The unwavering , direct and penetrating gaze ( no matter where the viewer stands , the eyes follow ), together with the benign , non-menacing yet enigmatic facial expression , both confident and serene , combine to serve an impression of the monumental and sublime . The artist ’ s choice of blue for both the mantle and tunic , at least in terms of Christian iconography , suggest an intention to convey that this is no mere earthly man , but a heavenly one .
At first I tried the Italian musical term coda for the addendum to the sometimes zany tale described above , to refer to beloved Spokane artist and teacher Stan Miller ’ s pictorial essay , his own version of the Salvator Mundi . A coda is , however , an end piece , a “ tail .” A better term might be cadenza , which is found especially in piano concertos where the pianist improvises outside the written form .
During the first COVID-19 lockdown that began in March 2020 , Miller , an award-winning watercolorist and tempera painter , began improvising his own version of the anomalous painting after pondering some things that did not strike him as quite right about the original . He would spend some 225 hours , give or take , on the project before completing it in mid-May . The intent was not to replicate the restored version of the Salvator Mundi , but to use the cleaned , naked version of it as a baseline to adjust certain elements he had found unworthy of a true da Vinci , if in fact , that ’ s what it was .
Modestini may have been bound by strict conservation ethics from re-creating her own idea of how the original painting ought to look , but Miller was not and he made a number of subtle alterations . Starting with the hand raised in a gesture of blessing , he found the thumb awkward ( as I do ; it ’ s too straight ) and adjusted it . It seems a decided aesthetic improvement . He also enlarged the composition slightly to give the hands more “ breathing room ,” for he felt certain the old master would never have put them so close to the edge of the frame . ( Or perhaps the panel had been cut down at some point to fit into an existing frame , which is not uncommon among old paintings .)
Unlike with the original painting , Miller used no black pigments for the dark parts , but a combination of modern and earth pigments instead . True ultramarine made from lapis lazuli had been the basis of the heavenly man ’ s blue garments , but Miller used Pthalo , cobalt , and cerulean blue pigment to make the color for his own re-creation . Whether the orb was intended to be a solid crystal ball , as some scholars contend , is also debatable , since the image behind it would appear inverted and bent . As was the case with some other old masters ’ versions of the subject , Miller opted to render it as a hollow glass sphere . His deepening of shadow areas gives the figure a more overall sense of sculptural solidity . The orb here also carries an increased sense of sphericality and transparency .
The discontent of some observers with the da Vinci attribution may partially be explained in terms of the Italian Renaissance , especially Florentine , concept of Disegno .
Stan Miller , closeup of face
34 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE