16 |VisualArt BIRTH, SEX AND DEATH FRANCIS BACON’S TRAGIC VISION OF MANKIND Amajor exhibition in Paris spanning the final two decades of Bacon’s oeuvre makes clear the visceral autobiographical nature of the artist’s work

LARA MARLOWE inspirations and his late goal of recounting presented in aglass case inside adarkened Clytemnestra, who killed her husband, his own life, intertwined with the history of room. An actor’s voice reads excerpts, in Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter, the 20th century. The later paintings are English. Iphigenia. Bacon was fascinated by the tale, rancis Bacon met George Dyer, characterised by intense colours, including “It may be that Francis Bacon’s literary and by Eliot’s modern version in The the man he most painted and pinks, mauves, yellows and oranges, and a passion came from his Irish learning,” says Family Reunion. most desired, when Dyer, apetty more precise and spare style. Ottinger. “Ireland is the country of poets. Bacon used the Furies from Aeschylus to criminal from east London, “After the Paris exhibition Iamdeter- Yeats was fundamental for him.” symbolise the guilt that gnawed at him F dropped through the skylight of mined to get started on the painting of my Ottinger perceives “a profound affinity” about Dyer’s death. In 1988 he painted the Bacon’s mews house one night in 1963, autobiography,” Bacon said, referring to In among the six writers in their tragic sense Furies as surreal creatures resembling intending to commit robbery. Memory of George Dyer, his 1971 triptych. of history and Nietzschean philosophy, “by disembodied organs. The first seems to “You’re very clumsy for aburglar,” Bacon “I hope by means of this series to crystallise which Imean Dionysus and Apollo, form crouch over itself in pain and grief. Two allegedly told Dyer, who was 25 years his time, in the same way as Proust did in his and meaning, light and shadow, life and others are threatening and screaming junior. “Take your clothes off. Come into novels.” death, Eros and Thanatos, civilisation and human mouths mounted on neck-like my bed, and afterwards you can take Bacon was consumed by guilt about barbarianism.” stems. whatever you want to.” Dyer’s death. “Not an hour goes by, of In The Oresteia, Aeschylus’s trilogy of Bacon’s nightmarish orifices remind one Bacon’s tender and brutal relationship course, when Idon’t think about George,” tragic dramas, Orestes kills his mother, of the mouth that appears on Samuel with Dyer lasted eight years, until Dyer Bacon told his biographer Michael Beckett’s pitch-black stage in Not I. The died from an overdose of alcohol and Peppiatt. “I feel profoundly guilty about painter traced their inspiration to ascene in barbituates in their Paris hotel room, two his death. If Ihadn’t gone out, if I’d simply Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potem- days before Bacon’s retrospective was to stayed in and made sure he was all right, kin. “I hoped to make the best painting of a open at the Grand Palais, in October 1971. he might have been alive now.” human scream,” he told the British art Bacon was by then world famous, Bacon was born on Baggot Street in In Memory of George critic David Sylvester. “I wasn’t able. attracting prices that rivalled Picasso’s. Dublin and spent most of the first 16 years Eisenstein’s is much better.” Distraught though Bacon was, he hushed of his life in Ireland. Barbara Dawson, ‘‘Dyer, from 1971, shows Meat carcasses are another recurring up Dyer’s death to prevent it distracting director of Dublin City Gallery the Hugh theme. “A friend from Bacon’s youth later from his crowning achievement. Lane, acquired the contents of Bacon’s Dyer as aboxer who recounted how Bacon would stop at a Francis Bacon: Books and Painting,a London studio, including more than 1,000 has suffered a butcher’s shop in Kildare on the cycle ride major exhibition spanning the last two books from Bacon’s library, for Dublin in back from Naas tennis club,” Barbara decades of Bacon’s oeuvre, at the Pompidou 1998. The studio was reconstructed down to knockout blow, Dawson recalls. Centre in Paris until January 20th, 2020, the tiniest details inside the Hugh Lane. A writhing on the floor. “If Igointo abutcher’s shop Ialways does not dwell on Bacon’s love life, although maquette is included in the exhibition at the think it’s surprising that Iwasn’t there his sadomasochistic homosexuality is Pompidou Centre. In the middle panel, instead of the animal,” Bacon later told omnipresent in the paintings. Nor does it Ottinger took the unprecedented ap- Sylvester. mention the astronomical prices command- proach of comparing Bacon’s oeuvre to adark figure stands Like Aeschylus, Bacon favoured the ed by his works. (The record was set by prose by six writers who inspired him. The before the staircase triptych as aform of expression. Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold curator borrowed books by Aeschylus, In Memory of George Dyer, from 1971, for ¤106 million in New York in 2013.) Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, TS Eliot and the to their room in the shows Dyerasaboxerwho has suffered a Instead the Pompidou show, curated by French writers Georges Bataille and Michel knockout blow,writhingonthe floor. In the Didier Ottinger, focuses on Bacon’s literary Leiris from the Hugh Lane. Each book is Hôtel des Saints-Pères middle panel, adark figure stands before

