THERE SHALL BE WINGS--1500
'_Piglierà il prima volo il grande ucello sopra del dosso del suo
magno Cecero, empiendo l'universo del stupore, empiendo di sua fama
tutte le scritture, e gloria eterna al nido dove
nacque._'--LEONARDO DA VINCI.
(The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with
amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory
to the nest whence he sprang.)
I
The little town of Vinci, Leonardo's native place, lay on the western
slope of Monte Albano, in Tuscany, between Florence and Pisa, and not
far from Empoli. There he had an uncle, Ser Francesco da Vinci, who had
amassed wealth in the silk industry, and who, unlike the rest of the
family, was friendly to his nephew. Before journeying to Romagna the
painter proposed to visit Ser Francesco, and if possible to leave Astro
in his charge, the unfortunate smith not yet having recovered from the
effects of his fall. Leonardo hoped that the mountain air, with quiet
and rest, might accomplish more for him than the drugs and experimental
surgery of ignorant physicians. The artist, who had been in Florence for
a few days, journeyed to Vinci alone, riding a mule. He left the town by
the Porta a Prato, and took his way along the banks of the Arno; at
Empoli he left the high road and followed a narrow and winding mountain
path. The day had been clouded and cool; at evening the sun set in a
bank of mist which foreboded a north wind. The prospect on either side
continually widened; the hills became higher; and though their
undulations were still gentle, they gave promise of higher mountains
behind. The ground was carpeted with scanty herbage of a dull green; and
the fields, with fallow stripes of brown earth, the stone walls, the
grey olives were all dull and whitish in tone, suggestive of the calm,
the simplicity, the poverty of the north. Here and there in the
distance, beside some solitary chapel or farmhouse with yellow walls and
barred windows, dark pointed cypresses, such as may be seen in the
pictures by early Florentine masters, rose against quiet hills and an
even background of clear, delicately gradated sky.
The path became gradually steeper, the air fresher and more
invigorating. Sant' Ausano, Calistri, Lucardi, and the Chapel of San
Giovanni were already past. Now the day closed, and one by one the stars
came out in the blue sky, from which the clouds had disappeared. The
wind freshened; the _tramontana_, that piercing wind from the Alps, was
beginning to blow. Every appearance of the lowlands had vanished; as the
plain had passed into hills, so now the hills passed into mountains.
Quite suddenly, at a turn of the road, Vinci came in sight, a little,
crowded, stone-built town, clustering round the black tower of its
ancient castle, clinging to the rock, crowning the peaked summit of a
low but sharply precipitous hill. Lights were gleaming in the windows of
the houses.
At the cross-roads near the foot of the hill there was a little shrine
known to Leonardo from his earliest childhood; a clay image of the
Virgin glazed in blue and white, before which a lamp burned continually.
As he passed he saw a woman kneeling, bowed together dejectedly,
covering her face with her hands, a poor peasant woman, in a thin dark
dress, torn and weather-stained.
'Caterina!' murmured Leonardo. It was his mother's name; she too had
prayed here, a poor peasant.
After crossing the swift mountain stream, the path turned to the right
between garden walls overgrown with weeds. Here it was quite dark, and
the traveller did not see the rose-branch which kissed his face as he
passed, and scented the air with balm. He dismounted at an ancient
wooden door let into the wall, and knocked with a stone on the iron
cramp. It was the house which had belonged to Leonardo's grandfather,
and from him had passed to Ser Francesco. The painter himself had spent
his childhood within its walls. No one answered the knock, nor was there
for a long time any sound but the rushing of the mill-stream, and
presently the quavering bark of an old watch-dog.
An old man came out, very much bowed and wrinkled, with silvery hair. He
carried a lantern, and was very deaf and rather stupid, so that it took
him time to understand who Leonardo was.
However, when at last he recognised him whom he had carried in his arms
forty years earlier, he burst into tears of joy, dropped his lantern,
and, stooping over the painter's hand, mumbled it with his lips, sobbing
out:--
'_O Signore! Signore! Leonardo mio!_'--while the dog wagged his tail to
please the old gardener, pretending that he clearly comprehended what
was taking place. Gian Battista, the old man, explained that Ser
Francesco was away at Marcigliano, where a monk of his acquaintance had
promised a drug to cure him of the stomach-ache; he would not be home
for two days. Leonardo determined, however, to wait for him; more
especially because next day Boltraffio was to bring up Zoroastro from
Florence.
The old man ushered the visitor into the house, and bade his
grand-daughter, a pretty fair-haired girl of sixteen, to prepare supper.
Leonardo declined anything but bread, home-grown wine, and iron-water
from the spring on the property. Ser Francesco, though well-to-do,
continued the hardy, simple style of living which had been a necessity
to his forefathers, and his house was anything but luxurious.
