessato a rappresentare i movimenti « invisibili » , non solo delle anime, ma anche di fenomeni fisici come il tempo, e più specificamente, il tempo geologico. Come si sono formate le montagne, ad esempio? Per altri, questo paesaggio « morto » o lunare dello sfondo – ciò che Vernadsky chiamerebbe « litosfera » – serve solo a mettere in risalto gli altri elementi della composizione.
Di fronte a questo paesaggio, sulla destra, si erge un albero, la prima indicazione della biosfera, ma una semplice tappa in un processo evolutivo di sviluppo accelerato del cosmo.
Di seguito, l’agnello (simbolo religioso del sacrificio di Cristo) rappresenterebbe una forma superiore di coscienza di questa biosfera.
Poi appare Gesù, che, nella sua incarnazione come bambino, rappresenta solo una sorta di coscienza ingenua, una mera potenzialità per il suo sviluppo futuro.
La Vergine Maria è raffigurata in una posa paradossale, che illustra perfettamente ciò che il pensatore americano Lyndon LaRouche definì un « cambiamento a metà movimento » , ovvero un momento ambiguo di indecisione tra movimenti apparentemente opposti. Il gesto maestoso, amorevole e protettivo di Maria, e il suo abbraccio a Gesù, coincidono con il suo profondo desiderio di concedergli tutta la libertà di movimento necessaria per compiere la sua sacra missione.
Sant’Anna, sulla vetta, colma di gioia divina, sorride mentre contempla il gesto aggraziato di sua figlia Maria e l’amore che ella nutre per Cristo. Gioisce di essere, in un certo senso, l’anima « noosferica » consapevole di un Cosmo divino e vivente, dove il Creatore concepisce incessantemente nuove forme per la Sua creazione e gradi sempre più elevati di consapevolezza della Sua stessa natura creativa. Gli allineamenti circolari delle catene montuose lunari risuonano visivamente con gli anelli armoniosi formati da braccia e vesti in una spirale a cascata.
Anche scrittrici come Viviane Forrester , il cui lavoro2 è contaminato da perniciose interpretazioni moderniste e freudiane, e che affermano erroneamente che siamo ingannati dalla « sciocca » gentilezza di Maria (p. 19), riconoscono tuttavia intuitivamente che c’è qualcosa di molto speciale in quest’opera, una sorta di unità che la scrittrice descrive, in mancanza di una parola migliore, come « organica ».
Quando scopriamo queste figure, scrive, « percepiamo chiaramente che si tratta di organismi viventi all’interno di un paesaggio, un organismo vivente. L’organico nell’organico » (p. 12).
Questo momento organico, osserva, appare allo spettatore come un « momento congelato » di un « movimento transitorio » .
«Il loro respiro successivo, quello che segue, sembra più importante, più vitale, più sospeso di qualsiasi trama, di qualsiasi storia. E la loro presenza tangibile e fragile è simile a quella delle montagne, che respirano anch’esse.» (p. 13)
La nascita di un fungo
L’eccessiva enfasi posta sul fatto che Leonardo da Vinci fosse un genio « autodidatta » ha in qualche modo trascurato la ricerca sulle influenze intellettuali di cui ha beneficiato.
La sua prima esperienza fu l’apprendistato presso Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) , la cui bottega fiorentina era modellata su quella del suo precettore, il dotto scultore Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) , dove gli studenti studiavano astronomia, poesia, architettura, scultura, pittura, fusione del bronzo, metallurgia, chimica, anatomia e leggevano i classici.
In seguito, a Milano, come pittore di corte, Leonardo fu « adottato » dalla giovane Cecilia Gallerani (1473-1536) , amante prediletta (ma non l’ultima) del duca Ludovico Sforza , detto Ludovico il Moro, duca di Milano.
Nacque a Siena in una famiglia numerosa, il cui padre, Fazio Gallerani, non era un nobile ma ricoprì diverse posizioni importanti alla corte di Milano, in particolare quella di ambasciatore presso le repubbliche di Firenze e Lucca.
Cecilia, insieme ai suoi sei fratelli, ricevette un’istruzione in latino e letteratura. È nota soprattutto per aver ispirato il dipinto di Leonardo da Vinci « Dama con l’ermellino » (circa 1489), un’opera in cui il senso del movimento prevale già sulla rappresentazione statica. Si narra che, durante una seduta, invitò Leonardo a unirsi al circolo letterario che ospitava a Palazzo Carmagnola, dove presiedeva dibattiti intellettuali con filosofi, poeti e musicisti.
Compositrice di opere musicali e poetiche, oratrice in latino e italiano fin dall’età di 16 anni, rinomata per il suo spirito e la sua erudizione, è considerata una delle donne più colte del Rinascimento italiano.
Benché quasi tutta la sua opera sia andata perduta, rimane nella nostra memoria come una figura di spicco della lingua italiana, grazie alla sua maestria nella letteratura e nella poesia.
Il poeta di corte Bernardo Bellincioni (1452-1492) , amico di Leonardo, ne elogiò il talento letterario, arrivando a paragonarla alla celebre poetessa greca Saffo, che si dice abbia ispirato Platone.
La Corte di Milano e i suoi mecenati attrassero e incoraggiarono anche altri artisti e scienziati, tra cui l’architetto Donato Bramante, il matematico e amico di Leonardo da Vinci, Luca Pacioli, la dotta duchessa Beatrice d’Este, il poeta Bernardo Bellincioni e l’umanista e pedagogista Francesco Filelfo.
Cecilia Gallerani fece conoscere a Leonardo da Vinci le idee di Cusano? Non lo sappiamo, ma senza dubbio aveva sia la capacità che l’opportunità di farlo.
Il Codice Trivulziano di Leonardo (1487-1490), compilato a Milano in questo periodo, segna una svolta. Fino ad allora, l’artista aveva spesso sostenuto con veemenza la superiorità della pittura rispetto alla poesia. Tuttavia, dopo la sua frequentazione con Cecilia, il Codice Trivulziano rivela il suo desiderio di migliorare drasticamente le sue capacità letterarie, fino ad allora piuttosto modeste, compilando lunghe liste di parole erudite, inclusi termini latini, tratti da autorevoli fonti lessicali e grammaticali. A quanto pare, considerava questo un prerequisito che gli avrebbe permesso di descrivere con precisione scientifica i fenomeni che avrebbe scoperto in seguito.
Circa vent’anni dopo la morte di Leonardo da Vinci, si narra che l’orafo e scultore Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) abbia dichiarato:
«Non mancherò di riferire le parole che ho sentito pronunciare dal re a proposito di lui. Il re disse che non pensava ci fosse mai stato un uomo che sapesse tanto quanto Leonardo, non solo di scultura, di pittura e di architettura, ma anche di filosofia, dove eccelleva.»3
Come ha concluso un ricercatore:
«L’unità epistemologica di Leonardo da Vinci consente di accedere a una prospettiva più elevata. Non solo accresce la nostra propensione all’empatia autentica e alla profonda comprensione (essenziali nella società pluralistica odierna), ma ci consente anche di accedere a una forma di libertà sociale e intellettuale. È un metodo per acquisire una comprensione più completa della condizione umana; in breve, per ricevere una vera istruzione.»
Il mondo ha bisogno di nuove Cecilia Gallerani e nuovi Leonardo da Vinci. Sei pronto ad accettare questa sfida?
Al Louvre con Viviane Forrester, La Vergine con Bambino e Sant’Anna , dossier preparato da Cécile Scailliérez, Servizio Culturale del Louvre, Symogy, Editions d’Art, Parigi, 2000. ↩︎
Marianne Tregouët , Cellini alla corte di Francesco I (1540-1545): I meccanismi di una disgrazia , dicembre 2024, HAL Id: dumas-04797814 https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-04797814v1↩︎
En mars 1821, le poète anglais Percy Bysshe Shelley concluait son poème « Défense de la poésie » par ce concept visionnaire :
« Les poètes sont les hiérophantes d’une inspiration insoupçonnée, les miroirs des ombres gigantesques que l’avenir projette sur le présent, les mots qui expriment ce qu’ils ne comprennent pas, les trompettes qui sonnent pour la bataille, sans ressentir ce qu’elles inspirent, l’influence qui ne se laisse pas émouvoir, mais qui émeut. Les poètes sont les législateurs méconnus du monde. »
Nous vous proposons d’examiner ici, de ce point de vue, le chef-d’œuvre de Léonard de Vinci(1452-1519), « La Vierge à l’Enfant avec sainte Anne », actuellement au Louvre.
On ne se lasse jamais de contempler ce chef-d’œuvre. Le tableau représente sainte Anne, sa fille Marie et l’Enfant Jésus enlaçant un agneau sacrificiel, symbole de sa mission : libérer l’humanité du péché originel.
Léonard de Vinci n’a pas réalisé ce tableau pour un prince, un duc, un cardinal ou un pape, mais pour lui-même, et à ce titre, l’a légué en héritage à l’humanité.
Après avoir passé en revue les dernières recherches, Vincent Delieuvin, l’historien français du Louvre, est arrivé en 2000 à cette conclusion étonnante : Léonard salue le retour du régime républicain à Florence, dont Sainte-Anne était la protectrice.1
Si l’œuvre resta quasiment inachevée à sa mort, en 1519, on sait que Léonard de Vinci commença à y travailler en 1503 (il avait 51 ans), alors qu’il vivait à Florence. Le roi François Ier ne vola pas le tableau, mais en vola l’auteur, qui l’emporta avec lui en France pour le terminer.
Le spectateur est immédiatement saisi par un sens puissant de mouvement presque troublant, un sentiment d’amour suprême et de grande beauté. Si elle met en scène des figures des Saintes Écritures (sainte Anne, la Vierge Marie, le Christ) plutôt que d’illustrer une séquence liturgique particulière (par ailleurs inexistante), l’œuvre elle-même jaillit manifestement d’une profonde conception philosophique.
Je vais tenter de vous convaincre qu’il existe un « long arc de l’histoire », une cohérence intellectuelle entre des personnes et des esprits qui ne se sont jamais croisés et ne se sont jamais parlé, mais dont les intuitions et les avancées épistémologiques s’accordent.
Le chef-d’œuvre de Léonard de Vinci apparaît, à mon sens, comme une sorte de chaînon manquant entre la vision de Dieu et de la création de Nicolas de Cues (Cusanus) et le concept de « noosphère » de Vladimir Vernadski, en passant par l’idée de « cosmos » d’Alexander von Humboldt. De prime abord, cela peut paraître farfelu, mais permettez-moi de développer.
Une unité
Qu’est-ce qui peut donc unir ces quatre intellectuels de génie, Cusanus, Léonard de Vinci, Alexander von Humboldt et Vernadski ? Tous quatre étaient convaincus que l’univers est un ensemble vivant, un et harmonieux.
Cusanus.
Dans son traité De la docte ignorance (1440), le cardinal allemand Nicolas de Cues (1401-1464), penseur et acteur majeur des grands conciles œcuméniques ainsi que de la Renaissance italienne et européenne, part de ce symbole : Dieu est le « maximum absolu » et l’unité parfaite (unio). Dans cette unité, toutes les distances, divisions et contradictions se changent et se fondent en union. L’Univers est l’image contractée de cette unité et de ce maximum absolu. Comme un miroir, il est le maximum « contracté » car il ne comprend pas toutes choses, mais seulement toutes choses hors de Dieu, toutes choses créées. Le philosophe emploie les termes complicatio (enveloppement) et explicatio (déploiement) pour expliquer que toutes choses sont enveloppées en Dieu (la source) et déployées dans le monde. Le monde, le cosmos et le temps géologique sont le déploiement de l’unité de Dieu.
Léonard de Vinci, modèle probable du David de Verrocchio.
