LEONARDO DA VINCI
“Blessed babe! what glorious features,
Spotless fair, divinely bright,
Must He dwell with brutal creatures?
How could angels bear the sight.”
I shall take you at once to Room IV. to stand before Leonardo da Vinci’s
picture, “Our Lady of the Rocks” (1093). Its almost unearthly effect is
produced by the light being concentrated upon the faces of the mother,
the children, the angel; all the surroundings are lost in shadow.
Leonardo (1452–1519) represented the eager spirit of the Renaissance. He
had the intellectual restlessness of the Florentines. He was a painter,
a poet, a sculptor, a musician, an architect, a machinist, a
mathematician, a philosopher and an explorer. He wrote upon art, he
practised anatomy upon dead bodies, he understood perspective, and he
excelled in the new science—the management of light and shade. Vasari
tells us of his great personal beauty—“the radiance of his countenance,”
he says, “brought cheerfulness to the heart of the most melancholy.” He
relates stories of the tenderness of Leonardo’s heart, so that “while
passing by a place where they sold birds, he would take them out of
their cages and, paying the price that was asked for them, he would let
them fly into the air, restoring to them their lost liberty.”
This picture is one of the great pictures of the world. In a flowery
nook, guarded all round by weird-looking rocks, like fangs (they are the
least good thing in the picture, for Leonardo was not much attracted to
landscape painting), the Virgin is kneeling, her arm round the little
John the Baptist, who holds his cross of reeds, whilst an angel supports
the child Christ. The divine little One, with hand upraised, blesses his
cousin who is kneeling before Him. It is a charming scene, reposeful to
the mind and to the heart. The light touches the child Christ, creeps up
to the face of the angel, falls upon the beautiful motherly countenance
of the Virgin, and seems to die away upon the form of John the Baptist.
The faces of the mother and the angel are both illuminated by that inner
smile of peace that distinguishes all the women’s faces painted by
Leonardo. It is the Leonardo smile touching the lips, reflected in the
eyes, setting the dimples playing on the cheeks, but not widening the
lips. It tells of a heart at peace, of a joy that is rooted in the soul.
It is a smile that suggests listening to music—the music of sweet
thoughts. Look and look again at this picture, and each time you will
find in it some new beauties—all but the rocks, strange basaltic
formations that are not natural, and yet that seem to harmonise with the
aspect of the scene. Leonardo da Vinci died at over seventy years of
age, and he died in the arms of King Francis the First of France.
[Illustration:
“THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS” (1093)
BY LEONARDO DA VINCI
page 42
]
Later I shall speak to you of Raphael, but I want you always to remember
these three great names, those of this trinity of genius,
unapproachable, mysterious. Michael Angelo representing strength;
Leonardo da Vinci, whose subtle charm is not to be analysed, but whose
mysterious appeal it is impossible to resist; Raphael, the exponent of a
grace human and divine. The art of these three must exist so long as
there are pictures in the world. Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci,
Raphael, the perfect three in whom culminated the genius of art. The
Florentine school declined and faded away after the death of Michael
Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. All that came before pointed to them, all
that came after declined from them.
There are many pictures that I have not noticed, for I want simply to be
a guide to the greatest works, the most memorable ones. Later you will
come to enjoy and to know all the pictures on these walls.