Leonardo entered the familiar apartment, at once kitchen and parlour,
where the few clumsy chairs, settles, and chests had become smooth and
polished with age; a dresser carried heavy pewter dinner-plates, and
medicinal herbs were hanging from the beams of the raftered ceiling. The
walls were whitewashed, and quite bare; there was a brick floor, and an
immense fireplace begrimed with soot.
All this was as Leonardo remembered it, but there was one innovation;
thick dull green glass had been inserted in the window-panes, formerly
covered only with oiled cloth, causing twilight in the room on the
brightest day. Upstairs, in the sleeping rooms, the windows were
protected by wooden shutters, which did not fit close enough to keep out
the cold.
The gardener made a fire of fragrant juniper and mountain heather, and
lit a hanging earthenware lamp, in shape much like the lamps found in
Etruscan tombs. In this remote corner of Tuscany the furniture, the
customs, even the language had preserved traces of immemorial
antiquity. While the young girl was preparing the supper of wine, bread,
and a lettuce salad, Leonardo mounted to the upper rooms, where little
had been changed since his last visit. He saw the same immense
four-poster bed, in which his grandmother had sometimes permitted him to
sleep, and which had now passed, with the other heirlooms, to his uncle
Francesco. On the wall hung the well-remembered crucifix, the image of
the Madonna, the shell for holy water, a bunch of dried grass, called
_nebbia_, and a book of Latin prayers in cursive script, written on
paper deeply yellowed by time.
Returning to the parlour, he sat in the chimney-corner, drank from a
wooden cup with a pleasant scent of olive-wood, and remaining in the
room alone, after Gian and his grand-daughter had gone to bed, abandoned
himself to happy recollections.
II
He thought of his father, Ser Piero da Vinci, the notary of the
Florentine Commune, a man of seventy, white-haired, but still vigorous,
whom he had seen a few days ago at Florence, in his house in the Via
Ghibellina. No one had ever loved life better than Ser Piero, with a
love simple and unabashed. He had cherished a great tenderness for his
first-born, but his legitimate sons, Antonio and Giuliano, fearing lest
their father should alienate part of his patrimony in favour of the
bastard, had done all in their power to induce bad blood between them.
Leonardo now felt himself a stranger in his father's house. His youngest
half-brother, Antonio, was more especially prejudiced against him on
account of his supposed atheism, for Antonio was one of the Piagnoni, a
zealous and rigid follower of Savonarola, and also a conventional,
virtuous, and money-loving trader of the guild of the woolstaplers.
Antonio often addressed his half-brother on the subject of the Christian
faith, the need for repentance, the heresies of the philosophical
thinkers of the day, and he had given him a book compiled by himself, a
_Manual of the Art of Saving the Soul_. Leonardo carried this book in
his pocket, and now, seated in his uncle's chimney-corner, he drew it
forth. It was a little volume, written in the small laborious hand
which befitted a merchant's office.
'The book of confession compiled by me, Antonio di Ser Pietro da Vinci,
a Florentine, sent to Nanna, my sister-in-law; most useful to all who
desire to confess their sins.'
For Leonardo, his brother's book breathed the air of conventional and
bourgeois piety, which had weighed upon his childhood, and had been an
inheritance in his family. A century before his birth the founders of
the house of Vinci were just as prudent, just as avaricious, just as
pious servants of the Florentine Commune as was now Ser Pietro, his
father. Their name appeared first in a writing of 1339, where mention
was made of one Michele da Vinci, a notary. Leonardo imagined him like
Antonio, his well-remembered grandfather. Antonio instructed his sons to
aspire to nothing over high, not to fame, nor to honours, nor to public
office, civil or military, nor to exceptional wealth, nor to exceptional
learning.
'_Starsi mezzanamente è cosa più sicura_,' ''Tis safest to keep the
mean,' was his constant saw; and Leonardo remembered the gravity and
calm assurance with which he enunciated this infallible rule.
After thirty years' absence, sitting under the roof of his grandfather's
house, listening to the moaning wind and watching the logs burning in
the fireplace, Leonardo thought how his own life had been one long
breach of this 'ant and spider' policy; had been an exuberant blossoming
which, according to his brother Antonio, temperance should have measured
with compasses and shorn away with iron shears.
III
Next morning, before the old gardener was awake, Leonardo left the
house, and having traversed the poor little town of Vinci ascended to
Anchiano, the neighbouring hamlet. The path was steep, and as on the
previous day, the sun colourless and wintry. At the verge of the
horizon, the cold cloudless blue of the sky melted into a dull purple.
