Leonardo da Vinci, The Annunciation, 1472–1475.
Oil on wood panel, 98 × 217 cm.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Leonardo da Vinci, Drapery Study for a Sitting Figure, c. 1470.
Pen, grey tempera and white highlights, 26.6 × 23.3 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
In 1506, Leonardo travelled to Milan again and, apart from short interruptions, stayed there for ten years. During this time, Leonardo dedicated himself to his students and, increasingly, to his scientific studies and research. It is hard to comprehend the number of subjects in the various technical fields across which Leonardo occupied himself. Among the drawings he left – the Codex Atlanticus alone contains 1,119 – there are ideas for a rope producing machine or float to walk on water, a suggestion for a bridge that could be put up quickly, for a canon on a gun-carriage, for a parachute, for a (wind up) automobile, which, as experts found out, really works, and many more other indescribable things. The approximately 1000 sheets of the three-part Codex Forster contain drawings for hydraulic machines, theories on proportions and mechanics, notes on architecture and urban studies. A third Codex, the Codex Arundel, comprises in more than 280 sheets of drawings, of tanks and projectiles. Then there is a book on the human body, one on flights of birds, and, in the Codex Madrid with its 140 sheets, Leonardo deals with subjects such as painting, architecture, maps of Tuscany, as well as problems in geometry and mathematics and other things. And, regarding his 780 drawings on anatomy, it is quite appropriate that a British heart surgeon adopted these notes in 2005 and changed his operating technique accordingly. This listing is by no means complete and can only convey an approximate idea of Leonardo’s incredible spectrum of interests and skills.
During his years in Milan, the only painting that was finished was a youthful John the Baptist. In his studies of male and female heads he paid tribute, at least with the female heads, to the smile and often also beauty, and captured the range of expressions from grace and beguiling charm to proud dignity and arrogance. For the male heads, however, he captured more of the individual characteristics, which he then even sometimes exaggerated as caricatures. Such caricatures, with hideous, distorted features, found unusual approval and even turned up as copper engravings. Perhaps Leonardo had grown tired of his homeland despite all of his success, perhaps he simply wanted to avoid further confrontation with the younger Michelangelo – whatever the reason, he accepted the invitation and at the beginning of 1516 followed the king, who provided him with a flat in the Palace of Cloux near Amboise. There, no longer creative, but only giving advice in artistic matters, he spent the last years of his life and died on 2 May 1519.
Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne, c. 1510.
Oil on wood, 168 × 130 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Last Judgment, 1536–1541.
Fresco, 12.2 × 13.7 m.
Sistine Chapel, Vatican.
The universal artistic talent of Michelangelo, the other Grand Master of Italian Renaissance, is equal to that of Leonardo. Although he cannot measure up to Leonardo, particularly in the field of natural history, he far surpassed him as a poet and philosopher. Michelangelo’s life also includes tragic complications, which have left their traces in his work. Just as Leonardo, who was born to paint but also nursed an ambition to create great sculptural work, Michelangelo, the greatest sculptor since Phidias, was convinced that he could do great things as a painter and architect. As an architect and master builder, his greatest piece of work was the dome in St Peter’s, as a painter he left examples of art, which even today require the utmost admiration, especially when taking into account that his moods, arbitrariness and impetuous temperament now and then spoilt the boldest drafts.
His life was just as restless as that of Leonardo’s. He went to Bologna in 1494, after having provided the first samples of his artistic talents with the high relief of a centaur fight and a Madonna in front of a staircase. There he created a kneeling angel carrying a candelabrum and a statuette of St Petronius for the Basilica of San Domenico. But then, in 1496, he returned via Florence to Rome. For a merchant, he made a life-size statue of Bacchus (1496/1498), who, obviously already merry on wine, raises the wine cup with his right hand, whilst his left hand takes hold of the grapes, offered him by a small satyr, standing behind him.
In his second great piece of work in Rome, the Pietà (1499/1500), found in St Peter’s, the classical influence completely disappeared, both as far as Christ’s body and his facial expression are concerned, and in the composure of the Mother of God, conquering her pain. Michelangelo moved back to Florence in 1501, in order to start his, so far, greatest task. The chairmen of the Cathedral had provided a marble block for the execution of a large statue, and Michelangelo decided to depict the young David (1501/1504), as he takes the sling from his left shoulder, whilst the right hand already has the stone ready. None of Michelangelo’s other pieces of work achieved this kind of popularity. With his first significant painting the tondo The Holy Family (1501), he wanted to demonstrate his firm determination to break with traditional composition and the previous portrayal of the figures. Furthermore, he wanted to show that and how movement could be included in a small sized picture.
Pope Julius II (1443 to 1513) summoned Michelangelo to Rome in 1505, entrusting him with the design for his tomb. A different commission from Julius II was completed during his lifetime: decorating the ceiling (1508/1512) of the Sistine Chapel with a number of pictures, which in rigorous structuring and grouping, through a painted architectonic frame, depict the creation of the world and mankind as well as the Fall of Man and its consequences.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Holy Family (Tondo Doni), c. 1504.
Tempera on wood, diameter: 120 cm.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Virgin with Child and St John the Baptist as a Child (Tondo Pitti), 1504–1505.
Marble, 85 × 82.5 cm.
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.
After the manifold fates of the Israelites, The Fall of Man was to be followed by the redemption, and the redeemer even come from its midst. The powerful figures of the prophets and the sibyls prepare for this, which surround the mirror of the ceiling vault and the transition between it and the vault pendentives on all sides. These paintings are perhaps only comprehensible to the individual when he reduces them to their parts and looks at each picture in itself, only then will the abundance of beauty which may find its best expression in the Creation of Eve (around 1508) be fully revealed. The ceiling paintings were completed with The Last Judgment (1536/1541). This painting is doubtlessly the greatest piece of work of the Italian High Renaissance, which, through its superabundance of figures and the guidance of their movement, prepares for those exaggerations which developed in the Late Renaissance and in the Baroque period. In all these figures Michelangelo made one thing clear: to reveal his uncompromising will; his absolute control of the anatomy