In Yuri Grymov’s play, Leonardo da Vinci tries to give people wings

Yuri Grymov presented to the first audience a new play “Leonardo” from the trilogy he had planned “Antichrist and Christ” (“Peter”, “Leonardo”, “Judas”). In this production, the director makes an attempt to reveal the personality of the great artist Leonardo da Vinci, a creator who “combines good and evil in equal proportions.”

The genius of Leonardo is a combination of opposite hypostases in one personality: the eternal desire for creation and destruction inherent in man. Da Vinci creates the great life-affirming fresco of The Last Supper and at the same time is busy constructing a bomb that could kill the living. Before the audience unfolds the drama of a genius who sincerely believes in the first half of his life that creativity should be free from all attachments, from any limiting framework. “The strength of the creator is in loneliness,” he throws to his students, “friendship, and even more so love, steals you from your calling. No one can serve two masters.”

Ironically, Leonardo writes his best picture, preserved for centuries, having fallen in love for the first time in his life. Lisa Gioconda (actress Maina Chizhevskaya) – by that time already a married lady – having met Leonardo, wants him to find in her not only a model for a portrait, but also just a woman. The lovers are separated by the sudden death of the heroine. Leonardo paints a portrait of Gioconda for three long years, not wanting to sell it during his lifetime for any money. Having fallen in love, he creates an image that still excites the imagination of all art lovers. It was not unraveled by the contemporaries of the genius, who were familiar with the secrets of Leonardo’s writing: some (lovers of painting of that time) saw only a luxurious beauty on the canvas, with whom many dreamed of spending the night, others (students) found in the image of Gioconda the reflection of Leonardo himself, in a smile which the devil, then God, appeared on the canvas, slowly driving the observers crazy.

In general, Yuri Grymov’s performance is full of such legends that surrounded the figure of Leonardo during his lifetime. Some of these legends hang in the air as an assumption, some the hero ironically refutes himself in the course of action.

The main distinguishing feature of Leonardo is that he, who has a powerful analytical mind of a scientist who was ahead of his time by several generations, is not ready to take anything for granted. Leonardo is not able to recognize as existing that which cannot be verified empirically or proved mathematically. As befits a scientist, he questions everything.

The soul of Leonardo (the role of the artist is superbly played by the Honored Artist of Russia Dmitry Bozin) is the scene of a great battle between the forces of good and evil, forcing him to behave paradoxically, from the point of view of others. “During the ten years that you have served me,” Duke Moreau (Yuri Anpilogov) says to da Vinci, “I have become accustomed to your whims.”

But the disciples of the master cannot get used to his quirks. Cesare (Alexander Serikov), Giovanni ((Bogdan Shukhin) and Zoroaster (Alexander Tolmachev) see in him what is hidden to the outside eye. Here Leonardo opens the curtain, and an unfinished gigantic image of the Last Supper appears before the admiring eyes of a few chosen ones. on it as if alive, – Duke Moreau says with some sacred horror, – for this all sins will be forgiven him. ”But as soon as Leonardo makes a gesture or instructs the same duke how to approach the picture, the figures on it begin to come to life, turn, reach for the center of the fresco.

This is a really strong directorial move: Leonardo the creator seems to enter into a secret connection with his creation, the figures in the picture. The trouble with da Vinci is that he does not recognize any power standing over him: he is his own pedestal, and a monument, and an idol. Leonardo makes a brilliant pencil sketch of the Madonna and Child, and then his pencil draws terrible things, accompanied by monstrous comments. The inquisitive mind of the scientist dreams of “giving people wings that God did not give them,” and his proud soul informs Michelangelo, who came to look at the famous fresco: “Maybe with my mind I will create wings for people, and they will fly higher than your Sistine Chapel.” And what is the value of Leonardo’s only phrase addressed to his students: “Everyone is free to choose which god to pray to, one of you will betray me”?!