The _tramontana_ blew steadily from the north, whistling monotonously in
the ears. The vegetation was still colourless and poor; little meagre
vineyards in semicircles, sparse dull grasses, mingled with fluttering
poppies; on all sides dusty grey olives, with knotted, blackened, and
twisted trunks of great antiquity. Entering Anchiano, Leonardo halted,
for he did not recognise the place. Where had been the Castello degli
Adimari with a wine-shop in its only unruined tower, there was now a
vineyard and a new house, with smoothly whitewashed walls. A husbandman
digging trenches among the vines, explained that mine host of the tavern
having died, the land had been sold to a sheepbreeder from Orbignano,
who had cleared away the ruins, and made a vineyard and an olive-grove
on their site.
Leonardo had good reason to ask after that little tavern, for it was
there he had been born.
Fifty years earlier, the village wine-shop had been lively enough. It
stood a little back from the road, its signboard swinging merrily. The
inhabitants of the surrounding hamlets on their way to the fairs of San
Miniato or Fucecchio, chamois-hunters, mule-drivers, custom-house
officers, and other persons who were not too exclusive in their taste
for company--all met here. The maid of the tavern was a girl of sixteen,
an orphan, a _contadina_ from Vinci; her name Caterina.
One day, in the spring-time of 1451, Piero di Ser Antonio da Vinci, a
young notary from Florence, was called to Anchiano to draw up an
agreement for the lease of the sixth part of a certain oil-press.
Business concluded, the peasants invited the notary to drink at the
tavern in the old tower of the Adimari. Ser Piero, always affable, even
among simple folk, accepted the invitation. The party was served by
Caterina, and the young notary, as he afterwards confessed, became
enamoured at first sight. Under pretext of quail-shooting, he delayed
his return to Florence; he haunted the tavern, and laid siege to
Caterina. Ser Piero was already celebrated as a conqueror of women; he
was four-and-twenty, handsome, strong, something of a coxcomb. He
possessed that self-confident eloquence which in a lover is
irresistible. Caterina hesitated, prayed to the Virgin for assistance,
finally succumbed. At the time when the quails took their flight from
the Val di Nievole, she was with child.
Ser Antonio da Vinci soon learned that his son had entangled himself
with the maid-servant at a village hostelry. He despatched him to
Florence and wedded him as quickly as possible to Madonna Albiera di Ser
Giovanni Amadori, who was neither very young nor very fair, but had a
substantial dowry. Caterina he mated also with a peasant named
Accattabrighe di Piero del Vacca, who was said to have beaten his first
wife to death in a drunken fit. The girl resigned herself without
protest, but with inward grief which threw her into a fever when she was
brought to bed. She was unable to suckle her child, and the little
Leonardo was wet-nursed by a goat from Monte Albano. Piero, however,
begged his father to take Caterina's child to be bred in his house. In
those times no one was ashamed of bastards, and they were frequently
educated on the same footing as their legitimate brethren, and even
preferred to them. Leonardo accordingly entered the virtuous and pious
family of da Vinci, and was entrusted to the care of his grandmother,
Lena di Piero da Baccareto.
As the vision of a dream, Leonardo remembered his mother; more
especially her smile, so delicate, so fleeting, full of mystery, and
gently malicious; singularly in contrast with the habitual expression of
her beautiful but melancholy face, which to some seemed even harshly
severe. Once he found that smile again, on the face of a small antique
bronze statue of Cybele, the immemorially ancient goddess of the earth;
the same subtle smile which he remembered as the characteristic of the
young peasant woman of Vinci--his mother.
He thought:--
'Ah, how the mountain women, dressed in poor coarse raiment, excel in
beauty those who are adorned!'
It was said by persons who had known Caterina that her son resembled
her; his long and slender hands, his golden hair, his smile, were
inherited from her. From his father he had a powerful frame, health,
zest of life; from his mother that almost feminine charm. Brought up in
the paternal house, Leonardo had never been entirely separated from his
mother. Her cottage was not far from Ser Antonio's villa; and at mid-day
when Accattabrighe had gone forth with the oxen, the boy would make his
way through the vineyard, climb the wall, and run to his mother. She was
awaiting him on the threshold, distaff in hand; she stretched out her
arms, and when he came she covered his eyes, his lips, his hair with her
kisses. Or at night when Accattabrighe would be at the tavern, dicing
and swilling, the child would escape from his bed, crawl through the
window and down the fig-tree, and run to Caterina's home. Sweet to him
was the cool of the dewy grass, the cry of the night-jar, the very
nettles and stones which wounded his feet; the glow of the far-off
stars, and the very anxiety lest his grandam should awake and miss him.
