Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

At last (1493) the plaster model was finished; all that remained was

to cast it in bronze. In November the model was set up publicly

under an arch to adorn the wedding procession of Lodovico's niece

Bianca Maria. Men marveled at its size and splendor; horse and rider

rose to twenty-six feet; poets wrote sonnets in its praise; and no one

doubted that when cast it would surpass in power and life the

masterpieces of Donatello and Verrocchio. But it was never cast.

Apparently Lodovico could not spare funds for the fifty tons of bronze

required. The model was left in the open while Leonardo busied himself

with art and boys, with science and experiments, with mechanisms and

manuscripts. When the French captured Milan (1499) their bowmen made a

target of the plaster cavallo, and broke off many pieces of it.

Louis XII, in 1501, expressed a desire to cart it off to France as a

trophy. We do not hear of it again.

The great fiasco unnerved and exhausted Leonardo for a time, and may

have disturbed his relations with the Duke. Normally Lodovico paid his

"Apelles" well; a cardinal was surprised to learn that Leonardo

received 2000 ducats ($25,000?) a year, in addition to many gifts

and privileges. `050711 The artist lived like an aristocrat: he had

several apprentices, servants, pages, horses; engaged musicians;

dressed in silks and furs, embroidered gloves, and fancy leather

boots. Though he produced works beyond price, he seemed at times to

dally with his assignments, or to interrupt them for his private

researches and compositions in science, philosophy, and art. In

1497, tired of such delays, Lodovico invited Perugino to come and

decorate some rooms in the Castello. Perugino could not come, and

Leonardo took over the assignment, but the incident left hurt feelings

on both sides. About this time Lodovico, straitened in his finances by

diplomatic and military expenses, fell behind in paying Leonardo's

salary. Leonardo paid his own costs for almost two years, and then

sent the Duke a gentle reminder (1498). Lodovico excused himself

graciously, and a year later gave Leonardo a vineyard as a source of

revenue. By that time Lodovico's political edifice was falling about

him; the French captured Milan, Lodovico fled, and Leonardo found

himself uncomfortably free.

He moved to Mantua (December, 1499), and there made a remarkable

drawing of Isabella d'Este. She let her husband give it away as the

first stage of its journey to the Louvre; and Leonardo, not

relishing such generosity, passed on to Venice. He marveled at its

proud beauty, but found its rich colors and Gothic-Byzantine ornaments

too bright for his Florentine taste. He turned his steps back to the

city of his youth.

III. FLORENCE: 1500-1, 1503-6

-

He was forty-eight when he tried to take up again the cords of

life that he had snapped some seventeen years before. He had

changed; Florence had, too, but divergently. She had become in his

absence a half-democratic, half-puritan republic; he was accustomed to

ducal rule and to soft aristocratic luxuries and ways. The

Florentines, always critical, looked askance at his silks and velvets,

his gracious manners, and his retinue of curly-headed youths.

Michelangelo, twenty-two years his junior, resented the good looks

that so contrasted with his own broken nose, and wondered, in his

poverty, where Leonardo found the funds to maintain so rich a life.

Leonardo had salvaged some six hundred ducats from his Milan days; now

he refused many commissions, even from the imperious Marchesa of

Mantua; and when he worked it was with his wonted leisureliness.

The Servite friars had engaged Filippino Lippi to paint an

altarpiece for their church of the Annunziata; Leonardo casually

expressed his desire to do a similar work; Filippino courteously

surrendered the assignment to the man then generally considered to

be the greatest painter in Europe. The Servites brought Leonardo and

his "household" to live at the monastery, and paid their expenses

for what seemed a very long time. Then one day in 1501 he unveiled the

cartoon for his proposed picture of The Virgin and Child with St.

Anne and the Infant St. John. It "not only filled every artist with

wonder," says Vasari, "but when it was set up... men and women,

young and old, flocked for two days to see it, as if in festival time,

and they marveled exceedingly." We do not know if this was the

full-size drawing that is now a treasured possession of the Royal

Academy of Arts in Burlington House, London; probably it was, though

French authorities `050712 like to believe that it was the first

form of the quite different picture in the Louvre. The smile of tender

pride that softens and brightens the face of the Virgin in the cartoon

is one of Leonardo's miracles; beside it the smile of Mona Lisa is

earthly and cynical. Nevertheless, though this is among the greatest

of Renaissance drawings, it is unsuccessful; there is something

ungainly, and in poor taste, in seating the Virgin unstably across the

widespread legs of her mother. Leonardo apparently neglected to

transform this sketch into a picture for the Servites; they had to

turn back to Lippi, and then to Perugino, for their altarpiece. But

soon afterward, perhaps from a variant of the Burlington cartoon,

Leonardo painted The Virgin, St. Anne, and the Infant Jesus of the

Louvre. This is a technical triumph, from Anne's diademed head to

Mary's feet- scandalously naked but divinely fair. The triangular

composition that had failed in the cartoon here came to full

success: the four heads of Anne, Mary, the Child, and the lamb make

one rich line; the Child and His grandmother are intent on Mary, and

the incomparable draperies of the women fill out the divergent

space. The characteristic sfumato of Leonardo's brush has softened

all outlines, as shadows soften them in life. The Leonardesque

smile, on Mary in the cartoon but on Anne in the painting, set a

fashion that would continue in Leonardo's followers for half a

century.

From the mystic ecstasy of these tender evocations Leonardo

passed, by an almost incredible transition, to serve Caesar Borgia

as military engineer (June, 1502). Borgia was beginning his third

campaign in the Romagna; he wanted a man who could make

topographical maps, build and equip fortresses, bridge or divert

streams, and invent weapons of offense and defense. Perhaps he had

heard of the ideas that Leonardo had expressed or drawn for new

engines of war. There was, for example, his sketch for an armored

car or tank, whose wheels were to be moved by soldiers within its

walls. "These cars," Leonardo had written, "take the place of

elephants... one may tilt with them; one may hold bellows in them to

terrify the horses of the enemy; one may put carabineers in them to

break up every company." `050713 Or, said Leonardo, you can put

terrible scythes on the flanks of a chariot, and a still more lethal

revolving scythe on a forward projecting shaft; these would mow down

men like a field of grain. `050714 Or you can make the wheels of the

chariot turn a mechanism that will swing deadly flails at four

ends. `050715 You can attack a fort by placing your soldiers under

some protective covering; `050716 and you can repel besiegers by

throwing down upon them bottles of poison gas. `050717 Leonardo had

planned a "book of how to drive back armies by the fury of floods

caused by releasing waters," and a "book of how to inundate armies

by closing the outlets" of waters flowing through valleys. `050718

He had designed devices for mechanically discharging a succession of

arrows from a revolving platform, for raising cannon upon a

carriage, for toppling over the crowded ladders of a besieging force

attempting to scale the walls. `050719 Borgia put most of these

contraptions aside as impracticable; he tried one or two in the

siege of Ceri in 1503. Nevertheless he issued the following patent

of authority (August, 1502):

-

To all our lieutenants, castellans, captains, condottieri,

officials, soldiers, and subjects. We constrain and command that the

bearer, our most excellent and well-beloved servant, architect, and

engineer-in-chief, Leonardo Vinci- whom we have appointed to inspect

strongholds and fortresses in our dominions to the end that

according to their need and his counsel we may be enabled to provide

for their necessities- to accord a passage absolutely free from any

toll or tax, a friendly welcome both for himself and his company;

freedom to see, examine and take measurements precisely as he may

wish; and for this purpose assistance in men as many as he may desire;

and all possible aid and favor. It is our will that in the execution

of any works in our dominions every engineer will be bound to confer

with him and follow his advice. `050720

-

Leonardo wrote much, but rarely about himself. We should have

relished his opinion of Borgia, and might have put it illuminatingly

beside that of the envoy whom Florence was sending to Caesar at this

time- Niccolo Machiavelli. But all that we know is that Leonardo

visited Imola, Faenza, Forli, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Urbino,

Perugia, Siena, and other cities; that he was in Senigallia when

Caesar snared and strangled there four treasonable captains; and

that he presented Caesar with six extensive maps of central Italy,

showing the direction of the streams, the nature and contours of the

terrain, the distances between rivers, mountains, fortresses, and

towns. Then suddenly he learned that Caesar was almost dead in Rome,

the Caesarian empire was collapsing, and an enemy of the Borgias was

mounting the papal throne. Once more Leonardo, his new world of action

fading before him, turned back to Florence (April, 1503).

In October of that year Pietro Soderini, head of the Florentine

government, proposed to Leonardo and Michelangelo that each should

paint a mural in the new Hall of the Five Hundred in the Palazzo

Vecchio. Both men accepted, strict contracts were drawn up, and the

artists retired to separate studios to design their guiding

cartoons. Each was to picture some triumph of Florentine arms:

Angelo an action in the war with Pisa, Leonardo the victory of

Florence over Milan at Anghiari. The alert citizens followed the

progress of the work as a contest of gladiators; argument rose

excitedly on the rival merits and styles; and some observers thought

that any definite superiority of one picture over the other would

decide whether later painters would follow Leonardo's bent toward

delicate and subtle representation of feeling, or Michelangelo's

penchant for mighty muscles and demonic force.

Perhaps it was at this time (for the incident has no date) that

the younger artist let his dislike of Leonardo come to flagrant

insult. One day some Florentines in the Piazza Santa Trinita were

discussing a passage in The Divine Comedy. Seeing Leonardo pass,

they stopped him and asked for his interpretation. At that moment

Michelangelo appeared, who was known to have studied Dante

zealously. "Here is Michelangelo," said Leonardo; "he will explain the

verses." Thinking that Leonardo was making fun of him, the unhappy

Titan broke out in violent scorn: "Explain them yourself! You who made

the model of a horse to be cast in bronze and could not cast it, and

left it unfinished, to your shame! And those Milanese capons thought

you could do it!" Leonardo, we are told, flushed deeply, but made no

reply; Michelangelo marched off fuming. `050721

Leonardo prepared his cartoon carefully. He visited the scene of the

engagement at Anghiari, read reports of it, made innumerable

sketches of horses and men in the passion of battle or the agony of

death. Now, as seldom in Milan, he found an opportunity to put

movement into his art. He took full advantage of it, and depicted such

a fury of mortal conflict that Florence almost shuddered at the sight;

no one had supposed that this most refined of Florentine artists could

conceive or picture such a vision of patriotic homicide. Perhaps

Leonardo used here his experience in Caesar Borgia's campaign; the

horrors that he may then have witnessed could be expressed in his

drawing and exorcised from his mind. By February of 1505 he had

finished his cartoon, and began to paint its central picture- The

Battle of the Standard - in the Sala dei Cinquecento.

But now again he who had studied physics and chemistry, and had

not yet learned the fate of his Last Supper, made a tragic

mistake. Experimenting with encaustic techniques, he thought to fix

the colors into the stucco wall by heat from a brazier on the floor.

The room was damp, the winter was cold, the heat did not reach high

enough, the stucco failed to absorb the paint, the upper colors

began to run, and no frenzied effort availed to halt the ruin.

Meanwhile financial difficulties arose. The Signory was paying

Leonardo fifteen florins ($188?) per month, hardly to be compared with

the 160 or so that Lodovico had assigned him in Milan. When a tactless

official offered the month's payment in coppers, Leonardo rejected

them. He abandoned the enterprise in shame and despair, only

moderately consoled by the fact that Michelangelo, after completing

his cartoon, made no painting from it at all, but accepted a call from

Pope Julius II to come and work in Rome. The great competition was a

sorry mess that left Florence ill disposed toward the two greatest

artists in her history.

On and off, during the years 1503-6, Leonardo painted the portrait

of Mona Lisa- i.e., Madonna Elisabetta, third wife of Francesco del

Giocondo, who in 1512 was to be a member of the Signory. Presumably

a child of Francesco, buried in 1499, was one of Elisabetta's

children, and this loss may have helped to mold the serious features

behind La Gioconda's smile. That Leonardo should call her back to

his studio so many times during those three years; that he should

spend upon her portrait all the secrets and nuances of his art-

modeling her softly with light and shade, framing her in a fanciful

vista of trees and waters, mountains and sky- clothing her in

raiment of velvet and satin woven into folds whose every wrinkle is

a masterpiece- studying with passionate care the subtle muscles that

form and move the mouth- bringing musicians to play for her and to

evoke upon her features the disillusioned tenderness of a mother

remembering a departed child: these are inklings of the spirit in

which he came to this engaging merger of painting and philosophy. A

thousand interruptions, a hundred distracting interests, the

simultaneous struggle with the Anghiari design, left unbroken the

unity of his conception, the unwonted pertinacity of his zeal.

