Leonardo Da Vinci - Chapter I

Baptism of Christ, by Verrochio, detail. The angel on the left and the landscape are said to have been the work of Verrochio's pupil Leonardo. According to Vasari the master was so chagrined that a child should know more than he that he abandoned painting.

Chapter I

The man who painted the world-famous Mona Lisa was born near the village of Vinci, in the countryside of Florence, on April 15, 1452. He was baptized Leonardo and was to become one of the most brilliant figures in a fascinating pe­riod of European history, the Italian Renaissance. He is mostly known as an artist, but he was much more, and his impact on the course of Western history has been immeasurable. Leonardo's unparalleled diversity of talents justifies calling him a "genius", a true embodiment of the Renaissance ideal of a universal man. Not only did he excel as a painter and sculptor, but he displayed a whole range of artistic and scientific capacities in such diverse fields as mathematics, mechanics, aeronautics, anatomy, geog­raphy, botany, astronomy, military engineering and even town planning and architecture.

Leonardo began his career as a painter in his home­town, Florence, which was one of the two cultural centres of Renaissance Italy, the other being Venice. He became an appren­tice to the painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, who is re­ported to have stopped painting when he saw that his young stu­dent Leonardo had surpassed him.¹ Leonardo enjoyed inspiring companionship: among his fellow-students were Ghirlandaio and Perugino. And in the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo di Medici, "Il Magnifico", Leonardo found an art-loving patron who gener­ously promoted all the arts, literature and philosophy.² But after

At any rate, when Leonardo heard that Ludovico wanted a military engineer, an architect, a sculptor, and a painter, he de­cided to offer himself as all these in one. And so he wrote his famous letter:

Most Illustrious Lord, having now sufficiently seen and consid­ered the proofs of all these who count themselves masters and inventors of instruments of war, and finding that their invention and use of the said instruments does not differ in any respect from those in common practice, I am emboldened without prej­udice to anyone else to put myself in communication with your Excellency, in order to acquaint you with my secrets, thereafter offering myself at your pleasure effectually to demonstrate at any convenient time all those matters which are in part briefly recorded below.

I have plans for bridges, very light and strong, suitable for car­rying very easily...

When a place is besieged I know how to cut off water from the

1. Mechanism for drawing Crossbows- 2. Design for a Siege Machine with Covered Bridge- 3. Machine to prevent Fortress Walls being Scaled- 4. Mechanism for repulsing Scaling Ladders.

trenches, and how to construct an infinite number of... scaling ladders and other instruments ...

I have plans for making cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, with which to hurl small stones in the manner almost of hail ...

And if it should happen that the engagement is at sea, I have plans for constructing many engines most suitable for attack or defense, and ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke.

Also I have ways of arriving at a certain fixed spot by caverns and secret winding passages, made without any noise even though it may be necessary to pass underneath trenches or a river.

Also I can make covered cars, safe and unassailable, which will enter the serried ranks of the enemy with artillery, and there is no company of men at arms so great as not to be broken by it. And behind these the infantry will be able to follow quite un­harmed and without any opposition.

Also, if need shall arise, I can make cannon, mortars, and light ordance, of very beautiful useful shapes, quite different from those in common use.

Where it is not possible to employ cannon, I can supply cata­pults, mangonels, traps, and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. In short, as the variety of circumstances shall necessitate, I can supply an infinite number of different engines of attack and defense.

In time of peace I believe that I can give you as complete sat­isfaction as anyone else in architecture, in the construction of buildings both public and private, and in conducting water from one place to another.

Also I can execute sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also painting, in which my work will stand comparison with that of anyone else whoever he may be.

Moreover, I would undertake the work of the bronze which shall endue with immortal glory and eternal honour the auspi­cious memory of the Prince your father and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

And if any of the aforesaid things should seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your park or in whatever place shall please your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.⁸

It is not known what Ludovico replied, but the thirty-year-old Leonardo entered the splendid court of Ludovico Sforza with great acclaim. He was described as "a beautiful person, well proportioned, with a fine beard well arranged in ringlets, reaching down to the middle of his chest",⁹ and he fascinated his audience with his playing on a lyre his own hands had fashioned in the form of a horse's head, with his gentle voice, and with his subtle arguments in conversation. "His powers of conversation were such as to draw to himself the souls of listeners", remem­bers Vasari.¹⁰ Employed as a "painter and engineer of the Duke", Leonardo directed an extensive workshop with several students, entertained the court with his decorations for the frequent fes­tivities, and did some paintings, among them the beautiful Virgin of the Rocks and the monumental Last Supper.

