ching, seeking new knowledge.
Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter born a few years before da Vinci's death, described Leonardo as "an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease" (Vasari, 1965, p. 255).
As a result, the broad scope of Leonardo's work has made him hard to label, to fit into a category, as an artist. In his research of Italian Renaissance painters and paintings, James Beck sets up two general categories or tendencies to distinguish between the different generations of artists. These are known as monumental and lyric (Beck, 1981, p. 14). Though it is understood that no single artist represents the absolute in either category, "The monumental and lyric currents in Italian Renaissance painting should be thought of as parts of a continuum, with the painters of the period standing at different points on it (p. 14).
In lyric painting "we find an emphasis on gracefulness, elegance, and refinement of forms; complex, often curvilinear, design patterns related closely to, or on the surface; and an excitement of contours" (Beck, 1981, p. 14). "In the monumental current, there is a gravity of forms, a volumetric three-dimensional insistence in which the figures take up space in a convincing stage-like environment" (pp. 14-15). There is usually an emphasis on horizontal and vertical stresses. Beck places Leonardo among the monumental artists, but then must pause, because in recognizing that the artist also included lyric traits, it was best to identify Leonardo as a centrist, as one who stands close to the middle (p. 285).
Further, because myths surrounded the artist, snowballing over four centuries, there are additional difficulties in evaluating Leonardo's work. He was considered unstable from his early years and known for not finishing much of his work. Vasari believed that t...