The Calm Centre

Abstract

Chapter 2 opens the second section of the book, where the painting and its place in Leonardo’s body of work is considered. This chapter, on Leonardo and the ineffable, considers the way that he evoked the spiritual in his paintings, above all in his images of Christ. This stands in opposition to the image of Leonardo as a heretic, first suggested in the 1550 version of his Life by Giorgio Vasari. The documentation of Leonardo’s career and his last testament indicate that his Christianity was of a traditional kind. His library featured bibles and other standard religious texts. His statements indicate that the nature of the divine was not directly knowable, but manifested itself through the works created by God. In Leonardo’s devotional images and religious narratives, Christ and the Virgin act as calm centres expressing the elevated essence of supreme divinity. The Salvator Mundi and the late St John the Baptist are the most developed expressions of the otherness of the divine being, who knows secrets inaccessible to us.