S’engageant sur la voie ouverte par Cues, Léonard de Vinci (1452-1519) affirme avec force : « Comprenez que tout est lié à tout. » Pour lui, progresser signifie unifier différents domaines comme l’art, l’anatomie et l’ingénierie en une compréhension globale et cohérente. L’artiste-ingénieur invite ses contemporains à apprendre à percevoir les liens qui unissent la nature, l’art, la science et l’âme humaine. L’observation permet à Léonard de découvrir les causes invisibles au-delà des effets visibles, et d’imaginer et tester des hypothèses créatives. Il postule notamment que le corps humain pourrait être une version miniature (microcosme) de la Terre (macrocosme), en observant que la ramification des vaisseaux sanguins chez l’homme reflète les affluents des rivières, tout comme les mouvements du corps imitent les marées. À ses yeux, la Terre est un organisme vivant doté d’une « chair » (le sol), d’« os » (les strates rocheuses) et de « sang » (les veines d’eau). Il étudie le vol des oiseaux et les mouvements de l’eau, convaincu que les deux obéissent à une même physique des fluides. L’art est une science et la science est un art, tous deux étant des outils pour comprendre les lois fondamentales du monde. Pour Léonard de Vinci, les peintres doivent posséder le cosmos tout entier dans leur esprit et leurs mains pour refléter véritablement la beauté, l’harmonie et la complexité de la nature. Pour lui, le mouvement est l’essence même d’un univers vivant en pleine expansion. Il étudie les motifs en spirale présents dans toute chose, des fleurs aux boucles des cheveux en passant par les tourbillons de l’eau, pour tenter de comprendre comment la force vitale engendre les différentes formes. Enfin, il considère la stagnation comme une forme de déclin, notant que « le fer rouille par manque d’usage » et que « l’inaction sape la vigueur de l’esprit ».
Alexander von Humboldt, auto-portrait.
Le naturaliste et révolutionnaire allemand Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) s’est lui aussi efforcé de comprendre comment divers phénomènes naturels, malgré leur apparente indépendance, forment un système harmonieux et unifié. Il évoque un « système terrestre » où le climat, la flore, la faune et la vie humaine sont interdépendants. Humboldt croit qu’il existe un « lien intrinsèque » entre le général et le particulier, ce qui lui permet de percevoir l’interconnexion entre les différentes régions et les climats. Dans son œuvre ultime en cinq volumes, Cosmos (1845-1858), il décrit la nature comme un « souffle de vie » et un « tout organique », et voit l’univers entier – physique et céleste – comme un « système magnifiquement ordonné et harmonieux ». À l’instar de Cusanus et de Léonard de Vinci, il soutient qu’une compréhension scientifique des processus naturels accroît notre appréciation de leur beauté.
Vladimir Vernadski.
Pour le géophysicien russo-ukrainien Vladimir Vernadski (1863-1945), la vie est éternelle et indissociable du cosmos, et non de la seule Terre. Il voit la matière vivante comme un « phénomène cosmique » apparu ailleurs ou ayant toujours existé, façonnant l’environnement chimique des planètes. La biosphère entoure la Terre comme une « enveloppe saturée de vie », où organismes vivants et matière inerte interagissent constamment, indissociablement et de manière dynamique. L’étape suivante de l’évolution est décrite comme la transition de la biosphère à la « noosphère », où l’activité rationnelle humaine, la science et la technologie deviennent la principale force géologique qui façonne la planète. Vernadski était convaincu que l’avenir de l’humanité dépendait de la reconnaissance de cette unité, suggérant que la pensée humaine était un prolongement naturel des processus géologiques et cosmiques.
Regardons maintenant le tableau
C’est avec ce « long arc de l’histoire » à l’esprit que le spectateur attentif peut déceler l’ombre de Vernadski dans la Sainte Anne de Léonard.
Décryptage
Léonard de Vinci, Vierge et l’enfant avec Saint Anne, (1504-1519), Musée du Louvre, Paris.
L’arrière-plan du tableau montre des crêtes abruptes à l’aspect préhistorique, inspirées des études de Léonard sur les Dolomites et les Alpes. Ce paysage aride et rocailleux, presque lunaire, a été qualifié par les historiens de « fantastique » ou de « métaphysique ». Comme en témoignent ses carnets, Léonard s’attachait à représenter les mouvements « invisibles », non seulement des âmes, mais aussi des phénomènes physiques tels que le temps, et plus particulièrement le temps géologique. Comment les montagnes se sont-elles formées, par exemple ? Pour d’autres, ce paysage « mort », ou lunaire, de l’arrière-plan – ce que Vernadski appellerait la « lithosphère » – servirait uniquement à mettre en valeur les autres éléments de la composition.
Devant ce paysage, à droite, se dresse un arbre, premier indice de la biosphère mais simple étape d’un processus évolutif de développement accéléré du cosmos.
En-dessous, l’agneau (symbole religieux du sacrifice du Christ) représenterait une forme supérieure de conscience de cette biosphère.
Apparaît alors Jésus qui, dans son incarnation d’enfant humain, ne représente qu’une sorte de conscience naïve, simple potentiel de son développement ultérieur.
La Vierge Marie est peinte dans une position paradoxale, illustrant parfaitement ce que le penseur américain Lyndon LaRouche appelait « mid-motion-change », c’est-à-dire un instant ambigu d’indécision entre des mouvements d’apparence contraires. Le geste majestueux, aimant et protecteur de Marie, et son étreinte de Jésus coïncident avec son désir profond de lui accorder toute la liberté de mouvement nécessaire à l’accomplissement de sa mission sacrée.
Sainte Anne, au sommet, animée d’une joie divine, contemple en souriant le geste gracieux de sa fille Marie et l’amour qu’elle porte au Christ. Elle se réjouit d’être en quelque sorte l’âme « noosphérique » consciente d’un Cosmos divin et vivant, où le créateur conçoit sans cesse des formes nouvelles pour sa création et des degrés de conscience toujours plus élevés de sa propre nature créatrice. Les alignements circulaires des chaînes de montagne lunaires résonnent visuellement avec les anneaux harmonieux dessinés par les bras et les vêtements dans une spirale en cascade.
Même des auteurs comme Viviane Forrester, dont l’œuvre2 est polluée par de pernicieuses interprétations modernistes et freudiennes, et qui prétendent à tort que nous sommes leurrés par la mansuétude « bébête » de Marie (p. 19), reconnaissent néanmoins intuitivement qu’il y a quelque chose de très particulier dans cette œuvre, une sorte d’unité que l’écrivaine qualifie, faute de trouver un mot plus adéquat, d’« organique ».
Lorsqu’on découvre ces figures, écrit-elle, « on perçoit bien qu’il s’agit d’organismes vivants au sein d’un paysage, organisme vivant. Dee l’organique dans de l’organique. » (p. 12)
Ce moment organique, observe-t-elle, apparaît ici au spectateur comme un « moment figé » d’un « mouvement transitoire ».
« Leur prochaine respiration, celle qui suivre, semble plus importante, vitale, plus en suspens que toute intrigue, tout récit. Et leur présence tangible, fragile, s’apparente à celle des montagnes, qui respirent aussi. » (p. 13)
La naissance d’un génie
Léonard de Vinci, portrait de Cecilia Gallerani, dite La Dame à l’hermine (1489).
En insistant excessivement sur le fait que Léonard de Vinci était un génie « autodidacte », on a en quelque sorte négligé les recherches sur les influences intellectuelles qu’il a subies.
Sa première expérience fut son apprentissage chez Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), dont l’atelier florentin était calqué sur celui de son tuteur, le sculpteur érudit Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), où les élèves étudiaient l’astronomie, la poésie, l’architecture, la sculpture, la peinture, la fonte du bronze, la métallurgie, la chimie, l’anatomie et lisaient les classiques.
Puis, à Milan, en tant que peintre de cour, Léonard fut « adopté » par la jeune Cecilia Gallerani (1473-1536), maîtresse favorite (mais non la dernière) du duc Ludovico Sforza, connu sous le nom de Lodovico Il Moro, duc de Milan.
Elle naquit dans une famille nombreuse de Sienne, dont le père, Fazio Gallerani, n’était pas noble mais occupa plusieurs postes importants à la cour de Milan, notamment celui d’ambassadeur auprès des républiques de Florence et de Lucques.
Cécilia reçut, avec ses six frères, une éducation en latin et en littérature. Elle est surtout connue pour avoir inspiré à Léonard de Vinci le tableau « La Dame à l’hermine » (vers 1489), une œuvre où le sens de mouvement prime déjà sur la représentation statique. On raconte que, lors d’une séance de pose, elle invita Léonard à rejoindre le cercle littéraire qu’elle animait au Palazzo Carmagnola, où elle présidait des débats intellectuels avec des philosophes, des poètes et des musiciens.
Attribué à Léonard de Vinci, supposé être un portrait de Bernardo Bellincioni.
Composant elle-même des œuvres musicales et poétiques, prononçant des discours en latin et en italien dès l’âge de 16 ans, réputée pour son esprit et son érudition, elle est considérée comme l’une des femmes les plus cultivées de la Renaissance italienne.
Bien que la quasi-totalité de son œuvre ait disparu, elle reste dans les mémoires comme une figure majeure de la langue italienne, grâce à sa maîtrise de la littérature et de la poésie. Le poète de cour Bernardo Bellincioni (1452-1492), ami de Léonard, loua son talent littéraire, allant jusqu’à la comparer à la célèbre poétesse grecque antique Sappho, qui aurait inspiré Platon.
La Cour de Milan et ses mécènes ont également attiré et favorisé d’autres artistes et scientifiques, parmi lesquels l’architecte Donato Bramante, le mathématicien et ami de Léonard de Vinci, Luca Pacioli, la duchesse lettrée Béatrice d’Este, le poète Bernardo Bellincioni et l’éducateur humaniste Francesco Filelfo.
Codex Trivulzianus, folio 30, recto.
Cecilia Gallerani a-t-elle initié Léonard de Vinci aux idées de Cusanus ? Nous l’ignorons, mais elle en avait indubitablement aussi bien les capacités que l’opportunité.
Le {Codex Trivulzianus} de Léonard (1487-1490), compilé à Milan à cette époque, marque un tournant. Jusqu’à là, l’artiste avait souvent soutenu avec véhémence que l’art de la peinture était supérieur à la celui de la poésie. Or, après avoir fréquenté Cecilia, le {Codex Trivulzianus} témoigne du fait qu’il souhaitait améliorer drastiquement sa capacité littéraire, jusqu’à là plutôt modeste, en dressant de longues listes de mots savants, y compris de termes latins, tirés de sources lexicales et grammaticales faisant autorité. Il aurait considéré cela comme une condition préalable qui lui permettrait de décrire avec une précision scientifique les phénomènes qu’il allait découvrir par la suite.
Une vingtaine d’années après la mort de Léonard de Vinci, l’orfèvre et sculpteur Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) aurait déclaré :
« Je ne voudrais manquer de rapporter les paroles que j’entendis dire au roi à son propos. Le roi dit qu’il ne pensait pas qu’il eût existé un homme qui en sût tant que Léonard, non seulement en sculpture, peinture et architecture, mais aussi en philosophie où il excellait. »3
Comme le conclut un chercheur :
« L’unité épistémologique de Léonard de Vinci permet d’accéder à une perspective supérieure. Elle accroît non seulement notre propension à une véritable empathie et à une compréhension profonde (essentielles dans la société pluraliste actuelle), mais aussi notre accès à une forme de liberté sociale et intellectuelle. C’est une méthode pour acquérir une compréhension plus globale de la condition humaine ; en bref, pour recevoir une véritable éducation. »
Le monde a besoin de nouvelles Cécilia Gallerani et de nouveaux Léonard de Vinci. Êtes-vous prêt à relever ce défi ?
Au Louvre avec Viviane Forrester, La Vierge et l’Enfant avec sainte Anne, dossier établi par Cécile Scailliérez, Service culturel du Louvre, Symogy, Editions d’Art, Paris, 2000. ↩︎
Marianne Tregouët, {Cellini à la cour de François Ier (1540-1545) : les mécanismes d’une disgrâce}, Déc. 2024, HAL Id: dumas-04797814 https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-04797814v1 ↩︎
In march 1821, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, concluded his poem « A defense of Poetry » with a visionary concept: « Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. »
We examine here, from that standpoint, Leonardo da Vinci‘s masterwork The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.
One never gets tired of looking at “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne”, Leonardo’s superb masterpiece in the Louvre. Formally, the painting depicts Saint Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Christ is shown embracing a sacrificial lamb symbolizing the mission he took on to liberate mankind from the original sin.
Remarkably, Leonardo didn’t make this painting for a Prince, not for a Duke, not for a Cardinal, nor for a Pope, but for himself, and as such, as a legacy for humanity.
Vincent Delieuvin, the French historian of the Louvre who cross-checked all the available documentation and hypothesis, arrives at the interesting but paradoxical conclusion that with this painting Leonardo wanted to give tribute to the return of the Florentine Republic:
« Since the Florentines rose up against Gautier de Brienne, Duke of Athens, on July 26, 1343, the feast day of Saint Anne, the city had devoted particular worship to the mother of the Virgin Mary, who was considered the protector of the Republic.
After the Medici were exiled in 1494, the honors bestowed upon the saint increased once again. Leonardo’s work fits perfectly into this context of the restoration of republican government, in which the artist participated with the execution of The Battle of Anghiari in 1503. »1
When the painting was finished is not known. In general, it is thought that Leonardo da Vinci (1454-1519) started working on it in 1503 when he lived in Florence at the age of 51. The French King Frances I, who bought the panel in 1518, didn’t steal the panel, just its author who brought it with him to France to finish it.
The viewer is immediately overwhelmed by a powerful and nearly disturbing sense of motion, supreme love and beauty. The scene itself, if it shows figures from the Holy scriptures (Anne, the Virgin Mary, Christ), rather than illustrating a given liturgical sequence, manifestly springs from a well of profound philosophical reflections.
I will try to convince you here there exists a “Long arch of History” of thinking and coherence between persons and minds that never met or spoke to each other, but whose intuitions and mindsets where congruent and oriented in the same directions. Leonardo’s masterpiece appears (in my view), as a sort of “missing link” between Nicolaus Cusanus’ vision of God and nature and Vladimir Vernadsky’s concept of the Noosphere, eventually via Alexander von Humboldt’s idea of the “Cosmos”. That might look wild and even silly at first glance, but please allow me to elaborate.
A Single Harmonic One
What unites the four towering intellectuals named Cusanus, Leonardo, Alexander von Humboldt and Vernadsky? All four were convinced that the universe is a single harmonic one.
Cusanus.
The German cardinal Nicolas of Cusa (1401-1464), a thinker and major figure in the great ecumenical councils and the Italian and European Renaissance, begins his treatise On Learned Ignorance (1440) with a symbol. God is the “absolute maximum” and perfect unity (unio); in this unity, all distances, all divisions, all contradictions are transformed and merge into union. The universe is the contracted image of this absolute maximum and this absolute unity; it is not the absolute maximum, but, as in a mirror, the “contracted” maximum, for it does not comprise all things, but only all things outside of God, all created things. The thinker uses the terms complicatio (envelopment) and explicatio (unfolding) to explain that all things are enveloped in God (the source) and unfolded in the world. The world, the cosmos, and geological time are the unfolding of God’s unity.
Leonardo da Vinci, here as a model for Verrocchio’s David.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), following in the footsteps of Cues, emphatically stated: “Understand that everything is connected to everything else.” For him, progress meant unifying different fields such as art, anatomy, and engineering into a comprehensive and coherent understanding. The artist-engineer invited his contemporaries to learn to perceive the links that unite nature, art, science, and the human soul. Observation allowed Leonardo to discover invisible causes rather than visible effects, and to imagine and test creative hypotheses. In particular, he postulated that the human body could be a miniature version (microcosm) of the Earth (macrocosm), observing that the branching of blood vessels in humans mirrors the tributaries of rivers, just as the movements of the body mimic the tides. In his view, the Earth is a living organism with “flesh” (the soil), ‘bones’ (rock strata), and “blood” (water veins). He studied the flight of birds and the movement of water, convinced that both obeyed the same fluid physics. Art is science, and science is art; both are tools for understanding the fundamental laws of the world. For Leonardo da Vinci, painters must possess the entire cosmos in their minds and hands in order to truly reflect the beauty, harmony, and complexity of nature. For the artist, movement is the very essence of a living, expanding universe. He studied the spiral patterns found in everything from flowers to curls of hair to whirlpools in water in order to understand how the life force generates different forms. Finally, he considered stagnation to be a form of decline, writing that “iron rusts from lack of use” and “inaction saps the vigor of the mind.”
Alexander von Humboldt, self-portrait.
The German naturalist and revolutionary Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) also sought to understand how various natural phenomena, despite their apparent independence, form a harmonious and unified system. He refers to an “earth system” in which climate, flora, fauna, and human life are interdependent. Humboldt believed in studying the “intrinsic link” between the general and the particular, which allowed him to perceive the interconnectedness of different regions and climates. In his ultimate multi-volume work, Cosmos (1845-1858), he described nature as a “breath of life” and an “organic whole,” and sought to describe the entire universe—physical and celestial—as a “magnificently ordered and harmonious system.” Like Cusanus and Leonardo da Vinci, he argued that a scientific understanding of natural processes increases our appreciation of their beauty.
Vladimir Vernadski.
Ukrainian-Russian geophysicist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945) viewed life as eternal and inseparable from the cosmos, not just from Earth. He proposed that living matter was a “cosmic phenomenon” that had appeared elsewhere or had always existed, shaping the chemical environment of planets. He defined the “Biosphere” as a “life-saturated envelope” around the Earth, where living organisms and inert matter interact constantly, inseparably, and dynamically. Vernadsky described the transition from the biosphere to the “Noosphere” as the next stage of evolution, where rational human activity, science, and technology become the main geological force shaping the planet. He was convinced that the future of humanity depended on recognizing this unity, suggesting that human thought was a natural extension of geological and cosmic processes.
What do we see?
It is with this “Long arch of History” in mind, that the viewer can discover the “Shadow of Vernadsky » in Leonardo’s Saint Anne. Because, what does the viewer see?
The background of the painting features sharp, prehistoric-looking crags inspired by Leonardo’s studies of the Dolomites and the Alps. This barren, rocky terrain, nearly lunar, has been described by historians as “fantastical” or “metaphysical”. As we know from his notebooks, Leonardo was interested in painting “invisible” movements, not only those of the souls, but also universal phenomena such as “time”, especially “geological” time. How did mountains arise, etc.? Others, correctly argue that the « dead » or lunar landscape of the background, what Vernadsky would call the “Lithosphere” serves to highlight the other elements of the composition.
On the right, one could see the tree (the “biosphere”) as representing a step in an evolutionary process of the development of the cosmos.
Beneath the tree, the lamb (in religious terms a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice to free mankind) also represents a higher form of conscience of that same “biosphere”
Then appears Jesus, who, represented in his human incarnation, that of a child, represents only a sort of naive conscience, merely the potential for his further development.
The Virgin Mary, is represented in a paradoxical position which is a perfect example of what the late Lyndon LaRouche identified as “mid-motion-change”, meaning an ambiguous instant of indecision between two or more contrary movements. Her majestic, loving and protecting gesture and embrace of Jesus coincides with her vivid desire to induce the boy all the freedom of movement he needs to fulfill his sacred mission.
Saint Anne, on top, as a sort of self-conscious form of agapic love, looks down and smiles seeing the majestic gesture and love for Christ of her daughter Mary. She is happy to be the self-conscious “noospheric” soul of a divine and living Cosmos, where the creator permanently creates ever higher forms of creation and of consciousness of its own creative nature. The rings of lunar mountain chains resemble and resonate visually with the harmonic rings formed by arms and clothes in a cascade of aesthetic spiral action.
Even authors polluted by nasty modernist and Freudian misinterpretations such as Viviane Forrester2 who wrongly pretend we are mislead by an overwhelming sentiment of mildness of Mary, nevertheless acknowledge intuitively there is something very special in this work, a sort of unity Forrester brands, not finding a better name, “organic”. When we discover these figures, she writes:
“one clearly sees they are living organisms in the midst of a landscape, a living organism. Organic inside Organic.” (p. 12)
That organic moment, she observes, appears here to the viewer as a “frozen moment” of a “transitory movement”.
Their “next respiration, the one that will follow, seems more important, vital, more suspended than any intrigue, any narrative. And their [the figures] tangible presence, fragile, matches that of the mountains, who respire as well.” (p. 13)
The making of a genius
By over-emphasizing that Leonardo was a “self-taught” genius, research on the intellectual influences he underwent was somehow neglected.
The first chance he had, was to be an apprentice of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), whose Florence workshop was modeled on that of his tutor, the Florentine erudite sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) where pupils studied astronomy, poetry, architecture, sculpture, painting, bronze-casting, metal-works, chemistry, anatomy and read the Classics.
Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, known as the Lady with an Ermine.
Then, in Milan, as a court painter, Leonardo was “adopted” by the young Cecilia Gallerani (1473 – 1536), the favorite (but not the last) mistress of the Duke Ludovico Sforza, known as Lodovico Il Moro, Duke of Milan.
She was born into a large family from Siena. Her father’s name was Fazio Gallerani. He was not a member of the nobility, but he occupied several important posts at the Milanese court, including the position of ambassador to the Republic of Florence and Republic of Lucca. Cecilia was educated alongside her six brothers in Latin and literature.
She is best known as the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489), already a painting where movement prevails over static representation. It is said that while posing for the painting, she invited Leonardo to be part of the literary circle she hosted at her residence in the Palazzo Carmagnola, where she engaged in intellectual debates with philosophers, poets, and musicians. Gallerani herself presided over these discussions.
Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, supposed to be a portrait of Bernardo Bellincino.
Composing music, poetry and delivering orations in both Latin and Italian at the age of 16, renowned for her wit and scholarship, she was considered one of the most cultured women of the Italian Renaissance.
While nearly all of her works were lost, she is remembered as a “great light of the Italian language” due to her mastery of literature and verse. The court poet Bernardo Bellincioni(1452-1492) highly praised her literary talents, even comparing her to the famous Ancient Greek poetess Sappho which allegedly inspired Plato.
The Court of Milan and its patrons also attracted and protected other artists and scientists, among which the architect Donato Bramante, the mathematician and friend of Leonardo, Luca Pacioli, the duchess Beatrice d’Este, the poet Bernardo Bellincioni and the humanist educator Francesco Filelfo.
Codex Trivulzianus, folio 30, recto.
Did Cecilia Gallerani introduce Leonardo to the ideas of Cusanus? We don’t know, but she certainly had both the knowledge and ability to do so.
Leonardo’s Codex Trivulzianus (1487-1490), shows he was working hard to improve his modest literary education, through long lists of learned words, including Latin words, copied from authoritative lexical and grammatical sources.
The scientist reportedly saw this as a precondition that was going to allow him to describe with scientific precision the phenomena he was going to discover in the future.
About twenty years after Leonardo da Vinci’s death, the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) is said to have remarked:
“I would not want to fail to repeat the words I heard the king say about him. The king said that he did not believe there had ever been a man who knew as much as Leonardo, not only in sculpture, painting, and architecture, but also in philosophy, in which he excelled.”
As one scholar concludes:
Leonardo’s “epistemological unity allows one to be elevated to a higher perspective. It not only increases our propensity for genuine empathy and understanding (much needed in today’s pluralistic society), but also for a kind of social and intellectual freedom. It is a method of acquiring a more holistic understanding of the human condition; or in short, of getting a real education.”
The world needs new Cecilia Gallerani’s and new Leonardo da Vinci’s. Are you ready to go there?
