It is for good rea­son that we for­ev­er asso­ciate illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man with the deliri­ous work of Hunter S. Thomp­son. It took the two of them togeth­er to invent the gonzo style of jour­nal­ism, which we may almost call incom­plete now if pub­lished with­out the req­ui­site car­toon grotesques. Stead­man con­jures visions of dev­ils and demons as deft­ly as any medieval church painter, but his hells remain above ground and are most­ly man-made. Whether illus­trat­ing Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dic­tio­nary, George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm, the cast of Break­ing Bad, or the vis­ages of Amer­i­can pres­i­dents, he excels at show­ing us the freak­ish fever dreams of the mod­ern world. He may, wrote The New York Times’ Sher­win Smith in 1983, “be the most sav­age polit­i­cal car­toon­ist of the late 20th cen­tu­ry.”

Steadman’s illus­tra­tive lega­cy places him in the com­pa­ny of history’s great­est visu­al satirists, but also makes him an odd choice for a biog­ra­phy of Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Though Leonar­do fre­quent­ly drew car­i­ca­tures in his note­books, the bulk of the Renais­sance genius’s work con­cerns itself with order and precision—the pur­pose­ful­ness of his line a stark con­trast to the crazed ink splat­ters of Steadman’s work.

Nonethe­less, Steadman’s I, Leonar­do, which he under­took not on com­mis­sion but on his own ini­tia­tive, exhibits a pro­found insight into the Ital­ian painter-sculptor-philosopher-inventor’s rest­less cre­ative mind. Leonar­do pre­sent­ed a very cool exte­ri­or, but his inner life may well have resem­bled a Stead­man draw­ing.

The project came to life in 1983 as what Stead­man called “a qua­si-his­tor­i­cal mish­mash,” a “tongue-in-cheek” sup­posed long-lost auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Leonar­do in pic­tures. “It is more than a col­lec­tion of illus­tra­tions on Leonardo’s life, based upon three years of work and research,” remarked a Wash­ing­ton Post review. “Stead­man does not mere­ly the­o­rize about the man, but attempts to go inside the artist’s bones.” Stead­man, writes Maria Popo­va, “even trav­elled to Italy to stand where Leonar­do stood, seek­ing to envi­sion what it was like to inhab­it that end­less­ly imag­i­na­tive mind.” The illus­tra­tions are a sur­pris­ing­ly effec­tive com­bi­na­tion of da Vin­ci-esque dis­ci­pline and Stead­manesque sick humor.

In his intro­duc­tion to the book, Stead­man com­ments on Leonardo’s split per­sona. His “expe­ri­ence showed him that man was not what he appeared to be, despite the pre­vail­ing atmos­phere of fine thoughts and high aspi­ra­tions…. The puri­ty of his paint­ing set the divine stan­dard of Renais­sance art—and of any art for that mat­ter. I believe he pre­served intact a part of his pri­vate self which found out­let in his more per­son­al notes and draw­ings.” Many of those draw­ings include the afore­men­tioned car­i­ca­tures of mon­strous, gri­mac­ing beings who would fit right in with Steadman’s night­mar­ish draw­ings.

The gonzo illus­tra­tor found a kin­dred satir­i­cal Leonar­do inside the famed mas­ter draughts­man and engi­neer. His inter­est in the Renais­sance artist’s anar­chic psy­che mir­rors that of anoth­er keen observ­er, Sig­mund Freud, who described Leonar­do as “a man who awoke too ear­ly in the dark­ness, while the oth­ers were all still asleep.” (Steadman’s first “his­tor­i­cal mish­mash” project was a 1979 illus­trat­ed Freud biog­ra­phy.) The artist behind I, Leonar­do has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent take on the sub­ject. Stead­man, writes Smith, saw Leonar­do “in 1980’s terms—as ‘a man tak­en up by a cor­po­ra­tion that couldn’t use him.’”

See many more of Steadman’s Leonar­do illus­tra­tions at Brain Pick­ings and pur­chase a copy of the book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ralph Steadman’s Sur­re­al­ist Illus­tra­tions of George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm (1995)

Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Draws the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents, from Nixon to Trump

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Imag­ine you could talk to Hierony­mus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, or of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script—a bizarre 15th cen­tu­ry text writ­ten in an uncrack­able code; that you could solve cen­turies-old mys­ter­ies by ask­ing them, “what were you think­ing?” You might be dis­ap­point­ed to hear them say, as does Lui­gi Ser­afi­ni, author and illus­tra­tor of the Codex Seraphini­anus, “At the end of the day [it’s] sim­i­lar to the Rorschach inkblot test. You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speak­ing to you, but it’s just your imag­i­na­tion.”

If you were a long­time devo­tee of an intense­ly sym­bol­ic, myth­ic text, you might refuse to believe this. It must mean some­thing, fans of the Codex have insist­ed since the book’s appear­ance in 1981.

It shares many sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Voyn­ich Man­u­script (high­light­ed on our site last week), save its rel­a­tive­ly recent vin­tage and liv­ing author: both the Seraphini­anus and the Voyn­ich seem to be com­pendi­ums of an oth­er­world­ly nat­ur­al sci­ence and art, and both are writ­ten in a whol­ly invent­ed lan­guage.

Ser­afi­ni tells Wired he thinks Voyn­ich is a fake. “The Holy Roman Emper­or Rudulf II loved ancient man­u­scripts; some­body swin­dled him and spread the rumor that it was orig­i­nal. The idea of made-up lan­guages is not new at all.” As for his own made-up lan­guage in the Codex, he avers, “I always said that there is no mean­ing behind the script; it’s just a game.” But it is not a hoax. Though he hasn’t mind­ed the mon­ey from the book’s cult pop­u­lar­i­ty, he cre­at­ed the book, he says, “try­ing to reach out to my fel­low peo­ple, just like blog­gers do.” It is, he says, “the prod­uct of a gen­er­a­tion that chose to con­nect and cre­ate a net­work, rather than kill each oth­er in wars like their fathers did.”

The Codex, writes Abe books, who made the short video review above, is “essen­tial­ly an ency­clo­pe­dia about an alien world that clear­ly reflects our own, each chap­ter appears to deal with key facets of this sur­re­al place, includ­ing flo­ra, fau­na, sci­ence, machines, games and archi­tec­ture.” That’s only a guess giv­en the unin­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guage.

The illus­tra­tions seem to draw from Bosch, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, and the medieval trav­el­ogue as much as from the sur­re­al­ism of con­tem­po­rary Euro­pean artists like Fan­tas­tic Plan­et ani­ma­tor René Laloux. (Justin Tay­lor at The Believ­er points to a num­ber of sim­i­lar 20th cen­tu­ry texts, like Borges’ Book of Imag­i­nary Beings.)

Ser­afi­ni has been delight­ed to see an exten­sive inter­net com­mu­ni­ty coa­lesce around the book, and has had his fun with it. He “now states,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “that a stray white cat that joined him while he cre­at­ed the Codex in Rome in the 1970s was actu­al­ly the real author, tele­path­i­cal­ly guid­ing Ser­afi­ni as he drew and ‘wrote.’” You can now, thanks to a recent, rel­a­tive­ly afford­able edi­tion pub­lished by Riz­zoli, pur­chase your copy of the Codex. Buy now, I’d say. First edi­tions of the book now fetch upwards of $5000, and the its pop­u­lar­i­ty shows no sign of slow­ing. Also check out the more recent Codex Seraphini­anus wall cal­en­dar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Behold the Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script: The 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Man­u­script The Red Book: A Whis­pered Intro­duc­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness