8. Also, if need shall arise, I can make cannon, mortars, and light ordnance, of very beautiful and useful shapes, quite different from those in common use.
9. Where it is not possible to employ cannon, I can supply catapults, mangonels, traps, and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general issue. In short, as the variety of circumstances shall necessitate, I can supply an infinite number of different engines of attack and defense.
10. In time of peace I believe that I can give you as complete satisfaction as anyone else in architecture, in the construction of buildings both public and private, and in conducting water from one place to another.
11. Also I can execute sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also painting, in which my work will stand comparison with that of anyone else whoever he may be.
12. Moreover, I would undertake the work of the bronze horse, which shall endure with immortal glory and eternal honor the auspicious memory of the Prince your father and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
And if any of the aforesaid things should seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your park or in whatever place shall please your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.
He got the job. Although, according to Giorgio Vasari, it was probably his courtly charms along with his talents as a musician and party planner that were mostly responsible for his positive reception. It’s amazing to imagine a genius of Da Vinci’s stature devoting his time to the design of pageants, balls, costumes, and other ephemerae, yet as Kenneth Clark points out, “This was expected of Renaissance artists between Madonnas.”
Thirty years earlier, according to a document prepared by his grandfather, Leonardo was born at 10:30 P.M. on Saturday, April 15, 1452. His mother, Caterina, was a peasant from Anchiano, a tiny village near the small town of Vinci, about forty miles away from Florence. His father, Ser Piero da Vinci, who was not married to his mother, was a prosperous accountant and notary for the city of Florence. Young Leonardo was taken from Caterina at age five and raised in the home of his grandfather, also a notary. Because children born out of wedlock were disqualified from membership in the Guild of Notaries, Leonardo was not eligible to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. But for this quirk of fate he could have been the greatest accountant of all time!
In quattrocento Florence, it was a common practice for a master to allow one of his more gifted students to complete some of the details of a painting. Domenico Ghirlandajo, Pietro Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi were some of Leonardo’s fellow apprentices in Verrocchio’s workshop.
Fortunately, he was sent instead to be an apprentice in the studio of the master sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488). Verrocchio’s name translates from the Italian as “true eye,” a name he was given to recognize the penetrating perceptiveness of his work and a perfect title for the teacher of Leonardo (Verrocchio’s masterpiece is the equestrian monument of General Colleoni in Venice, although he is most popularly known for his Putto with a Dolphin in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and his statue of David in the Bargello). The first painting known to be by Da Vinci’s hand is the angel and a bit of the landscape in the lower left-hand corner of Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ.
Da Vinci biographer Serge Bramly, author of the brilliant Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci, comments on the difference between the young Leonardo’s work and that of his teacher: “When the Baptism of Christ is X-rayed, the difference between his [Leonardo’s] technique and Verrocchio’s emerges quite staggeringly. Whereas the master still indicated relief by highlighting contours with white lead (which blocks the X rays and therefore shows up clearly on them), Leonardo superimposes very thin layers of paint, unmixed with white; his application is so smooth and fluid there are no brush strokes to be seen. The X rays go straight through his section; the angel’s face shows up completely blank.” As though he really created an angel.
In The Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari records that when Verrocchio saw the delicate, exquisite, and numinous quality of his pupil’s work, he vowed “never to touch colors again.” Although this may sound like reverential humility or despair at his own limitations, it is most likely that Verrocchio made a business decision to delegate more painting commissions to his gifted apprentice and to concentrate his own talents instead on the profitable practice of sculpture.
“The knowledge of all things is possible.”
– LEONARDO DA VINCI
Leonardo’s precocious talents drew the attention of Verrocchio’s prime patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Magnifico. Leonardo was introduced to the extraordinary milieu of philosophers, mathematicians, and artists cultivated by Lorenzo. There is some evidence that during the period of his apprenticeship, the young Leonardo lived in the Medici home.
After six years with Verrocchio, Leonardo was admitted to the Company of St. Luke, a guild of apothecaries, physicians, and artists headquartered in the Ospedale Santa Maria Nuova, in 1472. It is likely that he took the opportunity, provided through the location of the guild, to deepen his study of anatomy. The most educated guessers assign his anatomically outstanding evocation of St. Jerome in the Vatican Gallery and his Annunciation in the Uffizi to this period.
Verrocchio’s bust of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Magnifico.
The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. The misty background, detailed botanical studies, and luminous curly hair are early trademarks of the maestro’s style.
We can imagine Leonardo in his late teens and early twenties, strolling the streets of Florence in his silk leggings, his long auburn-blond curls cascading over the shoulders of his rose-colored velvet tunic. Vasari extolled “the splendor of his appearance, which was extremely beautiful, and made every sorrowful soul serene.” Renowned for his physical grace, beauty, and talents as a storyteller, humorist, conjurer, and musician, Leonardo probably spent a fair amount of his youthful time enjoying life. But this lighthearted period came to an abrupt close when shortly before his twenty-fourth birthday, he was arrested and brought before a committee of the Florentine government to answer charges of sodomy. One can imagine the traumatic effect upon someone so sensitive of being accused of what was then a capital crime and being held in jail. As he noted, “The greater the sensibility the greater the suffering … much suffering.”
Although the charges were eventually dismissed due to insufficient evidence, the seeds of Leonardo’s departure from Florence had been sown. Nevertheless, he did receive a number of commissions in the next few years including a few from the Florentine government. By far his most significant work of this first Florentine period is The Adoration of the Magi for the monks of San Donato a Scopeto.
In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan. Working under the patronage of Ludovico “the Moor” Sforza, Leonardo created his masterpiece, The Last Supper. Painted on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie from 1495 to 1498, Leonardo’s Last Supper captures, with stunning psychic force, the moment that Christ proclaims, “One of you shall betray me.” Christ sits alone, resigned and serene, at the center of the table as the disciples explode in turmoil around him. Yet in a geometrically perfect composition, the disciples counterbalanced – left and right, higher and lower – in four groups of three, Leonardo brings the uniqueness of each soul to life. Christ’s tranquillity, conveyed through Leonardo’s seamless sense of order and perspective, contrasts with the surrounding human emotion and chaos to yield a moment of transcendence unparalleled in the history of art. Although