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Leonardo da Vinci. Right side of the diptych
Alexey Berlin • Graphics, 50×39 cm
Description of the artwork «Leonardo da Vinci. Right side of the diptych»
The right side of the diptych depicts an elderly Leonardo in the process of dialogue with his pupil, which symbolizes the knowledge that the Master passed on to all mankind, including his great works of art.
The plot of my drawing is set against the background of Leonardo's famous work, "The Battle of Anghiari" (1503-1506).
As we know from historical sources, Machiavelli, a friend of da Vinci, secured for Leonardo one of the most serious orders - the Battle of Anghiari. Florentine citizens wanted the walls of the Signoria to be decorated with scenes from the city's military history and decided that Leonardo should do the work.
The actual battle of Anghiari in 1440, in which Florentine defeated the Milanese, was insignificant: during the entire military campaign killed one man. Nevertheless, one episode of this battle deeply touched Leonardo. Leonardo's sketches for a large wall painting show "that he intended to give a general panorama of the battle, in the center of which there was a fight for the banner. If one phrase to describe the further fate of the painting, we will say: Leonardo's canvas is lost. He finished the cardboard (also lost) and painted the picture on the wall. The colors slowly melted away (over a period of about sixty years) until they disappeared altogether. As with The Last Supper, Leonardo experimented, and the experiment ended with the loss of the painting, which gradually crumbled away.
However, the painting was not completely lost: before it was declared dead, several copies were made of it and rewritten. The copies give an idea only of the contours of Leonardo's figures, as they were made by unskilled craftsmen. Around 1605, another genius - Peter Paul Rubens, who visited Italy and created something close to Leonardo's idea, took up the task. Being a great artist himself, Rubens understood Leonardo, and although his drawing is only a copy of copies, it is generally agreed that it gives the best idea of the lost work.
Leonardo's drawing for the Battle of Anghiari depicts a tangle of people and animals so closely intertwined that the work could be taken as a sketch for a sculpture. The surging horses echo those that strike us in Leonardo's earlier painting "The Adoration of the Magi", but in this case they express not joy, but rage: while the warriors with hatred thrown at each other, the animals bite and kick. The painting can be seen as an expression of Leonardo's attitude to war, which he called "pazzia bestialissima" - "the most atrocious madness". He considered his painting an indictment. There is no scenery in the painting, and the fantastic costumes of the warriors have no relation to any particular period. To make his generalization even more impressive, Leonardo directed all the lines of his composition-the swords, the faces of the men, the equestrian bodies, the movement of the horses' legs-inward. Nothing takes the eye away from the center. It is against this background that I placed Leonardo's figure, as it is the dominant figure in my composition. The scaffolding and Leonardo's painting symbolize the extensive life work of the master who devoted his entire life to fine art.
The second figure, Salai (Giacomo Capotti), Da Vinci's pupil, I depicted as giving books to his mentor. Books, as an attribute of knowledge passed down from generation to generation, became the symbolic point of the triptych's closing movement.
The plot of my drawing is set against the background of Leonardo's famous work, "The Battle of Anghiari" (1503-1506).
As we know from historical sources, Machiavelli, a friend of da Vinci, secured for Leonardo one of the most serious orders - the Battle of Anghiari. Florentine citizens wanted the walls of the Signoria to be decorated with scenes from the city's military history and decided that Leonardo should do the work.
The actual battle of Anghiari in 1440, in which Florentine defeated the Milanese, was insignificant: during the entire military campaign killed one man. Nevertheless, one episode of this battle deeply touched Leonardo. Leonardo's sketches for a large wall painting show "that he intended to give a general panorama of the battle, in the center of which there was a fight for the banner. If one phrase to describe the further fate of the painting, we will say: Leonardo's canvas is lost. He finished the cardboard (also lost) and painted the picture on the wall. The colors slowly melted away (over a period of about sixty years) until they disappeared altogether. As with The Last Supper, Leonardo experimented, and the experiment ended with the loss of the painting, which gradually crumbled away.
However, the painting was not completely lost: before it was declared dead, several copies were made of it and rewritten. The copies give an idea only of the contours of Leonardo's figures, as they were made by unskilled craftsmen. Around 1605, another genius - Peter Paul Rubens, who visited Italy and created something close to Leonardo's idea, took up the task. Being a great artist himself, Rubens understood Leonardo, and although his drawing is only a copy of copies, it is generally agreed that it gives the best idea of the lost work.
Leonardo's drawing for the Battle of Anghiari depicts a tangle of people and animals so closely intertwined that the work could be taken as a sketch for a sculpture. The surging horses echo those that strike us in Leonardo's earlier painting "The Adoration of the Magi", but in this case they express not joy, but rage: while the warriors with hatred thrown at each other, the animals bite and kick. The painting can be seen as an expression of Leonardo's attitude to war, which he called "pazzia bestialissima" - "the most atrocious madness". He considered his painting an indictment. There is no scenery in the painting, and the fantastic costumes of the warriors have no relation to any particular period. To make his generalization even more impressive, Leonardo directed all the lines of his composition-the swords, the faces of the men, the equestrian bodies, the movement of the horses' legs-inward. Nothing takes the eye away from the center. It is against this background that I placed Leonardo's figure, as it is the dominant figure in my composition. The scaffolding and Leonardo's painting symbolize the extensive life work of the master who devoted his entire life to fine art.
The second figure, Salai (Giacomo Capotti), Da Vinci's pupil, I depicted as giving books to his mentor. Books, as an attribute of knowledge passed down from generation to generation, became the symbolic point of the triptych's closing movement.
