THE ITALIAN FAUST'S ACHIEVEMENTS

continued from No 30

As we have mentioned in Leonardo’s biography, his person was many-sided; but what made him different from the other many-sided artists: Leonardo possessed a spiritual force that generated his unlimited desire for knowledge, and guided his thinking and behavior. Leonardo found that his eyes were his main avenues of knowledge. Sight was man’s highest organ, because sight alone conveyed the facts of experience immediately and correctly. “Knowing how to see” became the great theme of his studies of man and God’s creations. His brilliant intellect, unusual powers of observation, and his mastery of the art of drawing, led him to the study of nature itself, in which his art and his science were equally revealed.

Painting. Leonardo’s total output in painting for all his sixty-seven year life is really not large; only seventeen paintings that have survived can definitely be attributed to him, and several of them are unfinished. Two of his most important works – the “Battle of Anghiari” and the “Leda”, neither of them completed – have only survived in copies. These few creations have established the unique fame of Leonardo, and have stood out in all periods and all countries as perfect masterpieces of painting. He was the first who used perspective in his art, recognized the play of light and shadow. He experimented much in the search of different composition of paints, being almost the first in Italy to turn to oil painting from tempera.

In the “Battle of Anghiari” Leonardo’s art of expression reached its high point. The drawings – many of which have been preserved – reveal Leonardo’s conception of the “science of painting”. His studies in anatomy and physiology influenced his representation of human and animal bodies in this painting, particularly when they were in a state of excitement. The Master described the baring of teeth and puffing of lips as signs of animal and human anger. Thus, this painting became the standard model for a cavalry battle. Its composition has influenced many painters: from Rubens to Delacroix.

Science of painting. In his Milan years, being over 20, Leonardo decided to turn toward scientific studies. He began to do these systematically and with such intensity that they demanded more and more of his time and energy. He felt within him a growing need to note and write down in literary form every one of his perceptions and experiences. It’s a unique phenomenon in the history of art. Leonardo began to write a theory of art of his own, which led him to the concept of a “science of painting”. Several treatises on art had already appeared by then (by Alberti and Pierro della Francesco), but Leonardo’s claims went much further. Basing on the conviction that sight is the most faultless sense organ, Leonardo equated “seeing” with “perceiving”, and concluded that the painter was the best person qualified to achieve knowledge by observing and to reproduce that knowledge in a pictorial manner. He conceived the plan of observing all objects in the visible world, recognizing their form and structure, and pictorially describing them exactly as they are. Thus, drawing became the chief instrument of his didactic method.

In the years between 1490–1495 Leonardo began his great program of writing. Four main themes were to occupy him for the rest of his life: a treatise on painting, a treatise on architecture, a book on the elements of mechanics, and a work on human anatomy. He also made geographical, botanic, hydrological and aerological researches.

All his studies were written down in Leonardo’s notebooks and individual sheets of paper. They were abundantly illustrated with sketches – the greatest literary legacy any painter has ever left behind. Of more than forty codices mentioned in the older sources twenty-one have survived. These contain notebooks originally separated from each other and now bound together so that thirty-one in all have been preserved. Surviving are a first collection of material for the painting treatise, a model book of sketches for sacred and profane architecture, the treatise on elementary theory of mechanics, and the first section of a treatise on the human body.

Sculpture. That Leonardo worked as a sculptor during his youth is known from his own statements. The two great sculptural projects to which Leonardo devoted himself stood under an unlucky star. Neither the huge, bronze equestrian statue for Francesco Sforza, on which he worked nearly for twelve years, nor the monument for Marshal Trivulzio, on which he was busy in the years 1506–1511, were brought to completion. Leonardo kept a detailed diary about his work on the Sforza horse. Texts and drawings show his wide experience in the technique of bronze casting, but at the same time reveal the utopian nature of the project. He wanted to cast the horse in a single piece, but the gigantic dimensions of it presented huge technical problems. The drawings of these two monuments reveal the greatness of Leonardo’s concept of sculpture. He studied the anatomy, movement, and proportions of a live horse, which was his favorite animal. Leonardo even seems have thought of writing a treatise on the horse.

Architecture. Leonardo was interested in architectural matters all his life, but his effectiveness was always limited to the role of an adviser. There are many architectural drawings in his notebooks ranging from plans for the dome of Milan Cathedral, through studies for churches, palaces, urban plans, and military architecture, to an enormous bridge over the Bosporus for Sultan Bayezid II. Leonardo invented an ideal city that is astonishingly modern in its attention to problems of hygiene and population density. But the most outstanding aspect of his plan is the conception of a city on two levels connected by stairways and ramps. The domestic and cultural activities on the upper level are separated from the traffic below. The lower level also includes a network of canals intended to serve as an efficient sewage system.

Leonardo was also quite active as a military engineer, beginning with the years of his stay in Milan. But no definite examples can be presented. His studies for large-scale canal projects in the Arno region and in Lombardy show that he was an expert in hydraulic engineering too.

Mechanics. Mechanics also proceeds from artistic practice. Throughout his life Leonardo was an inventor, works on mechanics that brought him the fame of a scientist. Some of his inventions were useless from the very outset; others couldn’t be done for technical reasons only very few of them might have forestalled great future inventions. For example, he invented a life buoy, glasses, shoes for water-walking, a self-closing cover for a lavatory, and many other items.

Leonardo wrote a model book on the elementary theory of mechanics, which appeared in Milan at the end of the 1490’s. It explained the basic mechanical principles and functions employed in building machinery. Leonardo was especially concerned with problems of friction and resistance. He almost formulated the First Law of Newton – the Law of Inertia; the principle of inertia was called the principle of Leonardo for a long time. In the course of years he realized that the mechanical forces at work in the basic laws of mechanics operate everywhere in the organic and inorganic world. Leonardo wrote on the page of his treatise on anatomy:

See to it that the book of the principles of mechanics precedes the book of force and movement of man and the other living creatures, for only in that way will you be able to prove your statements.
Finally, “force” became the key concept for Leonardo, it shaped and ruled the cosmos.

Anatomical studies. Leonardo’s study of anatomy, originally pursued for his training as an artist, quickly grew into an independent area of research. The early studies dealt chiefly with the skeleton and muscles. Then he proceeded to study the functions exercised by the individual parts of the body as they bring into play the organism’s mechanical activity. This led him finally to the study of the internal organs; he probed deeply into the brain, heart, and lungs as the “motors” of the senses and of life. Investigating and describing the internal organs, he studied the process of breathing, digestion, and reproduction. Studying the arterial system as well as the heart, he focused on the problem of the circulation of the blood. He described the nature of the womb, depicting accurately the compact position of the human embryo, who was shown correctly curled up.

Leonardo did practical work in anatomy on the dissection table in Milan, then in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. This astonishing experience was shown in the famous anatomical drawings, which are among the most significant achievements of Renaissance science. Leonardo first for anatomic history showed a cross-section of the skull, the others organs, the veins and nerves. His system of the drawings is used in medical student’s books even todays.

In Leonardo’s view, the artist is a transmitter of the true and accurate information of experience gained by visual observation. His idea of transmitting this knowledge turned out to be utopian; but the results of his researches were among the first great achievements of the thinking of the new age. Thanks to his genius, he developed his own “theory of knowledge”, unique in its kind, in which art and science form a synthesis.

GLOSSARY:

puff - запыхаться, тяжело дышать

density - плотность

sewage - сточные воды, нечистоты

forestall - предвосхищать

life buoy - спасательный круг

friction - трение

lungs - легкие

Compiled by Olga Volkova