their colours, are now dead, such as Il Rosso, Fra Sebastiano,
Giulio Romano, and Perino del Vaga! For of the living, who are known
to all through their own efforts, there is no need to speak here.
But what most concerns the whole world of art is that they have now
brought it to such perfection, and made it so easy for him who
possesses draughtsmanship, invention, and colouring, that, whereas
those early masters took six years to paint one panel, our modern
masters can paint six in one year, as I can testify with the
greatest confidence both from seeing and from doing; and our
pictures are clearly much more highly finished and perfect than
those executed in former times by masters of account.
But he who bears the palm from both the living and the dead,
transcending and eclipsing all others, is the divine Michelagnolo
Buonarroti, who holds the sovereignty not merely of one of these
arts, but of all three together. This master surpasses and excels
not only all those moderns who have almost vanquished nature, but
even those most famous ancients who without a doubt did so
gloriously surpass her; and in his own self he triumphs over
moderns, ancients, and nature, who could scarcely conceive anything
so strange and so difficult that he would not be able, by the force
of his most divine intellect and by means of his industry,
draughtsmanship, art, judgment, and grace, to excel it by a great
measure; and that not only in painting and in the use of colour,
under which title are comprised all forms, and all bodies upright or
not upright, palpable or impalpable, visible or invisible, but also
in the highest perfection of bodies in the round, with the point of
his chisel. And from a plant so beautiful and so fruitful, through
his labours, there have already spread branches so many and so
noble, that, besides having filled the world in such unwonted
profusion with the most luscious fruits, they have also given the
final form to these three most noble arts. And so great and so
marvellous is his perfection, that it may be safely and surely said
that his statues are in all their parts much more beautiful than the
ancient; for if we compare the heads, hands, arms, and feet shaped
by the one with those of the others, we see in his a greater depth
and solidity, a grace more completely graceful, and a much more
absolute perfection, accomplished with a manner so facile in the
overcoming of difficulties, that it is not possible ever to see
anything better. And the same may be believed of his pictures,
which; if we chanced to have some by the most famous Greeks and
Romans, so that we might compare them face to face, would prove to
be as much higher in value and more noble as his sculptures are
clearly superior to all those of the ancients.
But if we admire so greatly those most famous masters who, spurred
by such extraordinary rewards and by such good-fortune, gave life to
their works, how much more should we not celebrate and exalt to the
heavens those rare intellects who, not only without reward, but in
miserable poverty, bring forth fruits so precious? We must believe
and declare, then, that if, in this our age, there were a due meed
of remuneration, there would be without a doubt works greater and
much better than were ever wrought by the ancients. But the fact
that they have to grapple more with famine than with fame, keeps our
hapless intellects submerged, and, to the shame and disgrace of
those who could raise them up but give no thought to it, prevents
them from becoming known.
And let this be enough to have said on this subject; for it is now
time to return to the Lives, and to treat in detail of all those who
have executed famous works in this third manner, the creator of
which was Leonardo da Vinci, with whom we will now begin.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
LIFE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI[10]
PAINTER AND SCULPTOR OF FLORENCE
The greatest gifts are often seen, in the course of nature, rained
by celestial influences on human creatures; and sometimes, in
supernatural fashion, beauty, grace, and talent are united beyond
measure in one single person, in a manner that to whatever such an
one turns his attention, his every action is so divine, that,
surpassing all other men, it makes itself clearly known as a thing
bestowed by God (as it is), and not acquired by human art. This was
seen by all mankind in Leonardo da Vinci, in whom, besides a beauty
of body never sufficiently extolled, there was an infinite grace in
all his actions; and so great was his genius, and such its growth,
that to whatever difficulties he turned his mind, he solved them
with ease. In him was great bodily strength, joined to dexterity,
with a spirit and courage ever royal and magnanimous; and the fame
of his name so increased, that not only in his lifetime was he held
in esteem, but his reputation became even greater among posterity
after his death.
Truly marvellous and celestial was Leonardo, the son of Ser Piero da
Vinci; and in learning and in the rudiments of letters he would have
made great proficience, if he had not been so variable and unstable,
for he set himself to learn many things, and then, after having
begun them, abandoned them. Thus, in arithmetic, during the few
months that he studied it, he made so much progress, that, by
continually suggesting doubts and difficulties to the master who
was teaching him, he would very often bewilder him. He gave some
little attention to music, and quickly resolved to learn to play the
lyre, as one who had by nature a spirit most lofty and full of
refinement: wherefore he sang divinely to that instrument,
improvising upon it. Nevertheless, although he occupied himself with
such a variety of things, he never ceased drawing and working in
relief, pursuits which suited his fancy more than any other. Ser
Piero, having observed this, and having considered the loftiness of
his intellect, one day took some of his drawings and carried them to
Andrea del Verrocchio, who was much his friend, and besought him
straitly to tell him whether Leonardo, by devoting himself to
drawing, would make any proficience. Andrea was astonished to see
the extraordinary beginnings of Leonardo, and urged Ser Piero that
he should make him study it; wherefore he arranged with Leonardo
that he should enter the workshop of Andrea, which Leonardo did with
the greatest willingness in the world. And he practised not one
branch of art only, but all those in which drawing played a part;
and having an intellect so divine and marvellous that he was also an
excellent geometrician, he not only worked in sculpture, making in
his youth, in clay, some heads of women that are smiling, of which
plaster casts are still taken, and likewise some heads of boys which
appeared to have issued from the hand of a master; but in
architecture, also, he made many drawings both of ground-plans and
of other designs of buildings; and he was the first, although but a
youth, who suggested the plan of reducing the river Arno to a
navigable canal from Pisa to Florence. He made designs of
flour-mills, fulling-mills, and engines, which might be driven by
the force of water: and since he wished that his profession should
be painting, he studied much in drawing after nature, and sometimes
in making models of figures in clay, over which he would lay soft
pieces of cloth dipped in clay, and then set himself patiently to
draw them on a certain kind of very fine Rheims cloth, or prepared
linen: and he executed them in black and white with the point of his
brush, so that it was a marvel, as some of them by his hand, which I
have in our book of drawings, still bear witness; besides which, he
drew on paper with such diligence and so well, that there is no one
who has ever equalled him in perfection of finish; and I have one, a
head drawn with the style in chiaroscuro, which is divine.
And there was infused in that brain such grace from God, and a power
of expression in such sublime accord with the intellect and memory
that served it, and he knew so well how to express his conceptions
by draughtsmanship, that he vanquished with his discourse, and
confuted with his reasoning, every valiant wit. And he was
continually making models and designs to show men how to remove
mountains with ease, and how to bore them in order to pass from one
level to another; and by means of levers, windlasses, and screws, he
showed the way to raise and draw great weights, together with
methods for emptying harbours, and pumps for removing water from low
places, things which his brain never ceased from devising; and of
these ideas and labours many drawings may be seen, scattered abroad
among our craftsmen; and I myself have seen not a few. He even went
so far as to waste his time in drawing knots of cords, made
according to an order, that from one end all the rest might follow
till the other, so as to fill a round; and one of these is to be
seen in stamp, most difficult and beautiful, and in the middle of it
are these words, "Leonardus Vinci Accademia." And among these models
and designs, there was one by which he often demonstrated to many
ingenious citizens, who were then governing Florence, how he
proposed to raise the Temple of S. Giovanni in Florence, and place
steps under it, without damaging the building; and with such strong
reasons did he urge this, that it appeared possible, although each
man, after he had departed, would recognize for himself the
impossibility of so vast an undertaking.
He was so pleasing in conversation, that he attracted to himself the
hearts of men. And although he possessed, one might say, nothing,
and worked little, he always kept servants and horses, in which
latter he took much delight, and particularly in all other animals,
which he managed with the greatest love and patience; and this he
showed when often passing by the places where birds were sold, for,
taking them with his own hand out of their cages, and having paid to
those who sold them the price that was asked, he let them fly away
into the air, restoring to them their lost liberty. For which
reason nature was pleased so to favour him, that, wherever he turned
his thought, brain, and mind, he displayed such divine power in his
works, that, in giving them their perfection, no one was ever his
peer in readiness, vivacity, excellence, beauty, and grace.
It is clear that Leonardo, through his comprehension of art, began
many things and never finished one of them, since it seemed to him
that the hand was not able to attain to the perfection of art in
carrying out the things which he imagined; for the reason that he
conceived in idea difficulties so subtle and so marvellous, that
they could never be expressed by the hands, be they ever so
excellent. And so many were his caprices, that, philosophizing of
natural things, he set himself to seek out the properties of herbs,
going on even to observe the motions of the heavens, the path of the
moon, and the courses of the sun.
He was placed, then, as has been said, in his boyhood, at the
instance of Ser Piero, to learn art with Andrea del Verrocchio, who
was making a panel-picture of S. John baptizing Christ, when
Leonardo painted an angel who was holding some garments; and
although he was but a lad, Leonardo executed it in such a manner
that his angel was much better than the figures of Andrea; which was
the reason that Andrea would never again touch colour, in disdain
that a child should know more than he.
[Illustration: ANDREA VERROCCHIO: THE BAPTISM IN JORDAN
(_Florence: Accademia, 71. Panel_)]
He was commissioned to make a cartoon for a door-hanging that was to
be executed in Flanders, woven in gold and silk, to be sent to the
King of Portugal, of Adam and Eve sinning in the Earthly Paradise;
wherein Leonardo drew with the brush in chiaroscuro, with the lights
in lead-white, a meadow of infinite kinds of herbage, with some
animals, of which, in truth, it may be said that for diligence and
truth to nature divine wit could not make it so perfect. In it is
the fig-tree, together with the foreshortening of the leaves and the
varying aspects of the branches, wrought with such lovingness that
the brain reels at the mere thought how a man could have such
patience. There is also a palm-tree which has the radiating crown of
the palm, executed with such great and marvellous art that nothing
save the patience and intellect of Leonardo could avail to do it.
This work was carried no farther; wherefore the cartoon is now at
Florence, in the blessed house of the Magnificent Ottaviano de'
Medici, presented to him not long ago by the uncle of Leonardo.
It is said that Ser Piero da Vinci, being at his villa, was besought
as a favour, by a peasant of his, who had made a buckler with his
own hands out of a fig-tree that he had cut down on the farm, to
have it painted for him in Florence, which he did very willingly,
since the countryman was very skilful at catching birds and fishing,
and Ser Piero made much use of him in these pursuits. Thereupon,
having had it taken to Florence, without saying a word to Leonardo
as to whose it was, he asked him to paint something upon it.
Leonardo, having one day taken this buckler in his hands, and seeing
it twisted, badly made, and clumsy, straightened it by the fire,
and, having given it to a turner, from the rude and clumsy thing
that it was, caused it to be made smooth and even. And afterwards,
having given it a coat of gesso, and having prepared it in his own
way, he began to think what he could paint upon it, that might be
able to terrify all who should come upon it, producing the same
effect as once did the head of Medusa. For this purpose, then,
Leonardo carried to a room of his own into which no one entered save
himself alone, lizards great and small, crickets, serpents,
butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other strange kinds of suchlike
animals, out of the number of which, variously put together, he
formed a great ugly creature, most horrible and terrifying, which
emitted a poisonous breath and turned the air to flame; and he made
it coming out of a dark and jagged rock, belching forth venom from
its open throat, fire from its eyes, and smoke from its nostrils, in
so strange a fashion that it appeared altogether a monstrous and
horrible thing; and so long did he labour over making it, that the
stench of the dead animals in that room was past bearing, but
Leonardo did not notice it, so great was the love that he bore
towards art. The work being finished, although it was no longer
asked for either by the countryman or by his father, Leonardo told
the latter that he might send for the buckler at his convenience,
since, for his part, it was finished. Ser Piero having therefore
gone one morning to the room for the buckler, and having knocked at
the door, Leonardo opened to him, telling him to wait a little; and,
having gone back into the room, he adjusted the buckler in a good
light on the easel, and put to the window, in order to make a soft
light, and then he bade him come in to see it. Ser Piero, at the
first glance, taken by surprise, gave a sudden start, not thinking
that that was the buckler, nor merely painted the form that he saw
upon it, and, falling back a step, Leonardo checked him, saying,
"This work serves the end for which it was made; take it, then, and
carry it away, since this is the effect that it was meant to
produce." This thing appeared to Ser Piero nothing short of a
miracle, and he praised very greatly the ingenious idea of Leonardo;
and then, having privately bought from a pedlar another buckler,
painted with a heart transfixed by an arrow, he presented it to the
countryman, who remained obliged to him for it as long as he lived.
Afterwards, Ser Piero sold the buckler of Leonardo secretly to some
merchants in Florence, for a hundred ducats; and in a short time it
came into the hands of the Duke of Milan, having been sold to him by
the said merchants for three hundred ducats.
Leonardo then made a picture of Our Lady, a most excellent work,
which was in the possession of Pope Clement VII; and, among other
things painted therein, he counterfeited a glass vase full of water,
containing some flowers, in which, besides its marvellous
naturalness, he had imitated the dew-drops on the flowers, so that
it seemed more real than the reality. For Antonio Segni, who was
very much his friend, he made, on a sheet of paper, a Neptune
executed with such careful draughtsmanship that it seemed absolutely
alive. In it one saw the ocean troubled, and Neptune's car drawn by
sea-horses, with fantastic creatures, marine monsters and winds, and
some very beautiful heads of sea-gods. This drawing was presented by
Fabio, the son of Antonio, to Messer Giovanni Gaddi, with this
epigram:
Pinxit Virgilius Neptunum, pinxit Homerus,
Dum maris undisoni per vada flectit equos.
Mente quidem vates illum conspexit uterque,
Vincius ast oculis; jureque vincit eos.
[Illustration: THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
(_After the panel by =Leonardo da Vinci=. Florence: Uffizi, 1252_)
_Anderson_]
The fancy came to him to paint a picture in oils of the head of a
Medusa, with the head attired with a coil of snakes, the most
strange and extravagant invention that could ever be imagined;
but since it was a work that took time, it remained unfinished, as
happened with almost all his things. It is among the rare works of
art in the Palace of Duke Cosimo, together with the head of an
angel, who is raising one arm in the air, which, coming forward, is
foreshortened from the shoulder to the elbow, and with the other he
raises the hand to the breast.
It is an extraordinary thing how that genius, in his desire to give
the highest relief to the works that he made, went so far with dark
shadows, in order to find the darkest possible grounds, that he
sought for blacks which might make deeper shadows and be darker than
other blacks, that by their means he might make his lights the
brighter; and in the end this method turned out so dark, that, no
light remaining there, his pictures had rather the character of
things made to represent an effect of night, than the clear quality
of daylight; which all came from seeking to give greater relief, and
to achieve the final perfection of art.
He was so delighted when he saw certain bizarre heads of men, with
the beard or hair growing naturally, that he would follow one that
pleased him a whole day, and so treasured him up in idea, that
afterwards, on arriving home, he drew him as if he had had him in
his presence. Of this sort there are many heads to be seen, both of
women and of men, and I have several of them, drawn by his hand with
the pen, in our book of drawings, which I have mentioned so many
times; such was that of Amerigo Vespucci, which is a very beautiful
head of an old man drawn with charcoal, and likewise that of
Scaramuccia, Captain of the Gypsies, which afterwards came into the
hands of M. Donato Valdambrini of Arezzo, Canon of S. Lorenzo, left
to him by Giambullari.
He began a panel-picture of the Adoration of the Magi, containing
many beautiful things, particularly the heads, which was in the
house of Amerigo Benci, opposite the Loggia de' Peruzzi; and this,
also, remained unfinished, like his other works.
