9
CASA Magazine
June 1 2012
Book Review:
The Young Leonardo:
Art and Life in Fifteenth-Century Florence
By Larry J. Feinberg
Reviewed by Daniel Kepl / CASA
T
HE IDEA OF GENIUS – extraordinary
intellectual prescience and creative
achievement, manifest in a unique
individual - has diminished in
significance over the last century, as the
conflation of literacy and technology has
spawned increasing numbers
of savants, inspiring
a flood of fresh
discovery and
innovation.
Not so very long
ago humankind, in
an orgy of narcissism,
clung to the idea that
our planet was the
center of the universe
– and was flat. Today,
humans know better
about some things,
but can still annihilate
themselves, in the twinkling
of a toggle switch.
Nevertheless, there have
been extraordinary minds
in the history of civilization
worthy of the imprimatur, genius. In the
arts, Mozart comes to mind: in science,
Einstein. In the course of our long ascent
from primordial sludge, literary geniuses,
manufacturing geniuses, military geniuses,
philosophical geniuses, artistic geniuses,
even Internet geniuses, have helped us
understand the magnitude and potential of
life on our tiny blue marble.
Certainly, Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) is worthy of the genus genius, but
Larry J. Feinberg,
Director and
CEO of the Santa
Barbara Museum
of Art, believes
genius doesn’t
fall from the sky:
manna distributed
piecemeal in shining
points of light to the
chosen few, from
on high. Rather,
Larry J. Feinberg
Feinberg argues
convincingly in his new book The Young
Leonardo: Art and Life in Fifteenth-century
Florence (Cambridge University Press) that
genius is more often the result of intense
practical inquiry and studious observation.
Leonardo was a polymath, dissecting
subjects that took his fancy, which included
just about everything, like a black hole
sucks up whole solar systems. It’s safe to
say that his penetrating mind examined
subjects like anatomy, architecture,
astronomy, philosophy, painting, and more,
in greater detail than anyone before him.
Feinberg posits that though he was an
obsessive observer of the world around him
– Leonardo undoubtedly knew more about
anatomy than all the doctors of his epoch
combined – he still held to an antiquated
mythos, for example, about brain and heart
function. He was a visionary, but also a
product of his own time.
The Young Leonardo weighs in a little
shy of 200 pages, and focuses primarily on
the artist’s time in Florence in his 20’s at the
art workshop of the sculptor Verrocchio.
Feinberg examines Leonardo’s innovative
contributions to the studio’s artistic output,
by contrasting the stylized idiom of the
period, with Leonardo’s more
idiosyncratic, realist painterly
manner.
Feinberg, who has
organized and edited
exhibits on the reign of the
Medici family in Florence,
describes the teaming city
of the fifteenth century
in delicious detail: its
inhabitants, their daily
ribaldries and outrages.
Leonardo, Feinberg
makes clear, was in
the thick of it all
– duels, fights, sexual
peccadillos, and
political intrigues.
Though a bastard, born
of an obscure peasant scullery maid,
Leonardo’s father was an influential advisor
to the Medici court in Florence, and later,
the Sforza court in Milan, which allowed
the boy unique access to the vast libraries
and galleries of these two dynastic families,
where his mind could flourish.
Making use of over 70 illustrations,
Feinberg examines Leonardo’s creative
processes and collaborations, including the
artist’s early ideas for the Last Supper, his
sketches of the many public executions in
Florence during the Medici period - the
agonized faces of the condemned, becoming
studies for his paintings - and his Design
for a Colossal Crossbow, an example of the
artist’s preoccupation with aerodynamics
and warfare technology. Also intriguing, are
Feinberg’s chapters on Leonardo’s mastery
of portraiture and visual pun, the creation
of the Adoration of the Magi, and Leonardo’s
single-handed invention of the High
Renaissance painterly style, with its serene
moods, interest in the Classical Greco-Latin
world, and luminous colors.
By focusing on this particular time
in Leonardo’s career, Feinberg paints his
own convincing portrait of the artist as a
young man, and illuminates the dynamic
environment, which influenced the artist’s
later, mature works. Leonardo da Vinci
thought it possible to achieve a timeless
human hope: the power of the human mind
to decipher the nature of everything. Larry J.
Feinberg, with his entertaining and readable
The Young Leonardo, gives readers a peak
into the embryonic stages of this particular
genius’s apotheosis.
Daniel Kepl has been
writing music, theatre,
and dance reviews
for Santa Barbara
publications since he
was a teenager. His
professional expertise is as
an orchestra conductor.