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Моя жизнь с Леонардо. Полвека страстей, открытий и приключений в миру искусства и за его пределами
Мартин Кемп, историк искусства, всемирно признанный специалист по творчеству Леонардо да Винчи, раскрывает тайны своеобразного мира, возникшего вокруг фигуры гениального художника. Этот мир населяют искусствоведы всех мастей, частные коллекционеры, музейные хранители, жуликоватые арт-дилеры, услужливые аукционисты, выдающиеся ученые, псевдоисторики и фантазеры. Кемпу приходится сдерживать натиск воинственных легионов «фанатиков Леонардо», лавировать в лабиринтах интриг, сглаживать острые углы в конфликтах ученых и музейных работников, отражать нападки хулителей Леонардо. В своей новой книге он рассказывает о сложностях атрибуции картин, тонкостях научно-технических экспертиз, неоднозначности оценки и восприятия классического искусства в современном мире.
На протяжении всей книги, в которой нашлось место и научным трактовкам, и феномену популярности Кода да Винчи Дэна Брауна, нас сопровождает уникальный талант Леонардо, и мы не перестаем удивляться тому, что даже спустя 500 лет его гений продолжает будоражить умы и трогать сердца всех, кто с ним соприкасается.
На протяжении всей книги, в которой нашлось место и научным трактовкам, и феномену популярности Кода да Винчи Дэна Брауна, нас сопровождает уникальный талант Леонардо, и мы не перестаем удивляться тому, что даже спустя 500 лет его гений продолжает будоражить умы и трогать сердца всех, кто с ним соприкасается.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 25, 2019
Q:
Reading the paper, I felt that I had come home. (c)
Q:
I applied for postgraduate study at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art. When I was interviewed for admission Sir Anthony Blunt, head of the Institute, asked what I ‘collected’. Without thinking I responded, ‘my next lunch’. (c)
Q:
Leonardo is without rival in the history of art – and beyond. He is one of the best known of all pre-20th-century personalities. In a 2013 study measuring historical reputation by means of quantitative analysis, Leonardo was ranked first among pre-20th-century artists (with Michelangelo second) and twenty-ninth in the ‘overall top thirty’, a list headed by Jesus and Napoleon. Adolf Hitler came seventh. (c)
Q:
Leonardo inspires studious devotion and untrammelled fantasy in equal measure. Some of this attention is because he is famous for being famous, but it ultimately feeds upon the unique depth, range and imaginative reach of his work across the arts, sciences and technologies. Along the way, his life and works have also become repositories for wild theories to a degree that is not matched by any other figure. Would The Michelangelo Code have sold anything like as well? The Leonardo business is unlike any other, and it is easy for aficionados to become obsessed.
Having been in this business for about fifty years, I have seen it all. ... I have grappled with swelling legions of ‘Leonardo loonies’. (c)
Q:
On a number of occasions I have felt that I have finished with him, thinking that I have said all I want to and that it is time to move on. This was certainly the case in 1981 with the publication of my first monograph, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. There is a danger of being typecast. In retrospect I welcome the fact that he has never finished with me. He continues to make compelling posthumous demands on those who engage with him. (c)
Q:
Many stories involving Leonardo, while picturesque and revealing in themselves, also demonstrate a wider historical truth: the knowledge we possess and the opinions we form are significantly shaped by our specific circumstances. To put it more simply, how we encounter something colours what it looks like. There is some affinity with the notion, in modern physics, of the intrusion of the observer and the means of observation into the systems under observation. In my teaching I have on a number of occasions conducted seminars under the rubric of ‘Art History in Action’, in which we have discussed the range of circumstances that give rise to art-historical knowledge. Awareness of these circumstances is informative in its own right, and presents some insights into what might lie in store for students hoping to enter some aspect of the art world. (c)
Q:
The media are drawn to his supposed heresies and allegiances to arcane sects. ...
It has been claimed that Leonardo himself posed for the Mona Lisa in drag, or more recently, that his pupil Salaì did the cross-dressing. Maybe the masterpiece is not by Leonardo at all; I have been told that it is actually a Tahitian princess by Titian. The famed ‘self-portrait’ drawing in Turin is nothing of the sort, but nothing will shift it in the public imagination – and so on. New absurdities arise every month to join the old ones. (c)
Q:
The scope of Verrocchio’s activities, which included the manufacture and erection of the hollow copper ball on the top of Brunelleschi’s Dome of Florence Cathedral, naturalized Leonardo in the polymathic tradition of major Tuscan masters; he learned to embrace the painters’ sciences of perspective and anatomy, and cultivated skills in a wide range of artistic media, civil and military engineering, and ceremonial design. (c)
Q:
Leonardo served the court in various functions, not least as a Milanese civil and military engineer. We have plentiful evidence of his visionary inventions, which are best recognized as the kind of visual boasting that engineers reserved for their treatises. The more workaday activities are less well documented and do not survive. The grandest of his realized structures were the scenic machines for major celebrations – above all, for magnificent dynastic marriages. Leonardo created astonishing theatrical illusions of domed heavens and opening mountains. These were massive in scale and extremely expensive, and necessarily had to be completed on time. Some idea of his inventiveness in this courtly mode is provided by his Sala delle Asse, a large corner hall in the Sforza Castle decorated on all four walls and ceiling with a complex bower of interlaced trees and knots of golden rope.
Leonardo also served more generally as an impresario of artistic delights for the entertainment of indolent courtiers. He could turn water into wine, create clever rebuses in the manner of modern emojis, play music on a kind of violin, declaim paradoxical parables and prophecies, devise portable outdoor pavilions, and discourse with complex erudition on why painting was superior to every other kind of artistic pursuit. There are signs of frustration in his notebooks that he was being diverted away from works that would grant him enduring fame.
His burgeoning science found scope to flourish in the court environment, and he undertook campaigns to educate himself in the Aristotelian tradition of book learning. Most visually conspicuous is his anatomy, in which he mingled data from animal dissections with traditional wisdom and with some input from scarce human material. The greatest of his early achievements in anatomy centred on his studies of a human skull in 1489, in which he was concerned at least as much with brain function as bone structure. Another of Leonardo’s major concerns was optics, as an extension of perspective into a series of complex demonstrations of light and shade from varied sources and on bodies of varied shape. His growing fascination with the mathematics of natural phenomena manifests itself in his studies of statics (such as balances) and dynamics (as in the ballistics of weapons). He devoted increasing efforts to the physics of water in motion, which comprised the theoretical dimension to the hydraulic engineering that he extensively discussed and illustrated in his Milanese notebooks. Underpinning these interests was geometry itself, culminating in his illustrations of the regular and semi-regular ‘Platonic’ solids for the treatise On Divine Proportion by his mathematician colleague Luca Pacioli. The strong impression is that Leonardo was never idle, and that he was prized in the court for far more than completing a few paintings. (c)
Q:
The element of reprise at the Milanese court embraces the geometry of volumes and areas; attempts to ‘expedite all this anatomy’; the furthering of plans for a treatise on water (spanning theory and practice); the development of his ideas about the ancient history of the earth; a treatise on bird flight that served to refine his designs for a flying machine; and an intense study of the internal optics of the eye, in the course of which he came to regard seeing as a more ambiguous business than he had previously assumed. (c)
Q:
The king did expect some work from Leonardo. He was rewarded with such wonders as an automated lion that strode forward to open its breast, revealing French fleurs-de-lys against a blue background – apparently signifying peace. (c)
Q:
Sir Anthony Blunt was director of the Courtauld, and was consulted on the majority of academic art history appointments in Britain and the Commonwealth. ...
When he called me to his elegant office in the Robert Adam house in Portman Square then occupied by the Institute, it rapidly became evident that he had filed a workable number of details in his mental reference system without seeming to do so – one of the attributes that made him such an effective intelligence agent and spy during the war. It later transpired that my time at the Institute had coincided with his confession in April 1964 to the security services that he had acted as a Soviet agent – though he was not immediately unmasked in public. ...
Blunt was surreptitiously intimidating, intellectually and personally. (c)
Q:
Possessing a degree in natural sciences with a bit of aspiring art history and having studied some specialized post-graduate courses did not qualify me to cover the wide range of material in the stipulated syllabuses. In the middle of both terms I staged a tactical illness to catch up on basic reading in order to keep my nose just in front of my four eager pupils. It was a condensed apprenticeship. Early the following summer, a note arrived. Anthony Blunt ‘advised me to apply’ for a lectureship at the University of Glasgow, where I was again appointed without an interview. At the age of twenty-four I was in a tenured post, with no obvious reason (beyond the inherent corruption of the system) why I should have been. (c)
Q:
In the note beside the tangled skeins of water in the drawing illustrated above, Leonardo observes that the motion of water is analogous to the curling of hair. The weight of the hair corresponds to the impetus of the water, while both hair and water have a natural tendency to curl in a circular manner. The resulting configuration in both cases is a helix. As I progressively came to see, such underlying laws were central to Leonardo’s quest to understand nature. Leonardo’s expression of underlying order through the eloquence of drawing resonated with the instinct for natural pattern and processes that had drawn me into the natural sciences. I later came to attribute this instinct to what I have called ‘structural intuitions’. (c)
Q:
The effect has also been indirect, in that the Code has given currency to the idea that 500-year-old works of art might contain secret messages, disguised words, concealed images, mystic geometries and esoteric numbers, all waiting to be read by a smart modern-day sleuth. A whole genre of what we might call ‘secretology’ has grown up around Leonardo and the Mona Lisa in particular; there is much speculation about the artist’s allegiance to secret sects and his belief in arcane heresies. The resulting surge of people searching for obscure codes to which they can apply their ingenuity has led to more problems for me than the immediate existence of the book or film. (c)
Q:
Leonardo’s arithmetic was sometimes rather wobbly, but he could count to seven, or even to ten. (c)
Q:
Signs of Leonardo’s magic asserted themselves: the soft skin over the bony joints of the fingers of Christ’s right hand, implying but not describing anatomical structure; the illuminated tips of the fingers of his left hand; the glistening filaments of vortex hair, above all on the right as we look at the picture; the teasing ambiguity of his facial features, the gaze assertively direct but removed from explicitness; the intricately secure geometry of the angular interlace in the neckline and cross-bands of his costume; the gleaming crystal ellipse on the pendant plaque below his neckline; the fine rivulets of gathered cloth on his chest. Mona Lisa-ish echoes were sounding loudly. (c)
Q:
As God’s son incarnate he had become visible in fleshly form on earth, as in Leonardo’s picture, but he brought with him an aura of ineffability – of something unfathomable to our dull understanding. It is this aura that Leonardo evokes though the elusiveness with which he describes Christ’s features. We seem to see them, but they elude us. As always with Leonardo, form and content are one – and novel. (c)
Q:
The white lead of the final layer of priming was lightly tinted with yellow. Ground particles of glass were found in the various layers – an odd technique, even for Leonardo. Was he aiming to endow the paint with special luminosity? (c)
Q:
Academics are notably adept at missing deadlines, and I was unconvinced that all the authors actually had anything new to say. My rule of thumb is that having two authors to write a book increases by 20 per cent the likelihood of non-delivery on the deadline. By the time five authors are involved, the likelihood has effectively increased to something like 100 per cent. (c)
Reading the paper, I felt that I had come home. (c)
Q:
I applied for postgraduate study at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art. When I was interviewed for admission Sir Anthony Blunt, head of the Institute, asked what I ‘collected’. Without thinking I responded, ‘my next lunch’. (c)
Q:
Leonardo is without rival in the history of art – and beyond. He is one of the best known of all pre-20th-century personalities. In a 2013 study measuring historical reputation by means of quantitative analysis, Leonardo was ranked first among pre-20th-century artists (with Michelangelo second) and twenty-ninth in the ‘overall top thirty’, a list headed by Jesus and Napoleon. Adolf Hitler came seventh. (c)
Q:
Leonardo inspires studious devotion and untrammelled fantasy in equal measure. Some of this attention is because he is famous for being famous, but it ultimately feeds upon the unique depth, range and imaginative reach of his work across the arts, sciences and technologies. Along the way, his life and works have also become repositories for wild theories to a degree that is not matched by any other figure. Would The Michelangelo Code have sold anything like as well? The Leonardo business is unlike any other, and it is easy for aficionados to become obsessed.
Having been in this business for about fifty years, I have seen it all. ... I have grappled with swelling legions of ‘Leonardo loonies’. (c)
Q:
On a number of occasions I have felt that I have finished with him, thinking that I have said all I want to and that it is time to move on. This was certainly the case in 1981 with the publication of my first monograph, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. There is a danger of being typecast. In retrospect I welcome the fact that he has never finished with me. He continues to make compelling posthumous demands on those who engage with him. (c)
Q:
Many stories involving Leonardo, while picturesque and revealing in themselves, also demonstrate a wider historical truth: the knowledge we possess and the opinions we form are significantly shaped by our specific circumstances. To put it more simply, how we encounter something colours what it looks like. There is some affinity with the notion, in modern physics, of the intrusion of the observer and the means of observation into the systems under observation. In my teaching I have on a number of occasions conducted seminars under the rubric of ‘Art History in Action’, in which we have discussed the range of circumstances that give rise to art-historical knowledge. Awareness of these circumstances is informative in its own right, and presents some insights into what might lie in store for students hoping to enter some aspect of the art world. (c)
Q:
The media are drawn to his supposed heresies and allegiances to arcane sects. ...
It has been claimed that Leonardo himself posed for the Mona Lisa in drag, or more recently, that his pupil Salaì did the cross-dressing. Maybe the masterpiece is not by Leonardo at all; I have been told that it is actually a Tahitian princess by Titian. The famed ‘self-portrait’ drawing in Turin is nothing of the sort, but nothing will shift it in the public imagination – and so on. New absurdities arise every month to join the old ones. (c)
Q:
The scope of Verrocchio’s activities, which included the manufacture and erection of the hollow copper ball on the top of Brunelleschi’s Dome of Florence Cathedral, naturalized Leonardo in the polymathic tradition of major Tuscan masters; he learned to embrace the painters’ sciences of perspective and anatomy, and cultivated skills in a wide range of artistic media, civil and military engineering, and ceremonial design. (c)
Q:
Leonardo served the court in various functions, not least as a Milanese civil and military engineer. We have plentiful evidence of his visionary inventions, which are best recognized as the kind of visual boasting that engineers reserved for their treatises. The more workaday activities are less well documented and do not survive. The grandest of his realized structures were the scenic machines for major celebrations – above all, for magnificent dynastic marriages. Leonardo created astonishing theatrical illusions of domed heavens and opening mountains. These were massive in scale and extremely expensive, and necessarily had to be completed on time. Some idea of his inventiveness in this courtly mode is provided by his Sala delle Asse, a large corner hall in the Sforza Castle decorated on all four walls and ceiling with a complex bower of interlaced trees and knots of golden rope.
