The da Vinci Legacy. Jean-Pierre Isbouts
royal collection at Fontainebleau. Another observer, the 17th-century scholar Cassiano dal Pozzo, saw this work some thirty years later, describing it as:
A standing figure of Leda almost entirely naked, with the swan at her and two eggs, from whose broken shells come forth four babies. This work, although somewhat dry in style, is exquisitely finished, especially in the woman’s breast; and for the rest of the landscape and the plant life are rendered with the greatest diligence. Unfortunately, the picture is in a bad state because it is done on three long panels which have split apart and broken off a certain amount of paint.21
Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Leda and the Swan, ca. 1505–1506
This work then reappears in inventories of Fontainebleau, dated 1692 and 1694, only to vanish after that date. One theory suggests that it was burned on orders of the Marquise de Maintenon, the second wife of Louis XIV, a deeply pious woman who despised all forms of overt eroticism. The Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni, who visited Versailles in 1775, confirmed that the Leda was no longer on display, but also noted that the work was not included on a list of paintings that the Marquise had reportedly ordered destroyed.
Cesare da Sesto, Leda and the Swan after Leonardo, 1508–1510
That the painting was once highly popular is unquestionably true. At least five Leonardeschi painted copies of the Leda, all after 1510, which suggests that the original must have been completed at that time.
Francesco Melzi, Leda and the Swan after Leonardo (the Spiridon Leda), ca. 1508–1515
What is so remarkable about these copies is that none of the background vistas are alike. Leda is alternatively positioned in front of a rock-like formation near a lake, or against a Flemish panorama of deep, rolling fields, or framed by a landscape dotted with homes and castles perched on a hill. This would argue in favor of the idea that Leonardo never finished a painted version with a background in place—quite in contrast to the attention he lavished on the backgrounds of his paintings from around 1506 onward.
Of all these copies, the version by Melzi, the so-called Spiridon Leda, appears to be the most accomplished, and perhaps closest to Leonardo’s original, if indeed there was one. For example, the treatment of Leda’s hair closely resembles Leonardo’s drawing in Windsor. The vegetation in the foreground is executed with meticulous precision, as is the sfumato texture of Leda’s skin, in marked contrast to the copy by Cesare da Sesto, where the plants and trees are a mere afterthought, obviously depicted with little interest. In the copy painted by Il Sodoma, the variations from the original theme are even more striking. Instead of four infants in their eggshells, we now see two children of toddler age, with a village and several figures in the distance. Taken together, these versions display a remarkable homogeneity when it comes to the nude figure of Leda herself, while almost everything else appears to be subject to the invention of the artist.
The Trinity of Saint Anne
Notwithstanding the popularity of the Leda motif, the work that exerted the greatest influence on the associates of Leonardo’s studio is The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. In this painting, Leonardo’s lifelong meditation on the mystery of motherhood and the theme of the Madonna finds its culmination. Though hardly known today, Saint Anne was a prominent figure in the Middle Ages. She does not appear in the canonical Gospels, but she is described in various apocryphal writings, beginning with the 2nd-century Protoevangelium of James, where she is introduced as the mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus. During the Middle Ages, which made little or no distinction between canonical and noncanonical writings, she was as revered as a cardinal figure of the Holy Family.
This was particularly true in Florence, since it was on the feast day of St. Anne—July 26, 1343—that the city had risen in revolt against Gautier VI, Count of Brienne, restoring itself as a republic in the process. That moment in history gained further significance in 1494, when the city ousted another dynasty, that of the Medicis, and again returned to its republican roots. As Vincent Delieuvin has noted, the veneration of St. Anne then increased in the years that followed.22
The question that has bedeviled scholars is: why did Leonardo undertake such a monumental work, and for whom?23 One theory holds that the Saint Anne began as a commission from Louis XII, who as we saw had married his predecessor’s widow, Anne of Brittany, in order to retain France’s claim on the duchy of Brittany. Naturally, St. Anne was the queen’s patron saint. Given the close contacts between Leonardo and the French court at the time—Leonardo was working on a Madonna of the Yarnwinder for Florimon Robertet, one of the king’s counselors—it seems feasible that Louis would turn to the most famous artist in his orbit to commission a painting for his queen. Another theory suggests that the Saint Anne stemmed directly from Leonardo’s 1501 stay at the Servite monastery in Florence where, as Vasari writes, “he made a cartoon showing a Madonna and a St. Anne, with a Christ.”24
Leonardo da Vinci, Study for St. Anne, ca. 1505–1508
Whatever the case may be, the idea of a group portrait of Anne, her daughter Mary, and the infant Jesus would have appealed to Leonardo because of its psychological complexity. It overlays one maternal bond over another, creating an unprecedented level of emotional depth, in both an aesthetic and a theological sense. Authors on Leonardo don’t often refer to Leonardo’s interest in theological concepts, since most are content to perpetuate the stereotype of the artist as a scientific maverick, a dyed-in-the-wool empirical secularist rejecting all Church dogma. That is, perhaps, an unconscious projection of our own ideas about the separation of church and state, and of faith and science. But that would be a mistake. While the Renaissance certainly empowered individuals to explore the world beyond the restrictions of Christian doctrine, that does not mean that they felt less attached to Christian ideas.
More important, an artist in the Renaissance was expected to be intimately familiar with the Catholic repertoire if he was to receive any commissions from either the Church or private patrons; both were likely to want sacred scenes. In 1492, just three years before Leonardo’s Milan studio began gearing up for the Last Supper fresco, the Dominican friar Michele da Carcano summarized the essential purpose of sacred art, which artists were expected to serve, as follows:
First, on account of the ignorance of simple people, so that those who are not able to read the scriptures can yet learn by seeing the sacraments of our salvation and faith in pictures . . . .
Second, on account of our emotional complacency; so that men who are not aroused to devotion when they hear about this histories of the Saints may at least be moved when they see them, as if actually present, in pictures. For our feelings are aroused by things seen, more than by things heard.
Third, on account of our unreliable memories . . . . Many people cannot remember in their memories what they hear, but they do remember if they see images.25
In other words, a painter was expected to be fully informed about the devotional quality of a given motif, as well as the traditional iconography by which each of the figures was to be depicted, so that the largely illiterate faithful could recognize the character and understand the role he or she played in the story. Thus, an artist such as Leonardo couldn’t simply be guided by his imagination—or invention, as the Renaissance called it—as a modern artist would today. He needed to respect established conventions about the way these sacred scenes were to be portrayed: to both instruct the faithful and instill piety in the beholder.
For