Leonardo's topography

Maps by Leonardo da Vinci, which have been assembled for the first time in his native Tuscany and date back 500 years, have helped to identify the enigmatic landscapes in some of his most famous paintings, including the Mona Lisa.

Scholars have long debated whether Leonardo’s landscapes are imaginary or real, or a mixture of both. But Carlo Starnazzi, a palaeontologist at Florence University, claims that the maps show that Leonardo had gained a “precise topographical knowledge” of Tuscany while working as a military consultant to Cesare Borgia, the notorious son of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI.

The 16th-century maps show central and northern Italy, western Tuscany, the Pontine Marches near Rome and, most important, the backgrounds to Leonardo’s paintings, the Valdichiana and Valdarno areas around Arezzo. . .

Two of the maps, which were brought under guard from the Royal Library at Windsor for an exhibition on Leonardo opening today at Arezzo, have helped to solve the mystery of the backdrops, depicting the local region, the Valdichiana (Valley of the Chiana) and the upper Valdarno (Valley of the Arno).

Professor Starnazzi and Carlo Pedretti, Italy’s foremost Leonardo expert and director of the Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo Studies at the University of California, said the maps were made between 1502 and 1503 when Leonardo was in the Arezzo area with Vitelli. Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) was painted between 1503 and 1507.

Professor Pedretti said that the “topographical and geographical knowledge Leonardo acquired of specific sites as a cartographer was of fundamental importance for his work as a painter. This has not been recognised before". . .

The background to the Mona Lisa — painted during a period of creativity that also produced Virgin and Child with St Anne — shows a misty lake, a winding river, jagged rocks and a bridge behind her left shoulder.

Professor Starnazzi said that this was “not a fantasy but a precise depiction of the confluence of the Arno and Chiana rivers”, with the pool of water behind the Mona Lisa’s right shoulder forming Lake Chiana. “This is a place Leonardo knew as well as he knew the woman in the portrait,” he said.

It seems likely this will be contested; even if based upon real locales, Leonardo's background landscapes are notably otherworldly -- I recall someone referring to them as geological rather than topographical. The article appears in tomorrow's Times of London.

Posted by David on June 20, 2003 9:22 PM