Yet Monna Lena likewise loved and pampered her grandson, and he
remembered her well, her one vesture of dark brown, her white kerchief,
her dark, wrinkled, kind old face, her lullabies, and the appetising
odour of the 'berlingozzi' which she baked after the ancient Tuscan
recipe. With his grandfather, he had not agreed so well. At first Ser
Antonio had taught him personally; but Leonardo was an unwilling pupil,
and at seven he was sent to school at the Oratory of Santa Petronilla.
But neither was the Latin grammar to his liking. He played truant,
wandering to a wild ravine behind the town where he would lie on his
back watching the flight of the cranes with torturing envy; or unfolding
the cups of flowers, wondering at their coloured petals and
pollen-covered stamens, moist with honey. Sometimes during his
grandfather's absence the little Nardo would escape for whole days into
the mountains, making his way by the tracks of goats and along the edges
of precipices to the summit of Monte Albano. Thence he could see a
boundless expanse of meadows, pastures, groves, and forests; the marshes
of Fucecchio; and Prato, Pistoia, Florence, and the snowy peaks of the
Alps; when the sky was clear, the misty blue of the Mediterranean Sea.
At last he would return home, dusty, sunburnt, his hands scratched, his
garments torn; but his grandam, seeing his happiness, had not the heart
to punish him, or to betray him to Ser Antonio. The boy lived alone; his
father and his uncle Francesco he saw but seldom, for they were away in
Florence; with his schoolmates he did not associate. Their sports
displeased him; on one occasion when they tore the wings from a
butterfly and laughed at its writhings, he frowned, turned pale, and
went away. Complaints of his surliness were in consequence made to Ser
Antonio; great displeasure followed, threats of flogging, and an actual
imprisonment for three days in a cupboard under the staircase.
Later, recalling this link in a long chain of injustice, he wrote in his
diary:--
'If as a child you were put in prison for doing your duty, what will
they do to you as a man?'
IV
Not far from Vinci a large villa was in course of construction by the
Florentine architect, Biagio da Ravenna, a pupil of Alberti. Leonardo
watched the raising of the walls, the levelling of the stonework, the
elevation of huge blocks by machinery. One day Ser Biagio talked with
the lad, and was astonished by the understanding which he showed. At
first in jest, then seriously, he taught him the first principles of
arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and mechanics. The teacher marvelled at
the facility with which the boy caught each idea as it were on the wing,
and made it his own; it seemed as though he were not learning but
remembering. The grandfather looked askance at what he called
'caprices,' and he thought it a bad omen that the boy used preferably
his left hand when he wrote; for sorcerers, necromancers, and those who
make compacts with the devil are, of course, always born left-handed!
His suspicion of the lad increased when a neighbour from Fortuniano
assured him that the old woman of the village on Monte Albano who had
provided the black goat for the suckling of the babe was an undoubted
witch.
'Do what you will,' thought the old notary, 'but if you bring up a wolf
he will always have his eye on the forest. Well, well! Submit to the
will of Heaven! There's no family without _one_ abortion.'
And he waited with desperate anxiety for the birth of a legitimate heir
to Piero, his favourite son; since Nardo, the product of illicit love,
was showing himself thus clearly 'ill-born' into this eminently
respectable family. 'Twas a tale of Monte Albano, which indeed accounted
for its name, that many plants and animals there mysteriously changed
their natural colour into white; so that the traveller, roaming its
woods and meadows, would chance upon white violets, white strawberries,
white sparrows, white nestlings in a brood of blackbirds. In like manner
the little Nardo was one of the wonders of the White Mountain; a
changeling in the virtuous and commonplace family of the Florentine
notary; a big white cuckoo in a nest of blackbirds.
V
When the boy had reached the age of thirteen, his father removed him
from Vinci to his house. Florence; since then he had rarely visited his
birthplace. But long after, in one of his note-books of the year 1494,
when he was in the service of the Duke of Milan, he wrote, 'Caterina,
came in July last year.' It might signify the beginning of some kitchen
wench's service; in reality it referred to his mother. Her husband had
died, and feeling that her own time might be short, she desired to see
her son at least once again. She joined a party of pilgrims on their way
to Milan for adoration of the Holy Nail; journeyed from Tuscany, and
presented herself at Leonardo's house. He received her with pious
affection; for her he was ever the little Nardo, who had come secretly
by night with bare feet and nestled at her side.
She would have returned to Anchiano, but her son would not permit it. He
placed her in a quiet and commodiously-fitted cell of the Convent of
Santa Chiara, near the Porta Vercellina. Later she fell ill, and at her
own request was taken to the _Ospedale Maggiore_, built by Francesco
Sforza and the finest hospital in Milan. Here he visited her for months
every day, at the last scarcely leaving her for an hour. Yet he had told
none of his friends nor even his pupils of her presence in Milan.
But when for the last time he had pressed his lips on the cold hand of
this peasant woman who had been his mother, it seemed to him that to her
he owed everything. He honoured her with a sumptuous funeral.
Six years later, after the fall of Ludovico Sforza, when he was leaving
Milan, he found a small carefully wrapped bundle in one of his chests.
It contained a couple of coarse canvas shirts and three pair of
goats'-hair stockings, all made by Caterina's hand, and brought to him
from Vinci. He had never worn them, but now coming upon the poor things
among his scientific books and mechanical apparatus, and the garments of
fine linen to which he had habituated himself, he felt inexpressibly
touched. Nor in the years which followed, when he was a solitary and
weary wanderer from country to country, from town to town, did he ever
omit to take this poor little parcel with him, packed among the dearest
of his treasures.
VI
Such were Leonardo's recollections as he climbed the slopes of Monte
Albano, familiar to him in his childhood. He sat down under the shelter
of a rock and surveyed the well-remembered landscape. Dwarfed and
gnarled oak-trees surrounded him still hung with withered leaves,
perfumed juniper, which the peasants called _scopa_ (besom), pale shy
violets, and low bushes of dried mountain heather, exhaled that
intangible freshness which is the odour of spring. Far away the valley
of the Arno met the sky; but to the right rose bare lofty mountains with
undulating shadows, twisted hollows like gigantic serpents, and wide
ravines, delicate purple in colour. At his feet was Anchiano, white and
shining in the sunlight; further away, Vinci clung to its little conical
hill like a wasp's nest; the castle tower distinct and black as the two
cypresses by the side of the Anchiano road.
Nothing was changed since the day when he had first climbed these paths.
Forty years before the _scopa_ had grown as luxuriantly, the violets and
thyme had scented the air, the oaks had rustled their withered leaves;
as now, Monte Albano had seemed colourless, bare, northern. Etruria of
the ancients, now Tuscany, land of perpetual spring, land of unfailing
renaissance--to Leonardo it wore that subtle and tender smile
brightening a beauty otherwise too austere, which he had first seen on
the countenance of Caterina his peasant mother.
He rose and pursued his way, the path growing more rugged, the wind
colder, sharper, more northerly. Memories of his youth crowded upon his
soul.
VII
Ser Piero da Vinci had prospered. Skilful and good-hearted, his life ran
upon greased wheels. Live and let live, was his maxim, and he stood well
with all, more especially with the clerical party. Procurator of the
monastery of the Santissima Annunziata, and of many other rich
foundations, he acquired wealth in abundance, adding largely to his
property, but never changing the modest fashion of life which he had
learned from Ser Antonio. His wife died when he was eight-and-thirty,
but he soon married a young and beautiful girl, Madonna Francesca di Ser
Giovanni Lanfredini. She, like her predecessor, was childless; and
Leonardo, the bastard, lived with his father, and had every prospect of
becoming his heir.
At that time Paola dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a famous astronomer and
mathematician, lived at Florence. He had written a letter to Christopher
Columbus, assuring him on the authority of his calculations that the
route to India by the Antipodes was neither so long nor so arduous as
had been supposed, encouraging him to make the adventure, and
prophesying its success. Columbus therefore carried out what had been
conceived in the lonely cell of the Florentine scholar, and was, as it
were, the instrument played by the hand of a skilled musician.
Toscanelli was said by his contemporaries to 'live like a saint';
reserved, frugal, chaste, he frequented neither the brilliant Medicean
court, nor the vain assemblies of the Neo-Platonist imitators of
antiquity. His face was curiously ugly, but redeemed by eyes of great
brilliance.
One evening a lad, scarcely more than a child, knocked at his door and
was coldly received, being suspected of mere idle curiosity. But short
conversation with the young Leonardo--for it was he--convinced the
astronomer, as before it had convinced Biagio da Ravenna, of his
wonderful aptitude for mathematics. Ser Paola became his teacher; on
summer nights they went together to Poggio del Pino, one of those
fragrant, pine-clad, heather-carpeted hills, girdling the City of
Flowers; there Toscanelli had built his observatory. He taught the boy
all he himself knew of the laws of the universe. It was from these
lessons that Leonardo dated his faith in the experimental study of
nature, as yet too much neglected by the philosophers.
Ser Piero da Vinci, though he put no difficulties in the way of his
son's studies, advised him to choose some more lucrative occupation;
having noticed his bent towards modelling and drawing, he showed some of
the boy's work to Andrea Verrocchio, the painter and goldsmith; and
shortly afterwards Leonardo was formally entered as one of this artist's
pupils.
VIII
Verrocchio, the son of a poor furnace-stoker, was seventeen years the
senior of Leonardo. His face was placid, flat, and pale, with a double
chin. Only in his tight shut lips and piercing eyes was there evidence
of singular intelligence. Spectacles on nose, magnifier in hand, he sat
in his dark _bottega_ near the Ponte Vecchio, looking more like a small
shopkeeper than a great artist. A disciple of Paolo Uccello, he, like
his master, affirmed that Perspective must be based on science.
