|
detail of Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
(1504-1505)
Paris, Louvre |
For Leonardo, art and science were inseparable. Both were based on insightful observation, which, in the case of Leonardo, was augmented by an almost superhuman ability to see detail. In addition to the unity of spirit that all of his pursuits shared, we can see the influence of Leonardo the scientist on Leonardo the artist in countless examples in which scientific observation and research inform his
paintings and drawings. In particular, the scenes of nature portrayed in the backgrounds of many of his most famous paintings echo the scientific themes related to water, the sky and the Earth that concerned him in the Codex Leicester and other notebooks. We can even sense the analogy that the artist saw between the Earth and the living machine of the body. As Sir Kenneth Clark commented:
|
|
"To Leonardo a landscape, like a human being, was part of a vast machine, to be understood part by part and, if possible, in the whole. Rocks were not simply decorative silhouettes. They were part of the earth's bones, with an anatomy of their own, caused by some remote seismic upheaval. Clouds were not random curls of the brush, drawn by some celestial artist, but were the congregation of tiny drops formed from the evaporation of the sea, and soon would pour back their rain into the rivers."
|
Ginevra de' Benci (1474)
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art |
    
|
©
1998 American Museum of Natural History.
|
