Landscape with river
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| Landscape with river |
|---|
| Leonardo da Vinci , 1473 |
| Ink on paper |
| 19 x 28.5 cm |
| Uffizi Gallery, Florence |
Landscape with river (also Landscape of the Arno Valley and Arno landscape ) is a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). The work, dated August 5, 1473, is in the graphic collection of the Uffizi , the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe in Florence .
The work
The work is executed as a pen drawing in brown ink on paper, in the format of about 19 cm × 28.5 cm. The drawing shows a river landscape with castles and other features of a cultural landscape . Between two steep cliffs, the view opens onto a river, with trees, bushes and meadows in the distance.
The date is in the upper left corner of the sheet. There the artist noted in his characteristic mirror writing : " Dì de Sta Maria della Neve / A dì 5 daghosto 1473 " (German: " Day of Saint Mary in the Snow / On the day of August 5, 1473 "). The work is thus Leonardo da Vinci's first reliably datable work. The artists of the 15th and 16th century signed their works rarely and later Leonardo's paintings , or those that are proven emerged in his workshop, neither of a date or signature .
The sketch could have served as a preparatory study for the background landscape of a painting, or as an exercise for the young artist, who was a student of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435 / 36–1488) in Florence from around 1470 to 1477 . At that time, the painting " The Baptism of Christ " (date of origin around 1475) was created in Verrocchio's workshop. It is believed that Leonardo created the background river landscape and other details.
However, it is also possible that Leonardo made the landscape study just for his own pleasure.
Attempts to determine the location
From the art critics have been numerous attempts to locate the landscape depicted. The Arno valley , the valley of its left tributary Greve , the landscape around the mountain town of Panzano in Chianti as well as the hills above Leonardo's hometown Vinci will be discussed .
The Leonardo biographer Charles Nicholl identified the conical mountain in the background as the Monsummano ( ⊙ ) near Monsummano Terme , about twelve kilometers northwest of Vinci. The depicted plain represents the Padule di Fucecchio ( ⊙ ), the largest swamp area in Italy. But since no point has been found so far from which one would have the same view as on the drawing, this attempt to determine the location does not provide a clear result either.
It remains unclear whether the work is open-air or a studio painting and whether the work shows a real or an invented landscape. However, Leonardo da Vinci's drawing is often referred to as the first example of a pure landscape depiction in Western art; it marks the beginning of landscape painting as an independent subject .
literature
- Daniel Arasse : Leonardo da Vinci . Dumont Literature and Art Verlag, Cologne 2002, ISBN 978-3832-17150-6
- Martin Kemp : Leonardo . C. H. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56821-3
- Charles Nicholl : Leonardo da Vinci - The biography . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-10-052405-8
Web links
- Leonardo da Vinci: Arno landscape at Zeno.org .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Berthold Daum: City, Country, River: Natural and Urban Landscapes . Addison-Wesley, Munich 2009, p. 185, ISBN 978-3-8273-2773-4
- ↑ Angela Ottino della Chiesa (ed.): The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1969, ISBN 0-297-17702-8
- ↑ Nicholl, pp. 72-79
- ↑ a b c Kemp, pp. 256-258
- ↑ Nicholl, p. 75
- ↑ Paolo De Silvestri: Leonardo or the universal genius . ATS Italia Editrice, Rome 2009, p. 7, ISBN 978-88-7571-875-6
- ↑ Axel Walter (Ed.): Regional cultural area and intellectual communication from humanism to the age of the Internet . Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2005, p. 49, ISBN 978-90-420-1715-3
- ↑ Gloria Fossi: Uffizi Gallery . Giunti Editore, Florence 2001, p. 17