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The Aim of the Exhibition and its Catalogue
"Painting
cannot be taught to those whom nature grants it not": this
thesis of Leonardo’s recalls the old saying: "You can teach
painting but not art".
If art is really so difficult to teach, it must be just as difficult
to understand and appreciate.
Only a genius, therefore, could
undertake such an arduous task and no one more than Leonardo da
Vinci possessed all the necessary qualities to do so. In addition to
being a supreme painter – three of his works rank among the ten most
famous paintings in the world: the Last Supper, the Virgin of the
Rocks and the Mona Lisa – he considered himself first and foremost a
scientist and spent most of his life not painting but observing,
studying and projecting. In his thirties, whilst busying himself
with a great variety of activities in Milan, he became convinced of
the need to collect his notes together in a book.
Leonardo’s intention to write a
treatise on painting was mentioned in many of his notes. This book
never saw the light of day, however, also because of a fundamental
trait of the artist thus described by Vasari:
"Leonardo began many
things and never finished one of them".
His
field of interests was too vast to allow him to concentrate on a
single work.
Examples
of this peculiarity of his are his only important sculpture – Duke
Francesco Sforza’s equestrian statue – planned by Leonardo in a
myriad of studies and sketches but never executed, and by a number
of great paintings left unfinished or completed by others.
This same
impatience also prevented Leonardo from gathering and ordering all
his thoughts into a book. Unfortunately Leonardo jotted down all his
thoughts on miscellaneous sheets, concentrating them in very few
words written in his not always comprehensible code and in which
each subject was developed or dealt with repeatedly. |
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Towards the end of
his life, in Paris, Leonardo realized it was impossible for him to
collect and order thousands of sheets full of notes and sketches
into a book and he gave them all to his friend and pupil Melzi.
Since then many attempts have been made by scholars to select the
single notes, number them and illustrate them, if possible, with
drawings of the Master, piecing them together into a book, the "Treatise
on Painting". This book, which should be a "best-seller", is,
instead, little read and consulted because of its scant readability.
The aim of the Matthaes Foundation is to make the "Treatise" more
accessible, committing itself to using only the words of the
original texts, without comments or changes to the Master’s thoughts,
limiting itself to rearranging the subjects, shortening overlong
texts, avoiding the many repetitions and illustrating the salient
concepts.
The book thus put together, which is
also the catalogue of the exhibition, does not aim to be an extract
of the "Treatise" but a selection of those thoughts of Leonardo’s
which permit the beholder of a painting or a sculpture to observe
the work with the insight that only a "true master" can give. This
would already be a great and important step towards appreciating
works of art.
But appreciating
and understanding art as an intellectual and spiritual concept?
Perhaps Leonardo was right.
The
choice of objects exhibited
A
great many drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are known to us and the
exhibition makes extensive use of them. His production of paintings
was limited however, numbering about 15 in all, and no important
sculpture of his is known. It is thus impossible to have one of his
works to put on exhibit here.
Leonardo
formulated his thoughts in the Treatise without making direct
references to styles, cultures or historical/artistic eras, thus
permitting the choice of art objects as close as possible to the
canons of classical art dominant at his time. The numbering of the
subjects is based on that used in the Italian edition published by
Neri Pozza. |
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