The story of the execution of this last painting gives telling insights into the personality of the great painter. Shortly after he entered Ludovico's service, the Duke asked him to depict the Last Supper on the far wall of the refectory where the Dominican friars took their meals, at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. For three years (1495-98) Leonardo laboured but dallied at the task. The head of the monastery complained to Ludovico of Leonardo's apparent sloth: the painter would sit before the wall for hours without painting a stroke. Leonardo explained to his patron that the artist's most important work lies in conception rather than execution. In this case he had two great difficulties, he said: to conceive features worthy of Jesus Christ, and to pic­ture a man as heartless as Judas. Leonardo spent much of his time searching the streets of Milan for heads and faces that could serve him in representing the Apostles. One of the tragedies of Leonardo's life is that because of certain unconventional mural

Annunciation, c. 1472

Leonardo's most ambitious project for Ludovico, a sixteen-feet high equestrian statue in honour of Francesco Sforza, the Duke's father, was a failure, an exhausting and unnerving experi­ence for Leonardo. The tons of bronze intended for the statue were instead used to make cannonballs to fight the French who were then menacing Milan. After four years of work, Leonardo had only finished the clay model of the horse, which the French soldiers used as a target when they captured the city. The many anatomical sketches Leonardo had made were of such excellent quality that they set a new standard for anatomical drawings.

During the seventeen years Leonardo stayed in Milan he re­leased the creative power of his investigative mind through the study of nature by all sorts of different means; ranging from geometry, architecture and painting to geology, biology and mechanical engineering. He recorded the proceedings of these studies in notebooks, writing the Italian vernacular in a strange mirror-script." (see example p. 83-85) He is said to have com­posed about 120 manuscripts, and the fifty that remain are a treasure for historians of science and philosophy. He combined text and illustrations as a method — he called it dimonstratione (demonstration) to present his discoveries and inventions; but the notebooks were never published.

One of the most striking themes in the notebooks, one which Leonardo spent half his life studying, is the problem of human flight. He envied the birds as a species in some ways superior to man. He studied every aspect of their wings and tails, and the mechanics of their soaring, gliding, turning and descending. And he planned the conquest of the air:

You will make an anatomy of the wings of a bird, together with the muscles of the breast, which move these wings. And you will do the same for a man, in order to show the possibility of a man sustaining himself in the air by the beating of wings.¹²

A bird is an instrument working according to mechanical law. This instrument it is within the power of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength.¹³

In a brief essay, Sul Volo (On Flight), he described a flying machine made by him of strong cloth, leather and silk. He called this machine "the bird" and wrote instructions on how to fly it:

Make trial of the Machine over the water, so that if you fall you do not do yourself any harm... ¹⁴

The great bird will take its first flight... filling the whole world with amazement and all records with its fame; and it will bring eternal glory to the nest where it was born.¹⁵

During Leonardo's lifetime only one work of his was pub­lished, in collaboration with the mathematician Luca Pacioli, en­titled De Divina Proportione (on Divine Proportion), published in Venice in 1509. His Treatise on Painting was edited after his death by his lifelong friend Francesco Melzi.¹⁶ This work must be seen in the context of the ongoing Renaissance discussion on the scientific foundation of art, as exemplified by the works of L.B. Alberti and Piero della Francesca.¹⁷ In the Treatise, Leonardo demonstrated the mathematical and biological basis of the art of painting, described the geometry of space and functioning of the eye, and expounded the concept of saper vedere (to know how to see), as the creative method not only for painting but for every conscious artistic expression. For Leonardo, "the eye is the window of the soul"¹⁸ and the most noble of the senses,

Virgin and Child with St Ann, c. 1502/1513?

Unexplained gaps in the chronology of Leonardo's life be­tween 1482 and 1487 have given rise to speculations about a journey to the Near East or even Asia, but apart from some pas­sages in the Codice Atlantico notebook, there is no convincing evidence. In 1499 the French King Louis VII captured Milan and soon afterwards Leonardo and his friends returned to Florence where he was welcomed with honour and given ample opportu­nity to work. He made the cartoon for an altarpiece, The Virgin, Child, and St. Ann, and when it was publicly displayed it attracted large crowds of people who came as if attending a solemn fes­tival. But his life was "so irregular and unsettled that he may be said to [have lived] from day to day."¹⁹ Only his constant search for new frontiers can explain his decision to enter the service of the ruthless commander-in-chief of the Papal Army, Cesare Borgia, son of the notorious Pope Alexander VI." Borgia was entrusted with the mission of gaining control of central Italy, and Leonardo stayed with him as his "military engineer" for al­most one year. Besides military advice, he supplied maps of cities and topographical sketches which laid the foundation of modern cartography.

Upon his return to Florence the governing council of the city organised a competition in the Palazzo Vecchio for the best mural painting on an historical theme. The population of Florence watched in expectation as the two greatest artists of the day, Leonardo and Michaelangelo, became competitors. But neither Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari nor Michaelangelo's Battle of Cesna were completed. It is not clear whether Leonardo's re­turn to Milan in 1506 was precipitated by personal quarrels with Michaelangelo or by disappointment with another failure to em­ploy a new technique for the monumental (7x17 meters) mural (he seems not to have learned the lesson of The Last Supper).

When the French lost Milan in 1513, Leonardo, now sixty, again had to move. He left for Rome where the art-loving Pope Leo X (formerly Giovani di Medici) commissioned great works from Raphael, Michaelangelo, Bramante and Peruzzi.²² He was entertained at the Belvedere, a summer palace atop the Vatican Hill, but could not find the place he deserved as a master artist and received no large commission from the Pope. In fact, Leo X complained about him: "This man will never get anything done, for he is thinking about the end before he begins."²³ Thus, after three years of disappointment and loneliness in Rome, Leonardo readily accepted an invitation from King Francis I to come to France. He spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by the faithful Francesco Melzi, in the castle of Cloux near the Loire river, greatly admired by the French King who later told Benevenuto Cellini that he "believed no other man had been born who knew as much about sculpture, painting and architec­ture, but still more... was a very great philosopher."²⁴ Francis I gave Leonardo complete freedom to make finishing touches on

Four centuries later, we may be able to see Leonardo's im­pact and significance on the course of history much more clearly than his contemporaries, among whom only a handful realised his unique talent and his advanced state of consciousness. His synthesis of science and art, of investigation and expression, was a major break-through on the way towards modern empirical and rational science. His paintings, above all Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are such extraordinary renderings of physical and spiritual realities as to be considered immortal peaks of art. In sculpture he conceived the greatest projects of his age, and the anatomical sketches for the two equestrian monuments still rank among the best works ever done in anatomy. As a scientist, be­sides inventing many curious devices, he initiated a new way of exploring matter: his methods of experiment and quantification combined with visual demonstrations and textual explanations anticipate the modern scientific methods, and his concept of "force" as the prime agent in organic and inorganic matter has become a fundamental notion of modern physics. His science of seeing, saper vedere, as a precise method of revealing and under­standing the secrets of reality ranks beside Socrates' Know that you do not know as a philosophical and practical guideline for a conscious life.

The philosopher and historian Will Durant has this to say about Leonardo:

How shall we rank him? — though which of us commands the variety of knowledge and skills required to judge so multiple a Man? The fascination of his polymorphous mind lures us into exaggerating his actual achievement; for he was more fertile in

Annunciation, detail

conception than in execution... And yet Leonardo's studies of the horse were probably the best work done in anatomy of that age; Ludovico and Cesare Borgia chose him, from all Italy, as their engineer; nothing in the paintings of Raphael or Titian or Michaelangelo equals The Last Supper; no painter has matched Leonardo in subtlety of nuance, or in the delicate portrayal of feeling and thought and pensive tenderness; no statue of the time was so highly rated as Leonardo's plaster Sforza; no drawing has ever surpassed The Virgin, Child and Ste Anne; and nothing in Renaissance philosophy soared above Leonardo's conception of natural law.

He was not "the man of the Renaissance", for he was too gentle, introverted, and refined to typify an age so violent and powerful in action and speech. He was not quite "the universal man", since the qualities of statesman or administrator found no place in his variety. But, with all his limitations and incompletions, he was the fullest man of the Renaissance, perhaps of all time. Contemplating his achievement we marvel at the distance that man has come from his origins, and renew our faith in the pos­sibilities of mankind.²⁶

Leonardo's constant search for precision in cognition and for perfection in expression often brought him beyond the scope of the original task at hand, and he sometimes got lost in experi­menting with details and distracted by exploring new possibili­ties. Sometimes when his thirst for knowledge was satisfied he lost interest in his subject and would drop it in favour of new frontiers. And only too often the ignorance and arrogance of his patrons frustrated him. His spiritual aspirations to see and to express clashed with the imperfections of the physical world. There was in him some conflict between the spiritual and the material. But in the instances that Leonardo was able to over­come this seeming contradiction and synthesize his vast talents, the results were so stupendous that they remain timeless inspira­tions in the search for an integral aim of life.

Notes

1. Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) was an outstanding and widely talented artist. He directed the most important workshop in Florence during Leonardo's youth. His most famous work is the bronze statue David, in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence.
2. The Medici were a family of bankers and traders who ruled Florence and later Tuscany from 1434 to 1737. They provided three Popes, married into the royal families of Europe and were exceptional pa­trons of art. Lorenzo (1449-1492) continued the tradition of his fa­ther Cosimo and surrounded himself with philosophers, poets and artists.
3. The Adoration of the Magi is a popular theme of Christian my­thology. Leonardo's painting should be seen in contrast with those of Sandro Botticelli (1475) and of Albrech Durer (1483).
4. Ludovico Sforza (1452-1505), an offspring of the Milanese Sforza dynasty, made Milan the most splendid court in Europe during his reign.
5. Renaissance Neoplatonism was a philosophical movement that re­turned to the ancient sources of Platonic philosophy. Sponsored by the Medici, the Platonic Academy of Florence became the leading centre for the study and translation of Platonic texts. Masilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) were its major philosophical exponents, while Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) visu­alised the Platonic world-view in his painting Primavera (Spring) in 1475. See Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (London: Faber and Faber, 1958).
   Hermetic literature dates from the first to the last parts of the third century AD, and was rediscovered during the Renaissance. Hermetism is an effort to bridge the gap between religion and sci­ence and to deify man through knowledge of the world and experi­ence of the transcendent divinity.
6. Cf. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization Part V: The Renaissance.

   (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), p. 222.

7. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was an artist and, more importantly, an art historian whose book Le Vito dei pat eccelenti Architetti, Pittori, e Scultori Italiani, published in 1550, gives a detailed account of the life of Leonardo. Vasari is quoted from Irma A. Richter, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, (Oxford University Press, reprint 1980), p. 288.
8. Reproduced by Will Durant, op. cit., pp. 202-203.
9. Richter, op. cit., p. 293.
10. Vasari, quoted in Richter, op. cit., p. 330.
11. For recent editions of Leonardo's notebooks, see Jean P. Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, 3rd ed., 2 vols. 1970; or Edward McCurdy, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols., 1955.
12. Leonardo, Codice Atlantico; quoted by Will Durant, op. cit., p. 220.
13. Leonardo, Codice Atlantico; quoted by Will Durant, op. cit., p. 220.
14. Cf. Irma A. Richter, op. cit. p. 298.
15. Leonardo, Sul Volo, quoted by Will Durant, op. cit., p. 220.
16. Luca Pacioli (1450-1520) an eminent Renaissance mathematician, published De Divina Proportione in Venice in 1509. Two recent editions of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo are: C. Pedretti, On Painting: A Lost Book, (Berkeley, 1964); and A. 0. MacMahon, Treatise on Painting, (Princeton, 1956).
17. Geometrical perspective as a tool to pictorialise space was discov­ered during the Renaissance by several artists. The first publications on that theme are from Piero della Francesca (1420-1492), one of the most important artists of the Renaissance, in De Prospettiva Pingendi, 1482; and Della Pittura by Leon Battista Alberti.
18. Leonardo, Trattato della Pittura; cf. Irma A. Richter, op. cit., p. 4.
19. Vasari as quoted by Irma A. Richter, op. cit., p. 341f.
20. The Spanish Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (1431-1503) became Pope Alexander VI in 1492. Indulging in orgies and crime he is often regarded as the personification of the declining moral standards of the Vatican during the Renaissance. His son Cesare (1475­1507) and his daughter Lucrezia (1480-1519) were of the same

mould, unscrupulously pursuing power and wealth. For Niccolo Macchiavelli, Cesare Borgia was a model of the successful secular ruler. See Niccolo Macchiavelli, Il Principe, (The Prince).

21. Cf. Will Durant, op. cit., p. 222.
22. Giovani di Medici acquired Papal authority in 1503 and tried to con­solidate the Vatican after the devastating rulership of Pope Alexander VI. Bramante (1444-1514), the architect of St. Peter's Bassilica, Michaelangelo (1475-1564) the sculptor, and Raphael (1483-1520) the painter were among the artists who found generous employment in Rome during his reign.
23. Vasari, as quoted by Richter, op. cit., p. 377.
24. Benevenuto Cellini, quoted by Richter, op. cit., p. 383.
25. Will Durant, op. cit., p. 227.
26. Ibid, pp. 227-28.

Altogether, his genius was so wonderfully inspired by the grace of God, his powers of expression were so powerfully fed by a willing memory and intellect, and his writing conveyed his ideas so precisely, that his arguments and reasonings confounded the most formidable critics.

— Giorgio Vasari, 1568