How Many Paintings Does It Take to Make You an Artist?

When you think about your career and achieving success and recognition as an artist, how many paintings do you visualise yourself having done? A hundred, several hundred, close to a thousand? Would as many paintings as Leonardo da Vinci do it?

Well, I was astounded to read in "Da Vinci for Dummies", which is one of the books on my bedside table at the moment, that Leonardo (and if you know anything about the man it’s that you should call him this, not Da Vinci) left not even 30 paintings. And some of these aren’t even finished! Less than 30 paintings, that’s doable isn’t it? If you painted just one painting a month, that’s still less than three years’ work.

To get a look at what standard you’re trying to match, start at The Louvre in Paris, which has the most Leonardos. The Louvre’s collection includes what’s probably the world’s most known and reproduced painting, the Mona Lisa (which this year got a room in the museum all to itself).

Next is the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The National Gallery of Art in Washington has one painting that’s definitely a Leonardo (Ginevra de’ Benci), plus another (Madonna and Child with a Pomegranate) that is either his or a follower’s (art historians haven’t been able to decide definitely). The National Gallery in London has just one (the second version of Virgin of the Rocks), plus a famous cartoon (Burlington Cartoon.

But of course it’s not only Leonardo’s paintings that his fame rests on. There are also all his sketchbooks, notebooks, scientific experiments, and ideas well ahead of his time. So maybe it will take more than 30 finished paintings after all….