Sublime

The culmination of Leonardo’s collaborations with Verrocchio came in the mid-1470s with the completion of the Baptism of Christ, which shows John the Baptist pouring water over Jesus while two angels kneeling beside the River Jordan watch (fig. 10). Leonardo painted the radiant, turning angel on the far left of the scene, and Verrocchio was so awed

He was one of those to whom nature has given the desire without the power of artistic expression.

Leonardo’s dedication to connecting movements of the body with movements of the soul was manifest in the other great painting he probably began around that time,36 Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (fig. 17). The unfinished work shows Saint Jerome, a fourth-century scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, during his retreat as a hermit in the dese

Il va sans dire que Léonard n’en fera rien. Il aspire à réaliser des peintures plus ambitieuses, ainsi qu’à poursuivre ses recherches anatomiques, mécaniques, mathématiques et scientifiques. Peindre un tableau pour un patron insistant ne l’intéresse pas, et l’argent ne le motive pas non plus.

Painted in oil on a walnut panel, the portrait of Cecilia, now known as Lady with an Ermine, was so innovative, so emotionally charged and alive, that it helped to transform the art of portraiture. The twentieth-century art historian John Pope-Hennessy called it the “first modern portrait” and “the first painting in European art to introduce the id

Michelangelo was asked by the pope about the secret of his genius, particularly how he carved the statue of David, largely considered the masterpiece of all masterpieces. His answer was: “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.”