THE DIARY OF GIOVANNI BOLTRAFFIO--1494-1495
_L'amore di qualunque cosa è figliuolo d'essa cognitione. L'amore à
tanto più fervente, quanto la cognitione è più certa._
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
(Knowledge of a thing engenders love of it; the more exact the
knowledge, the more fervent the love.)
'Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.'--ST. MATT. x. 16.
GIOVANNI'S DIARY
On the 25th of March 1494 I entered myself as a disciple in the studio
of Messer Leonardo da Vinci, the Florentine master.
* * * * *
This is the order of his teaching:--perspective; the dimensions and
proportions of the human body; drawings from examples by the best
masters; drawings from nature.
* * * * *
To-day Marco d'Oggionno, my fellow-disciple, has given me a book, taken
down entirely from the words of our Master. The book begins thus:--
'The purest joy is given to the body by the light of the sun; to the
spirit, by the clear shining of mathematics. That is why the science of
Perspective (in which the contemplation of the bright line--_la linia
radiosa_--true solace of the eye, goes hand in hand with the clearness
of mathematics--true solace of the mind) must be exalted above all other
human research and science. May He who said, "I am the true Light," lend
me His aid that I may know the science of Perspective--the science of
His light. I divide this book into three parts: the first, the
diminishing, by distance, of the _size of objects_; the second, the
diminishing of the _distinctness of the colour_; the third, the
diminishing of the _clearness of the outline_.'
* * * * *
The Master cares for me like a father. When he learned of my poverty, he
refused to take the monthly payment agreed on.
* * * * *
The Master says:--
'When you shall have grasped well your Perspective, and hold in your
mind the proportions of the human body, then in your walks abroad notice
assiduously the postures and movements of men, how they stand, walk,
talk, and quarrel; how they laugh and fight; the manner of their faces
when they are doing these things, and the manner of the faces of the
bystanders who want to separate the fighters; and the faces of those who
look on with apathy. Set all in pencil in a note-book of coloured paper,
which you should always have about you. When the booklet is filled, take
another; put the first one away and keep it. In no wise destroy nor rub
out these sketches; for the movements of the body are so endless that no
memory could hold them all. That is why you must look on these rough
sketches as your best teachers.'
I have made myself such a sketch-book.
* * * * *
To-day in the Vicolo dei Pattari, not far from the cathedral, I
encountered my uncle, Oswald Ingrim. He told me he renounced me; and
accused me of ruining my soul in the house of the heretic and the
infidel.
* * * * *
Whenever I am heavy of heart, I have but to look on his face to grow
light and gay. How wondrous are his eyes; clear, blue, pale, and
cold--cold as ice. The voice, most pleasant and soft. The most cruel,
the most obdurate, can by no means resist his persuasiveness. He sits at
his work-table, immersed in thoughts, parting and smoothing his golden
beard, long and soft as the silk of a maiden. When he talks with any
one, then he partly closes one eye with a merry and kind expression; his
glance from under the thick and overhanging eyebrows penetrates the very
soul.
* * * * *
He dislikes lively colours, and new and discommoding fashions; nor does
he affect perfumes. His linen is of Rhenish stuff, marvellous clean and
fine. His black velvet _berretto_ carries no plumes nor ornaments. His
suiting is of black; but he wears a mantle of dark red which reaches to
the knee, and hangs in straight folds, as was the old mode in Florence.
His movements are easy and quiet, but notable. He is like no one else.
* * * * *
Shoots excellently with the bow or arbalist, rides, swims, is a master
of fence with the small sword. To-day I saw him hit the highest point of
the cupola of a church with a small thrown coin. Messer Leonardo, by the
skill and the strength of his hand, surpassed every competitor.
He is left-handed; but with that same left hand, for all it looks
delicate and soft as a woman's, he bends iron fetters and twists the
tongue of a brazen bell.
* * * * *
While I was watching him, the child Jacopo ran in laughing and clapping
his hands.
'Cripples, Messer Leonardo, monsters! Come your ways into the kitchen, I
have brought you such beauties that you shall lick your fingers for
joy!'
'Whence came they?'
'From the porch of Sant' Ambrogio. Beggars from Bergamo! I promised
you'd give them supper if they'd let themselves be painted.'
Leaving the picture of the Virgin unfinished, Leonardo betook him to the
kitchen, I following. We found two brothers, very old and swollen with
dropsy, great hanging _goîtres_ on their throats. With them was the wife
of one of them, a withered little old body, whose name Ragnina (little
spider) seemed very suitable.
'You see,' cried Jacopo triumphantly, 'I said you would be pleased!
Don't I know exactly what you like?'
Leonardo sat down by the hobgoblin cripples, ordered wine to be brought,
served it to them himself, questioned them kindly, told them absurd
stories to make them laugh. At first they were restive and suspicious,
not understanding why they had been brought in. But when he related an
anecdote about a dead Jew, whom his compatriots, to evade the law
forbidding the burial of Hebrews within the confines of Bologna, had cut
in pieces, pickled, spiced, and sent to Venice where he was eaten by a
Florentine Christian, the Little Spider was like to burst with laughter.
Soon all three were tipsy, and laughing and talking and making the most
horrible faces. I was disgusted and looked away; but Leonardo watched
them with deep and eager curiosity; and when their hideousness had
reached its height, took out his sketch-book and drew with the same
delighted attention that he had lavished on the smile of the Virgin.
In the evening he showed me a whole collection of caricatures;
grotesques not only of men but also of beasts--terrible shapes, like
those which haunt sick men in their delirium, the human and the bestial
compounded to make one shudder. The muzzle of a porcupine, its quills
bristling, its under lip pendent, loose, and thin as a rag, displaying
in a human grin two long white teeth like almonds; an old woman, her
nose spread and hairy, and scarce bigger than a mole, her lips
monstrously thick, like those squat and viscid fungi which grow out of
withered trunks.
* * * * *
Cesare da Sesto tells me that sometimes the Master, having met some
monstrosity in the street, will follow it for a whole day. Great
deformity, he says, is as rare as great beauty; only mediocrity is
negligible.
* * * * *
Marco d'Oggionno works like an ox, and carries out all the teacher's
rules; the more he tries the less is his success. He is endowed with an
invincible constancy. He thinks patience and labour shall possess all
things; nor doth he despair of some day becoming a great painter.
He takes also, more than any of us, rare delight in the master's
inventions. One of these days he carried his note-book to the Piazza del
Broletto, and according to the Master's system he made the required
indexed notes of those faces which struck him chiefly in the crowd. But
on reaching home he could in no wise translate his notes into a living
face. Likewise did he fail in the use of Leonardo's spoon for measuring
out colour. His shadows remain thick and unnatural, just as his faces
are wooden and devoid of all charm. Marco accounts for this by some
small failure in his obedience to the rules. Cesare da Sesto ridicules
him.
'This most excellent Marco,' he says, 'is a martyr in the cause of
science. His example shows that all these measures and rules be worth
nothing. To know how infants are born does not suffice to beget one.
Leonardo deceiveth himself and others; he teaches one thing and performs
another. When he paints he follows no rule save that of inspiration; yet
he is not content to be a great artist, but would be a man of science
also. I fear lest, coursing two hares, he run down neither.'
It may be that in this mockery of Cesare's there is a modicum of truth;
but no love for the Master. Leonardo hearkens to him, praises his
intelligence, and never is wroth with him.
* * * * *
I am watching how he works at his _Cenacolo_. Betimes, before sunrise,
he goes to the convent refectory, and paints till the shadows close in
on him, nor does the brush fall from his hands, nor does he remember
food and drink. Sometimes he lets whole weeks go by in which he touches
not his paints. Sometimes he will stand for two hours on the scaffold
before the picture examining it and criticising what he has done. At
other times I have known him rush forth in the mid-day heat through the
blazing streets, being drawn by some viewless power to the monastery; he
will mount his scaffold, do two touches or mayhap three, and rush away
at once.
* * * * *
He is working at the countenance of the Apostle John. To-day he should
have completed it. Instead he remained at home with the child Jacopo,
watching the flight of hornets, wasps, and flies. So absorbed is he in
studying the construction of their bodies that 'twould seem on it
depended the destiny of the human race. Having perceived that the hind
legs of flies serve them as a rudder, he experienced greater pleasure
than if he had found the secret of perpetual felicity. He thinks the
discovery useful, and like to serve his apparatus for flight. Poor
Apostle John!
* * * * *
To-day there is a new distraction, and the flies are abandoned. The
Master is working on a design, beautiful and wondrous delicate, which is
to form the coat-of-arms of an academy not yet existing outside the
brain of the duke. The device is a square containing a crown of cords,
geometrically intertwined, in knots without beginning or end. I could
not restrain myself, but reminded him of the unfinished apostle. He
shrugged his shoulders, and without raising his eyes from the crown of
cords, he said through his closed teeth:--
'Patience! time enough! The head of John will not run away!'
I begin to comprehend Cesare's malice!
* * * * *
The duke has entrusted to him the construction within the palace of
hearing-tubes concealed in the thickness of the walls, after the fashion
of the Ear of Dionysius. Leonardo began with ardour, but now has cooled
and catches at every pretext for laying the work aside. The duke hurries
him and is wroth; this morning he summoned him several times to the
palace, but the Master is occupied with experiments on vegetables. He
has cut away the roots from a pumpkin, leaving but one small shoot,
which he assiduously drenches with water. To his great joy the plant has
not withered. 'The mother,'says he, 'nourishes well her children.' Sixty
little oblong pumpkins have formed.
