THREE

The Florentine

In view of the enormous fame Leonardo enjoyed during his lifetime and the voluminous notes he left behind, it is astonishing that reliable biographical information about his life is very scant. In his Notebooks, he rarely commented on external events; he rarely dated his entries or drawings; and there are very few exact references to specific events in his life in official documents or the letters of his time.

Thus it is not surprising that succeeding generations of biographers and commentators relied to a degree on legends and myths about this great genius of the Renaissance. It was not until the late nineteenth century, when the Notebooks were finally transcribed and published, that the full extent of Leonardo’s intellect began to emerge, and only in the twentieth century that biographers and art historians finally were able, with a great deal of detective work, to separate fact from fiction and produce accurate biographies.¹

These detailed accounts make it clear that Leonardo’s life was driven by his tremendous scientific curiosity. He always sought to find stable situations with regular incomes that allowed him to engage in his intellectual pursuits relatively undisturbed, rather than relying on infrequent commissions for works of art. Leonardo was very successful in this endeavor, living quite comfortably for most of his life. He was employed as court artist and engineer by various rulers in Milan, Rome, and in France, and he did not hesitate to change his allegiances when the political fortunes of his patrons shifted—as long as the new ruler again offered him a stable income and enough freedom to continue his scientific investigations.

Leonardo’s desire for stable circumstances, in which he could calmly practice his art and science as well as carry out the many duties expected from him at court, stands in strong contrast to the turbulent times in which he lived. Italy in the fifteenth century was a kaleido-scope of over a dozen independent states, which formed ever-shifting alliances in a constant struggle for economic and political power that was always on the verge of degenerating into war. The principal powers of the time were the duchies of Milan and Savoy and the republic of Venice in the north, the republic of Florence and the territories of the papacy in the center of the peninsula, and the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily in the south. In addition, there were a number of smaller states—Genoa, Mantua, Ferrara, and Siena.

Leonardo had to move many times in the face of impending war, foreign occupations, and other changes of political power. Thus the trajectory of his life led him from Florence to Milan, from Milan to Venice, back to Florence, back again to Milan, then to Rome, and finally to Amboise in France. In addition, he made many short journeys within Italy, including several trips from Florence to Rome and to various places in Tuscany and Romagna, and from Milan to Pavia, Lake Como, and Genoa. About the many sudden changes and forced movements in his life, there is hardly a word in Leonardo’s Notebooks. Considering that travel by horse and mules took considerable time in those days, it is evident that he spent a significant portion of his life on the road, which makes his vast scientific and artistic output even more impressive.

In spite of all these peregrinations, Leonardo’s art and culture remained rooted in Florence. He spoke a distinctive, eloquent Tuscan that was greatly admired at the Sforza court in Milan, and throughout his life he was known as “Leonardo da Vinci, the Florentine.” Before he acquired his Florentine culture, however, Leonardo had several formative childhood experiences in the Tuscan countryside that exerted lasting influences on his character and intellect.

CHILDHOOD IN VINCI

Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, a charming Tuscan village on the slopes of Montalbano, some twenty miles west of Florence. His father, Ser Piero da Vinci, was a young and ambitious notary,² his mother a peasant girl named Caterina. Leonardo was an illegitimate child, which severely limited his career options later on. Soon after his birth, his mother was married off to a local peasant, while his father married a young woman from the Florentine bourgeoisie, probably in order to further his career in Florence, where he gradually built up a clientele. The boy was raised by his elderly grandparents and his uncle Francesco, who managed their farm in Vinci.

Francesco da Vinci, only sixteen years older than Leonardo, was very fond of his nephew and soon became a father figure to him. He was a gentle and contemplative man who loved nature and knew it well. He would have spent many hours with the boy, walking through the vineyards and olive groves that surrounded Vinci (as they do today), observing the birds, lizards, insects, and other small creatures that inhabited the countryside, teaching him the names and qualities of the flowers and medicinal plants that grew in the region.

Doubtless it was Francesco who instilled in the young Leonardo his deep respect for life, his boundless curiosity, and the patience required for intimate observation of nature. Leonardo also began to draw early on in his childhood. In his Notebooks he listed “many flowers portrayed from nature” among the works he had produced in his youth,³ and his earliest extant drawing, done at age twenty-one, is a view of the Tuscan countryside of his childhood, tilled fields framed by the foothills and rocks of Montalbano.⁴

It is striking that in this early drawing as well as in that of a ravine with waterbirds (Fig. 3-1) that he made a few years later, Leonardo already pictured the dramatic rock formations that would form the backgrounds of most of his paintings. It seems that his lifelong fascination with pinnacles of rocks, carved out by water and eventually turning into gravel and fertile soil, originated in his childhood experience of the mountain streams and rocky outcroppings that are typical of parts of the countryside around Vinci.

As a young boy, Leonardo explored these mysterious rock formations, waterfalls, and caves. Over the years, their memory no doubt intensified as he embraced the ancient analogy of macro-and microcosm and began to view the rocks, soil, and water as the bones, flesh, and blood of the living Earth. Thus the rock formations of his childhood became Leonardo’s personal mythical language that would forever appear in his paintings.

In Vinci, Leonardo attended one of the customary scuole d’abaco (“abacus schools”), which taught children reading, writing, and a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic adapted to the needs of merchants.⁵ Students who prepared for university then moved on to a scuola di lettere (“school of letters”), where they were taught the humanities based on the study of the great Latin authors. Such an education included rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.

Being an illegitimate child, Leonardo was barred from attending university, and hence was not sent to a scuola di lettere. Instead he began his apprenticeship in the arts. This had a decisive influence on his further education and intellectual development. Being “unlettered” meant that he knew almost no Latin and was therefore unable to read the scholarly books of his time, except for the few texts that had been translated into the vernacular. It also meant that he was not familiar with the rules of rhetoric observed in philosophical disputations.

In his later life, Leonardo constantly strove to overcome this handicap by educating himself in numerous disciplines, consulting scholars wherever he could and assembling a considerable personal library. On the other hand, he also realized that not being constrained by the rules of classical rhetoric was an advantage because it made it easier for him to learn directly from nature, especially when his observations contradicted conventional ideas. “I am fully aware that, not being a man of letters, certain presumptuous persons will think that they may with reason discredit me,” he wrote in his own defense as he approached forty. “Foolish folk!…They don’t know that my matters are worth more because they are derived from experience, rather than from the words of others, and she is the mistress of those who have written well.”⁶

Figure 3-1: Ravine with waterbirds, c. 1483, Windsor Collection, Landscapes, Plants, and Water Studies, folio 3r

Leonardo showed great artistic talent early in his youth; his synthesis of art and science was also foreshadowed early on. This is vividly illustrated in a story related by Vasari. When Piero da Vinci was asked by a peasant to have a “buckler” (a small wooden shield) decorated with a painting in Florence, he did not give the shield to a Florentine artist but instead asked his son to paint something on it. Leonardo decided to paint a terrifying monster.

“To do what he wanted,” writes Vasari, “Leonardo carried into a room of his own, which no one ever entered except himself, a number of lizards, crickets, serpents, butterflies, locusts, bats, and various strange creatures of this nature. From all these he took and assembled different parts to create a fearsome and horrible monster…. He depicted the creature emerging from a dark cleft of a rock, belching forth venom from its open throat, fire from its eyes, and smoke from its nostrils in so macabre a fashion that the effect was altogether monstrous and horrible. Leonardo took so long over the work that the stench of the dead animals in his room became unbearable, although he himself failed to notice because of his great love of painting.”

When Ser Piero came to see the finished painting, “Leonardo went back into the room, put the buckler on an easel in the light, and shaded the window. Then he asked Piero to come in and see it. When his eyes fell on it, Piero was completely taken by surprise and gave a sudden start, not realizing that he was looking at the buckler and that the form he saw was, in fact, painted on it. As he backed away, Leonardo stopped him and said: ‘This work certainly serves its purpose. It has produced the right reaction, so now you can take it away.’”

The story illustrates several of the qualities that became essential elements of Leonardo’s genius. The painting is an expression of the boy’s fantasia, but it is based on his careful observation of natural forms. The result is a picture that is both fantastic and strikingly real, and this effect is greatly enhanced by the artist’s flair for the theatrical when he presents his work. Moreover, Vasari’s description of the youth working for long hours, undisturbed by the stench of rotting corpses, eerily anticipates the anatomical dissections Leonardo would vividly describe some forty years later.⁷

APPRENTICESHIP IN FLORENCE

At the age of twelve, Leonardo’s life changed dramatically. His grandfather died, and his uncle Francesco got married. As a result, Leonardo left Vinci to live with his father in Florence. A few years later he began his apprenticeship with the renowned artist and craftsman Verrocchio. Ser Piero, in the meantime, had remarried after his first wife died in childbirth. The exact sequence of Leonardo’s movements at this time of his life is uncertain. He may have stayed in the country with his grandmother a couple of years longer, or he may have joined Verrocchio’s workshop at the age of twelve. Most historians believe, however, that he began his apprenticeship at about age fifteen.

Florence in the 1460s had no more than 150,000 inhabitants, but in its economic power and cultural importance it was on a par with Europe’s great capitals.⁸ It had trading posts in the major regions of the known world, and its wealth attracted scores of artists and intellectuals, who made it the focal point of the emerging humanist movement. The Florentines were proud of their city’s importance, its liberty and republican government, the beauty of its monuments, and especially of the fact that Florence had left its chaotic medieval past behind and embodied the spirit of a new era.

Throughout the 1300s, Florence had been the scene of many deadly feuds; succeeding factions had fought openly in the streets, and the wealthy families had built their houses like citadels, often fortified with imposing towers. By the time Leonardo arrived in the city, most of these menacing fortresses had disappeared. Narrow and twisting medieval streets had been widened and straightened; the unhealthiest districts had been cleaned up, and the wealthy Florentine bourgeoisie were busy building magnificent palazzi, using the local sandstone known as pietra serena and the severe symmetries of the new Renaissance architecture to give their city a uniform air of noble elegance.

To the adolescent Leonardo, arriving in Florence from a farm and a small village of a few dozen houses, this lively, enterprising, and beautiful city must have seemed like something out of a fairy tale. Brunelleschi’s magnificent dome, crowning the shining marble of Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence, was newly finished and already being admired as a wonder of the modern world. The river Arno was spanned by four bridges. In the city’s center, Leonardo would have frequently passed by the proud and stately palace of the Medici family. Near the Ponte Vecchio, one of the city’s great bridges, he would have seen the finely proportioned Palazzo Ruccellai, both built just before his birth. On the other side of the Arno, construction had begun on the imposing Palazzo Pitti. Two dozen more palaces would be built during the sixteen years Leonardo spent in Florence. This massive beautification of the city was supported by a huge number of workshops in which artists and artisans produced the required materials, works of art, and splendid decorations. During Leonardo’s apprenticeship, Florence could boast of 54 workshops for working marble, 40 goldsmiths, and 84 workshops for woodworking in addition to 83 for silk and 270 for wool.⁹

Leonardo’s apprenticeship came about as a result of the connections his father had. When Leonardo came to live with Ser Piero, he brought with him the drawings he had made in Vinci. “One day,” Vasari tells us, “Piero took some of Leonardo’s drawings to Andrea del Verrocchio (who was a close friend of his) and earnestly begged him to say whether it would be profitable for the boy to study drawing.¹⁰ Andrea was amazed to see what extraordinary beginnings Leonardo had made and he urged Piero to make him study the subject. So Piero arranged for Leonardo to enter Andrea’s workshop.” Ser Piero had not shown much concern for his son’s early education, but with the choice of Verrocchio he redeemed himself. Of all the workshops in Florence, Verrocchio’s was the most prestigious, the best connected, and for Leonardo the ideal place to nurture his talents.

Andrea del Verrocchio, who was about the same age as Leonardo’s uncle Francesco, was a brilliant teacher. Originally trained as a goldsmith, he was a skilled craftsman, an accomplished painter, and a noted sculptor. He also had considerable engineering skills. He had excellent connections to the Medici family and a solid reputation, and hence received a steady stream of commissions. It was well known in Florence that his workshop could handle every kind of request.

Verrocchio’s workshop, like those of the many other Florentine artists and artisans, was quite different from the painters’ studios of subsequent centuries. In his biography of Leonardo, Serge Bramly gives us a vivid description.

This was a bottega, a shop—just like that of the shoemaker, butcher, or tailor—a set of ground-floor premises opening directly onto the street…an awning was pulled down to act as a door or shutter. The living quarters would be at the back or upstairs. Artists’ materials would be hanging on the walls, alongside sketches, plans, or models of work in progress, while ranged around the room would be a collection of sculptors’ turntables, workbenches, and easels; a grindstone might stand alongside a firing kiln. Several people, including the young apprentices and assistants (who generally lived under the same roof as the master and ate at his table), would be working away at different tasks.¹¹

The bottega of a master like Verrocchio would produce not only paintings and sculptures but also a vast variety of objects—pieces of armor, church bells, candelabras, decorated wooden chests, coats of arms, models for architectural projects, and banners for festivities as well as sets and scenery for theatrical performances. The works leaving the bottega (even those of the highest quality) were rarely signed and usually produced by the master with a team of assistants.

Leonardo spent the next twelve years in this creative environment, during which he diligently followed the rigorous course of a traditional apprenticeship.¹² He would have drawn on tablets and familiarized himself with the artists’ materials, which could not be bought ready-made but had to be prepared in the workshop. Pigments had to be freshly ground and mixed every day; he would have learned to make paintbrushes, prepare glazes, apply gold to backgrounds, and finally, after several years, to paint. In addition, he would have absorbed considerable technical knowledge by watching the master work on a variety of projects. Over the years, as he honed his skills by imitating his elders, he and the other apprentices would have increasingly participated in the bottega’s production until he was finally designated a master craftsman and accepted into the appropriate association, or guild, of craftsmen.

In Verrocchio’s workshop, Leonardo was introduced not only to a wide variety of artistic and technical skills, but also to many exciting new ideas. The bottega was a place where lively discussions of the latest events took place daily. Music was played in the evenings; the master’s friends and fellow artists dropped by to exchange plans, sketches, and technical innovations; traveling writers and philosophers visited when they passed through the city. Many of the leading artists of the time were drawn to Verrocchio’sbottega. Botticelli, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio all spent time there after they were already accomplished masters to learn novel techniques and discuss new ideas.

The Florentine bottega of the fifteenth century fostered a unique synthesis of art, technology, and science, which found its highest expression in Leonardo’s mature work. As historian of science Domenico Laurenza points out, this synthesis lasted for just a hundred years: by the end of the sixteenth century, it had dissolved.¹³ For Leonardo’s own artistic and intellectual development, the years he spent in Verrocchio’s workshop were decisive. His way of working and his entire approach to art and science were shaped significantly by his long immersion in that workshop culture.

One important influence on Leonardo’s future work habits was the use of a libro di bottega (“workbook”), which all apprentices had to keep.¹⁴ It was a journal in which they recorded technical instructions or procedures, personal reflections, solutions to problems, and drawings and diagrams of their ideas. Continuously updated, annotated, and corrected, the libro di bottega provided a daily record of the activities in the workshop. Its composite character of accumulated notes and drawings, without any particular organization, is recognizable in many pages of Leonardo’s Notebooks.

Shortly after Leonardo began his apprenticeship, Verrocchio received a commission for his biggest and most spectacular engineering project yet—the construction of a gilded copper ball, 2.5 meters in diameter, or roughly seven feet, to be placed together with a cross on top of the marble lantern of Brunelleschi’s dome. The famous architect had died before being able to crown his masterpiece, but had left detailed plans for the lantern and copper ball, which Verrocchio was charged to execute. The project took three years, and the young Leonardo was able to observe every stage of it, and likely contributed to it as well.¹⁵

It was a complex project, involving securing the lantern to withstand strong winds; precisely casting, shearing, and welding the copper ball’s many sections; and finally, hoisting the heavy ball and cross to the top of the lantern by using special hoisting devices, designed by Brunelleschi himself. The welding alone was a major feat of science and engineering, because there were no welding torches in the fifteenth century. Small welds could be executed at the forge, but the copper ball was so big that the only way to weld it with a hot flame at precise points was to use concave mirrors to “burn” a weld (a technique that had been known since antiquity). Manufacturing such concave mirrors required considerable knowledge of geometrical optics and very precise grinding equipment. This explains Leonardo’s frequent studies of the geometry of “fire mirrors,” as he called them, in his early drawings.¹⁶ They later led him to formulate sophisticated theories of optics and perspective.

The project was finally completed in 1471. Contemporary chroniclers recorded that on May 27 of that year a large crowd gathered in front of the Duomo to watch the hoisting of the great gilded ball, perfectly smooth and shining, to the top of the marble lantern, where, after a fanfare of trumpets, it was secured to the plinth to the sounds of the “Te Deum.” It was a spectacle that Leonardo never forgot. Forty-five years later, when he was over sixty and working on the design of a large parabolic mirror in Rome, he wrote in his Notebook as a reminder to himself, “Remember how we welded together the ball of Santa Maria del Fiore!”¹⁷

Toward the end of Leonardo’s apprenticeship, Verrocchio was working on a picture of the Baptism of Christ (Fig. 3-2). Since the youth had shown great promise, the master let him paint parts of the background and one of the two angels. These portions of the painting, the first record we have of Leonardo as a painter, already show features of his distinctive style. In the background, we see wide, romantic hills, rocky cliffs, and water flowing from a pool in the far distance all the way to the foreground, where it forms small waves rippling around the legs of Christ. Close inspection of this flow of water in the original painting, now in the Uffizi Gallery, reveals several tiny waterfalls and turbulences of the kind that fascinated Leonardo throughout his life.

Figure 3-2: Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, Baptism of Christ, c. 1476, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Equally striking is the originality of Leonardo’s angel. Its grace and beauty are far superior to those of Verrocchio’s, which the master could not fail to notice. “This was the reason,” reports Vasari, “why Andrea would never touch colors again; he was so ashamed that a boy understood their use better than he did.” Indeed, it seems that from that time on, Verrocchio concentrated on sculpture, and left the execution of paintings to his senior assistants.¹⁸

YOUNG MASTER PAINTER AND INVENTOR

At the age of twenty, Leonardo was recognized as a master painter, and in 1472 he was admitted to the guild of painters known as Compagnia di San Luca. Curiously, the company was included in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, which was based at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. For Leonardo, this was the beginning of a long association with the hospital. For many years he used the guild as a bank for his savings, and it was at Santa Maria Nuova that he found his first opportunities to perform anatomical dissections.

The young Leonardo was already familiar with the dissection of muscles; close to Verrocchio’s workshop was the bottega of the brothers Pollaiolo, whose paintings were known for their vivid rendering of muscular bodies. They had derived their knowledge of muscles from frequent dissections, which Leonardo must have watched closely during his apprenticeship. A few years later, he used his acute knowledge of the musculature of the neck and shoulder to give the figure of the ascetic Saint Jerome a powerful expression of pain and sorrow.

After his acceptance into the painters’ guild, Leonardo remained in Verrocchio’s workshop for another five years, but he was now employed as a collaborator of the master rather than an assistant. This was not unusual; the large number of commissions received by Verrocchio encouraged his apprentices to continue working with him after they had become masters.

There was probably another good reason for Leonardo to stay on. During his apprenticeship, he had become familiar with a wide variety of mechanical and optical devices, and he was now increasingly experimenting with improvements of existing machines as well as the invention of new ones. In the bottega, his curious and creative mind would have found endless challenges as new commissions kept coming in. He also had at his disposal all the necessary instruments, equipment, and raw materials for his mechanical and optical experiments. As he embarked on his dual career of painter and inventor, Verrocchio’s bottega continued to be an ideal working environment.

In addition to his designs of concave mirrors, Leonardo’s early optical inventions included new ways of controlling light, most likely in connection with stage design. “How to make a great light,” he writes next to a sketch of light going through a convex lens; elsewhere he draws “a lamp that makes a beautiful and great light” (a candle in a box equipped with a lens).¹⁹ On a sheet of the Codex Atlanticus from that period there is a sketch of a machine “for generating a big voice,” and on other sheets drawings of various lanterns, one of them with the notation “put above the stars”—all of them evidently meant for theatrical settings.²⁰

Other inventions he created from that time involved fire and hot air.²¹ In addition to the self-regulating spit mentioned earlier, Leonardo invented a method of creating a vacuum to raise water by means of a fire burning in a closed bucket, based on the observation that a burning flame consumes air. During these early years he also developed his first versions of a diving apparatus. During a visit to Vinci he designed an olive press with more efficient leverage than the presses used at the time. While he was engaged in these multiple projects of invention, design, and engineering, Leonardo also painted his Annunciation, two Madonnas, and the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci.

In 1477, Leonardo left Verrocchio’s workshop to establish himself as an independent artist. But he did not seem to devote much energy to this enterprise. A few months later, perhaps through the influence of his father, he received a prestigious commission for an altarpiece in the chapel of San Bernardo in the Palazzo Vecchio.²² He was paid a sizable advance but never delivered a finished painting. Around this time, he wrote in his Notebook, “Have begun two Virgin Marys” without giving any further details.²³

In fact, very little is known about Leonardo’s activities between the years 1477 and 1481. Some historians assume that, after many years of rigid discipline in the bottega, Leonardo—now a dashing, athletic young man of twenty-five—simply joined the extravagant life of the well-to-do Florentine youth. “Presumably,” writes art historian and critic Kenneth Clark, “Leonardo, like other young men with great gifts, spent a large part of his youth…dressing up, taming horses, learning the lute [and] enjoying the hors d’oeuvres of life.”²⁴

If true, it was not a time without frustrations, however. For unknown reasons, the Medici never extended to Leonardo their vast patronage of the arts. Although Verrocchio was on excellent terms with the family, enjoyed their support, and would not have failed to recommend Leonardo to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lorenzo did not offer Leonardo a single full-scale commission.²⁵

A family of bankers and merchants, the Medici were the undisputed rulers of Florence for two centuries, despite the fact that they never held public office. With their enormous wealth and their passionate patronage of the arts, literature, and learning, they influenced every facet of Tuscan public life and culture. They also counted among their family members several cardinals, three popes, and two queens of France. In the words of Serge Bramly, “The Medici behaved less and less like businessmen and more and more like princes, becoming the avowed masters of a city that remained a republic in name only.”²⁶

Lorenzo de’ Medici, also known as il Magnifico, at the young age of twenty followed in the footsteps of his father as the ruler of Florence. Lorenzo was just three years older than Leonardo, and the two had much in common, including a love for horses, music, and learning. However, there was also much in their characters and tastes that kept them apart.²⁷ Lorenzo was not a handsome man and dressed with deliberate simplicity. Leonardo, on the other hand, was strikingly beautiful and flamboyant in his gestures and behavior. Lorenzo had received a classical education and had a genuine love for formal learning. He surrounded himself with writers. Leonardo, by contrast, was self-taught; he knew no Latin or Greek and despised what he must have perceived as literary pretension at the Medici “court.” These contrasts were apparently so strong that they stood in the way of any mutual sympathy forming between them. Nevertheless, Lorenzo’s low esteem of Leonardo as an artist is surprising.

Prudent and cunning, Lorenzo de’ Medici could be brutal as well as magnanimous. When he came to power, he consolidated his control of the government, restructured the family banks and trading houses, made new alliances, and dissolved old ones. He also inaugurated lavish festivals and spectacles for the city to assure his popularity.

However, Lorenzo’s political maneuvers inevitably generated opposition.²⁸ He had allied himself with the city-state of Venice against Rome and Naples, whereupon Pope Sixtus IV transferred the management of Vatican finances from the Medici to the rival Pazzi family. Lorenzo quickly retaliated by accusing one of the Pazzi of treason, and arresting him. The Pazzi family, in turn, planned revenge with the support of the pope, and in April of 1478, Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano were attacked while attending mass in the cathedral. Giuliano was killed; Lorenzo was seriously wounded but managed to escape. But the Pazzi conspiracy did not succeed in triggering a revolt against the Medici, as the pope had intended. Because of Lorenzo’s popularity, the citizens of Florence soon hunted down the criminals, including a member of the Pazzi family, an archbishop, and several priests. All were hanged within hours of the attempted uprising.

The turbulent time of the Pazzi conspiracy brought a sudden end to the city’s extravagant festivals, and perhaps this helped Leonardo to concentrate again on his work. The year 1478 is the date of his earliest drawings of machines in the Codex Atlanticus, most of them renderings of devices invented by Brunelleschi for the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.²⁹ The Pazzi conspiracy may also have turned Leonardo’s mind to the science and engineering of war. In the following years he recorded numerous military inventions, including multibarreled guns, assault bridges for attacking ramparts, and mechanisms for overturning ladders used for scaling fortified walls. Many of these creations were derived from the work of previous inventors, although they were invariably modified, and significantly improved.³⁰

When the Vatican’s support of the Pazzi conspiracy became apparent, Florence declared war on the pope. But Lorenzo resolved the crisis with a daring move. He traveled to Naples and negotiated a peace agreement with King Ferrante, thus depriving the pope of his strongest ally. Shortly thereafter, Florence and Rome were reconciled again, and in 1481—three years after conspiring to kill him—Pope Sixtus IV asked Lorenzo to lend him his best painters to decorate the Sistine Chapel, which he had just built and which had been named after him. It was a tremendous opportunity for Florentine painters, and Leonardo must have been very keen to participate. Once again, however, he was conspicuously ignored by Lorenzo, who sent several of Leonardo’s former companions to Rome, including Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Perugino.

The humiliation may have been the lowest point in Leonardo’s career. Over the years, he had been repeatedly snubbed by the Medici and passed over in favor of lesser artists. Now he was deprived of the chance to seek glory in Rome, which he certainly deserved. But Leonardo put aside his feelings of disappointment and despair, and marshaled his powers of concentration to paint his first masterpiece.

In March 1481 the monks of the Augustinian monastery of San Donato (whose legal affairs were handled by Ser Piero) commissioned Leonardo to create a large altarpiece representing the Adoration of the Magi. The artist made numerous preparatory drawings and worked on the project intensely for a year.³¹ His first approach was a masterful exercise in linear perspective, showing a courtyard with two flights of stairs and elaborate arcades. “This carefully measured courtyard,” writes Kenneth Clark, “has been invaded by an extraordinary retinue of ghosts; wild horses rear and toss their heads, agitated figures dart up the staircase and in and out of the arcades; and a camel, appearing for the first and last time in Leonardo’s work, adds its exotic bulk to the dreamlike confusion of forms.”³²

In the final painting, Leonardo abandoned the use of perspective in favor of a dynamic configuration created by the highly emotional gestures of an agitated throng of figures surrounding the Virgin and Child. In the background of the painting, a group of clashing horsemen represents the moral blindness of violence, in contrast to the Epiphany’s glorious message of peace on earth, foreshadowing Leonardo’s forceful condemnation of war in The Battle of Anghiari two decades later.³³ Indeed, the entire painting is full of visual themes that would recur in the artist’s later work.³⁴ Art historian Jane Roberts describes Leonardo’s Adoration as “the first mature and independent statement of his genius.”³⁵ At the same time, it is a radical departure from traditional representations of the subject as a calm ceremonial gathering. As Daniel Arasse explains, “To paint the moment when the presence of the Son of God was publicly recognized as such, [Leonardo] depicted the tumult of a universal dazzlement—reflecting in this the meaning that Saint Augustine and the monks of his order who had commissioned the painting gave to the Epiphany.”³⁶

Early in the following year, while Leonardo was still working on his Adoration of the Magi, Lorenzo de’ Medici decided to make a diplomatic gesture to Ludovico Sforza, his most powerful ally, in the form of a gift. As the Anonimo Gaddiano reports, “It is said that when Leonardo was thirty years old, the Magnifico sent him to present a lyre to the Duke of Milan, with a certain Atalante Migliorotti, for he played upon this instrument exceptionally well.”³⁷ Sending Leonardo to the Sforza court in Milan as a musician rather than as a painter may have seemed like another indignity. However, Leonardo did not hesitate. He must have felt that it was time for a fresh start; without Lorenzo’s support, his avenues to further commissions were limited in Florence. So he put down his brushes, packed his belongings, and, with his masterpiece unfinished, left the city that had nurtured his art.

MILAN

Milan in the 1480s was a vibrant trading center of tremendous wealth that exported armaments, wool, and silk. It was comparable to Florence in size, but very different in its architecture and culture. Its Latin name, Mediolanum, was probably derived from its location in the middle of the Plain of Lombardy (in medio plano). It was definitely a northern city. Most of its palaces and churches were built in the Romanesque or Gothic style. Unlike Florence, Milan had no elegant town plan. The city’s medieval houses huddled together, creating a labyrinth of narrow, bustling streets.

The duchy of Milan had been ruled by the Sforza family since 1450. Like the Medici, the Sforzas were cunning and ruthless, but their family tended to be full of warriors rather than bankers. Ludovico Sforza, only a few months older than Leonardo, was one of the wealthiest and most powerful Renaissance princes.³⁸ Nicknamed il Moro (“the Moor”) because of his dark hair and skin, he was also a subtle diplomat whose alliance with the king of France was a potent ingredient in the volatile mixture of Italian politics. With his wife, Beatrice d’Este, Ludovico held an elegant court and spent immense sums of money to further the arts and sciences.

When Leonardo arrived in Milan, the city had no renowned painters or sculptors, although the Sforza court was filled with doctors, mathematicians, and engineers. Its culture was linked to that of the great universities of northern Italy, whose emphasis was on the study of the physical world rather than on moral philosophy, as had been the case in Florence.³⁹ While the Medici spent their time composing verses in Tuscan and Latin,⁴⁰ Ludovico organized scientific debates among learned professors. In this stimulating intellectual environment, Leonardo soon transcended his Florentine workshop culture and turned toward a more analytic and theoretical approach to the understanding of nature.

Because he arrived at the Sforza court as a musician, he and Atalante (who was his student on the lira, according to the Anonimo Gaddiano) probably played frequently to entertain the court. But Leonardo had no intention of pursuing a musical career. Realizing that the power of the Sforzas came from their military might, and that Milan’s dominant position in trade required a well-functioning city infrastructure, he wrote a carefully composed letter to the Moor, in which he offered his services as a military and civil engineer, and also mentioned his skills as an architect, sculptor, and painter. Leonardo began his letter with a telling reference to his “secrets,” revealing a taste for secrecy that became a characteristic trait of his personality as he became older.⁴¹ “Most illustrious Lord,” he wrote, “having now sufficiently seen and considered the works of all those who claim to be masters and artificers of instruments of war…I shall endeavor, without prejudice to anyone else, to reveal my secrets to your Excellency, and then offer to execute, at your pleasure and at the appropriate time, all the items briefly noted below.”

He then proceeded to list under nine headings the different instruments of war he had designed and was prepared to build: “I have models for strong but very light bridges, extremely easy to carry…an endless variety of battering rams and scaling ladders…methods of destroying any citadel or fortress that is not built of rock…mortars that are very practical and easy to transport, with which I can fling showers of small stones, and their smoke will cause great terror to the enemy…secret winding underground passages, dug without noise…covered wagons, safe and unassailable, which will penetrate enemy ranks with their artillery…bombards, mortars, and light artillery of beautiful and practical forms…engines to hurl large rocks, fire-throwing catapults, and other unusual instruments of marvelous efficiency.”

“In short,” he concluded his list, “whatever the situation, I can invent an infinite variety of machines for both attack and defense.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “In peacetime, I think I can give perfect satisfaction and be the equal of any man in architecture, in the design of public and private buildings, and in conducting water from one place to another. Furthermore, I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay; and likewise in painting I can do any kind of work as well as any man….” And finally, he ended with an enticing prospect: “Moreover, the bronze horse could be made that will be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the Prince your father of blessed memory, and the illustrious house of Sforza.”⁴²

This astonishing letter, in which Leonardo refers to himself as an artist in only six out of thirty-four lines, shows how quickly he was able to assimilate the spirit of this northern city, presenting his many talents in the order in which he thought they would be most valued by Ludovico. The letter may sound boastful, but all of Leonardo’s offers were serious and well thought out. He had undoubtedly studied the work of the leading military engineers of his time, as he said in the letter; there are about twenty-five sheets of drawings of military machines, dating from his time in Florence, in the Codex Atlanticus; and there are over forty in a slightly later style.⁴³ By juxtaposing this letter, item by item, with existing drawings, Leonardo scholar Kenneth Keele has demonstrated the validity of every claim Leonardo made.⁴⁴ Indeed, in his later life, Leonardo was employed in all the capacities he laid out in the letter to il Moro.

