The premise of the first part of my presentation is that a valid history of images can be established by studying their dependence on, or correspondence with, texts. In the second part, I will criticize and reject this principle.
A text by Leonardo da Vinci has provoked an unprecedented exercise in fantasy among scholars of his work. This is the imaginary letter to the governor, Diodario of Soria (Syria), written by a fictitious official reporting on the scene, development and effects of a catastrophic flood in the vicinity of Mount Taurus. My attention was drawn to the close relationship that seems to exist between Leonardo's description in the letter to Diodario and the landscape of the monumental Battle of Alexander, painted by the German Albrecht Altdorfer in 1528-1529. In this painting, the atmospheric effects, the gradual change to intense blue of the waters and reliefs as they recede towards the curve of the horizon, the swirl of oranges and yellows around the setting sun and the ashen luminosity of the moon evoke several passages from Leonardo's manuscripts on astronomy and his theory of light and color. What might have been the lines of communication between Altdorfer and Leonardo? Let's not forget that the German never visited Italy. Which field of Leonardo's activity would have allowed such a transmission: that of his drawings, that of his texts, or even that of his artistic forms and his ideas on the scientific character of art? The first part of the lecture aims to demonstrate the existence of two very strong connections, first between Altdorfer and Dürer, then between Dürer and Leonardo's work. We can therefore assume that Albrecht Altdorfer had some form of indirect knowledge of Vincian painting practice and theory. Such a hypothesis helps to explain the stylistic and conceptual kinship between The Battle of Alexander and the letter to Diodario de Soria.
However, new sources and works previously unknown to me have forced me to revise my initial ideas. Firstly, I need to revisit the possible relationship between Jacopo de' Barbari and Leonardo, as well as the former's aesthetic ideas, expressed in a text written in Saxony in 1501, which we can see are very close to Leonardo's notions. Secondly, it seems that Albrecht Altdorfer must have known Jacopo, if not directly in person, at least through his large Venice engraving. Thirdly, Altdorfer had at his disposal a very important text, written at the Bavarian court, which contained a precise description of the battle between Darius and Alexander at Issos: the Baierische Chronik, written from 1526 onwards by Johannes Aventinus, official historiographer to Dukes William IV and Louis X. Fourthly, Christopher Wood's study of the autonomy of Altdorfer's landscape painting from the observation of nature prompted me to undertake optical experiments in situ, i.e. in the middle of the Wald, the German forest in autumn. I believe I can demonstrate that, contrary to Wood's assertion, the experience of perceiving light phenomena played a central role in Altdorfer's pictorial construction. This observation seems to distance the German's painting from that of Leonardo, despite the points of contact that keep appearing.
My misinterpretation probably stems from the automatism that always leads us to seek correspondences between texts and images, relationships that are neither obligatory nor necessary from a historical point of view. My recent research involves linking the figures of Leonardo and Altdorfer to practices, and thus to a deeper level than the mere transmission of writings, drawings or other images. Each of them is situated within the framework of a particular natural and historical experience, but their common belonging to the European civilization of the early 16th century unites them, and the same cultural passion for the discovery or invention of new knowledge runs through them. Our two artists sought to follow the process of sensitive knowledge of nature; they both wanted to transform the journey of the eye and its exploration of the relationships between the objects, light and air that surround them into a movement of the hand designed to reproduce the visible of the world outside itself.