Leonardo also served more generally as an impresario of artistic delights for the entertainment of indolent courtiers. He could turn water into wine, create clever rebuses in the manner of modern emojis, play music on a kind of violin, declaim paradoxical parables and prophecies, devise portable outdoor pavilions, and discourse with complex erudition on why painting was superior to every other kind of artistic pursuit. There are signs of frustration in his notebooks that he was being diverted away from works that would grant him enduring fame.
His burgeoning science found scope to flourish in the court environment, and he undertook campaigns to educate himself in the Aristotelian tradition of book learning. Most visually conspicuous is his anatomy, in which he mingled data from animal dissections with traditional wisdom and with some input from scarce human material. The greatest of his early achievements in anatomy centred on his studies of a human skull in 1489, in which he was concerned at least as much with brain function as bone structure. Another of Leonardo’s major concerns was optics, as an extension of perspective into a series of complex demonstrations of light and shade from varied sources and on bodies of varied shape. His growing fascination with the mathematics of natural phenomena manifests itself in his studies of statics (such as balances) and dynamics (as in the ballistics of weapons). He devoted increasing efforts to the physics of water in motion, which comprised the theoretical dimension to the hydraulic engineering that he extensively discussed and illustrated in his Milanese notebooks. Underpinning these interests was geometry itself, culminating in his illustrations of the regular and semi-regular ‘Platonic’ solids for the treatise On Divine Proportion by his mathematician colleague Luca Pacioli. The strong impression is that Leonardo was never idle, and that he was prized in the court for far more than completing a few paintings. (c)
Q:
The element of reprise at the Milanese court embraces the geometry of volumes and areas; attempts to ‘expedite all this anatomy’; the furthering of plans for a treatise on water (spanning theory and practice); the development of his ideas about the ancient history of the earth; a treatise on bird flight that served to refine his designs for a flying machine; and an intense study of the internal optics of the eye, in the course of which he came to regard seeing as a more ambiguous business than he had previously assumed. (c)
Q:
The king did expect some work from Leonardo. He was rewarded with such wonders as an automated lion that strode forward to open its breast, revealing French fleurs-de-lys against a blue background – apparently signifying peace. (c)
Q:
Sir Anthony Blunt was director of the Courtauld, and was consulted on the majority of academic art history appointments in Britain and the Commonwealth. ...
When he called me to his elegant office in the Robert Adam house in Portman Square then occupied by the Institute, it rapidly became evident that he had filed a workable number of details in his mental reference system without seeming to do so – one of the attributes that made him such an effective intelligence agent and spy during the war. It later transpired that my time at the Institute had coincided with his confession in April 1964 to the security services that he had acted as a Soviet agent – though he was not immediately unmasked in public. ...
