Light & Dark

Beatrice d'Este was 16 when the future Duke of Milan married her (in 1491), and probably not much older when Leonardo da Vinci painted her portrait for the Duke, his patron. Innocent, fresh and direct, the portrait was like a summing up of everything that the complex, secretive, worldly-wise Old Master himself was not. It made a highlight in the comprehensive show of Leonardo and his circle at Los Angeles County Museum last week.

Of the 72 paintings on exhibition, only four were attributed directly to Leonardo. The rest, wavering between chill sentimentality and brown gloom, either anticipated or copied the Master's favorite tricks: chiaroscuro (strong contrasts of mingled light and shadow), sfumato (blurring of outlines to suggest space), geometrically involved compositions and ambiguous half-smiles.

Along with the paintings were nine examples of Leonardo's unsurpassed draftsmanship and 66 models of his scientific inventions, ranging from ten-barreled machine guns and rocket-shaped projectiles to automatic roasting spits and a slave-powered air-conditioning unit for the Duchess' bedroom. They showed that in the vast chiaroscuro of Leonardo's mind, scores of the horrors and wonders of 20th Century science had hatched and died.

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