Leonardo and the Last Supper (55 page)

Chapter 4

1
Leonardo’s record of his purchase is found in the
Codex Atlanticus
, folio 104 r-a. For a discussion, see Carlo Pedretti,
Leonardo: Studies for the Last Supper from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle
(Florence: Electa, 1983), 137. Leonardo’s list of books is found in the
Codex Atlanticus
, folio 210r.

2
The Gospel accounts of the Last Supper are found in Matthew 26:1–29; Mark 14:1–25; Luke 22:1–30; and John 13:1–30.

3
Eusebius of Caesarea,
History of the Church
, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds.,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 1982), 153.

4
Quoted in R. Alan Culpeper,
John, the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 167.

5
Georgina Rosalie Galbraith,
The Constitution of the Dominican Order
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925), 118.

6
Patrick Barry, trans., “The Rule of Saint Benedict,” in
Wisdom from the Monastery: The Rule of Saint Benedict for Everyday Life
(Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2005), 59.

7
Giovanni Battista Giraldi, quoted in Martin Clayton,
Leonardo da Vinci: The Divine and the Grotesque
(London: Royal Collection, 2002), 130.

8
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §571.

9
Leonardo da Vinci,
Treatise on Painting
, vol. 1, ed. A. Philip McMahon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 55.

10
Quoted in Richard C. Trexler,
Public Life in Renaissance Florence
(Ithaca: Cornell Paperbacks, 1991), 461.

11
Quoted in Trevor Dean,
The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle Ages
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 123.

12
For the benches and bench sitters in Renaissance Florence I am indebted to Yvonne Elet, “Seats of Power: The Outdoor Benches of Early Modern Florence,”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
61 (December 2002): 444–69.

13
Quoted in Elet, “Seats of Power,” 451. The anecdote of Leonardo and the bench sitters at the Palazzo Spini is found in “Leonardo da Vinci by the Anonimo Gaddiano,” in Goldscheider, 32.

14
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §594.

15
Pedretti has suggested that this sketch is Leonardo’s “earliest idea for a Last Supper.” See
Leonardo: Studies for
“The Last Supper”
from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle
, 32.

16
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §§601, 602.

17
Ibid., vol. 1, §608.

18
Ibid., vol. 1, §§665, 666.

19
McMahon, ed.,
Treatise on Painting
, vol. 1, §248.

Chapter 5

1
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §509.

2
Quoted in Cecilia M. Ady,
A History of Milan Under the Sforza
(London: Methuen, 1907), 259.

3
Quoted in Paolo Galluzzi, ed.,
Leonardo da Vinci: Engineer and Architect
(Montreal: Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1987), 6.

4
Quoted in Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 119.

5
McMahon, ed.,
Treatise on Painting
, vol. 1, 37.

6
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
, 267.

7
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §494.

8
Ibid., vol. 2, §1344.

9
Ibid., vol. 2, §1460.

10
On Masini, see Scipione Ammirato,
Opuscoli
, vol. 2 (Florence, 1637), 242; Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 2, 377 and 383; and Nicholl, 141–45. For Leonardo’s opposition to alchemists and necromancers: Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §§1207, 1208 and 1213.

11
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1459.

12
Ibid., vol. 2, §1461.

13
See Gene A. Brucker,
The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 2.

14
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1547.

15
Ibid., vol. 2, §1384.

16
Ibid., vol. 2, §1517.

17
Ibid., vol. 2, §1522.

18
Quoted in Stephen D. Bowd,
Venice’s Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaissance Brescia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 135.

19
Quoted in Sharon T. Strocchia, “Death Rites and the Ritual Family in Renaissance Florence,” in
Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence
, ed. Marcel Tetel, Ronald G. Witt, and Rona Goffen (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), 121.

20
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §494.

21
Richard A. Goldthwaite,
The Economy of Renaissance Florence
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 373.

22
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1458.

23
Ibid., vol. 2, §1458.

24
Ibid., vol. 2, §1458.

25
Pedretti notes that these sentences are not in Leonardo’s handwriting. See
Commentary
, vol. 1, 342.

26
Goldthwaite,
The Economy of Renaissance Florence
, 371.

27
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1458.

28
Ibid., vol. 2, §§1516 and 1534.

29
Ibid., vol. 2, §1525.

30
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
, 265.

