ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud's psychobiographical study of Leonardo da Vinci was published in 1910, and reflects the development of psychoanalysis up to that point. The point of departure for Freud's Leonardo was the artist's recorded memory of a bird alighting on his crib and beating its tail feathers against the inside of his mouth. Taking this account as a psychic artifact, Freud proceeded to reconstruct Leonardo's childhood. Methodologically, the main bone of contention between art history and psychoanalysis over Freud's study is whether the screen memory is a valid historical artifact. Human development, childhood sexual investigation undergoes a powful wave of repression. When Meyer Schapiro considered the problem of the two young mothers in Madonna and Christ with Saint Anne, he addressed both form and iconography. Eissler agreed with Schapiro that the change from vulture to kite discredited the mythological associations to the Egyptian goddess Mut, but disagreed that the dynamic principles were thereby altered.
