Leonardo da Vinci is the archetypal “Renaissance man.” He is revered for his paintings, his inventions, his daring. He is practically synonymous with “genius.” But what do we actually know about him? Or, to put it more directly, who is the man behind the vaunted Renaissance man?
As it turns out, just like his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, Leonardo is something of an enigma.
Details of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, Mona Lisa, and The Vitruvian Man
The 15th and 16th century polymath is the subject of the latest two-part documentary from Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The trio, made up of eminent documentarian Ken, his daughter, Sarah, and her husband, David, previously collaborated on 2021’s Muhammad Ali, 2016’s Jackie Robinson, and 2012’s The Central Park Five. In 2022, Ken Burns directed a two-part documentary on another of history’s legendary: Ben Franklin.
By comparison to these subjects — Ali, Robinson, the Central Park Five, and even Franklin — Leonardo is shrouded in mystery. There is, of course, no archival footage of Leonardo. And perhaps surprisingly because of his huge standing in the realms of art and science, there are only a handful of paintings by him and images of him.
Perhaps it was this thinker’s elusiveness that prompted the directing team to take a different approach for the documentary. Though he died half a millennium ago, Leonardo’s brilliance means he will stay relevant far into the future.
So passing on the Burnsian signature period music, the team has instead commissioned a score from one of today’s brightest composers: Caroline Shaw. The Pulitzer-winner’s score represents the first music commissioned entirely for a Ken Burns-and-team feature.
WFMT spoke with the film’s co-director, David McMahon, about the unique challenges the subject provided, the joy of delving into the brilliance of Leonardo, and why Caroline Shaw was the perfect fit to create the music for the film.
WFMT: Leonardo da Vinci is such a titanic figure. How do you even begin to go about telling his story?
David McMahon: I knew very little about Leonardo going into this project. I think I had focused on him as a painter. He was maybe first and foremost a scientist and an intellectual, although he would have never thought about science and art as being different things. Every endeavor seemed to be informed by all those things at once.
The historical record is fairly thin. Most of what we know about his times are people in his day jotting things down about what they observed of him or time they spent with him. It was sometimes frustrating that you couldn’t get a little closer. On the surface, it seemed like there was not going to be much visual material.
But Leonardo left behind something like 6000 pages of notebook entries. The whole story is there in those notebooks. But it’s one of what is going on between his ears. What he’s observing, what he’s curious about, how he’s working it out. If you look between the lines of those notebook entries, you can see a real human who feels pride and feels jealousy and feels enthusiasm. We used those notebooks as our pole star
WFMT: How does the decision to commission a score play into this?
McMahon: We didn’t want to use period music. We wanted an original score at the beginning. We were thinking strings, we were thinking percussion. The music of Caroline Shaw had a joy to it, it had timelessness to it.
Caroline Shaw (Photo: Kait Moreno)
I think that it was reversing a process that we had used over films for years. Usually, if you’re introducing a character, you find a song that you think would fit. And then day one, when you open your edit room, you begin cutting that scene, and you put that piece of music down and it works. It’s just there ‘till the end.
In this case, we were using temp music throughout most of our edit. But when we get to the end and our composer comes in, will she create something that elevates it or feels like that or is completely different? And will we be ok with that?
We were ok with it every single time.
WFMT: How does the music enhance the documentary?
McMahon: The music provides a kind of connective tissue across the movie. Caroline would get up under that moment and really elevate it.
It did a remarkable thing to have those voices in there. They really do an extraordinary thing for Leonardo: they underline his humanity.
WFMT: And what about for immortal masterpieces like The Last Supper and Mona Lisa?
McMahon: Early in the project, the music supervisor, Jen Dunnington and I went to Portland to meet with Caroline. We spent a lot of time talking about The Last Supper. We talked at length, and Caroline said, “Don’t worry, I’ll make you the right thing.”
It’s at the end of the first show, it feels like for the whole two hours we’re waiting for that moment where he finishes the thing. We went and shot at the monastery; we shot the actual Last Supper. We have a big, beautiful tilt down and those voices sort of climb within it. It’s just a moment that really fills your chest.
For Mona Lisa, we wrestled with how to do because it’s the most famous painting. You can go to the Louvre, and you can watch people walk up and take a selfie with it, but never even turn and look at the painting. It almost seems more important to people that they prove that they were present than to stand before this painting and try to figure out what he was trying to achieve.
Like The Last Supper, it’s a tall order to make a piece of music that seems to sum everything up. Beforehand, I’m thinking, “Boy, that’s gotta be big!”
But there’s something gentle about it. Caroline intuits what that moment would mean, where it is in the movie, and how people would be feeling. She gets just the right amount of music. She pulls in all her collaborators and does something that is ethereal and elegant.
Leonardo da Vinci, a two-part, four-hour documentary directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, premieres on WTTW on Monday, November 18 at 7pm (part 1) and Tuesday, November 19 at 7pm (part 2). For more information, visit wttw.com.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. This story has been corrected to reflect Leonardo's proper name as Leonardo, not da Vinci.
