Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings
Pietro Marani
Abrams (2019)
Pietro Marani’s book on Leonardo’s paintings is distinct in its emphasis on ancient Greco-Roman influences, particularly those from his 1501 trip to Rome, where he visited Hadrian's villa at Tivoli.
Marani detects Leonardo’s new classicism in everything from the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, the unfinished Battle of Anghiari and the lost Leda and the Swan, to his Deluge studies and designs for a royal place and a mountain for a stage set.
“[W]e may posit that one of the reasons for his trip [to Rome] was a growing desire to study the wealth of ancient marbles to be found there.”
Otherwise, Marani extensively examines painting attributions, and touches on Leonardo's innovative fusion of science and painting. In Madonna of the Carnation, distant mountains are demonstrated with “knowledgeable use of color and atmospheric perspective.” (p. 37) The Last Supper reflects his optical and acoustical studies through the explosive interchange between Christ and the Apostles, while Mona Lisa represents a “universal model in which the painter has poured all of his acquired knowledge, all his ‘science.’” (p. 192)
Intriguingly, Marani asserts that post-1500 Leonardo lost confidence in scientific certainty, feeling his diverse studies “had led him too far from the true end of art.” (p. 308-309) His embrace of classicism, with its "idealized notions of beauty superior to objective reality," revealed that art should transcend nature, marking a philosophical shift in his artistic approach. (p. 322)