Read Leonardo and the Last Supper Online
Authors: Ross King
36
Luke Syson, “The Rewards of Service: Leonardo da Vinci and the Duke of Milan,” in Syson et al.,
Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan
(London: National Gallery, 2011), 36.
37
Quoted in Martin Kemp, “Dissection and Divinity in Leonardo’s Late Anatomies,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
35 (1972): 211.
38
Kemp, “Dissection and Divinity,” 212.
39
Quoted in Syson, “The Rewards of Service,” 23.
40
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1209.
41
Ibid., vol. 2, §1296.
42
Quoted in Gordon Griffiths, “Leonardo Bruni and the 1431 Florentine Complaint Against Indulgence-Hawkers: A Case-Study in Anticlericalism,” in Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, eds.,
Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
(Leiden: Brill, 1993), 133.
43
See my
The Fantasia of Leonardo da Vinci: His Riddles, Jests, Fables and Bestiary
(Delray Beach, FL: Levenger Press, 2010).
44
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1284.
Chapter 11
1
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §§1434 and 1444.
2
Leonardo’s word list is found in the
Codex Trivulzianus
, held in the Biblioteca del Castello Sforza in Milan.
3
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §10.
4
Ibid., vol. 2, §§1448, 1488, 1496, 1501, and 1448.
5
Ibid., vol. 2, §1469. The equal balance between scientific and literary books is noted by Martin Kemp: see “Science and the Poetic Impulse,” 95. Kemp’s caveat is worth bearing in mind: Leonardo’s list of books does not necessarily provide “a complete or even a balanced record of what he read and owned,” and “the ownership of a book should not be taken as evidence that its owner has read it” (ibid.).
6
For the second list, see Ladislao Reti, “Two Unpublished Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, Part II,”
The Burlington Magazine
110 (February 1968): 81–91.
7
These purchases are recorded in the
Codex Atlanticus
, folio 90v.
8
On Leonardo’s involvement in recruiting Pacioli to Milan, see R. Emmett Taylor,
No Royal Road: Luca Pacioli and His Times
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942), 206.
9
Quoted in John Henry Bridges, ed.,
The “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon
(Oxford: Williams and Norgate, 1900), vol. 1, xxv.
10
Quoted in Taylor,
No Royal Road
, 321, 320, and 283.
11
Quoted in Carlo Ginzburg,
The Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca
, trans. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper (London: Verso, 2000), 89.
12
On these monikers, see Michael J. Fischer, “Luca Pacioli on Business Profits,”
Journal of Business Ethics
25 (2000): 299.
13
Kenneth Clark and Carlo Pedretti, eds.,
The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle
, 3 vols. (London: Phaidon, 1969), vol. 3, p. 47.
14
Leonardo da Vinci: The Madrid Codices
, vol. 5:
Transcription and Translation of Codex Madrid II
, ed. and trans. Ladislao Reti (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 8.
15
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1444.
16
See the discussion in Jeremy Parzen, “Please Play with Your Food: An Incomplete Survey of Culinary Wonders in Italian Renaissance Cookery,”
Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture
4 (Fall 2004): 26–27.
De viribus quantitatis
exists in a single manuscript in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.
17
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
, 269.
18
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §343.
19
Vitruvius,
Ten Books on Architecture
, 73.
20
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1471.
21
Vitruvius,
Ten Books on Architecture
, 72.
22
For references to Trezzo and Caravaggio, see Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 234, 236, 239, 244, and 254.
23
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §§310, 324, and 343.
24
Vitruvius,
Ten Books on Architecture
, 72.
25
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §396.
26
For good discussions of Pacioli’s thought on divine proportion, see Alberto Pérez-Gómez,
“The Glass Architecture of Luca Pacioli,” in
Chora: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture
, vol. 4, ed. Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcell (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2003), 245–86; and Mario Livio,
The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the Extraordinary Number of Nature, Art and Beauty
(London: REVIEW, 2002), 128–37.
27
Pacioli’s first quote is from his dedication in the 1509 edition of
De divina proportione
, the second from his unpublished manuscript of
De viribus quantitatis
.
28
R. D. Archer-Hind, ed.,
The Timaeus of Plato
(London: Macmillan, 1888), 193 and 197.
29
Quoted in Kemp,
Marvellous Works
, 135.
30
Pacioli’s description of Leonardo’s illustrations comes from the introduction to the edition of
On Divine Proportion
printed in Venice in 1509.
31
Quoted in Livio,
The Golden Ratio
, 131.
32
See George Markowsky, “Misconceptions about the Golden Ratio,”
College Mathematics Journal
23 (January 1992): 2–19; Livio,
The Golden Ratio
, 72–75; and Keith Devlin, “The Myth That Will Not Go Away,”
Mathematical Association of America
(May 2007), available online at
www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_07.html
.
