Mysteries behind the Reclining Bronze in Amboise
Where are Holmes, Morse and Lewis when you need them?
The magnificent bronze on the banks of the Loire in Amboise poses many riddles.
It’s labelled Leonard de Vinci but the sculptor Amleto Cataldi, didn’t give it a name.
The tag maybe because of a Parisian newspaper headline in 1923, the year it was unveiled: Leonardo Da Vinci Lying like a River God of Mythology.
Acolytes of The Master might find it disrespectful to portray their hero in such a way. He might find it so too. Leonardo was an intensely private man, secretive. He never revealed personal matters, not even in his hundreds of Notebooks. That is part of his allure. He is an enigma.
There is nothing enigmatic about this in your face bronze. It bears no relation to the Leonardo of his many biographies: Tall, graceful, fastidious to the point of effete, ethereal, a visionary, a man in the world, but not of the world.
There’s nothing effete or ethereal about this muscular nude. You can’t imagine this giant strolling around town in the short pink tunic Leonardo wore.
It has been argued that the head resembles him, or, to be precise, resembles drawings reputed to be of him, but no-one knows what he looked like. Florentine contemporaries often remarked on his long curly hair but never mention a beard. In any case all ancient depictions of river gods have beards. Cataldi’s river god is very similar to those in the Vatican Museum.
Did perhaps Cataldi already have the bronze lying around? Did he perhaps copy the famous drawing of Leonardo and add the head? The practice was very common in ancient Greece and Rome as leaders fell in and out of favour.
Amboise is a place of pilgrimage because Leonardo lived and died in Château Clos Lucé and is buried in St Hubert’s Chapel, Château Amboise. In the 1920s, Enrico Garda, Minister Plenipotentiary* representing San Marino in Paris came to Amboise to pay homage to the Master. Hugely disappointed by its indifference to the genius, he decided to give the town a monument worthy of him. There wasn’t even a street named in honour of the town’s most famous resident (a hundred years later, visitors make the same comment).
Back home, Signor Garda visited Cataldi. As an art lover, he would have seen his work exhibited in the Salon of French artists in Paris. The sculptor was known for his massive nude males in the classical style of ancient Rome.
The men had something in common. Cataldi, born in Naples, based in Rome, trained to be a sculptor in Turin where Garda was born.
Needing a support for his massive bronze he decided on the head of Medusa. She is eyeless presumably so as not to frighten children. If anyone looked at her they turned into stone.
Given the Medusa connection, does Cataldi’s bronze depict Poseidon, who was in love with her? No-one knows.
Why did he depict Leonardo as a Greek god? No-one knows.
The colossal bronze was cast in sections. Where was it cast? No-one knows.
Cataldi signed his bronzes. Why not this one? No-one knows.
Garda wanted the statue placed on the banks of the Loire in Amboise. Why wasn’t it? No-one knows. Instead he offered it to Paris in 1928. Where had it been for five years? It was not officially accepted. Why not? No-one knows. Was it perhaps because Cataldi, one of Mussolini’s favourite sculptors (he did a bronze bust of the dictator) produced public monuments which celebrated Fascism? Was it because San Marino had a Fascist government?
Cataldi died in 1930 so he was no longer the sticking point if indeed he ever was.
In 1935 Paris formally accepted the bronze from Enrico Garda on behalf of the Republic of San Marino. Why then? No-one knows. San Marino still had a Fascist government.
Enrico Garda was a Jew. Still living in Paris in 1940 when Jews were being rounded up and deported, he left for America. He died in Miami, Florida in 1946. An excellent bronze of an extremely good looking Enrico Garda was re-discovered fairly recently in San Marino.
Another mystery is that the attributation plaque installed sometime after 1973, contradicts some of the dates above.
Whatever the facts behind this magnificent bronze, Amboise is surely grateful for Signor Enrico Garda’s generosity.
* A Diplomat invested with the full power of independent action on behalf of his government.
With thanks to Francesca Giorgetti San Marino Archives and Christèle Marie- Benoist Amboise Archives
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art). Photography by Mark.
Leonardo da Vinci
The Amboise Connection
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