It came to pass that Giovan Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, being dead, and
Lodovico Sforza raised to the same rank, in the year 1494, Leonardo
was summoned to Milan in great repute to the Duke, who took much
delight in the sound of the lyre, to the end that he might play it:
and Leonardo took with him that instrument which he had made with
his own hands, in great part of silver, in the form of a horse's
skull--a thing bizarre and new--in order that the harmony might be
of greater volume and more sonorous in tone; with which he surpassed
all the musicians who had come together there to play. Besides this,
he was the best improviser in verse of his day. The Duke, hearing
the marvellous discourse of Leonardo, became so enamoured of his
genius, that it was something incredible: and he prevailed upon him
by entreaties to paint an altar-panel containing a Nativity, which
was sent by the Duke to the Emperor.
He also painted in Milan, for the Friars of S. Dominic, at S. Maria
delle Grazie, a Last Supper, a most beautiful and marvellous thing;
and to the heads of the Apostles he gave such majesty and beauty,
that he left the head of Christ unfinished, not believing that he
was able to give it that divine air which is essential to the image
of Christ. This work, remaining thus all but finished, has ever been
held by the Milanese in the greatest veneration, and also by
strangers as well; for Leonardo imagined and succeeded in expressing
that anxiety which had seized the Apostles in wishing to know who
should betray their Master. For which reason in all their faces are
seen love, fear, and wrath, or rather, sorrow, at not being able to
understand the meaning of Christ; which thing excites no less marvel
than the sight, in contrast to it, of obstinacy, hatred, and
treachery in Judas; not to mention that every least part of the work
displays an incredible diligence, seeing that even in the tablecloth
the texture of the stuff is counterfeited in such a manner that
linen itself could not seem more real.
[Illustration: THE LAST SUPPER
(_After the oil fresco by =Leonardo da Vinci=. Milan: S. Maria delle
Grazie_)
_M.S._]
It is said that the Prior of that place kept pressing Leonardo, in a
most importunate manner, to finish the work; for it seemed strange
to him to see Leonardo sometimes stand half a day at a time, lost in
contemplation, and he would have liked him to go on like the
labourers hoeing in his garden, without ever stopping his brush. And
not content with this, he complained of it to the Duke, and that so
warmly, that he was constrained to send for Leonardo and delicately
urged him to work, contriving nevertheless to show him that he was
doing all this because of the importunity of the Prior. Leonardo,
knowing that the intellect of that Prince was acute and discerning,
was pleased to discourse at large with the Duke on the subject, a
thing which he had never done with the Prior: and he reasoned much
with him about art, and made him understand that men of lofty genius
sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least, seeking out
inventions with the mind, and forming those perfect ideas which the
hands afterwards express and reproduce from the images already
conceived in the brain. And he added that two heads were still
wanting for him to paint; that of Christ, which he did not wish to
seek on earth; and he could not think that it was possible to
conceive in the imagination that beauty and heavenly grace which
should be the mark of God incarnate. Next, there was wanting that of
Judas, which was also troubling him, not thinking himself capable of
imagining features that should represent the countenance of him who,
after so many benefits received, had a mind so cruel as to resolve
to betray his Lord, the Creator of the world. However, he would seek
out a model for the latter; but if in the end he could not find a
better, he should not want that of the importunate and tactless
Prior. This thing moved the Duke wondrously to laughter, and he said
that Leonardo had a thousand reasons on his side. And so the poor
Prior, in confusion, confined himself to urging on the work in the
garden, and left Leonardo in peace, who finished only the head of
Judas, which seems the very embodiment of treachery and inhumanity;
but that of Christ, as has been said, remained unfinished. The
nobility of this picture, both because of its design, and from its
having been wrought with an incomparable diligence, awoke a desire
in the King of France to transport it into his kingdom; wherefore he
tried by all possible means to discover whether there were
architects who, with cross-stays of wood and iron, might have been
able to make it so secure that it might be transported safely;
without considering any expense that might have been involved
thereby, so much did he desire it. But the fact of its being painted
on the wall robbed his Majesty of his desire; and the picture
remained with the Milanese. In the same refectory, while he was
working at the Last Supper, on the end wall where is a Passion in
the old manner, Leonardo portrayed the said Lodovico, with
Massimiliano, his eldest son; and, on the other side, the Duchess
Beatrice, with Francesco, their other son, both of whom afterwards
became Dukes of Milan; and all are portrayed divinely well.