VIRTUOSO INCOMPLETENESS

Two sonnets, two compliments, one man. Or, could he be one man and merit such divergent compliments? – Giovanni Battista Strozzi in his sonnet claimed that this 'man', alone, had vanquished all others, even Phidias, Apelles and their worthy followers: titans not painters. (" Tutti altri, e vince Fidia e vince Apelle,/ e tutto lor vittoriosi stuolo ") – Gian Piero Lomazzo, on the other hand, pitched on Protogenes, another mythical artist, suggesting that this 'man' was his equal: the equal of Protogenes, who mythically, never lifted his brush from his work. And this 'man' equaled him, says Lomazzo, by never finishing anything at all. (" Di cui opra non è finite pure ") Reflecting on Leonardo Da Vinci's work is like staring down a cul de sac, one where the wall is blind because it reflects the path that leads up to it. Leonardo's paintings are in many ways mirror-like and reflected Leonardo upon Leonardo. Perhaps that is why this raptness of Leonardo became an impasse that posterity has wrestled with. Giorgio Vasari, whose portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci in Lives of Artists is more in awe than critical of its subject, (an unusual thing in his work), stated, rather tamely, that it was because of his profound knowledge of painting that Leonardo started so many things without finishing them. Vasari explained that Leonardo was convinced that his hands, for all their skill, could never perfectly express the subtle and wonderful ideas of his imagination. All this ebb and flow of conviction was slow work indeed. — In the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Matteo Bandelli a contemporary and a fabulist, who was a young monk at the time, reported that Leonardo, while painting the Last Supper, used to climb up the scaffolding early in the morning and remain there till twilight contemplating the incomplete painting below. This would continue for days. Coupled with this notorious slowness was the tendency, at the peak of his powers, to stop painting altogether in favour of whimsical though compelling scientific forays. Leonardo's withdrawal from his art was accounted for by Sigmund Freud in his intriguing thesis, Leonardo da Vinci: A Memoir of His Childhood, as being the result of acute sexual repression, by which he implied that a conversion of physical instinctual force into various forms of activity can perhaps no more be achieved without loss than a conversion of physical forces. Freud's view culminated in his assertion that Leonardo da Vinci had not embraced a woman with passion in his life, unlike his great rival Michelangelo Buonarotti, who, as Freud suggested, always 'had' Vittoria Colonna. In fact, he further suggested that Leonardo's scientific heading was necessitated by his desire to escape his childhood memories: a time fraught with uncertainty and pain. Scientific researches were seen, thus, as a way of dodging one's self, (that painting made one confront), a way that precluded any personal reminiscence and reference.