NOTES:
Vincent Delievin, La Vierge, l’Enfant Jésus et sainte Anne, dit La Sainte Anne, website of the Louvre; ↩︎
Au Louvre avec Viviane Forrester, La Vierge et l’Enfant avec sainte Anne, Léonard de Vinci, dossier établi par Cécile Scailliérez, Service Culturel du Louvre, Symogy, Editions d’Art, Paris, 2000. ↩︎
Uccello, Donatello, Verrocchio and the art of military command. An inquiry into the key events and artistic achievements that created the Renaissance. By Karel Vereycken, Paris.
Prologue
Catalogue of the 2019 Exhibition in Washington.
If there is still a lot to say, write and learn about the great geniuses of the European Renaissance, it is also time to take an interest in those whom the historian Georgio Vasari condescendingly called « transitional figures ».
How can one measure the contributions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder without knowing Pieter Coecke van Aelst? How can we value Rembrandt’s work without knowing Pieter Lastman? How did Raphaelo Sanzio innovate in relation to his master Perugino?
In 2019, an exceptional exhibition on Andrea Del Verrocchio (1435-1488), at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., highlighted his great achievements, truly inspiring outbursts of great beauty that his pupil Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) would theorize and put to his greatest advantage.
The sfumato of Leonardo ? Verrochio is the pioneer, especially in the blurred features of portraits of women made with mixed techniques (pencil, chalk and gouache).
Andrea del Verrocchio, head of a woman, mixte technique (pencil, charcoal, gouache, etc.), 1475-1478.
The joy of discovery
Leafing through the catalog of this exhibition, my joy got immense when I discovered (and to my knowledgne nobody else seems to have made this observation before me) that the enigmatic angel the viewer’s eye meets in Leonardo’s painting titled The Virgin on the Rocks (1483-1486) (Louvre, Paris), besides the movement of the body, is grosso modo a visual “quote” of the image of a terra cotta high relief (Louvre, Paris) attributed to Verrochio and “one of his assistants”, possibly even Leonardo himself, since the latter was training with the master as early as age seventeen ! The finesse of its execution and drapery also reminds us of the only known statue of Da Vinci, The Virgin with the laughing Child.
Verrocchio, angel in terra cotta.Da Vinci, angel in the Virgin on the rocks.In his Virgin on the rocks (right) da Vinci « quotes » the angel (he eventually made himself?) for a terra cotta (left) in the workshop of Verrocchio.
Many others made their beginnings in Verrocchio’s workshop, notably Lorenzo de Credi, Sandro Botticelli, Piero Perugino (Raphael’s teacher) and Domenico Ghirlandaio (Michelangelo’s teacher).
Coming out of the tradition of the great building sites launched in Florence by the great patron of the Renaissance, Cosimo de Medici for the realization of the doors of the Baptistery and the completion of the dome of Florence by Philippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Verrocchio conceived his studio as a true “polytechnic” school.
In Florence, for the artists, the orders flowed in. In order to be able to respond to all requests, Verrocchio, initially trained as a goldsmith, trained his students as craftsman-engineer-artists: drawing, calculation, interior decoration, sculpture, geology, anatomy, metal and woodworking, perspective, architecture, poetry, music and painting. A level of freedom and a demand for creativity that has unfortunately long since disappeared.
The Ghiberti legacy
Self-portrait of Ghiberti, bronze Gates of the Baptistry of Florence.
In painting, Verrocchio is said to have begun with the painter Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469). As for the bronze casting trade, he would have been, like Donatello, Masolino, Michelozzo, Uccello and Pollaiuolo, one of the apprentices recruited by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) whose workshop, starting from 1401, over forty years, will be in charge of casting the bronze bas-reliefs of two of the huge doors of the Baptistery of Florence.
Others suggest that Verrocchio was most likely trained by Michelozzo, the former companion of Ghiberti who said up shop with Donatello. As a teenager, Donatello had accompanied Brunelleschi on their joint expeditions to Rome to investigate the legacy of Greek and Roman art, and not only the architectural legacy.
In reality, Verrocchio only perpetuated and developed the model of Ghiberti’s « polytechnic » studio, where he learned the art. An excellent craftsman, Ghiberti was also goldsmith, art collector, musician and humanist scolar and historian.
His genius is to have understood the importance of multidisciplinarity for artists. According to him « sculpture and painting are sciences of several disciplines nourished by different teachings ».
The ten disciplines that he considered important to train artists are grammar, philosophy, history, followed by perspective, geometry, drawing, astronomy, arithmetic, medicine and anatomy.
You can discover, says Ghiberti, only when you managed to isolate the object of your research from interfering factors, and you can discover by detaching oneself from a dogmatic system;
as the nature of things want it, the sciences hidden under artifices are not constituted so that the men with narrow chests can judge them.
Anticipating the type of biomimicry that will characterize Leonardo thereafter, Ghiberti affirms that he sought:
to discover how nature functioned and how he could approach it to know how the objects come to the eye, how the sight functions and in which way one has to practice sculpture and painting.
Ghiberti, who was familiar with some of the leading members of the circle of humanists led by Salutati and Traversari, based his own reflexions on optics on the authority of ancient texts, especially Arabic. He wrote:
But in order not to repeat in a superficial and superfluous way the principles that found all opinions, I will treat the composition of the eye particularly according to the opinions of three authors, namely Avicenna [Ibn Sina], in his books, Alhazen [Ibn al Haytam], in the first book of his perspective, and Constantine [Qusta ibn Luqa] in the first book on the eye; for these authors are sufficient and treat with more certainty the things that interest us.
Deliberately ignored (but copied) by Vasari, Ghiberti’s Commentaries are a real manuel for artists, written by an artist. Most interestingly, it is by reading Ghiberti’s Commentaries that Leonardo da Vinci became familiar with important Arab contributions to science, in particular the outstanding work of Ibn al Haytam (Alhazen) whose treatise on optics had just been translated from Latin into Italian under the title De li Aspecti, and is quoted at length by Ghiberti in his Commentario Terzio. Author A. Mark Smith suggests that, through Ghiberti, Alhazen’s Book of Optics
may well have played a central role in the development of artificial perspective in early Renaissance Italian painting.
Ghiberti, Saint John the Baptist, bronze, Orsanmichele, Florence.
Ghiberti’s comments are not extensive. However, for the pupils of his pupil Verrocchio, such as Leonardo, who didn’t command any foreign language, Ghiberti’s book did make available in italian a series of original quotes from the roman architect Vitruvius, arab scientists such as Alhazen), Avicenna, Averroes and those european scientists having studied arab optics, notably the Oxford fransciscans Roger Bacon, John Pecham and the Polish monk working in Padua, Witelo.
Finally, in 1412, Ghiberti, while busy coordinating all the works on the Gates of the Baptistry, was also the first Renaissance sculptor to cast a life-size statue in bronze, his Saint John the Baptist, to decorate Orsanmichele, the house of the Corporations in Florence.
Lost wax casting
However, in order to cast bronzes of such a size, the artists, considering the price of metal, would use the technique known as “lost wax casting”.
This technique consists of first making a model in refractory clay (A), covered with a thickness of wax corresponding to the thickness of the bronze thought necessary.
The model is then covered with a thick layer of wet plaster (B) which, as it solidifies, forms an outer mold. Finally, the very hot molten bronze, pored into the mold it penetrates by rods (J) provided for this purpose, will replace the wax.
Verrocchio’s David, for which it is thought he used his young pupil Leonardo as a model.
Finally, once the metal has solidified, the coating is broken. The details of the bronze (K) are then adjusted and polished (L) according to the artist’s choice.
This technique would become crucial for the manufacture of bells and cannons. While it was commonly used in Ifé in Africa in the 12th century for statuary, in Europe it was only during the Renaissance, with the orders received by Ghiberti and Donatello, that it was entirely reinvented.
In 1466, after the death of Donatello, it was Verrocchio’s turn to become the Medici’s sculptor in title for whom he produced a whole series of works, notably, after Donatello, his own David in bronze (Bargello National Museum, Florence).
If with this promotion his social ascendancy is certain, Verrocchio found himself facing the greatest challenge that any artist of the Renaissance could have imagined: how to equal or even surpass Donatello, an artist whose genius has never been praised enough?
Equestrian art
This being said, let us now approach the subject of the art of military command by comparing four equestrian monuments:
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline square in Rome (175 AD) ;
Paolo Uccello’s fresco of John Hawkwood in the church of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (1436);
Erasmo da Narni, known as “Gattamelata” (1446-1450), casted by Donatello in Padua.
Bartolomeo Colleoni by Andrea del Verrocchio in Venice (1480-1488).
Equestrian statues appeared in Greece in the middle of the 6th century B.C. to honor the victorious riders in a race. From the Hellenistic period onward, they were reserved for the highest state figures, sovereigns, victorious generals and magistrates. In Rome, on the forum, they constituted a supreme honor, subject to the approval of the Senate. Apart from being bronze equestrian statues, each one is placed in a place where their troops fought.
While each statue is a reminder of the importance of military and political command, the way in which this responsibility is exercised is quite different.
Marcus Aurelius in Rome
Copy of the Marcus Aurelius statue in Rome (175 AD).
Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome in 121 A.D., into a noble family of Spanish origin. He was the nephew of the emperor Hadrian. After the death of Marcus Aurelius’ father, Hadrian entrusted him to his successor Antonin. The latter adopts and gives him an excellent education. He was initiated early in philosophy by his master Diognetus.
Interested in the stoics, he adopted for a while their lifestyle, sleeping on the ground, wearing a rough tunic, before he was dissuaded by his mother.
He went to Athens in 175 A.D. and became a promotor of philosophy. He helps financially the philosophers and the rhetoricians by granting them a fixed salary. Concerned with pluralism, he supported the Platonic Academy, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Garden of Epicurus and the Stoic Portico.
On the other hand, during his reign, persecutions against Christians were numerous. He saw them as troublemakers – since they refused to recognize the Roman gods, and as fanatics.
Marcus Aurelius, original in the Museum.
Erected in 175 A.D., the statue was entirely gilded. Its location in antiquity is unknown, but in the Middle Ages it stood in front of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, founded by Constantine, and the Lateran Palace, then the papal residence.
In 1538, Pope Paul III had the monument of Marcus Aurelius transferred to the Capitol, the seat of the city’s government. Michelangelo restored the statue and redesigned the square around it, one of the fanciest in Rome. It is undoubtedly the most famous equestrian statue, and above all the only one dating back to ancient Rome that has survived, the others having been melted down into coins or weapons…
If the statue survived, it is thanks to a misunderstanding: it was thought that it represented Constantine, the first Roman emperor to have converted to Christianity at the beginning of the 4th century, and it was out of the question to destroy the image of a Christian ruler.
Neither the date nor the circumstances of the commission are known.
But the presence of a defeated enemy under the right foreleg of the horse (attested by medieval testimonies and since lost), the emperor’s gesture and the shape of the saddle cloth, unusual in the Roman world, make us to belief that the statue commemorated Marcus Aurelius’ victories, perhaps on the occasion of his triumph in Rome in 176, or even after his death. Indeed, his reign (161-180) was marked by incessant wars to counter the incursions of Germanic or Eastern peoples on the borders of an Empire that was now threatened and on the defensive.
The horse, while not that large, but looking powerful, has been sculpted with great care and represented with realism. Its nostrils are strongly dilated, its lips pulled by the bit reveal its teeth and tongue.
One leg raised, he has just been stopped by his rider, who holds the reins with his left hand. Like him, the horse turns his head slightly to the right, a sign that the statue was made to be seen from that side. Part of his harness is preserved, but the reins have disappeared.
The size of the athletic rider nevertheless dominates that of a powerful horse that he rides without stirrups (accessories unknown to the Romans). He is dressed in a short tunic belted at the waist and a ceremonial cloak stapled on the right shoulder. It is a civil and not a military garment, adapted to a peaceful context. He is wearing leather shoes held together by intertwined straps.
The statue is striking for its size (424 cm high) and for the majesty it exudes. Without armor or weapons, eyes wide open and without emotion, the emperor raises his right arm. His authority derives above all from the function he embodies: he is the Emperor who protects his Empire and his people by punishing their enemies without mercy.
The fresco by Paolo Uccello
Paolo Uccello, fresque en honneur de John Hawkwood (1436), Dôme de Florence.
In 1436, at the request of Cosimo de’ Medici, the young Paolo Uccello was commissioned to paint a fresco depicting John Hawkwood(1323-1394), the son of an English tanner who had become a warlord during the Hundred Years’ War in France and whose name would be Italicized into Giovanno Acuto.
Serving the highest bidder, especially rival Italian cities, Hawkwood’s company of mercenaries was no slouch.
In Florence, although it may seem paradoxical, it was the humanist chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) who put Hawkwood at the head of a regular army in the service of the Signoria.
This approach is not unlike that of Louis XI in France, who, in order to control the skinners and other cutthroats who were ravaging the nation, did not hesitate to discipline them by incorporating them into a standing army, the new royal army.
The humanists of the Renaissance, notably Leonardo Bruni (1370-1440) in his De Militia (1420), became aware of the curse of using mercenaries in conflicts and of the fact that only standing army, i.e. a permanent army formed of professionals and even better by citizens and maintained by a state or a city could guarantee a lasting peace.
Although Hawkwood faithfully protected the city for 18 years, his ugly “professionalism” as a mercenary was not unanimously accepted, to the point of inspiring the proverb “Inglese italianato è un diavolo Incarnato” (« An Italianized Englishman is a devil incarnate »).
Petrarch denounced him, Boccaccio tried in vain to mount a diplomatic offensive against him, St. Catherine of Sienna begged him to leave Italy, Chaucer met him and, no doubt, used him as a model for The Knight’s Tale (The Canterbury Tales).
All this will not prevent Cosimo, a member of the humanist conspiracy and a great patron of the arts, returning from exile, from wanting to honor him. But in the absence of the bronze equestrian statue (which had been promised to him…), Florence, will only offer him a fresco in the nave of Santa Maria del Fiore, that is to say under right under the cupola of the Duomo.
UV study of Uccello’s fresco showing condottiere with helm.
From the very beginning, Paolo Uccello’s fresco seems to have stirred quite a controversy. A preparatory drawing in the collections of Florence’s Uffizi Museum indicates the commander, more armed, taller, and, with his horse in a more military position. Uccello had originally depicted Hawkwood as « more threatening », with his baton raised and horse « at the ready ».
A recent ultraviolet study confirms the fact that the painter had originally depicted the condottiere armed from head to toe. In the final version, he wears a sleeveless jacket, the giornea, and a coat; only his legs and feet are protected by a piece of armor. The final version presents a less imposing rider, less warlike, more human and more individualized
In the dispute, it was not Uccello who was considered faulty, but his sponsors. Moreover, the painter was quickly given the task of redoing the fresco in a way deemed “more appropriate”.
John Hawkwood par Uccello, détail.
Unfortunately, there is no record of the debates that must have raged among the officials of the church fabric (Opera Del Domo). What is certain is the fact that in the final version, visible today, the condottiere has been transformed from a warlord running a gang of mercenaries, into the image of philosopher-king whose only weapon is his commanding staff. At the bottom of the fresco, we can read in Latin: “Giovanno Acuto, British knight, who was in his time held as a very prudent general and very expert in military affairs.”
The position of the horse and the perspective of the sarcophagus have been changed from a simple profile to a di sotto in su view.
If this perspective is somewhat surrealistic and the pose of the horse, raising both legs on the same side, simply impossible, it remains a fact that Uccello’s fresco will set “the standards” of the ideal and impassive image of virtue and command that must embody the hero of the Renaissance: his goal is no longer to “win” a war (the objective of the mercenary), but to preserve the peace by preventing it (the objective of a philosopher-king or simply a wise head of state).
Paradigm shift
Verrocchio, Scipion, (1467).Workshop of Verrocchio, Alexander the Great (1483).Leonardo de Vinci, condottiere, (1475). How can an artist represent a military commander and the qualities required for his character? Such was the debate among the humanists.
As such, one might say that Uccello’s fresco announces the “paradigm shift” marking the end of the age of perpetual feudal wars, to that of the Renaissance, that is to say to that of a necessary concord between sovereign nation-states whose security is indivisible, the security of one being the guarantee of the security of the other, a paradigm even more rigorously defined in 1648 at the Peace of Westphalia, when it made the agapic notion of the “advantage of the other” the basis of its success.
One historian suggests that the recommissioning of Uccello’s fresco was part of the « refurbishing » of the cathedral associated with its rededication as Santa Maria del Fiore by the humanist Pope Eugene IV in March 1436, determined to convince the Eastern and Western Churches to peacefully overcome their divisions and réunite as was attempted at the Council of Florence of 1437-1438 and for which the Duomo was central.
In 1445, an ordinance was passed to discipline and rationalize the army in the form of cavalry units grouped into Compagnies d’Ordonnances, the first permanent army at the disposal, not of warlords or aristocrats, but of the King of France.
Donatello’s “Gattamelata” (1447-1453)
Donatello, statue équestre d’Erasmo da Narni, dit Gattamelata, 1447-1453, Padua.
It was only some years later, in Padua, between 1447 and 1453, that Donatello would work on the statue of Erasmo da Narni (1370-1443), a Renaissance condottiere, i.e. the leader of a professional army in the service of the Republic of Venice, which at the time ruled the city of Padua. An important detail is that Erasmo was nicknamed “il Gattamelata”.
In French, « faire la chattemite » means to affect a false air of sweetness to deceive or seduce… Others explain that his nickname of “honeyed cat” comes from the fact that his mother was called Melania Gattelli or that he wore a crest (a helmet) in the shape of a honey-colored cat in battle…
The man was of humble origin, the son of a baker, born in Umbria around 1370. He learned to handle weapons from Ceccolo Broglio, lord of Assisi, and then, when he was in his thirties, from the captains of Braccio da Montone, who was known for recruiting the best fighters.
In 1427, Erasmo, who had the confidence of Cosimo de’ Medici, signed a seven-year contract with the humanist Pope Martin V, who wished to strengthen an army corps loyal to his cause with the aim of bringing to heel the lords of Emilia, Romagna and Umbria who were rebellious against papal authority.
Donatello: Gattemelata (detail).
He bought a huge suit of armor to reinforce his high stature. He was not an impetuous fighter, but a master of siege warfare, which forced him to take slow, thoughtful and progressive action. He spied on his prey for a long time before trapping it.
In 1432, he captured the fortress of Villafranca near Imola by cunning alone and without fighting. The following year he did the same to capture the fortified town of Castelfranco, thus sparing his soldiers and his treasure.
Those who were unable to grasp his tactics, accused him of being a coward for “running away” from the front-line, not realizing, that on a given moment, this was part of the tactics of his winning strategy.
He was a prudent captain, with a very well-mannered troop, and he was careful to maintain good relations with the magistrates of the towns that employed him. He obtained the rank of captain-general of the army of the Republic of Venice during the fourth war against the Duke of Milan in 1438 and died in Padua in 1443. Following his death, the Venetian Republic gave him full honors and Giacoma della Leonessa, his widow, commissioned a sculpture in honor of her late husband for 1650 ducats.
The statue, which represents the life-size condottiere, in antique-style armor and bareheaded, holding his commanding staff in his raised right hand, on his horse, was made by the lost-wax method. As early as 1447, Donatello made the models for the casting of the horse and the condottiere. The work progresses at full speed and the work is completed in 1453 and placed on its pedestal in the cemetery that adjoins the Basilica of Padua.
Donatello, Gattemelata, détail du visage.
Brilliant for his cunning and guile, Gattamelata was a thoughtful and effective fighter in action, the type of leader recommended by Machiavelli in The Prince, and which appears in the sixteenth century by François Rabelais in his account of the “Picrocholine wars”.
Not the brute power of weapons, but the cunning and the intelligence will be the major qualities that Donatello will make appear powerfully in his work.
Contrary to Marcus Aurelius, it is not his social status that gives the commander his authority, but his intelligence and his creativity in the government of the city and the art of war. Donatello had an eye for detail. Looking at the horse, we see that it is a massive animal but far from static. It has a slow and determined gait, without any hesitation.
But that’s not all. A rigorous analysis shows that the proportions of the horse are of a “higher order” than those of the condottiere. Did Donatello make a mistake and make Erasmo too small and the horse too large? No, the sculptor made this choice to emphasize the value of Gattamelata who, thanks to his skills, is able to tame even wild and gigantic animals. In addition, the horse’s eyes show him as wild and untameable. Looking at him, one could say that it is impossible to ride him, but Gattamelata manages it with ease and without effort.
Because if you look at the reins in the hands of the protagonist, you will notice that he holds them in complete tranquility. This is another detail that highlights Erasmus’ powerful cunning and ingenuity.
Next, did you notice that one of the horse’s legs rests on a sphere? If this sphere (which could also be a cannonball, since Erasmus was a warrior) serves to give stability to Donatello’s composition as a whole, it also indicates how this animal of gigantic strength (symbolizing here warlike violence), once tamed and well used, allows the globe (the earthly kingdom) to be kept in balance.
Having told you about the horse, it is time to know more about the condottiere.
He has a proud and determined expression. The baton of command, which he holds in his hand, delicately touches the horse’s mane. The baton is not just a symbolic object; he may have received it in 1438 from the Republic of Venice.
Unlike Uccello’s fresco, Gattamelata is not dressed as a contemporary prince of commander, but as a figure beyond time embodying both the past, the present and the future. To capture this, Donatello, who takes care of every detail, has taken an ancient model and modernized it with incredible results. The details of the protagonist’s armor include purely classical motifs such as the head of Medusa, taken from Marcus Aurelius, in Greek mythology one of the three gorgons whose eyes had the power to petrify any mortal who crossed her gaze.
Although the helmet of Gattamelata would have allowed to identify him at eyesight, Donatello has discarded this option. With a helmet on his head, he would have been the symbol of a bloodthirsty warrior, rather than a cunning man. Even better, the absence of a helmet allows the artist to show us a fearless commander whose fixed gaze shows his determination. With the figure slightly bowed and legs extended, the sword in its scabbard placed at an angle, Donatello gives the illusion of an “imbalance” that reinforces in the viewer’s mind the idea that the horse is advancing with full strength.
Art historian John Pope-Hennessy is emphatic:
The fundamental differences between the Gattamelata and Marcus Aurelius are obvious. The (roman) emperor sits passively on his horse, legs dangling. In the fifteenth century, on the other hand, the art of riding implies the use of spurs. The impression of authority that emanates from the monument designed by Donatello comes from the total domination of the condottiere over his horse. (…) The soles of the feet are exactly parallel to the surface of the pedestal, as are the large six-pointed spurs, stretched to the middle of the animal’s flank.
As a result, Gattamelata is not a remake of the “classical Greek or Roman sculpture” of a hero with a sculpted physique, but a kind of new man who succeeds through reason. The fact that the statue has such a high pedestal also has its reason. Placed at such a height, the Gattamelata does not “share” our own space. It is in another dimension, eternal and out of time.
Verrocchio’s Colleoni
Verrocchio’s Colleoni.
Some thirty years later, between 1480 and 1488, Andrea del Verrocchio, after a contest, was selected to make a large bronze equestrian statue of another Italian condottiere named Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400-1475).
A ruthless mercenary, working for a patron one day and his rival the next day, he served from 1454 the Republic of Venice with the title of general-in-chief (capitano generale). He died in 1475 leaving a will in which he bequeathed part of his fortune to Venice in exchange for the commitment to erect a bronze statue to his honor in St. Mark’s Square.
