Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists
Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered Details
Review “A vast project spanning more than 1m words and 1,500 images . . . Bambach’s numerous discoveries include a small drapery study in the Royal Collection, where it was described as from Leonardo’s workshop.”—Dalya Alberge, Guardian “awesomely ambitious”—Holland Cotter, New York Times“A project nearly a quarter-century in the making, this monograph attempts to provide a comprehensive revisiting of the man so many know only as the painter of the ‘Mona Lisa’ and the ‘Last Supper.’”—Lauren Christensen, New York Times Book Review“This outstanding work for Leonardo’s quincentenary is riveting. Across four sumptuous, scholarly volumes Bambach takes a fresh biographical approach, exploring especially through drawings and handwriting how Leonardo visualised knowledge in a new way. She humanises genius by showing the gap between his mysterious visions and staggering achievements.”—Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times“The outstanding memorial to Leonardo’s quincentenary year: a new biographical approach across four riveting exquisite volumes, exploring through paintings, drawings, diagrams, handwriting, Leonardo’s attempt to visualise knowledge in a fresh way, and his sense of the gap between his mysterious imaginings and his intellectual and artistic achievements” — Financial Times (Books of the Year 2019)“On the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death, a four-volume exploration of his life and work is pieced together from 4,000 surviving sheets of the artist’s notes and drawings.”—Clare Swanson, Publishers Weekly“[an] expansive four-volume book.”—Claudia Kalb, National Geographic“On the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death, a four-volume exploration of his life and work is pieced together from 4,000 surviving sheets of the artist’s notes and drawings.”—Clare Swanson, Publishers Weekly Read more Book Description This authoritative, four-volume publication reexamines the multi-faceted artist’s life and work from the ground up, creating a new, contemporary portrait based on his spectacular drawings, paintings, and manuscripts. Read more About the Author Carmen C. Bambach is curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 2019 she was awarded the Vilcek Prize for Excellence - created to honor immigrants who have had a profound impact on American society and world culture. Read more
Reviews
After repeated postponements, Carmen Bambach’s Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered is finally available for purchase. The delay, it turns out, was due to representations to the publisher (Yale University Press), apparently resolved by mutual agreement: the publisher agreed to put on its website a downloadable pdf, consisting of four pages from the book with an amended version of a caption to a digitally altered photograph of the Salvator Mundi.I preordered the four-tome package from Amazon.com and it arrived yesterday (7 August 2019). Immediately I delved into volume three, which mainly concerns the period of Leonardo’s life in which I claim some degree of expertise.The book set is beautifully and sumptuously produced and for a publication of this scope the purchase price is not excessive. All the endnotes are in volume four, which makes it easy to look them up by keeping two volumes open at the same time. While two large open volumes do take up a lot of desk space, for most readers this will only be a minor inconvenience.The depth and breadth of Carmen Bambach’s knowledge of Leonardo’s manuscripts, based on a lifetime of study, is certainly impressive, not to say astounding, and she guides the reader through this maze of information with superb authority. What follows are a few suggested corrections to historical issues, where I feel that the author has overly relied on published works, repeating their errors, rather than examining the evidence firsthand. The field of Leonardo studies has become so vast over the last decades that it is no longer possible for one person to encompass it in its entirety. Bambach has bravely taken it upon herself to produce an encyclopedic work, intended as the basis for future research. Here I will point out a few errors of fact, while emphasizing at the outset, that these are of decidedly minor importance and do not seriously detract from the value of Bambach’s monumental publication.Bambach points out the central importance of Leonardo’s patron, Giuliano de’ Medici, who “employed the artist in Rome with a steady salary for three years.” This is inaccurate, given the fact that Leonardo did not arrive in Rome before the end of October 1513 and that Giuliano died on 17 March 1516. Leonardo could thus have been in his employ for a maximum of two years and five months. Furthermore, Leonardo was not in Rome for the entire period. He must have spent considerable time in Terracina and its vicinity, surveying the Pontine Marshes. In early September 1514, he