My old friend – Leonardo da Vinci

I have known Leonardo for many years, since childhood, probably more than forty five years. He’s not here to ask, and would not know. Ours has been a friendship across time and place and disciplines and interests. These have been both similar and disparate at various stages, marvelling together at ingenuity and science when I was a child, and marvelling again here today. In between, we have been somewhat ephemeral, with Leonardo having a mythical status in my pantheon of influences, and my engagement with his body of work being fleeting and light for many years. Yet, as soon as I read about this exhibition of his work, I committed, I purchased, I planned, and I am here. Now. Today. This morning. Here, to greet and acknowledge one of my oldest friends. 

Growing up in a Catholic family, with all the associated influences and conversation topics in my upbringing, is the starting point for our friendship. The Pope, changing at various stages in my childhood, and Rome and the Vatican were regularly in our conversations. Family members, cousins and aunts in particular, were members of various orders of nuns and we also had a few priests in various branches of the tree. Not as many as some families, suggesting some of the greater relative prosperity which our families had enjoyed, on both paternal and maternal sides. 

In childhood, I was often on the edges of adult conversations about Pope and Rome, about the grandeur of the Vatican – which some had seen on various travels. Mention of the Sistine Chapel, the great roof painted by Michelangelo – these were the topics which sent me away to books and encyclopedias. No computers for research in my childhood. My mother was as close as I got, as she had a mine of information, it seemed to me, about so much which I was curious about. All these years later, I wonder if she had this vast knowledge, or whether my curiosity was answered cleverly by her with her relatively immense knowledge. 

Neighbours, a select few of wisdom and knowledge, plus my uncle genial W, my mother’s brother – a man who knew the real names of the Popes, where they came from, and how the Catholic Church had changed after Vatican 2. What fascination, what a wonderful periscope I had access to. 

Mists of time allow me to imagine more of the detail, as there is no specific certainty about where and when and for what reasons we became friends. My research about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel seems to have taken me to the world of great Italian artists, the Renaissance, and of course to an individual of ‘unquenchable curiosity’ and ‘feverish inventive imagination.’ This was Leonardo da Vinci, the incomparable. 

From the grandeur of The Last Supper, Vitruvian Man, Salvator Mundi. To reading about the breadth of his disciplines, his genius perhaps, the fame of the Mona Lisa. All there, in the heady merging of childhood and early youth, many years, many conversations, many dreamy imaginings of the art and science which this bearded genius brought forth. 

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The creativity of Leonardo da Vinci is very evident from the first section of his exhibition, here in the Louvre. Celebrating the 500th anniversary of his death in France, this exhibition has brought together so much of his life’s work. Previously unseen, lesser seen, certainly rarely seen together. It has taken over ten years to curate, it lasts for four months, and I’m here, to see and to view and to indulge and to absorb. 

Light, shade, relief – the title of this first section, at the beginning of the exhibition. They are here to highlight the beginning of his instruction during his apprenticeship with Andrea del Verrocchio. The sculpture of Christ and Saint Thomas is dramatically lit, its shade and light providing a perfect introduction to Leonardo’s  own view of art, namely that space and form only exist in the interplay between light and shade. 

His curiosity, to connect art with movement, and movement with reality, seems everchanging and impermanent, yet timeless. Here I am, viewing his work over 500 years since his career began. This curiosity, this sense of  connection between light and shade, resonate with my approach to writing, describing to create a sense of space and emotion for readers to climb on board and explore themselves. My obsession is with the subjectivity of reality. I’m drawn into experiencing what is around us, and seeking to describe this for others to share my experience in their own way. Reality, perception, context, ever-changing and ever-same. 

There we have similarities, and I begin to realise the connection which we have shared for these years, these decades, without either of us being able to give a description to this. The strap line for Listening, which is in draft, talks of “Darkness, light, the shadows and brightness between” – is completely at home with this section. Shining light on why we became friends in my childhood also. 

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As I wander along, I’m quietly delighted that descriptors on all the exhibition items are faithfully replicated in the hand held catalogue. This allows me to build my own relationship with every aspect, to stand in my own ground, to see then read, or see then read then see again through revised eyes. 

Section three of four deals with much of Leonardo’s more scientific work. Its where Vitruvian Man features. In this section, there are many journals. They shine forth in their own right, works as part of his research and his artistic development and his curiosity and his intellectual capacity. This section answers an important yet unvoiced question in my head about the role of my journals and the role of pen and paper in the technological era. Leonardo’s journals speak far more eloquently and far more resonantly to me than any of the infrared reflectograms which are technology-enabled ways to see some of the preparatory work for various of his paintings. The old technology of pen and paper shines through., artistry and communication together.

In the fourth and final section, the extent of his preparation work for some of his great works – Salvator Mundi, Saint Anne, Saint John the Baptist – are wonderfully inspiring. So much of the technical understanding from his journals and scientific knowledge is apparently cast aside as I viewed these sketches and drawings in different media. Yet, their life-like nature and sense of movement, reality, play out in ways which are underpinned by his knowledge. They would not be the work of the Renaissance Man without such underpinnings. 

Inspiration flows forth, through and within me. I breathe this all in. I stretch tall, standing in myself, looking forward and out and within. Immense and immeasurable already, my trip to Paris, to connect with my old friend. Leonardo da Vinci. 

And, serendipity exponentially, my Airbnb host is also Leonardo.

I smile, and choose a Taschen book to round off my visit here, inspired by the quote attributed to Leonardo, in the front sleeve, oft heard and yet so fresh again today:

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back 
and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

The day lays ahead still. Next, to second breakfast, then the rest of the Louvre. What a day already, what a day ahead.