BEELDEN IN VEELVOUD

ftom Russian folk art and ethnographicobjects,8 and with the works of Jugendstil
and Symbolist artists living and exhibiting in Munich, the city to
which Kandinsky had moved in 1896 from his native country Russia at the
age of thirty-six and whcrc hè had received his first training as an artist.9
Strangely however, the name of Leonardo da Vinci is never mcntioned.
MEREZHKOVSKY
Kandinsky was not the first to believe m a future Apocalypse and an inevitable,
cultural revolution. In the nineteenth century more and more
writers had discusscd these themes, convinced as they were that the course
of human history was an evolution through a number of major clearly
dcfined periods and that man wouid eventually reach a spiritual level. In
keeping with Hegcl's ideas on the progress of human culture, philosophers
and historians proclaimed that the spiritual epoch had already dawned or
else was just round the corner. At the end of the century this belief in a spiritual
progress had also become widespread among artists and poets.
His years in Munich and his stay in Paris in igoó-'oy gave Kandinsky every
opportunity to become acquainted with such eschatological and messianistic
ideas. He also came into contact with notions of the role of the artist
and poet as advocate and preachcr of the coming era. Just as his writer
friends chose an Expressionist style of poetry to give voice to the new era,
so hè and other artists became increasingly persuadcd that the artist's solution
was to paint in a more abstract style, leaving out or disguising figurative
forms.10 Kandinsky drew inspiration for this dcveloprnent not only
from the Russian and French symbolist poets and writers, hut also from
the theosophical ideas and the mystical writings of Joséphin Péladan, the
spokesman of the Rosicrucians.11
In Munich hè maintained close relations with the Russian Symbolists and
would thereforc have known of their admiration for Leonardo, whom they
hailed as a forerunner who had played a vital role in one of the great cultural
revolutions. According to them, Leonardo was a seer of great genius, a mysticand
a pioneer of what was then the new, modern mode of thought.12
Among the Russian symbolists, it was Dmitry Merezhkovsky who was
most eloquent in his admiration for Leonardo. In 1901 hè even wrote a historical
novel about this Renaissance artist, The Rebirth ofthegods: Leonardo
da. Vind.13 Merezhkovsky moreover srood out among the Russian symbolists
with his conviction that history had always been characterized by greac
upheavals and that the last of these was about to break out, leading to a
third, new epoch.14 It was within the framework of this vison of history
that hè presentcd Leonardo as a figure viewed by his contemporaries as an
Antichrist.
In his novel Merezhkovsky presents Leonardo's apprentice, Giovanni Bcl-
KAND1NSKY S COMPLETION OF LEONARDO S DELUGE 457