'Geometry,' he said, 'being a part of mathematics, mother of all
knowledge, is also the mother of drawing, which is the father of all the
arts.' Complete knowledge and complete enjoyment of beauty were to him
identical. Unlike Botticelli, and others of his kidney, Verrocchio was
neither ravished by extraordinary beauty nor repelled by unusual
deformity. In both he found occasion for study. He was also the first
master who made anatomical models. If Botticelli had found the
fascination of art in the miraculous, in the fabulous, in that mystic
haze which confounds Olympus with Golgotha--for Verrocchio it lay in
patient investigation and a firm grasp of the verities of nature. The
miraculous was not true for him. Truth was the miracle.
This was the man to whom Ser Piero brought his seventeen-year-old son;
he became Leonardo's teacher; further, he became his disciple. The monks
of Vallombrosa had commissioned Ser Andrea to paint them a Baptism of
Christ, and the master set his pupil to execute the kneeling angel which
formed part of the composition. The result showed Verrocchio that his
scholar knew intuitively and clearly all that he himself had dimly
guessed and sought for gropingly, slowly and laboriously, through a fog.
Later it was said that Verrocchio gave up painting because jealous of
the young man's superiority; in reality there was never anything but
harmony between the two. Each supplied the deficiency of the other. The
pupil had lightness and precision of touch; Verrocchio, perseverance and
concentrated attention. They worked together without envy, without
rivalry, scarce knowing how much they owed each other.
At that time Verrocchio executed the bronze group for Orsanmichele,
which was known as the 'Incredulity of St. Thomas.' It was altogether
unlike the celestial dreams of the Beato Angelico or the delirious
idealism of Sandro Botticelli. In St. Thomas's mysterious smile, as he
put his fingers into the print of the nails, was exhibited for the first
time the boldness of man before his God; Reason face to face with
Miracle.
IX
Leonardo's first independent work was a cartoon for a curtain of
Flanders tissue, a gift from the Florentines to the King of Portugal.
The subject was the Fall of Man; and such was the accuracy with which
the palm branches, the flowers, and the animals of Paradise were drawn,
that Vasari the critic was stupefied at so great patience.
Eve, stretching out her hand to the Tree of Knowledge, wore the same
smile of bold curiosity which Verrocchio had given to St. Thomas.
A little later Ser Piero employed his son to paint one of those round
wooden shields called _rotelle_, which were used as ornaments for
houses, and which generally carried some allegorical design. Leonardo
painted an animal, terrible as the face of Medusa. He had collected
lizards, snakes, crickets, spiders, centipedes, moths, scorpions, bats,
every sort of noxious creature, and had studied their characteristics.
By a process of selection and exaggeration of their individual truth, he
had put together a monster, such as had never existed, yet which might
have been possible, deducing what is not from what is with the precision
of an Euclid or a Pythagoras. The beast was issuing from its den in the
rock; grating its black and shining scales upon the gravel. Fetor
exhaled from its gaping jaws, smoke from its nostrils; its eyes were
flame. Horrible as was the monster, the wonder of it lay less in its
deformity than in its charm, which was no less powerful than the charm
of beauty.
Day and night Leonardo had studied and painted in the stifling room
empoisoned by the stench from the dead reptiles; at last the picture was
finished, and he summoned his father to see it. He had placed it on a
wooden stand surrounded by black cloth, the light being so disposed that
only the monster was illuminated. Ser Piero came in, saw the beast, and
involuntarily drew back. Recovering himself, he looked again, and his
expression changed from great fear to great pleasure.
'The _rotella_ is ready,' said Leonardo; 'it produces the effect at
which I have aimed. You may take it away.'
Next he received an order for an 'Adoration of the Magi' from the monks
of San Donato a Scopeto. In the sketch for this picture he exhibited a
knowledge of anatomy and of the outward expression of the emotions,
surpassing that of any previous painter. Against a background almost
Hellenic in its beauty, he showed the Mother of God with the divine
Infant, who, smiling shyly, seemed to marvel at the precious gifts
brought by the strangers. They, wearied and bowed down by the load of
ancient and earthly wisdom, bending their heads, shading their eyes,
were absorbed in contemplation of that miracle of miracles, the Epiphany
of God in man.
In his picture of the Fall, Leonardo had realised the boldness of
reason--the wisdom of the serpent; in this of the Adoration he had shown
the innocence of the dove, the humility of faith. One picture the
complement of the other; the two exhibited the full circle of his
philosophy.
