“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” -Leonardo da Vinci
If you’re working with a master whose aim is a masterpiece, then you have to constantly remind yourself that in terms of completion, “it takes what it takes.”
Read this post from George Bothamley and his always excellent Art Every Day Substack about Ludovico Sforza (The Duke of Milan) commissioning Leonardo for this now famous fresco painting.
From the post…
Sometimes, he would paint non stop, for hours on end – perhaps even turning up in the middle of the night to “correct” some minor detail in a work that was still not even fully sketched out.
Other times, he was known to go missing for days or weeks at a time – with no word of when he would return to the painting.
And then, when he was finally on site again, the brothers would often spy on him just standing in front of the work . . . lost in a world of his own, until eventually he might deign to lay a single brushstroke, before leaving again.
If you were tasked with producing this work, how would you handle Leonardo? And would you have the patience to see it through to completion?
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