Article: Visual puns and variable perception: Leonardo's Madonna of the Yarnwinder: in the second of two articles on Leonardo da Vinci, Larry J. Feinberg explains how the delight artist took in rebuses--visual puns--was part of a larger interest in the relativity of perception, as an un-noticed pun in his Madonna of the Yarnwinder suggests.(Critical Essay)

Over time, Leonardo's interest in vision and perception increasingly became fused with his literary inquiries and recreations. From the very beginning o his artistic career he found that ideas could be more effectively communicated, or recorded for himself, in the juxtaposition of images and text each reinforcing the other. For members of the Sforza court and other patrons he also jauntily involved himself in the interplay of words and pictures in his fashioning of witty imprese and emblemi with mottos. (1) Occasionally, h even integrated another type of literary device, the visual pun, into his painting as in the celebrated representation of a juniper (Italian: ginepro) ...

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