Chapter 6
At this stage, with the Salvator Mundi yet to be embedded in Leonardo’s oeuvre via years of scholarship, it is unwise to be too assertive about the painting’s date. Indeed, there are few fixed markers in the period after 1500. Even when we know the likely starting date for a picture, such as the Madonna of the Yarnwinder and the Mona Lisa, the date of completion is either unknown or substantially later than the patron would have hoped. The majority of Leonardo’s pictures underwent protracted periods of execution. However, weighing up the evidence of the drawings, the nature of the knot pattern, the optical qualities of the sphere, and the style and expression of the painting itself, we may reasonably think that it was begun in the years around 1503, or perhaps a bit later. In many ways the Salvator seems like a devotional counterpart to the Mona Lisa and shares many of the spiritual dimensions of the later St John. There are strong stylistic parallels with the Mona Lisa’s draperies and the elusiveness of edges of forms, as well as in the communicative affinities that we have already observed. It seems unlikely that the painting was commenced before 1500, but it would not be surprising if evidence emerges that it was started some years after 1503.
Given this likely date, can we suggest who might be the patron? The obvious point of reference for this kind of painting by Leonardo is the sustained effort by Isabella d’Este from 1501 onwards to obtain something from Leonardo. She campaigned particularly hard for ‘a young Christ of twelve years old … made with that air of sweetness and suavity in which his art is peculiarly excellent’.1 After experiencing typical frustrations with the Florentine master, she had made it clear that she would eventually settle for anything from his reluctant hand. However, the Salvator Mundi cannot be directly associated with Isabella’s ‘young Christ’, which she never received. It is just possible that the more informal versions of the young Christ as Saviour (Figs. 2.9 and 6.3), or even the Salaì Christ (Fig. 2.8) might have emerged from some preliminary thinking by Leonardo in response to Isabella’s request. One of the versions is inscribed to the effect that Jesus is twelve years old.2 In any event, there is no solid reason for associating the painting with her rather than another potential patron. There is no shortage of possible clients.
If we allow the broadest date range from as early as c. 1497, we might think of someone at or connected with the Sforza court, such as King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Charles VIII of France, or one of his courtiers. It could have been prominent person in the Florentine Republic after 1500, and later, Louis XII of France or someone in his Milanese regime. Louis XII was a known admirer and employer of Leonardo, and he has been promoted as the commissioner of Leonardo’s painting on elaborate but circumstantial grounds.3 We might like to think that the Holy Roman emperor, Maximillian I, would have appreciated the imagery of the Salvator, given its iconographical links with the traditional portrayal of the emperors with orb and sceptre. His second wife was Bianca Maria Sforza, Ludovico’s niece, underlining the close links between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Milanese court. However, portraits and coins of Maximillian conspicuously fail to conform to the orb-and-sceptre type. A particularly attractive possibility is Pope Leo X, whose emblem of the yoke with the biblical motto of suave would chime well with the crossed bands of Christ’s costume.4 However, this would indicate a date in 1513 or later, when Leonardo was residing in the Vatican. The Christ by Salaì (Fig. 2.8), dated to 1511 and clearly dependent on Leonardo, seems to exclude this late dating. The list of possible recipients could be extended, in the absence of direct evidence.
We also know that Leonardo began paintings that did not have a fixed patron. It is surprising to find that he worked on off-the-peg paintings when he had so many unfulfilled commissions. Speculatively produced pictures could be offered to clients of the highest status, as when he wrote in 1508 from Florence to Charles d’Amboise in Milan,
I am sending Salaì to you to explain to your Lordship that I am almost at an end of my litigation with my brothers, and that I expect to find myself with you this Easter, and to bring 2 pictures of … Our Lady of different sizes … for our most Christian King or for whomsoever your Lordship pleases.5
However, given the specificity of the subject of the Salvator, compared to the ubiquitous images of the Madonna, it is likely that the painting was commissioned.
In any event, it is likely that a patron or intended client never received the Salvator Mundi. It seems that it was recorded in Milan in 1525, six years after Leonardo’s death, as one of the paintings in the possession of the late Salaì, the ‘little demon’ (real name, Gian Giacomo Caprotti), who was a long-term member of Leonardo’s household and occasional painter.6 The rascally Salaì died intestate in 1524 in mysterious circumstances, and on 21 April in the following year his possessions were valued for division between his two married sisters.7 The list survives in first and revised versions. Salaì surprisingly owned some quite valuable things, including two diamonds and a chalcedony (ancient gem), and was owed money by some prominent citizens. Unexpectedly, his estate includes eleven paintings. The subject matter and high valuations indicate that they were by Leonardo. The most expensive picture, the lost Leda at 200 scudi, was worth as much as Salaì’s house.
The ninth item on the list was a Christo in modo de uno Dio padre (‘Christ in the Manner of God the Father’), rather a nice way to describe what we would later call a Salvator Mundi. It was valued at 25 scudi. The Mona Lisa, which had also remained in Leonardo’s hands, was listed at 100 scudi. The same painting also appears inaccurately as an ‘imaginem Dey Patris’ in a 1530 notarial document recording nine paintings formerly owned by Salaì that remained in Milan. The paintings were deposited in San Satiro pending the resolution of a dispute between Salaì’s wife, Bianca dei Coldiroli di Annone, and his two sisters.8 Salaì’s inheritance had seemingly become subject to a prolonged wrangle which involved Bianca’s dowry. The paintings on deposit were accorded a low value, but this was probably the amount specifically set as security in the court case.
The Salaì inventory on its own leaves open the question of the precise status of the painting, since it includes works accorded widely different values. The paintings that were most highly valued would have been the more substantial ones by the master himself. Size was obviously a factor. In other cases, he may have collaborated with members of the workshop on a prime version or versions. Or he may have generated a design that was then painted by the workshop. Leonardesque pictures were produced by skilled masters such as Marco d’Oggiono and Boltraffio, who were housed in the rooms available to Leonardo.9 They used the resources of the studio, such as sketches and cartoons, to produce works which in effect carried the ‘Leonardo brand’.10
Somewhere—and this seems as good a place as any—we should also note an enigmatic reference by Leonardo himself which could be taken as a record of his making an image of the mature Christ. It occurs in one of two isolated and deleted notes on a page in the Codex Atlanticus. He writes, ‘when I made an infant Lord our God you put me in prison; now that I make him large [grown up?], you will do worse’.11 The other note has an ironically philosophical tone: ‘Once I believed that I was learning to live, and I will learn to die’.12 To the right of the former, Leonardo has added the kind of bracket that he often used to designate a quotation. It seems likely that the note about images of Christ was designed to tease in a literary manner, in a way comparable to his comedic ‘prophecies’ and what Richter called Leonardo’s ‘philosophical maxims’. It cannot be safely taken as reportage of an actual occurrence.
Leonardo himself spoke in a more direct manner of the categories of painting that artists should have available.
They should keep aside some good work saying, this is worth a good price, this is medium priced and this is so-so [questa è di sorte], thus showing that they have works in all price ranges.13
On the grounds of its estimated value, size, and what we have already observed, the Salvator Mundi in the Salaì lists fell into the category of a ‘medium-priced’ product of high quality that may have involved studio intervention.
However, there is a serious complication to the story of the pictures owned by Salaì. A note by the treasurer for the region of Languedoil in his estimate of forthcoming expenditure for the state of Milan in 1518 states that ‘Mister Salaì son of Pietro Opreno’ was to be paid for ‘several paintings on panel which he has delivered (bailées) to the King’.14 The total value amounted to the large sum of 2,604 livres tournois, 3 sols, and 4 deniers. This is comfortably in excess of the value of the 400-plus scudi in 1525 list.
One interpretation is that Salaì was directly selling a group of Leonardo paintings to Francis I in 1518, but the valuations in the 1525 lists of his possessions in Milan are consistent with their being by Leonardo. It is also unclear why any payments for Leonardo’s paintings would not have been made directly to the master, who was on the royal payroll. It seems likely that the estimated expenditure did not occur and that the paintings were not actually sold to Francis. An alternative is that the ‘several paintings’ were not by Leonardo, and that they were by other Italian artists whose works Francis coveted15 Perhaps the shrewd Salaì was in the import business, acting as agent for Italian artists with whom he had contact.
