19th Century
Pair of desks with portraits of Petrarch and Leonardo
(2) Alabaster, diameter 34 and 35 cm
The pair of alabaster discs feature a central cameo with the effigy of Petrarch and Leonardo, likely part of a larger series featuring illustrious figures from Italian history. On Petrarch's openwork frame, there are portraits of several figures facing each other, paired by centuries, as evidenced by the styles of dress spanning various centuries: from the 13th century, where men wear caps with long points, to the 15th and 16th centuries, the two figures at the top, to the 17th century, with their wide collars, all the way to the 18th century.
Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) embodies the figure of the quintessential humanist intellectual, entirely dedicated to the study of Latin, conceived as the sole expression worthy of a man of letters, suitable for any form of written communication, including correspondence and self-reflection as evidenced in the Secretum. A personality made more complex by obsessive perfectionism, leading to continuous and infinite revisions of the work he ostentatiously considered minor, yet ensured him lasting fame among posterity: the Canzoniere. However, the only aspect fixed in the collective imagination is that of the lover who idolizes the places where his ideal love blossomed and where it remained lingering after the death of his earthly object. The dimension of remembering an unconsummated love, made of contemplation and desire, capable of transfiguring the place of encounter or vision, the reverie of an ideal beauty as poetic inspiration, are the themes that attract devotees of the Petrarchan myth. The typical representation of Petrarch, like the rest of his literary fortune, thus ends up capturing an absolutely marginal and partly strongly deviating aspect of the public and sought-after image of the great man of letters.
Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 and died in Amboise in 1519). He personified the Renaissance genius who revolutionized both the figurative arts and the history of thought and science. He presents himself with a letter representing a kind of curriculum in which he describes his aptitudes as a civil engineer and builder of war machines to the Duke of Milan Lodovico Sforza, who welcomes him well. Thus, the pictorial masterpieces are born: the Virgin of the Rocks in the two versions of Paris and London and the exercise for the equestrian bronze monument to Francesco Sforza. In 1489-90 he prepared the decorations of the Sforza Castle in Milan for the wedding of Gian Galeazzo Sforza with Isabella of Aragon while, as a hydraulic engineer, he dealt with the reclamation in the lower Lombardy. In 1495 he began the fresco of the Last Supper in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In 1499 Leonardo fled from Milan because it was invaded by the troops of the King of France Louis XII and took refuge in Mantua and Venice. In 1503 he was in Florence to fresco, together with Michelangelo, the Hall of the Great Council in the Palazzo della Signoria. Leonardo was entrusted with the representation of the Battle of Anghiari which he will not complete, due to his obsessive search for artistic techniques to experiment with or to innovate. In 1513 the King of France Francis I invited him to Amboise. Leonardo will deal with projects for the celebrations and continue with his hydrological projects for some rivers in France.
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