* * * * *
Cesare says Leonardo is the greatest of the libertines. He has written a
hundred and twenty volumes on matters of natural science, but all in
fragments, in dispersed notes on flying leaves; and he keeps a MS. of
over five thousand pages in such disorder that he himself cannot find
anything in it.
* * * * *
Coming into my little room, he said: 'Giovanni, have you noticed that
small rooms dispose the mind to profundity, large ones to breadth? And
have you observed how the images of things, seen through the shadow of
rain, are clearer than in the sunlight?'
* * * * *
Two days of work on the head of John the Apostle. But, alas! something
has been lost through flies, pumpkins, cats, and the ear of Dionysius.
He has again failed to complete the head, and now, disgusted with his
paint-box, retired into geometry. He says that the odour of the paint
nauseates him, and the sight of the brushes. Thus the days pass; at the
caprice of chance, and submitting to the will of God, we, as it were,
lie in port waiting for a wind. Fortunately he has forgotten the
flying-machine or we should starve.
What to others appears perfection is to him teeming with error. He aims
at the highest, at the unattainable, at what is for ever beyond the
reach of the hand of man. Therefore his productions rest incomplete.
* * * * *
Andrea Salaino has fallen sick. The Master nurses him, sits up at night,
watches by his pillow; but no one dare speak to him of medicine. Marco
d'Oggionno surreptitiously introduced a pill-box, but Leonardo found it,
and cast it from the window. Andrea himself desired to be bled, and
spoke of a most skilled phlebotomist of his acquaintance; but the Master
grew properly indignant, speaking of all doctors with epithets most
injurious.
'Heed rather to preserve than to cure your health; and beware of
physicians.' He added with a smile, good-natured yet malicious, 'Every
man scrapes up his money only to give it to them, the destroyers of
lives.'
* * * * *
The Master has taken in hand a treatise on painting; the Lord knows when
he will finish it. Latterly he has been much busied (I likewise, helping
him) with aerial and line perspective, both in light and shade, and he
has given me discourses and fugitive thoughts upon art. I will now write
down such as I can remember of the noblest of sciences; and may those
into whose hands these pages shall fall, remember in their prayers the
soul of the great Florentine master, Leonardo da Vinci, and the soul of
Giovanni Boltraffio, his humble disciple.
* * * * *
The Master says 'All which is beautiful, even humanly beautiful, dies,
except in art. (_Cosa bella mortal passa e non d'arte._)
'He who despises painting despises the philosophical and refined
contemplation of the world. Painting is the grandchild of Nature and the
kinswoman of God.'
* * * * *
'_Il pittore deve essere universale._ O painter, be thy variety infinite
as the phenomena of Nature! Carrying on what God has begun, seek to
multiply, not the works of men's hands, but those of the eternal hands
of God. Imitate no one; let thy every work be a new phenomenon of
Nature.'
* * * * *
'For him who is master of the fundamental natural laws; for him who
_knows_, it is easy to be universal; because all bodies, whether of men
or of beasts, are really formed on the same principles.'
* * * * *
'Take heed lest in thee the greed for gold suffocate the love of art;
and remember that the conquest of glory excels the glory of conquest.
The memory of the rich perishes with them, the memory of the wise
endures for ever; because science and wisdom are the legitimate children
of their father, and money is but his bastard. Love glory, and be not
fearful of poverty. Consider how many philosophers have laid down the
wealth to which they were born, that they might enrich their souls with
virtue, and have lived content in misery.'
* * * * *
'Knowledge rejuvenates the soul, and lightens the burden of old age.
Therefore gather wisdom, that thou mayest gather sweets for thine age.'
* * * * *
'There is a generation of painters who, to hide their meagre knowledge,
shelter themselves behind the beauty of gold and azure, and say they
give not of their best because of the scanty payment they receive, and
that they could surpass any man were they as well rewarded as he. O
fools! what hinders them to make something beautiful, and to say, "This
picture is such a price, and this other is less, and this, third least
of all; showing that they have work for every price?"'
* * * * *
'Not infrequently the lust for gold brings even the good masters down to
the level of craftsmen. Thus my countryman and comrade, Perugino the
Florentine, arrived at such rapidity of execution, that once he replied
to his wife, who called him to dinner, "Serve the soup while I paint one
more saint!"'
* * * * *
'The artist who has no mistrust of himself will never attain to the
supreme heights of art. Well for thee if thy work be higher, ill for
thee if it equal, woe to thee if it fall below, thine own estimation!
Pitiful is that artificer who, persuaded that he has produced a
masterpiece, questions wonderingly how God can have helped him to such
purpose.'
