Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius.

David Alan Brown. Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius.

New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. 75 b/w illus + 95 color pls. + vii + 240 pp. $55. ISBN: 0-300-07246-5.

Brown attempts the difficult task of reconstructing -- speculatively in the absence of written texts -- Leonardo da Vinci's artistic formation in the sculptor Verrocchio's workshop, which he probably joined circa 1466 at the beginning of his teens. After considering Leonardo's participation in the London Tobias and the Angel and the Uffizi Baptism of Christ, Brown focuses on three paintings -- the Uffizi Annunciation, the Washington Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, and the Munich Madonna and Child with Carnation -- hypothesizing that Leonardo completed them in this sequence between 1472 (the date he enrolled in the Confraternity of Sr. Luke) and 1476/early 1478, when he became an independent master.

Brown constructs Leonardo as an immensely gifted but immature apprentice. This Leonardo turns out to have been, in some respects, a slow learner, when compared, for instance, to the achievements at a similar age of Mantegna. Since Verrocchio was admired for his mastery of perspective, it seems strange that his pupil should have made such an elementary mistake as the position in space of the Virgin's right forearm, in relation to her torso, as late as 1472-1473 in the Uffizi Annunciation. The exact nature of the working relationship between Verrocchio and his apprentices and assistants -- who are thought to have included Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino, and Signorelli -- is unknown. Brown fashions a Verrocchio who gave Leonardo considerable latitude to develop his own ideas, but in the case of the Annunciation, which presumably left the shop as a "Verrocchio," the master's oversight would seem to have been so lax that he neglected to evaluate the work while it was in progress.

The monograph makes clear the importance of a master's skills for his apprentices; Verrocchio never used the new medium of oil or mastered the art of fresco, and hence taught neither to his pupils. The author stresses the difficulty posed by the proportions of oil to the other ingredients which left its impact on Leonardo's early paintings, all of which are marred by the subsequent wrinkling of the paint surface that led to surface craquelure. Verrocchio's lack of experience in fresco would seem equally relevant to discussions of Leonardo's technique in his Last Supper in Milan.

The excellent chapter on the double-sided Portrait of Ginevra de'Benci raises the problem of patronage, in that the two sides are interpreted as having been commissioned by different patrons at different times. It is reasonable to assume that Ginevra's likeness was commissioned by her family in connection with her betrothal in late 1473. Because the emblem on the reverse is similar to that used by the Venetian Bernardo Bembo, who had a platonic love affair with Ginevra when ambassador in Florence in 1475-1476 and 1478-1480, it is however suggested that he commissioned the reverse some years later. The idea that an already existing family portrait, presumably hanging in the Benci or Niccolini palace, would be ceded to the courtly lover so that he could "possess" the sitter by surrounding a sprig of juniper (ginepro, Ginevra) with his emblem seems implausible. As Garrard pointed out, it has not been shown that Bembo invented the emblem himself prior to his sojourn in Florence rather than adopting it directly f rom Leonardo's portrait of his ideal lady. In addition, a wreath combining laurel branch and palm frond was so standard a convention as to constitute a topos. Even Bembo's motto, VIRTVS ET HONOR, represented aspirations to which almost all Renaissance patricians aspired. Brown earns respect for refusing, on grounds of style, to shift the date of the work to conform to the biographical record, but, if the portrait itself is not to be dated later in the decade when Bembo could have commissioned the whole work, the proposal that he was responsible for the reverse should surely be dropped.

The portrait has been cut at the bottom, and a computer reconstruction of the painting's original format seems to extend it further than necessary; this is especially evident in the blank area at the bottom of the reverse. The proportions were surely just as likely to have been 3 to 4 as 2 to 3; Ginevra could have held her hands higher on her torso, by analogy with Verrocchio's Lady Holding a Bunch of Flowers (Bargello, Florence). Showing more than expected of the sitter's body for the date, the reconstruction invents a portrait format without apparent precedents or immediate successors. Such an original invention would surely have been emulated prior to the Portrait of the Lady Holding a Ring (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), attributed to Lorenzo di Credi and currently dated in the 1490s.

Leonardo seems to have felt liberated on leaving the constraints of Verrocchio's shop. During the years of independence before his departure for Milan in 1482, he reinvented himself afresh -- in the process subverting the good practices instilled during his apprenticeship. While his work for Verrocchio had always been finished, his release from the master's shadow led immediately to the change in priorities that marks his life oeuvre: his focus shifted from the finished work to the creative process. He allowed a major commission in 1478 for the chapel of St. Bernard in the Palazzo della Signoria, which would have established his reputation as a leading master in Florence, to come to nothing, and completed none of the three paintings on which he worked in this period: St. Jerome, the Benois Madonna, or the Adoration of the Magi. Relocation to Milan -- undertaken at Leonardo's own initiative -- allowed him to abandon this situation and start anew.

Although traditional in its concerns and approach, this is a beautifully produced, well written, fully documented, and thoughtful monograph that fills a lacuna in the scholarship.