LEONARDO AND HIS CIRCLE: DISEGNO AND THE EDUCATION OF PAINTERS

2023, LEONARDO AND HIS CIRCLE: PAINTING TECHNIQUE IN THE LIGHT OF RESTORATIONS AND SCIENTIFIC STUDIES

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Although virtually undiscussed, Leonardo's theories on disegno precede the famous discourses on disegno by Vasari by several decades. This paper reconstructs the fragmentary evidence on disegno in Leonardo's writings, and discusses the great contrasts between Leonardo's theories on disegno and his practices in educating his own pupils.

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sional painter in Florence in 1472"*. In the 1460s and 1470s in Florence, the rival sculptor-painters, Verrocchio and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, had been the leading masters of disegno, able to teach profoundly innovative draw- ing techniques“). Although Leonardo wrote in his Codex Forster III, of ca. 1493, “sad is the pupil who does not surpass his master” (“trissto e quel dissciepolo che / no nava[n]za il suo maestro”), he acknowledged the valid traditions of his predecessors, and recalled Verrocchio’s technological

youngsters (garzoni) absorbed in their sketchbooks, like the third boy at right in the Louvre sheet of 1440-50 by an artist in the circle of Domenico Veneziano (Fig. 4)°?. A great number of garzoni studies emanated from the bottega of Maso Finiguerra?®). The autograph study by Maso in the Uffizi (Fig. 5) dates to ca. 1460-64, close to the time when Leonardo would have entered Verroc- chio’s workshop®. It portrays the seated apprentice drawing into a pocket-size sketchbook, and has the inscription at the bottom of the paper: “Vo esere uno buono disegnatore . e . vo[rrei diJ/ventare uno buono archittetore”’ (“I would like to be a good draftsman, and I would like to become a good architect’’). A conceptual gulf exists, however, between Leonardo’s quoted passage penny — wee x a w*

The painter must first become accustomed to exercise the hand by copying the drawings by the hand of good masters; and having acquired this habit with the guidance of his preceptor, he must then become accustomed to por- traying [i.e., drawing] things in good relief, with those rules that will be told below. with the guidance of his preceptor, he must then become accustomed to por-

Fig. 10 — Maestro della Pala Sforzesca, Bust-lenght portrait of Ercole Massimiliano Sfor- za as a boy. Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Inv. F 290 Inf. 13). Fig. 11 — Maestro della Pala Sforzesca, Bust-lenght study of a man in three-quarter view. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Art Graphiques (Inv. 2416).

on pale blue prepared paper of a grayish-green hue, is of elegiac beauty”. The artist’s luminous technique, of delicately shaded interior forms with fine, intermeshed strokes of parallel-hatching, creates continuous tone with nearly sfumato effects. His technique in the Clark study is all the more re- markable considering that metalpoint is an unforgiving, linear medium. In many of Boltraffio’s metalpoint sheets of the 1490s, the idealized, languor-

Recalling Leonardo’s magnificent drapery study in the Frits Lugt Col- lection-Fondation Custodia, Marco d’Oggiono achieved a tonal and chro- matic richness in his Berlin drapery study for the Strasbourg Visitation, of ca. 1520-25 (Fig. 14)®. The Berlin Visitation study exhibits a complex combination of dry and wet media of black, blue-gray, and white tempera, over a design layer in black chalk, on buff paper, partly prepared with pale

Fig. 14 — Marco d’Oggiono, Drapery study for the Virgin in the Strasbourg Visitation. Ber- lin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett (Inv. KdZ 5103).

I would argue that Leonardo’s concept of diligenza formed part of a deliberate attempt to professionalize the practices of drawing among Milan- ese painters in the 1480s and 1490s. The scenario of Lombard drawing and painting during the second half of the Quattrocento became complex upon Leonardo’s arrival in Milan in 1482, and Bramante’s presence in the city since at least October 1481. The existing Lombard tradition of naturalism had been freer of theoretical discipline and pursued pictorial values which were entirely different from the Florentine tradition of disegno, rilievo, and sculptural monumentality. We can deduce from the scant corpus of surviv- ing drawings that earlier Milanese artists had not been prolific draftsmen on

Fig. 17 — Bramantino, Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi (Inv. 15733 F).

Fig. 18 — Giovan Francesco Melzi, Head of a bald man in profile view, signed and dated 14 August 1510. Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Inv. F 274 Inf. 8). Fig. 19 — Giovan Francesco Melzi, imaging in infrared reflectography (IRR), Head of a bald man in profile view, signed and dated 14 August 1510. Milan, Veneranda Bibliote- ca Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Inv. F 274 Inf. 8. Photo: Gianluca Poldi, Segrate).

ae” a as iia aat Leonardo, however, was especially aware that a laborious diligenza ir finishing drawings dried up the freshness of ideas in a design. His teaching methods and insistence on diligenza accorded with an approach to drawing and painting which he himself began to escape early in his own creative life, valuing too much the spontaneous moments of surrender to the sugges- tiveness of forms before the mind’s eye. Between 1490 and 1510, Leonardc wrote at least seven fragments of text about the use of sketchbooks and the importance of quick sketching, a fact which reveals his persistent preoccu- pation with the subject. These notes about sketching constitute Leonardo’s most original contribution to the theory of disegno. Although the majority

Fig. 23 — Leonardo, sketches for the Madonna of the Cat (verso). London, British Mu- seum (Inv. 1856,0621.1).