* * * * *
'Listen with long suffering to the criticisms which men pass on your
picture; and weigh their words to see if, perchance, they, faulting it,
be in the right. If they be right, correct; if they be wrong, feign
deafness; or if they be persons worthy of notice, show them their error.
The judgment of an enemy is often nearer the truth than the judgment of
a friend; hatred is often profounder than love. The intellect of him who
hates, sees and penetrates better than the intellect of him who loves. A
true friend is like thyself; but an enemy resembles thee not, and in
this is his strength. Hatred throws light. Remember this, and despise
not the criticisms of thine enemy.'
* * * * *
'Bright colours captivate the vulgar, but the true artist seeks not to
please the vulgar, but the elect. His pride and his aim is not in the
dazzling by colour, but in the performance of a miracle, namely, that by
the play of light and shadow, things which are flat should appear round.
He who neglecting the shadows, sacrifices them to the splendour of
tinting, is like the vain babbler who sacrifices significance for
sounding and furious words.'
* * * * *
'Above all, beware of coarse, sharp outlines. The shadows on a young and
delicate body should be neither dead nor stony, but light, evasive, and
transparent like air; for the human body is itself transparent, as you
can convince yourself by looking through your fingers at the sun. Too
brilliant a light gives not good shadows; wherefore be wary of it.
Observe the tenderness and charm on the faces of men and women as they
pass along the shadowed street between the dark walls of the houses
under twilight on clouded days. This is the most perfect light; your
shadow, gradually vanishing into the light, will fade like smoke--like a
soft music. Remember that between the light and the dark there is
something which participates in both; a bright shadow or a dark light.
Seek for it, O painter! for therein lies the secret of captivation--of
charm.'
These words he spoke, and raising his hands as if wishing to imprint the
lesson on our memories, he repeated, with indescribable emphasis,
'Reject coarse and heavy outlines; confound your shadows in the light,
letting them vanish little by little, like smoke; like a tender music.'
Cesare, who was listening attentively, raised his eyes and smiled, as if
about to dispute; nevertheless he remained silent.
* * * * *
Later, speaking on another topic, Leonardo said:--
'Falsehood is so shameful that even in praising God it dishonours Him.
Truth is so excellent that in speaking of the vile it ennobles. Between
truth and falsehood there is a difference no less than between light and
darkness.'
Here Cesare, suddenly struck by an idea, fixed scrutinising eyes on the
Master.
'How?' he said. 'Yet, Master, have you not told us that between the
darkness and the light there exists an intermediary, something which
participates in both, and is, as it were, bright shadow and dark light.
Then, between truth and lie--but no, 'tis absurd. Master, your metaphor
lands me in great temptation! For the painter who, you say, seeks
enslaving charm in the compounding of light and shadow, may rightly seek
also the twilight between true and false.'
At first Leonardo frowned, and seemed indignant that one of his pupils
should exhibit such an obsession; then he replied smiling:--
'Tempt me not! Get thee behind me, Satan!'
I had expected a different answer; to my thinking, Cesare's words
merited better than an idle jest. In me, at any rate they excited a
tumult of strange and tormenting ideas.
* * * * *
To-night I beheld him, standing in the rain in a close and fetid alley,
absorbed in the contemplation of certain spots of dampness on a stone.
He stood there a long while, and the urchins in the street nudged each
other and mocked him. I asked him what he beheld in the stone.
'Giovanni,' he said, 'see the splendid monstrous figure! Chimera, with
her jaws wide; and beside her an angel with flying hair and airy flight,
fleeing from the monster. The caprice of chance has produced a picture
worthy of a great artist.'
He traced with his finger the outline of the damp spot, and to my
amazement I recognised that what he said was true.
'Many,' he said, 'think this habit of mine an absurdity; but experience
has taught me how useful it is for the education of the fancy. I have
taken from such things what I wanted, and brought them to completeness.
Listen to far-off bells; you can find in their confused clang the very
names and words you lack.'
* * * * *
For tears the eyebrows contract; for laughter they expand.
The Master goes gladly with those condemned to death, watching in their
faces the degrees of their agony and terror; and the very executioners
wonder at him, when he makes a study of the last quivering of the
muscles.
'Nay, Giovanni, you understand not the man he is!' cried Cesare. 'He
will lift a worm from the path lest his foot crush it; but if his own
mother were a-dying he would watch the contracting of her eyebrows, the
wrinkling of her forehead, the drooping of the corners of the mouth.'
* * * * *
'Note the expression and the gestures of deaf-mutes.'
* * * * *
'When you watch persons, do it without letting them know; so shall their
movements, their laughter, and their tears be more natural.'
* * * * *
'An artist whose own hands are angular and bony, is apt to depict people
with angular and bony hands; for every man likes the faces and the
bodies which resemble his own. The ugly painter will choose ugly models,
and _vice versâ_. Let not the men and the women whom you paint seem your
blood-brothers either in beauty or in deformity. This is a fault which
attaches to many Italian artists. In painting there is no error more
treacherous. I consider the temptation arises from the fact that the
soul makes the body which belongs to it. Of old it shaped and fashioned
it in its own likeness; and now when again it is called upon to fashion
a new body with brushes and paint, it yearns to reproduce the shape in
which it has long had its habitation.'
* * * * *
The Master tells us, ''Tis not experience, the mother of all arts and
sciences, which deceives men, but imagination, which promises them what
experience cannot give. Experience is not to blame, but our own vain and
senseless lusts. Experience would have us aim at the possible, and not
strive ignorantly for what we can never obtain; lest we become the prey
of despair.'
When we were alone Cesare repeated these words, and cried as in
disgust:--
'Hypocrisy and lies!'
'How has he lied?' asked I.
'Not to aim at the impossible! not to follow the unattainable! Well, it
may be some one will believe his words, but 'twill not be I nor you! I
have penetrated to his inmost soul.'
'And what see you there, Cesare?'
'All his life through, he has done nothing but aim at the impossible,
nothing but follow the unattainable! What else is he about in this
machine to turn men into birds, in that other to set them in water like
fish? And the chimerical monsters he finds in the spots on walls and in
the outline of the clouds; and the mystic charm of divine faces seen in
angelic visions--whence does he derive all this? From experience? from
his diagram of noses, and his ladle for measuring out paint? Why does he
deceive himself? Why lie? His mechanical studies are for the performance
of a miracle; for raising himself into heaven by flight, for using
natural forces to do that which is against Nature. He stretches out
towards God or devil, he cares not which, provided 'tis something
unexampled, beyond possibility. The less is his faith, the greater is
his quenchless curiosity.'
These words of Cesare's have filled my soul with anxiety. For several
days I have thought them over: I would fain forget them, but I cannot.
To-day, however, the Master, as if in answer to my doubts, has said to
me:--
'A little knowledge puffs up; great knowledge makes humble. Blasted ears
raise proud heads; those full of grain bow down.'
'Then,' asked Cesare with his accustomed ironic smile, 'how happed it
that Lucifer, prince of the cherubim, and renowned for wisdom, was
moved by wisdom not to humility, but to pride that cast him into hell?'
Leonardo did not answer at once; presently he told us this fable.
'Once a drop of water aspired to reach the sky. Winged by fire, it rose
up in fine steam. But mounted on high it met air still finer and very
cold, and the fire deserted it. Then it shivered and grew heavy, and,
its presumption changing into terror, fell as rain. And cast down from
heaven it fell upon the earth, and was drunk up by dryness; and for long
time it was shut up in prison underground, and there did penance for its
sin.'
He added no more, but I thought I understood.
* * * * *
The longer I live with him the less I know him. To-day he has again been
playing like a child. And such strange pranks! Before going to bed I was
sitting in my chamber reading my favourite book, _The Little Flowers of
Saint Francis_, when suddenly a cry rang through the house from our old
woman, the kind and faithful Maturina--
'Fire! Help! Help! Fire!'
I rushed out. An appallingly thick white smoke filled the Master's
studio. He was there himself, standing among clouds like some ancient
magi, and illumined by unearthly blue flames. His face was merry, and he
looked jovially at the pale and terrified Maturina, and at Marco, who
had rushed in with two buckets of water, to empty over the drawings and
manuscripts strewing the table. Leonardo, however, stopped him, saying
it was all a jest. Smoke and flames came from a heated brazier
containing a powder of frankincense and resin. I cannot say which took
the greater pleasure in the joke, Leonardo or the little scamp, that
jackanapes Jacopo. Only a good man could laugh as does Leonardo! I swear
it is not true what Cesare says of him! The Master set down in his
note-book the effect produced by terror upon Maturina's wrinkles.
* * * * *
He speaks scarce at all of women. Once, however, he said that men
maltreat them even as they do their beasts. He ridicules the platonic
love which is the fashion; and when a certain youth read to him a
peevish sonnet in the manner of Petrarch, he replied in three lines,
about Petrarch's loving Laura merely to season his own daily food.
Cesare says that Leonardo has so wasted himself on mechanics and
geometry that he has had no time for love of women. But he adds, depend
upon it he is no Galahad; he must certainly have embraced a woman at
least once, out of mere curiosity.
* * * * *
I should never have talked to Cesare about Leonardo. We seem to watch
him like spies, and Cesare finds a malevolent pleasure in detecting new
blots in his character. And what does Cesare want with me? Why does he
poison my mind?
