The Shadow Drawing: How Science Taught Leonardo How to Paint

by Francesca Fiorani

Overview

"[The Shadow Drawing] reorients our perspective, distills a life and brings it into focus—the very work of revision and refining that its subject loved best." —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times | Editors' Choice

An entirely new account of Leonardo the artist and Leonardo the scientist, and why they were one and the same man

Leonardo da Vinci has long been celebrated for his consummate genius. He was the painter who gave us the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and the inventor who anticipated the advent of airplanes, hot air balloons, and other technological marvels. But what was the connection between Leonardo the painter and Leonardo the scientist? Historians of Renaissance art have long supposed that Leonardo became increasingly interested in science as he grew older and turned his insatiable curiosity in new directions. They have argued that there are, in effect, two Leonardos—an artist and an inventor.

In this pathbreaking new interpretation, the art historian Francesca Fiorani offers a different view. Taking a fresh look at Leonardo’s celebrated but challenging notebooks, as well as other sources, Fiorani argues that Leonardo became familiar with advanced thinking about human vision when he was still an apprentice in a Florence studio—and used his understanding of optical science to develop and perfect his painting techniques. For Leonardo, the task of the painter was to capture the interior life of a human subject, to paint the soul. And even at the outset of his career, he believed that mastering the scientific study of light, shadow, and the atmosphere was essential to doing so. Eventually, he set down these ideas in a book—A Treatise on Painting—that he considered his greatest achievement, though it would be disfigured, ignored, and lost in subsequent centuries.

Ranging from the teeming streets of Florence to the most delicate brushstrokes on the surface of the Mona Lisa, The Shadow Drawing vividly reconstructs Leonardo’s life while teaching us to look anew at his greatest paintings. The result is both stirring biography and a bold reconsideration of how the Renaissance understood science and art—and of what was lost when that understanding was forgotten.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374261962
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	685,072
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Francesca Fiorani is a professor of art history at the University of Virginia, where she has served as associate dean for arts and humanities and chair of the art department. A leading authority on Renaissance art and the application of computer technology to the humanities, she is the creator of the Leonardo da Vinci and His Treatise on Painting digital platform and the author of The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography, and Politics in Renaissance Italy.

Table of Contents

Prologue 3

Part I How Science Taught Leonardo How to Paint

1 The Right Place at the Right Time 19

2 Brunelleschi's Dome, Verrocchio's Palla, and Leonardo's Eye 39

3 Body and Soul 57

Part II How Leonardo Painted

4 Landscapes à la Leonardo and the First Solo Painting 81

5 The Painting of the Young Bride-to-Be 104

6 The Unfinished Painting 123

7 The Virgin of the Rocks 146

Part III How Leonardo Taught the Science of Art

8 The Idea of a Book on Painting 165

9 Why the Last Supper Fell to Pieces 191

10 Why the Mona Lisa Was Never Finished 205

Part IV How Leonardo's Science of Art Was Lost and Found

11 The Heir 233

12 The Biographer and the Doctored Book 250

13 The Best Editor, an Obsessed Painter, and a Printed Book 272

Epilogue 295

Notes 303

Acknowledgments 351

Index 355

Editorial Reviews

11/23/2020

Fiorani (The Marvel of Maps), an art historian at the University of Virginia, provides new insight into the work of Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci in this fresh assessment. She examines Leonardo’s training in the Florence workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio and his study of the science of optics before moving on to a technical analysis of Leonardo’s major works, showing how he applied his scientific learning when creating The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. Using information gleaned from infrared reflectography and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy done on Leonardo’s paintings, Fiorani leads readers through the artist’s tortuous re-working of his art. “The secret of the Mona Lisa’s smile,” she notes, is created by the application of “multiple layers of colors and varnishes with low atomic density.” It also becomes clear that Leonardo “understood that the subtlest change of heart or mind involuntarily triggered an alteration in the appearance of bodies and faces” and thus saw painting as “a technique for revealing the human soul.” This beautifully written work is underpinned by immense scholarship; art lovers and historians will not be able to put it down. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"[Fiorani] makes [her argument] with fresh force and pitches it against the misconception that Leonardo abandoned painting for science in his later years . . . when she loses herself in looking, the book achieves fluency and power. She notes the traces of the azure paint on the throat of the “Mona Lisa” and wonders if it is responsible for giving us the sense of seeing her pulse. Or take the bravura section on “The Last Supper,” in which she explains how the painting exists in two time frames, with several characters making gestures that will mark them in the future." —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

