[Illustration: _Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, after a woodcut
published in_ Lives of the Painters, _by Vasari. The Latin
inscription reads_
LIONARDO DA VINCI PITT. E SCVLTOR FIOR.
_Leonardo da Vinci, Painter & Sculptor of Florence._]
_Immortals of Science_
LEONARDO
DA VINCI
_Pathfinder of Science_
_Henry S. Gillette_
PICTURES BY THE AUTHOR
_Franklin Watts, Inc., 575 Lexington Avenue
New York 22, New York_
_To my wife Trudy_
FIRST PRINTING
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-8426_
Copyright © 1962 by Franklin Watts, Inc.
_Manufactured in the United States of America_
DESIGNED BY BERNARD KLEIN
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It is natural that, within the confines of these few pages, many facets
of Leonardo’s extraordinary personality will be missing. That he was an
artist, a man of letters, a poet and a philosopher are well known. That
he was also a man of humor, as well as a prophet whose vision extended
far beyond his times, are facts that I have also tried to include in
this biography. There are many gaps in our knowledge of his life, and
these I have sometimes filled with my own imagination to give some
continuity to his story. Little is known of his early days, his period
of travels after leaving Milan and his years in Rome. There is, too, a
certain mystery in his relations to those around him, since our
descriptions of him derive mostly from his often cryptic, personal notes
and from biographers who wrote of him many years after he had died.
This book is about Leonardo the scientist, and to fully write of his
many accomplishments would require an encyclopedic mind. My intent has
been to extract the essence of his story in the hopes that it would
arouse the enthusiasm of a reader to further his interest in those
other, more fully documented books—and, above all, in the notebooks that
Leonardo himself wrote.
—H. S. G.
_Rome, August 1961_
_Contents_
1 _The Shield_ 1
2 _Florence_ 9
3 _A Studio of His Own_ 20
4 _Years of Frustration_ 28
5 _Milan_ 37
6 _The Monument_ 49
7 _Success_ 60
8 _The French_ 73
9 _Cesare Borgia_ 86
10 _Shattered Hopes_ 98
11 _The Return to Milan_ 114
12 _Rome_ 129
13 _The Last Years_ 147
14 _Mankind’s Debt to Leonardo_ 159
_Significant Dates in Leonardo’s Life_ 162
_Index_ 164
1
_The Shield_
Dusk was beginning to gather in the valley at the foot of Monte Albano
as young Leonardo turned toward home. Stopping by a rushing stream to
wash the dust of the day’s explorations from his face, he laid aside his
cap and his leather pouch and plunged his hands into the cold mountain
water. He felt the force of the current and watched the whirl and flow
of bubbles around his bare arms. There was the same feeling, he thought,
to the flow of air he had experienced blowing around the rocky crags of
the mountains.
This evening, however, there was no time to sit awhile and think. He was
in a hurry to get home. Hastily scooping the water in his cupped palms,
he splashed it over his head and face, then shaking the water from his
hair he rose and picked up his cap. He took a satisfied look in his
pouch, slung it over his shoulder and headed down the stony trail to the
village of Vinci.
Vinci was a small hill town situated on a spur of Monte Albano. Its
castle and the bell tower above the houses seemed like sentinels
guarding the slopes of vineyards and olive groves spreading down into
the valley.
Leonardo da Vinci, which means “Leonardo from the town of Vinci,”
thought about his home. He knew that he had been born in Anchiano, near
Vinci, on April 15 of the year 1452, to a peasant girl named Caterina.
At the age of five, he had been sent for by his natural father, Piero da
Vinci, to come and live at his family’s house in Vinci, a comfortable
and roomy place with a spacious garden. Piero, five years before, had
married Albiera di Giovanni Amadori, a girl of sixteen. They had had no
children of their own, and Leonardo was welcomed into the home with
affection by his young stepmother.
When Leonardo was about eleven, young Albiera died, leaving a darkened
and saddened house. Two years later his father married another girl by
the name of Francesca Lanfredini. Although laughter and song soon
replaced the grief, Leonardo never forgot the love of his first
stepmother.
Also in the house lived Antonio, his grandfather, who was eighty-five,
his grandmother, his uncle Allessandro Amadori and family, and, best of
all, his uncle Francesco. The da Vincis, who could trace their
beginnings in the town back to the thirteenth century, had always been
respected lawyers and landowners. Because Uncle Francesco was neither a
lawyer nor a great landowner, the people of the town said he did
nothing; but he tended the family vineyards, and, to the delight of
Leonardo, he raised his own silkworms.
As Leonardo entered the main gate, he noticed that the oil lamps were
being lit above the stalls of the marketplace, and the lively confusion
of the last hours of business was in full swing. People nodded and
smiled to him, for as a boy of fifteen he was already a striking figure.
He was tall with long, auburn hair falling to his shoulders and his face
was so charming that it was frequently compared to those of the angels
painted in the chapels of the church. The music of his lute, the sound
of his voice, and the gentleness of his person were such that all hearts
and doors were open to him.
Tonight, however, Leonardo avoided the usual invitations to stop and
chat. His father would be back from Florence; he had been going there
more and more frequently as his fame as a lawyer grew. Now Leonardo was
thinking that he had almost finished the assignment his father, half
jokingly, had given him many weeks ago—so many weeks ago that he was
sure his father had forgotten about it. At that time a peasant, whose
skill in providing fish and game for the table of Piero’s big household
was greatly appreciated, had asked a favor of him. This man had a round,
wooden shield cut from a fig tree and he had asked Piero to have a
design painted on it for him in Florence. Piero, who had noticed the
sketches his son was making of plants, rock formations, and scenes in
his wanderings about the countryside, decided to test his son’s ability
and gave the shield to the boy. In the secrecy of his room, into which
no one was allowed, Leonardo had smoothed and prepared the wood, and on
it he was painting a monster.
Scrambling over rocks, through streams, and into caves, Leonardo had
been in the habit of gathering all manner of creeping and crawling life.
Patiently he would bring these home in his leather pouch and carefully
study and draw them. Maggots, bats, butterflies, locusts, and snakes
added to the confusion of the boy’s already cluttered room. Everywhere
he went he collected the things that aroused his curiosity; and as a
result, his room was always filled with rocks, dried plants, flowers,
the skeletons of small animals—and his pages of notations and drawings.
Now Leonardo had combined the features of these small forms of life to
make a monster—emerging from a dark grotto and breathing fire and
smoke—a thing more terrifying than if done from imagination, for each
feature was a duplicate of a reality in nature.
Unobserved, Leonardo reached the privacy of his room and emptied this
day’s collection on a table beside the shield. He lit a candle and
examined his catch—a lizard and a large grasshopper. These would
complete his picture; and, the most extraordinary find of the day—a
fossil seashell found high on the slopes of a mountain! How did it get
there? Was it a result of the flood about which his religion had taught
him? Had an immense wave deposited this ancient sea-life high on the
Albano mountains? Looking more closely he saw that it was a type of
sea-snail and in almost perfect preservation. This he would have to
think about and examine later.
Now, however, the picture must be completed, for he hoped to surprise
his father in the morning. But just then, Leonardo heard the family
stirring below and his father calling him to dinner. Reluctantly he left
his table, made himself presentable and went downstairs.
“Ah, Leonardo,” his father said when he appeared in the family dining
room. “I saw Benedetto dell’Abbaco on the way in town and he tells me
you haven’t been to school as often as you should—is that true?”
“Yes, Papa—but I’m not doing badly.”
“Signor Benedetto might agree, at least in your mathematics. He tells me
you ask him questions that often make him stop and think. But Leonardo,
you have other subjects—Latin, reading, and writing—as well as
arithmetic. You mustn’t neglect the others, my boy. But come—let us
eat.”
Together they sat down with the rest of the family—a large, prosperous,
and happy gathering. When dinner was over Leonardo made hurried excuses
to all the family, protesting that he was too tired to sing, and escaped
back into his room. For a long time he worked, unaware that the house
was growing quieter. Finally he laid down his brushes and his maul
stick, pushed his chair back and smiled a triumphant smile. The shield
was finished. Tomorrow he would ask his father in to look at it.
Conscious now that everybody had gone to bed, Leonardo blew out his
candle and opened the shutters. The night sky was a panoply of stars and
only here and there was the dark loneliness of the valley relieved by
pinpoints of light. Leonardo leaned his head against the window frame
and stared at the blue infinity above him. What exactly were the stars?
Did all of them move around the earth? What was the haze that obscured
the horizon ever so faintly? What was that sea-snail doing in the
mountains? Why? How?
The next morning Leonardo found his father and Uncle Francesco in the
garden deep in conversation about their vineyards and olive groves.
“Papa, I have a surprise for you up in my room—can you come now?”
“Yes, Leonardo. What is it you have found now—not a better way to raise
my grapes, I’ll wager!”
The elder da Vinci put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and went with
him up to the door of his room.
“Wait here, Papa, until I say to come in.”
Leonardo unlocked his door, lifted the cloth from the shield standing on
the easel and opened the shutter just a trifle so that a soft light
filled the room.
“Papa—you can come in now.”
Piero entered—he had long forgotten the round piece of wood—and suddenly
he froze in the middle of the room.
“Have mercy on me!” he said when he saw the horrible fire-breathing
creature. In the dimness of the room, the monster and the murky cave
from which it was emerging were terribly real. Piero actually started to
back out of the room in fright, when Leonardo laid a hand on his
shoulder.
“Papa, this work has served its purpose; take it away, then, for it has
produced the intended effect.”
The shield was the talk of the house; it was set up and marveled at. As
for Piero, he resolved to take it with him to Florence secretly and sell
it, giving his peasant friend some cheap substitute that he would buy in
the marketplace.
So, a few days later, Leonardo’s father saddled his horse and had the
shield wrapped and packed in his saddlebag. Also, unknown to his son, he
took some of the boy’s drawings. Piero had now realized that Leonardo
might have a rare talent. Moreover, he was planning to move to Florence
with his family so that he could be nearer to the Badia, or the law
offices of the city, for whom he had been frequently employed. There,
thought Piero, Leonardo’s talent could be developed under the best of
teachers.
It was many days before Leonardo’s father returned; when he did, he
gathered his family together and it was obvious to all that he had
exciting news. First, Piero announced that he and Francesca would move
to Florence since he and a law partner were now engaged in securing
office space from the Badia. It was a handsome office centrally located
opposite the palace of the _Podestà_, or chief magistrate.
Then, turning to Leonardo, he said: “I have shown some of your drawings
to Master Andrea del Verrochio and his enthusiasm for your skill has
decided me to place you in his studio as an apprentice. What do you
think of that?”
Leonardo was stunned. Verrochio, the great artist and sculptor!
Florence! The city-state whose power and influence had spread far beyond
her own walls. Now he would study in earnest; now he would find the
answers to his never-ending questions. He embraced his father and could
say nothing.
2
_Florence_
The Italy of Medieval and Renaissance days was not a unified country as
it is today. It was, of course, part of the Holy Roman Empire, but the
main governing forces in the land were in the city-states, of which
Florence was one of the most powerful. A city-state was much more than a
city—it was almost a kingdom in itself. Each had its own army, and very
often there were large-scale wars between such city-states as Milan,
Naples, Rome, Venice—and of course Florence. The Italians of those days
considered themselves citizens—not of Italy as a whole—but of their
particular cities; people coming from other cities were looked upon as
“foreigners,” even though they looked the same, wore the same style of
clothing, and spoke the same language!
All the power, influence, and ideas of this period in history were
concentrated within the city-states. A man might be a very fine artist,
engineer, or philosopher, but unless he managed to bring his work to the
attention of the ruler of one of the cities, he was likely to remain in
obscurity. Thus it was that Piero da Vinci, knowing that his son would
have to have a powerful patron if he was to succeed at all, brought
Leonardo to Florence.
In 1467, when the da Vinci family entered Florence, the city had been
under the rule of the Medici family for some thirty-three years. As it
was in most of these city-states, the head of the ruling family—at this
time Piero de’ Medici—was in charge of the government of Florence and
the surrounding countryside. But Piero was fifty-one years old and
ailing, and he had only two years of life left at the time of Leonardo’s
arrival.
None of this was in Leonardo’s mind as he rode with his father through
one of the great, guarded gates of the city. He was thinking, not of
politics, but of the fabulous sights that awaited him in this rich
center of commerce and activity.
The narrow streets of the city were so crowded that is was necessary for
the da Vinci family, together with their servants and the donkeys laden
with household effects, to go single file. Leonardo rode behind his
father, shouting questions, and, at the same time, turning his head from
side to side so as not to miss a thing. Brought up in the solitude of
mountains and valleys, and accustomed to the quiet life of a village,
the boy of fifteen was overwhelmed with the excitement of the city.
[Illustration: _Leonardo rode behind his father, turning his head
from side to side so as not to miss a thing._]
The party was now making its way past the booths of hundreds of shops,
past magnificent palaces built by wealthy merchants, and across squares
filled with the produce from hundreds of farms. Every now and then,
Leonardo caught a glimpse of the cathedral dome, one of the
architectural marvels of its day. He had seen the cathedral with its
bell tower and also the towering spire of the Palazzo della
Signoria—which means the Palace of the Lords—from a hill as they
approached the city. This palace still stands and today it is called the
Palazzo Vecchio or Old Palace. But now these sights were lost to view in
the midst of the narrow streets, other churches, flags, and the lines of
washing that seemed to hang everywhere. Frequently, Piero’s party was
pressed against a wall as a procession shoved its way through a street.
Sometimes it was by armed horsemen escorting a rich banker to some
appointment; other times it was a file of cowled monks observing some
saint’s day and carrying huge wax candles before them.
After they had crossed the magnificent square of the Signoria, in front
of the Palace of the same name, Piero leaned down from his horse and
asked a blacksmith where Verrochio’s studio might be. The man shouted
above the din of clanging hammers:
“Everybody knows that shop, Signor—it’s down that street and to the
right! You can’t miss it—ask anybody!”
The man was right, for the workshop of Verrochio was not hard to find.
Verrochio was considered one of Florence’s finest artists and everybody
knew of him. He was a short, broad-shouldered man of thirty-two with a
round face, shrewd eyes, a thin mouth and dark curly hair that reached
almost to his shoulders. In his workshop were two other
apprentices—young Pietro Perugino, who was six years older than
Leonardo, and Lorenzo di Credi, a boy of eight. They all lived in the
house together and, after Leonardo was shown where he would sleep and
had put away the few things he had brought with him from Vinci, he was
taken to the place where he would work.
Verrochio, whose real name was Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni,
had taken the name of his teacher, a renowned goldsmith, as was the
custom in the shops at that time. Verrochio himself was a skilled
goldsmith. But to be an artist and to have your own workshop in the year
1467 meant being a specialist in many things. Into Verrochio’s place
came a great variety of artistic work—painting pictures, sculpting and
architecture, goldsmithing, designing and making armor, creating
decorated furniture, designing mechanical toys, and even preparing stage
scenery.
Verrochio, of course, would attend to the greater creative tasks, while
his apprentices did the chores of grinding colors, preparing panels for
painting, making armatures for his sculpture, hewing to size the marble
for a statue, preparing molds for casting, building models for a new
palace or church—in fact, all the countless number of preparations to
the finished work. Sometimes, if an apprentice showed extraordinary
talent, he would be allowed to work on the finished painting or assist
with the final strokes of the chisel. Verrochio was a busy man and a
successful artisan. To further his own ambitions, he was now absorbed in
the perfecting of mathematical perspective and the study of geometry.
The curious Leonardo had come to the right man. In Verrochio’s workshop,
where so many crafts were learned at the same time, his powers of
observation were able to develop; his hunger to know about mathematics
was fed. In Verrochio, Leonardo found a teacher who would encourage
these investigations and urge him to study a wide variety of subjects.
Leonardo now felt his lack of a fuller education. He started to borrow
mathematics textbooks and to seek out men who could teach him what he
needed to know. After each day’s work was over, Leonardo would continue
on into the night, catching up on his neglected studies and discovering
for himself new areas of thought such as anatomy, movement and weight,
botany, and another subject which was to occupy much of his later
years—_hydraulics_, or the useful application of water power.
In these early years, Leonardo commenced his famous _Notes_. He had
developed his own “secret” writing in his childhood at Vinci. These
notes—consisting of observations, proportions, and reminders to
himself—were inscribed on his drawings. They were, however, unreadable
to the eye—until held up to a mirror. Leonardo was lefthanded and could
write fluently in this strange manner. It could have been for many
reasons that he did so—perhaps from a natural desire for secrecy,
perhaps for reasons of safety from possible enemies. In those days,
plots and counterplots of all sorts were commonplace—a rumor or a
whisper in the right ear could destroy a reputation or financially ruin
a career.
Leonardo was popular in Florence. He traveled with the young men of the
town, and his handsome appearance and enormous strength (he could bend a
horseshoe in his hands) made him a welcome figure in many houses. He
continued to play the lute and the lyre. He wrote poetry, composed his
own music, and sang with a pleasing voice. His blue eyes were kind and
his manner gentle. He always avoided arguments and competition when he
could. When he walked through the marketplace and came upon the caged
birds, he would buy them—just to set them free. Indeed, his love of
animals had become so great that he no longer ate meat.
During these years in Verrochio’s service, Leonardo grew in stature as
an artist and rapidly developed into a scientist of promise. He amazed
his master when he painted an angel in an altarpiece that had been
assigned to Verrochio. He painted it in the new oil colors recently
acquired from the Flemish painters. So astounded was Verrochio with its
grace that the master vowed he would never lift a brush again if a “mere
child” could so surpass him. In this picture there is a tuft of grass
beside a kneeling figure, also painted by Leonardo, which indicates by
its careful attention to detail the amount of research he did before
committing it to canvas. In other paintings he made beautiful drawings
of a lily and studies of animals and crabs, giving a hint of what was to
come. For, in these preparatory works, Leonardo could not be satisfied
until he had thoroughly studied the characteristics of plants and
animals in general. Later in life, he was to become more and more
absorbed in these researches until they occupied the greater part of his
time.
In 1469, when Leonardo had been in Florence only two short years, Piero
de’ Medici died and was succeeded by his son, the mighty Lorenzo de’
Medici—or Lorenzo the Magnificent, as he was often called. Now the city
of Florence felt itself under the control of a man who really knew how
to use power. Lorenzo was Florence; nothing happened without his making
it happen, and he became one of the most prominent patrons of art and
scholarship in all of Italy. If Leonardo was to make any headway in
Florence, he would have to make himself noticed by this new Medici
ruler.
But Leonardo was not yet worrying about how to make himself a success. A
young man of seventeen and still an apprentice of Verrochio, Leonardo
continued to meet new friends with new ideas. It was at about this time
that he met Benedetto Aritmetico, a prominent scholar and mathematician.
It is probable that this man drew Leonardo’s attention to the practical
needs of industry and commerce so that some of Leonardo’s energy was
directed toward the study and improvement of existing machinery and the
invention of labor-saving devices. At any rate, during these months
Leonardo was walking the streets of Florence, wandering into shops and
mills, making careful observations of all the various methods of
manufacturing. The more he saw, the more he thought to himself that one
man could do the work of many—if only he had the proper machine. He even
made drawings of laborers with picks and shovels to see if he could
determine by mathematics better ways to swing and hold the tools.
In addition, the particular problems in the engagement of joints
fascinated Leonardo, leading him on to the study of more general
problems such as the transmission of power by gears and the strength of
materials. He also spent long hours studying geometrical theories and
reading Greek and Latin classical works. Laboriously, he translated
these into his own formulas and made comments about them in his
notebooks. He attended the lectures of John Argyropoulos, a Greek, who
talked of the Aristotelian theories of natural history, and who had
translated Aristotle’s _Physics_.
The study of physics opened to Leonardo a whole new world of ideas. He
experimented with cogwheels, and with the improvement of ways to lift
weights. He became fascinated with the then-known laws of friction and
built a bench upon which he tested various devices for the overcoming of
frictional drag; he also tested the natural power of one body to set
another in motion. This bench with its rollers and weights was similar
in principle to the one used by the French physicist A. C. Coulomb
almost three centuries later. Leonardo was indeed growing into a man of
genius. Now everything from the stars to the flight of an insect
occupied his thoughts.
