Talk:Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood

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What?[edit]

Editor, what on earth are you talking about ?

Your introduction tells us that its an essay by Freud. OK.

But the leading sentence of your subject matter reads According to Freud, the Virgin's garment reveals a vulture when viewed sideways.

What on earth are you talking about? Are you talking about the Blessed Virgin Mary herself? Or what?

If you are referring to a painting by Leonardo, then tell us that!
Secondly, Leonardo painted the Virgin Mary at least seven times. Which picture was Freud referring to?

Amandajm (talk) 08:04, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Freud does not say that the drapery reveals a vulture. This misinformation is also represented on the page The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (Leonardo da Vinci), which is the referred- to painting. (There's also a sketch of the so-called vulture there.) Freud analyzes Leonardo's childhood memory of a "vulture" inserting its tail into his mouth while he lay in his crib as a fantasy of fellatio, as well a memory of being suckled, and then connects the two concepts with the myth of the Egyptian vulture headed mother goddess Mut, who according to Freud was portrayed with a phallus. Freud then brings in the information that vultures were believed in the ancient world to have consisted only of females, which conceived via the wind. This "divine conception" is related to the absence of Leonardo's own father, to which Freud attributes Leonardo's homosexuality. As I mentioned at first, it was not Freud but an English scholar who identified a supposed vulture in the painting. Freud includes this information and the diagram in a footnote that was added in a later addition, and himself expresses skepticism about the presence of a picture puzzle in the painting. Furthermore the title of the authorized translation is Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood. I hope to sometime get around the fixing up this page- it's important as the first application of psychoanalysis to an art-historical subject, and (I believe) to the biography of any historical figure. Lithoderm 04:12, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]