He did not receive an immediate response to his letter from the court, let alone an offer of employment. So Leonardo turned once more to painting—the profession in which he was an accomplished and acknowledged master. He began a collaboration with the brothers Ambrogio and Evangelista Predis, the former a successful portrait painter and the latter a woodcarver.⁴⁵ The Predis brothers were clearly the lesser artists, but they were well connected in Milan and gladly welcomed Leonardo to their bottega. Indeed, Ambrogio was soon able to negotiate a lucrative contract for the three of them.

In April 1483, the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception commissioned Leonardo and the Predis brothers to paint and decorate a large altarpiece in the church of San Francesco Grande with the central panel “to be painted in oil by Master Leonardo, the Florentine.” The contract specified not only the size and composition of the painting (the Virgin Mary flanked by two prophets, with God the Father appearing overhead, surrounded by angels), but also the traditional colors of gold, blue, and green, the angels’ golden halos, and so on.

Leonardo worked on the painting for about three years. The result was his second masterpiece, the Virgin of the Rocks, now in the Louvre (see Fig. 2-4 on Chapter 2). The finished work bore little resemblance to what the confraternity had ordered.⁴⁶ In fact, the priors were so upset that they brought a lawsuit before the duke, which dragged on for over twenty years.⁴⁷ Leonardo eventually painted a second version, which now hangs in the National Gallery in London. This could not have pleased the priors much better, as he made only minor changes in the painting’s composition.

Art historians believe that Leonardo may have let Ambrogio Predis paint large parts of the London version. This seems to be confirmed by recent analyses of the rocks and plants in the painting’s background. Scientists have noted that both the geological and botanical details in the London version are significantly inferior to those in the painting in the Louvre. It is highly unlikely that they were painted by Leonardo.⁴⁸

The confraternity may have had good reasons to be dissatisfied with the Virgin of the Rocks, but in the botteghe and intellectual circles of Milan, Leonardo’s masterpiece caused a sensation. The artist’s low tones of olive green and gray were in stark contrast to the bright colors of the quattrocento, and the Milanese could not have failed to notice the subtle gradations of light and shade, nor the powerful effect of the surrounding grotto. As Kenneth Clark describes it, “Like deep notes in the accompaniment of a serious theme, the rocks in the background sustain the composition and give it the resonance of a cathedral.”⁴⁹

SYSTEMATIC STUDIES

In 1484, while Leonardo was working on Virgin of the Rocks, Milan was hit by the plague. The epidemic raged on for a full two years and would kill close to one-third of the population. Leonardo, recognizing the critical role of poor sanitation in the spread of the disease, responded with a proposal for a new city design that was far ahead of its time, as I discussed earlier.⁵⁰ But it was ignored by the Sforzas. This renewed failure to get the court’s attention with his ideas brought Leonardo face-to-face with the huge handicap of his upbringing: his lack of a formal education. He was attempting to be accepted as an intellectual in a culture that was in close contact with the leading universities, a culture dominated by the written word, in which Latin was used almost exclusively. Being an “unlettered man,” Leonardo was not only ignorant of Latin but, even in his native Tuscan, did not have the abstract vocabulary necessary for precise and elegant formulations of his theories.

Leonardo tackled this seemingly insurmountable problem in his methodical, sustained, and uncompromising way. “In his mid-thirties and practically without any knowledge of Latin,” writes historian of science Domenico Laurenza, “he embarks on an intense and in some ways obsessive program of self-education. The years between 1483 and 1489 are dedicated largely to this obstinate attempt of cultural emancipation.”⁵¹

Leonardo began his extensive program of self-education with a systematic attempt to enlarge his vocabulary. This was the time when Italian as a literary language was just beginning to emerge from Florentine Tuscan. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio had all written in Tuscan, but the orthography had not yet been codified; grammars and dictionaries had not been published. The new vernacular was beginning to replace Latin as a written language, especially in texts about art and technology, and in the process it became enriched by a vast assimilation of Latin words. Leonardo was familiar with compilations of these vocaboli latini (new Italian words derived from Latin), and he laboriously copied them into his Notebooks.⁵² In his earliest manuscript, the Codex Trivulzianus, page after page is filled with lists of such words. In fact, Leonardo referred to this Notebook as “my book of words.”⁵³

As he turned to the written word, Leonardo also began to build up a personal library. In Florence he had read some literature and poetry, but had not studied scientific texts. He had acquired a rudimentary scientific education by studying the drawings of architects and engineers, and by having discussions with various experts in the bottega.⁵⁴ When he left Florence, he made a list of the things he wanted to take with him to Milan.⁵⁵ This list did not contain a single book.

A few months after his arrival in Milan, Leonardo listed five books in his possession; by 1490 he had added 35 new titles, and from then on the number of books in his library increased steadily, reaching 116 at its peak in 1505. In addition to the volumes he owned, Leonardo regularly borrowed books, so that his full personal library would have included about 200 books—a substantial library even for a Renaissance scholar.⁵⁶

The subject matter of these books was diverse.⁵⁷ Over half of them dealt with scientific and philosophical matters. They included books on mathematics, astronomy, anatomy and medicine, natural history, geography, and geology as well as architecture and military science. Another 30 or 40 were literary books. A dozen or so contained religious stories, which Leonardo would have consulted when he painted religious subjects.

These books provide ample evidence that Leonardo, during the last two decades of the fifteenth century, not only honed his language skills but was well versed in the major fields of knowledge of his time. As with everything he tackled, he would investigate several areas simultaneously while being involved in various artistic projects. He always looked for patterns that would interconnect observations from different disciplines; his mind seemed to work best when it was occupied with multiple projects.