We now frequently visit a scurvy little tavern by the Cantarana Canal,
just beyond the Porta Vercellina. We talk for hours over a half-flagon
of sour wine, amid the oaths of boatmen who finger filthy cards and lay
plots together for extortion. To-day Cesare asked me if I knew that at
Florence Leonardo had been accused of immorality. I could not believe my
ears, and thought him raving or drunken. Then he told me the story in
detail. When Leonardo was twenty-four years of age, and his master, the
famous Florentine, Andrea Verrocchio, forty--an anonymous charge against
them both was put into one of those round wooden boxes called _tamburi_,
which hang on the pillars in the churches, most notably in the Cathedral
of Santa Maria del Fiore. In April 'the guardians of the night and of
monasteries' inquired into the matter, and acquitted the accused on the
condition, however, that the charge should be repeated. The fresh
accusation was made in June, and they both were finally acquitted.
Nothing more was heard of the accusation; but Leonardo soon left
Verrocchio and Florence, and came hither to Milan.
'Oh, doubtless, 'tis an abominable calumny,' said Cesare with his
meaning smile; 'though, friend Giovanni, you do not yet know what
contradictions nestle in his heart. 'Tis a labyrinth so intricate that
even the devil would lose himself therein. He certainly appears chaste,
but----'
I had started to my feet, probably pale enough, and cried:--
'How dare you, Cesare?'
'What the devil is the matter with you? Calm yourself. I will say no
more. I was a hundred miles from _that_ construction----'
'What are you insinuating? Speak out!'
'What folly is this? Why so hot? Is it worth the separating of two such
friends as we? Rather let us drink. To your health, sir. _In vino
veritas._'
And we drank and resumed our talk.
But no, no! this suffices! I will forget it; I will abstain from
speaking of the Master with this man. Cesare is not his enemy alone, but
also mine. He is a bad fellow.
Now I feel nauseated. It is odious to see the hideous delight some men
feel when they have thrown mud upon the great.
* * * * *
The Master says: 'Thy strength, O painter, is in solitude! When you are
alone you belong wholly to yourself (_Se tu sarai solo tu sarai tutto
tuo_), but if you have even one companion then you are only half your
own; possibly less than half if your friend be indiscreet. If you have
many friends, you fall deeper into the same slough. And if you say, "I
will withdraw myself, and practise the contemplation of Nature," you
will not succeed, for you will be lending one ear to the chatterings of
your friends, and inasmuch as no man can serve two masters, you will
perform ill the duties of a friend, and still worse the observances of
art. And if you say, "I will withdraw beyond the reach of their voices,"
then you will be reckoned a madman, and you practically end by being
alone.
'But if you must have company, let it be that of the painters and
scholars in your studio; all other friendships will be to your
detriment. Remember, O painter, that your strength is in solitude!'
Leonardo consorts not with women, because his soul must be absolutely
free.
* * * * *
Sometimes Andrea Salaino complains that our existence alternates between
the monotony of hard work and the tedium of inaction; and he declares
that the pupils of other Masters lead a gayer life. He is as fond of
fine clothes as a maid, and would like the noise of feastings and
merriment and the fire of amorous eyes.
Leonardo to-day, having overheard the reproaches and laments of his
favourite, stroked his long curls affectionately, and said smiling:--
'Be of good cheer, lad. I'll take you to the next feast at the castle.
Meantime, shall I tell you a fable?'
Andrea clapped his hands like a child, and threw himself at the Master's
feet, all attention. Leonardo began:--
'Once upon a time a large stone, lately washed up by the stream, lay in
a retired place high up above the road and surrounded by trees, moss,
flowers, and grasses. Looking down on his road he saw a number of stones
like himself, and he said, "What profit have I here among these
short-lived plants? I will descend among my kinsmen and live with stones
like myself." Thereupon he rolled himself down to the road, and took a
place amongst his brothers. And the wheels of heavy wains ground him,
and the hoof of the ass, and the nailed boot of the pedestrian. Then he
lifted himself a little, and thought he should breathe more freely; but,
lo! became bespattered with mud, and the droppings of animals; and his
former fair retreat in the garden of flowers seemed to him a paradise.
Thus it is, Andrea, with those who leave their meditation and plunge
into city disquiet.'
* * * * *
The master permits harm to no living creatures, not even to plants.
Zoroastro tells me that from an early age he has abjured meat, and says
that the time shall come when all men such as he will be content with a
vegetable diet, and will think on the murder of animals as now they
think on the murder of men.
* * * * *
To-day we passed by a butcher's shop, and he pointed to the dead
carcases of calves and oxen and pigs, and said with disgust:--'Truly man
is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs.' And then added
sorrowfully: 'We live by the death of others. We are burial-places.'
* * * * *
God forgive me, I have again been with Cesare to that accursed tavern!
We spoke of the Master's compassionateness for animals.
'You refer, Giovanni, to his eating no flesh?'