The Venetian Senate agreed to erect an equestrian monument to his memory, while charging the costs to the widow of the deceased…
In addition, the Senate refused to erect it in St. Mark’s Square, which was, along with St. Mark’s Basilica, at the heart of the city’s life. The Senate therefore decided to interpret the conditions set by Colleoni in his last will and testament without contradicting them, choosing to erect his statue in 1479, not in St. Mark’s Square, but in an area further from the city center in front of the Scuola San Marco, on the campo dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo.
Although Verrocchio had started working on the project since 1482, it remained unfinished at his death in 1488. And it is, not as Verrocchio wished, his heir Lorenzo di Credi who will cast the statue, but the Venetian Alessandro Leopardi (who lost the contest to Verrocchio), who will not hesitate to sign it!
The four horses of the Triumphal Quadriga overseeing the Basilica of Saint Marc in Venice.
If the horse is in conformity with the typology of the magnificent horses composing the quadriga overseeing the Basilica of Saint Mark of Venice (Greek statuary of the IVth century BC brought back by the crusaders from Constantinople to Venice in 1204) and of the horse of Marcus Aurelius, its musculature is more nervously underlined and traced. Objectively, this statue is ideally more proportionate. There is also more fine detail, a result of new pre-sculpture techniques, making the work captivating and realistic to look at.
Andrea del Verrocchio, statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni.
The sculpture overflows its pedestal. According to André Suarès quoted in The Majesty of Centaurs:
Colleone on horseback walks in the air, he will not fall. He cannot fall. He leads his earth with him. His base follows him […] He has all the strength and all the calm. Marcus Aurelius, in Rome, is too peaceful. He does not speak and does not command. Colleone is the order of the force, on horseback. The force is right, the man is accomplished. He goes a magnificent amble. His strong beast, with the fine head, is a battle horse; he does not run, but neither slow nor hasty, this nervous step ignores the fatigue. The condottiere is one with the glorious animal: he is the hero in arms.
Verrocchio’s Colleoni (détail).
His baton of command is even metamorphosed into a bludgeon! But since it is not Verrocchio who finished this work, let us not blame the latter for the warlike fury that emanates from this statue.
Venice, a vicious slave-trading financial and maritime Empire fronting as a “Republic”, clearly took its revenge here on the beautiful conception developed during the Renaissance of a philosopher-king defending the nation-state.
On the aesthetic level, this mercenary smells like an animal. As a good observer, Leonardo warned us: when an artist represents a man entirely imprisoned by a single emotion (joy, rage, sadness, etc.), he ends up painting something that takes us away from the truly human soul. This is what we see in this equestrian statue.
If, on the contrary, the artist shows several emotions running through the figure represented, the human aspect will be emphasized. This is the case, as we have seen, with Donatello’s Gattamelata, uniting cunning, determination and prudence to overcome fear the face of threat.
Leonardo’s own, gigantic project to erect a gigantic bronze horse, on which he worked for years and developed new bronze casting techniques, unfortunately was never build, seen the hectic circumstances.
Da Vinci’s gigantic project.
Finally, beyond all the interpretations, let us admire the admirable know-how of these artists. In terms of craft and skill, it generally took an entire life to become able to realize such great works, not even mentioning the patience and boundless passion required.
Up to us to bring it back to life !
Bibliography:
Verrocchio, Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence, Andrew Butterfield, National Gallery, Princeton University Press, 2020;
Donatello, John Pope-Hennessy, Abbeville Press, 1993;
Uccello, Franco and Stefano Borsi, Hazan, 2004;
Les Commentaires de Lorenzo Ghiberti dans la culture florentine du Quattrocento, Pascal Dubourg-Glatigny, Histoire de l’Art, N° 23, 1993, Varia, pp. 15-26;
Leonardo da Vinci’s « Viruvian Man ». Since we’re commemorating this year (2019) Leonardo Da Vinci, who died 500 years ago, many silly things are presented by fake scholars trying to make a real living.
Since I was introduced into the canon of proportions of the human body during my training as a professional painter and engraver, I want offer you some hints on how to look at what is called Da Vinci’s « Vitruvian man », a drawing currently on exhibit at the Da Vinci show at the Louvre in Paris.
Hence, as Leonardo underlines himself in his notebooks, adopting Cusanus wordings, it is only with the « eyes of the mind » that art becomes visible, because the « eyes of the flesh » are intrensically blind to it.
Canons of proportions
Europe, and Classical Greece, as everybody should know, emerged largely by absorbing several major discoveries accomplished much earlier by other civilizations. Much of it came from Asia, but African and especially Egypt, were key.
The very practice of mummification, a process which takes at least 60 days of work, made Egypt the key area of anatomical research.
Left an egyptian stutue. Right a Greek archaic Kuros.
As demonstrated by early Egyptian sculpture, the exact size of the entire adult human body is 7,5 times the size of the head. The size of a newborn is only four heads, that of a seven year old, six heads and that of a 17 years old adolescent, 7 heads.
Drawing class card of the author.
If one subdivides the overall 7.5 proportion, for an adult, from the top of the head till the lowest part of the torso, one measures four heads, one till the nipples, one till the belly button and a fourth one till the lowest part of the pubis. Going up from the sole till the middle of the pelvis, one measures 3.5 heads: 2 heads till the knee and 1.5 till the middle of the pelvis. That brings the total till 7.5 heads for the entire length of the adult human body and it is proportional in the sense that people with smaller heads also have small bodies.
Polikleitos versus Lysippus
In the Vth Century BC, the Greek sculptor Polikleitos’ spear bearer (The “Doryphoros”) of Naples National Archeological Museum applied this most beautiful canon of proportions, known as the “Polikleitos canon”.
During the Renaissance, the nostalgics of the Roman Empire preferred another Greek canon, that of Greek sculptor Lysippus (4th Century BC), formalized by the Roman author, architect and civil engineer, Vitrivius (1st century BC).
Vitruvius only transcribed the prevalent taste of his epoch. Roman sculptors, in order to give an athletic and heroic look to the Emperors which they were portraying, adopting the canon of Lysippus, could reduce the head of their models to only an eight of the total length of the body. The trick was that by reducing the relative size of the head, the body looked more preeminent and powerful, something most emperors, who were often physical failures, appreciated and secured their popularity. Even extreme cases of 12 to 15 heads of body length appeared. In short, Public relations ruled at the detriment of science and truth.
Today’s comic strip drawers chose proportions according to purpose:
–For real life, 7.5 or “normal canon” –For a movie star, 8 heads, with the “idealistic canon”; –For a fashion magazine: 8.5 heads; –For a comic book hero: 9 heads for the “heroic canon”
Vitruvian man
« Vitruvian man », drawing of Leonard da Vinci.
Text accompanying Leonardo DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man:
Vitruvius, the architect, says in his work on architecture that the measurements of the human body are distributed by Nature as follows that is that 4 fingers make 1 palm, and 4 palms make 1 foot, 6 palms make 1 cubit; 4 cubits make a man’s height. And 4 cubits make one pace and 24 palms make a man; and these measures he used in his buildings. If you open your legs so much as to decrease your height 1/14 and spread and raise your arms till your middle fingers touch the level of the top of your head you must know that the centre of the outspread limbs will be in the navel and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle.
The length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height.
From the roots of the hair to the bottom of the chin is the tenth of a man’s height; from the bottom of the chin to the top of his head is one eighth of his height; from the top of the breast to the top of his head will be one sixth of a man. From the top of the breast to the roots of the hair will be the seventh part of the whole man. From the nipples to the top of the head will be the fourth part of a man. The greatest width of the shoulders contains in itself the fourth part of the man. From the elbow to the tip of the hand will be the fifth part of a man; and from the elbow to the angle of the armpit will be the eighth part of the man. The whole hand will be the tenth part of the man; the beginning of the genitals marks the middle of the man. The foot is the seventh part of the man. From the sole of the foot to below the knee will be the fourth part of the man. From below the knee to the beginning of the genitals will be the fourth part of the man. The distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose and from the roots of the hair to the eyebrows is, in each case the same, and like the ear, a third of the face.
Of course, Da Vinci’s exploration of the Vitruvian man doesn’t mean he approves or disapproves the stated fakery in proportions.
Soul or muscle?
It should be known that in Italy, the pure Roman taste has become trendy again following the discovery in 1506 of the statue of the Laocoon on the site of Nero’s villa in Rome. From that moment, artist will feel obliged to increase the volume of the muscular masses in order to appear as working « in Antique style ».
Although Leonardo never openly criticized this trend, it is hard not to think of Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, when the artist, seeking to raise the spirit to unequalled philosophical heights, advised painters: « do not give all the muscles of the figures an exaggerated volume » and « if you act differently, it is more a sort of representation of a sack of nuts that you will have achieved than to that of a human figure » (Codex Madrid II, 128r).
Drawing by the architect Giacomo Andrea, a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci, who had studied the work of the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius.
No doubt inspired by his friend, the architect Giacomo Andrea, in « The Vitruvian Man », Leonardo is above all interested by other harmonies: if a person extends his arms in a direction parallel to the ground, one obtains the same length as one’s entire height. This equality is inscribed by Leonardo in a square (symbol of the earthly realm). But if one stretches his arms and legs in a star shape, they are inscribed in a circle whose center is the navel. The location of the navel divides the body according to the golden ratio (in this example 5 heads out of a total of 8 heads, 5+3 being part of the Fibonnacci series: 1+2 = 3; 3+2 = 5; 5+3 = 8; 8+5 = 13; 13+8 = 21, etc.).
Leonardo clearly understood what the golden section really means: not a “magical” number in itself, but the reflexion of the dynamic of least action, the very principle uniting man (the square) with the creator and the universe (the circle).
So if you take a look, beware of what you see and especially what you don’t !
Léonard en résonance avec la peinture traditionnelle chinoise
Karel Vereycken, un peintre-graveur et historien d’art amateur d’origine belge vivant en France, travaille depuis longtemps sur la perspective. En 1996, dans une étude approfondie publiée dans Ibykus, le magazine allemand de l’Institut Schiller, il résuma ses recherches sous le titre « L’invention de la perspective ». Selon lui, par une lecture euro-centrique étriquée, la majorité des « experts » attribuent la paternité de cette découverte (la représentation de l’espace sur un plan) de façon exclusive à l’Occident.
Or, en examinant, non seulement les œuvres mais tout autant les écrits des peintres chinois, notamment ceux de la Dynastie Song (960-1279 après JC), Vereycken s’est rendu à l’évidence que la Chine a été pionnière dans ce domaine et a pu influencer certains artistes européens, dont Léonard de Vinci. Il a développée cette question dès 1996 dans son article intitulé « Sur la peinture chinoise et son influence en Occident ».
Etant donné qu’en 2019-2020 le Musée du Louvre, consacre
une belle exposition à ce peintre extra-ordinaire, dans le cadre du
200e anniversaire de sa disparation, nous avons demandé à
Karel Vereycken de présenter l’influence chinoise sur son œuvre.
Quotidien du Peuple : M. Vereycken, quel a été l’apport de la Chine à l’invention de la perspective ?
VEREYCKEN: L’avantage de la Chine, et mes confrères chinois me corrigeront le cas échéant, c’est que l’on y trouve, dès le VIe siècle, des écrits témoignant, non seulement de la pratique artistique dans le pays, mais évoquant l’état d’esprit qui doit animer les peintres. Je pense notamment aux six règles de base de la peinture chinoise détaillées par Xie He (500-535) pour qui « la résonance intérieure » doit « donner vie et mouvement » mais exige aussi la « fidélité à l’objet en représentant les formes ». L’on constate tout de suite, que ce qui prime, ce n’est pas la performance « technique » du peintre, mais sa valeur spirituelle et morale. Le peintre des Song, Guo Ruoxo, écrit par exemple en 1074, que « Si la valeur spirituelle (renpin) d’une personne est élevée, il s’ensuit que la résonance intérieure est nécessairement élevée, alors sa peinture est forcément pleine de vie et de mouvement (shendong). On peut dire que, dans les hauteurs les plus élevées du spirituel, il peut rivaliser avec la quintessence ».