"Through a series of close studies of paintings, Ms. Fiorani demonstrates how Leonardo explored light and shadow in a range of challenging subjects. She builds up the reader’s knowledge of what can be an abstruse and highly mathematical field through detailed and lively considerations of individual art works. Her study of the unfinished “Adoration of the Magi” (1481), is particularly compelling." —Cammy Brothers, The Wall Street Journal

"[Francesca Fiorani] provides new insight into the work of Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci in this fresh assessment . . . This beautifully written work is underpinned by immense scholarship; art lovers and historians will not be able to put it down." —Publishers Weekly

"University of Virginia art historian Fiorani’s sparkling second book explores how Leonardo’s love of science informed his art. Intimately capturing the artistic, religious, and cultural landscape of Leonardo’s world, the author traces his development as an artist from his early apprenticeship days to the lessons he learned as he painted his greatest works and up to his posthumous legacy . . . Fiorani effectively describes Leonardo’s experiments with paints that allowed him to 'achieve an astounding variety of optical effects'." —Kirkus Reviews

“In this insightful and beautiful book, the great Leonardo scholar Francesca Fiorani connects his studies of optics with his painting. It’s a wonderful study of how Leonardo’s art and science were interwoven—which should be an inspiration to us all.” —Walter Isaacson, author of Leonardo da Vinci

"Francesca Fiorani’s lively intellectual adventure gives us a new understanding and appreciation of Leonardo’s ingenious cross-fertilization of art and science. It is a perceptive biography of Leonardo exploring the frontiers of science, but also a brilliantly informative guide to his paintings—many of which I will now enjoy seeing again with Fiorani’s fresh insights in mind.” —Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome, Leonardo and the Last Supper, and Mad Enchantment

"Francesca Fiorani’s book makes an effective contribution towards demolishing the false notion of two Leonardos—one the artist , the other the scientist. Fiorani masterfully shows how science enabled the young Leonardo to take Renaissance painting to an unprecedented level of perfection. No matter how many books about Leonardo you might have read, this one is not to be missed. It will shape your understanding of his beautiful mind’s all-encompassing vision of art, nature, and man." —Paolo Galluzzi, director, Museo Galileo, Florence

From the Publisher

2020-10-13
The science of light and shadow illuminates Leonardo da Vinci’s revolutionary art.

University of Virginia art historian Fiorani’s sparkling second book explores how Leonardo’s love of science informed his art. Intimately capturing the artistic, religious, and cultural landscape of Leonardo’s world, the author traces his development as an artist from his early apprenticeship days to the lessons he learned as he painted his greatest works and up to his posthumous legacy. In his book The Lives, Giorgio Vasari’s influential portrait of Leonardo “discredited” Leonardo’s “science of art,” ruining Leonardo’s reputation for years. Throughout, Fiorani’s detailed attention to Leonardo’s notebooks show how much his interests in art and science were interwoven. He produced a handful of paintings, many unfinished, but some 4,100 notebook pages filled with notations, sketches, and technical and shadow drawings. The author notes that in his late 30s, Leonardo’s interest in the world of art shifted to focus on science and philosophy, especially optics and the “subtle pattern of shadows” on objects. His earliest works were studies of drapery, and his innovative Florentine teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio, taught him to “carefully observe each fold and to capture the effect of shifting light.” Fiorani effectively describes Leonardo’s experiments with paints that allowed him to “achieve an astounding variety of optical effects” in his first solo painting, the Annunciation. With his “stunning” portrait Ginevra, he aspired to capture not just a young woman’s beauty, but also her soul and a “new way of painting.” Adoration, which he left unfinished, “forced him to rethink what he knew and did not know about the science of optics” while Virgin of the Rocks was a “masterpiece of optics.” Last Supper, which began to deteriorate shortly after he finished it, is “perhaps the saddest example of Leonardo pushing experimentation too far.” Mona Lisa remained unfinished as well.

An absorbing inquiry into a legendary artist and his techniques.

Kirkus Reviews