At the same time, he continued his studies of drawing and painting.
Frequently he was seen in Florence following someone whose face had
interested him—sometimes for the better part of the day—and then at
night he would fill a page with sketches of this same person from
memory.
By developing his powers of observation in this way Leonardo came to
rely more upon his own experiences and less upon what he was told or
what he read. This brought him into frequent conflict with the
astrologers, the alchemists and even the Church. The astrologers were
men who told fortunes by the movements of the stars. The alchemists,
with their knowledge of chemistry, pretended to be able to talk with
ghosts and to tell the future. These men Leonardo held in contempt.
Although he was a devoutly religious man, Leonardo objected to many
attitudes of the Church which he considered outmoded and which stood in
the way of scientific progress; because of these objections, he was
frequently called a pagan.
In this same year of 1469, Leonardo met the aging Paolo del Pozzo
Toscanelli. Toscanelli was a famous physician, philosopher and
mathematician who, just the previous year, had marked off on the
cathedral floor the famous meridian line for determining the dates of
the various Church holidays. The old man and the boy became not only the
famous teacher and ardent pupil, but close friends.
One evening at Toscanelli’s house, the old man showed young Leonardo a
globe of the world. Much of it was marked “unknown,” but Toscanelli had
filled in some areas from his own careful calculations and from the
stories told him by sailors and travelers. Visions of distant lands,
remote mountain ranges and vast oceans filled Leonardo’s imagination as
Toscanelli spoke. Then Toscanelli tapped the globe to the westward of
Spain, saying:
“Here will be found a quicker route to India than the world has ever
known before.” Then, turning to Leonardo he murmured, “You will see it
happen, my boy, in your lifetime.”
One by one, Leonardo’s childhood questions were being answered.
Toscanelli told him much about the stars, the fossils of creatures long
disappeared from the world, and how he believed the earth’s early
formation took place. He also taught the boy the art of drawing a map.
Not only did Toscanelli greatly influence Leonardo, but the course of
history as well. Ten years after Toscanelli had died, Christopher
Columbus, struggling westward over the Atlantic Ocean, was using a map
that old Toscanelli had sent him, carefully notated with all his
accumulated wisdom.
Leonardo, in keeping with his own philosophy, tested all this knowledge
with experiments of his own. Because astronomical instruments were rare,
crude, and costly, Leonardo borrowed them where he could and later set
about making his own. He went on to experiment with time measurements,
devising the first example of the application of a pendulum to regulate
a clock; by means of two springs, it measured the minutes as well as the
hours. So for the next three years Leonardo worked in Verrochio’s studio
and continued his studies and experiments.
In 1472 Leonardo’s name was inscribed in the Red Book of the Painters of
Florence, which was the official _guild_, or artists’ union of that
time. But he was so poor that he couldn’t afford the dues and hardly had
the money for the necessary candles to be burnt before St. Luke, the
patron saint of all painters. Although his father now had a spacious
apartment in a house on one of the main squares of Florence, Leonardo
continued to live with Verrochio. In fact, he stayed on past his formal
training period for about four more years, grateful to the kindly man
for the food and bed he offered.
3
_A Studio of His Own_
On Sunday, April 26, 1478, the bells of the cathedral were ringing
loudly over Florence, almost drowning out the noise of the crowds in the
street. Shutters were being thrown open and people were shouting excited
questions at each other. Distantly at first, but growing in volume, was
another sound—an ugly one—the sound of an approaching, angry mob.
Leonardo, holding a roll of drawings closer under his arm, stopped and
listened.
Suddenly the questioning voices stopped. The bells continued ringing and
now the angry shouts of the mob could be heard.
“Lorenzo is dead! Giuliano is dead! Death to traitors! Pazzi! Pazzi!”
“On to the Palace of the Signoria! They’ve captured the Archbishop! He’s
a prisoner there!”
“Get a ram and we’ll break the door down!”
The people in the street were caught up in the surging mass. Already
soldiers of the Medici were spreading out through the city. Cobblestones
were ripped from the street, and swords, knives, and clubs were being
brandished in the air.
Leonardo, backed against a wall of a house, was soon left in an almost
deserted street. Still holding the drawings, he made his way carefully
back to his studio.
As it turned out, Lorenzo was not dead at all.
It was on this Sunday that the Pazzi conspiracy had broken out in
Florence. In the cathedral, the ailing Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of
Lorenzo, was killed by assassins. Lorenzo himself escaped with only a
scratched arm. The Pazzi family were rival bankers of the Medicis and
had joined in this plot with Girolamo Riario, a relative of Pope Sixtus
IV, and Francesco Salviati, a long-time enemy of Lorenzo. A hired
professional thug completed the members of the conspiracy.
Girolamo Riario hated the Medicis because they refused him money for his
own ambitions, and the Pope opposed Lorenzo because Lorenzo was
supporting raids against papal territory. As for Archbishop Salviati, he
had for years nursed a personal hatred for Lorenzo.
