The Content
What Art Depicts — The Things, The Ideas, and The World Behind the Figure
A painter who has no doubts will achieve little. When the work surpasses the judgment of the worker, that worker achieves little. When the judgment surpasses the work, the work will never cease to improve.
— Leonardo da Vinci, MS. Forster III, f. 66r
Overview
Understanding how art works (the Science) is only half the problem. The other half is understanding what you're making — what you're depicting, what it means, and where it lives.
Leonardo approached the content of art with the same obsessive rigor he brought to the science. He didn't just paint a hand — he dissected one first, then sketched the bones, then the muscles, then the tendons, because "those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass." He didn't just paint a background — he surveyed the terrain, studied the geology of the rocks and the botany of the trees, and codified how distance turns everything blue. He didn't just paint a biblical scene — he gave each apostle a distinct psychological reaction and demanded that "the spectator may easily recognize, by means of their attitudes, the purpose in their minds."
These three explorations separate what you draw (Objects), what it's about (Subjects), and the world it exists in (Setting). Leonardo would never have separated them — for him, painting "embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces." But to explore each fully, we start from three different doors into the same room.
The Three Explorations
Objects
People, animals, hands, faces, trees, water, rocks, buildings, drapery, horses, machines. Leonardo's approach was radically scientific — he dissected over thirty corpses, compared frog anatomy to human anatomy, injected wax into brain ventricles, and drew wildflowers with botanical precision. He insisted on esattezza: exactness from direct observation, because "he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well."
Explore →Subjects
Beyond the physical things depicted, every painting carries meaning — religious narrative, mythological symbolism, allegory, portraiture, philosophical statement. Leonardo demanded that figures express their mental state through gesture and pose: "the intention of his soul — the latter hard." He made the Last Supper a psychological explosion, the Mona Lisa an enigma of inner life, and the Battle of Anghiari an unflinching horror.
Explore →Setting
Background. Environment. Landscape. Atmosphere. Space. Sky. Leonardo treated setting with the eye of a geologist and cartographer — his Map of Imola is remarkably accurate by modern GIS standards. He codified atmospheric perspective ("five times as far, five times as blue"), compared the earth's structure to a body, and painted landscapes so geologically plausible that scholars still try to identify the exact locations.
Explore →See Also
Other Tiers
- The Science — Perspective, Proportion, Perception, Light, Color, Form
- The Craft — Practice, Process