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The Shadow Drawing: How Science Taught Leonardo How to Paint.  Francesca Fiorani.  Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.  NY. 2020.

Hard cover.  Sewn and glued.  374 p.  Notes.  Index.  Illustrations.  8 pages color prints.  1.4 pounds. Referred by friend; purchased at Alibris.com.

Dear Francesca Fiorani,

Who knew that Leonardo da Vinci zoomed in on boundaries?

This book opened my eyes to see differently.

That was not your stated intent; but you so artfully render Leonardo da Vinci’s growing skills at seeing and then applying that seeing to his act of painting that his growth expanded my vision as well.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so active in the art world, dabbling in painting and drawing, going to museums habitually, and applying myself to seeing the world with new eyes.  I struggled to look at the world as a Romantic would, or as an Impressionist, or a Surrealist, or an Art Nouveau artist.  So many modern ways to see that I never really got into seeing as the Renaissance artists did.  I was not attracted to religious motifs, nor to the social iconography of Florentine Italy.

But your descriptions of how da Vinci learned about the philosophy and science of optics, of how he practiced drawing and painting, of how he applied himself to seeing accurately, of how he strove to fix on canvass what we so easily miss in casual glances—these renderings of yours have led me to forever see with new eyes.

And what I am seeing is blurred, intentionally so; for in Leonardo’s view, there are no borders, no lines, only a play of light and shadow. He zoomed in enough to erase the borders.

I was only vaguely aware of the apocryphal story of how da Vinci began as an artist and later became a scientist.  I am thrilled to learn from you that instead, da Vinci was a scientist from the very beginning and used science as a tool to more accurately portray what he saw when looking at people, landscapes, and objects.

Leonardo explored the boundaries of science and art, and blurred them.

He experimented with the borders of his painted subjects, showing them without lines but only gradations of light into shadow, and shadow back into light.

He searched souls—our innermost thoughts and emotions—and how they displayed themselves subtly onto our physical muscles and facial expressions.

All these blurred boundaries and more, Leonardo da Vinci observed and experimented with from the very beginning of his art career until the end of his life.

And you paint that picture very adeptly.  You give us the broader landscape of Leonardo’s early life, the social and political realities of the time period, and the economic realities of an artist trying to make a living—all of this given in blurred strokes, just enough to put his life into context. 

Some of the particulars of his life that you briefly mention: His birth as a bastard son of a solidly middle-class citizen and the attendant cultural limitations of that birth.  His luck at landing in perhaps the best art workshop of the time that would encourage his powers of observation and his scientific inclinations.  His supposed sexual orientation and therefore lack of women but persistent presence of pertinent men in his life.  And the precise craftsmanship needed in order to practice the fine art of oil painting.  All these and more you briefly mention throughout the book to give us the landscape we need to understand your argument better.

The argument: da Vinci already had skills of observation in his youth.  Those skills were supported and encouraged in his apprenticeship to a multi-skilled artist and artisan of high regard.  Those skills were further supported by his exposure to several books—still rare enough in the late 1400’s to be available only in private libraries.  The books he read on optics were especially influential in developing his skills.  And he wanted to translate his own skills and the knowledge gained from those books into his own book that would teach aspiring artists how to look and render what they see into a painting.

I am fascinated by the philosophy and science of optics that da Vinci learned and explored; optics was the cutting edge of science at that time.  It was important to astronomers as they used the shadows on planets to “better calculate their orbits and shapes.”  Preachers used the science of optics in theology.  Merchants used optics to measure new trade routes.  “Craftsmen used optics to make eyeglasses and mirrors.”  Architects, painters, and even Dante in his Comedy all used the science of optics.

You go on to discuss how optics were used especially to help answer the philosophical question: “How do we know the world?”  The science of optics was, at the time, the science of consciousness.

Indeed, how do we mechanically see with our eyes?  How do our brains see what passes through the eye?  How do our minds interpret what we see?  How do our bodies act on that interpretation of what we see?  And how does geometry—including distance and the presence of atmospheric particles—influence or distort what we see?  These questions of optics are fascinating in their own right; in the modern-day study of consciousness, one would ask similar questions for all our senses.

Leonardo explored these visual questions in his act of painting.  He based this exploration on the works of Alhacen, a Persian Gulf Muslim from the early 1000’s based in Cairo.  You say Alhacen was one of the first philosophers to “stress the importance of experiments and mathematical demonstrations to confirm hypotheses.”  Leonardo and his fellow artists were doing that with their newly-codified perspective rules for painting geometrically-accurate landscapes and interior-scapes.  Their reliance on geometry and repeated experimentation created the science of perspective drawing that is still used to this day by artists.

But this linear perspective drawing that the Renaissance artists were using in a codified fashion still left people depicted in the paintings looking stiff and unrealistic.  The next bigger challenge was how to fashion the effects of the atmosphere on the subjects, or the atmospheric perspective. 

“No wonder,” you state.  “It was far from obvious how to make palpable what is ineffable and yet fundamental to how we perceive the world.”

Da Vinci’s answer to atmosphere, found in the writings of Alhacen and perfected in the practice of his own drawings and paintings, was to include the perspective of colors and shadows.  Thus the title of your book, “The Shadow Drawings.”

Then there is your subtitle, “How Science Taught Leonardo How To Paint,” which you showed throughout the book.  What the title and subtitle don’t convey is your other main assertion in the book, that da Vinci was actively writing and refining—for much of  his life—draft copies of chapters of a book he planned to publish.  The book was intended to teach the science of atmospheric perspective to other artists.

With your book, with your descriptions of Leonardo and his newly-emerging science, we see the perspective of atmosphere and how it changes depending on how close or far an object is, as well as depending on what conditions of light, shadow, and particulates are present.  Here, the relationship between object and atmosphere is close enough that there are no boundaries, only gradations.

My one question for you:  Do you have any suggestions for websites people could consult to get really up close and detailed views of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, so we could further explore all his artwork in the light of what you write?

Other posts that mention this review: Gastrophysics, Essay based on The Science of Storytelling, Essay on Perception, An Immense World,