THE IRISH TIMES | Ticket |Saturday, September 28, 2019 VisualArt |17

morbid or hard about his painting, “only the violence that surrounds men at every second of their lives”. “Birth, sex and death. He gets it by the throat,” says Dawson. “It’s visceral. And yet he manages to make it quite beautiful. He creates the most beautiful colours, the most interesting compositions. They can be tender, in the way that abruised face can be tender.” There was “a lot of anguish, alot of torment” in Bacon, Dawson continues. “He said he shared with the Irish acertain exhilarated despair, or adesperate opti- mism.” Ottinger, the curator of the Pompidou exhibition, also bridles when Isuggest that death and barbarity are the dominant features of Bacon’s oeuvre. “Look at the mastery of the execution,” he says. “Look at Above: In Memory of George Dyer, Francis his deployment of geometric forms. Bacon Bacon’s 1971 triptych based on his lover Dyer was fascinated by perfect forms of geome- (with Bacon, left, on the Orient Express in 1964. try. He painted polyhedrons everywhere.” Top right: Bacon in Paris in September 1987. Polyhedrons are solid figures with many PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHN DEAKIN ARCHIVE/GETTY; plane faces, usually more than six. They RAPHAEL GAILLARDE/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY often frame or encase Bacon’s figures. Bacon developed his concept of immacu- own life story. late painting in his last decades. The term Triptych 1986-1987 portrays historic means, literally, spotless, but it took on an figures, including Woodrow Wilson de- almost metaphysical meaning for him. He scending the steps of the French foreign told Sylvester that his Water from aRun- ministry after agreeing to the treaty that ning Tap, from 1982, was the most immacu- would lead to the second World War. The late of his paintings. site of the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Art historians long considered Bacon’s Mexico appears in the same triptych, also final 20 years to be his weakest. Ottinger inspired by anewspaper photograph. John believes they were his best years, “because Edwards, Bacon’s friend, surrogate son and they appear so to me, and because Bacon heir, appears seated, naked and oozing pink said it”. What was so special about them? liquid, in the central panel. Ottinger replies with one word: “Immacu- Bacon’s art is too brutal, some might say late”. ghastly, to be immediately accessible or the staircase to their roominthe Hôtel des from the portrait and lands like areflection pleasing. The excretions, suppurating FrancisBacon:BooksandPaintingisatthe Saints-Pères. Tornnewspapers,another on ablue tabletop. White paint is smattered wounds, raw meat and carrion are unset- PompidouCentre,inParis,untilJanuary20th, recurringtheme, are Bacon’s nod to cubism. across Dyer’s chest. Bacon marked paint- tling. But Bacon claimed there was nothing 2020.Seecentrepompidou.frformore Adisembodied arm is wrapped around the ings that held an erotic charge for him with darkfigure’s back, and turns akey in alock. sperm-like stains. Bacon borrowed the image of the arm Triptych May-June 1973 recounts the from Picasso’s Bathers of Dinard, which he circumstances of Dyer’s death. On the left, had seen in a1927 exhibition at Paul Rosen- amale figure is crouched on the toilet, the berg’s gallery in Paris. Bacon worked as a position in which Dyer was found. In the decorator at the time. Picasso’s surrealist centre, black shadows seep from Dyer’s canvases made him want to be apainter. In anguished figure, beneath anaked light 1936 he tried to join asurrealist exhibition bulb. On the right, Dyer vomits into asink. in London, but he was rejected on the Again, Bacon marked the triptych with grounds he was not surrealist enough. smears of white paint. In the right-hand panel of In Memory of Bacon identified with the tragic sense of George Dyer, Bacon’s dead lover is framed history he found in Aeschylus and Conrad. in profile. Dyer appears cleaved in two at In the 1970s he determined to paint the the chest. His mutilated trunk falls forward history of the 20th century, as well as his

