Earlier this month, at this link, I pointed out that Leonardo da Vinci had sourced two of Fra Filippo Lippi’s paintings of the Annunciation for his own version. Leonardo also referenced another work by Fra Lippi, The Vision of St Augustine.
Today I discovered another work Leonardo sourced: Tobias and the Angel, attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio and his workshop. It’s a painting that art historians believe Leonardo also had a hand in producing, notably the images of the dog and the fish. Leonardo confirms his contribution by adapting and reinterpreting some of its features for his version of the Annunciation.
Verrocchio’s Tobias and the Angel is housed at the National Gallery, London. The painting is dated between 1470-1475.
Detail from the Annunciation, Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
One of the tell-tale features in Tobias and the Angel that can be matched in Leonardo’s Annunciation is the right arm and hand of Tobias compared with the right arm and hand of the Virgin. Three colours are applied to the arm: blue on the upper arm; gold (at the elbow joint; and red/orange on the forearm. And then there is the hand formation, the crooked little finger, the extended thumb, and the three other fingers pressed down.
Detail from Tobias and the Angel, Andrea del Verrocchio, National Gallery, London
Other areas of Raphael’s clothing are echoed in the Annunciation. So, too, is Tobias’ doublet and decorative belt, adapted to reference Botticelli and Ghirlandaio. All very cryptic, I know, but embedded sub-narratives are all part of Leonardo’s version of the Annunciation, not just the biblical account at surface level recording the Angel Gabriel appearing before the Virgin Mary.
Almost a year ago (March 27) I posted an item about Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Annunciation – titled “When Stones Speak”. It explained the significance of the group of quoins or cornerstones placed behind the Virgin Mary.
Detail from the Annunciation, by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
One narrative associated with cornerstones is that they point to a passage from the Old Testament. Those on the left column above Mary’s right hand are shaped and mirrored to represent the letter E and the numeral 33. Those on the right represent the numeral 2. Together they point to Exodus 33:2 and the words the Lord said to Moses: “I will send an angel in front of you” – the angel in the painting, Gabriel.
A variant of this motif is repeated by Perugino in the Delivery of the Keys fresco; by Ghirlandaio in his fresco of the Birth of Mary; and by Michelangelo in the Creation of Adam.
Handing of the Keys, by Pietro Perugino, Sistine Chapel
Perugino puns on the word quoin, sounding like coin, and there are three scenes in his fresco that reference passages in the New Testament about coins.
The Temple tax paid by Jesus and Peter (Matthew 17:24-27)
The tribute to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22)
Judas betrays Jesus (Matthew 26:14-16)
The Temple tax detail from Perugino’s fresco
The Temple tax passage is referenced at the door of the temple. After Peter was asked if his master had to pay the half-shekel, Jesus said to his disciple: “Go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that bites, open his mouth and there you will find a shekel; take it and give it to them for you and me.”
Notice Peter’s left arm and side shaped as the fish-head with its mouth open, and his right arm shaped as a hook and tail end.
Observe also the silver face feature on the front of tax collector’s tunic – and the lion-head shape on his left arm, perhaps a link to the next illustration in the fresco and the question about paying tribute to Caesar.
The group of figures on the left side of the fresco’s middle ground represents the time when Jesus was asked if it was permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not. Jesus recognised it was a trick question designed to trap him. He asked to see the money used to pay taxes and was handed a denarius. He then asked whose head and whose name was on the coin. “Caesar” was the reply. So Jesus then gave his answer to the question: “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”
From this it can be understood that the silver face on the tax collector’s front represents Caesar, while the lion-head shape on his shoulder represents Jesus as the Lion of Judah.
The scene also illustrates another passage from Matthew’s gospel when armed men arrested Jesus at Gethsemane after he was betrayed by Judas for thirty pieces of silver. This links to the figure of Judas in the lineup beneath the group of soldiers, shown with his hand in the common purse.
It is not by coincidence that Perugino sourced Matthew’s gospel for the three narratives. Matthew was a former tax collector.
Domenico Ghirlandaio also referenced Leonardo’s quoins when he frescoed the Birth of Mary in the Tornabuoni Chapel. At this stage I shall simply point out where he placed the three-by-two combination without an explanation as I intend to reveal more about this fresco at another time.
Detail from the Birth of Mary, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence
Three facing wall panels, and the two narrow side panels behind the group of figures are Ghirlandaio’s take on Leonardo’s composition. Michelangelo drew his inspiration for his version from the eight partying putti featured above the three facing panels.
Count the figures behind the Creator’s right arm and notice they are shown as two groups of triplets (as in the musical term). The female figure of Simonetta Vespucci and Botticelli at her feet represent the two figures to complete the set of eight.
Detail from the Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel
Botticelli is placed in a support role for the figure of Simonetta who, in this instance is meant to represent a “lira da braccio” – an arm lyre which Leonardo da Vinci was a noted player and maker. In fact, he was known to have produced a silver version representing a horse head for Ludovico Sforza when he left Florence to work for the Duke of Milan.
The horse head reference forms the upper part and shoulder of the Creator’s left arm.
The head is elongated as the arm of the Virgin and Gabriel’s wax wing in Leonardo’s Annunciation. Ghirlandaio also embedded a double horse-head reference in the Birth of Mary fresco.
Michelangelo reversed this feature. Botticelli and the Creator are seen with arms wrapped around Simonetta, the “lira da brachia”. A similar motif was included by Botticelli in his Uffizi version of the Adoration of the Magi.
The lyre’s droning sound can be related to the name Vespucci, meaning wasps, as portrayed on the family’s coat of arms. This connection was also made by Botticelli in his painting of Venus and Mars.
So which biblical passage does Michelangelo’s three-three-two formation allude to? It can only be the Hebrew Psalm 33, verse 2: “Give thanks to the Lord upon the harp, with a ten-stringed lute sing him songs.”
Finally, back to the fish and the shekel taken from its mouth. In Leonardo’s Annunciation there is a disguised reference to Jonah, the prophet who was swallowed by a large fish – some say a whale or a dolphin – and then three days later was vomited onto the shoreline. This event is said to represent the Resurrection of Jesus.
In a descending line from the Temple tax depiction Jesus is shown handing the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to Peter. When Jesus spoke to the distressed Martha after her brother’s death, he said: “I am the Resurrection…” (John 11:25)
When the figure of Jesus is rotated 90 degrees clockwise, he is now shown rising from the mouth of a large fish. The three-day reference and clockwise rotation is a pointer to the clock references in Leonardo’s Annunciation and which Ghirlandaio embedded in the Birth of Mary fresco.
• Much more to come on Perugino’s Delivery of the Keys fresco.
Following on from my previous post and the mention how Pietro Perugino paired one of the figures in the lineup of apostles with Leonardo’s archangel Gabriel from his painting of the Annunciation, there are several other pairing or twinning narratives in the Delivery of Keys fresco. This type of methodology was used by Leonardo in the Annunciation.
Delivery of the Keys, by Pietro Perugino, Sistine Chapel
Some of the visual pairings used by Perugino are obvious: the two the triumphal arches; the mirrored construction of the temple; the two groups of figures in the centre ground representing passages from the gospels; the two groups of apostles either side of the central figure of Jesus handing over the pair of keys.