31
See Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 217.

32
Quoted in Carlo Pedretti,
Leonardo: A Study in Chronology and Style
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), 141.

33
Brucker,
The Society of Renaissance Florence
, 190.

34
Quoted in John M. Najemy,
A History of Florence, 1200–1575
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 247.

35
Villata, ed.,
Documenti
, 7–8.

36
Peter and Linda Murray,
The Art of the Renaissance
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1963), 230.

37
Sigmund Freud, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood,” in
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works
, vol. 11 (London: Hogarth Press, 1968), 71.

38
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1383.

39
Quoted in Richard C. Trexler,
Public Life in Renaissance Florence
(Ithaca: Cornell Paperbacks, 1991), 389.

40
The letter is reproduced in Villata, ed.,
Documenti
, 11–12. For a good discussion of Paolo, see Nicholl,
Leonardo da Vinci
, 131–32.

41
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
, 256.

42
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §680.

43
Giraldi, quoted in Clayton,
Leonardo da Vinci: The Divine and the Grotesque
, 130.

44
Cennino Cennini,
The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini
, trans. Christiana J. Herringham (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1899), 9 and 11.

45
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §§614, 616 and 617.

46
For the rarity of this technique, see A. E. Popham,
The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1946), 7.

47
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §368.

48
See Paola Tinagli,
Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 48–49.

49
Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 2, 380.

50
For a discussion of this sheet, see Martin Kemp,
Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design
(London: V&A Publications, 2006), 3–6.

51
Pietro C. Marani, “Leonardo’s
Last Supper
,” in
Leonardo:
“
The Last Supper
,” trans. Harlow Tighe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 8.

52
Cennini,
The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini
, 29.

53
Quoted in Carmen C. Bambach, “Leonardo, Left-handed Draftsman and Writer,” in
Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman
, ed. Carmen C. Bambach (New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2003), 32.

54
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §110; Popham,
The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
, 10. The only evidence for Leonardo having a maimed right hand is the statement of Antonio de Beatis, the secretary of Cardinal Luigi of Aragon, made after a visit to Leonardo in France in October 1517, that “a certain paralysis has crippled his right hand.” Noting this evidence, Popham does go on to state that there is no reason why Leonardo’s left-handedness should not have been natural.

55
See Bambach, “Leonardo, Left-handed Draftsman and Writer,” 51.

56
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle,
Senses of Touch: Human Dignity and Deformity from Michelangelo to Calvin
(Leiden: Brill, 1998), 212.

57
Riccardo Gatteschi, ed.,
Vita da Raffaello da Montelupo
(Florence: Polistampa, 1998), 120–21. It is Raffaello who writes that Michelangelo was originally left-handed, the only known source for this claim.

Chapter 6

1
The Memoirs of Philip de Commines
, 153.

2
Quoted in Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 257.

3
Setton,
The Papacy and the Levant
, vol. 3, 474.

4
Quoted in Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 255.

5
Commines,
Memoirs
, 155.

6
Quoted in Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 266.

7
Guicciardini,
The History of Italy
, 86.

8
Ibid., 88.

9
Ibid., 108.

10
Quoted in Samuel Lane, “A Course of Lectures on Syphilis,”
Lancet
, 13 November 1841, 220.

11
Quoted in Katherine Crawford,
European Sexualities, 1400–1800
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 130.

12
Montorfano’s fresco is signed and dated 1495. For the argument that the two paintings were begun at the same time, see Creighton Gilbert, “Last Suppers and their Refectories,” in Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman, eds.,
The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion
(Leiden: Brill, 1974), 380.

13
Jacob Burckhardt,
Italian Renaissance Painting According to Genres
(Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2005), 120.

14
Quoted in Creighton, “Last Suppers and their Refectories,” 382.

15
Vasari,
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects
, vol. 3, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (London: Philip Lee Warner, 1912–14), 188–89.

16
Evelyn Samuels Welch, “New Documents for Vincenzo Foppa,”
The Burlington Magazine
, vol. 27 (May 1985): 296.

17
Commines,
Memoirs
, 174.

18
Ibid., 179.

19
Ibid., 183.

20
Quoted in Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 268.

21
Quoted in Setton,
The Papacy and the Levant
, vol. 3, 490.

22
Quoted in Pastor,
History of the Popes
, vol. 5, 472.