Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (Burlington House Cartoon), 1499-1500, charcoal and chalk on paper, 55.7 × 41.2 inches c. 1499-1500 (National Gallery, London)
Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:03] Even in the Renaissance, drawings were sometimes works of art unto themselves. They weren’t always preparatory. We think that’s the case with a large-scale drawing by Leonardo that is usually given the title “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John.” That’s because it’s not perforated.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:25] Right, although it’s unfinished so its status is a little bit unclear. It would have had tiny dots or perforations in it so that that would have allowed Leonardo to trace the outlines of the figures so that you could transfer a drawing to a panel or a wall to paint on.
Dr. Zucker: [0:41] Although using Leonardo’s technique is so different from traditional, much more linear Renaissance painting that that would be more problematic. You could get the basic contours, but his construction of the figure is so often simply using chiaroscuro, using light and shadow.
Dr. Harris: [0:57] Sfumato.
Dr. Zucker: [0:57] Well, that’s because it’s so soft and because it’s so smoky. That idea of just the line that would be traced by the perforations seems sort of absurd.
Dr. Harris: [1:06] He’s much more interested in these very slow gradations from dark to light, and then moving back into dark again so that there’s such a sense of three-dimensionality and monumentality to these figures.
Dr. Zucker: [1:19] Also an integration of the figures into a whole. The figures form a kind of pyramid. They’re so stable, and that’s one of the characteristics of the High Renaissance.
Dr. Harris: [1:27] That stability that suggests a kind of eternity that is appropriate for the subject of these divine figures. Go ahead. Did you want to say something?
Dr. Zucker: [1:34] I just wanted to say that there’s such an interesting contrast because on the one hand, you’ve got this sense of an ideal perfection, this notion of the eternal and the eternally spiritual.
[1:44] On the other hand, there’s such a kind of intimacy between the figures, between Anne and Mary and between John and Christ.
Dr. Harris: [1:50] That’s very human.
Dr. Zucker: [1:51] It’s incredibly human and seems incredibly precious and at so odds with the notion of the eternal.
Dr. Harris: [1:58] Yeah, it’s both. That’s what Leonardo does. He combines the human and the divine. That’s the definition to me of what Leonardo accomplished in the High Renaissance.
Dr. Zucker: [2:09] There are all these marvelous passages here. I just love the way that Anne turns to Mary, who sits on her lap. There’s this kind of rhythm of knees of the two women, down and up and down and up again. It’s almost musical as it moves across.
Dr. Harris: [2:23] It makes me feel that Leonardo was certainly looking at classical sculpture, because that so much looks to me like drapery on ancient Greek and Roman figures.
Dr. Zucker: [2:33] There is a sense of the varied age of the figures, and you get a real sense of Leonardo’s process, especially when you look at the contrast between Anne’s face and her hand, which is so much less finished and still so much more linear.
Dr. Harris: [2:47] Anne is pointing up to communicate this idea that this is part of God’s plan. That Christ and his future sacrifice is part of God’s plan for the salvation of mankind.
Dr. Zucker: [2:58] Look at the way in which Christ’s arm bends around and his fingers point up in blessing John. Actually, it’s continued upward by Anne’s fingers so that’s one continuous movement. In a sense, Christ is literally drawn up in Anne’s gesture.
Dr. Harris: [3:12] Well, and that begins with the line from Mary’s shoulder up through Christ and then pointing up to God.
Dr. Zucker: [3:18] In fact, you could actually begin that movement with Anne’s glance at Mary, continuing down her shoulder, as you said, around her elbow and then up through Christ’s arm.
Dr. Harris: [3:27] Actually, what we did is a good example of what was so important to Leonardo, which is that unification. You can start linking things together the longer you look at the image. We can look at Saint John’s glance up at Christ. Then move up there to Mary’s looking at the Christ Child. Then go back to Anne, who’s looking at Mary.
Dr. Zucker: [3:49] That’s right. It really does create a pathway for our eyes. All of which lead toward heaven, which is, of course, the very point of the drawing.
[3:56] [music]