Quotidien du Peuple : En quoi cela a un rapport avec Léonard de Vinci ?
VEREYCKEN: Comme j’ai tenté de le développer dans mon article « Léonard, peintre de mouvement » de 2007, ce qui rapproche ce peintre de la philosophie chinoise, c’est sa volonté de peindre les transformations. Léonard se reconnaissait pleinement dans la phrase du philosophe grec Héraclite pour qui « Il n’y a que de permanent que le changement ». Or, pour saisir, non pas la forme des objets ou de l’espace-temps dans lequel ils se situent, mais leur apparition à un moment donné dans un processus de transformation, il faut savoir pénétrer les causes qui les engendrent.
Or, les « Notices sur les peintures du Jingyinuan » de Su Shi(1036-1101), révèlent une approche si semblable à Léonard qu’on risque de les confondre avec ses « carnets » ! Su Shi écrit « Au sujet de la peinture, j’estime que si les figures humaines, les animaux, les bâtiments ou les ustensiles ont une forme constante, par contre, les montagne et rochers, les arbres et bambous, eaux courantes et vagues, comme les brumes et les nuages, n’ont pas de forme constante, mais gardent un principe interne constant. Lorsque la forme constante est défectueuse dans sa représentation, tout le monde s’en aperçoit ; cependant, même un connaisseur peut ne pas s’apercevoir que le principe constant n’est pas respecté. C’est pourquoi tant de peintres médiocres, afin de tromper le monde, peignent ce qui n’a pas une forme constante. Or un défaut dans la représentation d’une forme ne touche qu’une partie de la peinture, alors qu’une erreur dans le principe constant en ruine la totalité. Car lorsqu’il agit de la représentation des choses qui n’ont pas de forme constante, il faut respecter son principe interne (li). Certains artisans sont capables de dessiner les formes exhaustivement ; par contre, pour leur principe, seuls y parviennent les esprits élevés et les talents éminents… »
Quotidien du Peuple : et au niveau de la perspective ?
VEREYCKEN : Léonard, qui décrit la « perspective d’effacement » aurait pu adhérer sans problème à ce qu’écrit l’érudit Wang Wei(701-761) pour qui : « d’un homme à distance, on ne voit pas les yeux ; d’un arbre à distance, on ne distingue pas les branches ; d’une montagne lointaine aux contours doux comme un sourcil, nul rocher est visible ; de même nulle onde sur une eau lointaine, laquelle touche l’horizon des nuages. ». Et pour qui, il est impératif de « distinguer le clair et l’obscur, le net et le flou. Établir la hiérarchie entre les figures ; fixer leurs attitudes, leur démarche, leurs saluts réciproques. Trop d’éléments, c’est le danger de l’encombrement ; trop peu, c’est celui du relâchement. Saisir donc l’exacte mesure et la juste distance. Qu’il y ait du vide entre le lointain et le proche, cela aussi bien pour les montagnes que pour les cours d’eau. »
Quotidien du Peuple : comment voyez-vous cette influence sur La Joconde ?
VEREYCKEN : Il faut bien comprendre, qu’au-delà du mouvement du corps, Léonard chercha à exprimer les « mouvements immatériels » qu’il classe en cinq catégories. La première est le temps car il « embrasse toutes les autres ». Les autres sont la diffusion des images par la lumière, celle des sons et des odeurs, le mouvement « mental » est celui qui anime « la vie des choses » (Codex Atlanticus, 203v-a).
Mais alors, comment peindre ce souffle de la vie ? Formellement c’est totalement impossible car dès qu’on attrape une forme, la vie s’en échappe comme celle d’un papillon qu’on épingle ! Pour y parvenir, sculpteurs, poètes et peintres doivent créer une ironie, une ambiguïté que le grand penseur Lyndon LaRouche(1922-2019) a exprimée en anglais comme mid-motion (un « moment d’entre-deux »), révélant le potentiel d’une transformation potentielle à un moment donné, pour ceux qui veulent bien le voir.
Or, regardez le visage de la Joconde, rempli de paradoxes
énigmatiques : un coté de la bouche sourit, l’autre, moins ;
un œil est sérieux, l’autre amusé, un œil vous regarde, l’autre
regarde au-delà, etc. Ce sourire est indéfinissable car précisément
« entre deux ». Va-t-elle sourire réellement ou éclater
en pleurs ? L’énigme de son sourire n’aura jamais cette
force sans le paysage encore plus énigmatique sur l’arrière plan.
Or, la perspective de ce paysage obéit plutôt aux préceptes
chinois qu’aux règles rigides de la perspective européenne.
Dans la peinture chinoise, l’interaction entre l’eau et la montagne étant symbole de transformation universelle, différents niveaux peuvent s’enchaîner du type : eau, petite brume, montagne, grande brume, nuage, eau, petite brume, montagne et ainsi de suite. Cherchant à se conformer à la vue humaine, les peintres chinois, dès le Xe siècle, feront appel, non pas à une seule ligne d’horizon, mais à une succession d’horizons accompagnant notre vue là où elle se projette. Or, c’est précisément le procédé mis en œuvre par Léonard dans La Joconde où les horizons se succèdent. A gauche de la figure, la ligne d’horizon s’établit à la hauteur des narines ; à droite, au niveau des yeux, le tout perturbant suffisamment nos habitudes visuelles pour que notre esprit s’ouvre à ce que Léonard jugeait essentiel : l’âme vivante de La Joconde.
English version (via google translate)
Leonardo Da Vinci’s « Mona Lisa » resonates with time and space with traditional Chinese painting
People’s Daily, Paris, December 17 (Reporter Ge Wenbo) This year marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Da Vinci. Belgian printmaker, art historian and art critic Karel Vereycken, who has lived in France, recently accepted an interview with a reporter on the Internet explaining his experience in studying Da Vinci’s painting techniques for many years, and he believed that the painting of « Mona Lisa » is similar to the ancient Chinese painting technique.
In his view, many people use a « European-centric » standpoint to attribute perspective to Western originality and ownership, which is wrong. Through observing the paintings of ancient China, especially the Song Dynasty, Vereycken proposed that China was the pioneer of perspective. The works of many European artists including Da Vinci in later generations could resonate with ancient Chinese painting theories and techniques.
People’s Daily: How do you think Chinese painting inspired perspective?
VEREYCKEN: From the 6th century onwards in China, some art works not only recorded literary practice, but also inspired more active painting art. The « six methods » proposed by Xie He, a well-known painter and literary theorist in the Southern and Northern Dynasties of China, need to be both « spiritual and vivid » and « appropriate ». Song Dynasty painter and calligraphy connoisseur Guo Ruoxu wrote in his « Pictures and Wenwenzhi »: « The character has become high, and the charm must be high« ; This obviously transcends the « technical » level of painting and sublimates into the spiritual and moral realm. It broke through the simplex system and pursued the vitality from the inside to the outside, and became an important theoretical basis of perspective.
People’s Daily:How does this relates to Da Vinci’s painting techniques?
VEREYCKEN: In my 2007 article « Da Vinci, the painter who captures movement, » I pointed out that the artist was eager to paint scenes of movement and change. Da Vinci agreed with the famous quote of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, « Only ‘change’ in the world is eternal. » However, it is not the form of the objects or their time and space that must be grasped, but the appearance of them at a given moment in the process of change, which requires a deep understanding of the reasons for the change.
In his Song of Jingyinyuan in the Song Dynasty, Su Shi proposed that human beings, poultry, palaces, houses, utensils, and things used often have their forms. As for mountains and rivers, rocks, bamboo, firewood, flowing water, waves, smoke, and clouds, although they don’t often exist, they have their essence. I found that Su Shi’s concept of pursuing essence and value change coincided with Da Vinci’s idea of seeking movement.
The Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei expounded his understanding of perspective in his « Landscapes and Landscapes » in more detail: « A distant man has no eyes, a distant tree has no branches. A distant mountain has no stones, faint like eyebrows; Yun Qi. » Make a detailed description of the space, layer, density, and sharpness of the picture« . This also fits perfectly with the « air perspective » adopted by Da Vinci.
People’s Daily Online: How does this appears in Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting?
VEREYCKEN: In addition to physical movement, Da Vinci also tried to express a « non-material movement », which he divided into five categories. The first is time, because it « contains everything else, » and the other is the spread of light, sound, and smell. In his view, these non-substantial movements just made things full of life.
But how to portray this vitality? It is impossible to rely only on the fixed form, because holding on to the form is like trying to catch a beautiful butterfly but nailing it to make a specimen, and vitality is lost. Sculptors, poets, and painters must create irony, contradiction, and ambiguity in their works, as the great thinker Lyndon LaRouche called « intermediate states » to reveal potential movements and changes.
The face of Mona Lisa is full of mysterious « contradictions »: one side of the mouth smiles, and the other side smiles slightly; one eye reveals a serious look and the other eye expresses pleasure; One eye is looking at you, the other eye is over you, and so on. Mona Lisa’s smile is difficult to define because it happens to be in the « middle state ». Does she really smile or cry? Her smile has such a charming power because the scenery behind her is more charming. The perspective of this landscape is closer to the rules of Chinese painting we described earlier than to the rigid rules of Europe at that time.
In Chinese painting, the interaction between water and mountains is a symbol of universal transformation, which can link different levels of mountains, water, and fog. Starting from the 10th century AD, Chinese painting seeks a structure consistent with human visual experience. Instead of using focal perspective, it has created and used scatter perspective produced by changes in line of sight projection. This perspective exists precisely in Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. On the left side of the character, the line of sight is at the height of the nostril, and on the right side of the character, the horizontal line rises to the corner of the eye. This way of breaking the conventional perspective allows us to feel the lively life and lively soul of Mona Lisa, listening to the resonance between the painting and traditional Chinese painting through time and space.
La Vierge aux Rochers (1483-1486), Léonard de Vinci, Louvre, Paris.
Par Karel Vereycken
En 1992, j’ai réalisé une copie à taille réelle de la Vierge aux rochers, un des chefs-d’œuvre de Léonard de Vinci appartenant à la collection du Louvre.
La commanditaire, une enseignante habitant l’Est de la France, y tenait à titre pédagogique. Or, la ville où elle exerçait sa profession, n’avait pas de musée. Pour combler ce manque, elle installa plusieurs copies de maîtres anciens à son domicile.
C’est là qu’elle permettait à de nombreux enfants de vivre un de ces moments magiques qui font de notre existence un délice. Car dialoguer, lors d’un rendez-vous, avec un tableau d’une beauté extrême de Léonard, fait de nous des humains.
Copie réalisée en 1992 par Karel Vereycken de la Vierge aux Rochers de Léonard de Vinci actuellement à l’Église Saint-Laurent (Paris, XIe arr.)
Pour des raisons diverses, ma copie a fini à l’Eglise Saint-Laurent de Paris, proche de la gare de l’Est, où on peut l’admirer et où il garde à ce jour une bonne place pour tout ceux qui désirent prier et méditer.
En 1992, en m’attelant à copier avec précision cette œuvre, j’ai constaté une chose étrange qui n’a cessé de me troubler. En plus, les plus grand spécialistes de Léonard dont j’ai consulté les écrits (Martin Kemp, Carlo Pedretti ou encore Daniel Arasse), semblent tous être passé à coté d’une énorme « erreur » anatomique présente dans ce tableau. Certes, ils n’ont jamais copié d’œuvres de ce type. Et évidemment, une fois identifiée, cette erreur ne quitte plus votre champs de vision ni votre esprit.
Les faits sont incontestables. Il s’agit d’une erreur anatomique majeure touchant l’ange situé à droite du tableau. Avant de préciser cette erreur, quelques mots sur l’œuvre comme un tout où cet ange joue un rôle majeur.