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Saturday,March14,2020 irishtimes.com/culture

STIRRING THEBLOOD PROVOCATIVEVISIONSOF THEBAROQUEMASTERS 4 |VisualArt SHOCK AND AWE THE HIGH PASSIONS OF THE EARLY The highest goal of Baroque artists such as and Bernini was to provoke emotions with their paintings, and perhaps also with their day-to-day lives, which were often marked by outrageous behaviour, violence and death

LARA MARLOWE atable, as ablack lizard clamps on to his the basket onto the white cloth meant to be middle finger. The boy recoils in pain, his used to cover the severed head. brow furrowed and fingers splayed. A Caravaggio’s father died when he nthe story told by the Roman poet contemporary remarked that one can was six, his mother when he was 13. He Ovid, was abeautiful young almost hear him scream. His white shirt fled his native Milan in 1592, when aged 21, woman with many suitors. For an falls sensuously off his shoulder. Curiously afteraviolent argument in which he wound- imagined slight the goddess Athena the boy looks at us, not the lizard. ed apolice officer. Several 17th-century I turned her long blonde tresses into Boy Bitten by aLizard conveys another historians recorded that he arrived in Rome writhing snakes. idea espoused by Baroque artists; in the naked, homeless and in extreme poverty. Gian Lorenzo Bernini captured words of the poet Giambattista Marino, Caravaggio became an aficionado of the moment of transition as Medusa’s “That even atragic event is aprecious Roman street brawls even as he built a hair becomes atangled coil of vipers subject/And horror oft-times accompanied reputation for dramatic religious paintings in tawny-coloured marble. Her open- by delight.” featuring decapitations, torture and death. mouthed expression conveys shock and Baroque paintings of Judith beheading He used aprostitute as amodel for the horror at what is happening to her. Holofernes are not for the faint-hearted. In Virgin. Visitors face Medusa’s head as they enter Orazio Gentileschi’s Judith and Her Maid- Speculation regarding Caravaggio’s the Caravaggio-Bernini: Early Baroque in servant with the Head of Holofernes, the sexuality continues to this day. He did Rome exhibition at the Rijskmuseum. The Old Testament widow has just decapitated not marry and had no children. Louis sculpture is so vivid, so realistic, that one the Assyrian general she seduced to save Crompton, aCanadian-born scholar almost fears Athena’s curse, which turned her people. The murder weapon, the and pioneer of queer studies, wrote of all who looked at Medusa into stone. victim’s sword, extends from her right Caravaggio’s “full-lipped, languorous The highest goal of baroque art was to hand. The dark green curtain, Judith’s red boys ...who seem to solicit the onlooker provoke emotion, and the exhibition is dress and her servant Abra’s blue and gold with their offers of fruit, wine, flowers – organised around the themes expounded clothing are in the rich, clear