Search

Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished and later destroyed mural painting, “The Fight for The Standard” ("The Battle of Anghiari"), in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, has been the object of investigation for many an art historian. In common, these all handle formal esthetic problems, while the genesis of the composition has been excluded from the discussion. There is a natural explanation for this. Researchers in general have proceeded from a point in a passage from Vasari, in which The Battle of Anghiari is named as the subject of Leonardo's battle composition, assuming in advance that Leonardo had built up his painting on the foundations of a written description of the actual battle. This description was found among Leonardo's papers in the Codice Atlantico. In contrast to former investigators, the author of this treatise maintains that the written association in the Codice Atlantico, which does not mention a standard strife in connection with the Anghiari encounter, played a subordinate roll in the conception of Leonardo's perhaps most monumental work. On the contrary, the artist has instead used an older pictoral description of the battle, a cassone painting (Fig. 1) made about 1440 by the “Anghiari Master”, en anonymous pupil of Uccello. This depicts, if compared with older and newer maps (Fig. 2 and 3) of this particular battleground between Anghiari and Borgo San Sepolcro, an almost topographically exact description of the land, though the proportions are somewhat concentrated. In addition, since the standard fight as represented in the central motif of the cassone painting is directly covered in the contemporary war journals (among others Neri di Gino Capponi), it is directly evident that the “Anghiari Master's” painting is a first class historical document, which presumably can have been used by Leonardo when at the instigation of the council in Florence he depicted the same event in monumental size in the Sala del Gran Consiglio of the Palazzo Vecchio. The cassone painting was still in Florence with the descendants of the Florentine victors from The Battle of Anghiari when Leonardo received his honourable commission. A direct comparison between a portion of the central part of the cassone painting (Fig. 4) and Leonardo's first sketch (Fig. 5) for the large battle painting shows that without any doubt he must have borrowed his main idea for his composition from the former. It is sufficient to name the characteristic equestrian groups which are partly composed of three figures diagonally inserted in the composition, the lance‐armed foot‐soldiers also attached to the group, and last but not the least important argument, the single arched bridges farthest on the right. It is obvious that Leonardo observed the artistic possibilities offered by the cassone painting's “equestrian trio” (Fig. 6), a rhombic configuration. On this basis he created his unfinished mural painting, which Vasari later (1558) effaced and which is known in appearance by an exact copy (Fig. 7) from about 1520–1530 preserved in the Uffizi Galleries. A comparative analysis reveals that Leonardo by a slight rearrangement transformed the “equestrian trio” of the cassone painting to an “equestrian quartet”. This was done by simply inserting the head of a man (the man with the dragon helmet) in the space between the second and third riders from the left in the “equestrian trio”. This new figure, of which there is a detailed sketch (Fig. 8) in Budapest, thus found itself entirely within the distinct outer contour of the earlier “equestrian trio group”. It is an artistically well‐devised grasp, the drama in the picture as well as the formal balance in the group being increased. The flagstaff rests like a connecting beam—or balance lever—through the whole composition, in which the standard‐bearer and his main combatant, the new‐comer in the dragon helmet, execute their tough fight for the standard while the other two riders, who come to support each of them, try to sink their weight in the balance. The standard (cavalry regiment flag) is thus the common denominator for the whole composition. The unified scheme of action which replaced the original cassone painting's two side‐arrangements—the struggle for the standard and the combat between the two riders (see Fig. 4), is accentuated by all the participating cavalrymen gripping the middle part of the flagstaff. Here exists the focus of the composition in form as well as in content. The comparison between the cassone painting and Leonardo's composition reveals simultaneously other new features of Leonardo's art. Besides the unified plan of action, which corresponds with his statements in the “Trattato della Pittura”, the dynamic life he has been able to instill into the former merely illustrative battle scene should be observed above all. Conspicous are the levelled proportions relating riders and horses. This observation specifically concerns the left rider (the standard‐bearer) and contrasts strongly against the general sixteenth century laws of proportion (Fig. 9) for man and horse. It is possibly influenced by a trace of ancient equestrian descriptions serving purely as an idea to increase the homogeneity in the presented battle scene; it is not a fight between riders being expressed, it is instead the wild passion for fight and power governing every living creature—la pazzia bestializzima to use Leonardo's own words—and here it has a perfect interpretation. This expression, however, has been obtained by the mimics of the participating figures (we are able to see all of the faces present!), this mimicry reflecting the whole register of human feelings and reactions in connection with a fight. Also the bodies of the figures (the standard‐bearer in particular) express—likewise agreeing with the Trattato theory—the inner events. It should be observed, however, that as in many other cases Leonardo has taken advantage of his older supply of forms which can be traced back to his youth in Verrocchio's workrooms (compare Fig. 10 and 11 with Fig. 12 and 13). Contrasting the above named Uffizi copy (Fig. 7), which faithfully reflects everything Leonardo and his assistants were able to execute on the wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, is the Lorenzo Zacchias engraving (Fig. 14) 1558, the year that Leonardo's painting was forever obliterated by Vasari. Certain parts of this engraving, particularly the war hammer raised in air, are freely reconstructed representations of the doomed mural painting, then very destroyed in the upper righthand part. The engraving is nevertheless of great interest, as it in all probability was the ground‐point just before 1615 for Rubens’ drawing in the Louvre. Rubens has, however, very likely on the basis of Vasari's description of the battle painting in “Vite”, substituted the clumsy war hammer, which in an unfortunate way breaks the cavalry group's distinct outer contour, for a Turkish sword, which produces a formal enclosure at the same time emphasizing the middle axle in this for the most part symmetrically consolidated figure group. Rubens has thus gone one step further than Leonardo, who at this stage only contributed a dragon‐crowned helmet. This deviation from the original is important to keep in mind. It shows that Rubens’ drawing more likely should be characterized as a paraphrase on Leonardo's painting than as direct copy. As to the spiritual life in the painting, the concentrated development of force, he nevertheless comes closer to the original than any other artist who has tried to give posterity a picture of the vanished painting. On the basis of these results, in a following investigation the author will deal with the comprehensive idea in “The Fight for The Standard” from a wholly new aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]