Leonardo da Vinci and the Perspective of Light · Leonardo was an atheist, which is advanced by many people, because he didnÕt spend all of his time talking about God. But he had

The remark has been attributed toNapoleon, that, when it comes togenerals and prostitutes, some-

times amateurs do better than profession-als. And, I believe that’s true of historians.I’m using the term “amateur historian” inthe Labor Committee* sense of the term;that is, someone who pursues truth for thelove of it. Whereas, professional historiansare more inclined to dilute the truth, inorder to make a living. So, we have a kindof simple definition of an amateur, and aprofessional, in this field.

Now, I speak with some authority,because I am both. I have been, and to a cer-tain extent, still am an amateur in the loveof truth, in the sense that we have used thatin the Labor Committees. I also make a liv-ing as a professional art historian, and so Iknow something about diluting the truth,or doing whatever one does in the course ofmaking a living. And, this evening, I’mgoing to try to use both experiences, so tospeak, to try to set up an argument whichhas the validity of the pursuit of truth, butwhich also has a certain amount of what weused to call in the bad old days of the 1960’s,“bourgeois historian professionalism.” Thatis to say, I’m actually going to try to quotedirectly from the sources, so that you can seethat I’m not making it all up.

The first thing that I want to show you,is this famous image, the “Baptism ofChrist”—and, for those of you who’ve had

the good fortune to be in the Uffizi in Flo-rence, you will recognize this as Leonardoda Vinci’s earliest contribution to the histo-ry of the visual arts [SEE Figure 1]. He

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Leonardo da Vinci and thePerspective of Lightby D. Stephen Pepper

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* The International Caucus of Labor Committees,the philosophical association founded by LyndonLaRouche.

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This article has been edited from a lecturepresented in Leesburg, Virginia, in September2000. A biographical note appears on page 53.

FIGURE 1. Andrea delVerrocchio, “Baptism ofChrist” (with Leonardo daVinci), c. 1470.

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painted this figure here, the angel on theleft, and this landscape here above theangels, in a painting that was otherwisedone by his master, Verrocchio. And, whatI’m going to try to show you, is that theseare indeed two different universes, side byside, one by Verrocchio, and one byLeonardo, which operate on fundamental-ly different principles. And this was sostriking, that when Verrocchio sawLeonardo’s contribution to this painting,he decided to quit painting. He realizedthat if this young man, who was less thantwenty years of age when he did this, wasso far ahead of him, there was no point inpursuing the métier of painting. So, hedevoted himself for the rest of his life, tobeing one of the greatest sculptors whoever lived.

Verrocchio was no fool, however. Hewas no second-rate man. But, the incredi-ble effect of this contribution of Leonar-do’s, staggered Verrocchio, and staggeredthe world. So, let’s try to look at it ingreater detail if we can [SEE detail, frontcover, this issue].

The point is, that compared to Verroc-chio’s work, and to everyone else’s at thetime, Leonardo’s figure was bathed inatmosphere. It was bathed in a luminousatmosphere, and therefore, it appeared tobe much more natural, and breathing, andmuch more complete, than anything thatVerrocchio did, or anybody else did. Andyou can see all of that in the various flick-ering ways that the light plays, and so on.This is not just a technique, or an approachto art. This was a fundamental under-standing of the physical universe. Whichis, for Leonardo, that the fundamental, theprimary character of the physical universe,is light, and its correlate, shade. Light andshade, from which all objects emerge.

Pascal has said, that we understandmore than we know; that is, our grasp ofwhat is true, or what is real, or what isexistent, is greater than our level of knowl-edge at given any time. And this is exactlythe situation with Leonardo. It fits Leonar-do perfectly, because Leonardo was, Ithink, nineteen years old, when he did this.He did not know, as yet, the principles onwhich he based this image, but he under-

stood them. He understood that this is aphysical universe. That it was not anabstract universe, made up of lines, or con-tours; but, actually, it is phenomena that hewas dealing with. And from this time for-ward, from the very beginning of his activ-ity, Leonardo was interested in only onething: the exploration and understandingof these phenomena. Only later did hisknowledge grow, as to what he wasalready actually comprehending, and act-ing upon, in this image.

And that’s what we will try, in verybrief fashion, to recognize tonight.

Leonardo: Father of PhysicsWhat I’m saying, to put it very simply, isthat Leonardo is really the father ofphysics. For him, this was not abstract, butphysical in nature. And I want to try todocument that, beginning with this pas-sage from his Notebooks, which I want toread to you:

Among the studies of natural causes andreasons, light chiefly delights the observer.And among the great features of mathe-matics, the certainty of its demonstrations,is what preeminently elevates the mind ofthe investigator. Perspective, therefore,must be preferred to all the discourses andsystems of human learning. In this field,the radiating line of light is explained bythose methods of demonstration whichform the glory, not so much of mathemat-ics, as of physics, and are graced with theflowers of both. But, its axioms being laiddown at great length, I shall abridge themto a conclusive brevity, arranging them bythe method both of their natural order andmathematical demonstration. Sometimesby deduction of the effects from the causes,and sometimes arguing the causes fromthe effects, adding also to my own conclu-sions, some of which, though not includedin them, may nevertheless be inferredfrom them.

Thus, if the Lord, who is the light of allthings, vouchsafed to enlighten me, I willtreat of light, wherefore, I will divide thepresent work into three parts, being a trea-tise on light.

Now, this is a beautiful statement, andcertainly puts to rest the claim that

Leonardo was an atheist, which isadvanced by many people, because he didn’tspend all of his time talking about God.But he had it very clear here: “The Lord isthe light of all things,” which I think is avery adequate statement. From that light,we are enlightened, and he pursued thestudy of light. Perspective, is the study oflight. Now, this was a radical departure.

First of all, we see how important per-spective is, that this is what we’re dealingwith in the Fifteenth and early Sixteenthcenturies, in what we call the Renaissance.Perspective was a fundamental issue in theRenaissance.

I brought along a couple of charts thatsome Labor Committee members and I didmany years ago [SEE Figure 2]. I want to justshow you the background, briefly, of perspec-tive. Figure 2(a) is what is called a “costruzionelegittima.” The great architect, FilippoBrunelleschi, this great genius, was also apolitical office-holder in Florence, he was incharge of the Maritime Commission of Flo-rence, he was everything, a multi-facettedcharacter. Now, Brunelleschi demonstratedperspective: He did not prove it. He did notargue it. He demonstrated it. He made whatwe would call a “camera obscura,” a littlebox, which was pointed at the Baptistery ofFlorence. He put in a mirror, and he made aperspective drawing, and in the perspectivedrawing, he made a small hole, which is thekey thing in the story of the camera obscura.So, when the light rays came through thathole, he had drawn on the back of this screen,the Baptistery, so when people lookedthrough it, they could see, on the mirror,reflected, an absolute construction of the Baptistery, done by a perspective drawing.And they were absolutely astounded. Theycouldn’t believe it. They didn’t know whatthey were seeing, whether they were seeingsomehow the Baptistery transformed, orwhatever. Then, he did it again, with a two-point perspective, for the Palazzo Signoria,the seat of government. I’ve always believedthat it was important for Brunelleschi toshow that perspective worked both for theChurch and for the State. It wasn’t just some-thing that worked for one part of the society,and not for the other. Because, that’s the wayhis mind worked.

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FIGURE 2. Development of perspective in the Renaissance.

(a) Construction of perspective “tile floor” by Leon Battista Alberti, using“costruzione legittima.”

(b) Tile pattern shows the relationshipbetween perspective and the harmonics ofthe musical scale. In the special case shown,the division of the plane corresponds to thediatonic scale.

(c) Raphael Sanzio, a disciple ofLeonardo’s method, used acircular cut to determine the rateof recession of the perspective tilepattern in his painting “TheMarriage of the Virgin.”

In any case, along came Leon BattistaAlberti, a dozen years later, and he wrote asmall book called, On Painting, originallyin Latin, and then translated into Italian,and there he showed how you could con-struct a perspective drawing, which isshown right here [Figure 2(a)]. Basically,what Alberti did, is he applied principlesthat were used in surveying, to create thecostruzione legittima. You have the horizonline, which is placed here at the height of aman; then, you have orthogonals, lineswhich are receding into space, which meetat a central point; and then, by extendingthe horizon line to a certain point, youthen create a series of diagonals, which cutthe orthogonals in such a way, that whenthe drawing is completed, they give youthe tiles of recession, corresponding tovisual perspective, linear perspective.

And, it’s further shown in the diagrams,that these lines would cut a string, in such away as to give you the major scale [SEE Fig-ure 2(b)]. And, Leonardo commented onthat in a page of the Codex Atlanticus.There’s a wonderful book by RudolphWittkower on the Architectural Principles inThe Age of Humanism, which shows howthe entire system of Renaissance architec-ture, applying Platonic principles, and thisdiscovery, was developed, whether we’retalking about Brunelleschi, or Alberti, orMichelozzi, or any of the great architects.

This is why perspective was such a cen-

tral issue in the Renaissance: Because itshowed very clearly, and very precisely,mathematically, that the Universe was har-monic, and ordered by harmonic princi-ples. After all, before Brunelleschi, peopledid see things in depth, they didn’t justbump into chairs, and go around like blindpeople. In fact, if you look at paintings byGiotto, or you look at antique art, and soon, there is an approximate perspective,which is called “natural perspective,” basedupon the similarity of angles. You can get arelatively visually satisfying image on a flatwall, by using these techniques. But it wasnot mathematical, it was not harmonic,and it was not demonstrable that it workeduniversally. Therefore, it could not be saidto have the authority of law.

That was the situation when Leonardoappeared.

One more diagram: This was the per-spective system supposedly used by Raphaelin the “Marriage of the Virgin” [SEE Figure2(c)], where, instead of using straight lines,he’s using curved lines to create the intersec-tion; that’s how to interpret the funny waythat this recedes. And of course, that repre-sents a very significant development inter-nally in the history of perspective.

Now, I’ll just take a moment here toshow you a one of Leonardo’s scientific dia-grams: it’s a camera obscura [SEE Figure 3].And if you look at this, and at his use oforthogonals, as in the drawings from theCodex Huygens I’m going to show you later,it’s perfectly clear that Leonardo was thor-oughly familiar with the previous history ofperspective.

The Revolution in PerspectiveSome of you may remember discussions ofthis that I made many years ago. This is adiagram that appears several times inLeonardo’s Notebooks [SEE Figure 4], and itshows three equal spheres, or balls, and thenit shows two intersections, and then a curvi-linear intersection. What he shows is, that,according to linear perspective, the furtheran object is from the eye, the smaller itshould appear, and the great advantage inlinear perspective is, that it gives you a very

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FIGURE 3. Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks,drawing of camera obscura, Manuscript D, fol. 8a.

precise, mathematical system for establishingthe ratios of distance to size and to height.But here, you can see that if this intersectionis very close, the further two objects on theperiphery, would project a broader, that is, alarger image, than the one in the center,which is closest to the eye—contrary to thepresumption, and contrary to Nature. How-ever, if the intersection is curved (line gf),then that distortion would disappear. Whatis debated very much is this line ed here, thisintersection. The person who wrote the text Ihave here, claims that what this line is, isLeonardo re-projecting onto a linear surface,the new intersection, which would permithim to render a curvilinear or spherical per-spective back onto a flat surface. It’s the prob-lem that John Mercator faced, in making amap of the globe. Well, it’s not so clear, andalso, it doesn’t seem to work.

What is absolutely certain, however, isLeonardo’s analysis that shows that thereare devastating flaws in the way linear per-spective was understood. Because, if youcome very close, or you extend the angle ofvision, and you approach the margins, youget phenomena, you get anomalies, whichdon’t correspond to Nature. Now, since theprinciple of perspective, which was univer-sally accepted by the leading thinkers of theRenaissance, is, that it is universal and trueunder all conditions, this left a gaping hole.And Leonardo, in his usual way, deter-mined to solve the problem.

We see in one of the drawings thatLeonardo made, that, in great measure, hewas concerned with correcting this problemgeometrically, with curved intersection. Infact, that became later on a great preoccupa-tion of the school of Leonardo in the Northof Italy. But, I think that Leonardo’s prima-ry solution went in another direction.

Let me, first, just read to you. Leonardowrites, in Manuscript E—I’m going tomake a comment about the manuscripts injust a moment, after I finish this point—Manuscript E is dated 1513-14; he died in1519. The earlier manuscripts are 1490-92,so this is a relatively late comment.

“The practice of perspective may bedivided into”—and then he leaves blankhow many parts; he hasn’t decided—“of

which the first treats of objects seen by theeye at any distance. And it shows all theseobjects just as the eye sees them dimin-ished, without obliging the man to stand inone place rather than another, so long asthe wall does not produce a second fore-shortening.” Well, that’s a very obscurephrase, and I can’t interpret it, so I’ll justleave it. You know, he uses the term “pari-ete,” which can mean a lot of things. “Butthe second practice is a combination of per-spective, derived partly from art, and part-ly from Nature, and the work done by itsrules, is in every portion of it, influencedby natural perspective, and artificial per-spective.” Now, that word “artificial” inthe translation, is a modern word; I don’tremember what appears in his Italian, butwe can look it up. “By natural perspective,I mean that the plane intersection onwhich this perspective is represented as aflat surface, and this intersection, althoughit is parallel, both in length and height, isforced to diminish the remoter parts morethan its nearer parts. And this is proved bythe first of what had been said above, andits diminution is natural. But artificial per-spective, that is, that which is derived byart, does the contrary.”

And that’s exactly the point we’ve justseen, in the three-sphere diagram: It oper-ates contrary to natural vision. “For objectsequal in size increase on the intersection,where they are foreshortened in propor-tion, as the eye is more natural and nearerto the intersection, and as the part of theintersection on which it is figured, is fur-ther from the eye.”

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FIGURE 4. Leonardo da Vinci,Notebooks, diagram showingflaws in linear perspective, redrawn from Manuscript E,fol. 16a.

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Leonardo’s Notebooks

I am now going to intrude upon this argu-ment, a comment about the Notebooks.There are about 7,000 pages of notes byLeonardo. He probably made 20,000 in all,of which two-thirds are lost. So, you can seethat the problem of dealing with Leonardo’sthought is complicated by the fact, that wehave only about a third of what he wrotedown. I don’t believe that this is devastating,as most writers do, because it seems to me,that he went over problems, he returned tothem. The main issue is, for us, to establishthe chronological sequence, so that weknow where his thought finally arrived.Because it’s very clear, from even my rela-tively simple and superficial considerationof these problems, that what Leonardothought about perspective in 1492, he cer-tainly did not think in 1513 or 1514, and soon. What is really interesting, is to try to sortout the progression of his thought. Because,in regard to perspective, he went frombelieving in the linear, geometric abstrac-tion, to believing in the physical principlesof the phenomena of light, as defining per-spective, as we have just heard.

Now, this is completely different fromall the famous Renaissance characters thatwe know so well: Brunelleschi, Alberti, upto that beloved personality, Piero dellaFrancesca. Piero della Francesca, forinstance, was not interested in anomalies.He was interested in the immutable,unchanging laws of Nature. If there was aproblem at the periphery of vision, orwhen you got close, or this or that, it didn’tconcern him. He wanted to represent, andto demonstrate, the immutable structure,given by geometry, of the Universe. Asyou know, Piero’s most important workwas devoted to the ordering of the fivePlatonic solids. He was the culmination,you might say, of a long tradition ofresearch, going back to Leonardo Fibonac-ci, on this problem. And his work was tak-en over by Luca Pacioli, and Pacioli joinedLeonardo in Milan, and elsewhere, to pro-duce the Divina Proporzione (Divine Pro-portion), which is a special case, the GoldenSection, based on the ratio of the side, to

the long diagonal of the pentagon.However, Leonardo was not interested

in the immutable laws of Nature. Leonardowas interested in the fact, that theimmutable laws of Nature appear to us in amutable, transient Nature. And therefore,we have to discover the relationship, usingour senses, and using our experimentalmethod, we have to establish the relation-ship, between the transient Nature, and theimmutable laws. This became physics. Thisbecame the systematic study of physicalphenomena which reveal—which cannotbe assumed, but reveal—immutable laws.He was not about to throw out immutablelaws and introduce a chaos theory, or some-thing. But—just like God: God does notappear to us. He is communicated to usthrough the visible universe. And we discov-er God in the visible universe. And by sodoing, we come, as Cusa and other peoplehave studied, we come to know the natureof God indirectly.—Vero, no? We don’tknow Him—wake up in the morning, andthere He is sitting at the end of the bed!We have to discover all of this.

And that is the character of Leonardo.He is going to examine the phenomena ofNature, to discover, in these transientforms, the true character of the Universe.And this, to my mind, is the birth of mod-ern physics, and is one of the great changesin the history of culture. Certainly, theperiod of Brunelleschi to Piero is a greatchange, but the change from Leonardo toRaphael to eventually Kepler, and so on, isan even greater one, in my view. And thisis the nature of it. And I will hope that wecan all stay awake long enough, that wecan get to Rembrandt, and see that Rem-brandt is part of this process, that he is fun-damental to this process.

The Role of LightNow, as I said, one of the principal thingsthat Leonardo came to recognize, whichmakes the difference between his view of1492 and his later view, is the role of light.Let me quote:

Every body in light and shade fills the sur-

rounding air with infinite images of itself,and these, by infinite pyramids, infused inthe air, represent this body, all in all, andall in each part. Each pyramid that is com-posed of a long converging course of rays,includes within itself, an infinite numberof pyramids, and each has the same poweras all, and all as each. The equidistant cir-cle of converging rays of the pyramid givesto their object, angles of equal size. And,the eye will receive the thing from theobject, as of equal size. The body of the airis full of infinite pyramids, composed ofradiating straight lines, which are causedby the boundaries of the surfaces of thebody, in light and shade, placed in the air.And the further they are from their cause,the more acute are the pyramids. Andalthough in their concourse, they intersectand interweave, nevertheless, they neverblend, but pass through all the surround-ing air independently, converging, diverg-ing, diffused. And they are all of equalpower, all equal to each other, and eachequal to all. By these images of bodies, arecarried all in all, and all in each part, andeach pyramid, by itself, receives, in eachminutest part, the whole form of the body,which is the cause.

Now, this is really one of the mostbeautiful statements of physics that youcan ever come across. You can see, thatwhat he is saying is, that, it is as if thisluminous air, which we occupy, has thepotential for all images. Everything that wesee, is potentially there in this luminous air,as a consequence of light and shade. Now,when you think about it, you can see thatthat’s what we saw, in the differencebetween Verrocchio and Leonardo. InVerrocchio, as in all other artists of the Fif-teenth century, the images are all closedand bounded, as if they were sealed intothemselves. With Leonardo, none of theseimages are sealed or bounded. They are allinteracting with the atmosphere. And thatinteraction, the active ingredient of thatinteraction, is light and shade.

Now, I’ll show you a stunning drawingby Leonardo, which gives you the idea[SEE Figure 5]. He has drawn the light, sothat it strikes this object. Just grasp theincredible precision of his eye and of hisrendering. You see, he shows how thelight on the surface turned to the light,how it gradually turns into shadow, and

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FIGURE 5. Leonardo da Vinci,Notebooks, drawing ofgradation of light and shadow,Manuscript B.N. 2038, fol. 13v.

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therefore, the area where no light reaches,has become perfectly dark. Where thereare all of these gradients, this is wherethere is a mixture of light and shade. Inother words, contrary to what most peoplebelieve, light and shade are continuous innature. They don’t cut off. They don’thave boundaries. Of course, this is the

basis for his famous rendering of drawingsin the method of sfumato, “smokiness.”And he shows you that all of this can bemeasured, by degrees, not numerically,but by degrees of shading.

So, you see, that where the lines inAlberti diagram were simply abstract, geo-metric lines, here, they represent the phe-nomena of light rays, which is a totally dif-ferent idea.

I’m going to show you another remark-able drawing [SEE Figure 6]. You see here,his drawing of how these cones, thesepyramids—and in the center, this is theobject that is radiating, and these conesshow you the directions of radiation, radi-ating out in all directions; and also, theseare the concentric circles, in which, as thelight diminishes, you can see by degree,and also, you can see that the anglebecomes more acute. The inset corre-sponds more closely to the originalLeonardo drawing [Figure 6(a)].

I’ll now turn to some written materialagain. Remember, what I’m pointing outhere, is the progression of Leonardo’sthought about these matters.

The Treatise on PaintingWe come now to Leonardo’s preparationfor what has come to be know as the Trea-tise on Painting. He prepared a treatise onpainting that was not published—actually,he left the notes; what is know as the Trea-tise on Painting is a codex in the VaticanLibrary, which was prepared by his stu-dent Melzi, based upon Leonardo’s notes,and presumably, his instructions—it wasnot published until 1561, and a modernedition only came out in 1894 by thegrandfather, or the great-grandfather, of ascientist who collaborated with us, namedWinterberg. So, like most of Leonardo’smaterial, it did not see the light of publica-tion in his lifetime. It was published inFrance in 1561, and the definitive editionwas done by Winterberg in, I think, 1882,in Vienna, as part of a history of treatises,including, eventually, The Divine Propor-tion. In fact, Winterberg may have donethe edition of The Divine Proportion, and

FIGURE 6. Leonardo daVinci, Notebooks, diagramof spherical radiation oflight, redrawn fromManuscript A, fol. 86v.

FIGURE 6(a). Detail,Leonardo da Vinci,

Manuscript A, fol. 86.v.

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somebody else did the Trattato (Treatise onPainting). I don’t remember now; I mayhave confused them.

However, the fact is, that, in his prepa-ration for the Treatise on Painting, he wrotethese things:

There are three branches of perspective.The first deals with the diminution ofobjects as they recede from the eye, and isknown as diminishing perspective.

That is, basically, linear perspective, orAlbertian perspective, or some form ofgeometric perspective.

The second contains the way in which col-ors vary, as they recede from the eye.

The third and last, is concerned withthe explanation of how the objects ought tobe less-finished in proportion, as they areremote, and the names are: linear perspec-tive, the perspective of color, and the per-spective of disappearance.

You see, the further away, the objectsbecome fuzzy. They lose whatever appar-ent definition they have. Let me read yousomething from a book I’m working onwriting now: “Leonardo attributes thecauses of these three perspectives, in thefirst instance, to the structure of the eye,and in the latter two, to the atmospherewhich intervenes between the eye andobject seen. The causes all concern physicaleffects. The role of the atmosphere intransforming boundaries and colors, or thestructure of the eye, in seeing diminution.In this, Leonardo differs from all of hispredecessors,” etc.

So, this is where Leonardo arrives. Heis concerned with the physical principlesof perspective. He uses the language ofgeometry, of abstraction, indeed as Cusadoes, as a language, but he does notbelieve that this geometric language ren-ders the reality. For example, as youknow, there is, as you approach the hori-zon, at long distances, there is a transfor-mation in the color scale towards the blueor the ultraviolet. We all see that in a air-plane or at long distances. We all see thediminution of clarity or precision inobjects seen at a distance.

I want to just briefly show you Pierodella Francesca, dearly beloved Piero dellaFrancesca. This is his altarpiece in theBrera [SEE Figure 7]. You can see preciselywhat I am talking about here, in regard tothe point that Piero della Francesca is notinterested in anomalies. He’s interested inthe immutable character of visual reality,and he believes that it’s on that basis thatwe encounter, or recognize, divinity. Youcan see, just as in his teacher DomenicoVeneziano, a half-century earlier, all of thecolors remain of the same intensity, wher-ever they’re placed.

I’m going to show you another example

FIGURE 7. Piero dellaFrancesca, “MontefeltroAltarpiece,” 1469-74.

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of this from Piero, just because it’s so muchfun to see it [SEE Figure 8]. Here’s some-thing which adorns many of your walls,the “Adoration” in the National Gallery inLondon, and I’ll just show you a detail[Figure 8(a)], which undoubtedly remindsyou of Luca della Robbia’s “Singing Can-toria,” now in the Opera del Duomo ofFlorence. You can see that Piero has notchanged his system at all over the fiftyintervening years, and you can see the per-

spective maintains its clarity; so that one ofthe things that appeals to us, in Piero, is thepurity and the assertiveness of the geomet-ric forms, and the way they hold their clar-ity and precision throughout. That’s exact-ly what Leonardo set out to overthrow!Not in a mean-spirited way, but in a devel-opmental way.

The Last SupperI want to introduce something else intothe argument now. You all know this, allthe world knows this, Leonardo’s “LastSupper,” in the refectory of the church ofSanta Maria delle Grazie in Milan [SEE

Figure 9]. I want to make a rather sur-prising comment: As you know, thispainting is a failure. Leonardo tried to usea new technique, and by any account, inits limited sense, it was a failure. The pic-ture is a ruin. It became a ruin almostimmediately, and it caused Leonardo con-siderable embarrassment. But, on anotherscale, it is the greatest success in history,because it’s the most famous painting inhistory, and it has had an enormous influ-ence, and so on.

So, what’s going on here?First of all, was Leonardo so stupid that

he just went ahead and did something,tried a new technique, for no reason at all?No, he had to do something. I don’t knowif you know what fresco is, but fresco is amethod of applying paint on a wet, pre-pared surface, a plaster wall surface. Thatsurface is called intonaco, and it’s veryunforgiving. You can only cover a certainarea at a time, because, as the surface dries,the paint will not adhere. So, you have topaint very quickly, you usually have to pre-pare everything with, what in Italian arecalled sinopie, underdrawings, and then,you have to fill in the paint, the lines of thedrawings on the wet wall. You can only doa certain amount each day, what is called,not suprisingly, giornata, a day’s work. Andone of the things we study in art history, iswe can now discover all of the giornate, sowe know exactly how a wall has beenpainted.

