Leonardo da Vinci

Microstory of Art V –
Leonardo da Vinci

Manuscript B 100v

Here, among other things, we look at Leonardo da Vinci’s bat. But the following is more about the »among other things«.
This is one of my favourite Leonardo da Vinci sheets, which is why we show it here behind bulletproof glass. It’s Manuscript B from Paris, folio 100v (source: leonardodigitale.com). Leonardo in his thirties, living in Milan. A dedicated fan of Renaissance cartoon artists, but no: this is Leonardo da Vinci, the historic Leonardo (and, in some sense, i.e. among other things, a cartoon artist as well). Quite messy, at it seems. But we’ll see, what we will find out about a universal genius being messy.

If one re-uses a sheet. Again and again. Would one say that the finally resulting sheet is in its character accidental?
In a way, yes. Because the combination of elements does not occur according to an organizing plan. But in a way, no. Because all you do in life, has to do with you, in some sense or the other. And what results is you. And open to interpretation as to your personality.

What we face here, not least, is the problem of Leonardo-philology or Leonardo-edition. What to do with the above sheet? Are we allowed to ignore the written, just simply being interested in Leonardo’s bat (and the three other flying organisms)? Or is it just about the combination of the written and drawn, about the relation or the inbetween? Are we allowed to cut those drawings that interest us out? Or is it just about the weird combination of drawings, a combination resulting of someone using and re-using a sheet again and again?

Let’s figure to sort at least one problem out: The stamps are owner’s stamps. Let’s try to forget them, because the provenance does not cause a problem here. But on the other hand: the stamps just make look the sheet as sort of a letter. Written in the past and sent to us, thus being being on its way for about 500 years. And we see: It’s not that easy to sort anything out here.

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(Picture: comicvine.com)


(Picture: blogintomystery.com)


(Picture: abduzeedo.com)

Four unidentified potentially flying objects we see represented here: a butterfly, a sort of a flying fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish ; the elder research, however, has seen a dragonfly here), a dragonfly, and the before-mentioned bat. To the flying fish Leonardo has written that this is an animal fleeing from one element to another, probably referring to water and air. And here the written actually does highlight what one use of that sheet was probably was about. Here someone was musing about how four different living creatures are capable, by their flying capacities, of moving between the elements and the spaces associated with that elements. The bat, if not thinking of batman here, would be capable to move between the heavens and the earth (the drawing of a man on the lower right side of the sheets is being interpreted as a men kneeling in reveration…).

This sheet, like many other Leonardo sheets, is a dream of any semiologist. Because we have conventional letters, mirror-written letters, undeciphered, probabaly exotic letters, numbers, images, not very elaborated images, even apt of being used as logos. We have Italian and latin words. And all the inbetween relations.

Let’s think for a moment of German poet Novalis here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalis), about his poem Wenn nicht mehr Zahlen und Figuren (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenn_nicht_mehr_Zahlen_und_Figuren). If no longer numbers und figures are the key to all creatures on earth… About his poem that questions that the use of numbers and figures is an appropriate way to say and to know something substantial about the universe we’re living in. And recommending instead the being a key of poems and fairytales.

(Picture: moma.org)

In a way the Leonardo sheet can be interpreted as being an example for both attitudes: The Leonardo that is using the sheet for calculations (one actually unfinished) and for illustrative figures represents the rational use of numbers and figures within our universe. But we might also think of a Leonardo dismissing what he has drawn, written and calculated (because the re-using might also being interpreteted as a giving up of something already done; and do we really know if Leonardo tended to address his world exclusively in a rational way? Maybe he was rather oscillating between a rational and a more mystical approach to worldly things, not mentioning metaphysical things for once…). And we might think about our own musing on this sheet like a musing on figures and numbers, or: this is the point I am getting to, about the inbetween. About the poetic potential of this sheet, that, on a comparatively little space of paper, opens a whole universe by assembling various gestures of writing and drawing.

