Template talk:Leonardo da Vinci

Problems

What you have created here is something less than useless. It's less than useless because it tries to put into a few boxes things which are very complex, and therefore gives a very false impression! I have already said something very similar.

I just found the Mona Lisa in a box that say "Leonardo and other artists. Whaaaat are you on about? Although it is probable that soemone cut it down, and over-cleaned it, there is no suggestion that he painted it with another artist.

If you look at my detailed list of explanationns on the Leonardo page, you'll see why you can't put everything in three boxes.

There is a vast difference between:

Verrocchio painted a picture and got a student (Leonardo) to add a dog, obviously painted over the top.

Verrocchio got his best pupil (Leonardo) to collaborate and paint a significant part of a picture he was working on.

Leonardo has large important commission. He is assisted, with rocky background, gilding etc by two workshop artists.

But you have lumped all these together as Leonardo and other hands. It includes eveything from perhaps a student addition, to one of Leonardo's most accomplished paintings the London "Virgin of the Rocks". And now you add the "Mona Lisa" to it!!?

Moreover, there is also a vast difference between an attribution that almost every art historian agrees with, and a claim made by one person. But you have lumped them altogether.

I groan at the fact that this has been tagged onto the Leonardo] article, which already contains the information in as accurate form as I can make it, with a good deal of research.

You claim Leonardo invented "The Robot"! What he built was an Automatum of a type that was not original. Impressive perhaps, but he didn't invent it. remove it from the list. I can't remember what the other thing is, but to say he invented the robot is far fetched, and inaccurate.

Please don't do this! It is misleading, to say the very least.

Amandajm (talk) 06:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Removals

I just removed the "Medusa". No Medusa by Leonardo still exists. I removed "Leda and the Swan". Everyone knows that they are all student copies. I removed "Tobias". One art historian suggests Leonardo might have painted the fish (and the dog). There is no concensus of opinion about this. I removed "Robot". He didn't invent the robot.

Amandajm (talk) 06:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I am confused. All of those articles that you removed were articles that talked about Leonardo's possible input into those works. And the robot link actually linked to Leonardo's robot not robots in general. Remember (talk) 14:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

• It's not the links that are the problem. It's the template itself. I notice that another editor has changed Inventions to 'Other works, obviously for the same reason as I deleted the single word "Robot" under the heading of "Inventions". Regardless of how accurate the info in the wiki-page might be, the info in the template itself was patent nonsense.

That is the problem. The template is not simply a set of links. It is also a stand-alone source of information which purports to give a list of Leonardo's works. That list of itself must not be misleading. If any student wants a list of Leonardo's works, they will take then straight off your template....Where it clearly showed Leonardo as the inventor of "the robot"!!

The Leda and the swan links to a general page and has a pic by a student of Michelangelo, based on a drawing by Michelangelo. That is, of itself, confusing.

Can I suggest that you add the categories "Lost works" and "Juvenile works". The smaller predella Annunciation in the Uffizi belongs in the "Juvenile works", along with the Tobias and the Dreyfus Madonna. Where the work is not fully bbe Leonardo, there needs to bbe a statement as to the other artist. Where the other artist is the major contributor, this should be made clear.

There is, as I have pointed out, a very big difference between Leonardo painting a dog (or fish) in another artist's picture, and Leonardo composing and painting 95% of a masterpiece, with the assistance of his own workshop as in "Virgin of the Rocks". All this stuff is made clear in the list in main article. It has been carefully researched and fully cited. The information is there for you to use. What is written in the template must be accurate, of itself.

One of the problems here is that the "big picture" is highly complex. If we were dealing with Michelangelo, the list would be short and simple. If we were dealing with Raphael, the list would be much longer but also fairly simple. In the case of Leonardo, the indentity and attribution of his works is an extremely complex matter, and your template fails to reflect that.

Amandajm (talk) 02:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

List

• Juvenile works and collaboration: "Dreyfus Madonna", attrib., "Annunciation" predella, attrib., "Tobias....", assisting Verrocchio, attrib., "Baptism of Christ", in collaboration with Verrocchio.
• Mature works (I would leave out "the entirely by Leonardo" bit, unless you want to go into lengthy discussion) Include here both the Virgin of the Rocks pictures, also include the cartoon of the Virgin and Child and St Anne, marking it clearly as a drawing. Label two works that are unfinished. Don't include anything that is "lost".
• Attribution generally accepted: Ginevra, Woman with the ermine, Madonna with the vase of flowers (Munich), Belle Ferroniere etc
• Also attributed: all the shakier ones
• Lost works: Battle scene, Medusa, Leda, equestrian monument.

List the "Dreyfus Madonna", even though it's a red link. I'll write a little monograph on it. Amandajm (talk) 03:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

What about a list of disputed works like the painting thought to be behind the wall in the church? --98.232.178.38 (talk) 03:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Revamped

Just a few notes to explain my recent edit, which mostly follows Amandajm's suggestions above:

• Per Amanda's suggestion, I've introduced an "Early works-Mature works-Recent attributions" structure to the Paintings section, replacing that awful mess that was there was before. My main aim was to give a sense of chronolgy which the list of paintings by attribution status necessarily can't do. The final category is outside the chronology to emphasise that these last works are still shaky attributions.
• In the list of paintings by attribution, based on Ottino's research, I count 6 or 7 different "grades" of authenticity. Obviously this navbox can't reflect the complexity of the big picture. Sooo, I've marked every painting between "grade" 3 ("Accepted attrbution") and 5/6 ("Disputed") as simply "Attributed [to Leonardo]". While it lacks nuance, it is the kind of phrasing you get in captions in art books or on museum labels, and therefore I should think it's acceptable.
• Lost works have been kept in the main list, but are clearly marked as being such. Again, I plead 'chronology': I think a separate category for The Battle of Anghiari et al would fail to show how they fit into his oeuvre. I wanted to avoid the meaningless atomisation of the last version.
• "Robot" has become "Leonardo's robot".

Ham 16:13, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Well done, Ham! Big improvement! Amandajm (talk) 14:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC)