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DOWNING COLLEGE ASSOCIATIONG ETTING T O K NOW L EONARDOEarlier this year the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court ofMilan” drew huge crowds to the National Gallery. Martin Kemp (1960) is anHonorary Fellow of Downing and Emeritus Professor in the History of Art atTrinity College, Oxford. He has published and broadcast extensively onLeonardo da Vinci, including the prize-winning Leonardo da Vinci. The MarvellousWorks of Nature and Man and Leonardo. With Pascal Cotte, he has written LaBella Principessa. The Story of the New Masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. Here hegives some insights into the “Leonardo business”.I have been in the “Leonardo business” for about 40 years. I have come to knowhim well (as far as we can claim to know anyone who died almost 500 yearsago). To be involved with someone who possessed one of the most remarkableminds in the history of human thought is a great privilege. Leonardo saw afundamental unity of cause and effect in the natural world – a unity thatembraces human beings no less than the humblest plants. He forged drawingas a tool for communicating visual information and emotion in a way that hasno parallel. And he painted the world’s most famous picture.To be involved, as a historian, with someone who still lives in theimaginations of a vast public today has proved to be a great blessing – as well ashelping to sell my books and to populate the exhibitions I have curated.Along with the blessing comes a cluster of curses. The legends are par forthe course with any iconic figure, but Leonardo attracts a special brand ofinsanity at levels and scales unrivalled by any other cultural figure. I am pesteredby “Leonardo Loonies”. They come in two main varieties. The first claim tohave cracked the “secret” of Leonardo, most often the “secret” of the Mona Lisa.They have become far more numerous in the wake of Dan Brown’s Da VinciCode, but they were around earlier, and Brown’s book may be seen as an extremeexpression of an existing tendency. The “secrets” comprise messages hiddenobscurely in his pictures and drawings. There are Dantesque faces in thelandscape, numbers in her eyes, an alligator behind her back, and a host ofother hidden images. It’s like seeing faces in wallpaper patterns. The most salientquestion is, for whom was Leonardo intending the hidden messages? Was heassuming that some smart-ass with a taste for codes would come along half amillennium later? And what do the secrets mean? Leonardo’s pictures are richin allegorical meanings in the Renaissance manner, but there are no codes – ifwe mean by code something that uses surface appearance to conceal deceptivelysomething quite different.The second species of loonies are owners of unrecognised masterpieces fromhis hand. I receive digital files of contenders at a rate of more than one a month.36