The beginning of Leonardo’s systematic studies in 1484, not surprisingly, coincides with the first entries in his Notebooks. Once he embarked on his interdisciplinary program of research, he regularly recorded all new ideas and observations. Now in his mid-thirties, it was the time when he deepened his theoretical investigations beyond his needs as an artist and inventor. For example, when he studied the nature of light and shadow, he did so at first to develop his theory of painting. But eventually he went much farther. As Kenneth Clark observed,

He drew [a] long series of diagrams showing the effect of light falling on spheres and cylinders, crossing, reflecting, intersecting with endless variety…. The calculations are so complex and abstruse that we feel in them, almost for the first time, Leonardo’s tendency to pursue research for its own sake, rather than as an aid to his art.⁵⁸

While he carried out his investigations of light falling on solid objects, Leonardo also became interested in the physiology of vision, and then went on to study the other senses. His earliest anatomical drawings, based on dissections dating from the late 1480s, are beautiful images of human skulls, all of which reveal the optic nerve and the path of vision.⁵⁹ These are no longer drawings merely for the benefit of the painter; they are also, and perhaps more important, the first scientific diagrams of Leonardo’s anatomical research.

In his drawings of machines of that period, too, one can see a definite movement toward exploring deeper theoretical problems. (As Domenico Laurenza has pointed out, Leonardo seems to have revised his early technical drawings around 1490 by adding various theoretical comments.)⁶⁰ What one sees in all these examples—from optics to anatomy and engineering—is the emergence of Leonardo the scientist.

GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE AT COURT

After the devastation of the plague, Milan’s citizens emerged with a new optimism and sense of excitement encouraged by the lavish spending of the aristocracy. In large parts of the city, houses were remodeled, new squares and avenues were built, and in 1487 a competition was held to design a tiburio (a central tower above the cross of the transepts) for the huge Gothic cathedral, which attracted architects from all over Italy. Caught up in the general enthusiasm, Leonardo became deeply interested in architecture during those years and participated in the competition for the tiburio, together with Donato Bramante, Francesco di Giorgio, and other renowned architects.

The project was quite difficult, since the high Gothic tower would have to be balanced on four slim pillars, and the existing parts of the cathedral already had structural problems. Leonardo examined all aspects of the cathedral and sketched a variety of solutions before settling on a design and producing a wooden model.⁶¹ When he submitted his design to the authorities, he sent along an introductory letter, which began with his comparison of the cathedral to a sick organism; himself, the architect, he compared to a skilled doctor.⁶²

The judges of the competition deliberated for a long time before finally awarding the contract to two Lombard architects in 1490, with the instruction that they produce a model that would be a harmonious blend of the best parts of all the submitted designs. For Leonardo, this turned out to be a very felicitous outcome. It allowed him to discuss his ideas about the tiburio, as well as his views on architecture in general, with the other competitors, especially with Bramante and Francesco di Giorgio, the two most famous architects in the group. Both of them would eventually become close friends of Leonardo, would exchange many ideas with him, and would greatly further his career during those years when he began to develop his theories.

His friendship with Bramante, in particular, was very advantageous for Leonardo. Born near Urbino, Bramante had come to Milan a few years earlier and had already gained the respect of the Sforzas when they met. The two artists had much in common.⁶³ Both were accomplished painters, were interested in mathematics and engineering, liked to improvise on the lute, and admired the famous architect and intellectual Alberti. Both also came from central Italy and were seeking to establish themselves in this northern city. Bramante, who later would design Saint Peter’s in Rome, was said to be completely free of professional jealousy and likely opened many doors at court for his new friend. Historians of art also believe that Leonardo, with his thorough grasp of the principles of architectural design, had a significant influence on Bramante’s work.⁶⁴

In 1488, six years after he first arrived in Milan, Leonardo finally had his breakthrough at the Sforza court. In the wake of the reputation he had gained with the Virgin of the Rocks, and perhaps aided by a recommendation from Bramante, he was asked by Ludovico to paint a portrait of the Moor’s mistress, the young and lovely Cecilia Gallerani. Leonardo painted her holding an ermine, a symbol of purity and moderation which, because of its Greek name, gale, was also a veiled allusion to her name, Gallerani. Lady with an Ermine, as it is called today, was a highly original portrait in which Leonardo invented a new pose, with the model looking over her shoulder with an air of surprise and subdued delight, caused, perhaps, by the unexpected arrival of her lover.⁶⁵ Her gesture is graceful and elegant, and is echoed in the animal’s twisting movement.

Ludovico was very pleased with the portrait. Soon after its completion, he asked Leonardo to create a “masque” for a magnificent gala, la festa del paradiso, in celebration of the wedding of the duke’s nephew, Gian Galeazzo, to Isabella of Aragon. At the same time, the Moor fulfilled one of Leonardo’s greatest dreams by awarding him the commission for il cavallo—the giant equestrian statue in honor of Ludovico’s father.⁶⁶

Leonardo’s “Masque of the Planets” was the climax of the theatrical performance that took place at the grandiose feast in January 1490. On a giant revolving stage, the signs of the zodiac, illuminated by torches, could be seen behind colored glass, and the seven planets, represented by costumed actors, circled through the heavens accompanied by “marvelous melodies and soft harmonious songs.”⁶⁷ The Masque was a huge success and made Leonardo famous throughout Italy, even more so than his paintings had done. From that point on he was in great demand at the Sforza court as a brilliant magician of the stage, and was referred to in official documents as painter and “ducal engineer.” At the age of thirty-eight, Leonardo had achieved, at last, the position he had desired when he wrote his memorable letter to the Moor years before.