In the footsteps of Leonardo

Apollo, July, 2005 by Carmen C. Bambach

Earlier this year there was great excitement when remains of wall paintings in the convent of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence were identified as works created during Leonardo da Vinci's stay there in about 1500-1502.

In the first English-language scholarly account of the finds, Carmen C. Barnbach reviews the evidence for the location of Leonardo's studios in Florence during this period. She argues that although such archaeological and biographical research may be unfashionable with art historians, it can add greatly to our knowledge of the artist.

The news of the discovery of remains of mural paintings and their identification with Leonardo's living quarters at the convent of Santissima Annunziata in Florence has led to wide coverage in the popular press, particularly during January and February of this year. (1) The news, however, appears to have been greeted with near-silence in the scholarly community. While, in my opinion, the recently identified mural remains may, in the end, have little, if any connection at all, to the paintings of Leonardo and his bottega (workshop) assistants, their fascinating but almost unknown architectural context within one of the greatest ecclesiastical building complexes of medieval and renaissance Florence, (2) which I was privileged to study during two comprehensive visits, is worthy of serious consideration.

As this article will attempt to demonstrate, there is good reason to pursue further historical research regarding Leonardo's ties to the conventual community of the Servite order at the Santissima Annunziata. This period was a turning point in the great master's career, bracketed by his return to Florence in 1500 (after an absence of nearly seventeen years as court artist to Ludovico Sforza 'Il Moro' in Milan), and by the award of his first mature civic artistic commission in Florence in 1503, the Battle of Anghiari mural for the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria (Fig. 1).

The monumental convent of the Santissima Annunziata stretches along the modern Via Cesare Battisti (the entrance to the convent is today at no. 6), leading to the church of the Santissima Annunziata, also known as Santa Maria de' Servi or Nunziata, on the east, and to the Piazza of San Marco on the west (Fig. 2). A drawing in the Uffizi from around 1500-1504 by Fra Bartolomeo, who became one of Leonardo's most immediate admirers soon after his arrival in Florence in 1500 and who was exactly twenty years younger than the great master, portrays the convent, church, and piazza of the Santissima Annunziata in a view taken eastward from San Marco, the neighbouring Dominican convent, where the frate himself resided (Fig. 3). (3)

Fra Bartolomeo's drawing shows the open site before the construction of the Sapienza (Universita degli Studi) on the west, and, most importantly, the original side entrance of the convent. (4) Other significant visual evidence regarding the general evolution of the Annunziata site can be obtained from the Codice Rustici, compiled by Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici in 1447-48 and 1451-53 (folio 11 recto, Seminario Arcivescovile del Cestello, Florence); (5) a late-fifteenth-century painted veduta (private collection, London); (6) the imposing map of the city of Florence published by Fra Stefano Buonsignori in 1584 (Fig. 4); (7) and an anonymous early- seventeenth-century architect's survey drawing (Conventi Soppressi 119, b 1268, folio 1 recto, Archivio di Stato, Florence). (8)

The recently discovered mural remains are in portions of the west and north wings of the second cloister, sometimes called the Chiostro Chiuso to distinguish it from the more famous Chiostro dei Morti (or first cloister), the location of Andrea del Sarto's fresco of the Madonna del Sacco (Fig. 2). These are portions of the building complex that were virtually unknown until the publication of detailed physical surveys by Roberto Manescalchi, Alessandro del Meglio and Maria Carchio during this past year. (9) The west wing in the second cloister, whose construction appears to have been begun between 1335 and 1384, (10) is today divided between the community of the Servite brothers of the Santissima Annunziata and the Istituto Geografico Militare (IGM), and this has added to its relative inaccessibility.

Part of the site of the Annunziata convent was expropriated, becoming property of the state in 1807-10, during the Napoleonic suppression of religious institutions (motions for ecclesiastical reform and suppression had already been explored between 1781 and 1799). The Istituto Topografico Militare, a predecessor of the modern IGM, was founded in the western portion of the site around 1868-72. (11) The walls that were erected to divide the ecclesiastical and state structures run somewhat jaggedly north to south along the complex, but appear clearly demarcated in the piante catastali (tax assessors' property maps) of the site from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (12) The western and northern parts of the convent, in particular, have been extensively remodelled over time; the interior spaces are today so severely fragmented that in many areas it is difficult to reconstruct their state during the quattrocento and cinquecento in any detail.