There are more pairings, but not so obvious. Some of the figures are presented as having two identities, while some pairings are matched or echoed with other groupings.
For instance, the man placed on the extreme left of the lineup in the foreground is said to be Alfonso II, Duke of Calabria. He is also presented as Leonardo da Vinci. This pair are mirrored by the figure on the right edge of the fresco who has two identities: Giuliano di Piero de Medici, and the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Left: Alfonso II of Calabria, doubling up as Leonardo da Vinci. Right: Giuliano de’ Medici, doubling up as Domenico Ghirlandaio
Giuliano was assassinated in Florence Cathedral on April 26, 1478, in what became known as the Pazzi Conspiracy. The assassination was supported by Pope Sixtus IV, whom the Sistine Chapel is named after. The outcome was that for the next two years, the Medici family and Florence were at war with Sixtus and supporting states, one of which was Naples whose army was led by the condottiere Alfonso II, the son of Ferdinand I, king of Naples.
Medals depicting Alfonso II of Calabria, and Giuliano de’ Medici of Florence
Eventually the warring parties came to terms and as a result, Lorenzo de’ Medici commissioned painters to assist frescoing the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Perugino was already at the Vatican having been commissioned earlier by Sixtus IV.
As for the conflict between Leonardo and Ghirlandaio, this could only relate to the time when Leonardo was anonymously reported to the police for a sexual encounter with a male prostitute. Leonardo discloses and denounces both Ghirlandaio and Botticelli in his painting of the Annunciation as the men responsible for his character “assassination”.
More about pairings in Perugino’s fresco in my next post.
I had intended to explain in this post more about the angels placed at the left side of the Creator in Michelangelo’s Creation of Man (Adam). The original source or inspiration for this feature is Leonardo’s Annunciation painting.
The Annunciation, by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
However, I’ve since discovered that Michelangelo was also inspired by another source, Domenico Ghirlandaio’s fresco of the Birth of Mary in the Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence. This painting not only took its lead from Leonardo’s Annunciation but also an earlier fresco in the Sistine Chapel, The Delivery of the Keys, attributed to Pietro Perugino,
The timeline is: 1476-77 – The Annunciation, by Leonardo da Vinci (Uffizi Gallery, Florence) 1481-82 – Delivery of the Keys to St Peter, by Pietro Perugino (North Wall, Sistine Chapel) 1485-90 – The Nativity of Mary, by Domenico Ghirlandaio (Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence) 1508-12 – The Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel)
Delivery of the Keys, by Pietro Perugino, Sistine Chapel
More information about Perugino’s Christ Handing the Keys to St Peter is here and here.
I shall start posting details about the fresco which will explain its connection to Leonardo’s painting of The Annunciation.
Seemingly there is no sight of any angel in Perugino’s fresco, but there is. So too are references to the extended arm and wing features that appear in Leonardo’s painting. What is an interesting discovery is that Perugino also embedded a reference to Fioretta Gorini, wrongly identified by art historians in her portrait by Leonardo as Ginevra de Benci. As confirmation, Ghirlandaio picks up on this connection in the Birth of Mary.
The Birth of Mary, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence
As for Michelangelo’s group of angels, they are partly connected to the putti figures in Ghirlandaio’s fresco.
In Perugino’s fresco, the fifth figure from the left is based on the greeting stance of the angel (Gabriel) in Leonardo’s Annunciation. However, the tuft of hair seen on the forehead of Leonardo’s angel appears on the figure behind Perugino’s angel – Judas.
He is positioned as a wing on the shoulder. His extended beard is a reference to Gabriel’s extended wax wing in the Annunciation which referred to the fall of Icarus who flew too close to the sun and fell to earth. Judas also fell to earth after he hung himself in remorse for his betrayal of Jesus.
Perugino’s ‘angel’ is based on the likeness of Leonardo.
The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
In June last year I made three posts highlighting the unusual winged scapulas attached to the angel Gabriel in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Annunciation – the heads of a monkey and a bird.
I also pointed to a fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio, the Preaching of John the Baptist (Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence) where the artist embedded the monkey under the chin of one of the Pharisees (Leonardo) being chastised by the Baptist (Ghirlandaio) when he referred to them as being a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 3 : 8).
As mentioned in a recent post, heads or other entities on shoulders is a signature feature in Leonardo’s paintings, and Michelangelo made ample use of this characteristic in his Creation of Man fresco.
Leonardo’s monkey and bird feature is part of the Annunciation narrative referring to the Muslim polymath Ismael al-Jazari, and his candle clock invention that featured a monkey and a falcon.
Ismail al_Jazari and a drawing of his Candle Clock
Michelangelo’s interpretation of this narrative is depicted in the section below the Creator’s right arm which shows the severed head of John the Baptist leaning on his right shoulder, and which also supports the head of the dark-skinned angel whose right arm covers part of his face.
Gabriel’s wax wing extension
This muscular arm is shaped as a wing tapering towards the hand disappearing into a dark recess. It represents the extended wax wing of Leonardo’s angel Gabriel, the wax associated with al-Jazari’s candle clock.
Notice that the red wrap is formed into a similar shape as the falcon head in Leonardo’s painting. It continues over the angel’s shoulder and under his extended arm to form a turban covering the head of a bearded man in profile (al-Jazari) – a reference not only to Ghirlandaio’s depiction of the Pharisee, but also to Leonardo’s embodiment of the Muslim’s candle clock invention.
The “brood” reference also echo’s another passage from Matthew’s gospel (23:37) – “How often have I longed to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you have refused.” It serves as a mirror and connection to the left hand of Simonetta Vespucci covered under the arm of the Creator.
Left: Domenico Ghirlandaio as John the Baptist in the Baptism of Christ. Right: Leonardo as a Pharisee in the Preaching of John the Baptist.
Back to Ghirlandaio and his portrayal in the Baptism of Christ painting, attributed to both Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci. Observe the visual pun on the word hair and the long ears of a hare featured on the Baptist’s chin, which could be another reason why Ghirlandaio later placed the monkey head on the chin of Leonardo in his fresco of the Preaching of John the Baptist. Leonardo is portrayed as a Pharisee, hence his turban shaped as a coiled viper. The winding turban feature and short beard doubles up as a reference to Ismael al-Jazari and the similar profile referenced in Michelango’s version.
There are two other parts in this section that are also adapted from Leonardo’s Annunciation: the dark angel’s extended knee and the dark red area beneath the angel’s elbow. Both connect to the several Islamic references Leonardo made in his early painting. I shall explain more about this in a future post.
My next post will explain how the group of six angels behind the Creator’s left arm relates to another section of Leonardo’s Annunciation.
Detail from `Michelangelo’s fresco of the Creation of Man in the Sistine Chapel
Having previously explained that the portrait of God in the Sistine Chapel’s Creation of Man panel is Leonardo da Vinci, there are other features in the fresco which Michelangelo adapted from two paintings of his rival: The Annunciation and the Louvre version of the Virgin of the Rocks.
The Annunciation, by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
In the Annunciation, commentators have pointed out what they perceive as an oddity in the length of the Virgin’s right arm, and the extended section of Gabriel’s right wing. It has been assumed that the extension was painted by someone other than Leonardo at a later date. As for the anomaly associated with the Virgin’s arm, the Uffizi Gallery, where the painting is housed, suggests the distortion may be “a reflection of Leonardo’s early research into optics…”
However, both assumptions are incorrect. The wing and arm extensions were intentional on the part of Leonardo.