Whatever the complications, we know that a group of Leonardo paintings did enter the French royal collection during the sixteenth century and later. The Leonardos in the Louvre, the St Anne, ‘La Belle Ferronière, the Mona Lisa, the St John the Baptist in the Wilderness (later converted into a Bacchus), and the small St John (formerly in the collection of Charles I) seem to have entered through various routes at various times. The lost Leda may have been one of Francis’s Leonardos, though its first mention in the royal collection dates from 1625.16 It disappeared after 1692. The lack of any direct record of the Cook Salvator Mundi in the French royal collection will become apparent in Margaret Dalivalle’s discussions in Chapter 10. We simply do not know where it went after 1530.
Copies
An important aspect of the history of the image and its Leonardo pedigree is the number of copies and versions. It clearly attracted many admirers at an early stage and was quite widely copied, though not in the same numbers as the Madonna of the Yarnwinder. Leonardo’s inventions were replicated more widely across Europe than those of other Renaissance masters, with the possible exception of Titian. The small-scale devotional images were particularly popular. Robert Simon has counted some thirty surviving pictures of the Saviour demonstrably inspired by Leonardo directly or indirectly. A full review of the copies remains to be undertaken. Here we concentrate on those that shed light on the Cook painting.
Exceptionally, one rather nice version on a small scale is on vellum and probably originated from a manuscript (Fig. 6.1). Understandably, the costume has been simplified on this smaller scale, but the sphere, face, and hair are rendered more effectively than in most of the larger oil paintings. It seems to have been produced at an early date by someone with a close knowledge of the original.
Fig. 6.1The Salvator Mundi on vellum, private collection.
The draperies were readily subject to variation in the copies, but it is the globe that offered most scope for the copyists to present something different from the original. Amongst the copies there are translucent spheres with or without a cross and a T-band, solid orbs with or without a cross, a terrestrial globe, and celestial sphere with an ecliptic band (marking the path of the sun and planets, and normally inscribed with dates and the signs of the zodiac). The majority of the copies that seem close to Leonardo’s finished painting, like that on vellum, show the sphere as a translucent orb, with or without small dots, but with no lustrous highlight. These may have derived from a particularly influential copy. The same is true of a number of copies that place a decorative cruciform halo behind the head of Christ. As a reproductive record of the appearance of the finished painting, the Hollar etching is probably the most reliable.
The copy that has rightly received most attention is that formerly in the de Ganay collection. It is closest in spirit to Leonardo’s drawings and has been claimed as his original (Plate 8).17 It is the most striking of the copies, but it falls short of autograph status in a number of crucial respects. The folds of the drapery tend to be schematic, without any subtle understanding of how real cloth actually behaves under pressure. This is particularly true of the folds below Christ’s right wrist. Similarly, the rivulets of gathered cloth below the band of his tunic are transposed without any clear comprehension of how the folds actually work. The hands themselves are also schematically handled. There is little sense of the anatomy under the skin and the fingernails are unconvincingly delineated. Christ’s face and hair are handled with neat if rather niggling delicacy. The image is close in its proportions to the autograph painting, but has been extended slightly on the left and at the base.
The underdrawing, revealed by infrared reflectography (Fig. 6.2), is tidy and skilled, but exhibits no trace of the erratic changes of mind that characterize Leonardo’s own underdrawings, even when he has been using a cartoon.18 The knot design effectively but mechanically transcribes the final pattern in the autograph painting. The draperies are delineated without any real sense of observed cloth. The underdrawing exhibits exactly those characteristics that are expected in a careful copy. It effectively rules out Leonardo having been involved in the design of the panel.
Fig. 6.2Infrared reflectogram of the de Ganay Salvator Mundi.
