Cultural depictions of Leonardo da Vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci, (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519), Italian Renaissance painter and polymath, achieved legendary fame and iconic status within his own lifetime. His renown primarily rests upon his brilliant achievements as a painter, the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, being two of the most famous artworks ever created, but also upon his diverse skills as a scientist and inventor. He became so highly valued during his lifetime that the King of France bore him home like a trophy of war, supported him in his old age and cradled his head as he died.

Leonardo's portrait was used, within his own lifetime, as the iconic image of Plato in Raphael's School of Athens. His biography was written in superlative terms by Vasari. He has been repeatedly acclaimed the greatest genius to have lived. His painting of the Mona Lisa has been the most imitated artwork of all time and his drawing of the Vitruvian Man iconically represents the fusion of Art and Science.

Leonardo's biography has appeared in many forms, both scholarly and fictionalised. Every known aspect of his life has been scrutinised and analysed. His paintings, drawings and notebooks have been studied, reproduced and analysed for five centuries. The interest in and appreciation of the character of Leonardo and his talents has never waned.

Leonardo has appeared in many fictional works, such as novels, television shows and movies, the first such fiction dating from the 16th century. Various characters have been named after him.

Contents

[edit] Leonardo in art

[edit] Self portrait

The well-known portrait that is generally accepted as being of Leonardo da Vinci is certainly by his hand, but is not universally accepted as a self-portrait because the apparent age of the man depicted appears to be older than Leonardo achieved. It has been suggested that it is Leonardo's portrait of his father or grandfather. On the other hand, an explanation that has been put forward to explain the apparent advancced age of the individual is that Leonardo deliberately drew himself as older than he really was, in order that Raphael might use it as the basis for his depiction of Leonardo as Plato in the School of Athens.

The drawing has been the basis for other representations of Leonardo.

[edit] Raphael's "School of Athen's"

[edit] Ingre's "Death of Leonardo"

The Death of Leonardo by Ingres, 1818
The Death of Leonardo by Ingres, 1818

In 1818 the French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres depicted the scene of Leonardo's death which is shown taking place in the home "Clos Luce" provided for him at Blois by Francois I. The King is shown supporting Leonardo's head as he dies, watched by the Dauphin who is comforted by a cardinal. A distraught young man may represent Leonardo's pupil Melzi.

The treatment of this subject by Ingres is indicative of Leonardo's iconic status and also specifically that he was of particular significance to the school of French Classicism. A number of his paintings had passed into the Royal collection and certain elements of them were much imitated. Leonado's manner of soft shading known as "sfumato" was particularly adapted by Ingres, Jacques Louis David and their followers. An influential painting was Leda and the swan, now regarded as by a pupil of Leonardo but then genereally accepted as the master's work.

[edit] Biography and appraisal

[edit] Vasari

[edit] Television documentary

[edit] Leonardo in Fiction

[edit] Novels and short stories

  • The Second Mrs. Giaconda (1981) by E. L. Konigsburg is a story about why Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa.
  • Theodore Mathieson's short story Leonardo Da Vinci: Detective portrays him using his genius to solve a murder during his time in France.
  • The novel Pasquale's Angel by Paul McAuley, set in an alternate universe Florence, portrays Leonardo as "the Great Engineer", creating a premature industrial revolution (see clockpunk).
  • The novel The Memory Cathedral by Jack Dann is a fictional account of a "lost year" in the life of Leonardo. Dann has his genius protagonist actually create his flying machine.
  • The novel Pilgrim by Timothy Findley describes the encounters of an immortal named Pilgrim with Leonardo da Vinci among others, as told to Carl Jung.
  • Terry Pratchett's character Leonard of Quirm is a pastiche of Leonardo.
  • Three novels by Martin Woodhouse and Robert Ross feature the adventures of Leonardo da Vinci in the guise of a James Bond-type spy of the Italian Renaissance: The Medici Guns (1974); The Medici Emerald and The Medici Hawks.
  • The Secret Supper (2006) by Javier Sierra explores the symbology of Leonardo's Last Supper, and its threat to the Catholic Church, as he is painting the fresco in 15th century Milan.
  • Black Madonna (1996) by Carl Sargent and Marc Gascoigne, is set in the Shadowrun game universe and portrays Leonardo as still living in the 21st century, blackmailing corporations to finance his inventions.

[edit] The Da Vinci Code

UK cover of The Da Vinci Code
UK cover of The Da Vinci Code

This work of fiction has been the centre of controversy over the accuracy of its depictions of Christianity and of Leonardo.

A bestselling 2003 novel by Dan Brown, adapted and released as a major motion picture in 2006, The Da Vinci Code revolves around a conspiracy based on elements of Leonardo's Last Supper and other works. A preface to the novel claims that depictions of artworks, secret societies and rites described within the novel are factual. For this reason much of the content of the novel has been widely accepted by readers as authoritative. Because the theme involves a conspiracy within the Church over the life of Jesus and the suggestion that the Church has hidden the facts of his marriage, there has been a strong reaction against the novel and much material published examining and refuting its claims.

Within the novel it is claimed that from 1510-1519, Leonardo was the Grand Master of a secret society, the Priory of Sion. In reality this society existed only as a 20th century hoax, but author Dan Brown used as a source the 1982 pseudohistory book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. The writers of this book had based their research on forged medieval documents that had been created as part of the Priory of Sion fraud. The mix of fact and fiction in the documents made it difficult to discount immediately as a forgery. For example, it was claimed that the Grand Master prior to Leonardo was Botticelli, who had indeed had an association with Leonardo, as they were both students at the Florence workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio.

The Priory of Sion story and the voracity of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was eventually debunked, and many of those involved publicly recanted, although Dan Brown continued to assert that the facts as presented were true.

In portraying the Priory of Sion as "fact" The Da Vinci Code expanded on the claims in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail:

  • That there were additional secrets hidden in Leonardo's paintings, such as an "M" letter in the painting of The Last Supper, indicating the presence of Mary Magdalene and that the figure to the left of Jesus traditionally said to represent John the Evangelist actually represents Mary Magdalene.
  • That Leonardo's painting The Mona Lisa was actually a self-portrait.
  • That among the differences in the two versions of the painting of the Virgin of the Rocks which hang in the Louvre and London's National Gallery, is the fact that in the Louvre painting the baby to the left of the picture depicts Jesus, and to the right John the Baptist, rather than the accepted view, which is the other way round.
  • That Leonardo invented a cryptex for carrying secret messages.

The book also used a variation of Leonardo's backwards handwriting to hide a secret message on the American bookjacket.

Among the many criticisms of Brown's writing is that he uses the name da Vinci (meaning "from Vinci") in the manner that surnames are commonly used nowadays. Leonardo would never have been referred to simply as da Vinci in his lifetime. Such designations were appended to common baptismal names in order to identify individuals.

[edit] Movies

[edit] Theatre

  • Peter Barnes's 1969 play Leonardo's Last Supper centres on Leonardo being "resurrected" in a filthy charnel house after being prematurely declared dead.
  • David Davalos's 2002 play Daedalus tells a fantasized story of Leonardo's time as a military engineer in the service of Cesare Borgia.

[edit] Opera

  • C.A. Silvestri and composer Eric Whitacre collaborated to create an "opera bréve" based on text from da Vinci's journals and original text by Silvestri. This piece, Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine, was modeled after da Vinci's conceptual flying machine. This piece was written on commission by the American Choral Directors Association as the second piece in Whitacre's series of "Element Works," the first being Cloudburst, written in 1992.

[edit] Television fiction

  • In The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! live-action segment "The Painting", the Mario Bros. find a painting which happens to be Leonardo Da Vinci's painting "The Last Supper". They call up Howard Stevens (played by the show's producer Andy Heyward), and he explains that it's the "second Last Supper" by Leonardo Da Vinci "Rooney". However, upon further examination, they discover that the painting is actually worthless because it was painted by an impostor, Leonard Da Vinci "Mahoney". Howard was able to identify it as Mahoney's painting because one of the people in the painting is Mahoney's uncle, Roy Orbisoni Mahoney. The information dealing with Da Vinci in this episode is incorrect.
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Requiem for Methuselah, Leonardo da Vinci is revealed to be one of many aliases to "Flint", an immortal man born in the year 3834 BC. Leonardo's abilities and knowledge are thus attributed to centuries of scientific and artistic study. Leonardo appears again in the Star Trek universe, in the series Star Trek: Voyager, where his workshop is created as a holographic simulation. Actor James Daly played Flint / Leonardo in Star Trek: The Original Series, while John Rhys-Davies portrayed Leonardo in Star Trek: Voyager. Also, in the S.C.E. (Starfleet Corps of Engineers) novels, the main starship of the series is called the U.S.S. Da Vinci (NCC-81623), a Sabre-class vessel, named for the artist.
  • The 1979 Doctor Who story City of Death features a theft of the Mona Lisa. The Doctor goes back in time to visit Leonardo's workshop and claims to be an old acquaintance of the artist. Leonardo also appears as a character in several Doctor Who novels.
  • The cartoon The Tick features Leonardo in Leonardo DaVinci and his Fightin' Genius Time Commandos! (Season 2, Episode 17, 1995).
  • The television show "Alias" features a character Milo Giacomo Rambaldi, a fictional character clearly based on Leonardo.
  • In the animated television series Dilbert episode Art has Leonardo as the secret ruler of the art world. He reveals that he discovered immortality centuries ago through the invention of the fountain of youth.
  • An episode of Histeria! focusing on the Renaissance featured a cartoon caricature of Leonardo as a host. Over the course of the episode, he is criticized by World's Oldest Woman for wearing a dress, and also parodies the 1960s Batman series as Renaissance Man, with Loud Kiddington as his sidekick.
  • Featured on the History Channel's Man, Moment, Machine.

[edit] Comics

[edit] Computer and video games

[edit] Role-playing games

In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, there is an equivilent to Leonardo named Leonardo de Miragliano.

[edit] Depictions of Leonardo's works

[edit] Pupils and followers

Leonardo's pupils and followers copied or closely imitated many of his pictures. Several of his important works exist only as copies by his admirers. These include:

Other much much-copied works include:

  • Mona Lisa for which Angela della Chiesa cites 14 examples of which 6 are bare-breasted. These include paintings by Luini, Salai and Joos van Cleeve.
  • John the Baptist for which there exist at least 5 versions by other hands including Salai.

[edit] Imitators and satirists

No painting has been more imitated and satirised than the Mona Lisa. Beginning possibly with a naked portrait of Diane de Poitiers by Clouet, the pose and expression have been freely adapted to many female portraits.

[edit] Products and advertising

[edit] Representations of Leonardo

Engraving from "The Swedish Family Journal", 1864-87, artist Evald Hansen.

Statue by Pietro Magni in piazza della Scala, Milan.

An engraved representation of Leonardo

[edit] Representations of Leonardo's works

Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is used in many contexts, including T-shirts.
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