But the second picture was never finished. In the quest for perfection
he made difficulties for himself which his brush could not overcome. In
the words of Petrarch, '_al dissetamento era d'ostacolo l'eccessiva
brama_'--'excessive thirst hindered its own quenching.'
Meanwhile, Ser Piero married his third wife, Margherita, who brought him
two sons, Antonio and Giuliano. The step-mother hated Leonardo, and
accused her husband of wasting the inheritance of his lawful children
upon a bastard, foster-child of a witch's goat. The young painter had
enemies also among his fellow-students; and it was one of them who
brought against him and against Verrocchio the accusation of which
Cesare da Sesto had told Giovanni Boltraffio. The calumny had acquired
some verisimilitude from the exceptional friendship between master and
scholar, and from the fact that Leonardo, though the handsomest man of
young Florence--('in his exterior, says a contemporary, there was such
radiance of beauty that at sight of him sad hearts were
gladdened')--eschewed the society of women. The accusation came to
nothing, but he left Verrocchio, and henceforth painted independently.
Reports now got about touching his heresies and atheism, and it became
increasingly difficult for him to remain in Florence. Ser Piero
introduced him to Lorenzo de' Medici; uselessly, however, for _Il
Magnifico_ disapproved spirits too daring and unconventional, and
demanded a constant and servile adulation which Leonardo was ill fitted
to supply. The tedium of inaction oppressed him. He entered into
negotiations with the Egyptian ambassador for the purpose of obtaining
the post of chief architect to the 'diodario' of Syria, though he knew
that it would require his embracing the Mahometan faith. His one desire
was to escape from Florence. Chance favoured him. He made a
many-stringed silver lute in the form of a horse's head, which took
Lorenzo de' Medici's fancy. Lorenzo sent it by the hand of the inventor
to Milan, as a gift to Ludovico Sforza.
Leonardo was received at the Lombard court not as a man of science, not
as a painter, but as the _sonatore di lira_--the 'player of the lyre.'
But before starting he had written a long letter to the duke, setting
forth how useful he might be to him.
'Most Illustrious Lord,--Having studied and estimated the works of the
present inventors of warlike engines, I have found that in them there is
nothing novel to distinguish them. I therefore force myself to address
your Excellency that I may disclose to him the secrets of my art.
'1st. I have a method for bridges, very light and very strong; easy of
transport and incombustible.
'2nd. New means of destroying any fortress or castle (which hath not
foundations hewn of solid rock) without the employment of bombards.
'3rd. Of making mines and passages, immediately and noiselessly, under
ditches and streams.
'4th. I have designed irresistible protected chariots for the carrying
of artillery against the enemy.
'5th. I can construct bombards, cannon, mortars, 'passavolanti': all new
and very beautiful.
'6th. Likewise battering rams, machines for the casting of projectiles,
and other astounding engines.
'7th. For sea-combats I have contrivances both offensive and defensive;
ships whose sides would repel stone and iron balls, and explosives,
unknown to any soul.
'8th. In days of peace, I should hope to satisfy your Excellency in
architecture, in the erection of public and private buildings, in the
construction of canals and aqueducts. I am acquainted with the arts of
sculpture and painting, and can execute orders in marble, metal, clay,
or in painting with oil, as well as any artist. And I can undertake that
equestrian statue cast in bronze, which shall eternally glorify the
blessed memory of your lordship's father and of the illustrious house of
Sforza.
'And if any of the above seem extravagant or beyond the reach of
possibility, I offer myself prepared to make experiment in your park; or
in whatsoever place it may please your Excellency to appoint; to whose
gracious attention I most humbly recommend myself. LEONARDO DA VINCI.'
When he caught his first glimpse of the snow-clad Alps shining above the
green plain of Lombardy, he felt himself entering upon a new life, in a
strange land which was to become his true country.
X
Such was the half century of life upon which Leonardo looked back as he
ascended Monte Albano. The path had become direct, vegetation was left
below, the mountains were bare, solitary, and terrible, as belonging to
another planet. He was blinded by fierce gusts of icy wind. Stones
breaking away from his feet fell noisily into the ravine. He was still
ascending, and at every step the prospect widened. He found exhilaration
in the effort of climbing, gradually conquering the great mountains and
compelling them to give up their treasures. Florence was out of sight,
but the spacious district of Empoli was spread at his feet; first the
mountains, cold dull purple with broad shadows; then the unnumbered
billowy hills from Livorno to San Geminiano. Everywhere was air,
emptiness, space. The narrow footpath seemed to vanish; he fancied
himself flying over this boundless expanse on gigantic wings. The
realisation that he had no such equipment produced in his mind the
wondering alarm felt by a man who is suddenly deprived of his legs. He
remembered how in boyhood he used to watch the flight of cranes; and
how, hearing their cry, he had fancied it a summons to himself, and had
wept for disappointment that he could not obey. He remembered releasing
his grandfather's cage-birds, and joying in the wild swoops of their
recovered liberty. He remembered listening to the tale of Icarus, who
had thought to fly on waxen wings, but had fallen and perished; and how,
when bidden by his teacher to name the greatest of ancient heroes, he
had answered without a moment's hesitation 'Icarus, son of Dædalus.' He
remembered, too, his pleasure in finding a clumsy representation of his
hero among the bas-reliefs of Giotto's campanile in Florence. He
retained one other memory of his childhood which, however absurd it
might have seemed to another, had for him a prophetic meaning. He wrote
of it:--
'I remember that once in infancy, lying in my cradle, I fancied that a
kite flew to me and opened my lips, and rubbed his feathers over them.
