The Beholder’s Share

Ginervra dé Benci by Leonardo da Vinci

Recently I traveled to the wonderful Burnt Hill Solstice Festival in Maryland, which also took me to Washington D.C., and on Sunday, I carved out some time for myself. I used that time to visit the National Gallery of Art as there was a particular painting I wanted to see, the only Leonardo Da Vinci painting in the Americas, his portrait of Ginevra dé Benci.

I had recently finished the book Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson and did not want to miss the opportunity to see an actual work by the master as it had been many decades since I saw The Mona Lisa at The Louvre and The Last Supper in Milan. I reread the chapter about the Ginevra de’ Benci portrait and read everything else I could find online to ready myself for the experience. When I found the gallery room, I was transfixed by the work spending the better part of an hour with it. Everything I had done to prepare for the visit elevated my experience of the great painting. I was fully adding my beholder’s share to the art.

When we interact with creativity, it’s not only the creation but us that bring something to the table. This is called the beholder’s share.

The painter Marcel Duchamp said that an artist only does fifty percent of the work in creating art while the viewer, the beholder, provides the rest. This concept was popularized by art