Leonardo da Vinci belonged to the Florentine school, the fifteenth
century, of which he was the first great example. Leonardo was the son
of a notary of Vinci, near Florence, and was born at that place in the
year 1452. He became the pupil of Andrea Verrocchio, the Florentine
sculptor and painter, and progressed so rapidly that he soon surpassed
his master, who is said to have thereupon given up painting in despair.
Leonardo’s studies at this time ranged over the whole field of science
and art; beside being a painter and a sculptor, he was a practiced
architect, engineer, and mechanician; profoundly versed in mathematics
and the physical sciences; and an accomplished poet and musician. The
famous letter in which he applied to the Duke of Milan for employment,
enumerates only a few of his acquirements; he represents himself as
skilled in military and naval engineering, offensive and defensive, and
the construction of artillery, and as possessing secrets in these matters
hitherto unknown; he can make designs for buildings, and undertake any
work in sculpture, in marble, in bronze, or in terra-cotta; and “in
painting,” he says, “I can do what can be done as well as any man, be
he who he may.” He concludes by offering to submit his own account of
himself to the test of experiment, at his excellency’s pleasure. He
entered the Duke’s service about the year 1482, receiving a yearly salary
of 500 scudi. Under his auspices an academy of arts was established in
Milan in 1485, and he drew round him a numerous school of painters. Of
the many works executed by Leonardo during his residence at Milan, the
greatest was the world renowned picture of the “Last Supper,” painted in
oil upon the wall of the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle
Grazie. Whether it was the fault of the wall or the medium used by the
painter, the great picture rapidly faded, and by the end of fifty years
had virtually perished. It is still shown, but decay and restoration have
left little of the original work of Leonardo. The best idea of it is to
be got from the old copies, taken while the picture was yet perfect; of
these the most valuable is the one executed in 1510 by Marco d’Oggione,
now in the possession of the Royal Academy of London. His other important
achievement, while at Milan, was a work of sculpture, which unfortunately
perished within a few years of its completion. It seems to have occupied
him at intervals for eleven years, for the completed model was first
exhibited to the public in 1493. All that we now know of it is from the
numerous sketches in the Royal Collection at Windsor. The model was
still in existence in 1501, after which nothing more is recorded of it.
He also at this time made a model for the cupola of Milan Cathedral,
which was never carried out. In 1499 Leonardo left Milan and returned to
Florence. He received a commission in 1503 to paint the wall at one end
of the Council Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, the decoration of the other
end being at the same time entrusted to Michelangelo. Leonardo’s picture
was never completed, and Michelangelo’s apparently never begun; but the
cartoons for their two compositions, known respectively as the “Battle of
the Standard” and the “Cartoon of Pisa,” excited the greatest admiration,
and were termed by Benvenuto Cellini “the school of the world;” both
have been lost or destroyed; all that we know of Leonardo’s composition
is gained from a drawing of it by Rubens in black and red chalk in the
gallery of the Louvre, to which, though spirited enough, he contrived
to impart the coarse Flemish character with which all his work is
disfigured. In 1514 Leonardo visited Rome, and was to have executed some
work in the Vatican, had not an affront put upon him by the pope given
him offence and caused him to leave Rome. He went to the King of France,
Francis I., who was then at Pavia, took service with him, and accompanied
him to France, in the early part of 1516. He was, however, weakened by
age and in bad health, and did little or no new work in France. In a
little more than three years’ time, in May 1519, he died, at Cloux, near
Amboise, at the age of sixty-seven.
Those pictures of Leonardo, which we may regard with confidence as the
work of his own hand, fully justify the exceptional admiration with which
he has always been regarded. He was excessively fastidious in his work,
“his soul being full of the sublimity of art,” and spent years over the
execution of some of his works. The painting of the portrait of Madonna
Lisa is said to have extended over four years, and to have been then
left incomplete. His mind also was at times equally bent on scientific
matters, and for long periods he was entirely absorbed in the study of
mathematics. For these reasons he produced but few pictures; if, however,
he had left none, his drawings, which fortunately exist in large numbers,
would suffice to account for the enthusiasm which his work has always
excited. It is certain that we do not see his pictures in the state in
which they left his easel; from some causes, unnecessary to discuss, they
have blackened in the shadows, and the colors have faded. Vasari praises
beyond measure the carnations of the Mona Lisa, which, he says, “do not
appear to be painted, but truly flesh and blood;” but no trace of these
delicate tints now remains.
Leonardo was the author of many treatises, some of which only have been
published. The most celebrated is the “Trattato della Pittura,” still a
book of high authority among writings on art.