ARTH 9/24 Lecture

Study Abroad Opportunities and Academic Context

• Study Abroad Fair Schedule and Location:

  • The study abroad fair takes place at Festival from $11:00\,\text{AM}$ to $1:00\,\text{PM}$ and from $2:00\,\text{PM}$ to $4:00\,\text{PM}$.

  • College presents a rare developmental window to live overseas for a extended period and become deeply invested in a program of study.

• Scholarship Funding and Financial Considerations:

  • Study abroad programs carry significant costs.

  • The study abroad office at JMU received a large gift from a private donor dedicated specifically to funding study abroad scholarships.

  • While scholarships require a formal application process, funding is actively available for interested students.

• JMU Study Abroad Options:

  • JMU is nationally recognized for its international study programs.

  • Semester-Long Programs: Available in Belgium, Scotland, Italy, England, and Spain.

  • Short-Term Programs: Offered across winter break, spring break, and summer terms.

• Florence and Rome Summer Program:

  • Duration: $4\,\text{weeks}$ split between Florence and Rome, Italy.

  • Academic Credit: $6\,\text{credit hours}$.

  • Operational History: Has run annually since $2017$.

  • Curriculum covers ancient, medieval, and High Renaissance art history.

  • Highlights include site visits, regional cultural immersion, local dining (gelato and pizza), and interacting with local street cats.

Leonardo da Vinci: Intellectual Curiosity, Anatomy, and Script

• High Renaissance Context:

  • The High Renaissance in Italy is defined primarily by three masters: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

  • Leonardo is the oldest of the triad and possesses enduring global cultural recognition.

  • A Florentine by origin, he moved frequently to execute commissions in major regional power centers, including Milan and France.

• Intellectual Curiosity and Working Method:

  • Leonardo was completely consumed by multi-disciplinary interests across science, engineering, and art.

  • His intense focus generated major breakthroughs across numerous fields, though many remained unrecognized during his lifetime due to his chronic failure to publish or complete projects.

• Anatomical Studies:

  • Executed extensive human dissections. While not illegal, human dissection was heavily frowned upon socially and religiously during the Renaissance.

  • Torso Dissections: Unlike contemporary anatomists who avoided the torso due to rapid decay and the absence of refrigeration, Leonardo routinely dissected human torsos.

  • Torso of a Woman: Anatomical drawing illustrating structural errors; due to a shortage of human cadavers, Leonardo conflated human internal organ structures with bovine anatomy, yielding anatomical amalgamations.

  • Fetus in Utero: Detailed series of drawings illustrating fetal development inside the womb.

  • Intended to publish an authoritative treatise on human anatomy, which remained uncompleted at his death.

  • Historical Impact and Rediscovery: Leonardo's anatomical breakthroughs were unmatched until the $17\text{th}$ century ($100\text{--}150\,\text{years}$ after his death). Unaware of his unpublished findings, subsequent generations lost access to his work; centuries later, several anatomical sheets were discovered in an attic pasted directly to window panes to block sunlight.

• Mirror Script and Left-Handedness:

  • Written notes across his sketchbooks run backwards from right to left in a mirror script.

  • Primary Cause: Left-handedness. Writing right-to-left prevented wet ink from smudging across the paper as his hand moved across the page.

  • Early art historians required physical mirrors to transcribe his texts; modern scholarship utilizes digital image mirroring.

Military Engineering, Draftsmanship, and Rapid Sketching

• Letter to the Duke of Milan:

  • Formulated as a professional resume seeking employment at the Milanese court.

  • Outlines capabilities in military defense engineering: designing novel war machines and diverting the course of rivers (the latter being an unrealized engineering concept).

  • Concludes with the single statement: "…and I am a painter," placing his artistic capability at the end of his technical skills.

• War Machine Designs:

  • Armored Tank Design: Conical enclosed machine kicking up dust clouds, accompanied by an underside diagram illustrating its internal mechanical drive.

  • Scythed Chariot / Rotating Blade Machine: Machine drawn by $2\,\text{horses}$ (one carrying a rider) outfitted with front-mounted rotating scythe blades as well as lateral and rear scythes designed to ride into enemy crowds and cut legs off at the knees.

  • Historical documentation indicates neither design was ever constructed or deployed on the battlefield.

• Volume and Method of Drawing:

  • Over $4,000\,\text{drawings}$ by Leonardo survive as of $2026$

  • By comparison, Michelangelo left the second highest quantity of drawings among Renaissance masters, numbering between $400$ and $600\,\text{drawings}$.

  • Drawing served as Leonardo's primary empirical tool to observe and analyze the natural world.

• Treatise on Painting (Trattato della pittura):

  • Compiled posthumously from his dispersed notebooks.

  • Directs young artists to carry a pocket sketchbook at all times to record the infinite spectrum of human gestures, emotional expressions, dynamic movements, water currents, and wind-blown foliage.

  • Advises artists to draw directly from live human models rather than copying static classical sculptures.

  • Established the origin of the rapid, quickly executed observational sketch.

• Study of a Child Playing with a Cat:

  • Double-sided pen and ink sheet recording sequential real-life observation:

  1. Toddler squats down to stroke a cat; the cat throws its head back in pleasure with a raised paw and tail draped over its shoulder.

  2. Toddler sits down and the cat climbs into the child's lap; flicking movement of the tail is rendered with motion marks.

  3. Toddler clutches the cat tightly in its arms.

  4. On the reverse side, the child pulls the cat close to its face while the cat looks bewildered.

  5. The cat breaks free in a flurry of lines while the toddler opens its mouth in shock.

  • Employs dynamic graphic shorthand: legs are rendered as rapid dashes and feet as simple check marks.

  • Translation to formal painting: Informal studies of children clutching cats directly informed formal religious commissions depicting the infant Christ holding a sacrificial lamb (e.g., Virgin and Child with a Lamb).

The Virgin of the Rocks: Visual Analysis and Duplicate Versions

• Commission Details:

  • Leonardo's first major painting commission in Milan, standing over $6\,\text{ft}$ tall.

  • Created as an altarpiece for a side chapel inside a church, rather than the church's high altar.

• Iconography and Figure Identification:

  • Depicts four figures: Virgin Mary, Infant Christ, Infant Saint John the Baptist, and an Angel.

  • Louvre Version (Paris, c. $1483\text{--}1486$):

  • Virgin Mary wears a dark blue mantle, extending her hand over the shoulder of the infant John the Baptist.

  • Saint John the Baptist kneels in prayer with clasped hands facing toward Christ.

  • The Infant Christ sits on the lower right, making a two-fingered gesture of divine blessing toward John the Baptist.

  • The seated Angel points directly at John the Baptist while gazing outward toward the viewer.

• National Gallery Version (London, $1491\text{--}1499$ and $1506\text{--}1508$):

  • Key differences between the first and second versions:

  1. Mary's gaze shifts downcast directly toward Christ.

  2. The Angel's pointing hand gesture is completely removed; its gaze shifts inward.

  3. Saint John the Baptist is given a wooden cruciform (cross-shaped) staff resting against his shoulder.

  4. Faint gold circular halos are added above Mary, Christ, and John the Baptist (the Angel has no halo).

  5. Age differentiation: John the Baptist appears slightly older with fuller hair, while Christ's hair is thinned to clarify age hierarchy.

  6. Color and Tone: The Louvre version exhibits warm, rich glazes; the London version displays cooler, blue, nocturnal lighting. Cleaning of the London panel in the late $20\text{th}$ / early $21\text{st}$ century is believed by many art historians to have removed original upper glazes.

• Legal Disputes and Duplicate Theories:

  • Leonardo left Milan with the painting unfinished and was forced legally to return between $1506$ and $1508$ to complete the second version, which was the version actually installed in the chapel altarpiece frame.

  • Bonus Dispute Theory: Patrons withheld an agreed completion bonus, prompting Leonardo to sell the original panel (Louvre) to a third party while remaining legally obligated to supply the original patrons with a replacement painting.

  • Rejection Theory: Patrons rejected the first version due to iconographic ambiguity surrounding the identity of the Christ child. Italian Renaissance patrons strictly required unmistakable visual markers for Christ, forcing Leonardo to add clear attributes (halos, cruciform staff) in the second version.

High Renaissance Artistic Innovations

• Pyramidal Composition:

  • Structural arrangement placing figures within an overarching geometric pyramid.

  • Apex is formed by the Virgin Mary's head; sides follow her outstretched arms and the outer contours of the Angel and John; the base stretches broadly across the foreground.

  • Creates structural stability, visual balance, order, and symmetry characteristic of High Renaissance art.

• Geological and Botanical Naturalism:

  • Features detailed rendering of rock structures creating a subterranean grotto.

  • Combines empirical geological accuracy with an eerie, otherworldly atmospheric backdrop.

  • Incorporates atmospheric perspective (sfumato) in misty background rock formations.

• Color Palette and Shadow Modeling:

  • Uses a restrained, deeply muted color palette devoid of highly saturated primary colors.

  • Paints out of darkness: Starts forms enshrouded in shadow and applies light highlights, creating an emerging effect.

• Rejection of Traditional Halos:

  • Leonardo argued in his treatise that holy figures should be recognized through psychological depth, posture, gesture, and expression rather than artificial gold circles.

• Chiaroscuro:

  • Etymology: Italian compound of chiaro ("light") and scuro ("dark").

  • Technical Definition: The juxtaposition of light and shade to model three-dimensional volume and mass on a two-dimensional surface.

  • Application: Demonstrated on the infant Christ child's arm and elbow dimple, where a light highlight transitions into a soft shadow gradient to define the curving form. Without shadow modeling, figures appear flat.

The Last Supper: Materials, Decay, and Restoration

• Location and Context:

  • Mural painted on the end wall of the refectory (monastic dining hall) in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy.

  • Integrates the biblical narrative of Christ's final meal with the physical space where the resident friars ate.

• Experimental Technique and Physical Structural Decay:

  • Completed c. $1495\text{--}1498$ / $1500$.

  • Leonardo rejected traditional wet fresco (buon fresco), using an experimental blend of oil and tempera paint applied directly to dry plaster.

  • Due to paint binding failure, pigment began flaking off the dry wall within two decades (by the early $16\text{th}$ century).

  • Historical Damage Timeline:

  • $17\text{th}\,\text{Century}$: Friars cut a doorway through the lower central section of the wall, destroying Christ's feet.

  • $19\text{th}\,\text{Century}$: Napoleonic troops used the refectory as a stable and targeted the mural for practice.

  • $1945$ (World War II): Allied bombing destroyed the refectory roof; the wall holding the mural survived because Italian conservators had sandbagged both sides prior to air attacks.

• The 1978–1999 Restoration Controversy:

  • A $21\text{--}year$ conservation project ($1978\text{--}1999$) aimed to strip centuries of overpainting added during prior repairs.

  • Because original paint was reduced to faint traces (facial features of several apostles, such as Simon, were completely gone), restorers filled blank areas with removable watercolor to maintain overall tonal continuity without faking Leonardo's brushwork.

  • Conservation Philosophy Debate:

  • Authenticity vs. Legibility: Debate over whether art preservation should prioritize retaining pure original fragments (even if illegible) or restoring visual readability through non-original fills.

  • Modern conservation proposals advocate projecting digital light-restorations onto surrounding wall surfaces rather than applying physical pigments.

• Alternative Halos:

  • Rejecting gold halos, Leonardo frames Christ's head against a central rectangular door/window opening filled with bright white daylight, utilizing natural light to signify divinity.

The Mona Lisa: Historical Record, Theft, and Global Iconography

• Identity and History:

  • Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Florentine cloth merchant Francesco del Giocondo (referred to as La Gioconda in Italian).

  • Commissioned c. $1503\text{--}1506$; kept in Leonardo's personal possession until his death in France in $1519$, entering the royal collection of King Francis I and eventually the Musée du Louvre.

• The 1911 Theft and Rise to Global Fame:

  • Prior to $1911$, the panel was historically respected but hung without high security alongside standard gallery displays.

  • In $1911$, Italian glazier and Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia stole the panel, hiding it for two years under the belief that it belonged in Italian museums.

  • France entered national mourning, hanging black silk crepe over the empty gallery wall space. Sensational worldwide news coverage over two years elevated the painting into a unique global cultural icon.

• Display and Modern Crowding:

  • Displayed in the Louvre behind thick bulletproof glass with security barriers to manage massive tourist crowds.

  • The Louvre spans $12\,\text{square miles}$; direction signs throughout the museum guide visitors toward the panel (L'Joconde).

• Popular Culture and "Apeshit" Video:

  • In $2018$, artists Beyoncé and Jay-Z (The Carters) rented the Louvre for an estimated $\$18,000\,\text{per day}$ to film the music video for Apeshit.

  • The video engaged themes of wealth, status, and historical representation by placing contemporary Black icons alongside classical Western art masterpieces.

  • The production drove a measurable surge in youth museum attendance and prompted the Louvre to create an official guided tour based on the video's featured artworks.

• Overtourism / "Hit-and-Run" Tourism:

  • The rise of social-media-driven rapid travel, where visitors flock briefly to famous monuments primarily to photograph selfies, leading to severe overcrowding across major European cultural destinations, including Paris, Florence, and Greece.