Not least a universe of languages and letters. Because if we forget for a moment that we also see Leonardo da Vinci willing to improve his Latin skills, we see a Leonardo probably playing around with other alphabets that conventionally used in Renaissance Italy. And is it enough to say (if we pretend to be Leonardo philologists) that there are several lines of undeciphered letters on that sheet? And what about the result of that playing around? Is it a musing about letters, arabic and latin letters, leading anywhere? Or is it like with the one calculation Leonardo did not finish a mere gesture, a playing around without any result, exept of producing more dreamlike musing and a mere contemplating (but not any longer using) of numbers and of figures…?

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Last but not least: How did Leonardo look at this particular sheet, or at any sheet that looked like this? Did he look at such papers again at all? Well, we don’t know. But the question still remains, if he thought that of all he ever did draw and write something systematic and rationally organized would once arise? Or was he once, it’s just a thought, to suddenly to think that exactly what was on that sheet of paper did represent the universe in a poetical and more in-depth way than any systematic manual on anything could ever provide. Because the sheet assembles gestures to rationally represent fragments of the universe (the four animals, assembled like four illustrative examples in a book on flying animals) and in its stopping to go further, in its re-using the sheet for trivial (?) calculations of which one is not even finished, it even, indirectly, designates the framentary rational gesture as such. In its musing about, yes, exotic letters and Latin words, the sheet assembles gestures of curiosity, and then, in another re-use, goes on to do something else.

It is an aide-mémoire, but not only of trivial things: It’s about a master that has to remind himself that he has to see a master Lodovico. And that he has to get or to think about yellow ambra. But on another level it’s an aide-mémoire of being distracted as such, a reminding of having been distracted that results from that sheet. In storing all the gestures of curiosity, all the musings on natural and literary things. And last but not least: it is a fascinating, almost fancyful assembly of gestures that could, if it was a sheet of Joseph Beuys or of Cy Twombly, interpreted as being a work of art.

(Picture: art.findartinfo.com)

We doubt that Leonardo could see this sheet as such, but we are not completely sure. What if he had a moment, when looking at this sheet and thinking that this sheet does interlink things like things haver never been interlinked before. By merely assembling gestures, and by inviting to fill the inbetween space between the various languages and ways to address the world (by numbers, figures and symbols) with your own questions and your own choices how to interpret the universe. In a mystical or rational way. And in such a Joseph Beuys drawing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys) would be an as reasonable way to interpret this sheet as another Leonardo edition, guided by whatever principles of philology would be (one one is tempted to ask, if not philology by nature is excluding the mystical element necessary to deal with what we face here?)

In sum: Even if Leonardo da Vinci was inclined to think of what he found in his own notes as a failing in what he actually had wanted, as the failing of an all-too often distracted man, who simply got not enough time to systematically elaborate his view of nature and his practical ideas – it is still possible to confront this sheet with modern works of art, that use as strategies what 500 years ago was the result of simply being focussed for moments, of being distracted or interrupted, maybe of being bored and being drawn to other things. And all this resulted of using and re-using a mere sheet.
We might think of Mallarmé (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stéphane_Mallarmé), and we might think especially of Cy Twombly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Twombly), also in being inspired by Mallarmé. Words and letters might be interpreted as gestures within a space, represented by a white page or a white canvas. And it is not the rationally informed will to visually represent anything that makes our universe. But about the assembling and combining of fragments and the organizing of fragmentary elements for exactly what Novalis had thought of would be the result: another, less superficial and in the end less fragmentary (because of potentially including all possible spaces and relations inbetween) way to address, to reflect upon and last but not least: to represent the universe. This might be thought as the ambition of art, and what art would be about.

If no longer numbers and figures…

Detail from Manuscript B 3r (source: leonardodigitale.com) – for an attempt to interpret what Leonardo is doing here – see my Leonardo da Vinci im Orient. Geschichte eines europäischen Mythos

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