Feinberg L.J. The Young Leonardo: Art and Life in Fifteenth-Century Florence
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26. First Thoughts for the Virgin of the Rocks 177
Figure 76.
Francesco Melzi, Flora,
c. 1510,temperaand
oil on wood panel,
transferred to canvas,
St. Petersburg, State
Hermitage Museum.
Scala/Art Resource,
NY.
Courtauld sketches) with the eccentric painter Piero di Cosimo, who
quickly fell under Leonardo’s spell. Piero executed a half-length Mary
Magdalene around 1500–1, and thereafter his oeuvre became increas-
ingly Leonardesque. He even went so far as to follow Leonardo’s advice
of looking at wall stains (in Piero’s case, the dried “spittle” of “sick
people”) to stimulate his imagination, envisioning in them marvelous
“landscapes” and “battles.”
The half-length Magdalene genre remained viable in Florence
until at least the middle of the century, thanks to the generation of
artists who matured around the time of Leonardo’s death, includ-
ing the talented young men Domenico Puligo, Jacopo Pontormo,
Francesco Bacchiacca, and Michele Tosini. Puligo painted a portrait
of an unidentified lady as the saint, now in Ottawa, around 1520;
and between 1526 and 1529, Pontormo executed a moving portrait
of Francesca Capponi, the young daughter of a principal patron, as
a penitent Magdalene. Francesco Ubertini, called Bacchiacca, pro-
duced a half-length Magdalene in the early 1540s. Tosini, around 1550,
178 The Young Leonardo
more than thirty years after Leonardo’s demise, painted a glamorous
Magdalene that corresponds closely in pose to the Courtauld studies.
After he returned to Milan in 1506–08, Leonardo must have
handed off some (now lost) Magdalene drawings or cartoons to his
dedicated followers, Bernardino Luini, Francesco Melzi, and Giovanni
Pietro Rizzoli, called Giampietrino. As a result, an entirely new genre
of half-length, beautiful-lady pictures seems to have grown out of his
workshop. In addition to the numerous Magdalenes that Leonardo’s
disciples produced, such as Giampietrino’s two paintings of c. 1516
and Luini’s of c. 1520, they created many, stylistically related portraits
of courtesans and mistresses, most thinly disguised as the mythological
figure of Flora; a resplendent example, by Melzi, can be found in the
Hermitage Museum (fig. 76).
Most commonly associated with spring, Flora, the ancient Italian
goddess of flowers, in Roman antiquity “presided” over an annual fes-
tival, the Floralia, which was notorious for its licentiousness. During
that celebration, Flora was worshipped as the patroness of prostitutes,
and in her honor nude women danced and public orgies erupted, until
more prudent attitudes prevailed in Rome in the third century a.d.
One legend holds that the rites of the Floralia derived from a posthu-
mous cult dedicated to a wealthy prostitute, who called herself Flora
and bequeathed funds to the state for bawdy parties in perpetuity.
While the painted Floras of Melzi and other Leonardo followers do
not fully exploit this richly sordid history, they do communicate effec-
tively the prurient nature of the deity and of her intended beholder.
Apparently, the popular, half-length Mary Magdalene and courte-
san conceits spread rapidly from Milan and Lombardy to the neigh-
boring Veneto region, where there was no shortage of mistresses and
prostitutes. Many prominent Venetian artists, including Paris Bor-
done, Vicenzo Catena, Palma Vecchio, Bartolommeo Veneto, and,
later, the great Titian turned the themes into a flourishing industry.
With time, the alluring courtesan genre became, virtually, a pan-
European phenomenon. Painters at the court of Fontainebleau and in
pious Antwerp, notably the anonymous artist dubbed the “Master of
the Female Half-Figures,” created several memorable variants on the
subject. Ironically, so far as we know, Leonardo never took the time
to produce a courtesan or Magdalene painting himself.
27. Milan
I
n the early 1480s, leonardo watched, no doubt enviously,
as some of his successful contemporaries left Florence for major
opportunities elsewhere. Botticelli and Ghirlandaio had gone to Rome
to work in the Sistine Chapel. Verrocchio was then planning to
move to Venice, having won, in 1480, the prestigious competition
for the design of the monument for the great condottiere Bartolomeo
Colleoni. He died there in 1488, some years before the completion
and installation of his magnificent equestrian statue. Having sought a
papal project for many years, the Pollaiuoli were finally asked in 1484
to create a tomb for Pope Sixtus IV; they immediately relocated to
Rome, where they died in the 1490s.
Apparently, Leonardo, too, wished to leave. By then, he had
learned some bitter truths about Florence and human nature that
Vasari, decades later, would explain:
all persons of spirit will not stay content with being equal,
much less inferior, to those whom they see to be men like
themselves, although they may recognize them as mas-
ters – nay, it forces them very often to desire their own
advancement so eagerly, that, if they are not kindly or
wise by nature, they turn out evil-speakers, ungrateful,
and unthankful for benefits. It is true, indeed, that when a
man has learnt there [in Florence] as much as suffices him,
and desires to become rich, take his departure from that
place and find a sale abroad for the excellence of his works
and for the repute conferred on him by that city, as the
doctors do with the fame derived from their studies. For
Florence treats her craftsmen as time treats its own works,
179
180 The Young Leonardo
which, when perfected, it destroys and consumes little by
little.
Understanding this, Leonardo preferred to couch his restless optimism
as well as his frustrations – with his circumstances and with himself –
in larger philosophical terms and context:
With a constant joyous longing he awaits the new spring,
always the new state, always the new months, the new
years; for always it seems to him that the things longed
for come too late, and he fails to realize that he is wishing
away his own life. This same longing is the quintessence,
the spirit – which finding itself imprisoned in the soul of
the human body, longs always to return to its emitter.
At Lorenzo de’ Medici’s direction, but possibly after some cour-
teous yet insistent lobbying by the artist, Leonardo traveled to Milan
around 1482. His interest in that city may have been stoked by casual
and enthusiastic remarks made by Verrocchio. The older master had
been responsible for decorating the Palazzo Medici for the state visit
of the Milanese duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1471; for many years
thereafter, he no doubt coveted the commission for the long-planned
equestrian statue of the duke’s father, the great soldier Francesco.
Leonardo would have recalled the Sforzas’ luxurious spending habits,
notably the two thousand horsemen, five hundred pairs of hounds,
and flock of hunting falcons in Galeazzo Maria’s traveling entourage.
Officially an artistic emissary, a diplomatic gift from Lorenzo to
Ludovico Il Moro Sforza (the younger brother of Galeazzo Maria,
assassinated in 1476), Leonardo arrived in the Northern Italian city
accompanied by a gifted, sixteen-year-old musician named Atalante
Migliorotti. The Medici, and Lorenzo in particular, had been long
allied with the Sforzas and heavily relied on them for military support.
Just hours after the attempt on his life, Lorenzo had sent a letter to
Ludovico pleading for protective troops. Having inherited at least
some of old Cosimo’s political instincts, Lorenzo probably suspected
that, before long, Ludovico would replace his young nephew as Duke
of Milan and, in the meantime, would rule as the power behind the
throne. As a present for Il Moro, the young Atalante brought with
him an unusual lute in the form of a horse’s skull. Leonardo carried a
letter of introduction, which he had crafted himself, and a “portfolio”
27. Milan 181
that included a few paintings, many drawings, and at least one piece of
sculpture. The self-promoting, testimonial letter, apparently written
by someone else at Leonardo’s dictation, indicates that he knew Sforza’s
priorities were military:
Most illustrious Lord, having sufficiently seen and consid-
ered the works of all those who are reputed to be masters
and contrivers of war machines, and that the invention
and operation of the aforesaid instruments are none other
than those in common use, I will strive, without disparag-
ing anyone else, to show my intentions to your Excellency,
showing my secrets to you, and then offering all of them for
your approbation, to work effectively at opportune times
on all those things which are briefly noted in part below.
His grand promises were followed by a list of weapons and engi-
neering projects with which Leonardo claimed to have either expe-
rience or brilliant ideas: portable bridges and “methods of destroying
and burning those of the enemy”; “methods of ruining every cas-
tle or fortress, even if it is founded on rock”; bombarding machines
that hurl myriad small stones “like a tempest”; new kinds of chariots;
and various and novel types of guns and catapults. One must suppose
that Leonardo would not have overstated his abilities too greatly and
risked misleading the ruthless and bellicose Sforza. Strangely, however,
he does not seem to have brought drawings to back up his boasts.
The inventory he compiled soon after reaching Milan mentions only
designs for “furnaces,” “gadgets for ships,” and “gadgets for water,”
which may or may not have had defensive applications. Indeed, his
informal, personal inventory, which I now quote at length, records
the useful, “reference” drawings of someone who foremost wished to
continue his artistic practice.
The document reads:
Many flowers copied from nature; a head full face, with
curly hair; certain St. Jeromes; measurements of a figure;
designs of furnaces; a head [portrait] of the Duke [an ideal-
ized likeness of Ludovico Sforza’s father, Francesco?]; many
designs of knots; 4 drawings for the picture of the Holy
Angel; a little narrative of Girolamo da Fegline; a head of
Christ done in pen; 8 St Sebastians; many compositions of
182 The Young Leonardo
angels; a chalcedony [a carved semiprecious stone]; a head
in profile with beautiful hair; certain forms in perspective;
certain gadgets for ships; certain gadgets for water; a head
portrayed from Atalante, who raises his face [probably a
drawing made while Leonardo and the young musician
rested on their journey from Florence to Milan]; the head
of Girolamo da Fegline; the head of Gian Francesco Boso;
many necks of old women; many heads of old men; many
complete nudes; many arms, legs, feet, and postures; a
Madonna, finished [Benois Madonna?]; another, almost fin-
ished, which is in profile [Madonna Litta?]; the head of Our
Lady who ascends to heaven; a head of an old man with
an enormous chin; a head of a gipsy; a head wearing a hat;
a narrative of the passion made in relief; a head of a young
girl with plaited tresses; a head with a head-dress.
