The da Vinci Legacy. Jean-Pierre Isbouts

      Leonardo da Vinci, John the Baptist, ca. 1513–1516; and the Mona Lisa (Louvre version), ca. 1507–1515

      If there is one constant in Leonardo’s career as a painter, it is the theme of the Madonna. Of the eighteen paintings generally believed to be Leonardo autographs, ten are depictions of the Virgin Mary. Nor are they mere imitations of the standard Madonna genre. From the very beginning, starting with The Annunciation of 1475, Leonardo’s key focus was on developing a more human, a more accessible Mary, free from the stereotypical artistic conventions of the early Renaissance. The halo that still adorns the Mary in The Annunciation, so similar to the style of Leonardo’s teacher Verrocchio, was abandoned in the Madonna of the Carnation painted three years later. From that point on, Leonardo steadily moved away from the stilted motifs of medieval times, which placed Mary with her child Jesus on a throne as Queen regnant. He chose instead to focus on the tender interplay between a young mother and her newborn child. In the Benois Madonna, Mary’s stern expression relaxes and breaks into a smile as she plays with the child on her lap. By 1490, in the Madonna Litta, she lovingly holds the babe in her arms while nursing him at her breast. This growing intimacy between Mary and her son culminates in the Saint Anne, which is perhaps Leonardo’s most ambitious examination of close maternal bonds, set against the looming future of Jesus’s Passion.

      So how does the Mona Lisa fit into this? Is the sitter of the Louvre Mona Lisa somehow a reflection of the Mary motif? In 2006, a group of researchers studied the garment the lady wears, using high-resolution imagery provided by the Louvre. They discovered evidence of a “fine, gauzy veil” that extended around the woman’s neck and shoulders, which had been all but obliterated by successive layers of varnish and dirt. In the Prado copy of the Mona Lisa, possibly painted by Salaì, this fabric is more clearly visible, the white gauze clearly standing out against the red sleeve of her left arm. Such a transparent veil, called a guarnello, was made of white silk or linen, and worn by Italian women to signal that they were expecting. It was then used to protect a woman’s modesty when she found herself compelled to nurse her baby in the company of others. Thus, the guarnello also became the attribute of the Virgin Mary, particularly in Madonna portraits that depict her as a young mother with her newborn.

      The idea of the Virgin Mary as not only the mother of Christ, but also the eternal mother of humankind, is perhaps best expressed in Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, painted in Milan in 1483. Some authors have speculated that the grotto behind her is a symbol of the maternal womb, which through the narrow passage offers eternal life in a heavenly sphere.

      The Mona Lisa may reflect a similar idea: that of the ideal mother, the quintessence of motherhood, informed by the iconographical model of the Virgin Mary. If that is true, then this interpretation would also, at long last, explain the mystery of the smile. Simply put, the lady is smiling for the same reason that Saint Anne and John the Baptist are smiling. Each has been given the secret of the coming Redentore, the Redeemer, which they cherish in their heart.

      The idea that Leonardo, the consummate scientist, would want to seal his career with three devotional paintings on the subject of Christian salvation may strike some of us as far-fetched. No artist so embodies the Renaissance ideal of human discovery and observation, unfettered by Church dogma, as Leonardo da Vinci. Though he certainly confessed his belief that nature has a source in the divine, Leonardo never cared much for theological questions or the practices of the Catholic faith. In the first edition to his book, Vasari wrote that Leonardo “could not be content with any kind of religion at all, considering himself in all things much more a philosopher than a Christian.” Though this passage was omitted in the second edition of Lives of the Artists in 1568, Vasari was probably referring to the Leonardo of Florence and Milan.

      Leonardo’s feelings may have changed after 1507, when the opportunity to conduct dissections, using female cadavers, gave him a privileged glimpse of the wonders of life and birth. As his notebooks attest, Leonardo was astonished at the perfection of creation and the marvels of the female body. Inevitably, his interest in spiritual matters deepened as he approached old age. While in Rome, suffering from some unspecified illness, Leonardo chose to register with the Confraternity of St. John of the Florentines. Working on behalf of confraternities was the type of “good works” that Catholics believed would earn them a place in heaven. Leonardo may have joined this group for any number of reasons—a desire to reach out to his fellow Florentines during his exile at the Vatican, or a concern for proper burial rites should he die unmourned in his papal apartments—but a yearning for the comfort of spiritual engagement may have played a part as well.

      As the shadows deepened in his manor in Cloux, Leonardo experienced an even deeper desire to be reconciled with the Church. He drafted a detailed will, commending “his soul to our Lord, Almighty God, and to the glorious Virgin Mary,” as well as other saints. He also provided detailed specifications for the funeral ceremony and the order of the procession that was to carry his body for burial at the church of St. Florentin in Amboise. In addition, Leonardo requested “three grand masses” to be celebrated by the “deacon and sub-deacon,” while no less than “thirty low masses” were to be performed in the church of St. Gregoire and the church of St. Denis. These services were to be illuminated by prodigious quantities of candles, including “sixty tapers . . . carried by sixty poor men,” with ten pounds of wax in thick tapers to be distributed to the churches involved.7

      Leonardo da Vinci, Views of a Foetus in the Womb, ca. 1510–1513

      This doesn’t sound like the Leonardo from Milan and Florence. These are the words of a man who, in the twilight of his days, is anxious to be reconciled with a faith that he has avoided for much of his life.

      As Leonardo approached death, Vasari tells us, “he earnestly wished to learn the teaching of the Catholic faith, and of the good way and holy Christian religion; and then, with many moans, he confessed and was penitent . . . and [took] devoutly the most holy Sacrament, out of his bed.” This may be Vasari’s attempt to exonerate Leonardo in case any statements in his notebooks would be considered heretical, as some have claimed. In light of the detailed proceedings he ordered for his funeral, it rings true. No man or woman can truly anticipate their emotions on the threshold of life and death. Here, too, Leonardo revealed himself as a man of his time, a Renaissance scholar who, on the verge of meeting his Maker, sought succor in the Church.

      If it is true that the Mona Lisa was inspired by Leonardo’s lifetime preoccupation with the mystery of the Madonna, then it is fitting that Leonardo kept these three paintings—the John the Baptist, the Mona Lisa, and the Saint Anne—with him through the last chapter of his life. All three are meditations on the mysterious ways in which the divine reveals itself. They are the expressions of a mind that, having studied the secrets of nature, must acknowledge that there are limits to what human reason can accomplish.

      2 Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Heath Brown, Young Leonardo. Tomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

      3 See Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci: The Royal Palace at Romorantin.

      4 The écu au soleil was a gold currency established by Louis XI in 1475 to replace the écu à la couronne.

      5 Rather than seventy, Leonardo was actually sixty-five at the time, though with his flowing beard and long hair, he may have looked older to his visitors.

      6 Antonio de Beatis, “Account of the Visit of Cardinal Louis d’Aragon paid to Leonardo, at the Château de Cloux, October 10, 1517,” in Vincent Delieuvin, Saint Anne: Leonardo da Vinci’s Ultimate Masterpiece, p. 199.

      7 “Leonardo’s Will” (1566), in Jean Paul Richter, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, pp. 468–469.

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      The Legacy of Leonardo’s Studio

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