But you can obviously see, from this

Alinari/Art Resource, NY

Alinari/Art Resource, NY

FIGURE 8. Piero dellaFrancesca, “Birth ofChrist” (“Adoration”),1480.

FIGURE 8(a).Detail, “Birth

of Christ.”

method, that you have no opportunity tochange your mind, or to do somethinginstinctive, or intuitive, or to capture some-thing fleeting. Everything is prepared inadvance, and then you have to put it on,put it on, put it on. So, what was Leonardoattempting to do? He was attempting tofree himself. He tried to develop a methodby which you could paint directly into thewall, in a method similar to oil painting—but different from oil painting—so youcould make changes, you could changethings around, and you could enlarge uponwhat you were trying to do, if you changedyour mind here and there.

What Leonardo was trying to do, wasto make the whole thing expressive. He wastrying to show what the response of theApostles was when Jesus announced, “Oneof you will betray me.” Which is indeed athunderclap observation, and is worthy ofbeing demonstrated.

Let me show you the traditional waythis was presented, before Leonardo. Thisis a “Last Supper,” painted by a contempo-rary, or near contemporary of Leonardo, acontemporary of his teacher Verrocchio,named Domenico Ghirlandaio, and a verygreat painter, indeed, a wonderful painter[SEE Figure 10]. But, he always has to play

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FIGURE 9. Leonardo daVinci, “Last Supper,” 1495-98.

FIGURE 10. Domenico delGhirlandaio, “Last Supper,”1480.

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the foil to Leonardo, because he makessuch a good foil. This is Ghirlandaio’sfresco, which exists in the refectory of thechurch, I believe it’s the church of theOgnissanti, located exactly between thetwo luxury hotels, the Excelsior and theGrand, in Florence. There’s the PiazzaOgnissanti, and that’s where this is. Icould just as well show you AndreaCastagno, or any number of other peoplewho painted a “Last Supper.” But afterLeonardo, no artist who wanted to bethought of in any way as modern, everpainted a “Last Supper” looking likethese: static, without drama, without emo-tion, without movement, without change,and so on.

This is the problem which was, in part,enforced by the fresco technique. So, that’swhat Leonardo was trying to do. That’swhat caused his ruin. He was trying tointroduce, into this, a means by which youcould show the expressive content of thepainting.

Now, what I am going to say here isthis: There is a direct connection betweenconsidering the Universe from the stand-point of physics, and transforming the artof painting, into the art of expression. Thechange in the volatility of the work, thechange in the expressive power of thework, is directly connected to Leonardo’sconception of the world that we live in, asa physical universe, consisting of phe-

There is a book on Leonardo byKenneth D. Keele, Leonardo

da Vinci’s Elements of the Science ofMan,* which is a very honest book,I think, and which tries to recon-struct, more or less accurately, thematerial. How brilliant he is, or not,I leave to your judgment. But, atleast you won’t be dealing withsomeone who believes that Leonar-do is an Aristotelian, or a memberof the faculty of the University ofChicago, or something like that—which many people do.

The usual idea is: “Well,Leonardo’s a botanist on Monday,and then on Tuesday, he takes uphis brush, and then on Wednesday,he’s working on mechanics; and onThursday . . . .” As if he wereforced to fit into the disciplines, asthey are established. But, the greatchallenge, and the great puzzle ofthe Notebooks, as they have beenleft to us, is how to reconstruct the

unity of Leonardo’s thought. Two-thirds of the Notebooks are lost.They have been corrupted. Forexample, the famous Codex Atlanti-cus was slapped together by a crudesalesman, to sell it.

But, meticulously, over time,scholars have, to some extent,reconstructed what can be rediscov-ered of Leonardo’s original note-books. What people have not beenable to discover, principally for aproblem of cultural prejudice, ishow these all go together as a unityof thought.

For example, Leonardo did abook, or a treatise, on astronomy,that was meant to be part of a chap-ter of a super-treatise, which in-cluded a treatise on the eye, whichhas survived; we have the codexthat deals with the subject of theeye. Well, no one in modern timeswould do that. But, in Leonardo’sway of thinking, since it was the eyethat received the astronomy, theheavens, they went perfectly togeth-

er. He was trying to have a totalityof how the physical world func-tions: how we see, what we see, andso on. So, the super-treatise wouldhave gone from astronomy, downto botany. There would have been abook, one of his books, on light.This is really something you canexplore. You can get the variouspublications, Richter’s edition of theNotebooks, which again, you see,distorts the situation, because it’sorganized by category—which isuseful, in one sense, you know,“Perspective,” and so on. ButLeonardo never considered per-spective isolated from astronomy.The problem is, that when you getthese modern works, the categoriesthat they establish are contrary tothe systematizing that he did,which would have made it possibleto follow his thought through. Thechallenge of anybody who wants topursue this—and you don’t have tobe an expert to pursue it—is to estab-lish Leonardo’s continuity ofthought.

—DSP,post-lecture discussion

Leonardo’s Unity of Thought

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* (New York: Academic Press, 1983).

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nomena that could be represented.Because the principle here is the principleof, fundamentally, light and shade, thenelaborated by gesture and pose, and soon, all of which are really extensions ofthe same notion, that Nature, the physicalworld, is not fixed and immutable, butchanging and transient, and that if youhave to render it, you have to be able torender its changing character, and not itsfixed character. So that’s what all of thisis about. That’s why, in his usual fashionof recognizing how anomalies give usinsight, Leonardo said that the peopleyou have to observe are deaf mutes. Infact, his student Melzi’s son was a deafmute! I didn’t know that; I just readabout it in preparing for this talk. Hegoes on, in his Notebooks, saying how, ifyou want to study gesture, you have tolook at deaf mutes. The point is, that art,as the art of expression, and not of fixedverities, is another invention of Leonar-do’s. And it comes, as directly—I can’tsay it’s an extension of, it’s part and parcelof his view of how the physical universefunctions. I’ll read you some comments ofhis.

I’m reading from this book that I’mwriting on, basically, the art of expression,or at least that’s the first part of thebook—just like Leonardo, I’m going tohave a book on the art of expression, andthis is part one of it, devoted to an artistnamed Annibale Carracci: “Fundamentalto Leonardo’s outlook, is that materialphenomena, observed in the world, arenot autonomous, but are, instead, the con-sequence of causes that arise through theaction of universal laws of Nature.” Andthat is the idea: that we are confrontedwith a world of phenomena, a changingworld of phenomena, but which have asource in universal law. “Further, Leonar-do believed that these laws could beknown, and that it was the task of theartist to penetrate the surface of Nature, toreveal their actions. Since painting is, infact, a science, in fact the greatest of all sci-ences, it not only represents the appear-ance of all things, but it reveals the causes

which create them, and reveals how theyare formed. The scientist-painter not onlyportrays Nature, but its intentions.Leonardo expresses these views through-out his writings, and in his paintings, butthey are most concisely expressed in theParagone, the first part of the CodexUrbanus, preserved in the Vatican Library,entitled, Libera di Pittura di MaestroLeonardo da Vinci, Pittore, ScultoreFiorentino. That is, Paragone, which is afamous book in itself, is the introductionto the Treatise on Painting. “Leonardowrites:

If you despise painting, you will certainlybe despising a subtle invention, that bringsphilosophy and subtle speculations to bearon the nature of all forms. Sea, land, plants,and animals, grasses and flowers, whichare employed in shade and light. Truly,painting is a science, the true-born child ofNature. It is in the joining of painting,which extends to the surfaces, colors, andshapes of all things created by Nature, toPhilosophy, which penetrates below thesurface, in order to arrive at the inherentproperties, which makes of the painter, hewho apprehends the foremost truth ofthese bodies as the eye errs less.

“The purpose of so much of Leonar-do’s effort, indeed, the very purpose towrite the Trattato [Treatise], is directed attraining the painter’s eye to see with thepenetration of philosophy, so that paint-ing, the most noble of all sciences, becauseit serves the eye, will realize its true pur-pose, to deal with the quality of thingswhich constitutes the beauty of the worksof Nature.”

So, you see where this development, inits broadest form, has been articulated byLeonardo.

Now, here is more in my text, specifical-ly on the expressive content. The womanwho edited the Paragone wrote, for Leonar-do, “the body was shaped by the spirit, andit is for the painted to reverse this process,and to create a body that give expression tothe soul.” One of Leonardo’s followers,Lomazzo, wrote this story about Leonardo:“There is tale told that Leonardo once

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wished to make a picture of some laughingpeasants. He picked out certain men,whom he thought appropriate for his pur-pose, and sitting close to them, he proceed-ed to tell the maddest and most ridiculoustales imaginable, making them, who wereunaware of his intentions, laugh uproari-ously. Whereupon, he observed all of theirgestures very attentively, and impressedthem on his mind, and there, made a per-fect drawing, which moved those wholooked at it to laughter, as if they had beenmoved by Leonardo’s stories at the feast.

“Leonardo further comments: ‘A goodpainter is to paint two main things, name-ly, the man, and the working of man’smind. The first is easy; the second, diffi-cult, for it is to be represented through ges-tures and movement of the limbs, andthese may be best learned from the mute,who make them more clearly than anyother sort of man.’ ”

So, let’s look at the “Last Supper” again.Now, the virtue of any lecture on art, isthat you can see. You can see that the wholequestion . . . —just like these men laugh-ing uproariously, the gestures are captured.Here is how Leonardo has proceeded: withnumerous drawings, he has captured whensomeone hears something appalling or sur-

prising, just as the gestures of a deaf mute.And of course, only a trace of this is lefttoday, but you can see that the whole envi-ronment is luminous, and the Christ, at thecenter of this luminosity, with the lightbehind him, is the key to the wholearrangement. But, this you can all see, soI’m not going to spend the time waxingpoetic about what I see.

Instead, I want to show you this [SEE

Figure 11]. Wonder of wonders! It’s Rem-brandt doing the “Last Supper.” Now,Rembrandt never went to Italy, and yet heunderstood the “Last Supper” perfectly.He made four or five drawings, basedupon prints that he saw of the “Last Sup-per.” But he understood Leonardo. And hecreated this masterful drawing. Unfortu-nately, we can only get a glimmer of ithere. He’s transformed it, of course, but,he’s understood the idea of emphases,expressed in contrasts of heavy emphasis ofshadow, and so on. And he has grasped theimportance of every gesture, or the ges-tures. And, it’s just a wonderful, lively,red-chalk drawing, which communicatesmuch more of the essense of Leonardo,than very accurate copies.

So, we’ve now brought Rembrandt intothe picture.

FIGURE 11. Rembrandt vanRijn, “Last Supper” (after

Leonardo da Vinci), red chalkdrawing, 1634-35. T

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Rembrandt: Light and Shade

This is the cover of an exhibition catalogon Rembrandt as an engraver [SEE Figure12]. What is wonderful about this, is that itshows you, all on one sheet, about fourteenor fifteen proofs of the same etching. Firstof all, it’s very important that it’s Rem-brandt who’s making the engraving, ormaking the drawing. That is, it is a manwho is at work with his mind. And sinceLeonardo has pointed out, that the hardpoint is to represent the working of themind, the movement of the mind, then wehave a wonderful expression of that here.He has posed himself next to a lightsource, almost like a Leonardo experiment.

And, what he has changed in the succes-sive proofs, what he has studied so meticu-lously—just like a Leonardo Notebook—is the penetration of greater and lesserlight, the interaction of light and shade. Inthat interaction, the entire content, theexpressiveness of the work is contained.

I can show you several other examplesof how what concerns Rembrandt in eachand every case, is the change in the propor-tion of the amount of light available, or theinteraction of light and shadow. For exam-ple, we have this famous print of the Cru-cifixion [SEE Figure 13]. You’ll see, thattime after time, what concerns Rembrandtis almost the “quantity” of light, or shade,or darkness, or lightness that will appear.

FIGURE 12. Exhibitioncatalogue, “Rembrandt:Experimental Etcher,”showing successive phases of plate, “RembrandtDrawing at a Window,”1648.

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Here is a painting at the Frick Collec-tion in New York, by the early Rem-brandt, painted in 1631 [SEE Figure 14].You can see that the outline is fairly com-plete in this early painting, it is not brokenand mottled, as in the later work. And youcan see, that the shadow, the light, isalmost like an object. You could say, hepaints this shadow on the collar, and theshadow has a shape; and he paints the lighthere, on the face. So, light is objectified. It’ssomething that can fall into the painting.

