Sforza memorial A horse as large as life

Despite these alterations the Louvre picture has a force and beauty which no copy could achieve. It is, to my eye, one of Leonardo's most wonderful inventions. Critics have objected to the extreme artificiality of the poses, and we are, indeed, very far from the frontal simplicity of early quattrocento treatment of this subject. But nothing else in his work shows more clearly his intentions as an artist. The subject had interested Leonardo for many years, as offering the possibility of contrasted interlocking rhythms enclosed within a single shape. Looking at his earlier treatment of the subject we can see how he gradually made his rhythmical sequences more and more complex. In the Burlington House cartoon he has given a maximum of contraposto to the individual figures of the Virgin and St Anne, but he has kept the whole of the Virgin's figure on one side of the composition and the two heads, although they are looking in opposite directions, are on the same level and give the design a certain formality. Moreover, the two sides of the group are not perfectly thought out. The left-hand side is too characterless and on the right-hand side the intervals between the heads are too regular. In the cartoon of 1501, if we can judge by Brescianino's replica, Leonardo has already succeeded in getting the Virgin's head on a different level and the ascending scale of the heads is more interesting. But he clearly felt that the vertical line of the composition was over-emphatic and in a sketch in the Louvre for his last version of the subject we see how he emphasises the diagonal line by bringing the Virgin's figure right across the composition. Finally, he arrives at the solution which we know in the Paris picture. By considerable distortion he has achieved a perfect balance throughout. The design has for me the exhilarating quality of an elaborate fugue; like a masterpiece of Bach it is inexhaustible. We are always discovering new felicities of movement and harmony, growing more and more intricate, yet always subordinate to the whole. Yet, as with Bach, this is not only an intellectual performance; it is charged with human feeling.

Without the style of Pater this strange blend of mystery and tenderness, human and inhuman, is best left undescribed. But I cannot resist quoting the beautiful, and I believe profound, interpretation which Freud has put on this picture. He imagines that Leonardo must have spent the first years of his life with his mother, the peasant Caterina; but a year after his birth his father married, and when Ser Piero found that his wife was unlikely to have children, he brought his love child to be looked after by her. In a sense, therefore, Leonardo had two mothers. And it is the unconscious memory of these two beloved beings, intertwined as if in a dream, which led him to dwell with such tenderness on the subject of the Virgin and St Anne. Whether or not this is true in fact, it seems to express the mood of the Louvre picture; and explains the apparent nearness in age of mother and daughter, the strange intermingling of their forms, and their remote, mysterious smiles.

On 10 March 1511, Charles d'Amboise died and the government passed into the hands of two Generals, Gaston de Foix and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. We know that Leonardo undertook to execute an equestrian monument for the latter and it is reasonable to place in this period the numerous drawings of horses at Windsor, which on grounds of style and other internal evidence belong to his second residence in Milan. Superficially these drawings resemble the studies for the Sforza memorial, and there is a certain irony in the fact that students have been unable to decide which designs Leonardo made for his first patron and which for the Sforza's bitterest enemy and conqueror. However, I believe it is possible to distinguish between the two series, and as a result the later project can be studied in detail. It gives us a good opportunity of watching Leonardo at work, inventing and rejecting pose after pose in his effort to achieve something compact and full. The general scheme of the monument is known to us from an elaborate estimate in Leonardo's own handwriting, giving precise measurements and descriptions of every part.

To begin with there was to be "a horse as large as life"--that is to say, smaller than the horse for the Sforza memorial--which was to be placed on a high base with a heavy cornice, frieze and architrave. This base was evidently in an elaborate classical style, since we have estimates for eight columns and eight capitals made of metal. Between them were to be festoons in stone and other ornaments. Set in the base was to be the figure of the deceased, carved in stone, and this figure was to rest on a sarcophagus supported by six harpies with candelabra. Round the base there were to be eight figures which from their price in the specification were evidently to be almost life-size. The relative elaboration of the base is shown by the fact that it accounts for about half the cost of the whole monument, although stonework was very much cheaper than bronze. Three drawings at Windsor correspond closely with this description. They show the heavy cornice and architrave, the classical columns and the tomb with its recumbent effigy; even the figures at the corners are roughly indicated and we see that they were thought of as captives tied to columns. Perhaps as a result of his recent work in Milan Leonardo has laid an emphasis on the architectural side of the monument which was completely absent from the Sforza memorial. He has transferred the motive of a recumbent effigy in the base from the wall monuments common in Northern Italy to a free standing group. In so doing he has changed a quattrocento idea into a typically high Renaissance idea. The slaves at the corners recall Michelangelo's projects for the monument to Pope Julius: and some of the studies on a sheet at Windsor are remarkably like that last great monument of high Renaissance sculpture, Alfred Stevens' memorial to the Duke of Wellington. The two main studies show that Leonardo was considering both a prancing horse ( Windsor ) and a walking horse ( Windsor ). Neither satisfied him completely. In the prancing horse the design of the space under the horse's belly still presented difficulties; and the walking horse had to be re-designed with more severely plastic intention. With this end in view Leonardo made another series of studies from nature. This is another example of the immense pains--so often lost to us--which Leonardo took about all his compositions. He had been drawing horses all his life with a matchless power of observation. He had studied their anatomy and worked out a theory of their proportions; and at the age of 55 he begins again to make detailed and conscientious studies from nature. Superficially these drawings are less attractive than those made for the Sforza monument. The crisp silverpoint, with its sensitive surface quality, is replaced by a slow pen-line, defining a sketch in black chalk. But this deliberation has an extraordinary weight; and it was weight--volume-at which Leonardo was aiming. These are not simply exquisite drawings from nature; they are studies for a piece of sculpture.

It is worth digressing to notice the differences in pen technique between these drawings, and the earlier studies of horses. The whole system of shading has changed. Instead of diagonals the lines of shading are directed to indicate depth. Thus, a shadow on a cylinder, instead of being made up of graded diagonals, will consist of lines drawn at right angles to the side of the cylinder, following its curves. This is what is known as shading following the form. It is essentially a formal style, rejecting the data of sight in favour of a convention based on knowledge. That Leonardo, who was so great a master of impressionistic draughtsmansbip, ever adopted this intellectual, classical style is a proof of how much he valued continuity of modelling. This change in the method of shading is one of our best means of dating Leonardo's drawings. There are very few instances of it earlier than 1500, and as time goes on it is used far more openly, with the lines of shading further apart. Ultimately it is accompanied by crosshatching, an unlikely system as long as silverpoint was the dominant technique. On the whole, this style of drawing was little used by Italian painters. It is a northern, in particular a German style, and we cannot reject the possibility that Leonardo was influenced by the prints and drawings of Diirer, which much impressed Italian artists of that date.