This, then, is the face that launched a thousand reams upon a sea of

ink. Not an unusually lovely face; a shorter nose would have

launched more reams; and many a lass in oil or marble- as in any

Correggio- would by comparison make Lisa only moderately fair. It is

her smile that has made her fortune through the centuries- a nascent

twinkle in her eyes, an amused and checked upcurving of her lips. What

is she smiling at? The efforts of the musicians to entertain her?

The leisurely diligence of an artist who paints her through a thousand

days and never makes an end? Or is it not just Mona Lisa smiling,

but woman, all women, saying to all men: "Poor impassioned lovers! A

Nature blindly commanding continuance burns your nerves with an absurd

hunger for our flesh, softens your brains with a quite unreasonable

idealization of our charms, lifts you to lyrics that subside with

consummation- and all that you may be precipitated into parentage!

Could anything be more ridiculous? But we too are snared; we women pay

a heavier price than you for your infatuation. And yet, sweet fools,

it is pleasant to be desired, and life is redeemed when we are loved."

Or was it only the smile of Leonardo himself that Lisa wore- of the

inverted spirit that could hardly recall the tender touch of a woman's

hand, and could believe in no other destiny for love or genius than

obscene decomposition, and a little fame flickering out in man's

forgetfulness?

When at last the sittings ended, Leonardo kept the picture, claiming

that this most finished of all portraits was still incomplete. Perhaps

the husband did not like the prospect of having his wife curl up her

lips at him and his guests, hour after hour from his walls. Many,

years later Francis I bought it for 4000 crowns ($50,000), `050722 and

framed it in his palace at Fontainebleau. Today, after time and

restorations have blurred its subtleties, it hangs in the majestic

Salon Carre of the Louvre, daily amused by a thousand worshipers,

and waiting for time to efface and confirm Mona Lisa's smile.

IV. IN MILAN AND ROME: 1506-16

-

Contemplating such a picture, and reckoning how many hours of

thought must have guided so many minutes of the brush, we revise our

judgment of Leonardo's seeming sloth, and perceive again that his work

embodied the meditations of numberless inactive days; as when an

author on an evening's stroll, or lying sleepless in the night,

molds the next day's chapter, page, or verse, or rolls on the mind's

tongue some savory adjective or bewitching phrase. And in those same

five years at Florence that saw The Virgin, Child, and St. Anne in

all its forms, and Mona Lisa, and the ferocious cartoon and

melting Battle, Leonardo found time to paint other pictures, like

the lovely portrait of Ginevra de' Benci now in Vienna, and the lost

Youthful Christ that at last he yielded to the importunate

Marchioness of Mantua (1504). But her agent sent her a revealing note:

"Leonardo grows very impatient of painting, and spends most of his

time on geometry." `050723 Perhaps in those outwardly idle hours

Leonardo was burying the artist in the scientist, the Apelles in the

Faust.

However, science brought no fees; and though he was living simply

now, he must have mourned the passing of those days when he had been

the artist prince of Milan. When Charles d'Amboise, viceroy of Milan

for Louis XII, invited him to return, Leonardo asked Soderini might he

be excused for a few months from his commitments to Florence. Soderini

complained that Leonardo had not yet earned the money paid him for

The Battle of Anghiari; Leonardo raised the unearned sum and brought

it to Soderini, who refused it. Finally (1506) Soderini, anxious to

keep the good will of the French King, let Leonardo go on condition

that he return to Florence after three months, or pay a penalty of 150

ducats ($1875?) He went; and though he revisited Florence in 1507,

1509, and 1511, he remained in the employ of Amboise and Louis in

Milan till 1513. Soderini protested, but Louis overruled him with

the gracious courtesy of confident strength. To make matters quite

clear, Louis in 1507 appointed Leonardo peintre et ingenieur

ordinaire - painter and engineer in ordinary- to the King of France.

