By Cheryl McCaffrey
Learning to keep a nature journal led me to discover botanical painting, and a sketchbook is still an important and enriching part of my artistic process. When it came time to pick a subject for my botanical art research paper (a requirement for the certificate program at Wellesley College Botanic Gardens), naturally, I was interested in studying the origins of the sketchbook. This led me on a deep dive into Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci and I discovered much inspiration in the pages of his notebooks.
The combination of Leonardo’s curiosity and observation skills was a perfect match for detailed botanical studies in his notebooks. He prided himself on not receiving formal education, which separated him from the typical Renaissance Man, proclaiming “Though I have no power to quote from authors as they have, I shall rely on a far more worthy thing-on experience.”
However, while living in Milan around the 1490s, he softened his view on classical works. He taught himself Latin and started to become a voracious reader. Some of the books he acquired reflected his vast interests: minerals and precious stones, a Latin grammar, Pliny the Elder, and more than 40 works on science.
Rather than solely relying on abstract theories, though, he would look at facts and then try to understand (and prove) them through observation, thorough testing, and experiments. He wrote, “My intention is to consult experience first, and then with reasoning show why such experience is bound to operate in such a way.”2 Interestingly, he used the same word for experience and experiment: esperienza.
Leonardo grew up with a love of nature and perhaps his lack of formal education influenced his intense curiosity, acute observational skills, and desire to understand the world around him-from asking why the sky is blue to describing the tongue of a woodpecker (an actual item in a to-do list in one of his notebooks!)
In one of his most revered collection of notebooks, the Codex Leicester, he wrote about geology, astronomy, and the dynamics of flowing water. He sought to understand the connection between humans and the earth-from the mechanics of our muscles to the movement of the planets, from the flow in our arteries to that of the earth’s rivers. He saw that the earth as a living organism, proclaiming, “We might say that the earth has a vegetative soul.”3
In his notebooks, he used a variety of media to draw with, even though a limited range of drawing materials was available at the time. Pens were made from a goose’s wing feather. The ink was made of iron salts mixed with tannic acid from oak galls (oak apples), which resulted in a thick black ink, ‘iron gall ink,’ which has evolved into a warm chestnut color over the centuries. In the early 1490s, Leonardo started to use red and black chalks (a red-ochre variety of haematite or iron oxide, and a soft carbonaceous schist respectively). For these chalk drawings, he often used a colored ground or toned paper, creating a limited tonal range. Around 1510, he started experimenting by layering red and black chalks and occasionally adding white chalks with liquid media like ink, wash or water. In his later years, he removed the red chalk altogether and restricted his materials to black chalk, pen and ink, and wash. All drawings were done on paper made from hemp or linen clothing rags.
One page from his notebooks which is now held at Windsor Castle includes ink and red-chalk drawings of diversions of rivers as well as a sketch of water falling into a pond. As was often the case, he created an analogy – he compared the forces in the water eddies to curls in human hair. Discoveries and comparisons like this show Leonardo’s joy in seeing the patterns that connect two things that delighted him.
In this drawing, Leonardo used a variety of line weights and contrast in tones to skillfully expressed a sense of depth and perspective. The lines in the background are faded, giving the impression that they are farther away. This sketch was a preparatory drawing for his painting of Leda and the Swan, and could be considered among the earliest botanical sketches. Wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa L.) flanks the star of Bethlehem and below is sun spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia L.) with seed head details. The untidy depiction of the blades of grass growing behind the star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum L.) suggests that Leonardo observed this plant in the wild.
Many of these preparatory drawings for his Leda and the swan painting piqued Leonardo’s interest in plants and botany and many were created simply out of curiosity. It’s believed that he may have even considered writing a treatise on plant and tree structure. Like all his drawings, his botanical sketches were technical and accurate, strong evidence of his commitment to nature, botany, and an interest in understanding plant life.
Sources:
Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo Da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2017 (1, page 170; 2, page 173; 3, page 427.)
www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-a-life-in-drawing-0
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This article was first published in the March 2022 issue of The Botanical Artist 2022 ©American Society of Botanical Artists, 2022
You can visit Cheryl’s website at: https://www.cherylmccaffrey.com