Page 288 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

We know that Leonardo executed a "presentation" 190 those of a Circassian slave girl or a Venetian
drawing (now lost) of Neptune for the Florentine courtesan.
Antonio Segni, a patron of Botticelli. The purpose Albrecht Diirer The Portrait of a Young Venetian Lady in
of the present image (Windsor 12496) is not docu- Nuremberg, 1471-1528 Vienna was painted during Diirer's second Italian
mented, but its high degree of resolution and the PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG VENETIAN LADY trip, which he started in the summer of 1505,
virtuoso handling of the red chalk suggest that it returning to Nuremberg in January 1507. The
was also intended to be "presented" to a patron. 1505 young woman is portrayed against a black back-
As a unique survival of such a sheet in Leonardo's oil on panel ground, her golden hair bound with a fillet made
oeuvre, it is not easy to place in the chronology of 32.5 X 24.5 (l2 /4 X 9 /SJ of fine metal thread. Her necklace is of white
5
3
his drawings, but the characterization of the tur- references: Panofsky 1943, 116, fig. 159; Levey 1961, pearls and biconal metal beads. She is dressed in a
bulent water suggests a late date, perhaps about 512, fig. 29 (also 27-28); Anzelewsky 1971, 187, no. low-necked gown of velvet or silk embellished
1515-1516. A similar compass had earlier been 92, pi. 94; Nuremberg 1971, 286, no. 531, color pi.; with gold braid in a lattice pattern. Two bows tie
illustrated by Leonardo on a sheet of emblems Strieder 1982, 116, fig. 131 the sleeve to the bodice. One of them appears to
(Windsor 12701, c. 1508), where it signifies Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna, Gemaldegalerie be of black silk; the other was not finished by the
unswerving purpose: "He does not deviate who artist. The compositional formula that Diirer used
is attached to such a star." The star in the earlier Diirer first travelled to Venice in 1494-1495 to here has many affinities with that of two Vene-
emblem contains the fleur-de-lys of the French familiarize himself with the achievements of the tian portraits, now lost, which were attributed to
monarchs. It is not difficult to recognize the kind Italian Renaissance. There he became interested in Giovanni Bellini in 1627 when they were in the
of meaning the strange narrative of the wolf and the works of Andrea Mantegna and Antonio Pol- Vendramin Collection in Venice. The similarity of
eagle was intended to convey. It can be related to laiuolo, and especially in their reintegration of the costumes in these pictures to that worn by
printed and literary images in which animals and classical forms and classical subject matter. On Diirer's sitter negates the old but still prevalent
objects are used as symbols of prominent persons this trip Diirer also sketched Alpine valleys and hypothesis that the lady in Diirer's portrait is
or entities, set within allegorical compositions North Italian towns, Venetian ladies and orientals, dressed in the Milanese fashion. It is hardly sur-
that convey political messages. However, the spe- exotic animals, and details from Italian paintings. prising that Diirer was influenced by Bellini, as he
cific allusions in this drawing remain elusive, and He was particularly interested, it seems, in the always planned his travels with the aim of making
numerous interpretations have been suggested. costumes of the people he encountered, such as contact with the most stimulating personalities
The most straightforward reading is to identify
the wolf with the pope (Leo x), the eagle with the
French king (Francis i), the boat with the navis
ecclesiae (ship of the church), and the tree-mast
(albero means both 'tree' and 'mast' in Italian)
with the olive of peace. The narrative would then
allude to Francis' ambitions to become Holy
Roman Emperor and to Leo's policy of steering
the "ship of the church" by the light of the king.
Their shared aspirations were expressed in their
famous concordat of 1515, and were represented in
the visual arts in Raphael's Coronation of Charle-
magne in the Vatican, in which the key roles of
emperor and pope are played by Francis and Leo
respectively. In 1515 Leonardo was resident in the
Vatican, and he was shortly to enter the service
of Francis.
Even in a composition that depends so much
upon the artist's fantasia, the characterization of
the components is full of his searching observa-
tions of natural forms and phenomena. Not the
least remarkable of these is the impressionistic
rendering of the tree leaves, which is related to
some of Leonardo's later notes intended for his
treatise on painting in which he discusses the
appearance of trees at various distances and under
various lighting conditions. The marine compass
in this and the related drawing (Windsor
12701) appear to be the earliest representations of
this navigational instrument (Francis Maddison,
personal communication, December 20,1990).
M.K.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 287