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The Colors of Leonardo's Shadows

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The Colors of Leonardo's Shadows LEON4103_pp270-278.ps - 5/6/2008 2:06 PM The Colors of Leonardo’s Shadows ABSTRACT The author examines Leonardo da Vinci’s lifelong interest in the depiction of blurred, colored Francesca Fiorani shadows from the point of view of painting technique and optics. She analyzes Leonardo’s refinement of the oil technique to capture the instability of CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI colored shadows from the early Annunciation of 1472–1473 and examines the artist’s theoretical hadows have been fundamental to the art of which to my knowledge have not writings on shadows from the S 1490s onward. The author painting in the West, indeed inextricably connected to its been noticed before. The top and shows how Leonardo analyzed mythical origins. According to a story reported by Pliny and front of the lectern’s base present the blurred edges of colored repeated by countless authors, the first painting resulted from minor, albeit significant, differences shadows with the geometric tracing the outline of a shadow cast by a human figure on a in coloring, which can be attributed rigor that earlier authors wall. Later artists realized that the illusion of relief was created to Leonardo’s intention to repre- afforded only to the clear-cut edges of astronomical shadows. by adding internal shadows to the traced silhouette, and the sent the lectern’s orientation in re- She argues that the very kind depiction of shadows has since become a pictorial convention lation to the light sources of the of shadows that captured to suggest natural phenomena in painting [1]. painting. The top is yellowish, since Leonardo’s attention indicates No artist was more obsessed with shadows than Leonardo it is directly exposed to the red light his underlying pictorial con- (Figs 1 and 2). He painted the shadows that indicate model- cerns, despite the fact that of the late afternoon sun, while the his instructions often seemed ing, which he called “original shadows” (ombre originali). These relief-adorned front is bluish, since directed toward teaching a are the internal shadows that earlier painters such as Pietro it is exposed only to the indirect way of seeing rather than a Cavallini and Giotto had perfected and that earlier writers blue light of the sky. Leonardo must way of painting. such as Cennino Cennini had codified for workshop practice. have intensified these variations by But Leonardo also devoted endless attention to the colors that covering the image of the lectern shadows acquire by reflection from surrounding objects and with a varnish. His original varnish from their own light source, be it a candle, a window, the sky was lost long ago, but the existing varnish, which was applied or the sun. These reflected shadows, which he called “deriva- during an old and undocumented restoration, still effectively tive shadows” (ombre derivative), relate people and things to distinguishes the different colorings of the two surfaces. Placed each other, the viewer and the cosmos. Like Pliny, Leonardo prominently in the foreground, the lectern is a demonstration thought that “the first painting was only an outline that cir- piece of Leonardo’s skills in traditional and innovative picto- cumscribed the shadow of a man projected by the sun on a rial conventions. He carefully foreshortened the lectern, which wall” [2], but unlike that ancient author, who did not mention was inspired by a drawing or model from his master’s work- the light source of the shadow at the origins of painting, shop, according to the rules of linear perspective, thus demon- Leonardo explicitly stated that this ur-shadow was generated strating his mastery of that pillar of Renaissance painting. He by the sun. This added detail to the famous story is invaluable modeled in minute detail the lion’s-paw legs, acanthus leaves, in understanding Leonardo’s lifelong preoccupation with de- shells, volutes, garlands and rosettes to show his ability in us- picting the blurred, colored shadows generated outdoors by ing paint to suggest the three-dimensionality of sculpture, in- the combined light of the sun and the sky. deed to manifest visually the supremacy of painting over Leonardo’s earliest painting, the Annunciation of c. 1472– 1473, is justly famous for the depiction of outdoor shadows produced by the light of the setting sun, which casts its light Fig. 1. Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, oil on from the left side of the painting, and by the diffuse light of wood, 168 × 130 cm, 1508–1517 (detail) (Paris, Musée du Louvre. the sky, which spreads across the entire scene (Fig. 3) [3]. Photo: Daniel Arnaudet. Photo © Réunion des Musées Seated in the garden of her palace, Mary casts a blurred Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.) shadow against the building to the right and behind her. Gabriel, who is himself the messenger of a shadow—an- nouncing to Mary that the Holy Spirit will come upon her by overshadowing her—projects his silhouette on the grass. Mary’s drapery is shadowed with intense dark blues that match in modeling and tone the dark red shadows of Gabriel’s robe. Bluish shadows appear on the angel’s white shirt, while the at- mosphere and its reflections cause the blurring of outlines, features and colors in the background landscape. Internal shadows masterfully enhance the modeling of the marble base of Mary’s lectern. Mary’s lectern is remarkable also for its colored shadows, Francesca Fiorani (scholar, academic), Art Department, University of Virginia, PO Box 400130, Charlottesville, VA 22904, U.S.A. E-mail: <[email protected]>. ©2008 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 271–278, 2008 271 LEON4103_pp270-278.ps - 5/6/2008 2:06 PM Fig. 2. Leonardo da Vinci, studies of original and deriva- tive shadows generated by the atmosphere on a sphere placed between a window and a wall, pencil and ink, 0.213 × 0.148 CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI m, c. 1490. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Ash- burnham Codex, complement to MS A (2185), fols. 13v-14r. (Photo: René-Gabriel Ojéda. Photo © Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.) sculpture, which he later defended in his with yellow touches from the walls facing The shadows of bodies generated by the writings. He also painted colored shad- the viewer, which are bluish [4]. redness of the sun near the horizon are ows over the foreshortened and modeled Many years later, Leonardo wrote ex- always blue: and this is because of the 11th [proposition of the book on light form to place the lectern firmly on the tensively about the colored shadows that and shadow], where it is said: the surface painted surface through the representa- he had painted in the Annunciation and of any opaque object partakes the color tion of its lighting conditions. that had since become his innovative pic- of its object. Therefore, since the white- Similar colored shadows appear else- torial means of defining the location of ness of the wall is deprived of any color at all, it is tinged with the color of its ob- where in the Annunciation. The back- people and things in the atmosphere. In jects, which are, in this instance, the sun ground mountains are more yellowish on one written precept and its accompany- and the sky, because the sun reddens to- the side exposed to the sun’s rays and ing drawing, Why shadows cast by bodies on ward evening and the sky appears blue; more bluish on the opposite side, which white walls are blue at sunset, c. 1510 (Fig. and where on this wall the shadow does is illuminated by the sky. The gray walls 4), he explicitly equated the geometry of not see the sun, it will be seen by the sky, because of the 8th [proposition of the of the palace exposed to the sun are shadows with the geometry of reflected book] on shadows, which says: no lumi- slightly, but unmistakably, differentiated colors: nous body ever sees the shadows that it Fig. 3. Leonardo da Vinci, Annunciation, oil on wood, 98 × 217 cm, c. 1472–1473. (Florence, Uffizi Gallery. Photo © Scala/Art Resource, NY.) Leonardo depicted a full range of outdoor shadows: the cast shadows of Mary, Gabriel and of the lectern; the internal shadows of faces, draperies and the lectern; and the colored shadows of the lectern’s marble base, the angel’s robe and the background mountains. 272 Fiorani, The Colors of Leonardo’s Shadows LEON4103_pp270-278.ps - 5/6/2008 2:06 PM gether with a quantitative, or geometric, explanation, which was instead based on Euclidean optics. It is documented that, from the late 1480s onward, Leonardo read optical treatises and that he in- tended to write a book on light and shadow, to which he referred in this pre- cept. No evidence exists that Leonardo was familiar with Aristotelian natural phi- losophy or Euclidean and medieval op- CELEBRATING LEONARDO DA VINCI tics in the 1470s, and, as far as one can tell, the shadows of his Annunciation were based entirely on artistic practice. Early in his artistic career, Leonardo grasped the distinct advantages of the oil Fig. 4. A drawing after Leonardo illustrating his precept Why shadows cast by bodies on white technique over the traditional tempera walls are blue at sunset. From Trattato della Pittura (Rome: Stamperia de Romanis, 1817) table VI, fig. 37. Leonardo’s original drawing of c. 1510 is known only through this copy of c. 1550 in depicting the instability of shadows by Francesco Melzi for Book Three of his compilation. The drawing analyzes the colored and the effects of the atmosphere [7].
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