VMs: Gallows and vinci...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

For the last month or so, I've been exploring the possibility that the 
gallows characters were created by Leonardo da Vinci.

A recurrent theme amongst courtly works of 1495-1505 is that of "vinci" - 
osiers, used for basket-weaving. Leonardo used this in a number of his 
works, most notably the extraordinary single looped golden thread weaving 
through the Sala delle Asse in Milan - the same vinci recur in a number of 
other works of his from this time (Mona Lisa, etc) and in a number of 
places in his Codex Atlanticus.

However, according to art historians, the idea of "vinci" came from The 
Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri's Paradiso: Canto XIV

	http://italian.about.com/library/anthology/dante/blparadiso014.htm

	Ïo m?innamorava tanto quinci,
	che ?nfino a lì non fu alcuna cosa
	che mi legasse con sì dolci vinci.

	So much enamoured I became therewith,
	That until then there was not anything
	That e'er had fettered me with such sweet bonds.

Dante composed this around 1315 or so, but it wasn't until 1490 or so that 
his metaphor (of love as a kind of osier-like binding) fully made the 
transition across to other media.

It is said that the playwright Niccolo da Correggio designed the "fantasia 
dei vinci", a wonderful filigree gold-threaded looped design in silk for 
Isabelle d'Este - Alison Cole also points to the similarity between the 
threads extruded by silkworms and the gold thread

Patrizia Costa (who is writing a thesis on Sala Delle Asse) points to vinci 
being used in this period as decoration on musical instruments (in the 
Castello Sforza), and on costume, and repeatedly on jewellery (specifically 
as noted by Paola Venturelli). However, she specifically points out that, 
tempting as it is, none of these have been conclusively linked with 
Leonardo da Vinci at all.

My opinion? I look back at da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" (1483-1485) - a 
portrait of Ludovico Sforza's mistress Cecilia Gallerani - and am 
immediately struck not just by the strength of the portraiture, but also by 
the numerous black vinci on her clothes.

To me, this represents not only a self-pun by Leonardo, but also Dante's 
metaphor for love as a binding. The shoulder facing the light has no vinci, 
they're all in the darker part of the picture - to me, this is clearly an 
iconic representation of a mistress, a "love in the shadows".

This amazing picture influenced many other artists and patrons - Isabelle d'