If we can turn to a very late work, andto his favorite subject, his self-portrait, youcan see all of that is changed. Even in thereproduction, you get a sense of the impasto[SEE Figure 15, and inside front cover, thisissue]. Impasto is an Italian word, fromwhich pasta also comes, meaning doughy.It is a thick treatment of the paint on thesurface. You see how the light and shad-ow—the shadow eats into the surface, andthat everything is now rendered in anatmospheric fashion. So we have a trans-formation, very similar to that which tookplace in Leonardo’s activity between 1492and his thought of 1513.

I have many other wonderful Rem-brandt paintings here, and I’m going toshow you one, or maybe two more. This isa painting in the National Gallery here inWashington, which, if you come upon it inthe right mood, and you are ready for it,you will burst into tears [SEE inside backcover, this issue]. No question about it—infact, I’m in danger of doing that right now.It is the most moving painting; it repre-sents the tragic woman Lucretia, who killsherself after she has been raped by Tar-quin, and disgraced. Everything that wehave seen of the way that the phenomenaof the physical universe can be represent-ed—the breaking of the light by the impas-to surface, so that nothing is sharp orclear—it is all morbido, it is all in that fash-ion. The gestures. The study of the ges-tures. The way the light falls on the hand.The tilt of the head. All of these features,bring you to the point where you are soaware of the tragedy of this event, the dis-grace and the redemption through her sui-cide, that you cannot help yourself but be

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FIGURE 13. Rembrandt van Rijn,“The Three Crosses,” phase I (top),phase IV (bottom), 1653.

swept away by the clarity—not by justemotion—but by the clarity. Now, that’sthe point I want to make: There is no dis-tinction here, between the way the physicalmaterial is used, and the ability to render itexpressive. It’s not like we’re studying, onthe one hand, physics, or physical proper-ties, and on the other, art and art expres-siveness. They are absolutely unified. Thatis what Rembrandt gets from Leonardo.

I’ll just show you another treatment ofthis incredible subject [SEE Figure 16].Here’s Lucretia again, mournful andbleeding, just, you know—all of this basedupon the way the light and shade interactshere, just as in his engravings.

Okay, I have some things to read now.We’re coming to the conclusion of this dis-course. I bring Rembrandt into my book,because I say that there is a relationbetween Annibale Carracci and Rem-brandt. Later, as a coda to this, I’m goingto show you a couple of things by Carracci.Here’s what I say:

“But the most striking feature that theyshared in common, was the view that thecreative act was defined by the autono-mous will of the artist. That this view washeld by Rembrandt, was demonstrated bythe attitude attributed to him by ArnoldHoubraken in his life of the artist.Houbraken wrote that Rembrandt madethe remark, that a picture is completedwhen the master has achieved his intentionby it.

Now, this is contrary to what youalways hear, “Oh, it’s the patron who says. . . ,” and so on. Rembrandt maintainsthat you know when the picture is fin-ished, when it satisfies your intention.That is to say, it is an expressive vehicle.“That means, that what guided Rem-brandt, was his own intention. And it wasexactly that elevation of the principal roleplayed by the artist’s own creative power,that is celebrated in his self-portraits. WithAnnibale it’s not quite as explicit, but nev-ertheless, it’s there. As to their methods,they were both masters of the expression ofthe emotions through gestures.” Themethod of affetti, it’s called in Italian. “Atone portrait, Houbraken comments, ‘The

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Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

Copyright The Frick Collection, New York

FIGURE 15. Rembrandtvan Rijn, “Self-Portrait,”1669.

FIGURE 14. Rembrandt van Rijn,“The Merchant Nicolaes Ruts,”1631.

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head appeared to protrude from it, andaddress the beholders.’ Another pupil,Samuel Hoogstraeten, adds his praise ofRembrandt’s representation of emotions,when he wrote of the wonderful attentiongiven to the depiction of people of all class-es, who are listening to St. John preach-ing.” This is St. John, and all the people arethere, and what Hoogstraeten was prais-

ing, was the attention, the various expres-sions, on the faces of the various people lis-tening to the speech.

“Many remarks of contemporaries attestto the widespread appreciation of Rem-brandt’s use of chiaroscuro, and his abilityto render reflections, the study of whichLeonardo had laid particular emphasis.Two features of Rembrandt’s techniqueare singled out: his use of impasto, and hisbreak-up of the color. And these are tech-niques which were used in Venetian paint-ing, in particular, if you think of the lateTitian, for example.” And then the bookgets into material which is interesting, buta little too off the track for us.

The North Italian TraditionWhat I’m suggesting is, that this discovery,that the principal and primary—the primamateria—of this universe, is light, and itscorrelate, shade; and that everything thatwe see is a characteristic of that primarymaterial, as we see it in the luminousatmosphere, and is the basis for renderingthe emotions. And that this developmentcorresponds to the development of Leonar-do’s emphasis on this at the end of the Fif-teenth, and the early part of the Sixteenthcenturies, and it is then communicatedthrough a school of art in the North ofItaly, which is very well represented, by theway, in the National Gallery in Washing-ton: Bernardino Luini, and other artists ofLeonardo’s school, particularly Boltraffio isa great artist, and so on.

Let me just show you one by-product ofthat. This is something called the CodexHuygens, and it’s now in the MorganLibrary in New York. Curiously, theHuyghens family was very closely connect-ed to Rembrandt. The elder Huyghens,who was the secretary to the Staatholder ofHolland, wrote the first biography ofRembrandt, when Rembrandt was still ayoung man in Leiden, or just after he cameto Amsterdam. He commissioned a seriesof the Passion, which is now in the MunichAlte Pinakothek, and his two sons, Christi-aan and Constantijn, were the great scien-tists, or one of them was, anyway, who

Rembrandt and the Science of Light

One thing that is very interesting, is, to look at the relation of thephysical character of Rembrandt’s paintings, to the discussion

of the wave theory of light, and the radiation of light, being donemore or less contemporaneously.* Because, as you know, Rem-brandt’s paintings are done, especially the late paintings, with thisattention to the thickness of the pigment, so there is actually, physi-cally, a process taking place, of the light being refracted, its entranceand its reflection, which gives the experience, as if the light origi-nates in the painting, as a feature of the physical properties of thepaint. Rembrandt was very conscious of this. That’s why he did it.

—DSP, post-lecture discussion__________

* The work of Huyghens, Fermat, and Leibniz; see page 54.–Ed.

Minneapolis Institute of ArtsFIGURE 16. Rembrandt vanRijn, “Lucretia,” 1666.

worked in Paris. Both had been pupils ofRembrandt; both had learned drawingfrom him. We have a correspondencebetween the two brothers, in which onebrother asks the other to examine someCarracci drawings, because they wanted toknow whether the drawing by Carracciowned by Rembrandt was authentic, andthe great collection of Carracci drawingswas in Paris.

This latter Huyghens bought a codex,which was thought to be by Leonardo, but,in fact, it’s by a pupil of Leonardo.Nonetheless, it gives a very good idea ofthe continuing study of the principles ofmovement and motion of the human body,which, of course, affected many peoplewho came in touch with Leonardo, mostnotably, Dürer (although this is later thanDürer). There’s a close connection betweenDürer and the North of Italy.

Here are drawings from the CodexHuygens, which are all based upon the ideaof the angle of vision in natural perspective[SEE Figure 17]. What he’s interested in, ishow you can regularize the rendering offigures seen from below, seen from straighton, seen from above. A very Leonardesqueset of problems. Some of the drawingsmust come from the artist’s copies of lostLeonardo drawings. And it’s very interest-

ing, this idea of the rendering of the figure,seen, in forced perspective, feet first. If youremember, there’s a wonderful painting byMantegna, of the “Dead Christ,” with sim-ilar perspective, and that goes on down intime, through Northern Italy.

So, we have a very definite school,

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FIGURE 17. Carlo Urbino(after Leonardo da Vinci),Codex Huygens, fol. 102r(left), 105r (right).

FIGURE 18. Carlo Urbino (after Leonardo daVinci), Codex Huygens, fol. 113.

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shaped by Leonardo, but continuing pasthis death, where the study of the physicalproperties in the problems posed by per-spective, and so on, are minutely studied.Bramantino, many treatises were done byartists in the North of Italy; and it’s a verydifferent tradition from what’s takingplace in Central Italy and Rome at thetime, influenced by Michelangelo. That isto say, Central Italy and Rome is influ-enced by Michelangelo, and the North ofItaly is influenced by Leonardo.

I’ll just show you one more drawing,a colossal statue, gesturing and beingseen from different angles, found in theCodex Huygens [SEE Figure 18]. This isanother kind of problem, an architecturalproblem.

So, this gives you an idea of how theLeonardesque tradition survived. In myopinion, the greatest artist who took it up,was Annibale Carracci. I cannot really gointo it very much, but I’ll show you one ortwo things by him, which will, if not amazeyou, at least amuse you. Let me show youthis wonderful painting that he made of aman eating beans [SEE Figure 19]. Now,what this is, actually, is a kind of caricature.Annibale invented the caricature, which iscompletely in the Leonardesque tradition.

Leonardo made drawings of deformedpeople, but he did not make them as specif-ic representations of people. That’s whatAnnibale introduced. It fits into the wholeidea of the anomalies of Nature, telling youmore about Nature than the standard. Youcan’t imagine Michelangelo making adrawing of a deformed face, or of a bean-eater! So, what happens is, that the chap isabout to lose his spoonful, the gravy isfalling down. The reason is, because someintruder has come into his den. This obvi-ously was born of an observation, althoughthis is a finished, worked-up painting to besold. But Annibale obviously encounteredthis chap on the road between Parma andBologna in Italy, where he travelled fre-quently, because the delectable dish shownhere is called erbasone, which is a specialtyof Reggio Emilia. Apparently, you can onlyget it in Reggio Emilia. Indeed, I have eat-en it in Reggio Emilia. And I don’t knowexactly what it is; it’s something like Brus-sels sprouts, or something like that, youknow. I never ask. Otherwise you mightnot go forward with your courage!

This means, that Annibale saw thisevent take place in a sort of squalid tav-ern on the way between Parma andBologna, indeed, exactly where you findReggio Emilia. And then, he got home,and he made a painting of it. It’s a veryLeonardesque idea, the whole thing; itreally represents gluttony. It doesn’t rep-resent gluttony in the way the Sixteenthcentury did, some kind of deformed,allegorical figure, who’s called “Glut-tony.” It’s someone in the act of gluttony,and that’s what makes it funny andappealing.

Here is a portrait by Annibale [SEE Fig-ure 20], long believed to be a self-portrait,but actually not, a portrait of another artistnamed Antonio Vassillacchi, and it’s in theUffizi. You see that it fits between Leonar-do and Rembrandt, if we think of the per-corso that I’ve been discussing: this NorthItalian tradition of representing, by thephysical means, the interior of the individ-ual, the existence of an animating soul,which becomes the burden of Rembrandt’s

FIGURE 19. Annibale Carracci,“Bean Eater,” (c. 1583).

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activity. We might call this whole develop-ment, from Leonardo through Annibale,through the North Italian school, Annibaleto Rembrandt, the “History of Self-Con-sciousness.” The artist becoming aware ofhis own powers, as the intervening anddetermining power vis-a-vis Nature.Because Nature is no longer a fixed set ofattributes. It’s a changing, transientprocess, and you see how Annibale conveysthe idea, with a tilt of the head, the intensi-ty of the eyes; very important. He’s puttingthe eyes into shadow, so that you have tolook into the picture, and the course oflooking into the picture, is a metaphor foryou looking into the person, seeing thatthing, the interior, not the surface, which isthe difficult part of art. This is completelyin the tradition of Leonardo to Rem-brandt, the very quick and sketchy wayhe’s rendered the setting of the head in thecollar, and so on, so as, on the one hand, togive the feeling of the transience, the spon-taneity of the situation, while not distract-ing from the intensity and the focus on thehead.

So: I think the best thing to do is to quitwhile I’m ahead, and I think I’ll leave it atthat. If we can have the lights, we can takesome questions, and have discussion.

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D. Stephen PepperArt historian Dr. D. Stephen Pepper was a long-time associate of Lyndon LaRouche and theSchiller Institute. An expert on Renaissance art,he was the recognized world authority on the Ital-ian painter Guido Reni, authoring the definitiveGuido Reni: A Complete Catalogue of His Works,with an Introductory Text (New York: New YorkUniversity Press, 1984), and was called upon toauthenticate paintings in collections throughoutEurope and the United States. He died suddenlyin Italy in December 2000, at 63 years of age.“Leonardo da Vinci and the Perspective of Light”was the last lecture he delivered to members ofthe LaRouche political movement.

D. Stephen Pepper (right) greets Virginia Lt. Governor (laterGovernor) Douglas Wilder, at the state Democratic Party conventionin 1989. A prominent LaRouche Democrat, Pepper was running for the post of Chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party.

FIGURE 20. Annibale Carracci,“Self-Portrait” (“Portrait of

Antonio Vassillacchi”), (c. 1590).

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