Rather oddly, the sphere in the painting exhibits ghosts of horizontal and vertical bands on which a cross is mounted and seems to be dotted with a multitude of orangish spots. There are also traces of highlights on either side of the centre of the sphere. The infrared image confirms that the sphere has at some point been overpainted with the bands and cross, which have later been partially cleaned off. The curved scar over Christ’s head seems to have resulted from some kind of headdress or a halo that has been added and then crudely removed. There are areas of quite severe abrasion across the surface, particularly on the right. In overall effect the copy creates a striking impression, but the details exhibit nothing of the astonishing observational acuity of Leonardo’s autograph drawings and paintings, none of his miraculous refinement of execution, and no sense of the optical elusiveness that marks his paintings after 1500. It fails to evoke the suggestive ‘otherness’ of Leonardo’s Christ. The obvious place to search for the author of the de Ganay version would seem to be amongst Leonardo’s followers in Milan, but it might well have originated elsewhere. In any event, there is no sign of Leonardo’s own participation in its production. The Ganay version is discussed further by Margaret Dalivalle.19
Copying Leonardo’s later paintings is a difficult and slippery business. No copyist precisely emulated the indefiniteness that characterizes his description of form, in particular the soft contours of youthful faces. Many of the copies of the Salvator are of dispiriting standard, but so strong was Leonardo’s conception that enough of its essence survived to exercise some kind of distant magic for viewers in earlier centuries, many of whom would not have known what a real Leonardo looked like.
In the story that follows in the succeeding chapters, another ‘Leonardo Salvator Mundi’ features prominently. The historical records of paintings belonging to Charles I introduce us to a somewhat different rendering of the subject, a younger Christ posed more flexibly as he cradles a terrestrial globe and offers us his gentle blessing (Plate 10). The evidence that this painting was once in the collection of Charles is secure. On the reverse of the painting in the Pushkin State Museum in Moscow is his cypher of a crown and C(arolus) R(ex), which occurs on some of the works from his collection. Its earlier provenance is uncertain and we do not know how it entered the collection of the Mosolov family in the nineteenth century.20
Stylistically the Pushkin Salvator belongs in Leonard’s Milanese following rather than with immediate members of his studio, since its colouring and chiaroscuro do not exhibit the tonal consistency of that his assistants adopted in various ways. Jesus’s head is prettily adorned with a cruciform nimbus in filigree gold. The image is undeniably appealing, with its striking swathes of red, gold, and blue drapery, and it is not hard to see why it was once held in high regard. It is related to paintings of some quality in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Nancy (Fig. 2.9), and the Borghese Gallery in Rome (Fig. 6.3), and to a poor version on deposit to the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci in Vinci.21 This last is inscribed ‘AN[NO] XII’, presumably a reference to the age of Jesus when he disputed in the temple, which may encourage us to think consider a link between the young Christs and Isabella d’Este’s request for a painting of the twelve-year-old Jesus.22 The variant in Rome is reasonably attributed to Marco d’Oggiono, but the others are best described generically as by followers of Leonardo.
Fig. 6.3Marco d’Oggiono (?), The Young Christ as Salvator Mundi, Rome, Galleria Borghese.
It is not too hard to place the four paintings in a sequence on the basis of the terrestrial globe. That in the Nancy picture is geographically convincing to a decent degree, accurately featuring the Cape of Good Hope, and is generally similar to the Waldseemüller map of 1507, particularly to one of the simplified vignettes showing two halves of the full globe at the top of the main map (Figs. 6.4 and 6.5).23 The viewpoint is set up so that Italy is very evident, which means that the slice of ‘America’ in the printed map is not visible. Or the globe in the painting might have been based on one assembled from Waldseemüler’s paper gores. The land and seas in the Borghese globe are more schematized, while the Pushkin version wrongly covers most of the visible hemisphere with land. The poorest of the variants makes an unintelligible mess of the patterns of land and water. This sequence means that the Pushkin Salvator stands at more than one remove from any Leonardo precedent, if there ever was one, and at least one remove from whatever was its prototype.
Fig. 6.4Follower of Leonardo, The Young Christ as Salvator Mundi, detail of the globe, Nancy, Musée des Beaux Arts.
Fig. 6.5Martin Waldseemüller, Map of the World, detail of the vignette at the top left of the main map, 1507, Washington, Library of Congress.
Such are the two main protagonists in the complex story that follows. One is a majestic if damaged masterpiece by the master, and the other a pretty Leonardesque painting that once was accorded autograph status.