palette of and themselves”. by contemporary theoreticians. These Gentileschi’s native Tuscany. “There are two sources for Caravaggio’s included meraviglia (wonderment), Abra holds the severed head in awicker homosexuality,” says Duncan Bull, senior stupore (astonishment), orrore (horror), basket. Both women look to the right, as if curator for foreign paintings at the terribilità (awesomeness), passione, listening for the approach of Assyrian Rijksmuseum. “One is that he painted compassione and vivacità (lifelikeness). soldiers. Holofernes’s blood drips through pretty boys in provocative positions. The The head of Medusa achieves another second is that we know homosexuality was goal of Baroque art by portraying that fairly widespread at the time, and it was vertiginous moment of action when an quite normal to sleep with your apprentice. event tips into salvation or disaster. An English visitor to Rome alluded to Medusa is also avisual allusion to ‘Caravaggio and his boy Cecco, who lay Caravaggio, the first Baroque artist, born Caravaggio became with him’.” in 1571, 27 years before Bernini. Decades Though sodomy was acapital offence in before Bernini’s sculpture, Caravaggio ‘‘an aficionado of 17th-century Rome, “in acity filled with painted similar heads of Medusa. bachelor clergymen and choirboys”, says Commissioners gave Caravaggio top Roman street brawls Bull, “the inevitable was going to happen”. billing because he is better known to the even as he built a In 1606, Caravaggio killed aman, public than Bernini. He so profoundly and fled to Naples with adeath sentence influenced painters of the first half of reputation for hanging over him. He left afew months chap, ashow-off. Bernini was ashow-off in a the 17th century that they adopted his dramatic religious later for Malta, where he was arrested and different sort of way. He played the grand name, calling themselves . All imprisoned in 1608 for seriously wounding seigneur.” Witness the imitated the master’s hallmark technique paintings featuring aknight in yet another altercation. He gilt bronze heads of screaming men which of chiaroscuro or tenebrism, the use of escaped back to Naples, and was heading Bernini crafted as ornaments for his Roman intense contrasts between light and shadow decapitations, torture for Rome to seek apapal pardon when he carriage, on display at the Rijksmuseum. for dramatic effect. and death. He used a died mysteriously in 1610. Life in the 17th century was dangerous In Boy Bitten by aLizard, one of the “Caravaggio wasn’t that bad. He was just and short. Whole cities were decimated by handsome, effeminate male models who prostitute as amodel outrageous,” Bull says with alaugh. “He plague. Violence marked the lives of other established Caravaggio’s reputation for was always in trouble, and he offended artists, not just Caravaggio. homoeroticism, reaches for two cherries on for the Virgin people greatly. He was adifficult sort of Artemisia Gentileschi, the daughter of

