Leonardo da Vinci: The Roots of His Mariological Painting (Part 1)

Introduction

A mind thirsty for knowledge, that focuses its attention on everything it comes across. A man who does not merely investigate through painting, but expands his field of action in all domains of learning. A genius that continues to surprise even today through a gradually revealed profile by new acquisitions and new studies that increase his myth.

Leonardo da Vinci attempted multiple and truly daring feats for his time: to make man fly, to teach beauty and truth, to help his fellow men become aware, to learn the secrets of the human body, to observe the stars, to entertain courtiers and nobles.

His presence, between the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, serves as a stimulus to all: painters admire him, nobles protect him, everyone marvels. We look at him above all as a great artist, as a painter of incomparable mastery, and the myth of his few works, in particular the Last Supper in Milan and the Mona Lisa, will continue to live even in the following centuries.

# Leonardo da Vinci: A Unique Artistic VisionHis personality is often compared to the very different ones of Michelangelo and Raphael. But while M. Buonarroti is a painter and sculptor who expresses through his arts his need to reveal God’s secret, and Raphael achieves with his works a more easily comprehensible formal delicacy, Leonardo seems to stand apart from this comparison. His painting is that of an artist-scientist, a man who prioritizes personal analysis and self-reflection above the creative act. In this sense, his figure transcends the times in which he lives.The influence his painting will have on the artistic developments of subsequent centuries remains the most significant aspect. While Lombard painters sometimes refer to Leonardo with varying degrees of success, his work is also observed and understood by the greatest masters of the 16th century, from Giorgione to Dürer, Correggio to Holbein, even Michelangelo and Raphael. Even his still-unclear human history has often been the subject of anecdotes and inventions.## The Early Florentine Years: Verrocchio’s Workshop, Roots in PaintingBorn as an illegitimate son in a small Tuscan village during the 15th century must have presented significant challenges. Yet, Leonardo da Vinci, who saw the light on April 15, 1452, when night’s shadows had not yet lifted to reveal the beautiful contours of the city’s towers, was born under a fortunate star.He was recognized by his father and lovingly registered by his grandfather, the respected Antonio da Vinci, who used to keep track of his large family in a notarial book: “A nephew of mine was born on April 15th,” he wrote, “son of my son Piero, at three o’clock in the morning.” The long list of attendees at Leonardo’s baptism confirms his acceptance. Leonardo could count on a wealthy and respected father as a notary in the local court, but his mother, Caterina, remained an unknown figure.In 1468, the very old Antonio died, and a cadastral document mentions “Leonardo, son of the aforementioned illegitimate Sier Piero, aged 17,” among the heirs. The strong and slender adolescent grew up outdoors, running through the lush fields of Vinci, and from his childhood, he observed nature, understood its deep message, and stole its secrets.One morning in 1469, Leonardo left his hometown forever. He sets off full of hopes for Florence, following his father and uncle Francesco, who will live on Via delle Prestanze, now known as Via dei Gondi. Caterina looks at her son from afar: she has lost him forever now. Sier Piero was appointed a notary, a prestigious position. He is an intelligent, concrete, practical man with brusque manners, but when he realizes the boy has unusual skills, he allows him to pursue painting.The artist thus enters Andrea Verrocchio’s workshop, one of the most renowned masters of the period, where important works of painting and sculpture are continuously created for a select clientele. Leonardo met a group of young artists, including Botticelli, Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi.Master Verrocchio only had space for those with talent to sell. And Leonardo’s talent was undeniable, though when the young man collaborated with the master on the composition of The Baptism of Christ, interpreting the sweet figure of the angel in profile and the landscape in the background on the left, Andrea reacted with disappointment.

Much more agile and graceful than Verrocchio’s painting, the angel gently curves, with a smile in its relaxed features, and the landscape in which his blonde head stands out is a compendium of changeable places, hills, margins, wet elevations by the atmosphere. Leonardo adheres to types and forms of Andrea Verrocchio in his early attempts, but refining everything with light touches, infusing them with subtle spiritual nuance. Everything softens in Leonardo’s form. All roughness dissolves. Lights rain transparencies, touch things with pearly reflections, and air circulates between them, moistening them, enveloping them tenderly.

In his Treatise on Painting, Da Vinci reminds us that when the weather is bad, light becomes half-light and gives figures grace and sweetness. The chiaroscuro, which until then was mainly used to achieve plastic and luminous effects, with Leonardo became an indispensable tool for creating soft shadows, harmonious luminosity, and vibrant reflections. His chiaroscuro is not simply a chromatic degradation, but a shading capable of softening the rigid contours of figures and producing the effect of distance, even modulating the sense of space, making it freer and deeper, surpassing the limits of perspective lines. With this concept, Leonardo subordinates color to the monochromatic chiaroscuro, which he does not consider essential for form, but rather an ornamental accessory, and on the other hand, along with the human figure, expresses nature in perfect harmony with the characters he depicts, after having studied them intensively in depth.

In the famous Uffizi Annunication, painted for Monte Oliveto Abbey in 1475, Leonardo, at just twenty years old, gives the pearly color of flesh and the hazy clarity of the sky, over which intertwine, forming the velarium, let’s look at the needle-shaped leaves of the pine tree.

We feel the first application of nuance that disperses the line, and achieves atmosphere with the granulation of contours, with the oscillation of shadow and lights, the substrate of things, the architecture of interiors, almost the heartbeat of life.

In the foreground, the Announcement. In the background, a Florentine building and a beautiful landscape where Leonardo naturally captures the plant world and the atmospheric sense of distance, an echo of Eden when God spoke to man.

The view from the balcony is magical, by the lake, with steep hills and mountains, a procession of trees of different varieties stark against the light, and the absolute absence of human figures emphasizing Mary’s absolute virginity.

Learn about the earliest Marian image in the Catacomb of Priscilla.