Inventive Mimesis and Representation in Leonardo da Vinci

Abstract

The types of artistic mimesis are basically three: ritual, visual and cognitive. The last two are the ones that have most influenced art and correspond to the theses defended by Plato and Aristotle. The aesthetic experience of Vinciana painting is different. Such a distinction does not depend on fidelity to a supposed real model, nor on the anatomical correctness of its characters or the geometric purity of its perspectives. It seems to be related to what in the field of Aesthetics is called ‘identification’, ‘incarnation’, ‘presentization’ or ‘representation’. In this article we propose to show that Leonardo was an artist more Aristotelian than Platonic. In his work and writings, we find enough Aristotelian traces. However, in vinciano thought and doing there is a form of inventive mimesis that allows us to reinterpret what a representation is. This article aims to notice the deep re-presentative depth, in the sense of a present doing that underlies the vinciano making. His skill is not exhausted in the likeness, nor in the knowledge of reality, but in a summoning to presence. Such a milestone allows us to venture, beyond psychoanalytic or psychological tendencies, why some works from Vinciana - unfinished- can be considered finished.