User:Aza24/Lost works by Leonardo da Vinci

Lost works
Works by Leonardo da Vinci
Peter Paul Rubens's copy of Leonardo's lost The Battle of Anghiari

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Early works

Adam and Eve

Francesco di Giorgio Martini's 15th century Adam and Eve drawing is thought to have been inspired by Leonardo's now lost watercolor cartoon on the same subject.

Adam and Eve was an watercolor cartoon (a Modello) of the biblical characters Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden for an unexecuted tapestry. The work is dated c. mid 1460s – early 1470s while Leonardo was in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio. Accounts of the work are known only from Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (The Lives) and by a brief mention from the anonymous 16th-century biographer, known as Anonimo Gaddiano. It was perhaps his first independent commission; Vasari says it was a preparatory drawing for the design of a golden silk tapestry above a door, commissioned by the King of Portugal. Around this time Leonardo began studying animal anatomy – often dissecting rabbits, pigs and horses. This is exemplified by Vasari's emphasis on the work's depictions of nature, giving information on Leonardo's scarcely extant style and technique while he was an apprentice. Vasari describes the work as:

"...a meadow in chiaroscuro, the highlights being in white lead, displaying an immense variety of vegetation and numerous animals, respecting which it may be truly said, that for careful execution and fidelity to nature, they are such that there is no genius in the world, however God-like, which could produce similar objects with equal truth. In the fig-tree for example, the foreshortening of the leaves, and the disposition of the branches are executed with so much care that one finds it difficult to conceive how any man could have so much patience; there is a palm tree, in which the roundness of the fan-like leaves is exhibited to such admirable perfection and with so much art, that nothing short of the genius and patience of Leonardo could have affected it"

According to Vasari, the tapestry was never created and the cartoon remained in Florence, where it was given to Leonardo's uncle. Art historian Ludwig Goldscheider suggested Vasari is referring to Leonardo's step-uncle Alessandro Amadori, the Canon of Fiesole, who could have received the work when Leonardo left for Milan in 1482. Vasari says that the uncle eventually gave it to Ottaviano de' Medici, where it must have still been in Vasari's lifetime (1511–1574). Gaddiano's account differs, he simply says that Leonardo created a watercolor of Adam and Eve that was in the house of Ottaviano at the time. If not passed through Leonardo's uncle, Ottaviano may have received it from the heir to Verrocchio's studio, Lorenzo di Credi, whom he was a considerable patron for.

The cartoon is now lost, without any trace other than the testimonies of Vasari and Gaddiano. Art historian William Suida has postulated that various 16th-century Adam and Eve depictions – such as Raphael's painting on the Fall of man in the Raphael Rooms – were imitations of Leonardo's cartoon. Art historian David Alan Brown notes that these "lack [the cartoon's] key element – the plethora of carefully rendered natural forms". Brown and art historian Pietro Marani identify Francesco di Giorgio Martini's "Verrocchiesque" drawing on the same subject, kept at Christ Church Picture Gallery, as more likely to have been inspired by Leonardo's watercolor.

Dragon shield

Studies of dragons by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1478–1480)

Dragon Shield, or simply Dragon was a painted shield depicting a dragon, dated c. 1472. The work is only known from Vasari's account in The Lives. According to Vasari, a farmworker brought a shield that he had made to his employer Ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo's father, and asked him to have it painted in Florence. Ser Piero brought the shield to young Leonardo and without telling him its purpose, asked him to paint it. Leonardo smoothed out the shield, applied gypsum and collected a wide range of small animals and insects to inspire him for a design that was supposedly meant to strike fear into an enemy during conflict, like The Head of Medusa. Later in his life he would write in a notebook that the best way to create an imaginary animal is to combine different features from real animals. He describes the end result as a:

"...hideous and appalling monster, breathing poison and flames, and surrounded by an atmosphere of fire; this he caused to issue from a dark and rifted rock, with poison reeking from the cavernous throat, flames darting from the eyes, and vapours rising from the nostrils in such sort that the result was indeed a most fearful and monstrous creature."

Vasari says that Ser Piero was very impressed by his son's work so he bought another shield with an arrow through a heart to give to the farmworker instead. The work was then supposedly sold to merchants for 100 ducats, and later to the Duke of Milan, for 300 ducats. It has been speculated that this work described by Vasari is actually the Head of Medusa, but Vasari goes on to describe the Head of Medusa as a separate work and compares it to the Dragon shield. There are no traces of the Dragon Shield in Leonardo's surviving sketches.

The Head of Medusa

Medusa's Head, a Flemish painter, ca. 1600, Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The work was once thought to be Leonardo's lost The Head of Medusa

The Head of Medusa or simply Medusa is an unfinished oil on panel depicting the gorgon from Greek mythology, Medusa. The work is only known from mentions by Vasari and Anonimo Gaddiano. Both writers highlight the work's tangled and impressive serpentine hair and state that the work belonged to the Duke Cosimo. In 1782 Italian art historian Luigi Lanzi connected Vasari's passage on the The Head of Medusa to a painting in the Uffizi Gallery that was thought to have been hung at the Palazzo della Signoria in the 1540s. The attribution was received excitedly by other Italian scholars and was in favor until the mid 1800s, where criticism by various German, French and English scholars disproved the authenticity. The painting at the Uffizi is now attributed to a Flemish painter, with the whereabouts of The Head of Medusa remaining unknown.

Middle works

San Bernardo Altarpiece

Cartoon

"The note on one of his drawings, the Studies of Heads and Machines (1478; Florence, Uffizi), saying that he ‘began two Virgin Marys’, probably refers to small panels rather than the altarpiece" from Kemp Grove

Late works

Nude Mona Lisa

"He probably made an anamorphic painting for Francis I depicting a fight between a dragon and a lion in such a way that it made sense only when viewed from a shallow angle" Kemp 2003

Sources

Early sources

• Vasari, Giorgio (1923) [1550]. Foster, Jonathan; Blashfield, Edwin Howland; Hopkins, Albert Allis (eds.). Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Vol. 2. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan.
• Gaddiano, Anonimo (2002) [16th Century]. "Leonardo da Vinci by Anonimo Gaddiano". Leonardo on Art and the Artist. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0486421667.

Secondary Sources

Books

• Brown, David Alan (1998). Leonardo Da Vinci: Origins of a Genius. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07246-4.
• Clark, Kenneth (1961). Leonardo da Vinci. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books. OCLC 187223.
• Isaacson, Walter (2017). Leonardo da Vinci (1st ed.). New York City, New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-3915-4.
• Marani, Pietro C. (2003) [2000]. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings (1st ed.). New York City, New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0810935815.
• Palmer, Allison Lee (2018). Leonardo da Vinci: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works (Significant Figures in World History). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1538119778.
• Turner, Almon Richard (1994). Inventing Leonardo. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520089389.

External links

• www.example.com