Fritjof Capra (6 page)

Figure 2-1: Madonna and Child and other studies, c. 1478–80, Drawings and Miscellaneous Papers, Vol. III, folio 162r

Leonardo’s anatomical drawings were so radical in their conception that they remained unrivaled until the end of the eighteenth century, nearly three hundred years later. Indeed, they have been praised as the beginning of modern anatomical illustration.
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To present the knowledge he had gathered from his extensive anatomical dissections, Leonardo introduced numerous innovations: drawing structures from several perspectives; drawing in cross sections and “exploded” views; showing the removal of muscles in successive layers to expose the depths of an organ or anatomical feature. None of his predecessors or contemporaries came close to him in anatomical detail and accuracy.

To the few of his contemporaries who were privileged to see them, Leonardo’s anatomical manuscripts must have seemed almost miraculous. When the Cardinal of Aragon visited the old master in France in 1517, his secretary, Antonio de Beatis, wrote in his journal: “This gentleman has written a treatise on anatomy, showing the limbs, muscles, nerves, veins, joints, intestines, and everything that can be explained in the body of men and women, in a way that has never been done by anyone before.”
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Leonardo called his anatomical drawings “demonstrations,” adopting a terminology typically used by mathematicians to refer to their diagrams, and he proudly asserted that they gave “true knowledge of [various] shapes, which is impossible for either ancient or modern writers…without an immense, tedious and confused amount of writing and time.”
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Indeed, when looking through the Anatomical Studies, it is evident that Leonardo’s main focus is on the drawings. The accompanying text is secondary, and sometimes absent altogether. In a way, these manuscripts are reminiscent of modern scientific papers in which the main statements are the mathematical equations, with a few explanatory lines between them (see Fig. 2-2).

Leonardo used the same innovative techniques that he perfected in his anatomical drawings in his vast collection of technical drawings of mechanisms and machines. A multitude of mechanical elements in different combinations are presented in cutaway or exploded views and from many sides, with great mastery of visual perspective and subtle renderings of light and shade (see Fig. 2-3). Drawings of similar machines were produced by other Renaissance engineers. However, as art historian Daniel Arasse points out, while theirs are merely explanatory, Leonardo’s are
convincing
, persuading the viewer of the feasibility and soundness of the author’s designs:

Figure 2-2: Muscles of the arm and shoulder in rotated views, c. 1510, Anatomical Studies, folio 141v

Figure 2-3: Two-wheeled hoist, Codex Atlanticus, folio 30v

His working drawings not only possess a rare elegance; they are visually put in context, and they have the concrete appearance of objects which exist: the angle or angles of view, the subtlety of the shadows and the treatment of the background itself on which they are drawn gives them an extraordinarily persuasive…effectiveness.
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As an artist, Leonardo introduced a novelty into the practice of preparatory drawing, which forms an intriguing counterpoint to the precision of his scientific and technical drawings.
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In many studies for his paintings, he would go over the outlines of a figure again and again, sketching several alternative lines and variations of the figure’s position, until he found the ideal form. These preparatory sketches have an extraordinary dynamic quality. One can almost feel the rhythm of Leonardo’s “sublime left hand” as he tries out different possibilities, translating his
discorso mentale
into a blur of lines. In Leonardo’s time, this technique was unprecedented, as Martin Kemp describes:

Never before had any artist worked out his compositions in such a welter of alternative lines. The pattern-book drawing techniques of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which Verrocchio had relaxed in some measure, have here been overthrown in a “brain storm” of dynamic sketching. Such flexibility of preparatory sketching became the norm for later centuries; it was introduced almost single-handedly by Leonardo.
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Sometimes—as, for example, in a study for his famous
Madonna and Child with Saint Anne
—Leonardo would push his technique of dynamic sketching to an extreme, producing what Arasse describes as “an unreadable blur. Nothing can any longer be distinguished in this chaos, but his eye has perceived in the movement of his hand the hidden, buried, latent form, straining to become a figure. Leonardo marks this with a stylus and, turning the sheet over, makes it visible with a distinct line.”
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To me, this is a fascinating visual illustration of the process known to complexity theorists as “emergence”—the spontaneous emergence of new forms of order out of chaos and confusion.
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According to complexity theory, creativity—the generation of new forms—is a key property of all life, and it involves the very process that Leonardo revealed in his exquisite preparatory drawings. I would argue that our most creative insights emerge from such states of uncertainty and confusion.

THE SOUL OF PAINTING

Although he kept his scientific ideas to himself, Leonardo freely shared his views on painting with his students and fellow artists. At his death he left over six hundred pages of detailed instructions for painters, covering all aspects of his science and art of painting. From this vast collection, scattered through eighteen of Leonardo’s Notebooks (over half of which, as noted earlier, are now lost), his friend and disciple Francesco Melzi compiled the famous anthology known as
Trattato della pittura (Treatise on Painting)
.
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First published in 1651, it was soon translated throughout Europe, and remained a standard text for art students for three centuries.

The first part of the
Trattato
, known as the “Paragone” (“Comparison”), is a long polemical “debate” comparing painting to poetry, music, and sculpture.
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This kind of polemic was fashionable in the fifteenth century, and Leonardo’s highly original arguments in favor of painting are so lively and witty that we can easily imagine him presenting them in an actual debate.

“Painting serves a more noble sense than poetry,” he argues, “and renders the figures of the works of nature with more truth than the poet does.” He continues in a lighter vein: “Take a poet who describes the beauties of a lady to her lover, and take a painter who represents her, and you will see where nature will turn the enamored judge.”
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Music ought to be called “the younger sister of painting,” Leonardo suggests, “since it composes harmony from the conjunctions of its proportional parts…. Yet painting excels and rules over music, because it does not immediately die after its creation the way the unfortunate music does.”
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What about sculpture? Surely, no painting endures as well as marble or bronze? True, he admits, “sculpture has the greatest resistance to time.” Nevertheless, painting is far superior, because sculpture “will not produce lucid and transparent bodies like the veiled figures that show the nude flesh under the veils laid against it. It will not produce the minute pebbles of varied colors below the surface of transparent waters.” Sculptors, he continues, “cannot represent…mirrors and similar lustrous things, nor mists, nor bad weather, nor infinite other things that I need not mention because it would be too tedious.”
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The deeper purpose of Leonardo’s lively polemic was to advance persuasive arguments for considering painting as a mental activity and a science, far above the rank of a mere craft. At the beginning of the Renaissance, painting was classified as a “mechanical art,” together with crafts like gold and metal work, jewelry, tapestry, and embroidery. None of these mechanical arts stood out in terms of prestige, and their practitioners remained relatively anonymous. Commissions would typically specify the quality of the raw materials (gold leaf, lapis lazuli, etc.), which was more important to the patron than the name of the artist.
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When Florence became a major artistic center in the fourteenth century, its painters began to share their knowledge and experience, and collectively developed many technical innovations. They perfected the fresco technique (the art of painting
al fresco
, that is, on freshly spread moist plaster), introduced panel painting, and, a century later, pioneered perspective and oil painting. The Florentine painters and sculptors also established an elaborate apprenticeship system, with strict quality control under the supervision of professional guilds, all of which enhanced their prestige and gradually elevated their professions above the anonymous world of craftsmen.

Leonardo committed himself to advancing this process of emancipation, to convince society that painting should be considered an intellectual enterprise, a true liberal art. To distinguish painting from manual labor, Alberti, in his 1435 book
De Pictura (On Painting)
, had already discussed the importance of mathematics, one of the liberal arts of the time, as the foundation of perspective and the geometry of shadows, and by implication as the intellectual core of painting as a whole.
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Leonardo followed in Alberti’s footsteps but then went beyond him by promoting painting as an intellectual discipline based not only on mathematics but on the theoretical knowledge of “all the qualities of forms.”
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As a painter, Leonardo excelled especially in modeling subtle gradations of light and dark, known to art historians as chiaroscuro. He revolutionized painting by completely reconceptualizing traditional techniques. “In his use of light and shade, Leonardo was the precursor of all subsequent European painting,” writes Kenneth Clark.”
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The essence of Leonardo’s innovation lies in his use of shadow as a unifying element, a theme that brings out different qualities of tone and color. As Martin Kemp explains in his discerning analysis of Leonardo’s
Virgin of the Rocks
,

From [the] soft substratum of velvety shadow emerge the colors, revealed only by the presence of light…. Within this unity of shadow an infinite subtle series of adjustments are made to accommodate the inherent tonal values of different colors, from the lightest yellow to the deepest of blues.
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One of the hallmarks of a master painter in the Florentine tradition was the ability to represent figures in apparent three-dimensional relief. “The first task of the painter,” writes Leonardo, “is to make a flat surface appear as a body in relief, standing out from that surface, and he who surpasses the others in that skill deserves most praise.”
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As Kenneth Clark explains, Leonardo was not content to achieve this effect by “the subtle combination of drawing and surface modeling which the painters of the quattrocento [fifteenth century] had brought to perfection. He wished to achieve relief through the scientific use of light and shade.”
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According to Leonardo, such an achievement is “the soul of painting.”
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Leonardo’s technique of using light and shade to give his figures “great vigor and relief,” as Vasari put it, culminated in his celebrated creation of sfumato, the subtle melting of shades that eventually became the unifying principle of his paintings. “Leonardo’s
sfumato
was the power behind the poetry of his paintings,” Arasse claimed, “and the mystery that seems to emanate from them.”
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It is clear from Leonardo’s writings on the use of light and shade that he derived his knowledge from a series of systematic experiments with lamps shining on a variety of geometrical solids. He drew numerous complex diagrams showing the formation, projection, intersections, and gradations of shadows in endless combinations. As I will show later in the book, his detailed investigations of vision, the nature of light and shadow, and the appearance of forms were the gateway to his science of painting.
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