[Illustration: _Leonardo, backed against a wall, was soon left in an
almost deserted street._]
When the assassination attempt failed, the Archbishop and Francesco de’
Pazzi fled to the Palace of the Signoria for protection. However, the
members of the Council of Florence, who were meeting, then became
suspicious and bolted the doors after them. Both men were later killed
by the Medici followers and their bodies were hung from the barred
windows of the Palace. In the terror of the days afterward, eighty
victims lost their lives. The Pazzi conspiracy also had an effect on
Leonardo’s future, as we shall see later on.
Leonardo had been on his way to the Palace that morning. He had been
given his first painting assignment, or commission, the previous
January. This was to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of San Bernardo
in the Palace, and just the month before he had received the sum of
twenty-five florins as a partial payment.
Some time before January of 1478, Leonardo had left Verrochio and had
found a place of his own. The commission had come to Leonardo through
the influence of his father, who was now one of the leading notaries, or
lawyers, of the city. Though still poor, Leonardo could now devote this
new independence to his widening fields of study.
Leonardo’s studio was like his childhood room in one respect—it was
still filled with all the different things that had aroused his
curiosity. Books were everywhere—on his tables and shelves and piled on
the floor—books by Ptolemy, Pliny, and Strabo on geography and natural
history, by Aristotle on physics, even one by Guido, a tenth-century
monk, who has been called the father of modern music. In addition, there
were books on arithmetic, agriculture, geometry, grammar, philosophy,
fables, poetry and even one containing jokes. A map of the world hung on
the wall, together with his drawings; and, scattered throughout the
whole studio were the plants, fossils, rocks and animal skeletons he was
still collecting from his trips into the country.
There was also a huge table extending down the middle of Leonardo’s
studio upon which were many drawings and instruments for working
geometrical problems. His easel near the window supported a painting—a
study for his commission in the Palazzo. And on his desk was a confusion
of papers containing notes all written in his “secret” writing.
At twenty-six Leonardo was deep in the study of mechanical law,
geometry, and botany. For example, he had observed the rings in trees
and their relationship to the age of the trees. In mechanics, he was
absorbed in drawing models of a “variable speed drive.” By meshing three
cogged wheels of different diameters to a common lantern wheel, Leonardo
saw that different speeds of rotation could be obtained at the same
time. This same principle is used in the gear shift of modern
automobiles. About mechanics Leonardo wrote that it was “the paradise of
the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruit
of mathematics.”
Now, too, he was starting to write about his observations on the flight
of birds, the formations of clouds and the behavior of smoke in the air.
He compared the flying of birds to the swimming of fish in the sea, and
the flow of air to the flow of water. Two hundred years before Newton,
Leonardo would define the principles of aerodynamic reciprocity, as
contained in Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
At this time, Leonardo had an idea for making the Arno river navigable
all the way from Florence to Pisa by the addition of canals, thus giving
Florence an outlet to the sea. He also had thoughts for the improvement
of irrigation in order to make use of land that did not have enough
water. Nothing that Leonardo saw in his day’s activities was too small
to pass unnoticed and unquestioned. The flight of a butterfly, the
stratification of rock in a cliffside, the shape of a mighty cumulus
cloud, the turning of a carriage wheel on a bumpy road, the play of
muscles in a farmer’s back, the curling of water around a rock in a
stream—all of these aroused Leonardo’s curiosity. Continually, he
studied these things and painstakingly drew them and wrote about them in
his notebooks.
Unfortunately, Leonardo’s painting commission for the Palace of the
Signoria was never completed. By the end of the year 1478, the Pope,
angered by the killing of the Archbishop during the Pazzi conspiracy,
had declared war on the Republic of Florence. Ferdinand, the King of
Naples, was persuaded to help in this war against Florence and the
Medicis. As the papal forces were approaching the fortresses on the
Florentine hills, the Council of Florence discontinued Leonardo’s
commission in order to conserve money for the defense of the city.
Disappointed though he was, Leonardo did not allow this setback to
discourage him. From a page of drawings in the Uffizi Gallery of
Florence on which are sketched various arms and war materials, we learn
that he turned from his artistic to his mechanical skills and began
designing engines of war. Besides being a Florentine concerned with the
defense of his city, Leonardo was eager to gain an appointment with
Lorenzo as military engineer to make up for the painting commission he
had just lost. Also, as the fifteenth century was a turning point in the
methods of waging war, Leonardo was attracted to all the mechanical
possibilities of the new artillery. Before then soldiers had used
spears, bows and arrows, and stone-throwing catapults, among other
primitive methods. One of Leonardo’s designs included a light cannon
whose barrel could be raised or lowered to proper elevation by means of
a hand-cranked screw and whose horizontal direction could be determined
by a maneuverable cradle.
The military appointment that Leonardo hoped for didn’t come.
Unfortunately for the Medicis, the war with the papal forces was being
lost. One by one, the fortresses under siege surrendered; more and more
of the Florentine troops were fleeing.
Leonardo continued the work on his military machines for, although he
was having some success painting Madonnas for private homes and had even
received a commission from the King of Portugal for a tapestry design,
he still wanted official recognition for his inventions from Lorenzo de’
Medici.