Le sens de l’œuvre
Le sujet de la Vierge aux rochers n’illustre aucun évènement spécifique des Évangiles et reste donc ouvert à toute interprétation. Il pourrait s’agir d’un évènement popularisé par le théologien du XIVe siècle Pietro Cavalca, quand saint Jean et le Christ enfant se sont retrouvés lors de la fuite de la sainte famille en Égypte.
L’ange serait alors l’archange Uriel qui, selon l’interprétation de Cavalca, protégeait l’enfant-ermite saint Jean. Or, Uriel, en hébreu lumière de Dieu, est l’ange qui apporte à l’humanité la connaissance et la compréhension du Divin.
Les ressemblances sont frappantes, tant au niveau du visage que des bras, de la pose ou de l’aile. J’affirme ici, et je suis à ma connaissance le seul historien d’art à le faire, qu’il est presque certain que Léonard de Vinci, pour sa représentation de l’ange dans La Vierge aux Rochers, ait utilisé l’ange qui figure dans le bas-relief aujourd’hui attribué à « L’atelier de Verrocchio », atelier où justement Léonard suivait sa formation en tant que jeune apprenti.
Seule figure à nous regarder de face, c’est par lui que nous « entrons » dans le tableau. C’est lui qui pointe son doigt sur un des enfants, plus précisément Saint-Jean Baptise agenouillé en prière devant l’enfant Jésus qui à son tour le bénit. La Vierge, au centre, a sa main droite posée sur l’épaule de Saint-Jean Baptiste qui lui semble sur le bord d’un relief. Elle le protège et le retient. Entretemps, elle garde sa main protectrice au-dessus de l’enfant Jésus qui lui, également au bord d’un précipice, est protégé à son tour par la main de l’ange qui nous regarde. L’ange nous met donc sur la « bonne piste » pour comprendre le sens que Léonard a voulu faire ressortir de l’œuvre qui s’éloigne un peu de celui de l’immaculé conception, souhaité par ses commanditaires.
Platon ?
Il pourrait également s’agir d’une interprétation philosophique personnelle de Léonard de Vinci. Dans l’iconographie médiévale et pré-renaissante, l’ange de l’annonciation se rend auprès de Marie pour lui signifier que son heure est venue. Or, ici, l’ange se retourne vers nous tout en indiquant qu’il découvre sur place un autre annonciateur : saint Jean Baptiste.
Ce dernier, saint patron de la ville de Florence, fut parfois associé à Platon. Les grands humanistes de l’époque, en effet, considérait que la philosophie de Platon, bien qu’avec des limites et des imperfections, préfigurait le message de l’Évangile. Pour eux, les « petites lumières » de l’Antiquité (païenne) annonçaient timidement la grande lumière de la Chrétienté. Or, saint Jean Baptiste, qui avait vécu comme Platon avant le Christ, avait lui aussi annoncé sa venue. Par analogie, l’image de saint Jean Baptiste, pourrait être une métaphore du platonisme christianisé qui fut la puissance fondatrice de toute la Renaissance européenne.
A un moment où le Vatican, avec saint Thomas d’Aquin, avait fait le choix calamiteux de privilégier Aristote dont la philosophie est diamétralement contraire avec l’Évangile, le tableau de Léonard n’a pu qu’apparaître comme une terrible provocation. Le Vatican semble d’ailleurs ne lui avoir jamais pardonné car contrairement à Raphaël ou Michel-Ange, des propagandistes égotiques dont le contenu philosophique était largement inférieur à celui exprimé par Léonard, le Vatican n’a jamais honoré De Vinci de la moindre commande, une des raisons pour son départ pour la France.
La Vierge aux rochers (Léonard de Vinci, Louvre, Paris.) Détail de l’ange.
L’erreur
Lorsque l’on scrute avec attention, comme j’ai dû le faire pour réaliser ma copie conforme, la position anatomique de l’ange en bas à droite, l’on constate la chose suivante :
–Contrairement à l’impression initiale, l’ange n’est pas assis sur son fessier ;
–L’ange est agenouillé sur son genou gauche qu’on identifie sous le vêtement rouge ;
–Son genou droit est donc en hauteur derrière le corps de l’ange ;
–Par contre, son pied droit est posé au sol sur la végétation. Il est visible et on peut compter les orteils ;
–Par conséquent, avec son corps, et donc sa colonne vertébrale, dans cette position, le positionnement de la tête de l’ange, telle qu’elle est peinte, est strictement impossible. Pour un être « normal », cette tête doit s’inscrire dans la prolongation de la courbe que forme la colonne vertébrale, c’est-à-dire fortement s’incliner vers la gauche.
Comment l’expliquer ?
J’appelle cette erreur « fantastique » non pas parce qu’elle est digne d’un élève, une autre hypothèse plausible, mais parce qu’elle nous apprend quelque chose sur nous mêmes.
La Vierge aux rochers de Léonard de Vinci. A gauche, l’original du Louvre. A droite, la copie au National Gallery de Londres. Notez que dans cette dernière, le doigt de l’ange a disparu…
Deux pistent offrent des hypothèses pourquoi tant de gens « n’ont rien vu » :
1) D’abord personne n’en a parlé et des milliers de copies ont déjà été réalisées. Notez que la plus connue, réalisée à l’époque et actuellement dans la collection du National Gallery de Londres, bien qu’elle a changé le sens de l’œuvre en amputant la main de l’ange, tente discrètement d’estomper l’erreur dont nous parlons ;
2) L’amour rend aveugle. Nous sommes « bon public » et donc nous nous imposons une forme de cécité. Tout d’abord, puisqu’il s’agit de Léonard de Vinci, un des plus grands génies de tous les temps, surtout en anatomie ! Ensuite, la « gestalt » du tableau comme un tout est d’une telle puissance et d’une telle beauté, que nous « pardonnons » immédiatement toute erreur de ce type. Un peu comme lorsqu’un bon pianiste nous joue une sonate magnifique de Beethoven. Tant que l’interprète nous traduit avec fidélité l’intention sublime du compositeur, nous « n’entendons » pas telle ou telle fausse note. Et c’est pareil en peinture.
En juillet 1656, la Cour suprême de la Hague accorde à Rembrandt (1606-1669) un cessio honorum, une autorisation de mettre lui-même en vente ses biens et ses meubles, les recettes étant partagées entre ses créanciers. Sans tarder, les magistrats se rendent chez lui pour dresser l’inventaire du contenu de sa grande maison dans la Jodenbreestraat, aujourd’hui le Rembrandthuis d’Amsterdam.
Cet inventaire nous révèle l’étendue de la précieuse collection du maître : sculptures, estampes, dessins et peintures de Mantegna, Dürer, Van Eyck, Lucas van Leyden et quantité d’autres grands noms de la Renaissance italienne et flamande dont il est l’héritier spirituel, sans oublier ses propres œuvres.
Démontrant à quel point le sujet était cher à l’artiste, dans l’agtercaemer (salle du fond) qui lui sert de chambre à coucher, l’inventaire relève deux têtes du Christ. Dans la cleyne schildercaemer (le petit atelier), « Een Cristus tronie nae ‘t leven » (Une tête du Christ d’après la vie, c’est-à-dire peint… d’après un modèle vivant).
Cette formulation, on la retrouve également dès la première phrase d’un poème composé par Herman Frederik Waterloos et inscrite sous la fameuse gravure La pièce aux cent florins : « Aldus maalt REMBRANTS naaldt den Zoone Godts na ‘t leeven » (Ainsi l’aiguille de REMBRANDT peint-elle le Fils de Dieu d’après nature).
Après que des générations d’historiens se sont interrogées sur ce paradoxe apparent – comment un artiste peut-il peindre le Christ d’après un modèle vivant ? – l’exposition du Louvre, riche de 85 œuvres, tente de dissiper ce mystère en montrant comment Rembrandt a représenté le Christ, tout au long de sa carrière, ainsi que les artistes qui l’ont influencé, et comment il a été repris par ses élèves.
Les pèlerins d’Emmaüs
Pour y parvenir, telle une composition de musique classique, l’exposition s’ouvre et se clôture par deux tableaux abordant le même thème, celui des Pèlerins d’Emmaüs, dont la figure du Christ occupe le centre. Le premier tableau, qui appartient au Musée Jacquemart André, est peint en 1629, lorsque l’artiste n’a que 23 ans.
Le deuxième, de la collection du Louvre et fraîchement nettoyé, date de 1648, année où se termine enfin la guerre de Trente ans, grâce au Traité de Westphalie mettant fin au règne impérial des Habsbourg. A l’intérieur de cette contrainte, l’exposition réussit avec brio à dérouler le fil rouge du « voyage intérieur » de Rembrandt.
Rembrandt, Les pèlerins d’Emmaüs (1629).
Dans le premier tableau (ci-dessus) sur le thème des Pèlerins d’Emmaüs, on ne voit que de profil la figure imposante du Christ, représenté à contre-jour.
La stupeur d’un pèlerin se lit sur son visage éclairé, tandis qu’un autre en est tombé à la renverse.
Comme dans La résurrection de Lazare ou Le Christ chassant les marchands du temple, le Christ y manifeste avant tout son autorité.
Jusque-là, à part quelques exceptions comme Pieter Lastman, dont Rembrandt, tout comme son ami Jan Lievens, était l’élève, les peintres représentaient un Messie à la beauté glorieuse – doté d’un visage aux traits réguliers, barbu et chevelu, qui, même sur la croix, affichait un air certes dolent mais impeccable.
Quelques exemples de cette iconographie, dont de belles gravures de Dürer ou des œuvres de Mantegna, sont d’ailleurs présents au début de l’exposition. Dès 1631, son Christ sur la croix tranche avec les stéréotypes en vigueur. Alors que Rubens le peint athlétique, le Jésus de Rembrandt est peu musclé, les bras maigres, le ventre un peu gonflé. Martyrisé, il affiche une grimace peu esthétique. C’est bien un être humain qui souffre.
Cependant, s’il s’intéresse à la nature divine du Christ, il n’en oublie pas le caractère humain. Il va multiplier les dessins, à la plume, à la sanguine, du Christ dialoguant avec ses proches, avec Marthe et Marie par exemple. Jésus y est représenté à la fois diaphane et familier. Sans l’auréole esquissée au-dessus de sa tête, on pourrait croire à une scène familiale. Dans un tableau où il apparaît, après sa mort, à Marie-Madeleine qui le prend pour un jardinier, Rembrandt l’affuble d’une pelle.
Jésus, Roi des juifs
Rembrandt, Les pèlerins d’Emmaüs.
Ensuite, véritable tournant historique, Rembrandt, à la tête d’un groupe d’élèves qui travaille dans une belle communion d’idées, commence à faire des portraits de jeunes juifs et de rabbins de la communauté d’Amsterdam, afin de se rapprocher au plus près du visage qu’aurait pu avoir cet homme venu d’Orient.
Dès la Bible, le personnage du Christ réunit tous les paradoxes. N’est-il pas « le Roi des juifs », bien que crucifié par les pharisiens ?
Ensuite, n’est-il pas homme mais fils de Dieu ? Rembrandt nous démontre encore et toujours que pour s’approcher de Dieu, il faut s’approcher de l’humain et l’aimer pour ce qu’il possède de divin en lui, c’est-à-dire l’étincelle de créativité qui l’unit au Créateur.
Rembrandt, tête de Christ.
Pour conclure cette réflexion, la dernière salle offre au visiteur, pour la première fois depuis plus de trois siècles, les sept esquisses du Christ, réalisées d’après un jeune juif et ayant servi à préparer le tableau des Pèlerins d’Emmaüs.
Dans ces études au fond sobre, le Christ porte le même vêtement marron. La lumière illumine son visage, qui prend toutes les expressions, de la douleur au recueillement. Les yeux sont levés, baissés, la tête tourne…
Ici, c’est bien le même visage, aux yeux foncés et aux pommettes hautes du jeune juif, qui apparaît.
Terriblement humain, il n’en est que plus émouvant. Enfin, le Christ s’incarne.