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Left: Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1597-98) and, right, The Crowning with Thorns (1603). Below: Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Medusa (1638-40). IMAGES: FONDAZIONE DI STUDI DI STORIA DELL’ARTE ROBERTO LONGHI; KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM; ANDREA JEMOLOBE/MUSEI CAPITOLINI

lifelikeness which they aspired to. To be able to depict apained face, Bernini is said to have studied himself in amirror while burning himself with hot coals. Even he, establishment figure and the leading architect of Baroque Rome, blotted his record with ahorrific incident of violence. There is emotion in Bernini’s 1638-40 self-portrait. One wonders if it is related to his affair with Costanza Bonarelli, the wife of an assistant. When Bernini learned that Costanza was also having an affair with his younger brother Luigi, he nearly killed his brother, and sent aservant to slash Costanza’s face with arazor. The servant and Costanza were jailed, but Bernini received exonera- tion from the pope. Some have noticed a resemblance between Bernini’s bust of Costanza and the features of his Medusa. Violence permeates even the love stories told in these paintings. Gentileschi’s Sacrifice of Isaac is atale of divine and filial Mourned, also known as the Three Marys, love. Yet the painter shows Abraham is apainting of utter, inconsolable grief. gripping the knife with which he is about to The dead Christ lies across the bottom of stab Isaac. The angel and Abraham lock the canvas, in the arms of the swooning eyes as the angel points heavenward. This Virgin, whose grey pallor resembles is the moment of hesitation, when Abraham Christ’s. The composition leads the eye is confused by God’s conflicting orders. up to the anguished face of Mary Salome, Gentileschi uses chiaroscuro to dramatic who supports the weight of the Virgin, effect, creating astrong diagonal line across then across to Mary Cleophas, the mother the canvas, from the angel sent by God to of James the Younger, and finally to Mary stop the sacrifice, to the patriarch and Magdalene, dressed in red and gold, Isaac. throwing her hands up in despair. Armida and Rinaldo, beautifully ren- Yet despite their biblical content, dered by Poussin, also shows the tipping these paintings seem almost irreligious. point between love and killing. As told in an The Caravaggisti succeeded so well in epic poem by Torquato Tasso, Armida was conveying emotion that psychology aSaracen witch who intended to murder overwhelms the sacred. the crusader Rinaldo as he slept. But at the Aseries of canvases on the theme last moment Cupid holds back Armida’s of Doubting Thomas again display the right arm, which bears adagger. The left Caravaggistis’ taste for gruesome subjects. hand which was meant to seize Rinaldo’s Spadarino, whose real name was Giovanni head caresses him instead. Antonio Galli, painted Christ Displaying his Half acentury before the Caravaggisti, Wounds, perhaps the most haunting the Council of Trent ordered artists to picture of the exhibition. find new ways to play on the emotions of Thomas is absent from Spadarino’s believers. Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti told dramatic portrayal of Christ, standing Orazio and afine painter in her own right, off the scaffolding of the cathedral. them to use depictions of the suffering of half-wrapped in his shroud, pulling was raped by Agostino Tassi, the tutor “Real mafia stuff,” says Bull. Christ and Christian martyrs to increase his side wound apart, his hands marked Orazio hired to teach her painting. She Aportrait of papal secretary Giovanni devotion. by bitter nail holes. Four centuries after it sued Tassi, but was forced to endure a Batista Agucchi is attributed to Domenichi- Caravaggio’s The Crowning with Thorns was painted the wound looks fresh, the humiliating gynaecological examination, no, though some believe it may have been shows henchmen beating the thorns down blood wet and sticky. We, the viewer, have and was tortured to ensure she was telling painted by Annibale Carracci. As author of on to Christ’s head. His muscular body replaced Thomas. “Do you believe me the truth. Tassi got one year in prison. the Trattato della pittura, Agucchi was a slumps forward. His face is beaten, now?” the resurrected Christ seems to say. When the painter Domenico Zampieri, leading theoretician of baroque painting. resigned. Asoldier in the left foreground known as Domenichino, won acommission He was close to the Caravaggisti, and the leans on aparapet, his hand close to Christ’s Caravaggio-Bernini:EarlyBaroqueinRomeis for frescoes in Naples, he received death portrait of Agucchi looking up from the hand, seeming to indicate compassion. attheRijskmuseum,Amsterdam,untilJune threats from local artists, who pushed him letter he is reading is afine example of the Annibale Carracci’s Dead Christ 7th.rijksmuseum.nl/en

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Saturday,October26,2019 irishtimes.com/culture

DECODING DAVINCI INSIDETHELARGEST LEONARDOEXHIBITION EVERASSEMBLED 4 |VisualArt MYSTERY AND BEAUTYLEONARDO AT THE LOUVRE For ablockbuster new exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, curators have assembled the most complete collection of Leonardo ’s paintings, drawings, sketches and manuscripts ever shown

LARA MARLOWE Uncertainty about the loan of Salvator and never considered any canvas finished. Mundi, apainting of Christ in Renaissance It is sometimes achallenge for experts to robes, created asecond cliff-hanger in the distinguish between his work and that of his he exhibition that opened at the runup to the show’s official opening on atelier. Louvre this week to mark the October 24th. An anonymous buyer, With five Leonardo paintings, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo believed to be the Saudi crown prince world’s single largest collection, the Louvre da Vinci’s death appears to have Mohamed bin Salman, purchased the had aheadstart organising the exhibition. T fulfilled his ambition “to leave painting at auction for US $450 million in Italy, the Vatican and Russia lent paintings, an imperishable memory among mortals”. 2017, despite lingering doubts about its but none compares with those already Leonardo created drawings and paint- authenticity. The Louvre continued to owned by the Louvre. ings of ineffable mystery and beauty. The negotiate with an unnamed middleman The most famous painting of all, the exhibition, which continues until February until the last minute. , is technically not part of the 24th, emphasises his belief that painting The absence of other Leonardos is felt show. Thirty thousand people queue to see was the greatest art, but it also pays homage more keenly than that of Salvator Mundi. her daily, and the cramped exhibition space to his scientific genius. The Uffizi said its was too can receive only 7,000 per day. So Mona It took curators 10 years to assemble the fragile to travel. The in Lisa has been left in her glass cage upstairs. largest number of Leonardo’s paintings, Washington and the Polish National Mona Lisa, Saint Anne, and Saint drawings, sketches and manuscripts ever Museum, Kraków, said their portraits of John the Baptist were the paintings that shown together. The exhibition is routinely Ginevra de Benci and Leonardo took with him to France, where described as ablockbuster and the cultural (known as Lady with an Ermine) were he spent the last three years of his life at event of the season. More than 260,000 crucial to the identity of their museums, the invitation of the Renaissance King, visitors booked tickets before it opened, and that they could not deprive their public Francis I. He worked on all three canvases and the Louvre expects it to surpass the of the portraits’ presence. until his death. previous record of 540,000 visitors to the The Louvre exhibition includes infrared “These three paintings are Leonardo’s Delacroix exhibition last year. Tickets must reflectograms of the missing paintings. pictoral testament,” says Vincent Delieu- be pre-booked online. These black and white X-ray-like pictures vin, co-commissioner of the exhibition. For the past 11 months, there has been show how Leonardo created the masterpiec- Their faces resemble one another, near-continuous coverage of negotiations es, but they are scant comfort for their particularly their mysterious smiles, to with Italy and the shadowy owner of the absence. such an extent that Saint John the Baptist is Salvator Mundi, the world’s most expensive There are about 15 oil paintings by sometimes called the brother of Mona Lisa. painting, for the loan of their possessions. Leonardo in existence. He worked very The Renaissance artist and historian “The French can’t have everything,” slowly, for example 16 years on The Virgin Giorgio Vasari described Mona Lisa as “life Lucia Borgonzoni, then adeputy culture and Child with Saint Anne, known simply as itself”. He even fancied he could see blood minister from Matteo Salvini’s far Saint Anne. He did not sign his paintings, pulsing in her veins. right-wing League, told the Corriere della “Every painter paints himself,” Leonardo Sera last November. “Leonardo is Italian. wrote. It has been suggested that Mona Lisa He only died in France,” she added, echoing was aself-portrait by Leonardo. She was the sentiments of many Italians. almost certainly the wife of the Florentine Amid fraught relations between silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, but President Emmanuel Macron and the Leonardo idealised her and other subjects’ previous far-right-dominated Italian Saint John the Baptist faces to conform to his ideal of beauty. government, Italy reconsidered an ex- ‘‘ was the last painting change agreement concluded in 2017. The Theinvisiblevisible loans at risk included the , undertaken by Saint John the Baptist was the last painting Leonardo’s anatomical study of anaked undertaken by Leonardo before his death man inside asquare and circle, symbolising Leonardo before his in 1519. Ayoung man with curly locks harmony in the universe. The Italian death in 1519. Ayoung emerges from the night, clad in animal finger points heavenward, but his eyes and government fell. The French culture skins. Leonardo said he wanted “to make smile seem to speak of earthly pleasure. He minster and his new Italian counterpart man with curly locks the invisible visible”. His Saint John the is profoundly ambiguous, at the same time resolved the dispute. emerges from the Baptist brings to life the Gospel of St John, mystical and sensual, ethereal and androgy- Then acultural heritage group tried to chapter 1, verses 5-8: “And the light shineth nous, afleeting apparition who dissolves block the loan of the Vitruvian Man. In an night, clad in animal in darkness; and the darkness comprehend- into the inky background. 11th-hour decision, aVenice court ruled ed it not. There was aman sent from God, Leonardo wrote that “a good painter that Leonardo’s drawing could be sent to skins. Leonardo said whose name was John ...He was notthat must represent two things: the person and Paris, but only for two months, after which he wanted ‘to make Light, but was sent to bear witness of that their state of mind or soul. The first is it must be stored in darkness for eight Light.” simple, the second more difficult”. When he years. the invisible visible’ Saint John the Baptist’s right index dissected human cadavers, Leonardo tried

