Mauro Di Vito 111 111 P olybius said that you can not write the his- tory of an event unless you have witnessed it with your own eyes. For him, direct vi- sual participation was essential if one sought to gain an understanding of something. This is the same thing that happens, more or less, in theatre: the experience of the spectator in front of the stage is something that can not be repeated, always dif- ferent each time. This does not quite have the same weight today as it did in the time of Leonar- do. Video screens have almost completely replaced direct knowledge of the world. In the age of me- chanical reproduction of the work of art, 1 that which formerly was for the very few can now be replicated ad infinitum with excellent results (and now more than ever), causing a dequalification of taste but enhancing communication. 2 As is known, the reproduced work of art loses its aura, i.e., it loses its uniqueness. Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci remains miraculously aloof from this process of pauperization: he demands to be seen in person. This brief essay does not pretend to provide an exhaustive review of the material I have gathered on Saint John. 3 I write it for those who have seen him, or are on their way to seeing him, in per- son. Hunt up an image of this painting. Of all those I have examined (photographic, digital, or mer- cury salt reproductions, reflectographies, engrav- ings, copies), none yet published render the idea of the original. Some photos are too dark, in- evitably failing to capture the fine sense of the lynx skin, the stick, or the curls vanishing into the shad- ows while others, over-bright, eviscerate the pro- found depths of the night enfolding Saint John. This painting, more than any other, is irrepro- ducible, non-photographable. It is almost mono- chrome, incandescent. It glows like an ember in the dark, its life expressed through its lucid radi- ance. If illuminated directly its inner light is ex- tinguished under the reflection, like a misty mir- ror. 4 And hence the only way to see it is in per- son, in the shadows of a dim room illuminated by the soft radiance of an oil-lamp. Saint John the Baptist, according to the words in the Bible, is the lamp that heralds the daylight of Christ. 5 Saint John the Baptist is the Precursor. We know little, very little, about this painting. It portrays a youth with long hair frozen in a black mirror. He looks at us reflected in front of him, inside him, as if he were our soul. This painting has a private, votive function. It was still in Leonardo’s studio when the artist died in France. The master kept it at his side, and probably not only to show it, as he did in 1517 to Antonio de Beatis, 6 but also because he used it, every day, to meditate. The painting has the dimensions of a mirror and like a mirror reflects convexly. For Leonardo the mirror is the teacher of the painter: Vasari tells us that he “occupied himself with mir- rors”. 7 The portrayed personage presents the char- acteristics of a young Saint John the Baptist and reflects a mode of representation that is entirely Florentine 8 (Fig. 1), Leonardo having received his education in the Tuscan city. Trying to explain its mysterious meaning is like trying to reproduce it: as impossible as proving dogma. We shall thus un- dertake a fragmentary attempt, seeking to stress the most important concepts to keep in mind as we approach the inner experience of beholding this masterpiece. We must thus proceed with a breakdown of the image, a sort of autopsy. This operation is inevitably irreverent, desecrating: those who wish to discover the causes have to dig deeply; where our examination fails to penetrate, it will be faith to guide us. Eyes. Leonardo makes it clear that he knows the rules of Renaissance magic, 9 those of drawing the viewer into the work of art 10 and those of hu- manistic rhetoric: an image, like an oration, must The Misty Mirror of the Soul: The Cultural History and Iconology of Leonardo’s Saint John the Baptist 08_Di Vito_GB.qxd:07 Saggio Falcucci 30-07-2010 18:01 Pagina 111