Leonardo da Vinci • Biography • Articles and  Resources • Art History 101: The Italian High Renaissance

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Figure 1

Image from "Wer ist Mona Lisa? Auf der Suche nach ihrer Identität"
("Who is Mona Lisa? In search of her identity"); courtesy of the author

In the course of my research for the book "Who is Mona Lisa? In search of her identity", I investigated not only the coats of arms, specific symbols or emblems and colours used by the different Italian dynasties of the 15th and 16th century, but also the hundreds of books of plates in which one can find wonderful portraits from this epoch. Because over 95% of these portraits are unsigned, undated and give no information about the person depicted, art historians will make mistakes (and have made mistakes) when attributing a portrait to a painter, year or subject.

Figure 2:  Portraits of Leonardo

Images from "Wer ist Mona Lisa? Auf der Suche nach ihrer Identität"
("Who is Mona Lisa? In search of her identity"); courtesy of the author

In the paintings of Figure 2 you can see what Leonardo da Vinci looked like. These portraits were painted by Leonardo da Vinci himself, his master Andrea del Verrocchio, and co-workers of his master like Botticelli and Francesco Botticini.

Figure 3: Leonardo's father, Ser Piero da Vinci, or uncle, Francesco da Vinci

Image from "Wer ist Mona Lisa? Auf der Suche nach ihrer Identität"
("Who is Mona Lisa? In search of her identity"); courtesy of the author

The drawing (Figure 3), which is regarded to be a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, is certainly not a portrait of the great master. It depicts a man at the age of 75 to 80 years. Leonardo da Vinci didn’t have the fortune to reach this age. The drawing in fact depicts either Leonardo’s father Ser Piero da Vinci or his beloved uncle Francesco da Vinci, both of whom died at the age of 80. Some art historians instead made the ridiculous assumption that Leonardo da Vinci must have aged very quickly. The contemporaries of the great master described his looks very precisely, but they didn’t mention this phenomenon.

Figure 4: (left and middle detail) Tobias and the Angel; Verrocchio and Leonardo
(right) Tobias and the Three Archangels; Francesco Botticini

Images from "Wer ist Mona Lisa? Auf der Suche nach ihrer Identität"
("Who is Mona Lisa? In search of her identity"); courtesy of the author

However, not only is the similarity of the person in Figure 1 with the other portraits of Leonardo striking, there is further indication that this person is the great master himself: The little white dog, which was either Leonardo’s dog or the dog of his master Andrea del Verrocchio († 1488). A little white dog can also be seen in the painting "Tobias and the Angel" (Figure 4, left picture, and middle picture detail), which was made in the school of Andrea del Verrocchio. The dog in this painting was depicted by Leonardo da Vinci according to the art historian David Alan Brown (see his book: Leonardo da Vinci – Origin of a genius. New Haven and London 1998). This little dog can also be seen in the painting "Tobias and the three angels" of a co-worker of Andrea del Verrocchio, Francesco Botticini († 1498). The dog can be found in this case on the left side of the Archangel Raphael, who is nobody other than Leonardo da Vinci himself.

Leonardo was said to have had a big heart for animals. His contemporaries described how he liked to go to the markets and buy little birds in tiny little cages. He then went outside of the cities to open their cages and give them back their freedom. In his household there were always a lot of dogs and cats to be found. There are numerous drawings made by the great master that show them jumping and rolling. Leonardo also avoided eating meat, at least as an elderly man.

Could it be that this new portrait of Leonardo da Vinci is the same portrait mentioned by Giorgio Vasari in his famous book "Lives of seventy of the most eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects", published in 1550, when he speaks about Francesco Melzi, the beloved pupil and heir of Leonardo da Vinci: "…(Francesco Melzi) a Milanese gentleman, who, in the time of Leonardo, was a child of remarkable beauty, much beloved by him, and is now a handsome and amiable old man, who sets great store by these drawings, and treasures them as relics, together with the portrait of Leonardo of blessed memory." (in: Giorgio Vasari: Lives of seventy of the most eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, edited and annotated by E.H. and E.W. Blashfield and A.A. Hopkins. Vol. II. London 1897, S. 392)

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From your Guide:  Maike Vogt-Lüerssen is an historian and author of many texts on historic women. The information presented here on Leonardo is a product of seventeen-years' research for her latest book, "Wer ist Mona Lisa? Auf der Suche nach ihrer Identität" ("Who is Mona Lisa? In search of her identity"), published by BoD in Norderstedt, Germany in 2003. Maike, native to northern Germany, emigrated to Australia in 1995, and lives and writes there with her husband, Dr. Holger Lüerssen, and doctoral candidate son Martin.

All images courtesy of the author, and used here with her gracious permission.

Note: Figure 1 ("Portrait of a Man with a Dog") is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. As of this writing (July, 2004), it remains attributed to Giovanni Cariani.