Blunt was surreptitiously intimidating, intellectually and personally. (c)
Q:
Possessing a degree in natural sciences with a bit of aspiring art history and having studied some specialized post-graduate courses did not qualify me to cover the wide range of material in the stipulated syllabuses. In the middle of both terms I staged a tactical illness to catch up on basic reading in order to keep my nose just in front of my four eager pupils. It was a condensed apprenticeship. Early the following summer, a note arrived. Anthony Blunt ‘advised me to apply’ for a lectureship at the University of Glasgow, where I was again appointed without an interview. At the age of twenty-four I was in a tenured post, with no obvious reason (beyond the inherent corruption of the system) why I should have been. (c)
Q:
In the note beside the tangled skeins of water in the drawing illustrated above, Leonardo observes that the motion of water is analogous to the curling of hair. The weight of the hair corresponds to the impetus of the water, while both hair and water have a natural tendency to curl in a circular manner. The resulting configuration in both cases is a helix. As I progressively came to see, such underlying laws were central to Leonardo’s quest to understand nature. Leonardo’s expression of underlying order through the eloquence of drawing resonated with the instinct for natural pattern and processes that had drawn me into the natural sciences. I later came to attribute this instinct to what I have called ‘structural intuitions’. (c)
Q:
The effect has also been indirect, in that the Code has given currency to the idea that 500-year-old works of art might contain secret messages, disguised words, concealed images, mystic geometries and esoteric numbers, all waiting to be read by a smart modern-day sleuth. A whole genre of what we might call ‘secretology’ has grown up around Leonardo and the Mona Lisa in particular; there is much speculation about the artist’s allegiance to secret sects and his belief in arcane heresies. The resulting surge of people searching for obscure codes to which they can apply their ingenuity has led to more problems for me than the immediate existence of the book or film. (c)
Q:
Leonardo’s arithmetic was sometimes rather wobbly, but he could count to seven, or even to ten. (c)
Q:
Signs of Leonardo’s magic asserted themselves: the soft skin over the bony joints of the fingers of Christ’s right hand, implying but not describing anatomical structure; the illuminated tips of the fingers of his left hand; the glistening filaments of vortex hair, above all on the right as we look at the picture; the teasing ambiguity of his facial features, the gaze assertively direct but removed from explicitness; the intricately secure geometry of the angular interlace in the neckline and cross-bands of his costume; the gleaming crystal ellipse on the pendant plaque below his neckline; the fine rivulets of gathered cloth on his chest. Mona Lisa-ish echoes were sounding loudly. (c)
Q:
As God’s son incarnate he had become visible in fleshly form on earth, as in Leonardo’s picture, but he brought with him an aura of ineffability – of something unfathomable to our dull understanding. It is this aura that Leonardo evokes though the elusiveness with which he describes Christ’s features. We seem to see them, but they elude us. As always with Leonardo, form and content are one – and novel. (c)
Q:
The white lead of the final layer of priming was lightly tinted with yellow. Ground particles of glass were found in the various layers – an odd technique, even for Leonardo. Was he aiming to endow the paint with special luminosity? (c)
Q:
Academics are notably adept at missing deadlines, and I was unconvinced that all the authors actually had anything new to say. My rule of thumb is that having two authors to write a book increases by 20 per cent the likelihood of non-delivery on the deadline. By the time five authors are involved, the likelihood has effectively increased to something like 100 per cent. (c)
January 28, 2019
A great fan of Martin Kemp’s writing, I had been waiting for this book to come out for months. At last getting my hands on a copy, I could not put it down. Of course, anything on the subject of Leonardo da Vinci is bound to generate interest. Recently, at an exhibition on the Renaissance Nude at the Getty, I noticed a great buzz happening around a very small codex page in the middle of one of the last gallery rooms --and knew it could only have been a Leonardo. Who else has that kind of power to excite people? And, of course, the art world in general has a fascinating attraction for those on the outside. Filled with its scandals, intrigues and skullduggery, like many people, I love art history detective stories and really enjoy art world memoirs. And this one, by Martin Kemp— is unsurpassed. Written in a highly engaging style that blends reason and good humor, Kemp takes us on a journey with him over fifty years as one of the world’s leading experts on Leonardo da Vinci.
The book focuses on his high profile “cases” to work out attributions, hunt down pictures gone missing, or advise on restorations. Interestingly, coming from a background in hard science, Kemp focuses less on issues of connoisseurship and instead recounts the science and analytical side of his work. These details about what goes into making attributions are fascinating. But it was his descriptions of his emotional reactions to paintings that really were the most moving aspect for me about the book. Speaking personally, I don’t consider myself a die-hard Leonardo fan (though my husband sure is), and yet I had my life’s only strong emotional reaction to a work of art in front of— of all pictures, what is one of the world’s biggest icons-become-cliches-- The Last Supper.
I wrote about my reaction here https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksd... (And I highly recommend Elkins book, Pictures and Tears).
In "Looking at Lisa” (Chapter 3) Kemp speaks of how the picture is usually viewed as if underwater; roped off and behind that thick glass in a frame that is more of a box with a built-in alarm and climate control. This is a very different experience from seeing the copy of Lisa in the Prado, where the alarm is merely a motion sensor and so you can tiptoe very close to this Lisa—who is breathing the same air as you are. Very similar to my own experience in from of the Last Supper, Kemp speaks of the presence of this work of art—describing the “alive” quality about this painting. And I agree completely that this is something one also finds undeniably in Velasquez: this difficult to express radiating quality (what Kemp calls her “astonishing vibrancy”). To capture how he feels when he looks at her up close, he offers the this poem by Dante from Paradiso.
The image of her when she starts to smile
Breaks out of words, the mind cannot contain it,
A miracle too rich and strange to hold…
Being involved in such high profile attributions and sales as Salvator Mundi has led Kemp to deconstruct what goes into the art of making attributions. Like science, paradigms are built by consensus among experts using a wide spectrum of evidence types. Kemp divides these into construction and deconstructive. First and foremost is scientific evidence, which is crucial in telling us what a painting is not. If carbon dating concludes that a walnut panel dates from the 17th century then you know the picture in question is NOT a Leonardo. In addition to carbon dating, there is chemical analysis of pigments, and finger printing; as well as x-rays, infrared and UV spectrographs. This kind of science-based evidence goes far in telling you what a painting is not. For example, look at the hands held up in bless. So expressive, graceful --and more, an x-ray inspection revealed that the painter had a "change of heart" and had altered the position of the thumb-- thereby suggesting that this was no copy.