travelled to Florence and then continued to Parma and the banks of the Po, returning to Rome probably at the end of October. Bambach continues: “His [Giuliano’s] own political star was to decline during this time…” However, it could equally be argued that, except for the final phase of Giuliano’s illness, his political fortunes were in no way eclipsed, as evidenced by Giuliano’s strategic marriage to Filiberte of Savoy, his being admitted to the Order of the Garter by Henry VIII of England (which would surely have deserved a mention, as would his becoming Marquis of Soragna), his elevation to the office of Gonfaloniere of the Church, and finally being made a member of the French nobility by being awarded the Duchy of Nemours, despite his failing health.Bambach then explores the possibilities for Giuliano de’ Medici and Leonardo to have met prior to 1513, for example in Milan in 1496-97, drawing in part on Bartolomeo Cerretani’s Ricordi, published by Giuliana Berti in 1993 (though she makes the same mistake as her source in referring to the signature as BAV, MS. Vat. Lat. 13661, rather than BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 13651) and refers to unpublished letters of Agostino Vespucci from Milan, which may throw light on the still obscure circumstances of Leonardo’s return to Florence in after his departure from the city in late 1499. She places great emphasis on Benedetto Varchi’s funeral oration for Michelangelo and its references to Giuliano and Leonardo. However, this is a rather late source, providing little specific information and its laudatory literary form predetermines its tone, and to a large extent even its content. The references to Leonardo in Varchi’s funeral oration were already extensively discussed in 1919 by Mario Cermenati.p. 316: “Giuliano was destined to marry Filiberta di Savoia (1498-1524), the young tenth daughter of Filippo II di Savoia and aunt to the French king.”Here Bambach follows the consensus of historians that Filiberta was a posthumous child of Filippo II, who died on 7 November 1497 and would have been 17 at the time of her marriage to Giuliano. However, this cannot be correct, as an observer at her second wedding celebration (held in Rome at the end of March 1515), the Portuguese ambassador, Miguel da Silva el-Rei, gave a much higher estimate of her age. A letter by Stazio Gadio to the Duke of Mantua, dated 24 November 1516, reveals that Filiberte was the twin sister of Philip of Savoy, the count of Geneva. This means she was born 1490 and was 24 when she married Giuliano. This letter was published in 1991 by Raffaelle Tamalio.Further down on page 316 we read: “The union between Giuliano and Filiberta was celebrated in Paris on 25 January 1515, in Turin on 10 February and in Florence on 22 February.” This is not borne out by the historical evidence. If any celebrations took place in Paris, they passed unnoticed by all foreign diplomats residing in that city: on 24 January 1515 the Mantuan envoy Francesco Chieregato wrote to Isabella d’Este from Paris of the forthcoming coronation of King Francis, to follow upon the obsequies for the late King Louis XII, but makes no allusion to any marriage celebrations. In fact, Giuliano’s hasty departure for Savoy on 10 January 1515 was sparked by the news of Louis XII’s death, the concern being that the new king might oppose the marriage. The wedding took place in Turin on 15 February, and was celebrated a second time upon the couple’s arrival in Rome. Giuliano arrived in Turin on 11 February, according to a report by the Venetian ambassador Piero Pasqualigo from Lyon. The reference to a wedding celebration in Florence on 22 February must be a mistake, perhaps again based on Bambach’s reliance on an erroneous secondary source. In fact, the newlyweds proceeded to Rome from Genoa by sea, alighting at Civitavecchia on 28 March 1515. The voyage is described by Francesco Richardson in a letter to the Duke of Savoy, sent from Rome on 16 April 1514 (published in 1876). Huge celebrations were held in Rome to welcome the newlyweds, as described in numerous contemporary sources, including the mentioned letter by Richardson, the Diarii of Marino Sanuto, and in particular in a contemporary letter by the Portuguese ambassador, Miguel da Silva el-Rei, dated 31 March 1515 (published in 1862).Further below we read: “François I bestowed on Giuliano the title of Duke of Nemours upon his marriage, and on 29 June 1515 Leo X appointed him “capitano generale della Chiesa (Captain General of the Church).” Both parts of the sentence are incorrect. The title of Duke of Nemours was not bestowed on Giuliano upon his marriage in mid-February 1515, but in mid-October of that year, as compensation for Giuliano giving up his control of Parma, which was, along with Piacenza, re-integrated into the Duchy of Milan, in the aftermath of the French victory at Marignan. The first letter in which Giuliano uses the title (Julianus Medices: Nemursi dux) is dated 5 November 1515. Giuliano had sent Paolo Vettori to Milan in