He loved art. He said, "In the silence of the night, recall the ideas of the things which you have studied. Design in your spirit the contours and outlines of the figures that you have seen during the day. When the spirit does not work with the hands, there is no artist… Do not allege as an excuse your poverty, which does not permit you to study and become skilful; the study of art serves for nourishment to the body as well as the soul… When all seems easy, it is an unerring sign that the workman has but scant ability and that the task is above his comprehension."
Enjoying all athletic exercises; so strong that he could bend a horseshoe in his hands; exceedingly fond of horses, of which he owned several, – he still found time to be the life and joy of the brilliant society of Florence; always leading, always fascinating with his intelligent conversation and elegant address. And yet the ambitious Leonardo was not satisfied in Florence. The Medici did not encourage him as they did Michael Angelo. Possibly they felt that he lacked a steady and dominant purpose. He finally made up his mind to try his fortune elsewhere, and wrote the following letter to Lodovico Sforza, Regent of Milan: —
"My Most Illustrious Lord, – Having seen and duly considered the experiments of all those who repute themselves masters and constructors of warlike instruments, and that the inventions and operations of the said instruments are not different from those in common use, I will endeavor, without derogating from any one else, to make known to your Excellency certain secrets of my own, and, at an opportune time, I shall hope to put them into execution, if they seem valuable to you. I briefly note these things below: —
"1. I have a method of making very light bridges, fit to be carried most easily, with which to follow the flight of enemies; and others, strong and secure against fire and battle; easy and commodious to lift up and to place in position. I have methods also to burn and destroy those of the enemy.
"2. I know, in case of the siege of a place, how to take away the water from the ditches, and to make an infinite variety of scaling-ladders and other instruments pertinent to such an expedition.
"4. I have also kinds of cannon most commodious and easy to carry, with which to throw inflammable matters, whose smoke causes great fright to the enemy, with serious injury and confusion.
"5. I have means, by excavations and straight and winding subterranean ways, to come to any given point without noise, even though it be necessary to pass under moats and rivers.
"8. When the operations of artillery are impossible, I shall construct mangonels, balistæ, and other engines of marvellous efficacy, and out of the common use; and, in short, according to the variety of events, I shall build various and infinite means of offence.
"9. And when it shall happen to be upon the sea, I have means of preparing many instruments most efficient in attack or defence, and vessels that shall make resistance to the most powerful bombardment; and powders and smokes.
"10. In time of peace I believe I can satisfy very well and equal all others in architecture, in designing public edifices and private houses, and in conducting water from one place to another. I can carry on works of sculpture, in marble, bronze, or terra cotta, also in pictures. I can do what can be done equal to any other, whoever he may be. Also, I shall undertake the execution of the bronze horse, which will be the immortal glory and eternal honor of the happy memory of my lord your father, and of the illustrious honor of Sforza."
The result of this letter was a summons to the court at Milan, where Lodovico, though dissolute, was proud to surround himself with the most brilliant men and women of the age. Leonardo took with him a silver lyre, made in the shape of a horse's head, designed by himself, on which he played so skilfully that the duke and his court were enchanted. "Whatever he did," says Vasari, "bore an impress of harmony, truthfulness, goodness, sweetness, and grace, wherein no other man could ever equal him." Such a union of gentleness and sincerity with genius! Who could withstand its influence!
At Milan Leonardo remained for nineteen years, and here some of his most remarkable works were done.
One of the first pictures painted for the Regent was a portrait of a favorite, the beautiful Cecilia Gallerani, a gifted woman, skilled in music and poetry. Leonardo painted for her a picture of the Virgin, for which she probably was the model. The infant Saviour is represented as blessing a new-blown Madonna rose, the emblem of St. Cecilia.
The next portrait – it is now in the Louvre – was that of another beauty, loved by the duke, Lucrezia Crivelli, formerly called La Belle Féronnière, who was a favorite of Francis I. "The face," says Mr. Sweetser, "is at once proud and melancholy, with a warm and brilliant coloring and soft pure lines, the head full of light, and even the shadows transparent." In honor of both these portraits Latin poems were written by the poets of the time.
Leonardo also painted two fine portraits of the lawful duke, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, and his wife, Isabella of Aragon, the latter picture "beyond all description beautiful and charming," now preserved in the Ambrosian Library. When these persons were married, Leonardo invented for the entertainment of the guests at the wedding feast a mechanical device called "The Paradise," a representation of the heavens and the revolving planets, which opened as the bride and bridegroom approached, while a person in imitation of the Deity recited complimentary verses.
Leonardo now began on the great equestrian statue of the warrior Francesco Sforza. He studied ancient works of art, especially the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, made almost countless drawings of horses in repose or on the battle-field, many of which are still preserved at Windsor Castle, studied every movement of live horses and every muscle of dead ones, and did not complete his clay model for ten long years. A genius like Da Vinci spends ten years on the model of an equestrian statue, and yet some artists of the present day, men and women, paint and mould horses or human beings after a few weeks or months of study, and expect to win fame!
When the clay model was exhibited in public at the royal wedding of the sister of Gian Galeazzo to the Emperor Maximilian, the enthusiasm was very great. All Italy talked of it, and poets and critics extolled it as beyond the works of Greece or Rome. Unfortunately the ensuing wars depleted the treasury of Milan, and prevented the work from being cast in bronze. When the French entered Milan in 1499, it became a target for the archers. Two years later the Duke of Ferrara asked the use of the model that a bronze horse with a statue of himself might be made; but the King of France refused, and the model finally disappeared.
During these years Leonardo founded the Milan Academy. Probably many of the manuscript volumes which he left were notes of lectures delivered to the students. He must have spoken to them on botany, optics, mechanics, astronomy, hydrostatics, anatomy, perspective, proportion, and other matters. He wrote a book on the anatomy of the horse. "He also," says Vasari, "filled a book with drawings in red crayons, outlined with the pen, all copies made with the utmost care from bodies dissected by his own hand. In this book he set forth the entire structure, arrangement and disposition of the bones, to which he afterwards added all the nerves, in their due order, and next supplied the muscles, of which the first are affixed to the bones, the second give the power of cohesion or holding firmly, and the third impart the motion."
Leonardo said in his notes, "The painter who has obtained a perfect knowledge of the nature of the tendons and muscles, and of those parts which contain the most of them, will know to a certainty, in giving a particular motion to any part of the body, which and how many of the muscles give rise and contribute to it; which of them, by swelling, occasion their shortening, and which of the cartilages they surround. He will not imitate those who, in all the different attitudes they adopt or invent, make use of the same muscles in the arms, back, or chest, or any other parts… It is necessary that a painter should be a good anatomist, that in his attitudes and gestures he may be able to design the naked parts of the human frame, according to the just rules of the anatomy of the nerves, bones, and muscles; and that, in his different positions, he may know what particular nerve or muscle is the cause of such a particular movement, in order that he may make that only marked and apparent, and not all the rest, as many artists are in the habit of doing; who, that they may appear great designers, make the naked limbs stiff and without