Anatomy of an artworkLeonardo da VinciLeonardo da Vinci’s A Deluge: apocalypse wow
With torrents of rain and a wrecked fortress, the artist is obsessed with civilisation’s end
Apocalypse wow …
We are far from the first generation to worry about weather apocalypse. Civilisation obliterated by a storm was a subject Leonardo returned to again and again in his final years, in France at the court of Francis I. This 1517 work is one of a suite of drawings rendered in black chalk, seemingly made for himself.
Hard rain …
The torrents of rain literally lash, curling violently like whips. They have the geometric precision of the landscape (and suggest a similar degree of analysis) in his Virgin of the Rocks.
Washed out …
In several works, man’s cities are seen tumbling. Here they are all but obliterated, although a wrecked fortress can be made out in the bottom-right corner. The storm is on the point of consuming everything.
Appetite for destruction …
The drawings expand on ideas he was working through in his treatise of painting. Their controlled realisation vies with the wild subject, suggesting competing forces at work: the end-of-days obsessive and the meticulous scientist and artist.
Included in Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, to 6 May
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