Chapter 4
Before the discovery of the painting, the presence of two red chalk drawings for Christ’s drapery testified to Leonardo having planned a painting of the Salvator Mundi, which was an unusually hierarchical subject for him to have tackled. The drapery studies also provide key evidence for the date of generation of the composition and provide a logical starting point in our quest to locate the painting in Leonardo’s career—not least given the often protracted schedule for Leonardo’s production of a finished painting.
We have a range of drapery studies from a wide span of his activity, from before 1481 to those made in connection with the Louvre St Anne, which are likely to date from after 1507, perhaps substantially so. Looking at the drawings that are associated with dated or dateable compositions, it is apparent that there is not a simple linear development either in terms of style or with respect to his use of particular media and supports. As so often with Leonardo, each new project for a painting seems to trigger preparatory manoeuvres that are not entirely consistent with preceding or successive methods. The survival rate of drapery studies is not high, and for a number of paintings none are known, but some broad trends can be discerned, not least in his hatching techniques in silverpoint, pen, chalks, and brush.
The technique of the two Salvator Mundi drapery studies is not precisely paralleled in his other drawings for draperies, and they are on a larger scale than is the norm (Plates 6 and 7). The basic technique is red chalk on red prepared paper. The shadowed contours have been gently reinforced with brown ink in the area of bunched cloth below the cuff in the detailed study for the sleeve on 12524 (henceforth drawing A), and more widely in the complex folds of the sleeve on 12525 (henceforth drawing B).1 The latter has also been heightened with white applied with a fine brush. The configurations of the folds in the two drawings exhibit a level of superb conviction, conveying a sense of amplitude, and have the appearance of having been done ‘from life’. The tight handling of the media and high degree of finish have led to unwarranted doubts about their autograph status, although it does seem possible that the white heightening of the sleeve in smaller drawing on sheet B was added by someone else.2
The dominant motion of the hatching, as customary with Leonardo, is orientated diagonally from upper left to bottom right, in a left-handed manner, but there are a number of passages in which other directions are apparent. This is particularly the case in the white heightening in B, but is also evident in the roughly indicated portion of wrist on A. The arm on B also shows clear signs of curved hatching rather than the straight parallels he favoured earlier in his career. This pragmatic response of the hatchings’ orientation to the sketched form is characteristic of his drawings after 1500. Before that, the Florentine formality of his left-handed hatching in straight, parallel lines of more or less constant orientation was the norm, although, as we will see, a drapery study associated with the Last Supper studies complicates the issue.
The remarkable red-on-red technique is also a noted feature of his later drawings, exploited for its subtlety in creating delicate and elusive tonal modelling. However, it does occur in some drawings of disciples’ heads connected with the Last Supper. These drawings may be studio copies, as first noted by Clark, but it seems to me that the Judas on Windsor no.12547, the possible study for St Bartholomew on 12548, and even that for Simon on 12550 are autograph red-on-red drawings of the late 1490s.3 If they are not, they are very skilled and faithful copies that were presumably taken from Leonardo’s own red-on-red studies. Either way, they indicate that the technique was in use in the years immediately before 1500.
The most cogent comparisons for the Salvator Mundi drawings are with the drawing for the sleeve of a man, generally taken as for St Peter in the Last Supper and therefore dated c. 1495–7 (Fig. 4.1), and that for a kneeling figure usually connected with the second version of the Virgin of the Rocks (Fig. 4.2).
Fig. 4.1Leonardo da Vinci, Study for a Sleeve, black chalk, pen and ink with white heightening, c. 1504, Windsor, Royal Library, 12546.
Fig. 4.2Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Drapery of a Kneeling Figure, ink and brush with white heightening, c. 1504, Windsor, Royal Library, 12521.
The sleeve study appears to be the most firmly dateable of these—if it is for St Peter. There is some continuing doubt about the drawing’s purpose. The motif of the bent arm with the sharply curved wrist resting on the hip was a favourite of Leonardo’s, appearing in the St Anne compositions and even in two late costume studies.4 In the Last Supper Peter’s arm is bent back at a sharper angle than in the drawing. The study is strongly executed in a complex way with black chalk, pen reinforcement, and traces of white heightening. The black chalk in the dense folds on the sleeve around the lower part of the arm presents an example of the pragmatic shading that follows the form in such a way that the handling has a sculptural feel. These features would make the drawing exceptional amongst surviving studies for the Last Supper or any other project before 1500.
A similar dilemma presents itself with the drapery for a kneeling figure, which is now almost always associated with the London version of the Virgin of the Rocks and dated to the middle or late 1490s.5 Executed with brush in dark and lighter inks with white heightening (and perhaps a little pen work in the outlines), the shading curves around many of the forms, with some passages of curved cross-hatching in the folds to the lower left. In this it is quite unlike any drawing from the 1490s. This might reflect the impact of Michelangelo’s hatching style, which Leonardo would have encountered on their mutual returns to Florence after 1500. The study for the kneeling figure is, therefore, best recognized as dating from around 1506, when he finally set himself to the finishing of the altarpiece for the disgruntled Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan. We now know from the underdrawing that in the 1490s he had considered changing the subject into an image of the Virgin with the Holy Children at play, but reverted to a near-copy of the first version.6 Looking at the ‘St Peter’ drawing from this perspective, I am inclined to see it also as dating from a few years after 1500, whilst acknowledging that the connection with the sleeve of the disciple weighs against such a move.
Amongst the late St Anne drapery studies, a number of which seem by analogy to evoke seismic shifts in geological formations, the one devoted to the swathe of drapery around the Virgin’s hip (Fig. 4.3) provides a good comparison, allowing for the different medium. It is close not only to the Salvator drawings but also to the two studies we have just been discussing. It is in black chalk on the rather fibrous paper that he often seems to have used in his second period in Milan and exhibits the kind of cross hatching we noted in the drapery of the kneeling figure.
Fig. 4.3Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Drapery on the Hip of St. Anne, black chalk, c. 1508, Windsor, Royal Library, 12529.
Turning back to the studies for Christ’s drapery, we gain a sense from these comparisons that they are unlikely to date from before 1500. We have already noted the pragmatic directions of the hatching. There is also something of the ‘geological’ quality of the St Anne drawings. The clustered, rivulet fold patterns below the cuff and the neckband on B seem to be post-1500 features. They first appear, in relatively subdued form, in the Isabella d’Este portrait drawing in the Louvre, which is securely dated to 1500. They feature in fully virtuoso mode in the small folds cascading over the breast of Mona Lisa, and we may imagine that a comparable study or studies once existed for her draperies. The lost Mona Lisa drawing(s) would have dated from 1503 or perhaps a bit earlier, when he is known to be working on the painting, according to evidence in the marginal note by Agostino Vespucci in Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares.7 All in all, even if the ‘St Peter’ study is placed before 1500, the Salvator drawings are likely to have been made no earlier than 1503.
None of the three sketches on the two sheets are precisely carried over into the finished painting. The main study for the configuration of folds over Christ’s chest already denotes the position of the bejewelled central plaque, but not its final shape, and features the tight gathering of folds below the neckband. We can see that he is in the process of adding the tight band or bands that cross Christ’s chest, but exactly what is going on is far from clear. The band running from top right to bottom left is lightly sketched over the ends of the vertical folds top right, while at bottom left the folds are strongly bunched up by the band, causing the ‘omega’ fold. The other band is barely indicated and crosses the first one distinctly to the right of the central axis of the plaque. The best explanation is that he is studying the form of the folds ‘from life’ and at one point added the first band to the set-up, paying close attention to the bunching in the lower left, but had not physically introduced the second band. This is consistent with our sense that Leonardo, as a left-hander, tended to work from right to left on a drawing. In any event, we are clearly seeing that the idea for the crossed bands is emergent as this drawing was being made and was not part of his very first conception of the subject.
The sleeve on B is not particularly close to the painted version, but that on A presents a more interesting comparison. The outer sleeve is close to that in the painting, most notably in the somewhat contrived S-fold that is so characteristic of Leonardo, especially in his later drapery drawings. The inner sleeve is obviously different, but is surprisingly taken up very closely in the copy once in the possession of the Earls of Yarborough (Fig. 4.4) but not in other versions.8 The Yarborough picture also prominently displays the ‘omega’ fold above the constriction of the band at the lower left, a feature found in a number of the better versions. This configuration is barely discernible in the blue drapery of the painting, which has suffered from damage and the notable deterioration of the ultramarine pigment, made from precious lapis lazuli. It was probably always more reticent than in the drawing and copies. The Yarborough painting also shares the scattering of light dots within the transparent sphere, which, as we will see, is a signal feature of Leonardo’s own invention.
Fig. 4.4After Leonardo, Salvator Mundi, formerly in the Yarborough Collection.
The Yarborough copy reflects the way that some of Leonardo inventions ‘leaked’ into pupils’ or followers’ paintings before they eventually reached their definitive, painted form in his studio. The versions of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder that contain the ‘baby-walker group’, which infrared reflectography has disclosed in the underdrawing of both prime versions, are cases in point.9 They might have been taken from the same cartoon or based on similar underdrawings, before Leonardo decided to modify some details in his final version. The different pattern on the crossed bands may indicate that the geometrical design of the interlace had yet to be determined. The copy thus provides precious if somewhat pedantic evidence about an early scheme for the Salvator Mundi.