A Review by Norman A. Ross
Leonardo da Vinci, the latest work from the extraordinary documentarian Ken Burns, is a must-see for anyone interested in the history of art, science, the Renaissance or just the man himself. In a two-part series running nearly four hours, broadcast last November and available for streaming on PBS, Burns tells the story of Leonardo, the 15th-century painter whose name brings instant recognition around the world.
A military architect, cartographer, sculptor and lifelong searcher for answers to the myriad questions crowding his brain, da Vinci left us a tremendous body of work. As we all know, his Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world, but this doesn’t inform us that he was probably the greatest genius of all time. His drawing of The Vitruvian Man is almost equally well-known around the world. It depicts a nude male figure with its arms and legs in two superimposed positions so that the hands and feet touch the perimeters of both a square and a circle, revealing several basic constructs of the ideal human body. The Last Supper in the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan (bombed during WWII by the Allies), is also remarkable, as detailed in the documentary.
Burns’ series explores da Vinci’s endless research in such areas as human flight, parachutes and flying machines; light and shadow (chiaroscuro); gravity (long before Newton); military equipment; and the mathematics of the human body. Da Vinci based his human form drawings on dissections of cadavers as well as live humans he measured. It explores da Vinci’s predilection for writing backwards, explaining that he was left-handed and didn’t want to smear his words as he was writing (reenacted in the film). Da Vinci left nearly 30,000 pages of notes and sketches in 50 notebooks about whatever interested him, including politics, women, painting, engineering, philosophy, warfare, physiology, geography, geology and his searching for commissions.
He was born out of wedlock in Vinci to a notary and a peasant woman. When he was 14 his father arranged an apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, a Florentine painter, and some works credited to da Vinci’s oeuvre were primarily by Verrocchio. The film follows his peregrinations between Florence, Milan, Rome, and finally to Amboise, where he eventually died.
Perceptions of da Vinci’s work have evolved over the centuries. Although in our lifetimes, Leonardo’s works are all considered masterpieces, at the beginning of the 20th century his early works were not well accepted. David Alan Brown writes that the famous art historian Bernard Berenson “deplored them.” Another historian, D. M. Field, wrote that “not one of Leonardo’s early works…was known before the 19th century”—the early works that today are so venerated. Among these are the Uffizi’s Annunciation and the Ginevra de’ Benci in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the only da Vinci in the United States. His anatomy studies weren’t published until circa 1900.
In 2011 I was fortunate to see the National Gallery exhibit in London, “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” that included paintings and drawings from Windsor Castle and 27 museums in ten countries. The National Gallery considered it was their most important show since the museum opened 150 years earlier. The catalog cites da Vinci’s 18 years in Milan as “the makings of him.” Eight years later the Louvre somewhat replicated what we saw in London. Many of the works in both shows can be seen in the film.
I have periodically been quite surprised by sightings of “Leonardo.” For instance, in 1970 in the Loire Valley we discovered that we were standing in front of the house in Amboise where he died, although we hadn’t known he had ever left Italy. In 1995 in Kraków, in a little-known branch of the National Museum of Poland, I was shocked to find da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine (a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani), that was in both the London and Paris shows years later.
This past October we were surprised to find ourselves in front of a da Vinci in the National Gallery of Scotland (on loan). It is one of two versions he painted of The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, which were alongside each other in the 2019 show in Paris for the first time ever. A debate has raged over many decades as to the authenticity of the attribution, and today the consensus is that he painted the figures but his atelier painted the background (the opposite of his contributions to works by Verrocchio).
As tourism expanded over the last 50 years, and after several people attacked the painting with a rock, paint and a piece of cake (!), the Louvre had to move the Mona Lisa to a larger space and protect it with safety glass. Every visitor to the Louvre—from all over the world—finds it. Most try taking a ‘selfie’ with her. Yet the other four works there by da Vinci hardly draw a crowd, although guides stop in front of them with their small groups.
We cannot contemplate da Vinci without recalling his Salvator Mundi (“Savior of the World”), which was included in the exhibition at the National Gallery before it was sold for $450 million, by far the highest price ever paid for a painting. Although it was destined for the Louvre Abu Dhabi it is now privately held and has not been on view to the public since its sale.
The documentary isn’t always easy to follow. Although it’s mostly in English, commentators periodically address the camera in French and Italian, with small yellow subtitles that are often difficult to read against colorful backgrounds. In addition, there’s no pause as each one starts, and by the time you realize you need to read the captions, you’ve already missed one or two. If you’re streaming you can back up, but that interrupts the flow. In addition, the film is full of stories about its hero that are hard to absorb at the rate they hit you. On the other hand, for the same price you can stream it twice! G&S
Photos by Norman A. Ross
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