Professor Butter Beard and da Vinci’s Thumbprint
“The artists we love, they put their fingerprint on your imagination, and on your heart and your soul.” – Bruce Springsteen
I could never be a good criminal. I leave my fingerprints on everything. Windows, eyeglasses, car doors, tabletops, money and even on Nellie. While baking, my flour prints will be on every counter, apron, shelf, cupboard door and again, on Nellie. Hopefully Bruce is right. Maybe I am providing a little signature on everything I create with butter, sugar and passion.
Katherine Keener writes, “An artwork becomes an extension of an artist and experiencing a work in person can feel as though you’re in their company even if the artist has been dead for centuries. Examining the brushstrokes laid out by an artist or seeing the materials brought together to create a work allows for a connection between viewer, artist, and subject matter. Sometimes, it can be overwhelming simply knowing that what you stand before was handled by the artist as they worked.”
What a thrill it is when you are actually able to see a physical trace of the artist outside of their pen strokes or signature. In 2019, a very clear thumbprint was found on one of Leonardo da Vinci’s medical drawings – one of around 550 drawings by the artist in Queen Elizabeth’s collection. Alan Donnithorne, a former paper conservator for the Royal Collection, found the reddish-brown fingerprint was made by in the same ink as the drawing leading him to believe that it is extremely likely that while working, the Old Master picked up the sheet with inky fingers. The print is from da Vinci’s left thumb (he was famously left-handed), and another smudge, presumably from his left index finger, can be found on the reverse of the drawing.
The drawing depicts a detailed anatomical view of a female and is titled “The cardiovascular system and principal organs of a woman.” The fingerprint is found near the end of the truncated arm to the far left of the drawing, just at the edge of the paper. While this isn’t the first fingerprint thought to have come from the artist to be found, Donnithorne has described the print as “the most convincing candidate for an authentic Leonardo fingerprint.”
“It has been observed before, but it is the first time we’ve really stood back from it and said this is actually quite something,” said Martin Clayton, the head of prints and drawings at the Royal Collection Trust. “There are smudges and partial prints on Leonardo’s other drawings, but this is far and away the crispest, clearest, most definite Leonardo thumbprint or fingerprint.”
Clayton believes the found thumbprint demonstrates how “down to earth” Leonardo was showing “how much he was a practicing artist rolling up his sleeves and getting on with the task of drawing. So many people think of Leonardo as this ivory-towered genius, not of this world almost.”
“This is as close as you are ever going to get to Leonardo, when you can see his print as clearly as this,” said Clayton. “It is so clear it almost looks deliberate. And that makes me feel a little tingly.”
I danced with this idea of an artist’s thumbprint and baked cookies designed around my own personal indentation. Aromatic toasted cornmeal tangoes with a burst of ginger and plenty of butter creating a shortbread dough that is then twice baked. Once to set the cookie’s form and then a second time to bake in a delicious dollop of homemade strawberry jam as the jewel-like centerpiece. I loved watching my farmer friend’s faces as they took a bite and burst into twinkling contagious smiles. I think they felt “a little tingly!”
Toasted Cornmeal and Ginger Thumbprint Cookies with Strawberry Jam
Three dozen cookies
1 cup coarse cornmeal, toasted and cooled
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground ginger
1 ½ tsp fine sea salt
2 large egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla paste
Strawberry jam – preferably homemade
½ cup coarse sugar (I use turbinado, but sanding sugar or even granulated sugar will work)
1) Toast the cornmeal in a non-stick skillet until darkened in color and aromatic. Set aside to cool completely
2) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the coarse sugar in a separate bowl.
3) In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, ginger, salt and cooled cornmeal.
4) In a standing mixer, cream together the unsalted butter and confectioner’s sugar with the paddle until light and fluffy. Add the two egg yolks, one at a time, and then the vanilla paste.
5) Add the dry mix and mix on low speed until a soft dough forms.
6) Form balls of the dough, about 1 ½ Tbsp each, and roll each in the coarse sugar. Place 18 of the cookie balls on each tray and then using your thumb, press in the center of each cookie dough ball to create an indentation.
7) Bake one tray at a time on the middle rack of your oven. Bake for eight minutes and remove the tray. Using a spoon, re-press down the indentation and fill each indentation with about one tsp of strawberry jam. Return the tray to the oven and bake for another ten minutes until the cookies are golden brown and the jam is bubbling.
8) Cool the cookies on the tray for ten minutes before removing them to cool completely on a wire rack.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Italian: 1452–1519), “Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk” (presumed self-portrait), c. 1512, Sanguine on paper, Royal Library of Turin.