'It may be so. I know----'
'You know nothing! Messer Leonardo is not moved by goodness, but by the
love of singularity.'
'What mean you by that?'
He laughed somewhat forcedly.
'Peace. Let us not quarrel. Wait, and I will show you certain of his
drawings--i' faith, very interesting drawings.'
So upon our return we crept, thief-like, into the Master's studio.
Cesare rummaged till he had found a certain concealed sketch-book which
he showed to me. My conscience pricked me; nevertheless I looked with
interest.
They were drawings of colossal bombards, explosive balls, many-barrelled
guns, and such like engines of war, executed with no less delicacy than
he lavished on the divine countenances of his Madonnas. Especially do I
remember one bomb, half a _braccio_ in diameter, called 'Fragilità,' the
construction of which Cesare explained to me. It was cast of bronze, the
hollow within being filled with layers of gypsum. Leonardo had written
on the margin beside the sketch:--
'Most beautiful bomb. Very useful. After leaving the gun it ignites
while one might pronounce an _Ave Maria_.'
'_Ave Maria!_' cried Cesare. 'How does this use of a Christian prayer
please you, my friend? You see the breed of his inventions! And have you
heard his definition of war?'
'No.'
'"_Pazzia bestialissima_, the most brutal of madnesses." A pretty
definition, methinks, for the inventor of these engines. Here is your
holy man who eats no flesh, who lifts a worm from the path lest a boot
should tread on it! Both one and the other simultaneously! to-day a
devil, to-morrow a saint. A Janus, with one face toward Christ, the
other towards Antichrist. Which is the true Leonardo, which the false!
Who can say? And he does it all with a light heart, with a mystic
seductive grace. _He is at play._'
I listened in silence, a chill like the chill of death piercing my
heart.
'Eh? What is the matter, friend Giovanni? Quite chapfallen? You take it
overmuch to heart. Oh, you'll soon be used to it, just as I am. And now
let us go back to the _Tartaruga d'oro_, and sing:--
"Dum vinum potamus
Fratelli cantiamo
A Bacco sià onore!
Te deum laudamus."'
I said no word, but fled from him.
* * * * *
To-day Marco d'Oggionno said to the Master:--
'Messer Leonardo, they accuse us of too scanty church-going, and of work
on holy days as on others.'
'Let bigots talk at leisure, and heed them not,' answered Leonardo. 'The
study of Nature is well-pleasing to God, and is akin to prayer. Learning
the laws of Nature, we magnify the first Inventor, the Designer of the
world; and we learn to love Him, for great love of God results from
great knowledge. Who knows little, loves little. If you love the Creator
for the favour you expect of Him, and not for His most high goodness and
strength, wherein do you excel the dog who licks his master's hand in
the hope of dainties? But reflect how that worthy beast, the dog, would
adore his master could he comprehend his reason and his soul! Remember,
children, love is the daughter of knowledge; and the deeper the
knowledge of God the greater the fervency of love. Wherefore in the
Scripture it is written, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as
doves."'
'But who,' retorted Cesare, 'can combine the sweetness of the dove with
the cunning of the serpent? To my thinking we must choose between the
two.'
'Not so,' cried Leonardo; 'there must be a fusion. I TELL YOU PERFECT
KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE AND PERFECT LOVE OF GOD ARE ONE THING AND THE
SAME.'
* * * * *
How fain would I return to thy silent and holy cell, O Fra Benedetto!
Tell thee all my grief, and fall upon thy breast, that thou mightest
pity me and remove from my soul this burden, O beloved father! O gentle
shepherd, who dost abide by the word of Christ--'Blessed are the poor in
spirit!'
* * * * *
At times the Master's face is so peaceful and innocent, so full of
dovelike harmlessness, that I am ready to pardon all, to believe all, to
trust him with my very soul. Then of a sudden the subtle lines of his
lips take on an expression so incomprehensible, something which so
inspires me with fear, that I seem to be looking through the
transparency of water into the profundity of the abyss. There is in his
soul some impenetrable mystery; and I recall one of his sayings:--
'Very deep rivers flow underground.'
* * * * *
The Duke Gian Galeazzo is dead; and they say that Leonardo has been the
occasion of his death by means of poisoned fruit. God is my witness,
that 'tis not of my own will I lend an ear unto this terrible
accusation, and that I would fain reject it out of hand. Yet there
stands ever before my eyes that vision of the tree, with its leaves
distilling dew, and its fatal fruit maturing in the greenish mist, lit
by the moon, pregnant with terror and death. Oh, that I had never seen
it!
'"Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."'
* * * * *
Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord! Lord hear my voice; let Thine
ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! Like the thief upon
the Cross, I confess Thy name: Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest
into Thy kingdom.
* * * * *
Leonardo has begun to work on the countenance of the Christ.
