Leonardo da Vinci: Innovation in Renaissance Art, Exams of Painting

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INNOVATION and EXPERIMENTATION:

ART of the EARLY and HIGH RENAISSANCE

(Leonardo’s Last Supper )

HIGH RENAISSANCE: Leonardo’s Last

Supper

Online Links:

Leonardo da Vinci – Wikipedia

Bramante – Wikipedia

Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks - Smarthistory

Leonardo's Last Supper – Smarthistory

Leonardo's Last Supper - Private Life of a Masterpiece

Andrea del Castagno's Last Supper - Art in Tuscany

Dieric Bouts - Flemish Primitives

Bouts Holy Sacrament Altarpiece - wga.hu

Leonardo da Vinci. Virgin of the Rocks , c. 1485, oil on wood

The Virgin of the Rocks was painted around 1508 for a lay brotherhood, the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, of San Francesco in Milan. Two versions survive, an earlier one, begun 1483, in the Louvre, and a later one of c. 1508 in the National Gallery in London.

There is no general agreement, but the majority of scholars concede that the Louvre panel is earlier and entirely by Leonardo, whereas the London panel, even if designed by the master, shows passages of pupils’ work consistent with the date of 1506, when there was a controversy between the artists and the confraternity.

The patron confraternity was devoted to the Immaculate Conception, the doctrine that Mary was conceived without sex and free of all stain of original sin. This belief, promulgated in papal bulls written by Pope Sixtus IV close to the date when Leonardo painted the picture, was represented in a sculptured image at the same altar (above or below the painting) and has infiltrated the meaning of Leonardo’s painting.

According to tradition, the cave associated with the Nativity was mystically identified with the cave of the Sepulcher. The dove may be interpreted as a reference to the Virgin Mary, and perhaps the shadowy caves are intended to suggest humanity’s dark mortality, which needs the divine light that enters through Mary as the immaculate vessel of God’s purpose.

Leonardo da Vinci. Cartoon for the Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John, 1498, charcoal heightened with white on brown paper

The word cartoon is derived from the Italian “cartone” meaning a large sheet of paper on which the artist drew an image that served as a kind of template for the finished painting or fresco, using pricking the contours with a sharp instrument. Charcoal dust would then be brushed over the holes so that the outline of the cartoon could be transferred to the wall or wood panel. This cartoon dates from the mid- 1490s and is in black chalk, highlighted with white, on several sheets of reddish buff paper. It was in fact never pricked, so it is possible that it was intended for a painting but was considered by Leonardo as complete in itself.

Leonardo da Vinci. Last Supper from the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Milan), c. 1495-98, fresco (oil and tempera on plaster) (View during latest restoration)

The Last Supper was commissioned by Lodovico Sforza of Milan. As Lodovico’s court artist, Leonardo’s duties included constructing theatrical devices for pageants and designing weapons that could be used against the enemies of Milan- including the artist’s Florentine compatriots.

Above: After Leonardo da Vinci: The Last

Supper (about 1515) by Giampietrino

who was active about 1500– 1550

Right: The Last Supper photographed in

Leonardo refers to the text from Luke, for Judas’s hand is on the table, stretching after the bread. Because Christ’s hands gesture toward the bread and the wine, the picture also refers to the institution of the Eucharist. Leonardo has fused this episode with yet another moment- never before represented- as recounted by Matthew, Mark, and Luke: “Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and began every one to say unto him, Lord, is it I?” Instead of designating the betrayer, Leonardo has shown how the announcement sparked astonishment on the part of the apostles and the searching of their own souls.

Dirk Bouts. Last Supper, 1464-7, oil on panel

This work, also known as the Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament , painted between 1464- and located in St Peters Church, Louvain, is one of the key works of Northern Renaissance art. The central panel represents The Last Supper and it is surrounded by 4 smaller panels depicting scenes from the Old Testament. In his Last Supper , Dirk Bouts breaks with convention by depicting Christ giving the Eucharist, rather than announcing the betrayal of Judas, as had hitherto been the tradition.

Scholars believe this may in fact be the first Flemish panel painting to depict the Last Supper and to use a single vanishing point of linear perspective. All the orthogonals in the room (imagined lines perpendicular to the picture plane) converge and vanish in a point just above Christ's head.

Through a window to the right of Christ's head, a landscape can be glimpsed, which has it own vanishing point. The complexity of the painting is increased by the inclusion of 4 servants, painted in Flemish clothes.

At first it was thought they may have been the artist and his sons, but it is more likely they are the portraits of the donors who commissioned the altarpiece.

Tilman Riemenschneider belonged to the first generation of sculptors who occasionally abandoned the customary practice of decorating their works with pigments and metal foil, producing instead uncolored sculpture. The development of monochromy, in which the wood is visible through a translucent glaze, imposed new demands on the artist, since he had to rely on sculptural means alone to reach the desired level of expressiveness. The popularity of the graphic arts in Germany in the fifteenth century contributed to the acceptance of uncolored sculpture.

Riemenschneider’s figures contain rich contrasts between florid and quiet passages, which create a complex play of light and dark. Their broad tonal range brings to mind the subtleties of Martin Schongauer’s engravings, which Riemenschneider often took as a point of departure for his own compositions.

Although Riemenschneider was among the first sculptors to produce monochrome sculpture, a large portion of his oeuvre was originally brightly colored or polychrome. Much of it fell victim to the nineteenth-century antipathy toward color in sculpture and was stripped of its decoration to reveal the bare wood. The polychromy of wood sculpture, which was often not carried out in the sculptor’s workshop but left to painters, relied on much the same technique as panel painting.

A glue sizing was applied to the wood to close the pores and prevent the absorption of paint media, and knots and joints were covered with textile or plant fibers. The figure then received several layers of a chalk-based ground, which served as a support for metal leaf and for opaque and translucent layers of pigment. The painter could achieve highly illusionistic effects, especially in the rendering of textiles and the treatment of flesh tones, which greatly enhanced the immediacy of sculpture.

The Altar of the Holy Blood, located at the church of Saint James (St. Jakobskirche), Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany, is named for the rare relic it contains: a small sample of Christ’s blood. The relic, encased in rock crystal, is set in a cross held aloft by two carved angels, enshrined above the corpus (central panel). The altarpiece itself is a masterpiece of woodcarving created by the Würzburg sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider between 1501 and 1505. In the medieval period, the church of Saint James, named for the patron saint of pilgrims, was an important stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and the Holy Blood (Heilig Blut) relic was an object of intense devotion. Today, the Altar of the Holy Blood, as well as the church’s other great altarpiece, the Twelve Apostles Altar, continue to draw visitors to the church of Saint James and the picturesque, medieval town of Rothenburg.

The central panel of the Altar of the Holy Blood depicts the Last Supper, although the figure of Christ, who is normally portrayed at the center of such scenes, has been supplanted by Judas, the Apostle who would later betray Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. In The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, 1475-1525 , Michael Baxandall writes, “Judas is Riemenschneider’s protagonist, displacing Christ from the centre of the Corpus.... The emphasis on poor Judas invites meditation, though its significances are unlikely to be arcane: Judas might, for instance, be taken to stand for the lack of discrimination with which God offers grace.” Citing a sermon from the 1490s by Johannes Pauli, a Franciscan writer, Baxandall observes, “Judas... can be a signal of hope to pilgrims poor in spirit.”