To what would Leonardo attribute his reputation as a great artist? What would he say in 1519 at the end of his life – about the secret of his success? First he might consider the kind of “art” at issue. He was the master of various arts. At the turn of the sixteenth century, the art of painting and the art of sculpture were still considered technical trades (artes techinae) whereas the art of poetry and the art of music were considered among the highly regarded liberal arts (artes liberales). But this mainly referred to the degree of difficulty of the art form: its level of noble accomplishment (virtù), or an individual’s “power of artistic genius” (artis ingenium), as noted by Marsilio Ficino in 1482. And in this virtuosity and artistic genius, most art forms of the Italian Renaissance had excelled in reputation.

Though well known as a painter and draughtsman, Leonardo also earned praise from his contemporaries for his work as a sculptor, architect, interior designer, engineer, scientist, inventor, philosopher, musician, and a skilled writer of letters and technical books. For the Court of Milan (1482-99), he designed musical instruments, coats of arms, festival costumes, parade carriages, an elaborate mechanical stage set, and numerous useful as well as impractical machines. By 1508 at the age of 56 he had noted the completion of 120 illustrated books on widely differing topics, which are a mere fraction of his total contribution of writings and drawings by 1519.

He was known for projects of grand scale. Court poets praised his painted effigy of a giant equestrian monument. This would have stood nearly forty feet tall, as seen in Milan Cathedral in 1493. The galloping horse and its armoured rider, Francesco Sforza – the first Sforza Duke of Milan, were to be cast in bronze. According to Luca Pacioli, court mathematician and friend of Leonardo’s, the hollow bronze horse would weigh about seventy-five tons. Hailed for its unprecedented scale and grandeur, the monument was to stand above a pedestal of similar height, such that the group would be as tall as a modern six-story building. Moulds for the horse were still available after the 1499 French invasion and destruction of the giant effigy. The massive memorial would have been one of the ‘wonders of the world’ in its day.

A number of preparatory drawings for the “Sforza Horse” were produced from the mid 1480s onward. They ranged from detailed proportional studies like the Horse’s left foreleg, with measurements of around 1491, to exquisitely rendered studies like the Profile and front of a horse of 1493. For the latter drawing Leonardo used a delicate shading technique that involved rubbing the tip of a silver stylus over a paper coating of blue ‘ground’ – made of a mixture of bone dust and glue. He made thorough use of this and other drawing media, such as gold and lead styli, red and black chalk, as well as pen and brown ink.

To the expressive and thought provoking capabilities of the various drawing techniques he would attribute the secret of his success in the visual thinking and display of two and three dimensional problems. He states that draughtsmanship (disegno) “is of such excellence, it not only investigates the works of nature, but infinitely more than those [works] made by nature.” As a tribute to his profound faith in drawing, nearly seven thousand of his drawings survive of a group estimated to be originally four times that size. These and other documentary sources prove that he was one of the hardest working artist/engineers.

Painting, for Leonardo, is another kind of draughtsmanship and the medium for which he knew he was most famous. Though his paintings were in demand, however, his other responsibilities to patrons and his studio left him with very little time to paint, or even to finish commissions. He produced relatively few paintings for an artist who had been active for nearly fifty years. Of the forty-three known paintings to which he contributed, only thirty-one exist today. Of these remaining paintings only ten are considered fully autograph – that is, produced without studio assistance.

Nonetheless, by the time he was fifty years of age – around 1502 – he had gained almost legendary status as a painter. He earned this reputation even though the general public had no access to most of his work.

Indeed, not even the marchioness of Mantua, Isabella d’Este, had seen a Leonardo when she had written in 1498 to the countess, Cecilia Gallerani Bergamini – an accomplished writer who happened to be at a young age the mistress of Isabella’s brother-in-law – requesting a loan of Cecilia’s portrait, The Lady with the Ermine (c. 1488). Shortly afterward, Leonardo produced the Portrait of Isabelle d’Este (c. 1500), a preparatory drawing based on the traditional format of ancient Roman cameo and low relief marble portraits. Despite requests from the influential marchioness, he never produced a painting of this drawing.

His most famous portrait, the Mona Lisa, continued to receive finishing touches from 1503 through as late as 1517. Giorgio Vasari added to his detailed description of the painting of 1550 that, “in this work of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold; and it was held to be something marvellous, since the reality was not more alive.”

Thanks to praise of this kind that he received throughout his lifetime, Leonardo was known primarily as a painter. At the age of twenty he had the title of “painter” (dipintore) whereas his teacher, Verrocchio, was both “painter and sculptor.” This is according to the registrations of these artists in the Florentine confraternity of painters’ account book in 1472. Though Leonardo later earned other titles, such as “family architect and general engineer” for work in 1502, he could rely on continuous commissions for his paintings from 1472 onward.

Such requests came from prominent patrons. In 1481 he agreed to paint the Adoration of the Magi for the main altar of San Donato a Scopeto, a major Augustinian convent church near Florence. For the painting he had produced an under-drawing with an innovative organization of complex groups of individuals choreographed to perform simultaneously as independent actors, groups of actors, and as a cohesive group. Though the painting remained unfinished he had the opportunity in 1495-98 to revisit in his Last Supper his innovative approach to complex groups. That painting was immediately famous for its unprecedented orchestration of life-like gestures, expressions and movements consistent with the thirteen very different reactions of Christ and the Apostles.

By 1505, he had pushed that pictorial technique to another level with his Battle of Anghiari, known only through studies and copies. Highly influential on Raphael and other contemporaries, this painting had proven that its innovative interlocking twists of straining figures form a convincing pattern of live movements. Even more influential was the activity of this group within the formal pyramidal format. To give a sense of the order of nature in the group, this classical pyramid balances the inner life of the composition.

Other influential examples of these pyramidal groups include the Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1508) and the Virgin and Child with St. Anne (drawing c. 1491-1508 and painting c. 1510-13).

Ten years prior to the Mona Lisa he had begun producing a series of verbal and visual arguments that only painting can be more real than reality; only painting can invent effects of the greatest sweetness (dolcezza) as well as the greatest terror (terrore). The verbal arguments are now part of his posthumously published Paragone, a formal series of nearly fifty detailed arguments that painting is superior to the arts of sculpture, music and poetry. In this case, his main argument is that painting is the most noble because it is a science: a branch of optics based on perspective. Given his tireless attention to this kind of optical science, to this concern for every visual detail he would likely attribute the secret of his success as an artist.

Content last updated: 20/04/2003

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