Michelangelo picked up on this by showing the Creator with his right arm extended and his left arm formed in the shape of a wing (see previous post). His extended right arm points to the figure of Adam who is later destined to fall from grace after tasting the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. This is a pointer to Leonardo (made in God’s image and likeness) and his fall from grace with the Medici family and departure from Florence (the Garden) to Milan.
The Damned Man detail from Michelangelo’s Last Judgement fresco in the Sistine Chapel
In a later fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel – The Last Judgement – Leonardo is depicted as the Damned Man, representing the Fall of Man. The green serpent biting into his thigh is a pointer to the coat of arms of Milan, the Biscione, which shows a serpent swallowing the figure of a man.
The Fall of Man theme also connects to Leonardo’s Annunciation. The extended wing is painted to resemble wax and is a reference to Icarus, the Greek mythology figure who flew too close to the sun and fell to earth. (More here).
The wing and long arm features in the Annunciation are extended or continued themes from an earlier painting he is associated with, the Baptism of Christ. The four figures in this painting are Andrea del Verrocchio as Christ; Leonardo and Botticelli as the two kneeling angels; and Domenico Ghirlandaio as John the Baptist. Three of the quartet, Leonardo, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, can also be identified in Michelangelo’s Creation of Man: Leonardo as the Creator, Botticelli as the angel at the feet of Eve (Simonetta Vespucci), and Ghirlandaio as the head of John the Baptist immediately beneath the right arm of the Creator.
That Botticelli and Ghirlandaio are both featured in the panel is another reference to the pair also embedded in a disguised manner in the Annunciation as the men responsible for anonymously reporting Leonardo to the Florentine authorities accusing him of sodomy.
Detail from the Baptism of Christ attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci
Domenico Ghirlandaio depicted as the head of John the Baptist in Michelangelo’s Creation of Man
The head of Ghirlandaio (or John the Baptist) In the Creation of Man, is linked to John in the Baptism of Christ painting by the feathered style of his hair meant to represent a dead bird.
The same motif appears behind the head of the Baptist in the rock formation shaped as a head beneath a dead bird. Notice also the shape of a broken wing cut from the rock. In the same painting, observe the baptismal cloth in the shape of a wing carried by Leonardo – the angel at the forefront.
Notice, too, that the head of the Baptist rests on a shoulder in Michelangelo’s fresco, just as the rock formation is placed at the shoulder of John in the Baptism of Christ painting. This begs the question, who are the two angels whose heads are placed at the shoulders of the Creator? No answer for this just yet, but it does lead on to why the Creator’s left hand rests on the right shoulder of the angel depicted as Botticelli.
Lion Sejant motifs in the Virgin of the Rocks and Creation of Man. Botticelli is portrayed as both figures.
The hand’s formation is similar to the hand of Mary resting on the shoulder of the infant John the Baptist in Leonardo’s Louvre version of the Virgin of the Rocks. It resembles an heraldic seated lion – lion sejant. Leonardo “signed’ some of his paintings with a lion (Leonardo) or similar references at the shoulder of one of his subjects. The Mona Lisa is a classic example. The lion is shaped in the rocks at the woman’s right shoulder (see my post, Leonardo’s monumental cliffs). A lion-sphinx shape also appears on the shoulder of the young woman in Leonardo’s Benois Madonna. In his painting said to be of Ginevra de’ Benci, the signature shape at the right shoulder is the bear associated with St Gaul.
Parnassus by Andrea Mantegna, Louvre Museum
Andrea Mantegna, was aware of Leonardo’s signature motif. In his painting of the Parnassus (also known as Mars and Venus), Leonardo is depicted in several ways, notably as Pegasus at the shoulder of Mercury, but also as the face of a lion on the left shoulder of the crumbling bridge. There is a third representation; Leonardo’s profile is shaped as a knot attached to the shoulder of the “chaise longue” (long chair) depicted in French colours, and the two cushions placed on the seat represent his hat.
Versions of Leonardo da Vinci embedded in Mantegna’s Parnassus
The Virgin’s right hand in the Annunciation is another instance of resting on a shoulder. In this situation it is shaped as a claw resting on the inclined lectern, reminiscent of a claw-shaped page turner, pressing down. When the image is rotated 90 degrees to the right, the hand is dove shaped, symbolising the Holy Spirit; the thumb as the dove’s head, the fingers as a wing.
The hand of the Virgin Mary placed on the word of God, and shaped as a dove representing the Holy Spirit
Michelangelo was aware of this feature and adapted it to represent the left hand of Eve (Simonetta) gripping the hand of the Creator (the Word) as well as representing the hen covering her chicks, as explained in my previous post.
The left hand of the Creator is also shaped as a lion sejant, seated on the angel’s shoulder, but notice the extended forefinger and how it appears double jointed. This is a pointer to another feature of the hand shaped to represent the head and forelegs of a sacrificial lamb, the Lamb of God. And so now we have a pairing of a lion and and a lamb, a biblical reference symbolising peace. The finger also points to Botticelli as one of two men who had a hand in Leonardo’s denunciation.
There yet another feature in the scene that connects to Leonardo’s Annunciation which I shall explain in my next post.
This figure from Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles is said to symbolise Repentance. It is also portrayed as a magpie, a sign of approaching death (one for sorrow, two for joy).
The dying man is Domenico Ghirlandaio, seen dragged by his hair by the woman in blue, a personification of Calumny or Slander.
Here Botticelli confirms in yet another of his paintings the rupture in the relationship between Leonardo da Vinci and Ghirlandaio who died in January 1494 of ‘pestilence fever’.
In a previous post I pointed out that the sentinel figure of Mars keeping watch above the ‘victim’ represents Leonardo. It refers to another painting Botticelli had produced earlier, titled Venus and Mars. That particular painting shows Mars asleep, stripped of his armour, and being tormented by three young satyrs, while Venus remains dressed, awake and alert, and keeping watch.
A similar theme of torment can be seen above the sentinel panel of Mars. It shows three putti torturing a lion in various ways: using a whip, riding on its back, and forcing liquid down its throat. The lion represents Leonardo.
Another motif associated with Leonardo is the monkey and bird. It’s not the first time Botticelli has borrowed this motif from Leonardo’s painting of The Annunciation. In this instance, the bird is the figure of Repentance – the Magpie – as profiled in the image below along with the profile of the monkey or ape’s head.
Notice also how the the beak of the magpie points to another panel, that of four men. The seated man is Leonardo. The others are those who were named with him in the anonymous letter accusing the group of “immoral activities”.
This scene is similar to the one Botticelli painted in the Uffizi version of the Adoration of the Magi. The horse head on the adjacent panel, beneath the beak in the Apelles painting, is also a pointer to the scene portrayed in the Magi painting.As to the three men conversing with Leonardo, could they refer to the biblical three wise men from the East and/or the authors of books studied by Leonardo, including the Arab engineer Ismail al-Jazari and his inventions Leonardo referenced in his painting of The Annunciation?
The Calumny of Apelles, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi, Florence
Of the several dozen figures portrayed in Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles, one in particular is a key to recognising an ongoing narrative found in some of Botticelli’s early paintings.