But then after you figure out what a painting isn't, you still need positive proof to tell you what a picture is. And that is done by trying to piece together the provenance of the picture, backed up by stylistic judgements based on connoisseurship.
Ideally, a potential Leonardo would be already known. How? From primary and secondary records. For example, if Leonardo had mentioned having been working on or having completed a Salvator Mundi in his notebooks, than that would create a Holy Grail scenario for a lost Leonardo. Or, if there is 16th century evidence from royal or aristocratic inventories of such a painting, that would also make a strong case.
The descriptions of Leonardo’s unique style and technique are endlessly fascinating for lovers of master paintings.
Finally, a last thought. In a world which can have its seedy and corruptible side, Martin Kemp’s virtuous stance on the making identifications and advising (he never takes money, nor will even travel to see works other than at his own expense!) was a pleasure to read. I read this book along with The Eye,” by Philippe Costamagna. I loved that book as well and highly recommend—though it isn’t as thrilling or engaging, it is also incredibly interesting in its laser-like focus on the practice of art connoisseurship. One final recommendation is Jonathan Brown's In the Shadow of Velasquez. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
The book focuses on his high profile “cases” to work out attributions, hunt down pictures gone missing, or advise on restorations. Interestingly, coming from a background in hard science, Kemp focuses less on issues of connoisseurship and instead recounts the science and analytical side of his work. These details about what goes into making attributions are fascinating. But it was his descriptions of his emotional reactions to paintings that really were the most moving aspect for me about the book. Speaking personally, I don’t consider myself a die-hard Leonardo fan (though my husband sure is), and yet I had my life’s only strong emotional reaction to a work of art in front of— of all pictures, what is one of the world’s biggest icons-become-cliches-- The Last Supper.
I wrote about my reaction here https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksd... (And I highly recommend Elkins book, Pictures and Tears).
In "Looking at Lisa” (Chapter 3) Kemp speaks of how the picture is usually viewed as if underwater; roped off and behind that thick glass in a frame that is more of a box with a built-in alarm and climate control. This is a very different experience from seeing the copy of Lisa in the Prado, where the alarm is merely a motion sensor and so you can tiptoe very close to this Lisa—who is breathing the same air as you are. Very similar to my own experience in from of the Last Supper, Kemp speaks of the presence of this work of art—describing the “alive” quality about this painting. And I agree completely that this is something one also finds undeniably in Velasquez: this difficult to express radiating quality (what Kemp calls her “astonishing vibrancy”). To capture how he feels when he looks at her up close, he offers the this poem by Dante from Paradiso.
The image of her when she starts to smile
Breaks out of words, the mind cannot contain it,
A miracle too rich and strange to hold…
Being involved in such high profile attributions and sales as Salvator Mundi has led Kemp to deconstruct what goes into the art of making attributions. Like science, paradigms are built by consensus among experts using a wide spectrum of evidence types. Kemp divides these into construction and deconstructive. First and foremost is scientific evidence, which is crucial in telling us what a painting is not. If carbon dating concludes that a walnut panel dates from the 17th century then you know the picture in question is NOT a Leonardo. In addition to carbon dating, there is chemical analysis of pigments, and finger printing; as well as x-rays, infrared and UV spectrographs. This kind of science-based evidence goes far in telling you what a painting is not. For example, look at the hands held up in bless. So expressive, graceful --and more, an x-ray inspection revealed that the painter had a "change of heart" and had altered the position of the thumb-- thereby suggesting that this was no copy.
But then after you figure out what a painting isn't, you still need positive proof to tell you what a picture is. And that is done by trying to piece together the provenance of the picture, backed up by stylistic judgements based on connoisseurship.
Ideally, a potential Leonardo would be already known. How? From primary and secondary records. For example, if Leonardo had mentioned having been working on or having completed a Salvator Mundi in his notebooks, than that would create a Holy Grail scenario for a lost Leonardo. Or, if there is 16th century evidence from royal or aristocratic inventories of such a painting, that would also make a strong case.
The descriptions of Leonardo’s unique style and technique are endlessly fascinating for lovers of master paintings.
