That little joke of the Pope’s about Leonardo’s working habits has a sombre aftertaste. ‘Comincia a pensare alla fine…’ He begins to think of the end.
On 8 October 1515 Leonardo enrolled in the Confraternity of St John of the Florentines, which had its headquarters across the Tiber from the Vatican. He may have done so for a number of reasons: a resurgence of his sense of himself as Florentine; a late touch of religiosity; a desire to ensure a decent burial. Burial was one of the roles of these lay associations or confraternities – they were ‘confraternità della buona morte’, providing mutual assistance in case of sickness, and arranging funerals in case of death. His election is recorded, with the usual faintly bizarre particularities, in the Confraternity’s register:
Novice: Leonardo da Vinci, painter and sculptor, was voted in by the committee by a majority of 3 black beans, and was then voted in by the whole company by a majority of 41 black beans and 2 white beans. He was put forward by Maestro Gaiacqo the doctor, who was his guarantor for the entry fee.
However in a later, undated note in the ledger the governor of the Confraternity proposes to cancel Leonardo’s membership – ‘mettere nel buondì’: ‘to bid him good day’ – because he has not paid the entry fee in the appointed time.56
It may be that Leonardo’s failure to pay his dues was a matter of circumstance rather than a change of heart, for in this month of October 1515 he left Rome as a member of the papal entourage, bound for Florence and Bologna, where a historic meeting was scheduled between the Pope and the new French king, François I (recently victorious over the revived Sforza of Milan at the Battle of Marignano): a meeting of superpowers which should ensure their alliance and – so it was touted by Pope Leo – a new period of ‘peace for Christianity’. The sneering joke, the hindered studies: Leonardo has an edgy relationship with the sharp-witted, gross-featured Pope, so different from the quixotic Giuliano. But he is part of the retinue for this papal visit, and he is glad enough to be out of Rome for a while.
They journeyed first to the old port of Civitavecchia. It was probably on this occasion that Leonardo made some notes on the ancient harbour there: ‘4 braccia long, 2½ braccia wide, 2¼ braccia deep: thus are the stones which stand in the front parts of the breakwater of the port of Civitavecchia.’57 His curiosity is undimmed despite the physical setbacks of this year.
The papal circus arrived in Florence on 30 November, with a triumphal entry for the Florentine pope. Among those who witnessed the junkets was the apothecary Luca Landucci: ‘All the chief citizens went in procession to meet him and among others about fifty youths, only the richest and foremost, dressed in a livery of clothing of purple cloth with fur collars, going on foot, and each with a type of small, silvered lance in his hands – a most beautiful thing.’58 The procession passed through a triumphal four-fronted arch, one of the architectural ephemera constructed for the occasion. Leonardo did a drawing of it, and at the top of the sheet are three words in the hand of Melzi: ‘illustrissimo signor magnifico’ – i.e. Giuliano de’ Medici, with whom Leonardo was reunited here.59
Among the grandiose schemes planned by the papal spin-doctors was a convocation of artists and architects to discuss the urban regeneration of Florence, and particularly the Medici quarter – the surrounds of the old Palazzo Medici on Via Larga, and the church of San Lorenzo with its Medici chapels. Painters, architects, sculptors, woodcarvers and decorators had been informed of the papal intentions. New façades, in the form of full-scale wooden models, had been erected in front of San Lorenzo and the Duomo. Leonardo’s own ideas for a new façade for San Lorenzo are recorded in a drawing at the Venice Accademia. Typically, he is not content with just the façade, but imagines a complete transformation of the surroundings, enlarging and lengthening the adjacent piazza as a scenographic background for the renovated church. Another sketch-plan envisages the demolition of whole blocks of housing in front of the church, and a long piazza extending to Via Larga, where the side-wall of the Palazzo Medici is transformed into the façade facing the square.60 Thus Leonardo sketches out imperious swathes of destruction through the old streets and quarters of his youth – purely practical, architectural considerations, but one has the feeling he is rather enjoying himself as the Medicean modernizer: a ‘Maestro Ruinante’ like his friend Bramante.
During the week that the papal court spent in Florence, Leo X presided over a consistory of cardinals in the Council Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, where the magnificent fragment of Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari could still be seen. It is likely that Leonardo was present. Forty years later the Medici grand-duke Cosimo I commissioned Giorgio Vasari to paint the huge cycle of frescos which now covers the walls – controversially so, because of the ghostly presence of the Anghiari fresco beneath it – and among the scenes included was a representation of this dynastic moment when a Medici pope sat in state in the political heart of Florence. In the background of the scene Vasari included a group of four men, which he explained thus:
I have painted in life-size, so that they may be recognizable there in the background of the composition, distinct from the ranks of the consistory, Duke Giuliano de’ Medici and Duke Lorenzo his nephew, conversing with two of the greatest geniuses of their time: one of them, the old man with that mane of white ringletted hair, is Leonardo da Vinci, the great maestro of painting and sculpture, who is shown talking to Duke Lorenzo standing next to him; and the other is Michelangelo Buonarroti.61
This little grouping ironically reconciles the two artists, precisely here in the Palazzo Vecchio where their rivalry began, and enshrines them as the twin stars of Medici-fostered art. The portrait of Leonardo is stereotypical – it is based on the Melzi profile, which Vasari had seen at Vaprio62 – but it retains a kind of folk-memory of Leonardo’s last recorded visit to Florence.
On about 7 December 1515 the papal procession wound up towards Bologna. Here the Pope and François I conferred, and here Leonardo met for the first time his last and most devoted patron. The new king was twenty-one years old, immensely tall, charismatic, with his confidence riding high after his routing of the Sforza’s Swiss mercenaries at Marignano. He had an enormous nose, and an amorous reputation to match – ‘he is lascivious and enjoys entering the gardens of others to drink different waters’, as Antonio de Beatis puts it. His motto was ‘Nutrisco et extinguo’: ‘I feed and I extinguish.’ That the King already knew of the great Leonardo is certain – through the paintings so highly prized by his father-in-law, Louis XII; and the Last Supper, which he had doubtless seen in reconquered Milan; and that ingenious mechanical lion which had performed for him at the Lyon triumphs of July. And so once more Leonardo is drawn into a French ambit, which for him means a patronage underwritten by a sovereign ruler such as Italy could not boast, and by a cultivated appreciation which he did not always enjoy from his Italian masters. Among the French courtiers in Bologna was one Artus Boissif, and on 14 December Leonardo drew his portrait in red chalk, annotated by Melzi, ‘Portrait of M. Artus, chamberlain to King Francesco I, at the meeting with Pope Leo X.’63
The Pope left Bologna on 17 December, somewhat rattled by François’s high-handed attitude and only partly mollified by the royal grant of dukedom to Giuliano de’ Medici, who became Duke of Nemours. But Giuliano did not enjoy his new title long, for he died of consumption three months later, on 17 March 1516, at the age of about thirty-seven.64 Leonardo lingered on in Rome for a few months after this, his activities obscure, his life once more in flux. Some measurements for the Basilica of San Paolo Fuori are dated August 1516: they are the last brief record of Leonardo in Italy.65