Last year, I photographed the mountains in central London—the distant blue jagged peaks in Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks at the National Gallery. Although the painting’s main subjects are religious icons, I focused primarily on capturing its natural details: the foreground vegetation and the haunting rock formations that monopolize the captivating landscape.
My photographer’s eye was led partly by my newfound knowledge of da Vinci’s excursions in the Lombardy mountains. Otherwise, I was guided by the main purpose of my da Vinci-themed travels to London and Paris. That was to visit multiple museums and libraries to gather information for a book I will write about the Italian polymath. In particular, I searched for examples in which he integrated his diverse scientific studies with his art. My other goal was to observe how other museum-goers engaged with his painting.
When I photographed the Virgin of the Rocks, I stepped back to get the full composition and got up close to capture its details, using my Sony and iPhone cameras.
After zooming in and out on the Virgin of the Rocks, I sat on a bench to meditate on the masterpiece. I also noted that as usual with da Vinci’s works, the painting attracted the largest gathering in the room. Watching other people pause to observe and comment on the painting, I imagined who they were and how their interests matched or differed from mine.
Among its admirers were two gentlemen dressed in business casual attire. One man read the sign accompanying this painting that is a copy of da Vinci’s original version now in the Louvre. The Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception commissioned the original in 1483 for the central panel of an altarpiece in their chapel at the Church of the San Francesco Grande in Milan. The brotherhood hired da Vinci and painters Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis and his sibling, Evangelista, for the multipurpose project. The contract also required the artists to produce two flanking paintings of musical angels and to paint and guild the altarpiece. The man read aloud this passage from the sign:
“Financial disputes with the confraternity caused Leonardo's first version of the composition… to be sold elsewhere and significantly delayed completion of this second version. Still unfinished in places, it was finally installed and paid for in 1508.”
The two men discussed the legal matter almost exclusively to the painting itself. I imagined they were attorneys working on a dispute centered on payment amounts to their clients, just as da Vinci and the de Predis brothers requested additional fees after all the money earmarked for the entire commission was spent on decorating the altar. The confraternity refused to pay.
After the men departed, a tour guide led her group to the painting. She too read the sign aloud but just the passage about its Christian iconography:
“The Virgin holds out her hand above the Christ Child. Supported by an angel, Christ blesses his cousin, the infant Saint John the Baptist, who can be identified by his cross and scroll. The rocky setting may refer to the world at the dawn of time, or to the desert in which Christ lived after his flight into Egypt, or both.”
As the guide discussed the uncertainty about the exact event, I considered that this was possibly a church group, and their tour centered on the museum’s religious-themed artworks, including the Virgin of the Rocks.
Before my trip, I’d read extensively about both versions of the painting in multiple books. In Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, art historian Frank Zollner writes that the composition depicts the first meeting between the infant Christ and St. John the Baptist. He notes that the event is not from the Bible but in the Gospel of James (2nd century A.D.) and was rarely depicted in art. Zollner also describes various interpretations of the painting’s religious theme, motifs, and symbolisms, including its rocky landscape and vegetation. He also posits that the paintings may also be regarded as representing da Vinci’s scientific meditations. [1]
After my trip to Europe, I re-read Zollner's book and other sources about the original version and its copy. I realized that my primary interest in these works—the marriage of science and art—is more connected to their religious meaning and the legal dispute than I had realized.
In a 1995 essay, a geologist determined that the variety of rocks da Vinci painted in the original—including those that accept and resist plant growth, and the stratified formations in the foreground—are astoundingly faithful to nature, while inaccuracies abound in the rocks of the copy. [2]
A geologist has determined that the rock formations in the painting’s second version aren’t true to nature and were likely painted by another artist other than da Vinci. (Photo: Joseph Kellard)
Likewise, in a 1987 book, a botanist noted that the plants and flowers in the original were rendered accurately and selected for their religious symbolism—e.g., St. John's Wort is a plant deemed sacred and cherished for its alleged protective powers; Cyclamen is a flower with heart-shaped leaves, symbolizing love and devotion—while those in the copy are mostly unidentifiable hybrids. [3] (The copy features several other minor to major changes from the original, most notably the angel no longer looks out at the viewer nor points a finger at St. John the Baptist.)
Scholars have cited these scientific analyses to support the argument that, given da Vinci's fidelity to portraying nature in the original version, the discrepancies in the copy imply significant input from Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis. Also, de Predis painting large sections of the copy gives more credibility to speculations that both artists were required to produce a second version.
Who then painted the distant blue mountains in the London version?
