In 'Leonardo da Vinci' (Princeton Univ., Feb.), Johns Hopkins art history professor Stephen Campbell complicates received narratives of the renaissance painter.
You describe your book as an anti-biography—why is that?
Biography tends to create fictional elaborations of historical figures where the documentary record might not be complete. We tend to project 21st-century categories of personhood, like tech entrepreneur, genius, influencer—we want historical figures to be like celebrities, and we want to psychologize them. There’s a whole industry around Leonardo that tries to make his writings and works of art materialize Leonardo himself.
What can be learned by pushing against those narratives?
We get a sense of the historical variation in notions of personhood. We weren’t always as we are now, and there were always other possibilities. Leonardo may have seen his own self as continuous with other selves that he was working closely with. We gain an insight, not only into historical subjects but into ourselves through historical notions of personhood. Instead of saying Leonardo was ahead of his time, we can understand him as part of his time.
You write that contrary to traditional notions of the solitary artist, da Vinci was part of the workshop system. Can you say more about that?
The Renaissance workshop was like a sort of open project, with people coming and going, sharing resources, tools, and space. Among Leonardo’s notes, we have lists of people who came through the workshop and with whom he wanted to talk because they represented certain kinds of craft expertise, or could provide him with books—it was a very small, interconnected world. Then there’s the issue of authorship. Leonardo didn’t do things single-handedly, and from the late 1490s or early 1500s onwards, his works were probably a result of collaboration with assistants he’d trained. A lot of his writing about painting is pedagogical—how to make paintings that actually resemble his style.
What has changed your perception of da Vinci’s works?
Just actually looking at the works and what they do, and the very powerful way in which the works seem to address a beholder. They seem to do so now just as I think they did 500 years ago when they were created. That’s what’s so distinctive about this artist. You have to train yourself to really see the Mona Lisa for what it is, to defamiliarize the image.
What do you want readers to come away with?
There’s a lot in Leonardo’s life and legacy that can speak to us today on many levels. There’s a level of care manifest in his writings for living things, for people, and for the world. The way he looks at the world in his writings, drawings, and paintings—that’s what I hope people will connect with.