The figure is squeezed between those representing Perfidy and Calumny and faces the head of the ‘victim’ Domenico Ghirlandaio. Its arms reach upwards, and in its hands is a tambourine.
The tambourine represents the tambouri (drums), the Florentine post boxes known as “holes of truth” which were designed for the purpose of reporting misdemeanours and crimes. In April 1476 an unsigned letter was posted in one of the tambouri accusing Leonard da Vinci and other men of sodomy. According to clues outlined in paintings by Leonardo and Botticelli, the report was by the hand of Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Placed in a niche above the head of Perfidy is a statue of an armoured sentinel. In his right hand is a sword, and his left hand grips a shield. His legs are set wide apart and between them is the outline of the sentinel’s cloak and shield. However this blade-like shape is also meant to represent a writing quill. Its size is greater than the sword and so is suggestive of the adage that the pen is mightier than the sword. But Botticelli implies a biblical truth to this phrase, the passage from Paul’s letter to the Hebrews:
The word of God is something alive and active. It cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely; it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts. No created thing can hide from him; everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the one to who we must give account of ourselves. (5:12-13).
The sentinel, who keeps watch, is portrayed as Leonardo da Vinci, famous for his dissection of cadavers and detailed anatomical drawings of his findings. Ghirlandaio portrayed Leonardo in this role in one of his frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel in the basilica of Santa Trinita. The central figure in The Death of St Francis, dressed in red and blue, is Leonardo.
Detail from The Death of St Francis, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sassetti Chapel, Florence
So as Ghirlandaio portrayed Leonardo keeping watch over the dying St Francis, Botticelli has also portrayed him keeping watch over the dying Ghirlandaio, perhaps even suggesting how the latter may have kept watch over Leonardo and the other men he accused of misdemeanours.
In his biography of Leonardo da Vinci, The Flights of Mind, Charles Nicholl explains that a copy of the document denouncing Leonardo “survives among the archives of the Ufficiali di Notti – the Officers of the Night and Conservers of the Morality of Monasteries, who were essentially the Florentine night-watch, though they could as well be described as the vice-squad.”
This title may well explain why Ghirlandaio decided to place Leonardo among the group of monks attending the death of St Francis.
This trio of heads all feature in Sandro Botticelli’s painting, the Calumny of Apelles. Left to right, they represent: the Victim, Rancour (Envy), and King Midas.
A comprehensive description and history of the painting is published by Wikipedia. However, what Wikipedia doesn’t reveal, or any other source that I know of, is the identity of the three men, apart from their allegorical representation in the narrative depicting the Calumny of Apelles.
The Calumny of Apelles, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi
The painting is approximately 3ft x 2ft in size and dated c1495.
As for the identity of the three men, there is only one: Domenico Ghirlandaio. The painter died in January 1494, aged just 45, of ‘pestilence fever”.
More on this at another time, but just to add, the painting provides another connection with Leonardo da VInci’s version of The Annunciation.
I recently explained how Leonardo da Vinci had been inspired by the Muslim polymath Ismail al-Jazari and referenced one of the inventor’s clock designs – the Candle Clock – in his painting of The Annunciation. He also referenced another of al-Jazari’s constructions – the Peacock Clock.
The simple illustration above shows a peahen with neck outstretched. Below the peahen are two facing peachicks and below these is a peacock with its tail fanned..
For a full description of the mechanics and how the clock operates, go to this link.
Leonardo applied the bird features in this way: The Virgin Mary represents the peahen and acts as the water source. Her extended right arm represents the extended neck of the peahen.
Detail of the sarcophagus from The Annunciation, by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence
During the process, the pair of peachicks begin to quarrel and turn their backs on each other. This is represented by the two scrolling bird-shaped edges of the sarcophagus. They also represent Domenico Ghirlandaio (left) and Leonardo da Vinci (right).
The wreath or garland linking the two scrolling features is another reference to Ghirlandaio (garland maker). The garland is shaped as a mouth and represents what is known as “The Mouth of Truth”. This can be understood in several ways which I will explain in a future post.
Above the garland is a fluted shell intended not only to represent the fanned tail of the peacock, but also a scallop shell – a pilgrim’s emblem.
Ghirlandaio was in Rome in 1475, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the newly-built Vatican library. The year had been declared a Holy or JubileeYear by the Pope, whereby people were encouraged to make a religious pilgrimage to Rome during that time.
The Pasquino in Rome
There are indications in The Annunciation painting that Leonardo visited Rome in 1475, likely with Ghirlandaio and other artists engaged in producing works of art to mark the Jubilee. One notable reference to Rome is the Pasquino, a dismembered sculpture of two men unearthed during the 15th century and considered one of the first ‘talking statues’ in the city. This also connects to Domenico di Pasquino, one of four men, along with Leonardo, brought before a Florentine court of justice in 1476, on a charge of sodomy.
Four years ago, I posted a note suggesting Domenico Ghirlandaio was the person who anonymously ‘outed’ Leonardo da Vinci. Around this time, and even to the present day, there was “the tradition of attaching anonymous criticisms to the base of the Paquino figure. The satirical literary form pasquinade (or “pasquil”) takes its name from this tradition.” (Wikipedia)
And here we can see how Leonardo responded to Ghirlandaio’s accusation by pairing the name of one of the other accused men – Domenico di Pasquino – with the name of the statue and Ghirlandaio’s first name, Domenico.
The Virgin’s extended arm also serves another purpose, not only to compliment the extended wing section of the Angel Gabriel, but also to reveal the identities of the other men charged with Leonardo.
The objects above the ‘sarcophagus’ or altar – the fluted column, the veil, the holy book, and the Virgin’s hand – are all related to the mechanics of the peacock clock, which I will explain at another time., except to say at this point that when the cycle is completed every half-hour, the sound of peacocks is heard. And here Leonardo returns to the monkey feature pointed out in an previous post. It is said that the sound of a peacock’s call is similar to a monkey. Some species of owls can also sound like a monkey and this explains the wide-eyed owl feature Leonardo incorporated on the side of the sarcophagus.
Finally, one other unusual feature seen on the sarcophagus is the right clawed foot, superimposed with a turbaned head, and perhaps Leonardo’s hat-tip to Ismail al-Jazari.
So here’s the explanation why Leonardo da Vinci depicted the heads of a monkey and a bird as the scapulars on the Angel Gabriel’s wings in his painting of The Annunciation.
Detail from The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence. Image: Haltadefinizione
He was inspired by the Muslim polymath Ismail al-Jazari (1136-1206), best known for writing The Book of Knowledge of Ingenius Mechanical Devices, and “described by some as the ‘father of robotics’ and modern day engineering” (Wikipedia).
Monkey candle clock, Topkapi Manuscript, 1206
One of Al-Jazari’s inventions was the Candle Clock. He published three versions in his Book of Knowledge: the Candle Clock of the Swordsman; the Candle Clock of the Scribe; and the Candle Clock of the Monkey and the Falcon. It is the latter, pictured alongside, which was sourced by Leonardo for his construction of the Angel Gabriel.
As to how the candle clock functions, I refer you to this link for details.
The stepped feathers above the monkey’s head represent the tick marks on the candle.