* * * * *
The duke has commanded him to construct an engine for raising the Holy
Nail. With mathematical accuracy he weighs in a scale the instrument of
the Passion of the Saviour, as if it were a fragment of old iron; so
many ounces, so many grains. To him it is only a figure among figures; a
part among parts of a lifting machine; ropes, wheels, levers, and
pulleys.
* * * * *
Says the apostle, 'Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have
heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists,
whereby we know that it is the last time.'
* * * * *
To-night a crowd of people demanding the Holy Nail surrounded our house,
crying, 'Sorcerer! infidel! poisoner! Antichrist!' Amused, Leonardo
listened to the howl of the mob, and when Marco would have discharged
his arquebus at them, it was the Master who restrained him.
The Master did not change from his impenetrable serenity, and when I
fell at his feet supplicating a word, a single word, to dispel my
doubts--and I swear by God I should have believed him--he would not or
could not speak.
Little Jacopo, stealing out, evaded the crowd, and having met the guard
of the captain of justice, led them to the house: and at the instant
when the doors were giving way under the weight and the blows of the
crowd, soldiers took them in the rear, and the rioters scattered. Jacopo
is wounded, struck on the head by a stone, and like to die.
* * * * *
To-day I assisted in the cathedral at the Feast of the most Holy Nail.
At the moment recommended by the astrologers it was raised on high.
Leonardo's machine acted without a hitch: neither rope nor pulley was
visible. Through clouds of incense the round casket with the crystal
sides and the golden rays in which the nail was set, rose of itself like
the rising sun. 'Twas a triumph of mechanics! The choir sang:--
'Confixa clavis viscera
Tendens manus vestigia
Redemptionis gratia,
Hic immolata est Hostia.'
Then the casket was arrested and lodged in a dark niche above the high
altar, surrounded by five ever-flaming lamps.
The Archbishop intoned:--
'_O Crux benedicta quae sola fuisti digna portare Regem cælorum et
Dominum, Alleluia!_'
The whole assembled multitude fell on their knees repeating Alleluia!
And the usurper of the throne of Milan, Ludovico the assassin,
prostrated himself with the rest, and weeping, raised his hands to the
Holy Nail.
After which the populace was glutted with wine, with the flesh of
beasts, with five thousand measures of pease, and six hundredweight of
salt. Forgetting their murdered lord, they feasted and drank, and
cried--'_Viva Il Moro! Viva il Chiodo!_'
Bellincioni has composed some hexameters, in which we learn that by
virtue of the ancient nail of iron the age of gold shall be renewed.
After leaving the cathedral the duke came to Leonardo and embraced him;
kissing his lips, calling him his Archimedes, and, thanking him for the
beautiful machine, he promised to present him with a pure-blooded
Barbary mare and two thousand imperial ducats. Then condescendingly
tapping him on the shoulder, he said, 'Now you'll have time to finish
the head of your Christ.'
* * * * *
'A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.'
I can no longer endure my torment; I perish; I become crazed! My reason
loses itself in the duplicity of these thoughts.
Fly, fly, ere it be too late!
* * * * *
I rose in the night-time, tied up my clothes and my books in a bundle,
took a thick stick, felt my way through the darkness to the studio,
where I left on the table the thirty florins which I owe for the last
six months' teaching--I have sold my mother's emerald ring to do
this--and without leave-takings, abandoned Leonardo's house for ever.
* * * * *
Fra Benedetto tells me that from the time I left him he has not ceased
to pray for me; and he has had a revelation in his sleep that God has
brought me back into the true path. He is faring to Florence to visit
his sick brother, a Dominican in the monastery of San Marco, where Fra
Girolamo Savonarola is prior.
* * * * *
Praise and thanksgiving unto Thee, O Lord! Thou hast brought me out of
the shadow of death, from the mouth of the pit. I renounce to-day the
wisdom of this world, upon which is the seal of the dragon with the
seven heads, the beast which walketh in darkness, which is Antichrist. I
renounce the fruit of the poisonous tree of knowledge, the pride of vain
understanding, of that wisdom which is inimical to God, of whom the
Devil is the father.
I renounce every aspiration after the enchantments of the world. I
renounce all that is not subordinated to Thy glory, Thy will, Thy
wisdom, O Christ!
Illumine my soul with Thy light, deliver me from fatal duplicity of
thought; make sure my footsteps in Thy paths, and shelter me under the
shadow of Thy wings.
My soul, praise the Lord! I will praise the Lord so long as I have my
being; I will yet sing praises unto my God.
* * * * *
Two days hence, Fra Benedetto and I go to Florence. I desire, with the
blessing of this my second father, to enter as novice in the Convent of
San Marco, under the guidance of the holy and elect Fra Girolamo
Savonarola.
* * * * *
Here ends the diary of Giovanni Boltraffio.