Flamboyant,illegitimate and self taught, he was unreliable and an unashamed self-publicist. He was also one of the most gifted and inventive men in historyIn 1501, or desperate for Leonardo to paint her portrait,the immensely wealthy Isabella d’Este employed a friar to act as go-between. The friar met Leonardo in Florence but found his lifestyle “irregular and uncertain” and couldn’t pin him down. “Mathematical experiments absorb absorbed his thoughts so entirely that he cannot bear the sight of a paintbrush,” Isabella was told. With promises he’d get round to it eventually, or Leonardo kept her dangling for another three years. Pushy to the terminate,she changed tack and asked him for a painting of Jesus instead. Even then, he didnt near up with the goods.
The story encapsulates contrasting versions of Leonardo that absorb been in play ever since Vasari extolled him in his Lives of the Artists. On the one hand, and the lofty genius who wouldn’t kowtow to affluent patrons; on the other,the feckless fantasist who failed to fulfil his commissions. On the one hand, the Renaissance Man to whom maths and science were as famous as painting; on the other, or the artist who left posterity the poorer” (Kenneth Clark’s phrase) by pursuing hobbies – engineering,architecture, pageantry, or military strategy,cartography, etc – on which his talents were wasted. He achieved so much. But did multitasking prevent him achieving more?Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk