Page 274 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

Warrior in the British Museum (Popham 1946, posture. The painting he eventually undertook arrangements for the back of the wig. The visual
no. 129) — show the maturity and sophistication of portrayed her standing in a sinuous pose. The counterpoint between the free cascades of Leda's
the handling of this medium that he had achieved motif of the standing Leda was copied by Raphael own hair and the compact spirals of her wig recalls
by his late twenties. in or before 1507, either from a design or from his famous parallel between the motions of water
The unaffected directness and sensitivity of Leonardo's painting, whether finished or unfin- and the curling of hair: "Observe the motion of
Leonardo's characterization serve to counter- ished. The present drawing (Windsor 12516), with the surface of water, which resembles the behavior
balance his more familiar depiction of women as its almost obsessively rounded shading, can be of hair, which has two motions, of which one
ideal, remote, mysterious and unfathomable dated on stylistic grounds to circa 1505-1507. depends on the weight of the strands, the other on
beings —in keeping with the image of woman in The completed painting is the first and most the line of its revolving; thus water makes revolv-
Renaissance love poetry. It is therefore tempting highly valued item on the list made in 1525 of the ing eddies, one part of which depends upon the
to think that this sitter was a member of Leonar- possessions of the deceased Salai, who had been a
do's immediate circle or household. M.K. member of the master's household (Shell 1991).
It appears subsequently to have entered the collec-
tion of Francis i and was housed in his Apparte-
ments des Bains at Fontainebleau. There is no
1 7 2 definite record of the original painting during
Leonardo da Vinci the last two centuries, though numerous copies
Florentine, 1452-1519 and variants are known (such as those of Wilton
House and the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
STUDY FOR THE HEAD OF LEDA [ex-Spiridon]).
The main sketch on this sheet is very close to
c. 1505-1507 the head of Leda in the copies of the lost painting.
pen and brown ink over black chalk on paper The elaborately plaited hair —an extreme develop-
l
3
6
19.8 x 16.6 (7 /4 x /2J (irregular)
references: Clark and Pedretti 1968-1969, 12516; ment of the knotted styles favored by Leonardo's
London 1989, 5#; Shell 1991 master, Verrocchio — is in fact a wig. A note on
Windsor 12517 records that "this kind can be
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library, taken off and put on again without damaging it."
Windsor Castle Leda's own hair is visible at the forward margins
of the wig and spouting through the center of the
Leonardo's project for a painting on the theme of lateral whorls. As in the study of plants associated
Leda and the Swan first appears in drawings asso- with this painting (cat. 184), the intertwined ele-
ciated with the Battle of Anghiari around 1505, ments become the subject of interest in their own
when he was planning to show Leda in a kneeling right, and Leonardo experiments with various

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 273