October 1515 for the purpose of negotiating the terms. The appointment of Giuliano as Capitano generale della Chiesa did not take place on 29 June 1515, but on 10 January 1515, on the day of Giuliano’s departure for Savoy. Giuliano began using this title in his correspondence that very day. Giuliano did receive the white baton of command on 29 June, and in the literature, on which Bambach is relying, this is mistakenly interpreted as constituting his appointment.Further down, on page 321 we read: “Leonardo’s Roman period is very sparsely documented, and the documents that do survive seem incidental in nature.” However, Leonardo’s candidacy to the Compagnia della Pietà of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome surely does not belong in this category. She states: “On 8 October 1514 he was unanimously elected as an initiate (novizio) in the rolls of the confraternity…” This is, however, an oversimplification. There were two rounds of voting, first by the governor and his two councillors, and the second by the plenum. Leonardo received all three votes in favour in the first round, and 41 out of 43 in the second round. Next, she writes that he was expelled on 31 December 1514, but this is again inaccurate. The voting that took place on 8 October 1514 allowed Leonardo to become a novice provided he paid the required admission fee (entrata) and underwent an initiation ceremony. However, Leonardo failed to pay the fee within the period stipulated and the offer of membership was therefore withdrawn. He could not have been expelled, since he had never joined. Furthermore, Leonardo could not have returned to Rome as early as 8 October, since, according to an annotation in one of his notebooks, he was on the banks of the Po in northern Italy just eleven days earlier (27 September). The application for membership was most likely submitted by Leonardo’s sponsor in the artist’s absence, and without his knowledge or approval. This would explain why he refused to pay the fee or undergo the initiation ceremony upon his return. These important documents, first published by Christoph L. Frommel in 1964, and the subject of a book-length treatment by Julia Vicioso (in press) would have benefitted from a more in-depth discussion.On page 331 Bambach reproduces some lines of text found on fol. 816r of the Codex Atlanticus, written from left to right by a hand that is neither Leonardo’s nor Melzi’s. She discussed the same passage in her paper on Leonardo and Raphael in Rome, presented at the Prado in 2012. Here she refers to the passage as “copied-over poetic text by a right-handed scribe intended for a letter. This text praises the beauties of Rome and the Campania.” Left unmentioned is the fact that the passage is copied verbatim from Christophoro Landino’s translation of Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis (book III, ch. 4), published in 1476, a book which Leonardo is known to have owned.On page 348 Bambach writes: “On 11 April — or, less likely, on 12 April — Bramante died in Rome.” There is no need to allow for the possibility that Bramante died on 12 April, since the Mantuan envoy Grossino learned of Bramante’s death on the morning of 11 April, as he dutifully reported to Marquis Francesco Gonzaga in a postscript to a letter dated 10 April. But this is again a relatively minor point.On pp. 350-351 she discusses: “His [Leonardo’s] detailed description of an octagonal Roman temple at Civitavecchia, on a now nearly ruined fragment of copied-over text (Codex Atlanticus, fol. 775r)…” However, there is nothing on the mentioned folio that might relate the octagonal temple to Civitavecchia. The problem may have arisen due some confusion between fol. 775 and fol. 733, which does in fact in large part concern Civitavecchia. On p. 351 Bambach keeps referring to fol. 775, when she clearly means fol. 733.On page 383 of volume III, we encounter a sentence that could have been better formulated: “While one knows that Leo X’s entry into Florence on 30 November 1515 led to elaborate decorations and festivities, it is not certain that Leonardo had accompanied his master Giuliano to the city.” Giuliano arrived in Florence for the last time on 14 July 1515. He came from Rome at the head of a cavalry regiment, but fell seriously ill soon thereafter. Thus Leonardo could thus not have accompanied his master Giuliano into the city. What is of importance, however, is that Bambach rightly throws doubt on the hoary theory of Leonardo’s journey to Florence and thence to Bologna to meet Francis I.The following chapter, dealing with Leonardo’s sojourn in France, is also not free of errors, most of them simply taken over from existing secondary sources, though these do not seriously detract from the value of her detailed discussion of this final episode of Leonardo’s life.On p. 401 Bambach writes: “Bonnivet’s letter of 14 March 1516 to Pallavicini mentions that he had invited Leonardo to France, at the behest of François I, when the royal adviser had himself visited Rome.” This seems to be an inadvertent conflation of the text of the letter and its interpretation. Bonnivet in fact never visited Rome. He was sent by King Francis, along with Bonnivet, to Viterbo, where the papal court was in residence. Bambach here reproduces an error originally committed by Sammer in his first publication of the letter in 2009. Bonnivet arrived in Viterbo together with the newly-appointed French ambassador, Antonio Maria Pallavicini, on 2 November 1515. He then accompanied the pope to Bologna, as did Pallavicini.The misunderstood passage in fact constitutes a direct instruction from King Francis to his ambassador in Rome, Antonio Maria Pallavicini, take care of (“sollicitez”) Leonardo in order to make him come (“pour le faire venir”) to the king’s presence. Although Bambach appears to have researched Antonio Maria Pallavicini’s career with some diligence, she has missed the key fact that he left Rome, presumably carrying out the royal instruction, on 12 August 1516 and arrived in Amboise on 29 October.Bambach, by contrast gives credence to Edmondo Solmi’s “intuition,” as she calls it in endnote 33 to chapter XII of volume IV, that Leonardo left Rome for France at the end of 1516, while claiming that “the first securely known dated record by Leonardo in France ... is the feast day of Ascension in May 1517 (21 May), as stated in Codex Atlanticus, fol. 284r.” In fact, the first securely known dated record by Leonardo in France is Friday, 16 January 1517, i.e., the eve of feast of St. Anthony the Abbot, the day Leonardo records (Codex Atlanticus, fol. 920r) that he had returned to Amboise from Romorantin, the king having left Romorantin two days earlier. That same evening, i.e., Friday, 16 January 1517 Federico Gonzaga noted that the court had departed from Romorantin for Orléans the previous Wednesday, i.e., 14 January 1517. The journey from Romorantin to Amboise normally took two days. This means that Leonardo took leave of the king at Romorantin in the morning of 14 January, in order to return to Amboise, while the court left at the same time in the direction of Paris (via Orléans). These documents allow us to reconstruct the king’s and Leonardo’s movements with extraordinary precision. Bambach is strangely hesitant on this point, stating (p. 417) that the historical evidence of the royal visit to Romorantin “may help pin down the year in Leonardo’s memorandum as 1517.” However if, as Bambach comes close to admitting, the memorandum dates to 16 January 1517, Leonardo could not have left Rome as late as the end of 1516. He evidently arrived in Amboise on 29 October 1516 under the protection of Pallavicini, acting on direct instructions from the king (cf. Bonnivet letter mentioned above).On p. 427, Bambach discusses a letter by Galeazzo Visconti reproduced in the Diarii of Marino Sanuto, describing a royal festivity that had taken place two days previously at Leonardo’s residence of Cloux. Sanuto dates the letter to 19 June 1518 and Bambach accepts this date, even though it cannot be correct, since the royal court had left Amboise a month earlier and was by then residing in Angers. It can be shown that the lost original of the letter was dated 19 January 1518 and the festivity it describes took place on 17 January. Here again Bambach merely reproduces what has been accepted by Leonardo scholars for the past century. One would wish that she had put on her sceptical glasses more often.Bambach’s discussion of Leonardo’s testament is one of the highlights of this chapter, in that she correctly distinguishes between the main body and the codicil, the latter done exclusively in favour of Battista de Villanis. One would have wished to know Bambach’s opinion as to the reason for this. I would hazard the guess that Leonardo wished to give more to Villanis than to Salaì, without arousing Salaì jealousy.On p. 487 Bambach writes: “The itinéraire of François I shows that he had been absent from the royal court at Amboise for a long period of time, residing first in Paris, and then in Saint-Germain-en-Laye from 15 March until 21 June.” The itinéraire cited by Bambach is often inaccurate. A much more reliable source is contemporary diplomatic correspondence, which shows that the royal court remained in Saint-Germain-en-Laye only until the second week of April; by 10 April 1519 it had relocated to Poissy on the Seine, where it continued to reside until the last week of July 1519. This means that the court was at Poissy on 2 May 1519, the day of Leonardo’s death, not at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Again, such details do not seriously impact our knowledge of Leonardo.It would be a miracle if so vast an endeavor were entirely free from error, and those that I happened to notice should not be understood as seriously detracting from the immense contribution to Leonardo studies that Bambach’s publication represents. It will stand as a landmark in Leonardo studies for years if not decades to come, though some of its conclusions may be modified by the results of subsequent research.
