The da Vinci Legacy. Jean-Pierre Isbouts
that the Confraternity believed the painting was more Ambrogio than Leonardo; the magic touch of the real master, they seemed to believe, was clearly missing. Perhaps the judgment was motivated by other factors. As it happened, Louis XII had become deeply fascinated by Leonardo. When he saw the fresco of the Last Supper in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, he ordered his engineers to “carry it into his kingdom . . . safely, and without any regards for expense,” as Vasari reports.
Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin of the Rocks, 1506–1508 (London version)
Leonardo da Vinci, Last Supper, 1494–1499
When his engineers told him that it was impossible to transport a large wall across the Alps, the king opted for the next best thing: a full-size copy of the Last Supper, to be executed by Leonardo and his workshop.19
The upshot of these developments was that Leonardo was able to reconstitute his studio in Milan, this time under the generous patronage of a royal commission.20 But by this time, the character of the studio had changed. During the six previous years, Leonardo’s associates had been busy absorbing the influence of other painters—blending the Leonardesque with the most recent movements in Italian art. As a result, the reconstituted studio of 1506 brought together a far more experienced and diverse group of artists. In addition to the original core, the bottega was now joined by a Florentine artist named Giovanni Francesco Rustici, who like Leonardo had been trained in Verrocchio’s workshop; a Sienese painter named Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, who also went by the less-than-flattering name of “Il Sodoma,” and whose loose morals became the subject of withering critique in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists; and an artist called Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, commonly referred to as “Giampietrino” (a contraction of “Giovanni” and Pietro”), pronounced “Giampèder” in the Lombard dialect.
In addition, the studio was joined by Francesco Melzi, an artist of not inconsiderable talent who eventually became Leonardo’s loyal secretary and assistant until his death.
Giampietrino, Virgin of the Rocks (Cheramy version) after Leonardo, ca. 1500–1505
The most important work of this period was, of course, the life-size copy of the Last Supper on canvas. Given the speed with which this work was completed—it was delivered by Leonardo’s pupil Andrea Solario to the Château de Gaillon in France in 1509—the painting must have been a collaborative effort that involved not only Solario but also Boltraffio and Giampietrino, for reasons that we will see shortly. Leonardo himself supervised the work and, we believe, personally executed the faces of Jesus and John. X-ray examinations of this canvas, which has been quietly on display in the Tongerlo Abbey in Belgium for the last 450 years, indicate that in contrast to all the other figures, there are no underdrawings under the features of these two figures. Leonardo must have painted them directly onto the canvas. Furthermore, the face of John bears a remarkable similarity to the model Leonardo used for his drawing of Leda and the Swan, a project that was also coming to fruition at this time.
Leda and the Swan
The crucial role of Leonardo’s drawings in the continued development of his Leonardeschi, both during and after his lifetime, is vividly illustrated by a mysterious project from this period, known as Leda and the Swan. The original story is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This Roman author tells us how the Greek god Zeus fell in love with the beautiful Leda, wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta. Zeus, in the guise of a swan, proceeded to seduce her. As a result of this encounter as well as marital congress with her spouse, Leda conceived and bore two sets of twins, each delivered in an eggshell. Helen and Polydeuces were the children of Zeus, while Castor and Clytemnestra were the children of her husband Tyndareus.
It was obviously a risqué subject. It’s therefore not surprising that during the quattrocento, several artists played with the theme, but hesitated to develop it into a full-blown painting. All such scruples disappeared in the 16th century. The story of Leda and the swan became a highly popular motif, possibly because it enabled artists such as Antonio Allegri da Correggio and Michelangelo to depict the passion of human intercourse, with the swan as a proxy.
Leonardo’s first exploratory drawings for this theme date from around 1503 and 1504, during the contemplative hiatus in Florence. An early attempt, now in Windsor, is sketched on the same paper as a rearing horse that appears to be related to the composition of the Battle of Anghiari. Leda kneels in classic contrapposto position, her torso turned away from the infants crawling next to her.
This “kneeling Leda” concept was further developed in several drawings. One, now in the Devonshire Collection in Chatsworth House, includes Leda’s suitor Zeus in his swan disguise. In this more articulated composition, the nude Leda kneels next to her newborn children on her right, while the swan kisses her tenderly on her neck at her left.
A later version, possibly executed in Milan and now in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, shows a variation on this theme. Leda is still kneeling toward her children, but her head is now turned toward the swan while her left hand caresses its neck—thus restoring some of the charged passion of the story. This composition formed the basis for a painting by one of Leonardo’s foremost Leonardeschi, Giampietrino. It was possibly begun around 1506 or 1507, and now is held in Kassel, Germany.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Leda and the Swan, ca. 1503–1504
Of all of the Leonardeschi, Giampietrino’s is perhaps the most consistent and recognizable style, deeply beholden to Leonardo, particularly in the execution of atmosphere and emotional expression. This is also true of his full-length painting of the Nymph Egeria, now in the Brivio-Sforza collection in Milan, which appears to portray the same model who sat for the Kassel Leda and the Swan. On this basis, some historians have argued that the Kassel painting should be dated around 1510.
Giampietrino, Leda and the Swan, ca. 1506–1510
In the meantime, however, Leonardo had developed a second approach to the Leda motif. In this final and most satisfactory solution, Leda stands in a classic contrapposto pose. While her torso is turned toward the libidinous swan, her voluptuous thighs face the beholder, and her gaze is turned the other way, toward the four infants scrambling out of their broken eggshells. This “standing Leda” version probably dates from 1504, when Raphael briefly joined Leonardo’s studio, for we have a drawing by the younger artist that closely follows this composition.
Raphael, Study for Leda and the Swan after Leonardo, ca. 1504
For many years now, scholars have energetically debated whether Leonardo actually executed a painting based on this composition, or whether it was left to his studio associates to translate the drawing or perhaps a more finished cartoon into a panel. The consensus today appears to favor the idea that Leonardo did execute a finished painting—his only portrait of a full-length female nude. This is also suggested by the famous study of Leda’s hair, dated around 1505 and 1506, which indicates that Leonardo’s ideas for the painting were far advanced at that time. Additional evidence may be found in a 1590 report by the Italian artist and