Finally, a last thought. In a world which can have its seedy and corruptible side, Martin Kemp’s virtuous stance on the making identifications and advising (he never takes money, nor will even travel to see works other than at his own expense!) was a pleasure to read. I read this book along with The Eye,” by Philippe Costamagna. I loved that book as well and highly recommend—though it isn’t as thrilling or engaging, it is also incredibly interesting in its laser-like focus on the practice of art connoisseurship. One final recommendation is Jonathan Brown's In the Shadow of Velasquez. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
July 24, 2023
Interesting read for art historians and armchair art historians, but I am not sure it would appeal to a broader audience than that. The book was really a sort of personal historiography of Kemp's scholarship on Leonardo, and the spheres of influence he has encountered. I enjoyed the book, especially the sections that explored his interactions with the art world (auctions, private collectors, the process of putting together exhibitions). There was a fair bit of the book dedicated to more technical art history, though some of the images--or lack thereof--weren't always super helpful in bolstering some of Kemp's conjectures. Most of all, I enjoyed Kemp's anecdotes about some of the Big Names in art history, including Anthony Blunt, as I have only read their scholarship. The personages in the book are by far the most interesting aspects.
May 8, 2018
I think this was an odd book. I liked that it was out of my comfort zone, because I'm trying to branch out with what I read. However, I don't think biographies are my things. I chose this book because the artist it's about inspires me in a strange way. I like that his art was so uncommon and weird looking. In a way, I did enjoy aspects of the book. I liked hearing how art affected Leonardo, because it reminded me of how writing affects me. He was a very curious person and I don't necessarily regretf picking this book up.
July 9, 2021
Part memoir, part art history, part biography of Leonardo. I loved this book. It's written with gravitas and sudden flashes of British humour. And I never thought I'd find the descriptions of scientific procedure used in art so interesting.
Also, the last chapters at least about The Da Vinci Codes will be sure to appeal to those who wouldn't read this book for any other reason.
Also, the last chapters at least about The Da Vinci Codes will be sure to appeal to those who wouldn't read this book for any other reason.
May 9, 2022
Restaurar o no ? El mundillo del arte, cómo se monta una exposición, conspiraciones, el código Da Vinci, el uso de la tecnología como parte importante en el estudio de las obras y las notas personales de un estudioso de Leonardo Da Vinci.
Libro interesante y ameno que aporta bastante a los que no nos dediacamos a la historia del arte ni somos expertos en Leonardo.
Libro interesante y ameno que aporta bastante a los que no nos dediacamos a la historia del arte ni somos expertos en Leonardo.
March 15, 2023
Très original. C’est très Kemp, une fascinate expérience d’un expert sur Léonard, mais tourné largement vers lui-même et parfois arrogant envers ses pairs. Le chapitre sur La belle princesse est très peu convaincant mais annonce bien l’extrême du Salvador Mundi. Pas de provenance dans les deux cas.
December 9, 2025
Well worth reading for students of Museum Studies, curatorial practices, or art history in general. Kemp covers his career as a “Leonardo expert” in an engaging style. Looks at the work of Leonardo from a scholarly point of view as juxtaposed with the many theorists claims about the paintings and their supposed hidden messages.
August 24, 2018
Entirely different from my usual repertoire, this book was very interesting in some sections, somewhat dry in others, and brimming with thinly veiled professional snobbery at yet others. I did enjoy gaining a few insights into the art world, too.
August 2, 2018
This book was a Best of the Best for the month of August 2018, as selected by Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet. http://forums.delphiforums.com/stevo1...
December 11, 2020
Martin Kemp, jeden z najwybitniejszych znawców twórczości Leonarda da Vinci, opublikował liczne prace na temat tego twórcy, sztuki renesansu oraz związków między sztuką a nauką. Zdobył wykształcenie w dziedzinie nauk przyrodniczych i historii sztuki na Uniwersytecie w Cambridge i w Instytucie Sztuki Courtaulda. W latach 1993-1998 był profesorem Akademii Brytyjskiej w ramach Wolfson Research Professorships, następnie przez ponad dwadzieścia pięć lat pracował w Szkocji na Uniwersytecie w Glasgow i Uniwersytecie St Andrews. Obecnie jest emerytowanym profesorem historii sztuki Uniwersytetu w Oksfordzie.
Martin Kemp przez pięćdziesiąt lat badał twórczość Leonarda da Vinci. Leonard jest wyjątkowym twórcą, ponieważ nie ma sobie równych wśród innych artystów. Zainteresowanie jego twórczością trwa do dnia dzisiejszego, choć minęło już pięćset lat. Był znany z tego, że niczego nie kończył oprócz Mona Lisy i Ostatniej Wieczerzy. Jego twórczość obejmuje sztukę, naukę i technikę.
Autor książki po pięćdziesięciu latach widział już wszystko. Miał do czynienia z pseudonaukowcami. Nie jeden nauczyciel akademicki podważał jego kompetencje. Zajmuje również swoje stanowisko, na temat fabrykowania nowych teorii da Vinci. Twierdzi, że ma to na celu wzbudzenia zainteresowania. Zazwyczaj takie zabiegi nie mają nic wspólnego z prawdą.
