Studies & Sketches
Preparatory Notes for Major Works
One who was drinking and has left the glass in its position and turned his head towards the speaker.
— Leonardo da Vinci, §665 (notes for the Last Supper)
Overview
This section collects Leonardo's preparatory notes and compositional sketches for his major artistic works — the Last Supper, the Battle of Anghiari, Madonna pictures, and various allegorical compositions for the court of Milan. These notes give an extraordinary window into how Leonardo planned his paintings: not from the outside in, but from the characters' psychology outward.
Many of these entries are notes-to-self — quick verbal sketches of a gesture, an expression, a dramatic moment — that Leonardo would later translate into visual form. Others describe allegorical figures for court festivals, or record the colours of a hanged man's clothing.
The Two Madonna Pictures
§663 — Florence, 1478
663. [In the autumn of] 1478 I began the two Madonna [pictures].
S.K.M. II² — Neither painting survives. Leonardo may have begun preparatory studies for two works that were never completed.
Notes for the Last Supper
§665–666 — Composing the drama
665. One who was drinking and has left the glass in its position and turned his head towards the speaker. Another, twisting the fingers of his hands together turns with stern brows to his companion. Another with his hands spread open shows the palms, and shrugs his shoulders up his ears making a mouth of astonishment.
Another speaks into his neighbour's ear and he, as he listens to him, turns towards him to lend an ear, while he holds a knife in one hand, and in the other the loaf half cut through by the knife. Another who has turned, holding a knife in his hand, upsets with his hand a glass on the table.
666. Another lays his hand on the table and is looking. Another blows his mouthful. Another leans forward to see the speaker shading his eyes with his hand. Another draws back behind the one who leans forward, and sees the speaker between the wall and the man who is leaning.
S.K.M. II² — Written c. 1494–1495, before the final composition was determined.
The Battle of Anghiari
§669 — Fight for the Standard
669. Begin with the address of Niccolò Piccinino to the soldiers and the banished Florentines among whom are Messer Rinaldo degli Albizzi and other Florentines. Then let it be shown how he first mounted on horseback in armour; and the whole army came after him — 40 squadrons of cavalry, and 2,000 foot soldiers went with him.
The cartoon was prepared in the Sala del Papa, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, from October 1503 to February 1504. The painting in the Sala del Consiglio was interrupted in May 1506. Both cartoon and painting are now lost.
The Battle of Anghiari is the great lost masterpiece. Leonardo's cartoon — and his rival Michelangelo's "Bathers" on the opposite wall — were the two most important works of their era. Both have vanished completely. We know Leonardo's composition only from copies, the best being a drawing by Rubens now in the Louvre. The writing here shows Leonardo planning the scene like a director planning a battle sequence. -D
Bernardo di Bandino's Portrait
§664 — Sketching a hanged man
664. A tan-coloured small cap, a doublet of black serge, a black jerkin lined, a blue coat lined with fur of foxes' breasts, and the collar of the jerkin covered with black and white stippled velvet. Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli; black hose.
Leonardo made this colour note while sketching the body of one of the Pazzi conspirators, hanged from a window of the Bargello in Florence, December 1479. The drawing survives at the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne.
This section is fascinating because it shows Leonardo's process. He didn't start with composition — he started with character. "One who was drinking and has left the glass." "Another, twisting the fingers of his hands together." He's casting a movie, not arranging a painting. Every apostle in the Last Supper has a specific emotional reaction, a specific physical gesture, and Leonardo worked them all out in writing first. -D