It would seem to be my destiny all my life to talk about wings.'
The question of human flight had indeed become the preoccupation of his
whole life. Now, even as forty years before, standing again on the slope
of the White Mountain it seemed to him an intolerable injury, even an
impossibility, that men should remain wingless.
'He who knows all can do all,' thought Leonardo. 'I have only to _know_;
and there shall be wings.'
XI
On one of the final zigzags of the path he felt himself touched from
behind, and turning saw Giovanni Boltraffio who, hat in hand, eyes half
shut, head bent, was battling with the wind, and had evidently been
calling for some time unheard. When he saw the Master with long hair
streaming on the blast, and look of indomitable will, his thoughtful
eyes, deep lines on his forehead, and overhanging brows contracted in a
frown, seemed to the disciple so strange and terrible as to be barely
recognisable. Even the broad folds of his red cloak bellying in the wind
were like the pinions of some strange bird.
Giovanni shouted as loud as he could, but he was so much out of breath
he could only articulate broken phrases.
'Just come--from Florence. Letter--important--told to give it into your
hands at once!'
Leonardo guessed at a communication from Cæsar Borgia, and quickly
recognised the writing of Messer Agapito his secretary.
'Go down at once,' said Leonardo, seeing Giovanni blue with cold. 'I
will follow you immediately.' And he watched Boltraffio as he fought his
way through the storm, clinging to frail boughs of low-growing shrubs,
crawling over rocks, bending double, absurdly small and weak in
comparison with his surroundings and the fury of the elements. He
appeared an epitome of all human weakness; and, watching him, Leonardo
was reminded of the curse of some grave impotence which seemed to have
lain upon his whole life, which had, he feared, condemned him to eternal
sterility, besides depriving him of the sympathy of his fellows.
'My Wings!' he thought, 'Ah! will not they fail like everything else?'
And he remembered the words spoken by Astro in his delirium, the answer
of the Son of Man when the devil would have seduced him by the terror of
the abyss, by the fascination of flight: 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord
thy God!'
He raised his head, set his teeth, and again addressed himself to the
ascent, conquering the mountain and the storm. The path had disappeared.
He guided himself over the bare rocks where, perhaps, none had trodden
before. Suddenly he found himself upon the edge of a precipice, till now
unseen; misty dull purple filled with air and yawned beneath his feet as
if the void and endless heaven were below no less than above. The wind
had become a hurricane, and howled and roared like continuous thunder.
Leonardo could have fancied that unseen evil birds--flock after
flock--were sweeping past him on gigantic wings. No further advance was
possible; never had the long familiar idea appealed to him with such
force; never had he been so impressed by the logic, by the necessity, of
the power of flight.
'_There shall be wings!_' he cried, 'if the accomplishment be not for
me, 'tis for some other. It shall be done. The spirit cannot lie; and
Man, who shall know all and who shall have wings, shall indeed be as a
god.'
And he pictured to himself the King of the Air, Him who can pass all
bounds and supersede all the laws which limit human intelligence, the
Son of Man coming in his glory and power, the _Magno Cecero_, 'the Great
Swan,' borne on wings immense, white, shining as light itself, in the
blue of heaven.
And his soul was filled with a joy akin to terror.
XII
As he descended from Monte Albano the sun was setting. The pointed
cypresses were black against the golden sky; the receding mountains
tender and translucent as amethyst. The wind had subsided. He was
approaching Anchiano, and the hill town of Vinci was already in sight.
He stopped, and murmured:--
'From the mountain which takes its name from the conqueror
(Vinci--Vincere) Man shall take his first flight!'
And gazing at his birthplace, there at the foot of the White Mountain,
he repeated: 'Eternal glory to the nest from whence he sprang!'
The letter from Messer Agapito announced the approaching siege of
Faenza, and demanded the immediate presence of the new engineer and
architect in Cæsar Borgia's camp.
Two days later Leonardo left Florence for Romagna.