The extended section of the wing, which most scholars wrongly assume to have been painted later by someone else other than Leonardo, represents wax (and so the candle), and connects to another narrative in the painting about the Greek mythological figure, Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell to earth. The wings his father Daedalus made for Icarus contained beeswax. Hence the wax portrayal of the wing extension.
The sun is represented by the angel’s nimbus, and the candle wick is the tuft of hair on the angel’s forehead.
The balls channel is the sleeve that wraps the angel’s right wrist, and the pattern, the balls, here represented as stones to explain another narrative in the painting, linked to Mecca.
The seated man with one leg raised equates to the angel Gabriel on one knee, supporting the monkey on his shoulder.
The shape of the winged platform, along with the grey-coloured weight can be matched to the altar – or what has been described as a sarcophagus – placed in front of the Virgin Mary.
The two pulleys and chords beneath the candle resemble the features of an owl, and can be matched to the owl features seen at the base of the sarcophagus.
• Another famous Muslim who shared the Al-Jazari name was Muhammad Ibn Al-Jazari (1350-1429). Born at Damascus, he was “a scholar and authority in the field of the qira’at of the Quran”.
Leonardo had reasons for embedding the reference to Ibn Al-Jazari. One of which may relate to a time in the Imam’s life when he was mistreated by people who were envious of him. This passage from a modern-day biography records the troubled period.
In 797 AH, the governor of the Levant, Amīr Altamash, appointed him to the post of Qādī (judge) of Shām. Imam Jazari, however, had disagreements with the government in important matters related to the judicial post. Furthermore – due to the plotting of some individuals who were envious of him – the central government began to mistreat him. Inevitably, he decided to leave Damascus and migrated to Bursa in modern-day Turkey. The king of Turkey, Bāyazīd bin Uthman Yaldaram – who was already acquainted with the personality of Imam Jazari – treated him with great honour and respect, requesting Imam Jazari to permanently take residence in Bursa which Imam Jazari accepted. From thereon, the fruits of his lectures and writings began to materialise. Those who valued his knowledge, especially the students of qirā’ah, benefited from him tremendously.
Did Leonardo relate this account to his own trials and tribulations brought on by jealousy from some of his contemporaries, notably the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio? And could it have inspired him to later leave Florence and travel north to work for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan?
As mentioned in some previous posts on The Annunciation, Leonardo referred in his painting to the time he was anonymously accused of sodomy. So on the left of the frame there is the reference made to envy against Ibn Al-Jazari, and on the right, a similar account of envy made against Leonardo.
The Annunciation, Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence
There are also references to two other clock inventions of Ismail Al-Jazari: the Water Clock of the Peacocks, and the Candle Clock of the Scribe.
Damascus, the birthplace of Imam Mohammad Ibn Al-Jazari, is also referenced on the right half of the painting for a reason that connects to Domenico Ghirlandaio.
In my last post – The Monkey and the Angel – I mentioned that Domenico Ghirlandaio’s fresco of the Preaching of John the Baptist featured a monkey’s head. It’s depicted as part of the facial features of the man seated at the right edge of the frame.
Detail from the Preaching of John the Baptist, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence
The figure has two representations: Leonardo da Vinci and St Blaise (known as St Biagio in Italy), the patron saint of throats. St Blaise came from Sebastea in historical Armenia (modern-day Sivas in Turkey).
Ghirlandaio’s fresco partly apes Leonardo’s painting of The Annunciation by mimicking some of its features. The monkey is one example. Another is incorporating the reference to St Blaise to replace St Rocco referred to by Leonardo. The figure of John the Baptist (a reference to Ghirlandaio himself) standing on a rock, not only alludes St Rocco but also to Ghirlandaio’s role as John the Baptist in Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting of the Baptism of Christ in which Leonardo is said to have contributed to.
There are more connections between Ghirlandaio’s fresco and Leonardo’s Annunciation painting in which Ghirlandaio is referenced.
The Preaching of John the Baptist is one of a cycle of five fresco’s on the prophet’s life painted by Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni Chapel in Florence and dated between 1486 and 1490. Leonardo’s painting of The Annunciation is dated to 1472-1476, ten or more years earlier.
So why did Ghirlandaio decide to parody Leonardo’s work in this way after so many years? And why did Leonardo continue the ‘conversation’ in his Last Supper mural dated 1495-1498? Could it have had anything to do with Ghirlandaio’s death in January 1494? He is said to have died of “pestilence fever” – likely cholera.
Ironically, St Rocco is a saint invoked against cholera.
Sandro Botticelli revealed the reason for the dispute between Ghirlandaio and Leonardo in his painting of the Calumny of Apelles, dated 1494-95, and therefore, shortly after the death of Domenico Ghirlandaio who is portrayed not only as Apelles but also as king Midas and the figure of Rancour.
Calumny: A false statement maliciously made to injure another’s reputation.
Calumny of Apelles, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi, Florence
Here’s an unusual feature taken from Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Annunciation. It depicts the heads of a monkey and a bird as the scapulars on the Angel Gabriel’s wings.
Detail, The Annunciation, Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence
So what could have been the reason why Leonardo placed a monkey on Gabriel’s back?
The artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, a contemporary of Leonardo, also featured a monkey’s head in one of the frescos he painted in the Tornabuoni Chapel in Florence: Preaching of John the Baptist.Leonardo also has a role in the fresco.
More on this in my next post.
Preaching of John the Baptist, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence
In March this year I posted an item stating that Michelangelo’s portrayal of God in The Creation of Adam section of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, represented Leonardo da Vinci.
More recently there was much press coverage given to research by the scholar and author Adriano Marinazzo who hypothesised that Michelangelo painted himself as God.
Marinazzo based his judgement primarily on a sketch drawn alongside a sonnet Michelangelo had written to a friend. In an interview with Julie Tucker of the Muscarelle Museum of Art on May 12, this year, Marinazzo explained:
“In my study, I pointed out the intriguing resemblance between Michelangelo’s self-portrait silhouette and the artist’s depiction of God in “The Creation of Adam.” In Michelangelo’s self-portrait, his right arm is extended toward the ceiling’s surface to give life to the stories of the book of Genesis. The artist holds a brush that approaches the vault’s surface but does not touch it. This gesture recalls Michelangelo’s painting of God’s index, who gives life to Adam without touching him. Plus, in his self-portrait, Michelangelo represented himself with his legs crossed; this is a curious pose for somebody who is painting on a scaffolding. But Michelangelo also painted God with his legs crossed while giving life to Adam. I also pointed out that in his self-portrait, Michelangelo idealises himself. The features of his face, viewed in profile, are gentle and harmonious. But in real life, Michelangelo had rough features, characterised by a flattened nose. I concluded by pointing out that Michelangelo goes towards the surface he is painting, as God goes towards Adam. The profile of the artist is flawless, like that of God.”
Marinazzo added in another report (New York Post) that it was when he turned the sketch on its side he experienced an “epiphany” and “discovered the self-portrait looked almost identical to the God that is seen on the ceiling of the chapel.”
Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel,
Michelangelo’s sketch is not unfamiliar to me. In an earlier post I compared it to one of the figures in Botticelli’s Primavera painting, presented at surface level as the man generally assumed to represent the mythological Roman god Mercury. Botticelli also applied other identities to the figure, another being the painter Filippino Lippi, one of several Florentine artists commissioned earlier to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel. In fact, Botticelli had a field day portraying extended arms in the Primavera painting. All the figures are depicted with an arm or arms outstretched.
Primavera, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi, Florence
Baptism of Christ, Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence
But the link doesn’t stop there. Michelangelo’s sketch, transformed into the figure of God in the Sistine Chapel, can be sourced back to a much earlier painting attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio in which Leonardo da Vinci is said to have contributed some of the finer detail. Notice in this painting the figure of John the Baptist with his extended right hand stretched upwards.
Another work that can be recognised as influencing Botticelli’s stretching figure in Primavera is Leonardo’s painting of The Annunciation. Leonardo is often criticised for his portrayal of the Virgin Mary with an extra-long right arm, but this was intentional. Leonardo was making a point about the figure of John the Baptist in Verrocchio’s painting as well as referring to a water feature in The Annunciation. And so in Primavera, Botticelli continued stressing the same point with his figure of Mercury, his arm extended and pointing to a water feature, just as the figure of John the Baptist, with his arm outstretched baptising Jesus with water.
The Annunciation, Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence
Botticelli continued the outstretched arm reference in his Birth of Venus with the Hora of Spring offering cover for the naked Venus.
Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi, Florence
So in actuality, Michelangelo brought the narrative full circle and back to Leonardo to whom his pointing man relates to. Adriano Marinazzo accessed a page in the story but not the complete narrative. Decades after Michelangelo completed painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, another artist, Giorgio Vasari, provided more clues about the man with the extended arm in his painting of the Battle of Marciano on one of the long walls in the Palazzo Vecchio’s Hall of Five Hundred. The fresco covers an earlier battle scene, The Battle of Anghiari painted by Leonardo da Vinci in which he depicted another version of a man with an extended arm.
Battle of Marciano, Giorgio Vasari, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
There is another feature attached to the narrative of the man with the extended arm, and that is a wing. The feature appears prominently in two places in the Baptism of Christ. It also explains why the Archangel Gabriel was given an extended wing in The Annunciation; why Mercury’s left hand-on-hip is wing-shaped; why Michelangelo’s loose sketch shows his left hand on hip; and finally, why God’s left arm is also shaped as a wing covering the woman he created, which begs the question: Who was this particular woman?
Creation of Adam detail, Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel
Detail from Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo da Vinci, Louvre, Paris
Botticelli is the child that bears the left hand of God on his right shoulder. Observe the shape of the hand. It is the same as the right hand of Mary which bears down on the shoulder of the Infant John the Baptist in Leonardo’s painting of the Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre version).
Leonardo continued the narrative even in his painting of The Last Supper. There are several references to wings and long arms, and Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio, who both figured in Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ, are depicted at at the table.
The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan
The Annunciation was one of Leonardo da Vinci’s first paintings. It is generally dated between 1472 and 1476. My preference is for the latter end of the range, 1476, because Leonardo embedded references to the charge of sodomy that was made against him that same year.
The Annunciation (1476) by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence
References to the year of 1475 – declared as a Holy Year by Pope Sixtus IV – are also embedded in the painting. Holy years are also known as Jubilee years.
“The Jubilee Year, according to Christianity, is a time of joy, the year of remission or universal pardon. The celebration of the Jubilee Year is quoted in several verses of the bible like in Leviticus 25:10 which says: ‘and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land: for it is the year of jubilee.’ The Jubilee Year was celebrated every fifty years and during this year, families were expected to find their absent family members, the Hebrew slaves were to be set free, debts were to be settled and illegally owned land had to be returned to its owners.
“According to Roman Catholic Church’s history, the first Jubilee Year in the Roman Catholic Church was instituted by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300. During the celebration of the first Jubilee Year, Pope Boniface VIII passed his message of the need for people to confess their sins by fulfilling certain conditions. The first condition was to be repentant and confess their sins, and the second condition was to visit either St Peter or St Paul in Rome and pass through the “Holy Doors”, within the specified time of the celebration.”
That one of the conditions of the Jubilee was for people to travel to Rome would be considered a pilgrimage, which is one of the themes to be found in the painting. Pointers to locations in Rome in The Annunciation painting indicate that Leonardo da Vinci was one of thousands who made a pilgrimage to Rome during the Jubilee year of 1475. (source:vatican.com)
Neither would he have been the only painter from Florence to have made the journey to the Eternal City. Domenico Ghirlandaio certainly did. He was employed that year by Pope Sixtus IV to ‘decorate’ the newly built Vatican Library. Vatican sources also mention other painters being employed to paint and decorate Rome in 1475, including Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Verrochio, but there is no record of Leonardo among the Florentine group.
“The Annunciation to Mary” from the Chronology of Ancient Nations (1307) by Al-Biruni.
I pointed out in a previous post that The Annunciation painting also contains several pointers to Islam. So it’s not surprising to discover Leonardo embedded references to the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kaaba, the “House of Allah”, where Muslims “cleanse their souls of all worldly sin”.
Detail from The Last Supper mosaic by Giacomo Raffaelli, Minorites Church, Vienna.
Again, Sophie was speechless. In the painting, Peter was leaning menacingly toward Mary Magdalene and slicing his blade-like hand across her neck. The same threatening gesture as in Madonna of the Rocks!
‘And here too,’ Langdon said, pointing now to the crowd of disciples near Peter. ‘A bit ominous, no?’
Sophie squinted and saw a hand emerging from the crowd of disciples. ‘Is that hand wielding a dagger?’
‘Yes. Stranger still, if you count the arms, you’ll see that the hand belongs to … no one at all. It’s disembodied. Anonymous.’
Dan Brown, The DA VINCI CODE
This passage from Dan Brown’s big earner, The Da Vinci Code, had untold readers checking out the claim of a ‘disembodied’ hand in Leonardo da Vinci’s mural of The Last Supper.
The general conclusion is that there is no mystery – the left hand belongs to St Peter as does the “knife-welding dagger” in his right hand.
But what Dan Brown, Robert Langdon the ‘symbolist’ and Sophie failed to spot was another ‘disembodied hand’ elsewhere on the wall. Peter’s seemingly displaced left hand is a pointer, a sign to direct observers to “seek and find” – Cerca Trova.
Of course, the pointing hand can be understood in several ways. First and foremost, as pointing in the direction of Jesus who, in John’s gospel (14:6), after informing his disciples at the Last Supper that one of them would betray him, went on to reveal he was “…the Way, the Truth, and the Life”.
With outstretched arms, Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, is seemingly pondering on the direction his life is about to take. On each side are six disciples, all with their arms and hands activated in one way or another, wondering and considering which one of them is to betray Jesus. Those at a distance lean forward; those nearest to Jesus lean backward in an attempt to distance themselves from his outstretched arms and hands.
Leonardo has placed Jesus as a fulcrum or crux, leveraging and measuring the hearts of each group of disciples either side of him. Just like the feasting Persian king Belshazzar and the story of the Writing on the Wall, Judas has been measured, weighed in the balance, and found wanting (Daniel 5).
Leonardo paired this judgment made against Belshazzar and Judas with one that preoccupied him on a personal basis for over twenty years when, in 1476, an anonymous charge against him was made to the Florentine authorities accusing him of sodomy.In 1496 he began to ‘write’ in paint on the wall of a monastery wall his own judgement against the two people responsible for the anonymous accusation.
So on the left side of Jesus we see a group of three men, generally understood to be the disciples Thomas. James the Great, and Philip. But undercover they represent the artists Domenico Ghirlandaio, Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli.
Detail from Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper
Now it is Leonardo portrayed as the fulcrum and seated off-balance, weighing the guilt of the two men either side. And it is Thomas who is found wanting. Thomas “the twin”, paired with Judas, the disciple who stole from the common purse, the thief who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. It was Thomas who doubted the Resurrection and would only believe if he could place his finger into Christ’s wounds.
As for the upright finger, the finger that denotes who wrote the denunciation of Leonardo, it refers to the time when the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman accused of adultery to Jesus, saying the Law demanded her death by stoning. Jesus responded by first writing in the sand with his finger and then saying “If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then he bent down and started writing in the sand again. (John 8:3-10). Whatever the message was that he wrote in the sand, the scribes and Pharisees took note and dispersed.
The moving hand that wrote on the wall during Belshazzar’s banquet, is the same hand that wrote in the sand, a revealing hand about a person’s intention or state of heart. In Leonardo’s case the moving hand can be understood as the two hands attached to his left arm. Like Peter’s knife hand, it is turned or twisted; a hand behind the back, a sleight of hand prepared to steal, a covered or disguised hand, but one known and identified by Leonardo as the left hand of Domenico Ghirlandaio.
A similar motif is present in Leonardo’s painting of The Annunciation. It also explains why Leonardo wrote and probably painted with his left hand. He had limited movement in his right hand. It is always depicted as a claw-shape, similar to the claw-shape in the right hand of Jesus. So the two references to disembodied hand in The Last Supper mural is Leonardo pointing out the physical disability in his own right hand that likely accompanied him throughout his life.
As to the finger of Thomas-Domenico, it references another Persian, the polymath Omar Khayyam and one of many quatrains he wrote, the most well-known being the verse about the Moving Finger:
The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
Seemingly, Leonardo was still not in a place where he could fully forgive Domenico Ghirlandaio for his betrayal.
References to Omar Khayyam appear in other paintings by Leonardo.
Here’s an interesting image I came across yesterday. It represents John the Evangelist, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2), resting close to Christ at the Last Supper.
Leonardo da Vinci portrayed as John the Evangelist in the Badia Passignano version of The Last Supper by Domenico Ghirlandaio
The detail is from the first of three Last Supper frescoes painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio and is located in the Badia Passignano, near Florence.
The fresco was brought to life again in 2015 after restoration.
I doubt if anyone realised at the time that the face of John the disciple is in fact Leonardo da Vinci.
The fresco was said to have been painted in 1476. If so, that would be the same year Leonardo was anonymously reported for sodomy along with four other men. However, Ghirlandaio’s fresco could only have been painted after Leonardo had completed The Annunciation, because he has referenced some of its features. The reason for this is that both works have embedded cryptic clues that refer to the anonymous accusation against Leonardo.
In The Annunciation, Leonardo reveals both Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli as those responsible for the charge against him. In The Last Supper painting Ghirlaindo portrays himself as the Christ figure, who John claimed he was loved by – the Domenico who may have been the one Leonardo mentioned when he wrote: ‘Fioravante di Domenico… in Florence is my most cherished companion, as though he were my…’”
The Badia Passing version of The Last Supper by Domenico Ghirlandaio
Could the Badia Passignano version of The Last Supper confirm what was once a close relationship between Domenico and Leonardo? And who did Ghirlandaio place in the guise of Judas his betrayer, but Sandro Botticelli.
Ghirlandaio, Leonardo and Botticelli, in the guise of Christ, John the Evangelist and Judas
Seemingly, the fall-out between the three men was to last even beyond the death of Ghirlandaio in January 1494, because Leonardo continued with the spat by responding to Ghirlandaio’s buck-passing accusation when he portrayed Ghirlandaio as Jesus in his more famous version of The Last Supper.
Detail from Leonardo da Vinci’s version of The Last Supper
In 1480 Ghirlandaio painted another version of The Last Supper, this time in the refectory of the Convent of the Ognissanti in Florence. Here the roles are reversed. Botticelli is portrayed as Christ, Ghirlandaio as John, and Leonardo as Judas. To the right of Judas is a figure depicted as a Man of Sorrows wringing his hands – a symbol of repentance. It’s another version of Domenico, and probably represents James the Great, the brother of John. This version of a Man of Sorrows can be identified with Ghirlandaio’s role in the self portrait he made some ten years later, and in it referenced his part in Leonardo’s The Annunciation many years earlier.
Domenico Ghirlandaio portrayed as Men of Sorrows
The Man of Sorrows shows two marble columns in the background. They represent numeral 2 and 11 and refer to the short sentence in Romans 2:11 when St Paul said: “God has no favourites”. In other words, as much as Leonardo had considered Ghirlandaio favoured him above others, Ghirlandaio, for whatever reason, thought otherwise. Perhaps Leonardo suspected Ghirlandaio was jealous of his superior talent as a painter and concerned he would lose commissions and favour from patrons to the younger man.
So when we see the young Leonardo in Ghirlandaio’s first Last Supper fresco resting his head against Jesus in the guise of Domenico (“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” John 14:9) and the close physical connection of the disciple John (portrayed as the young Leonardo), and also take into account the reference “I have no favourites”, then a reason for the gap between the two men in Leonardo’s Last Supper becomes apparent.
Detail from The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci
The gap is a triangular V-shape. The shape of Jesus with his outstretched arms is also triangular, but inverted. The two shapes placed side by side form a parallelogram. In other words, Leonardo is drawing a parallel to Ghirlandaio’s Last Supper frescoes and probably intended as a final response to the banter between the three artists that continued for a period of twenty years.
Notice also the two columns that frame Jesus – a reference to the two columns in Ghirlandaio’s Man of Sorrows pointing to St Paul’s words from Romans 2:11, “God has no favourites”, and Leonardo’s confirmation of the separation of himself from Ghirlandaio portrayed as Christ. This scenario may also represent Leonardo pointing to his own choice of keeping his distance from Church, but reconciling later in life. It’s why he is seen leaning in the direction of Peter, chosen by Christ to be the rock of faith on which he would build his church.
For sure, both Leonardo and Ghirlandaio felt a deep betrayal in their lives, hence Leonardo choosing to portray the time at the Last Supper when Jesus announced that someone at the table, someone close to him, would betray him.
Botticelli continued to stoke the fires of dispute with various references to Leonardo in his own paintings. The most notable to the sodomy accusation is parodied in the Uffizi version of the Adoration of the Magi. Ghirlandaio referred to the incident in his painting of the Adoration of the Shepherds.
Adoration of the Shepherds by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Santa Trinita, Florence
But as I understand, the origins of the dispute can be clearly recognised in Verrocchio’s version of the Baptism of Christ in which Leonardo clearly had a hand in painting. Botticelli is depicted gazing lovingly at Leonardo who only has eyes for the Baptist portrayed by Ghirlandaio. His gaze is firmly focused on the crown of Jesus.
The Baptism of Christ by Andreadel Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence.
Perhaps Andrea del Verrocchio understood the nature of his apprentices better than themselves when he set out to paint the Baptism of Christ.
