A Vision of China

A Vision of China

Yan Pei-Ming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Pei-Ming), View of Louvre exhibition Les Funérailles de Mona Lisa (2009) (picture: initiartmagazine.com)

This will not be a reflection upon Leonardo da Vinci’s vision of China (for his vision of the Far East see the section in my Leonardo da Vinci im Orient. Geschichte eines europäischen Mythos that I dedicated to all the Far East references in Leonardo’s work and especially to his reception of John Mandeville). No, this will be about what went on in the ›Leonardo world‹ during the three years after I had my study published in the winter of 2010/2011. About what went on – within the context of a changing world. It’s about impressions, observations and updates, and not least about reinterpreting one’s own book in the context of a changing world (which includes that we also explore new ways of publishing).

Leonardo da Vinci, today as ever, seems to represent the quintessence of Western civilisation; and he seems to maintain an almost unquestioned mythical status within Western culture. While the West, however, questions its relation to the Muslim world, to Russia, and to China. A vision of China refers here to a future vision of China in its future relation to the West, and as I have shown in my book, Western popular culture has been quite sensitive in confronting Leonardo da Vinci as a symbolical figure representing the West, with another symbolical figure, representing China, as early as in the 1990s in a popular novel. Whereas the Humanities and the discipline of art history in particular seem only now, and rather reluctantly, to be responding to the challenges of a changing world that include to relate one’s own culture to other cultural traditions, and at least the trying to see one’s own tradition from other viewpoints than one is used to.

Thus this section renews the invitation that my study of 2011 was and still is meant to be: to see Leonardo da Vinci, as a historical figure, in his relation to other cultural landscapes and viewpoints, to be located not only, but also in the Eastern world; and to see Leonardo, as a symbolical figure, within the symbolical and not only symbolical struggles of our age.

Selected cultural and political events and trends (2009-2013)

2009: US-President Barack Obama calls himself ›America’s first Pacific president‹

2009ff.: The Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories programme (apparently established in 2009) supports various research initiatives (https://www.getty.edu/foundation/)

2010ff.: Arab Spring (beginning in December 2010)


(Picture: nyt.com)

2011: National Gallery of London’s Leonardo exhibition »Painter at the Court of Milan«

2011: Niall Ferguson’s Civilization (book and TV documentary) identifies six »killer apps« of Western power

2012: Niall Ferguson’s TV documentary on China



2012: 2008 founded Ukrainian feminist protest group FEMEN has Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man reworked into a Vitruvian Woman (picture above: alternativesocial.com)

2012: Italian art is shown at Beijing (see: http://www.arte.tv/de/italienische-kunst-in-china/6825088,CmC=6825428.html)

2013: at the Harvard Center Shanghai the conference The Italian Renaissance in China: New Research by Chinese Scholars takes place

Selected Leonardo curiosities and miscellanea (2010-2013)


(Picture: io9.com)

2010: the actors of the TV serial Lost pose as a Last Supper


(Picture: froehlichundkaufmann.de)

2011: a show at Aachen’s suermondt-Ludwig-Museum presents artist Joos van Cleve (http://en.wiki-pedia.org/wiki/Joos_van_Cleve) as the »Leonardo of the North«

2011: scientists find confirmation for a rule proposed by LdV as to the growing of trees (see Physical Review Letters 107)



2012: the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Nr. 184) informs, not without irony (and not without showing a Leonardo drawing of a horse), about everything to know for the buyer of a high-class horse (picture above: theequinest.com)


(Picture: losttv-forum.com)

2013: TV serial Da Vinci’s Demons is being aired (as to the character of Al-Rahim, »the Turk«, see here: http://davincisdemons.wikia.com/wiki/Al-Rahim)

Early in 2014 it was announced that the BBC was planning to redo an epoch-making programme: Civilisation, written and presented by art historian Kenneth Clark and aired in 1969. Although, earlier, the Sunday Times had mocked Clark’s TV performances (»the great elucidator woos his great audience with the head movements of a super-sapient tortoise and many an artful lapse into demotic speech«), I do consider this programme (and also the book) a classic, a milestone, a touchstone. But hasn’t it been redone already? Redone or replaced by Civilization [sic], the 2011 programme by Niall Ferguson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson ; http://www.niallferguson.com/) that explains to us, propagates and even – horribile dictu – reveals to others the six »killer apps« of Western power (as there are: competition, science, property/democracy/rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism and Protestant work ethic)?
What would Lord Clark have thought about this? Would he have thought about Lord Acton, the historian, commenting upon power and corruption? Or would he have thought it a matter of style and language (while he actually had agreed with Ferguson in a basically affirmative view of what has been achieved in the West? At any rate: Civilisation (with an s) does look as fresh as ever and as a classic can look like at all. It’s timeless and does confront an audience of today not only with »a personal view« of European civilisation, but also provides us with an example how huge discipline of reading results in (or can be hidden by) elegance and grace, of which Clark, in my view, can be seen as an embodiment (and I am speaking about a lecturer and not about a coach).



But Civilization (with a z) is about something that Clark, as far as I can remember, addresses rather indirectly, if at all: It is about Western strength, about Western power, Western dominance, about the »West and the Rest« (and about why there is asymmetry in the world, issues that Clark gives little room next to the works of art, of architecture and next to books and ideas that, of course, are more ambiguous). It is an affirmative view that Civilisazion (with a z) does propagate, but in making the supposed reasons for Western dominance transparent, it does recommend the »killer apps« to everyone. In sum and put into neutral words: It’s the view that would like to see everywhere being realized what is considered being good at home. And at Lord Clark’s time one would have identified this position with modernisation theory (why other theories then focussed more (or on the contrary) about dependencies, structural asymmetries, asymmetric relations and especially: forced asymmetry).