33
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1157.
34
Ibid., vol. 2, §1504.
35
David Bergamini,
Mathematics
(New York: Time-Life, 1963), 96.
36
Matila Ghyka,
The Geometry of Art and Life
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1946), 98. For a good survey of the golden section—and lack thereof—in Leonardo’s work, see Livio,
The Golden Ratio
, 162–66; and Markowsky, “Misconceptions,” 10–11.
37
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §827.
38
Livio,
The Golden Ratio
, 134–35; Vitruvius,
Ten Books on Architecture
, 73.
39
The Prince
, 49.
40
Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 237 and 245.
41
Villata, ed.,
Documenti
, 93.
42
See Nicholl,
Leonardo da Vinci
, 300–301. On annual salaries, see Gene A. Brucker,
The Society of Renaissance Florence
, 2.
43
Baxandall,
Painting and Experience
, 8.
44
For examples of Florentine real estate prices, see Patricia Lee Rubin,
Image and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 6.
45
For Leonardo’s portrait of Nani, see Irma A. Richter, ed.,
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 329. On Leonardo’s plans for his altarpiece: Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 387–88.
46
Villata, ed.,
Documenti
, 94.
47
Commines,
Memoirs
, 191.
48
Guicciardini,
The History of Italy
, 113.
49
Quoted in Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 295.
50
Quoted in ibid., 302.
51
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1560.
52
The spelling of the painting varies: the Louvre’s curators spell
ferronière
with a double
n
, virtually everyone else with a single
n
.
53
Zöllner,
Leonardo da Vinci
, 228.
54
Goldscheider,
Leonardo da Vinci
, 185.
55
See John Brewer,
The American Leonardo: A Tale of Obsession, Art, and Money
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Chapter 12
1
Dan Brown,
The Da Vinci Code
(New York: Doubleday, 2003), 243.
2
Michelle Pauli, “Vatican Appoints Official
Da Vinci Code
Debunker,”
Guardian
, 15 March 2005.
3
For the text of the Gospel of Philip and the other Nag Hammadi codices, see James M. Robinson, ed.,
The Nag Hammadi Library in English
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, and New York: Harper and Row, 1977), and subsequent reprints and revisions.
4
Brown,
The Da Vinci Code
, 246.
5
Voragine,
The Golden Legend
, vol. 1, 376 and 382.
6
Quoted in Katherine Ludwig Jansen, “Maria Magdalena:
Apostolorum Apostola
,” in
Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity
, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 57.
7
Phyllis Zagano and Thomas C. McGonigle,
The Dominican Tradition
(Collegeville, MN: Order of Saint Benedict, 2006), 2; Susan Haskins,
Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 135.
8
Jansen, “Maria Magdalena:
Apostolorum Apostola
,” 57.
9
Quoted in Katherine L. Jansen, “Like a Virgin: The Meaning of the Magdalen for Female Penitents of Later Medieval Italy,”
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
, vol. 45 (2000), 133.
10
Sarah Wilk, “The Cult of Mary Magdalene in Fifteenth-Century Florence and Its Iconography,”
Studi medievali
26 (1985): 685–98.
11
For the Aquinas quote and the Signorelli fresco, see Sara Nair James,
Signorelli and Fra Angelico at Orvieto: Liturgy, Poetry and a Vision of the End-Time
(Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2003), 57.
12
Among numerous other sources, see Laura Miller, “The Last Word: The Da Vinci Con,”
New York Times
, 22 February 2004.
13
Brown,
The Da Vinci Code
, 243.
14
Quoted in Richard Turner,
Inventing Leonardo
(London: Papermac, 1995), 110.
15
Quoted in Ernest Samuels,
Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Legend
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 215.
16
Nick Squires, “Mona Lisa ‘was a boy,’”
Daily Telegraph
, 2 February 2011.
17
See Antoinette LaFarge, “The Bearded Lady and the Shaven Man: Mona Lisa, Meet
Mona/Leo
,”
Leonardo
29 (1996): 379–83.
18
Nicholl,
Leonardo da Vinci
:
The Flights of the Mind
(London: Allen Lane, 2004), 469–70. For a history of the sketch, see ibid., n26 on p. 562.
19
“The ‘Angel in the Flesh,’”
Achademia Leonardi Vinci: Journal of Leonardo Studies and Bibliography of Vinciana
, ed. Carlo Pedretti, vol. 4 (Florence: Giunti, 1991), 35.
20
See Lorenzo Ghiberti,
I commentari
, ed. Ottavio Morisani (Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1947), 55.
21
On these issues, see Giancarlo Maiorini,
Leonardo da Vinci: The Daedalian Mythmaker
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 110.
22
See Luke Syson et al. ed.,
Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan
(London: National Gallery, 2011), 268.