Organized by Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza

ANTONIO NATALI

Did young Leonardo bungle or master perspective?

Scholars have maintained that Leonardo's Annunciation reveals the young artist's difficulties in applying perspective technique. They have pointed out that the building's foreshortened façade is incongruously concealed by an oddly out of scale cypress tree, and that the corner ashlars are too large in relation to the wall's implied dimensions. They have also pointed out that the lectern's apparent alignment with the door makes it seem excessively distanced from the Virgin, so that her right arm appears twisted, poorly conceived, almost dislocated.

They are right. However, before accepting such a rigorous and geometric composition as artless, I propose that we consider the painting as having been conceived for a specific point of view. I prefer to argue the case that Leonardo painted the panel to be seen not frontally but from the right, and perhaps slightly from below. If we observe the painting from such a standpoint, everything returns to its proper position: the façade appears elongated; the ashlars are shortened so that the stone frame of the window no longer touches them; the lectern draws closer to the Virgin whose arm then assumes a normal posture; and, finally, the apparently elongated archangel returns to a comfortable kneeling position.

If the painting was indeed conceived for a specific viewpoint, any purported incongruities or uncertainties become brilliant compositional devices, in other words, optical refinements that would have excited the mind of a young artist naturally inclined to systematically transcribing empirical observations. We must not forget Leonardo's experiments in anamorphosis, which Carlo Pedretti demonstrated years ago. According to Lomazzo, Leonardo painted a struggle between a lion and a dragon as well as a scene with horses, and designed both to be seen from a specific point of view. We are informed of these in a passage where Lomazzo describes "how to execute a painting on the wall of a portico" in such a way that its forms and proportions will only appear legible from a specific viewpoint, outside of which everything assumes "an incomprehensible and deformed appearance." According to Pedretti, "Leonardo studied the application of perspective as a practice necessary to the painter when he must paint on a surface that is irregular or in a position that demands a fixed point of view." In this light, the Annunciation may be considered as one of the first concrete applications of Leonardo's skill in resolving such perspective problems. We may conclude that the apparent incongruities are not mistakes but, rather, expressions of virtuosity. What remains for us to determine was its original placement. Given that its size is atypical for an altarpiece, we may assume that it was not intended for frontal viewing, but belonged to a side panel.