The artist's Hand; the mind's Eye

[malsperanza]

A listserve I subscribe to has lately had a fascinating conversation about the presence of fingerprints in the surface of paintings.

It's only fairly recently (in the last 10 or 15 years) that conservators and scholars have been able to see and photograph the fingerprints in paintings, using raking light and sensitive film. They have found prints in many paintings, most famously in some by Leonardo.

In discovering the fingerprints in the surface of a Leonardo painting, we learn something about how he worked--how he achieved that famous sfumato, the "smoky" blurring from shadow-to-light or from one color to another without any discernible border between the two. Apparently he did it at least partly without brushes, by smearing the paint with his fingertips, and possibly with the heel of his hand.

Leonardo's art is beautiful by way of ambiguity: What is that equivocal half-smile? Is she even smiling? Why are those angels gesturing stangely, and why does one look sly? The Apostles--are they leaning toward Jesus to grasp his words, or shrinking back, terrified of his godhood? And is Jesus offering them the bread and wine of redemption, or is that upraised hand judging and spurning them?

Both. All. Leonardo is that rarest and greatest of artists: one whose art embraces opposing meanings, simultaneous dualities, and variant readings within it.

So it should not surprise us that Leonardo's sfumato, his ambiguous shades of light and shadow, substance and air, should be both a means of rendering reality more solid and an evanescence, an ineffable veil, a gauzy dream, a metaphor for all that is poetic and insubstantial and impossible to render.

Here's a book cover that shows a detail with sfumato:


The back of the hand vanishes into immeasurable shadows, and light shifts across the flesh in imperceptible gradations from dark to bright.

So beautiful.

And across that lambent surface, that glowing skin, there once brushed another hand, whose delicate touch brought the image into being, and left the tiniest mark of its passing almost invisibly in the thin glazed surface.

When I first saw photos of the fingerprints, I was thrilled. Here, then, was the Hand of the artist, the semiotic mark of his presence, embedded in the very material of the work of art. More than a signature, this was a sign: Signum, signaculum, spectaculum--sign, index, and mirror, says the philosopher.

Of course, to us fingerprints have a very particular semiotic role. They mean evidence: proof. If we see the same identifiable fingerprints in several paintings, then we can assume that the same hand made them. For those paintings attributed to Leonardo, but not known to be by him, this may provide a possible avenue of forensic research.

Conversely, what might we think if the fingerprints of more than one person were to turn up in the surface of some famous painting? The artist and his students? The clumsy assistant who picked up the panel before it was quite dry? A group effort? A forgery? Reworked later by some other Hand?

Into the mind's Eye creeps an image: A hand caresses the surface of a painting as if that painted shoulder were the warm shoulder of a lover.




Which is more beautiful, more true, the smiling boy, or the painting of him?
And is he St. John the Baptist, as some have thought, or is he Bacchus robed in leopardskin?


And there's that smile again...

Comments

Pentimento

[lady_of_asheru]

Fascinating! This reminded me of the definition of "pentimento" - the emergence or reappearance of earlier underlying painting which eventually shows through the finished painting because of the increasing translucence, through aging of the superimposed layer. I've long been intrigued by the idea of the artist "repenting" what s/he originally painted, and correcting it by painting over it, but the original brush strokes eventually showing through. The thought of their fingerprints being there as well is just delicious!
S

Re: Pentimento

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? I too love that word "pentimento"--as if the artist had repented of his original image, and changed it. But also as if the painting itself had repented, and changed itself back. It suggests a kind of agency in the painting, as if it had its own seductive life. Which I think is true.

You must know the fine Lillian Hellman memoir titled "Pentimento." That's where I first came across the word.

Re: Pentimento

[lady_of_asheru]

I have heard of it, but not read it - it's long been on my list though (says she, surveying the tottering piles of books to be read, covering every surface...
:-)
S

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

The posts you create are a major reason I come back to LJ.

A hand caresses the surface of a painting as if that painted shoulder were the warm shoulder of a lover.

This idea expresses just what came to mind when you described how Leonardo achieved sfumato. I don't know exactly how to say this, but - when, as an audience, a work of art (whether in visual arts, literary arts, or any other area) touches you, it's beyond gratifying to realize just how intimately the artist touched it in its creation.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Gratifying indeed! And sexeh! This is all part of the (my) Seduction Theory of Art: that there is an erotic relationship between the artist/author and the viewer/reader and it occurs via an erotic relationship between the reader and the book, or viewer and painting. Behind the painting lurks that other, more powerful figure, completely unknown and mysterious (and therefore seductive): the artist. So when we *think* we glimpse some sign of that powerful magician's presence, we are ravished.

Behind Harry and Dumbledore and Voldemort is a magician more powerful than all three together: Rowling. Which is perhaps the reason some people are drawn to real-people slash. (It's a kind of slash that creeps me out too much to read, but I think I understand the impulse.)

Thank you for your nice comment :-)

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

Ah, very pretty. I have no useful comment to make at all, but I really enjoyed reading this entry. ^_^