Renaissance man: Leonardo’s personal life

Personal life

Within Leonardo’s lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his “outstanding physical beauty”, “infinite grace”, “great strength and generosity”, “regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind” as described by Vasari, as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect is his respect for life evidenced by his vegetarianism and his habit, described by Vasari, of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.

Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned either in their fields or for their historical significance. They included the mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s, as well as Franchinus Gaffurius and Isabella d’Este. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Isabella d’Este. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through Mantua, and which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait now lost.

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud.

Leonardo’s most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi, describing Leonardo’s feelings for him as both loving and intensely passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy, and acquitted. Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his painting techniques, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of erotic art painting techniques.

Raphael Renaissance: Sistine Madonna

Sistine Madonna

Sistine Madonna, also called The Madonna di San Sisto, is an oil painting by the Italian artist Raphael. Finished shortly before his death, ca. 1513–1514, as a commissioned altarpiece, it was the last of the painter’s Madonna’s and the last painting techniques he completed with his own hands. Relocated to Dresden from 1754, the well-known painting has been particularly influential in Germany. After World War II, it was relocated to Moscow for a decade before it was returned to Germany. There, it resides as one of the central pieces in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Composition

In the painting, the Madonna, holding the Christ Child and flanked by Saint Sixtus and Saint Barbara, stands on clouds before dozens of obscured cherubs, while two distinctive winged cherubs rest on their elbows beneath her.

American travel guide Rick Steves suggests that the expression on Mary’s face stands in marked contrast to the usual in that this Mary is worried, reflecting her original placement besides a painting of the Crucifixion.

History

Commissioned by the Benedictine monks of the Monastery of San Sisto in Piacenza, Raphael painted the piece as their altarpiece. Finished shortly before his death, ca. 1513–1514, it was the last of the painter’s Madonnas and the last painting he completed with his own hands. It was their requirement that the image contain both Saint Sixtus and Saint Barbara. Legend has it that when Antonio da Correggio first laid eyes on the piece, he was inspired to cry, “And I also, I am a painter!”

The painting moves to Germany

In 1754, Augustus III of Poland purchased the painting for 110,000 – 120,000 francs, whereupon it was relocated to Dresden and achieved new prominence. In 2001′s The Invisible Masterpiece, Hans Belting and Helen Atkins describe the influence the painting has had in Germany:

Like no other work of art, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in Dresden has fired the Germans’ imagination, uniting or dividing them in the debate about art and religion…. Over and again, this art painting techniques has been hailed as ‘supreme among the world’s paintings’ and accorded the epithet ‘divine’…

If the stories are correct, the painting achieved its prominence immediately, as it’s said that Augustus moved his throne in order to better display it. The Sistine Madonna was notably celebrated by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in his popular and influential Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), positioning the painting firmly in the public view and in the center of a debate about the relative prominence of its Classical and Christian elements. Alternately portraying Raphael as a “devout Christian” and a “‘divine’ Pagan” (with his distinctly un-Protestant Mary who could have as easily been Juno), the Germans implicitly tied the image into a legend of their own, “Raphael’s Dream.” Arising in the last decades of the 1700s, the legend—which made its way into a number of stories and even a play—presents Raphael as receiving a heavenly vision that enabled him to present his divine Madonna. The legend itself inspired considerable passion in the painting’s audiences, some of whom (including one of Freud’s patients) were transported to a state of religious ecstasy by the sight of it, and created of the painting an unlikely icon of romanticism. The picture influenced Goethe, Wagner and Nietzsche. In 1855, the “Neues Königliches Museum” (New Royal Museum) opened in a building designed by Gottfried Semper, and the Sistine Madonna was given a room of its own.

Hitler sketches

Drawings believed to be those that Adolf Hitler submitted in a failed attempt to gain entry in to the Vienna Academy of Art are to be auctioned.

Sketches taken from the portfolio submitted by a young Adolf Hitler to the Vienna academy of Art Photo: BNPS
Along with a distinguished emeritus dean of art has studied them and declared today they'd be considered only around “moderate GCSE standard.”
Some have speculated that Hitler’s rejection from Art College helped shape his character in the future.
He thought that it absolutely was a Jewish professor who had rejected his application to review in the academy.

The whole shebang includes nudes, human figures, various objects and landscapes including buildings.
Nearly all are dated 1908 - the season he was rejected from the academy for your second time and had not been even able to sit test - and several are dated annually later that were put into his portfolio.
Hitler gone after Vienna like a son in 1905 and lived a bohemian life, making small quantities of money by selling pictures he copied from postcards.
At some point he ended up in the hostel for the homeless and later he claimed in Vienna where the fires of his anti-Semitism were ignited.
Michael Liversidge, Emeritus Dean of Arts at Bristol University, where he has taught art history since 1970 and was head of department for 21 years, has studied the images.

He was quoted saying: “Of course, remembering the Hitler diaries which ended up being turkeys, one has to become careful though these do look authentic and presumably happen to be tested concerning their provenance.
“They look quite usual for an aspiring student looking to enter into art instructional school - tentative and never very certain about his perspective when he’s using pencil and pen, making basic errors by permitting the very best and also the bottom of your candlestick wrong in relation to one another etc.
“And he doesn’t yet have much in the way of technical skill, but it’s not so bad that particular can’t imagine him learning - especially when he’s bolder with the charcoal or black chalk.

“But there’s no latent genius here, and never much beyond a moderate GCSE. Probably in the event the artist was in school today you wouldn’t encourage him to keep the niche up in a Level.

“So if they are a part of a portfolio submitted having an application to study at a major European art academy, the selectors were to reject him - they simply don’t suggest he was more than pretty marginal and mediocre to get a potential art school entrant then or now.
“If they are what he submitted he definitely wouldn’t happen to be worth interviewing for any place.
“Now, of course, they've got a very different historical interest for all of us, but sadly that isn’t one that has almost anything to do with art.”
Richard Westwood-Brookes, who's selling the archive, said: “We know Hitler was twice refused from the Vienna Academy of Art.
“The second in time 1908 he wasn’t even invited to adopt quality. These works constitute an assortment which he might have submitted.
“They are of pictures that a student would produce to exhibit a variety of painting techniques.
“Of course it's possible that Hitler’s rejection from your Vienna Academy of Art was something that helped shape his character and turn him in to the monster he became.
“It’s the first time the pictures have come to light and will be seen by the general public.
“The vendor is definitely an artist based on the continent and contains had them for many, several years.”
The 12 pictures are expected to sell for approximately £6,000 each.

For Artists: Keep Records

The finish stages of anyone’s life will tend to be somewhat chaotic. Ailments consume one’s thoughts, strength wanes, memory fades, and also the ability to look after ordinary activities, albeit work or simply shopping for food, decline. Those with effort is likely to retire - the company will go on - and devote most of their lives to a less stressful existence. In 1996, multimedia sculptor Nam June Paik (1932-2006) a break down stroke that largely curtailed his ability to create new installations, but his career was far from over. Exhibitions of his work were being planned, new pieces were still being fabricated and existing works stayed set up for sale at galleries. What’s more, a series of sculptures purportedly by Paik, but which the artist denied were his, were placed available, leading to two lawsuits against Paik, which his lawyers chose to settle, because Paik wasn't deemed mentally competent to testify at trial. “You are able to see this as people using a senile artist,” said Paik’s nephew and estate executor, Ken Hakuta. “He was sick.”
The lawsuits were eventually resolved out of court. Had Paik maintained a documentary record for all his work - “So-and-So Gallery or studio assistant is authorized to make this-many pieces, to become titled this, every part and sold for these prices,” signed and initialed by everyone concerned - the confusion might have been resolved more quickly and with less expense. Good recordkeeping, unfortunately, isn't one of the characteristics of highly successful artists. Diminished thinking processes, however, may prove catastrophic for an artist whose business is run completely out of his or her head. “Just getting old is hard,” said Dr. John Zeisel, director of the Woburn, Massachusetts-based organization Artists for Alzheimer’s. “Bills don’t receive money; things don’t get set aside. Most creative types have things available anyway and, after they develop dementia, it might be much harder to organize.”

On the list of issues that may occur are:

• Artworks with various art painting techniques which have been loaned to some gallery, collector or museum and are forgotten. The grateful recipients may construe the loans as gifts, sometimes selling the whole shebang.
• Artworks consigned to some gallery and forgotten. Galleries, too, sometimes forget to pay for artists.
• Images which can be licensed for commercial use, also forgotten. “Postmortem royalties, with few exceptions, often taper off,” said Elliot Hoffman, an attorney having an arts practice in New york, “but sometimes royalty payers forget to pay for the artist or perhaps the artist’s estate or heirs. Sometimes, they only stop paying and wait to see if anyone complains.”
• Elements mixed up in process of making a multiples edition, for example mock-ups, proofs, maquets, molds or drawings, are overlooked by the artist but are subsequently used or sold from the publisher, fabricator or foundry.
• Artworks with impressive painting colors that are not documented with photographs or written information (title, size, year, medium), which can pose later problems of attribution. Artists are generally regarded as the very best judges that belongs to them work (however, there are instances where some happen to be under truthful, denying early pieces they now dislike or, regarding Giorgio di Chirico, intentionally misdating works) but, if the artist suffers loss of memory (as in the truth of Nam June Paik) or dies, the situation of attribution is magnified. Determining whenever a work was made by whom gets a more drawn-out and expensive process.
“Artists, by definition, aren't business-minded,” Hoffman said, which is neither true nor a definition, but there have been numerous instances of artists neglecting to maintain good records on the artwork, loans, licenses and consignments, resulting in headaches and lawsuits during an artist’s lifetime and beyond.
If artists kept better records on their own work and careers, there can be less requirement for lawsuits, authentication committees - art fakes hardly will be profitable - and catalogue raisonnés. Toward that goal, the Joan Mitchell Foundation (155 Avenue with the Americas, New York, NY 10013, 212-524-0100, www.joanmitchellfoundation.org) has built a grant program enabling artists to document their work. The foundation will underwrite this method by hiring an archivist and investing in a computer (if need be) and the creation of a graphic and text database rather than providing money for an artist directly. “If you merely give artists money, they could not spend it on archives,” said Carolyn Somers, executive director of the foundation. “While they're alive, artists can do their particular catalogue raisonné.”

Elegant Art Jokes: FUSELI’S ARRIVAL IN LONDON.

Fuseli found its way to the administrative centre with the British Empire early one morning, ahead of the individuals were stirring. “When I stood working in London,” said he, “and considered that I did not know one soul within this entire vast metropolis, I became suddenly impressed having a sense of forlornness, and burst in to a flood of tears. An incident restored me. I'd written a long letter to my dad, giving him a merchant account of my voyage, and expressing my filial affection-now not weakened by distance-and using this letter in my hand, I inquired of your rude fellow whom I met, the best way to the Post Office. My foreign accent provoked him to laughter, so when I stood cursing him in good Shakespearian English, a gentleman kindly directed me towards the object of my inquiry.”

Cherubs

A prominent element inside painting techniques in addition to its painting colors, the winged angels beneath Mary are famous themselves. As soon as 1913 Gustav Kobbédeclared that “no cherub or band of cherubs is so famous since the two that reply on the altar top indicated in the very bottom of the picture.”Heavily marketed, they've been featured in stamps, postcards, t-shirts, wrapping paper, as well as condom wrappers. These cherubs have inspired legends of their very own. According to a 1912 article in Fra Magazine, when Raphael was painting the Madonna the kids of his model would come in to watch. Struck by their posture because they did, the story goes; he added them to the painting the same manner he saw them. Another story, recounted in 1912's St. Nicholas Magazine, says that Raphael rather was inspired by two children he encountered about the street when he saw them “looking wistfully into the window of a baker’s shop.”