1000 Paintings of Genius. Victoria Charles

He was well grounded in the sciences and mathematics of the day, as well as a gifted musician. His skill in draughtsmanship was extraordinary; shown by his numerous drawings as well as by his comparatively few paintings. His skill of hand is at the service of most minute observation and analytical research into the character and structure of form.

      Leonardo is the first in date of the great men who had the desire to create in a picture a kind of mystic unity brought about by the fusion of matter and spirit. Now that the Primitives had concluded their experiments, ceaselessly pursued during two centuries, by the conquest of the methods of painting, he was able to pronounce the words which served as a password to all later artists worthy of the name: painting is a spiritual thing, cosa mentale.

      He completed Florentine draughtsmanship in applying to modelling by light and shade, a sharp subtlety which his predecessors had used only to give greater precision to their contours. This marvellous draughtsmanship, this modelling and chiaroscuro he used not solely to paint the exterior appearance of the body but, as no one before him had done, to cast over it a reflection of the mystery of the inner life. In the Mona Lisa and his other masterpieces he even used landscape not merely as a more or less picturesque decoration, but as a sort of echo of that interior life and an element of a perfect harmony.

      Relying on the still quite novel laws of perspective this doctor of scholastic wisdom, who was at the same time an initiator of modern thought, substituted for the discursive manner of the Primitives the principle of concentration which is the basis of classical art. The picture is no longer presented to us as an almost fortuitous aggregate of details and episodes. It is an organism in which all the elements, lines and colours, shadows and lights, compose a subtle tracery converging on a spiritual, a sensuous centre. It was not with the external significance of objects, but with their inward and spiritual significance, that Leonardo was occupied.

      160. Fra Bartolomeo, 1473–1517, High Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Portrait of Girolamo Savonarola, c. 1498, Oil on panel, 47 × 31 cm, Museo di San Marco, Florence

      16th Century

      161. Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), 1483–1520, High Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (La Belle Jardinière), 1507–08, Oil on wood, 122 × 80 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

      La Belle Jardinière, or The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist, completed in 1507, shows the trio surrounded by a pleasant rural environment. The similarity between the Madonna of the Goldfinch and this depiction of the Madonna is more than coincidental: it represents the ideal of female beauty according to Raphael. Perhaps the same model was used in both paintings.

      The sixteenth century begins with the Reformation in 1517, when Martin Luther (1483–1546) issued his Ninety-Five Theses and John Calvin (1509–64) formally tried to reform the Catholic Church. These movements led to the establishment of Protestantism, which emphasised personal faith rather than doctrines of the church. The invention of moveable type by Gutenberg in the previous century helped to make access to the Bible and literacy an important feature of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church, however, reacted with its own Catholic Counter-Reformation by convening the Council of Trent from 1545–63. The most prominent participants in the counter-Reformation were the Jesuits, a Catholic order founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). The Jesuits also participated in the Age of Exploration as missionaries, establishing themselves throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Catholic Church also responded at this time with an extreme measure of policing the faith through the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Finally, the English Reformation was supported by King Henry VIII (1491–1547) who wanted a divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536) because she had not produced a male child. Henry VIII then founded the Church of England, the new church that was formed in the wake of the split with the Catholic Church.

      Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) began his experiments by inventing the pendulum and the thermometer in the sixteenth century. Galileo was also interested in astronomy, but it was Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) who developed the heliocentric, or sun-centred, theory that the earth revolves around the sun.

      The art of this century was mostly influenced by the apparition of Protestantism and the counter-Reformation as the need for clarity in the works of art meant the end of Mannerism.

      The northern lands were embracing Protestantism and this changed the patronage system in art. Due to the wealth from increasing global trade, a new merchant class developed in northern Europe which commissioned more secular works of art for both church and private homes.

      Still-life paintings were popular, as were landscapes. Also, the formation of guilds and civic militias created a new market for the group portrait. In Italy, the Catholic Church was the primary patron of art, while in the north, individuals were the principal patrons, thereby creating a market force that determined subject matter. Artists could no longer depend on large church commissions for religious paintings the way they had prior to the Reformation. Conversely, much of Spanish and Italian art was still created through religious patronage. King Francis I of France (1494–1547) was generally considered a monarch who embodied the Renaissance. His courtly style and love of humanist knowledge was far reaching. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) eventually wound up in his court in France, where he found generous patronage for his science and experiments and lived out the rest of his life near Amboise with the support of Francis I.

      162. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), 1445–1510, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Mystic Nativity, c. 1500, Oil on canvas, 108.6 × 74.9 cm, National Gallery, London

      Inscribed in Greek at the top: “This picture, at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, I Alessandro, in the half-time after the time, painted, according to the eleventh [chapter] of Saint John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, during the release of the devil for three-and-a-half years; then he shall be bound in the twelfth [chapter] and we shall see [him buried] as in this picture.“ Botticelli’s picture has been called the Mystic Nativity because of its mysterious symbolism.

      163. Piero di Cosimo, 1462–1521, High Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Immaculate Conception and Six Saints, c. 1505, Oil on panel, 206 × 173 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

      164. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, High Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, The Virgin of the Rocks (The Virgin with the Infant Saint John adoring the Infant Christ accompanied by an Angel), 1483–86, Oil on panel, 199 × 122 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

      The Virgin of the Rocks, also by Leonardo da Vinci, is probably the most well-known painting of the Virgin and Child within the Western world. Now located in the Louvre, this work is one of the best examples of the use of atmospheric perspective and the correct foreshortening of the human figure. The cavern and the group of figures are all seen as through a veil of shadowy mist. Leonardo believed that his destiny was to recreate the beauty of nature on his canvas. The figure of the Madonna occupies the apex of the pyramid-based composition of this painting – the most important location – due to her high ranking within contemporary Christian belief. She is accompanied by the infants Jesus and St John, and an angel. All four reflect the Renaissance ideal of the human form. Leonardo altogether eliminated the use of the halo effects to further humanise the group. The Virgin is depicted as the perfect woman, yet she also projects her tender Earth Mother qualities reminiscent of those seen in ancient renderings of the Great Goddess Isis.

      165. Giovanni Bellini, c. 1426–1516, Early Renaissance, Venetian School, Italian, The Doge Leonardo Loredan, c. 1501–05, Oil on poplar, 61 × 45 cm, National Gallery, London

      Bellini was an exquisite portrait painter. His Doge Leonardo Loredan, the elected ruler of Venice,