The mind becomes a trap for Leonardo. “From the mental wolf I will be hunted by the beast,” John Chrysostom says with horror in one of his prayers. Leonardo falls for the hook of this same “mental wolf”, being influenced by the limitations of the human mind – the root of any temptation.

At the same time, da Vinci in the performance is a very extraordinary, powerful personality, clearly falling out of the frame. A man from the people, the son of a laundress, he most of all looks like an ancient hero with a developed torso, endowed with an inquisitive look, literally oozing a sense of superiority over others. From the outside, it seems that everything is allowed for this, as if he commands the elements: he laid out the sheets with his pencil sketches in a strict order on the ground, but he heard a woman’s laughter, blew, mixed the sheets, and they flew away on the wings of the wind. And it seems to us, the audience, that Leonardo himself followed them. Yuri Grymov staged this scene so cleverly.

There are many such symbolic scenes in the play, thanks to them the production acquires volume, additional philosophical meaning.

Perhaps the best assessment of Leonardo’s performance is given by Michelangelo (artist Mikhail Matychenko), who, seeing that the magnificent fresco “The Last Supper” has already begun to crack due to a violation of technology, bitterly remarks: “Leonardo is a great buffoon. All life for him is just a scientific experiment. The verdict sounds almost like Pushkin’s: “Mozart, you are not worthy of your talent.”

Even the great contemporaries of Leonardo are unaware that the artist was not at all an indifferent buffoon. Da Vinci was not satisfied with the traditional technique, in which it was necessary to write quickly and fluently before the moistened layer of plaster dries. He, on the contrary, is used to working slowly, thinking over every movement of the brush. That is why he is looking for new solutions, trying to write on dry ground “gesso” – a ground of “chalk”, “glue” and “oil” in egg tempera. But few people knew about this: contemporaries were sure that he simply saves time and works with ordinary oil on the ground. In search of new technologies, while working on the fresco, Leonardo used white lead, which eventually damaged the paint layer. The humid air of the refectory from the nearby kitchen caused the destruction of the painting already in the process of its creation, this happened literally before the eyes of the artist.

But since da Vinci was not just a painter, but also an inventor driven by talent, he sought the fullness of knowledge in each of his artistic ideas. That is why Leonardo was indifferent to the reproaches that the magnificent fresco was being destroyed before our eyes: “Well, it means that the students will recreate this lost fresco according to my own drawings.”

Yuri Grymov’s production has a rather unexpected ending. In the finale, three Russian painters come to see the work of the great Italian, who were sent by their sovereign to find masters in Rome and invite them to work in Moscow. One of them, the icon painter Eutychius Gagara (a magnificent work by Alexander Borisov), remarks, looking at Leonardo’s works: “They didn’t see our blessed icons.” And although the portrait of Gioconda is amazing, “but our Orthodox Mother of God cannot be written to him.”

In the finale, Leonardo receives an icon from Eutychius as a gift, and looks at it for a long time. Suddenly, his face lights up with a childlike smile. He seemed to understand something that had eluded his consciousness for a long time: “This is not painting at all,” says da Vinci, peering into the Image. “What is written here is what you can’t see with your eyes.”

With this final, Yuri Grymov sets the accents very clearly. The ingenious works of the Italian masters are indeed too realistic – they are not about God, but rather about people and events. The Italians dreamed all their lives of capturing the Spirit of God, but captured only human beauty, reaching perfection in this. Looking at their great works – at the “La Gioconda” by Leonardo, at the sculptural “Pieta” of the same Michelangelo, a person experiences admiration and something similar to pleasure. Meanwhile, the image becomes an icon, an Image, only when it begins to evoke feelings and thoughts in a person’s soul that cannot be defined by the word “Beautiful”. The image with a capital letter has a sense of mystery, a hidden meaning, it directs attention into our own being, removing the feeling of admiration, making us “silent”. This deafening feeling of silence creates a sense of connection with God. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult for an Orthodox person to pray in front of the great paintings of Italian masters on a religious theme, hanging in churches.

Elena Bulova.