DOI chapter:
Chapter III: Earliest Works
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62110#0083
EARLIEST WORKS
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awkward arrangement of the Virgin’s draperies would be
impossible to an artist with so keen a feeling for the
beauty of line as Leonardo. The fall of the heavy folds
between the knees is repeated a second time between her
leg and the arm of the chair, giving a most unpleasant
effect. These defects of composition are certainly strange
in Verrocchio with his scientific training, and can be
accounted for only by want of experience at this date in
grouping, all his earlier works with the exception of the
Baptism and the Careggi Relief being single figures.
It is incredible that Leonardo, the perfection of whose
composition is one of his greatest qualities, who in the
boyish painting of the predella has instinctively avoided
all these faults, should have committed such errors in what
is obviously a more mature work.
The superficial resemblance of the flowers and grasses in
the foreground to those of Leonardo in colour and general
form is adduced as a proof that the painting is by him,
but by the side of the foliage of the “ Vierge aux Rochers ”
of the Louvre and of the pen studies of plants and grasses
in the Windsor Collection, they are tame and lifeless.
Leonardo’s treatment of grasses and leaves is unique, and
reveals more than any other of his special forms his strange
fantastic imagination. As at times he suggests the beast
in his human figures, f so his plants have the sinuous coils
bears the strongest resemblance in ornamental detail to his Sarco-
phagus of the Medici in S. Lorenzo.
f For example, the half kneeling Angel of the “ Vierge aux Rochers”
in the Louvre, whose crouching attitude and raised arm suggest some
sphynx-like creature, half lion, half woman—a suggestion his assistant
has not dared to imitate in the replica of the National Gallery. Again,
the portrait of the Lady with the Ermine in the Collection of Prince
Czartoryski, Cracow, whose face reproduces in contour and expression
that of the animal in her arms.
53
awkward arrangement of the Virgin’s draperies would be
impossible to an artist with so keen a feeling for the
beauty of line as Leonardo. The fall of the heavy folds
between the knees is repeated a second time between her
leg and the arm of the chair, giving a most unpleasant
effect. These defects of composition are certainly strange
in Verrocchio with his scientific training, and can be
accounted for only by want of experience at this date in
grouping, all his earlier works with the exception of the
Baptism and the Careggi Relief being single figures.
It is incredible that Leonardo, the perfection of whose
composition is one of his greatest qualities, who in the
boyish painting of the predella has instinctively avoided
all these faults, should have committed such errors in what
is obviously a more mature work.
The superficial resemblance of the flowers and grasses in
the foreground to those of Leonardo in colour and general
form is adduced as a proof that the painting is by him,
but by the side of the foliage of the “ Vierge aux Rochers ”
of the Louvre and of the pen studies of plants and grasses
in the Windsor Collection, they are tame and lifeless.
Leonardo’s treatment of grasses and leaves is unique, and
reveals more than any other of his special forms his strange
fantastic imagination. As at times he suggests the beast
in his human figures, f so his plants have the sinuous coils
bears the strongest resemblance in ornamental detail to his Sarco-
phagus of the Medici in S. Lorenzo.
f For example, the half kneeling Angel of the “ Vierge aux Rochers”
in the Louvre, whose crouching attitude and raised arm suggest some
sphynx-like creature, half lion, half woman—a suggestion his assistant
has not dared to imitate in the replica of the National Gallery. Again,
the portrait of the Lady with the Ermine in the Collection of Prince
Czartoryski, Cracow, whose face reproduces in contour and expression
that of the animal in her arms.