Not surprising, the work also has a strong link to Leonardo’s The Annunciation, and suggests he contributed more to the painting than has been understood in the past.
While here in the U.K. preparations are underway for the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla at the Abbey Church of Westminster on May 6, 2023, here’s another coronation scene painted c.1492.
The Coronation of the Virgin Mary is dated a couple of years after Domenico Ghirlandaio painted the Man of Sorrows which Leonardo referenced and applied as one of the identities to the figure of Jesus in The Last Supper.
In my previous post I stated Leonardo gave Ghirlandaio another role in The Last Supper, that of Judas.
What I hadn’t considered was that Leonardo may have sourced his image of Ghirlandaio from elsewhere. But today I happened to come across the Coronation of the Virgin and discovered the painting was a joint production by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli.
• To be continued, with an explanation of the iconography that connects the two heads, apart from any facial likeness.
The picture above shows two initials carved on the bark of a tree in woodland near to my home. The monogram’s message is clear-cut: K loves B.
It reminds me of a monogram associated with Leonardo da Vinci, formed by linking the letters L, D and V. But notice the emphasis on the letter D. What could be the explanation for the D’s dominance in the monogram?
Was Leonardo providing a cryptic clue to some form of friendship, a close bond, perhaps?
In his book Leonardo da Vinci, The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, Martin Kemp directs the reader to “Two imperfectly legible lines of writing on a torn sheet from 1478” that “suggest the kind of affectionate relationships he [Leonardo} established: ‘Fioravante di Domenico… in Florence is my most cherished companion, as though he were my…’”
Leonardo never completed the sentence written above the drawing of two heads facing each other, one being Leonardo, the other, presumably, Domenico. D for Domenico, L for Leonardo.
On this sheet the young Leonardo appears to be studying intensely the visage of he older man. A similar comparison can be made in Andrea del Verrocchio’s painting of the Baptism of Christ. Here we see Leonardo, as the angel in the forefront, gazing not at Jesus, but the head of Domenico Ghirlandaio depicted as John the Baptist.
The Baptism of Christ (1472-75) by Andrea del Verrochio, Uffizi, Florence.
There are other drawings by Leonardo that resemble the mysterious Domenico, seemingly toothless and ‘sour-faced’. Notice the lion (Leonardo?) on two of the illustrations.
Another and more detailed portrait of Domenico produced by Leonardo (shown below) is assumed to be a preliminary drawing for one of the twelve apostles, the Head of Judas, as featured in The Last Supper mural – or could it represent Peter as well? Both men betrayed Christ.
The Head of Judas (c.1495) by Leonardo da Vinci, Royal Collection Trust
So why would Leonardo want to define this particular Domenico – and if it is Ghirlandaio – as Judas, or even Peter, (bearing in mind my previous post stated that the figure of Christ also represented Ghirlandaio)?
Detail from Leonardo’s mural of The Last Supper, showing the Judas, Peter and John
• More about this in a future post. • Another post that relates to the LDV logo at this link. • And at this link, the man who anonymously ‘outed’ Leonardo da Vinci.
This is the right hand of God that appears in Fra Filippo Lippi’s painting of The Annunciation (London version) sending forth the Holy Spirit to overshadow the Virgin Mary so she may conceive and bear a son to be named Jesus.
In Leonardo da Vinci’s version of The Annunciation, the hand of God is also indicated, but visibly absent, and for a specific reason.
It was the finger of God that inscribed the two tablets of stone setting out his Law – The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments – for the people to live by, an event disguised by Leonardo as the window above the Virgin’s head.
The window frame can also be visualised in another way: The two tablets as representing the Old and New Testaments, and the scroll with its wing-shaped edge, as a roll cloud. The ledge above can be understood as another cloud formation, a ledge cloud. Both clouds can sometimes hint at a coming thunderstorm in their wake.
When Moses responded to God’s call from within a cloud on Mount Sinai he spent 40 days and nights on the mountain in the cloud and was eventually given the two stone tablets. After descending from Sinai he witnessed the people he had led out of Egypt dancing and worshiping a calf made of gold. In anger, Moses smashed the tablets on the ground. The thunderstorm had broken and descended from the cloud. The dark area alongside the tablets in the window, and the unfurling shadow under the ledge represent the storm.
So the window is a cloud motif, and its connection to a storm and darkness points to an episode in Leonardo’s early life when, in April 1476, he was denounced to the Florentine authorities with four other men, accused of sodomy.
The letter of denunciation had been deposited in one of the city’s post boxes known as tambouri (drums). These holes in the wall or “holes of truth” were designed for the purpose of reporting misdemeanours and crimes.
The charges against Leonardo and the other men were eventually dropped, principally because the accuser had not signed the letter and remained anonymous.
Along with Leonardo, four other men were named: Bartolomeo di Pasquino, a goldsmith; Lionardo Tornabuoni, from a noble family connected to the Medici; a tailor named Baccino; and a young man said to be a male prostitute, Jacopo Saltarelli.
Two months later another anonymous accusation against Leonardo was posted in a tamburo, and again, the charge was dropped for the same reason as previous.
Now Leonardo’s window takes on a new identity. It becomes a “hole of truth”, a tamburo, The two tablets represent the two denunciations, unsigned; the scroll, the written accusation.Hence the reason for the absent visible hand of God in the painting.
That the last charge was not made until June 1476 is helpful in dating Leonardo’s Annunciation painting. It could not have been started until, at the earliest later, in the same year.
Having shone the light on the accusations, Leonardo proceeded to identify in his painting those who were charged with sodomy – and also the two men he considered were responsible for writing and placing the accusation in the tamburo – two notable artists, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli.
Not knowing at the time of the charges who his accuser was, Leonardo implied an alternative meaning to the cloud motif – an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in the 14th century known as “The Cloud of Unknowing”. It’s placed in the window and paired with an earlier work from the late fourth century penned by Augustine of Hippo and generally referred to as “Confessions”. Augustine also wrote on a similar theme of unknowing as in The Cloud.
When introducing Leonardo’s father Piero, an established notary in Florence, Nicholl describes Piero’s notarial insignia as “a kind of trademark – not unlike a printer’s device – can be seen on a contract dated November 1458. It is hand drawn, and shows a cloud with a letter P in it…”
The window scroll is the reference to notary, while Leonardo has utilised the left side and bottom edges of the window frame to represent the letter L and the first letter of his full name which was Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Leonardo, son of ser Piero da Vinci).
It is here that Leonardo laid the ground to reference the Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit (the Spirit being the winged edge of the scroll) to make a connection to Sandro Botticelli and another painting by Fra Filippo Lippi, The Vision of St Augustine. Botticelli served as an apprentice under Fra Filippo.
Like his father, a notary, Leonardo recorded in notebooks many of his observations and discoveries, a type of biography or confession of his life. The two stones in the window are also a reference to his early notebooks.
While Leonardo may never have made any handwritten record of his dark times being brought before the courts accused of sodomy, or if he did, they are are either lost or still to be discovered, his painting of The Annunciation paradoxically records his Denunciation, and is a visible record to his accusers and one which both Botticelli and Ghirlandaio parodied in later paintings of their own.
Botticelli, in particular, went on to further suggest that Leonardo may have fallen from grace again a few years later before he left Florence and moved to Milan, but in different circumstances,
C A T C H L I G H T 
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