THE IRISH TIMES | Ticket |Saturday, October 26, 2019 VisualArt | 5

Left: The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, ‘perhaps the greatest masterpiece of Leonardo’. Right (from top): Saint John the Baptist, sometimes called ‘the brother of Mona Lisa’; La Belle Ferronière; Francisco Melzi’s portrait of Leonardo in red chalk. PHOTOGRAPHS: RMN-GRAND PALAIS (MUSÉE DU LOUVRE); RENÉ-GABRIEL OJÉDA/MICHEL URTADO; VENERANDA BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA/GIANNI CIGOLINI/ MONDADORI

Head of aWoman, also known as , is perhaps the best example of Leonardo’s belief in the power of the non finito or unfinished artwork. The young woman’s face resembles the visages of the angel in the , of Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist.

Thegreatestmasterpiece Delieuvin, the commissioner, says Saint Anne is “perhaps the greatest masterpiece of Leonardo. In its representation of the world, it is more complete than the Mona Lisa and Saint John the Baptist”. The National Gallery in London lent its cartoon or preparatory drawing for Saint Anne. Along with the painting’s infrared reflectogram, it reveals how Leonardo simplified the painting’s pyramidal structure over many years. The bodies of Saint Anne and her daughter, the Virgin, appear almost fused. All three figures turn, creating aspiral effect. The lamb looks at Christ, who looks at his mother, who returns his gaze. There is movement in the eyes and facial expressions. In the original cartoon, Saint Anne seems to ask her daughter if she knows what she is getting into. Her raised, pointed finger, like that of Saint John the Baptist, is an indication that Christ will die. In the final painting, Saint Anne sits passively while the Virgin reaches towards Christ. Her faint, sad smile has changed, to imply acceptance of his sacrifice. Two other paintings from the Louvre’s permanent collection, the Virgin of the Rocks and La Belle Ferronière, grace an earlier room, dedicated to Leonardo’s first, 1582-1600 stay in Milan, where he worked for Duke . La Belle Ferronière was mistakenly named for amistress of King Francis I. The beautiful woman in acrimson dress was either Sforza’s wife or amistress. With her expressive face that seemingly watches the viewer from the corner of the eye, she is a precursor of the Mona Lisa. Insatiable curiosity was perhaps Leonar- do’s most salient characteristic. More than 40 manuscripts in the exhibition, many with drawings, catalogue his research on human anatomy, astronomy, botany, geography, geology, geometry, meteorolo- gy, optical effects and zoology. It was an astounding sum of knowledge, by any standard. The show starts with abronze statue by , Leonardo’s first to discover the physical location of the soul. blurring original lines to create avaporous and only teacher. It includes Leonardo’s Leonardo in red chalk by Francisco Melzi, As he aged, Leonardo removed extrane- effect. early studies of drapery, and his first known the disciple and adopted son who followed ous detail from his paintings. There is Some art historians believe that Salaï –a drawing, of the Tuscan countryside. There him to France, and who, along with Salaï, virtually no colour, no background, no nickname meaning imp –was the model for are numerous paintings by apprentices in was Leonardo’s heir. Melzi drew Leonardo scenery, only light and shadow in Saint Saint John the Baptist. The son of poor his atelier, copies of works that have been as he was perceived in France, as an John the Baptist. It is atour de force of peasants, Salaï moved into Leonardo’s lost, such as his Battle of Anghiari, or which intellectual and philosopher in the ancient sfumato, the technique used by Leonardo to house at the age of 10, when Leonardo cannot be moved, including the Last Greek tradition. Melzi bequeathed the endow his paintings with alifelike sense of was 38. He was the painter’s assistant, Supper. It is all part of the narrative of Mona Lisa, Saint Anne and Saint John the movement. From the Italian word fumo or companion, secretary and possibly his Leonardo’s life, but sometimes it feels like Baptist to Francis I. Francis made the smoke, sfumato was achieved by applying lover. superfluous padding. Louvre his royal palace, and home to layer upon layer of translucent paint, The exquisite, unfinished The exhibition ends with aportrait of Leonardo’s greatest masterpieces.

THE IRISH TIMES | Ticket |Saturday, October 26, 2019