Leonardo da Vinci ... Live

The other night Rich and I went to a local screening of Leonardo Live. Have you seen it? It’s the behind- the-scenes-look at opening night of London's National Gallery’s Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, which sold out in London until the day it ended, in the middle of February. Produced by the same company that brings the Metropolitan Opera to millions, this presentation is mesmerizing.

Touted as a once-in-a-century exhibit,  museums from Paris to Krakow loaned their works for a show that saw both of da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks paintings (in the same room, no less), and more than half of his known completed paintings.

The film starts off slowly, with a wide exterior shot of the National Gallery.  People are walking by, seemingly unaware of possibly the greatest exhibit we will ever know taking place in the building beside them.

Then the presenters take us inside through the mazes of rooms, where the cameras spin chaotically giving us erratic glimpses of Leonardo’s portraits and drawings, before the throngs of museum goers are let it.

Critics and glitterati from all forms of art expound on why da Vinci matters. It all takes on a rock-star feel, instead of a medieval one, and I admit, I’m somewhat dubious about the whole thing.

But the moment I catch sight of the painting, Lady with an Ermine, something happens. My heart shifts and I whisper “Oh, My God,” while Rich sighs.

 

Her skin resembles porcelain and her hand has taken on a life of its own. Those fingers caressing the ermine seem to have blood coursing through them. You can actually see the wrinkles around her knuckles, the ridges on the fingernails. How long did it take da Vinci to get that right? I wonder.

“She’s somebody I could write a song about.” It’s the first line in my husband’s novel, Wrestling Sturbridge, and I feel that way about the Lady.

The presenters talk to musicians, actors and historians, but I keep hoping they come back to The Lady With An Ermine.

Then we meet the Gallery’s restorer, and the woodcutter who created the missing pieces of the gilded frame around the National Gallery's Virgin of the Rocks.

He’s chiseling it all out by hand, tiny flower buds, petal-by-petal, with what looks like a screwdriver. I start to cry. Through this humble-looking woodcutter, I get a sense of just how labor-intensive art is—of what goes into a restoration, of what it takes to display a masterpiece and of the life of the master himself. It seems like an impossible task—the rosettes barely the size of a thumbnail; the painting, more than 6 feet tall. But in the end, we see it surrounding the painting, how they seem as one.

Why did Leonardo da Vinci have so many unfinished works? was the joke of the night. But who could blame him? The far more astounding question for me is, how did he manage to complete so many? Focusing on just one of his finished oil paintings can alter the way you see things.

I agonize over every line in my novels, but a painting the magnitude and genius that was da Vinci took decades. Before there were even painstakingly accurate brush strokes, there was his studious devotion to anatomy, for we’re told Leonardo never considered himself a painter.

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing,” da Vinci once said. “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

Be more than willing. Go see Leonardo Live.

The Blank Page

I’m not the kind of writer who can work on different manuscripts at the same time.

My husband can. Maybe it’s because Rich wrote his first novels in the middle of the night while his young boys were sleeping.(Though I still can’t imagine how anyone could’ve written something as good as Wrestling Sturbridge in the middle of the night, without sleeping during the day to make up for it).

But Rich is very adept at allotting certain hours of the day (or night) to specific writing projects. Then he’ll close the book on one, have a cup of tea or go for a run, and start in on another-- his mind happily suspending thought on the previous work while he delves in on another.

I’m good with deadlines. Working for decades as a journalist has taught me that. But I’d always focused on one story at a time, seeing it to completion. Perhaps I’d collect information for another story or two that I’d pitch in the future, but the thrust of my work was for my assignment that week or day. While I was a reporter with ESPN, I’d spend several days prepping, which meant reading the latest news on a game or player, and making countless calls to get exclusive information for game-time. Once the actual game was over, the routine repeated itself.

Now that my focus is fiction writing, I’ve discovered that I have a lingering mind-- a story grips me and I can’t stop thinking about it. I form files on my characters which continue to swell, jotting down everything from what they look like to how they feel. And since I love research, whether in libraries or through interviews, I immerse myself in that, until the characters speak to me. (As a writer, there’s nothing more exciting than when you start hearing your characters’ voices inside your head).

But I haven’t found a way to tell them to be quiet; that I’m busy working on another story which has nothing to do with them.

I know this because I attempted to work on a couple of novels simultaneously. Knowing that it usually takes me a year to write one, I thought I could split the week up between two novels and hopefully, end up with two manuscripts 12 months later. Instead, a month in and I’d had two stories that sounded a lot like each other. Plus, if truth be told, I’d really been spending more time on one novel over the other anyhow.

“Why don’t you and Rich write something together?” A friend suggested to me. “Wouldn’t that be more enjoyable and even better than writing all on your own?”

Hmmm.

The following week an editor asked Rich if he would be interested in writing a non-fiction sports book for middle-graders. “I’ll write it with you,” I chimed in, as we talked about the project that evening at our local coffee shop.

That made him smile.

So now we’re working on a book together. Non-fiction—a natural for me-- and two projects. Can I make it work? It's two different genres, with only one being a novel. Sounds terrific, doesn’t it? I hope so.

I’ll keep you posted.