(Picture: telegraph.co.uk)

Leonardo da Vinci, of course, does figure prominently in Civilisation (with an s), and because Clark’s small Leonardo da Vinci biography can still be seen as a classic like Civilisation is, it is worth noticing that this small biography of 1939 bears also testimony to Clark’s attempt of comparing and thus associating Western and Asian art in some regards (and in this respect Clark obviously was following his mentor or godfather Bernard Berenson).
If Leonardo da Vinci, however, does prominently figure in Civilization (with a z) as well, is an interesting question. In his representing of the theoretical penetration of nature and of the Renaissance Man’s will to govern it, he does obviously represent the »killer app« of science (and, to some degree, of medicine). He actually is one or even the »killer« (even if, or even more so because of many of his achievements remained purely theoretical). And still, and this is one of the odd things, if one does observe the Leonardo world: He can also be seen merely as the painter at the court of Milan and as the courtier and by limiting the perspective of a Leonardo show he would not necessarily figure within Civilization (with a z) at all.
But only at a first glimpse:

(continued below)

(Picture: nationalgeographic.it)


(Picture: timesofmalta.com)

(Picture: arthistorynews.com)


(Picture: thesun.co.uk)

Selected events and ongoing controversies in Leonardo attribution (2010-2014)

2010: the portrait on vellum, known today as La Bella Principessa, is the subject of a book by Martin Kemp who presents the in the following much discussed portrait as a work by LdV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Young_Fiancée)

2011: the rediscovery of a Christ as Salvator Mundi by hand of LdV is announced (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_%28Leonardo%29)

2011: the press reports that in Bavaria a painting is being claimed by its owners as a painting by LdV

2011ff.: ongoing »cerca, trova« investigation for a hidden fresco by LdV in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence, conducted by Maurizio Seracini (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurizio_Seracini)

2012: in Geneva a so-called »Ur-Mona Lisa«, kept in Switzerland, is being presented to the press

2012: the long known Prado version of the Mona Lisa (»Prado-sister«) is now being considered as possibly being painted in parallel to the Louvre Mona Lisa and possibly in Leonardo’s workshop

2013: news agencies and therefore the press report that a portrait of Isabella d’Este, being kept in Switzerland, has now been attributed to LdV

2014: The Christ as Salvator Mundi is being sold, after having appeared in the National Gallery’s Leonardo show of 2011, and without the documentation announced by the owners and expected by the scientific public ever having appeared in print; the whereabouts of the painting are now unknown to the general public (that is probably also confused by contradicting statements of Leonardo experts about which parts of the painting, if not the whole, is to be considered as being by the hand of LdV)

(Picture: frescotechnique.com)

(Picture: designyoutrust.com)

(continued from above)

Because for one: every Leonardo show, if it is a show of painting or of engineering genius, does show Leonardo as one of the wonders of the world. And because secondly: given this context, a new painting, only attributed to Leonardo, has been shown within the context of the London National Gallery’s 2011 Leonardo exhibition. And in 2014, after having been ennobled, it has been sold.
Thus, if Civilisation has to be redone any time soon, in shape, let’s say, of a mini series on Leonardo. I would propose to close this series with a programme on Leonardo da Vinci and capitalism (and consumerism, one of the »killer apps«). But more important I would find other programmes on Leonardo da Vinci and Russian art like, for example, I did propose in the section above, called Spotlight 2: An Icon Painter from Russia (http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/Spotlight2AnIconPainterFromRussia). And about Leonardo da Vinci and 1492, i.e. about Leonardo and his knowledge and his view of the European expansion, and so forth. And since he have mentioned the theoretical penetration of nature and the will to govern it, I would also propose a programme on Leonardo and sustainability, taking, in sum, the best and only the best of the two Civilisation/Civilization programmes.

PS: Leonardo da Vinci does figure in Ferguson’s Civilization book as being one of Lord Clarks heroes (see p. 2). Since Ferguson declares his view on civilisation/civilization to be more »down and dirty than high and mighty« one might also point to the fact that on page 199 (n. 1) he does explain how Lord Clark was provided with the means to be a gentleman scholar.

(Picture: nydailynews.com)


(Picture: timgosling.wordpress.com)

Visegrad Drina Bridge built by Sinan (picture: Julian Nitsche)


(Picture: muslimheritage.com)

(Picture: Sailko)

Some Michelangelo Addenda (2010-2014)

2010: Mathias Énard’s novella Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d’éléphants about Michelangelo travelling to Turkey appears in French (2011 in German); it is developed after motives of Michelangelo biographies like the visual depiction of Michelangelo encountering the Sultan’s ambassadors in the Casa Buonarotti (shown above) was; neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo scholarship, despite of the fact that the competition between these two artists is a classical topic, have ever made much of the fact that the idea of a bridge over the Golden Horn was the only idea both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci are actually to be associated with (for the history of the Galata bridge see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galata_Bridge)

2012ff.: the press reports of expert’s fears that in the next decades to come the city of Istanbul might face a disastrous earthquake like in 1509 (and 1799); the 1509 quake, known by tradition as the ›Lesser Judgment Day‹ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1509_Constantinople_earthquake) and also being reported about in Renaissance Italy, has to be seen as a context of the Ottoman sultans wishing Italian engineers and archictects to come to Turky and help with the rebuilding of buildings, bridges and whole cities; the Turkish architect Sinan’s early career (cf. the Frankfurt show of 2008 and see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimar_Sinan) as a »Turkish Michelangelo« might be seen also within this very context of the aftermath of historical desaster; Leonardo’s interest, however, to construct a bridge over the Golden Horn dates some years earlier, of 1502/03, and is to be associated with other historical facts (see my Leonardo da Vinci im Orient. Geschichte eines europäischen Mythos for details)

(Picture: amazon.de)

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