During these weeks late in the year of 1479, Leonardo conceived many
ingenious devices to wage war. Besides the small artillery piece, he
designed a _bombard_, or rock-throwing cannon, which did not recoil when
it was fired. This was followed by a light gun arranged in three tiers
of barrels, mounted so that while one tier was fired, the second was
being loaded and the third was cooling (a forerunner of the modern
machine gun). Another was a device to repel enemy ladders. It consisted
of a horizontal beam laid parallel to the top of a fortress wall; the
beam could be pushed outward by one man or several men using a system of
pulleys.
[Illustration: _Leonardo’s design for a machine gun. It had
thirty-three barrels in three banks of eleven each. While one bank
was fired, one cooled and the other was reloaded._]
Unfortunately for Leonardo, just as he was ready to show these
inventions to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the last fortress outside Florence
surrendered and a three-month truce followed. Lorenzo himself went to
Naples and persuaded King Ferdinand to withdraw from the war. By 1480,
peace returned once again to Florence.
As for the Medicis, military machines no longer interested them. Greatly
disappointed at not having his inventions used—or even looked
at—Leonardo began to search about for new fields of creative activity.
4
_Years Of Frustration_
The old monk spread the papers out before him on the table.
“Master Leonardo,” he said, “these are the terms of the commission. We
at the monastery wish to have an altarpiece painted for our chapel. Your
father has recommended you, and, as you know, he is our lawyer. Of
course your reputation has already reached our ears, and we are
satisfied in our choice.”
The year was 1480. The monk represented the monastery of San Donato a
Scopeto near the Porta Romana, just outside Florence. Leonardo shook his
head slowly at the terms of the commission. The painting had to be
completed in thirty months at the most. Moreover, he must pay for his
own colors and even—Leonardo looked up as if to protest but resumed
reading—even pay for any gold or gold leaf he might use. Nevertheless,
it was an opportunity, and Leonardo needed work. Since the papal war had
ended, he had not received any commissions—and his skill at military
engineering was still too unknown to have won him recognition.
Although Lorenzo de’ Medici was a great supporter of the arts and
sciences, he had not granted Leonardo any of his patronage. In Lorenzo’s
court were many men with much book-learning but little talent. They
guarded their positions jealously and kept the way to Lorenzo barred to
any applicant whom they did not like. Of them, Leonardo wrote in his
notes: “They strut about puffed up and pompous, decked out and adorned,
not with their own labors, but by those of others, and they will not
even allow me my own. And if they despise me who am an inventor, how
much more blame be given to themselves, who are not inventors but
trumpeters and reciters of the work of others?”
In accepting the commission to paint the altarpiece, Leonardo hoped to
attract attention to himself. Perhaps then Lorenzo might welcome him to
his court and grant him patronage. So, with his usual thoroughness,
Leonardo set about the task of preparing an Adoration of the Magi—a
favorite subject of that time. This was to be a picture of the Holy
Family surrounded by the three wise men from the East, shepherds and
animals, old and young, rich and poor, paying their adoration to the
Christ child.
Since he wanted his subjects perfect in every detail, Leonardo set about
drawing countless youths, old men, sheep, oxen, horses, and donkeys. In
a separate drawing for the background, he worked out with mathematical
mastery the problems of perspective, that is, drawing objects to make
them appear three-dimensional and either close or far away in space. In
addition, he made studies for the composition of the whole
picture—studies in which his knowledge of geometry was used to heighten
the excitement of this great religious subject.
[Illustration: _Leonardo’s hygrometer._]
Among these sketches that Leonardo made for his “Adoration of the Magi”
is a page on which appears an inspiration for one of his greatest
masterpieces—a drawing of the “Last Supper.” And on this same page is
another drawing—one of a hygrometer. A hygrometer is an instrument for
measuring the amount of moisture in the air. Leonardo’s design consists
of a simple, graded disk with a balanced pointer, weighted at one end
with sand and at the other with a sponge or some salt. As the sponge or
salt absorbed the moisture in the air, the added weight was indicated on
the graded disk, thus measuring the amount of humidity.
Leonardo’s researches for the altar painting took him almost a year.
Although the monks began to grumble at his slowness, Leonardo would not
be hurried. He was determined to produce a painting that was perfect in
all respects. To quiet their impatience Leonardo did odd jobs for them
in the cloister. He repainted their old clock and for this extra work
they advanced him some much-needed money. In March of 1481 Leonardo was
ready to begin the actual drawing for the altarpiece. As he progressed
with the composition, the monks crowded around with exclamations of
delight. So different was it from all the other Adoration pictures they
had ever seen, that the monks sent Leonardo some sacks of corn as a
token of their appreciation.
One day, Leonardo was walking slowly toward the monastery over the Ponte
Vecchio—the Old Bridge—across the Arno River. He made his way slowly up
the hill past the construction for the new Pitti Palace. The morning was
hot and the farmers moving into the city with their heavily laden carts
were short-tempered. Leonardo stood to one side as he watched a pair of
oxen straining to haul a wagon up a rise in the road. Their owner, his
shirt unbuttoned to the waist, was shouting angrily, lashing the animals
with his leather-thonged whip. It was a cruel sight and Leonardo turned
away. From some experiments he had been making, Leonardo realized that
the poor animals were struggling not only with the hill, but the drag of
friction on the creaking axle. This drag could be eased, he thought to
himself, by simply resting the axle in two sets of roller-bearings
attached to the bottom of the cart near each wheel. In his mind he
formed the plan for such a model as he made his way to the monastery.
