The Herald - The Herald Magazine
It turns out good old da Vinci was more like us than you would think
ONE of the perks of this journalism gig is you get to meet your fair share of topnotch celebrities. I interviewed Basil Brush once, for instance. In the flesh! (Or the fur, to be precise.) It turned out to be an uncomfortable experience, as some bloke insisted on being in the room with Basil while I chatted to him. This being a family magazine, I won’t attempt to describe the indignities that were heaped upon Mr. Brush by the bloke and his wandering right hand. Let’s just say #BasilToo, and leave it at that.
Another time I foolishly leapt into the ring with the masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, who immediately put me in a chokehold that left me gasping for breath like an asthmatic mountaineer who’s left his inhaler at base camp.
Though I like to think I gave as good as I got on that occasion. As my neck was being relentlessly crushed by Kendo’s muscular bicep, I managed to do untold damage to his inner arm with the sharp edge of my Adam’s apple.
I met Joan Collins, too, though she didn’t put me in a chokehold. (My interview technique must have improved by this point.) She was pretty scary, though.
If Joan ever decides to jump in the ring with Kendo, my money’s on the Diva Dame doing the most damage.
It’s always a thrill meeting a genuine celeb. Even the ones who try to strangle you. Which is why you find me in today’s Diary at Large skipping down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, feeling more than a little pleased with myself. For I’m on my way to meet one of the most famous people who has ever lived… Leonardo da Vinci.
Okay, I won’t, strictly speaking, be meeting up with the da Vinci dude in person. One reason being there’s not much person left to meet. He’s been dead since 1519.
GOTCHA!
Instead, I’ll be studying a series of sketches made by the artist that are currently on display in Edinburgh’s Palace of Holyroodhouse. Even so, these drawings, diagrams and day-dreamy doodles promise to be as revealing as even the most intimate of interviews.
They certainly have the potential to be more informative than Leonardo’s surviving paintings, including the fabled Mona Lisa. A painting is a pristine and polished object, after all. Framed to be fawned over. It’s the artist’s public face; shaved, showered, slathered in aftershave and ready to meet the world.
But his sketches? Not nearly so sublime. Sketches are the artist sans sanitary products. A glimpse of him at eight in the morning, still wearing his jim-jams. Crusty-eyed, stipple-chinned and with just the merest smidgen of drool caked below the lower lip. That’s what I’m hoping to catch sight of when I look at the drawings, at any rate. And hopefully this will, in turn, lead to a juicy revelation of some sort.
The kind of “Gotcha!” moment that even the grubbiest of tabloid hacks would approve of and celebrate as a bona fide scoop.
15TH-CENTURY HIPSTER
The first drawing in the exhibition gives me my initial glimpse of the geezer in question. It’s a portrait of Leonardo as a young man. He’s looking romantic, resplendent and ever so regal. Buoyant of beard and noble of brow, he’s actually something of a hottie.
A 15th-century hipster, no less. This is the only picture in the gallery not drawn by da Vinci, but was instead executed by Francesco Melzi, the great man’s pupil and assistant. It’s on display as the only verifiable portrait in existence of the painter.
The cliched view of great artists is that they are not of this fallen world of ours. They are eccentric, impractical, out of touch. Gazing into the abstract, seeking out the eternal, they have no time for the commonplace frivolities of the here and now. That’s certainly true of some artists.
William Blake saw visions and was outand-out bonkers for most of his life. The late Glasgow writer and painter, Alasdair Gray, was known throughout the city’s West End for his endearing eccentricities.
Leonardo, however, was most definitely a man of the world. Our world. Or at least a Medieval version of it. He was a practical visionary.
The portrait I’m looking at underlines this point perfectly. Here’s a man who clearly takes care of himself; who sees himself as a bit of a lad around town.
SENSATIONAL TABLOID SCOOP
The next few sketches in the gallery add to this impression, and continue to show the flipside of the man who painted the ethereal Mona Lisa.
There’s a picture of two grotesques, for example. A pug-ugly man and woman who appear to be in love. Is Leonardo making a satirical point here? Or just being a bit of a meany?
It’s the sort of image that could have been drawn by American underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. Or appeared in The Beano and Dandy, back when those comics were notorious for sharing a rebellious and mischievous spirit.
The earthy and practical side of Leonardo
also comes through in various design and engineering drawings he completed. He worked on the intricacies of both canals and weaponry. (Unlike modern day creatives in the John Lennon mould, Leonardo was never content to give peace a chance. He was much more keen on giving war a shot.)
An inspired inventor of machines, this all-round Renaissance man also drew maps, designed complex statues so they wouldn’t collapse under their own weight, and completed numerous pictures of the dissected human body.
Never afraid to get his hands gloopy with gore, he undertook those dissections himself.
Such curiosity and boldness allowed him to achieve new levels of realism in art.
Leonardo even spent part of his life as a sort of fashion designer for the French aristocracy. A Renaissance version of Stella McCartney, though presumably without the tedious virtue signalling and smug vegan lettuce munching.
None of Leonardo’s costumes survive, though there are a few etchings he made of them on show in Edinburgh. They’re Ab Fab with a Halloween vibe, and were probably created for a pageant or fancy-dress ball.
These sketches aren’t only significant because they show a mind in constant motion, as well as the naked artist, stripped of all artifice and gravitas. The body of work that I’m gazing at is important because, by and large, it’s all that remains of Leonardo. There really isn’t much of him to go around. Only 20 paintings survive, and some of them are in serious disrepair. Other paintings remained unfinished for one reason or another. Many of his most ambitious projects failed to get off the ground. Commissioned statues planned over several years never came to fruition.
Even in his own lifetime Leonardo came to realise that almost the entirety of his endeavours and ambitions were in danger of turning to dust. The later sketches show an ageing mind in turmoil. A man facing up to his own mortality, fraught with fears of death and destruction. These pictures are filled with almost Turneresque levels of chaos. There are imaginary floods and hurricanes. A world warped and wounded. Leonardo seems scared, confused, baffled.
Bingo. This must be the intimate revelation I’ve been looking for. My sensational tabloid scoop. Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Great man most definitely genius. But beneath the remarkable talent? The gilt-edged glory of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa? It turns out he was also one of us.
Or to put it more succinctly (and rob the phrase of its sinister Basil Brush connotations)… #LeonardoToo.
They’re Ab Fab with a Halloween vibe