Posted on 02/10/2006 12:15:47 PM PST by lunarbicep
Rome, February 10 - The intense and intriguing face which the world has come to associate with Leonardo Da Vinci is actually not him at all, according to one of Italy's top experts on the Renaissance genius .
The red chalk drawing, which is confidently labelled as a Leonardo self-portrait in hundreds of art books, has just gone on show in Turin's Royal Library along with dozens more of his sketches and designs .
In this exhibition too it is described in the usual way .
But Professor Pietro Marani, who teaches art history at Milan's Polytechnic University and has written several books on the artist, says Leonardo almost certainly looked quite different .
"Studies of the drawing style date it to about 1490, when he would have been 48," said Marani, who spent 15 years overseeing the restoration of Leonardo's famous fresco The Last Supper in Milan .
The face depicted on the yellowed paper is not that of a 48-year-old, he argues, pointing out that contemporaries described Leonardo as a handsome, energetic figure, not an old man .
"I don't question the fact that it was done by him. But I'm convinced the features aren't his. It's more likely to be a study for the head of one of the apostles in The Last Supper," he said .
A quick look at The Last Supper in the Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie reveals in fact that the head of the penultimate apostle on the right, Simon, bears a striking resemblance to the Leonardo 'self-portrait' .
As for the inscription on the back of the drawing, which was written about a century later, Marani argued it was wholly inconclusive. The only legible word was 'Leonardo' while the rest was too smudged to read. The professor noted that doubts have been raised before over the identity of the subject, by eminent figures such as Carlo Pedretti, the world's top Leonardo expert .
Legendary art historian Ernst Gombrich noted that features such as the wide, wrinkled forehead, the aquiline nose and the protruding lower lip often appear in the artist's work .
"The Turin head," wrote Gombrich, an authority on the Renaissance, "could be the personification of one of Leonardo's favourite human types." Prof. Marani noted that the common conviction that the drawing showed Leonardo himself arose soon after it reached public notice in the early 19th century .
In the 1840s, amid the Romantic movement in art and literature, a common view of Leonardo developed in which he was a sort of sorcerer, wielding strange powers thanks to his extraordinary knowledge of nature and science .
The face in the drawing, with its long hair, beard and overhanging forehead, would have seemed to fit the bill perfectly, Marani said. The Romantic view of the painter and multi-faceted genius has led to a long tradition of literature playing up his mystic and mysterious side, including most recently the best-selling thriller The Da Vinci Code.
Opus Dei's fault.
Mohammed?
More like 78.
I suppose this will also put to rest the theory that the Mona Lisa is DaVinci in drag considering they based it on comparisons to this image..
JIHAD!
The puzzler is that during that time it was common for artists to paint portraits of other contemporary artists, yet not a single authenticated portrait of Leonardo?
He must have pi**ed off a lot of people...
Gandolf!.....
Well, people didn't live very long back then- during the middle ages anyone over 40 was an old fogey.
Coupled with the fact that most of 48 years, even back then probably didn't look like this...I don't think it's Leonardo.
I always hide things in the penultimate place people might look.
art ping!
Get with the (sports) program. It's "Turino" now.
SOmeone update the sign on the Shroud, too.
TS
That is all. Move it along now. Nothing else to see here.
In Raphael's 1501 fresco "School of Athens", he uses Leonardo as his model for Plato. The image is very similar to the self-portrait.
I have also read that Leonardo da Vinci did not fear growing old, and preferred to depict his own image as it would in later life come to be, rather than promulgate some idealized notion of enduring youthfulness.
Leonardo planned his own imagery well, and he continues to both baffle and challenge. Listen to him chuckle.
Here's a rare, authentic image:
Art Ping.
Let Sam Cree, Woofie or me know if you want on or off the art ping list.
Yes, but they found his upper limbs in an arms cache in Croatia.
Breaking: Italian art students who worship DaVinci have attacked the FR embassy in response to this outrageous publication of his image!
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