It was no sinecure; Leonardo earned his keep. We hear of him again

decorating palaces, designing or building canals, preparing

pageants, painting pictures, planning an equestrian monument of

Marshal Trivulzio, and collaborating in anatomical studies with

Marcantonio della Torre. Probably during this second stay at Milan

he painted two pictures that came from the lower levels of his genius.

The St. John of the Louvre has the rounded contours of a woman,

and such flowing curls and delicate features as might have graced a

Magdalen. Leda and the Swan (in a private collection in Rome) has

a face and fleshly softness recalling the St. John and the Bacchus

formerly ascribed to Leonardo; but it is most likely a copy from a

lost painting or cartoon by the master. His fame would have gained had

these pictures died at birth.

In 1512 the French were chased out of Milan, and Lodovico's son

Maximilian began a brief reign. Leonardo stayed a while, writing

illegibile notes on science and art while Milan burned with fires

set by the Swiss. But in 1513, hearing that Leo X had been chosen

pope, he thought there might be, in Medicean Rome, a place even for an

artist of sixty-one years; and he set out with four of his pupils.

At Florence Leo's brother, Giuliano de' Medici, attached Leonardo to

his retinue, and assigned him a monthly stipend of thirty-three ducats

($412?). Arrived in Rome, Leonardo was welcomed by the art-loving

Pope, who gave him rooms in the Belvedere Palace. Presumably

Leonardo met- certainly he influenced- Raphael and Sodoma. Leo may

have given him a commission for a picture, for Vasari tells how

surprised the Pope was to find Leonardo mixing varnish before doing

any painting; "this man," Leo is reported to have said, "will never do

anything, for he begins to think of the last stage before the

first." `050724 In truth Leonardo had now ceased to be a painter;

science more and more absorbed him; he studied anatomy at the

hospital, worked on problems of light, and wrote many pages on

geometry. He amused his leisure by constructing a mechanical lizard

with beard, horns, and wings, which he made to flutter by an injection

of quicksilver. Leo lost interest in him.

But meanwhile Francis I, a royal lover of art, had succeeded Louis

XII. In October 1515 he recaptured Milan. Apparently he invited

Leonardo to join him there. Early in 1516 Leonardo bade farewell to

Italy, and accompanied Francis to France.

V. THE MAN

-

What sort of man was this prince of art? There are several alleged

portraits of him, but none before fifty. Vasari speaks with unusual

fervor of "the never adequately praised beauty of his body," and

"the splendor of his appearance, which was extremely beautiful, and

made every sorrowful soul serene"; but Vasari spoke from hearsay,

and we have no representation of this godlike stage. Even in middle

age Leonardo wore a long beard, carefully perfumed and curled. A

portrait of Leonardo by himself, in the Royal Library at Windsor,

shows a broad and benign face, with long flowing hair and a vast white

beard. A magnificent painting in the Uffizi Gallery, by an unknown

artist, pictures him with a strong face, searching eyes, white hair

and beard, and soft black hat. The noble figure of Plato in

Raphael's School of Athens (1509) has by tradition and some scholars

been called a portrait of Leonardo. `050724a A self-portrait in chalk,

in the Turin Gallery, shows him bald to the mid-pate, wrinkled in

forehead, cheeks, and nose, and almost lost in hair. He seems to

have grown old before his time, and died at sixty-seven, despite a

careful vegetarian regimen, while Michelangelo, who scorned hygiene

and entertained one ailment after another, reached eighty-nine. He

dressed in luxurious clothing, while Michelangelo lived in his

boots. Yet Leonardo in his prime was known for his strength, bending a

horseshoe with his hands; he was an expert fencer, and skilled in

riding and managing horses, which he loved as the noblest and

fairest of animals. Apparently he drew, painted, and wrote with his

left hand; this, rather than a desire to be illegible, made him

write from right to left.

We have suggested that his homosexuality was not innate, but grew

out of the unpleasant relation of a burdened stepmother with a bastard

stepson. His need for receiving and returning affection found

satisfaction with the handsome youths whom he later collected. He drew

women much less frequently than men; he acknowledged their beauty, but

seems to have shared Socrates' preference for boys. In all the

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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