The drawing of the altarpiece was nearing completion. The monks were
fascinated by the spectacle of the Adoration appearing before their
eyes. The soft, umber outlines deepened with gray, the ochre
highlighting the central figures charmed them and they sent another gift
to Leonardo’s house—a cask of Tuscan red wine.
As it turned out, Leonardo never finished this altarpiece. It is not
known why. But the drawing for it can be seen today in the Uffizi
Gallery in Florence just as Leonardo left it.
It is certain, however, that Leonardo was far from idle during this
time. He drew the design for eliminating the friction of a turning axle
by mounting the axle in roller-bearings. He experimented with, and
solved the problem of, transmitting motion to revolving machine parts by
friction—the possible forerunner of our modern friction clutch. Another
device, found in modern automobiles—the differential—was also drawn by
Leonardo. This idea provided for the difference in speed between the two
drive wheels when rounding a curve.
Leonardo also drew the first known plans for a self-propelled vehicle—an
“automobile.” It was designed to operate by a system of elastic springs
wound by hand by the person on the vehicle; the “car” was then supposed
to run the short distance allowed it by the unwinding of the springs.
In addition, Leonardo continued designing machines for both offensive
and defensive military action. One of these was a breech-loading cannon,
together with the first known projectiles that took into consideration
better penetration through the air and greater stability in their
trajectory. Indeed, these very much resembled present-day aerial bombs,
with pointed noses and stabilizing fins.
As the months passed, however, Leonardo began to feel that his time and
talents were being wasted in Florence. Although the monks and friends of
the monastery were pleased with the work he was doing, other artists
were being called to greater tasks in Rome. For example, Domenico di
Tommaso del Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, and even Leonardo’s fellow
student, Pietro Perugino, had left Florence to work in the chapel of
Pope Sixtus IV in Rome—known to us as the Sistine Chapel. Now, too, it
was becoming clear that Lorenzo and his court had no time for this
solitary genius whose ideas stretched beyond his age.
So Leonardo looked about him. He was thirty years old and the walls of
Florence seemed to bind his spirit. To what city could he go where his
talents would be put to fruitful use? Rome seemed to hold out no hope,
for no one had offered him a position there.
But Leonardo remembered that there had been a visitor to the Medicis
from another city in recent months. This man was Ludovico Sforza, the
ruling prince of Milan, the great city-state of the north. Ludovico, who
was also called “Il Moro” (the Moor) because of his dark complexion, was
seeking the friendship and alliance of the Medicis. He was fascinated
with the art and culture of Florence and sought to gather to his own
court of Milan as many artists, scientists, philosophers, and musicians
as he could.
Perhaps, thought Leonardo, his future lay in Milan. So he began
collecting his countless drawings, diagrams of machines and instruments
of war, his notes, his plans for canals and irrigation—even a drawing
for a monument that he knew Ludovico wanted to erect to his father—and
made a package of it to send to Ludovico. Then he sat down to write a
letter to that nobleman. In it he set forth in ten numbered paragraphs
his qualifications as military and naval engineer, architect, and
hydraulics expert. Almost as an afterthought to the tenth item, he
wrote: “I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I
can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who
he may.”
When he had finished the letter, Leonardo took out a strange instrument.
It was a lyre of silver in the shape of a horse’s head. He had designed
it himself, and now with an air of peace, he commenced to play. Its rich
tone was sweet to hear and the music was his own composition.
Leonardo had also designed other instruments—lyres, lutes, viols, and a
kind of zither. He had perfected the single-stringed monochord of
Pythagoras, replacing the tablet of wood with thin strips of drum that
gave the instrument a low or high note according to the tightness of the
string. In addition, he introduced stops or small pistons in the holes
of wooden reed instruments; and, he had even invented a set of
mechanical chords by using a wheel of reeds which plucked a set of
strings as it was turned. His skill as a musician, composer, and singer
was well known among his friends and his bass voice had retained the
pureness of his boyhood.
As it happened, news of Leonardo’s silver lyre had reached Lorenzo de’
Medici. All Leonardo’s paintings, all his designs for cannons and
fortifications, all his inventions for commercial machinery had failed
to interest Lorenzo—yet this single musical oddity excited the ruler’s
curiosity. Leonardo was summoned to the Medici palace.
Lorenzo was enchanted both by the instrument and Leonardo’s musical
talent. When Leonardo had finished playing, Lorenzo, surrounded by
members of his court, applauded and said,
“It would please us if Master Leonardo da Vinci would present us with
this beautiful instrument so that we, in turn, could make a gift of it
to His Highness, Ludovico Sforza, of Milan.”
Leonardo bowed and replied,
“Your Grace’s request is my pleasure. Moreover, Sire, it would further
that pleasure to bear the gift myself to His Excellency in Milan.”
The idea delighted Lorenzo. He immediately directed that Leonardo be
given a letter to Ludovico and that every protection be given Leonardo
for his journey.