Treść książki jest poprowadzona tematycznie. Prolog zawiera krótką biografię Leonarda da Vinci. Następne siedem rozdziałów jest poświęcone obrazom Mona Lisa i Ostatnia wieczerza, oraz innych obrazów, w których autor brał udział w badaniach. W następujących rozdziałach porusza jak działa biznes, na którym zarabia się na Leonardzie i jego twórczości.
Książkę można podporządkować do powieści jako gatunku literackiego. Autor opisuje przebieg badań naukowych nad sztuką w latach 80. Opisuje jak wyglądał proces konserwacji oraz prawidłowa ocena oryginalności obrazu. Jeżeli ktoś jest zainteresowany stroną techniczną, to na pewno się nie zawiedzie, ponieważ wszystko jest opisane krok po kroku.
Książkę czyta się szybko. Może być problem ze zrozumieniem treści, ponieważ występują specjalistyczne terminy. Warto zaczerpnąć wiedzy ze stron edukacyjnych. Lektura zawiera ilustracje najważniejszych dzieł Leonarda da Vinci.
Mój Leonardo... przypadła do mojego gustu czytelniczego, ponieważ autor zabiera czytelnika w podróż po dziełkach Leonarda da Vinci. Dowiedziałam się wielu ciekawych informacji, o których nie miałam pojęcia. Było to też spowodowane tym, że nie interesowałam się wyżej wymienionym artystą. Dla osób, które się interesują sztuką to będzie świetny dodatek do uzupełnienia swojej wiedzy.
Opinia pojawiła się również na blogu: www.wksiazkizaklete.wordpress.com
Martin Kemp przez pięćdziesiąt lat badał twórczość Leonarda da Vinci. Leonard jest wyjątkowym twórcą, ponieważ nie ma sobie równych wśród innych artystów. Zainteresowanie jego twórczością trwa do dnia dzisiejszego, choć minęło już pięćset lat. Był znany z tego, że niczego nie kończył oprócz Mona Lisy i Ostatniej Wieczerzy. Jego twórczość obejmuje sztukę, naukę i technikę.
Autor książki po pięćdziesięciu latach widział już wszystko. Miał do czynienia z pseudonaukowcami. Nie jeden nauczyciel akademicki podważał jego kompetencje. Zajmuje również swoje stanowisko, na temat fabrykowania nowych teorii da Vinci. Twierdzi, że ma to na celu wzbudzenia zainteresowania. Zazwyczaj takie zabiegi nie mają nic wspólnego z prawdą.
Treść książki jest poprowadzona tematycznie. Prolog zawiera krótką biografię Leonarda da Vinci. Następne siedem rozdziałów jest poświęcone obrazom Mona Lisa i Ostatnia wieczerza, oraz innych obrazów, w których autor brał udział w badaniach. W następujących rozdziałach porusza jak działa biznes, na którym zarabia się na Leonardzie i jego twórczości.
Książkę można podporządkować do powieści jako gatunku literackiego. Autor opisuje przebieg badań naukowych nad sztuką w latach 80. Opisuje jak wyglądał proces konserwacji oraz prawidłowa ocena oryginalności obrazu. Jeżeli ktoś jest zainteresowany stroną techniczną, to na pewno się nie zawiedzie, ponieważ wszystko jest opisane krok po kroku.
Książkę czyta się szybko. Może być problem ze zrozumieniem treści, ponieważ występują specjalistyczne terminy. Warto zaczerpnąć wiedzy ze stron edukacyjnych. Lektura zawiera ilustracje najważniejszych dzieł Leonarda da Vinci.
Mój Leonardo... przypadła do mojego gustu czytelniczego, ponieważ autor zabiera czytelnika w podróż po dziełkach Leonarda da Vinci. Dowiedziałam się wielu ciekawych informacji, o których nie miałam pojęcia. Było to też spowodowane tym, że nie interesowałam się wyżej wymienionym artystą. Dla osób, które się interesują sztuką to będzie świetny dodatek do uzupełnienia swojej wiedzy.
Opinia pojawiła się również na blogu: www.wksiazkizaklete.wordpress.com
July 28, 2024
Interesante repaso a la obra de Leonardo por una de las personas que mas y mejor lo ha estudiado. Con un enfoque divulgativo, profundiza tambien en multiples aspectos de las pinturas de Leonardo que son ya más que icónicas: La Ultima Cena, Salvador Mundi, Mona Lisa, la Virgen de las Rocas, etc. Tambien saca tiempo para hablar de aspectos técnicos mas alla del propio arte (como las técnicas de reflectografia de infrarrojos, tecnicas basadas en radiacion ultravioleta, etc.).
Muy ameno y riguroso. Una joya.
Muy ameno y riguroso. Una joya.
April 30, 2019
Wonderful exploration of the genius of Leonardo from world expert Martin Kemp. As this year marks the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death there's no better time to pick it up and read it!
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