Writing about this version in his book Leonardo by Leonardo, preeminent da Vinci scholar Martin Kemp leaves little doubt: “The atmospheric effects in the rocky waterscape express Leonardo’s optical theory of distance in a way that can only be his.” [4] An intriguing yet under-reported fact about da Vinci is that, like Dante and Petrarch before him, he was one of the pioneering Italian mountaineers. In a later notebook (the Codex Leicester, started in 1508), he recorded observations he made from the peaks in northern Italy, in which he accurately describes why the sky appears blue:
“I say that the blue which is seen in the atmosphere is not its own colour but is caused by warm humidity evaporated in minute and imperceptible atoms on which the solar rays fall rendering them luminous against the immense darkness of the region of fire that forms a covering above them. And this may be seen, as I myself saw it, by anyone who ascends the Monte Rosa, a peak of the Alps that divides France from Italy…” [5]
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The background mountains in the painting conform to da Vinci’s written observations of the atmospheric effects on distant objects. (Photo: Joseph Kellard)
“The atmospheric effects in the rocky waterscape express Leonardo’s optical theory of distance in a way that can only be his.”
Elsewhere, da Vinci noted the visual impacts of atmospheric effects on distant objects such as buildings and mountains [6] These observations enabled him to help innovate painting techniques known as aerial or atmospheric perspective, in which the details and colors of objects become less distinct the further they are from the human eye. Also, the following passage da Vinci probably wrote for his Treatise on Painting closely captures the atmospheric effects on distant mountains he produced in the London version:
“It is clearly seen that the air which borders most closely on the plain of the earth is more dense than the other air, and to the extent that it is more elevated it is thinner and more transparent. … Therefore, painter, when you make mountains, ensure from hill to hill that the bases are always lighter than the summits.” [7]
Observe how da Vinci’s mountains transition from a lighter blue at their base to darker shades at higher elevations. Also, their details blur and colors fade the more they recede into the background.
When I reread Daniel Boorstin’s The Discoverers and learned that da Vinci ventured up the Alps, and I discovered later how these excursions informed (or confirmed) his studies of optics, geology and other scientific disciplines that he infused into his art, my fascination with this already multifaceted man intensified yet again. [8 & 9]
Ultimately, this newfound knowledge helped energize me to travel to Europe and guided me to focus on photographing the distant blue mountains in the London Virgin of the Rocks. I thought that if da Vinci could scale tall mountains to make firsthand observations to enhance his art, then I certainly could travel to Europe to see his paintings and drawings in person to improve my book about him.
——
Endnotes
Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Frank Zollner, Taschen, 2011, pp. 64-79.
Leonardo's Geology: The Authenticity of the Virgin of the Rocks, Ann C. Pizzorusso, 1996.
Leonardo da Vinci on Plants and Gardens, William A. Emboden, Dioscorides Press, Portland, 1987.
Leonardo by Leonardo, Martin Kemp, Callaway, New York, 2019, p. 181.
Leonardo da Vinci: Notebooks, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 40.
Leonardo On Painting, edited by Martin Kemp, Yale University, 1989, p. 80-81.
Leonardo by Leonardo, p. 181.
The Discoverers, Daniel J. Boorstin, Random House, New York, 1983, pp. 428-429.
The most detailed information on da Vinci's mountaineering that I've encountered so far is in the biography Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl, published by Viking, New York, 2004, pp. 276-280.
* First, Nicholl writes: “On at least three occasions, and probably more, Leonardo journeyed up into the Alps: the earliest of these treks can be dated to the early 1490s.” (p. 277)
* Nicholl also writes that da Vinci reported on the base of Mount Mandello and describes “a grotto which is probably the ‘opening towards a lake’ …” (p. 278)
* In describing an area at the Troggia River, da Vinci writes: “Here mapello grows abundantly,” and Nicholl notes that this variety of plant appears at the left shoulder of the Virgin in the [original] Virgin of the Rocks. (p. 278)
* Lastly, Nicholl writes of da Vinci’s observations of the atmosphere from Mount Rosa: “The all-important phrase in this note – the phrase implicit in all these notes concerning his Alpine excursions – is this: ‘I myself have seen it.’ (p.280)
* In this paragraph, I write “confirmed” because da Vinci painted mountains according to similar aerial perspective principles starting with his first independent painting, The Annunciation, dating from the early 1470s, approximately two decades before his first extant notes on his travels in the Alps.
Additional Sources
National Gallery (London) website: Virgin of the Rocks.
Learning from Leonardo, Fritjof Capra, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2013.
Leonardo: A Study in Chronology and Style, Carlo Pedretti, Thames & Hudson, London, 1973.
Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2017.