Although in his letter to Sforza Leonardo asserted that he had expertise
in marble and bronze sculpture, he seems to have neglected to transport
examples of those as well, except, perhaps, for the “narrative of the
passion made in relief,” which, for all we know, might have been
executed in terracotta or plaster. He did, however, carry with him a
“head of the duke,” presumably an idea he had for an idealized portrait
of Ludovico’s late father, Francesco. In light of the excitement in the
early 1480s concerning the competition for the equestrian statue of
Colleoni in Venice, Leonardo had accurately anticipated that Il Moro
would be keen to see realized, finally, the equestrian monument to
his father, a grandiose project that had been under discussion at the
Milanese court for over a decade. Leonardo was probably informed
of his possible assignment to the project not long after he landed
in Milan and then officially offered the job by 1483. The ambitious
undertaking, which ended tragically, would occupy much of his adult
life.
Indeed, because of “The Horse,” as the Sforza monument was
called, and countless engineering and festival projects, Leonardo was
never able to step up his painterly production. When he departed from
Florence at about the age of thirty, he left a rather meager legacy of
perhaps five completed paintings (four of them small), two unfinished
pictures, and a piece of sculpture or two – not an impressive output
for fifteen years of artistic practice. On the other hand, he could claim
27. Milan 183
credit for several major artistic innovations, above all, the creation
of the “High-Renaissance” or “Modern” style. In the Adoration of
the Magi, particularly, he had devised a new, comprehensive pictorial
language in which the entire apparatus of forms conveyed content –
in which insightfully rendered human expressions and gestures were
made to conform to an ideal geometry, and where the space itself, in
its abstractness or mathematical perspective, communicated meaning.
Through another invention, sfumato, he had managed to integrate his
fresh and precise “scientific” observations of anatomy and landscape
(as well as symbols and literary tropes) into a smokily cohesive com-
position. His ingenious achievement of this “Modern” or “Classical”
style, as it is sometimes called, would not be fully understood for some
twenty years and, only after Leonardo’s return to Florence in the next
century, assimilated by the likes of the progressive painters Raphael,
Andrea del Sarto, Piero di Cosimo, and Fra Bartolommeo.
During the last thirty-seven years of his life, until his death in 1519,
Leonardo turned out artworks at about the same rate as he did during
his first Florentine period. He created, with some shop assistance, just
a dozen or so paintings, and two of those – the Last Supper and Battle
of Anghiari – began deteriorating almost immediately because of the
“time-saving” experimental media and techniques he had employed.
Considering himself more of an inventor-designer than a craftsman,
Leonardo wished the artistic thought process to be as thorough and
profound as possible, but he tried to streamline the physical act of
creation, and sometimes his works suffered because of it. Still, those
paintings and sculptures that survive – and his drawings for those that
do not – reveal how his art continued relentlessly to evolve and that,
through subtle processes of idealization and his refinement of sfumato,
he brought to his works unprecedented – and largely ineffable –
qualities of expression. In fact, it can be said that in some cases the
complexity and robustness of his ideas (such as those for “The Horse”)
seem to have exceeded known technical means of realization.
28. Leonardo and the
Sforza Court
F
or an ar tist whose designs, more often th a n not, failed
to seep down from the conceptual to the material realm,
Leonardo must have found Ludovico’s steady court stipend reassur-
ing. Not wishing to disappoint his sponsor, Lorenzo, or Sforza (as he
had Ser Piero), Leonardo was willing to play almost any role asked
of him at the Milanese court. No design or engineering project was
too minor, be it a belt buckle, a drainage ditch, or a water-driven
gadget for the “bath of the Duchess.” Certainly, under the penetrat-
ing glare of Il Moro, Leonardo had to keep himself constantly busy
and could not revert to some of his bad habits of youth. Watching
over Leonardo, too, were – still affixed to a bell tower – the heads
of those responsible for the murder, six years earlier, of Ludovico’s
brother, Galeazzo Maria. The exceptional, creative cruelty of Il Moro
and Galeazzo Maria, who once had a man nailed alive to his own
coffin, cast an apprehensive pall over all of Milanese life.
Leonardo had accepted as his new patron a man whose enor-
mous power, energy, and artifice equaled his malevolence. Declared
by the political expert Nicol
`
o Macchiavelli to be responsible for the
“ruin of Italy,” the treacherous Ludovico Sforza summoned Charles
VIII of France to Italy to aid him militarily. Bankrolled in part by
Il Moro, the French king and an army of forty thousand men sub-
sequently marched down the length of the Italian peninsula in 1494,
leaving untold destruction and atrocities in their wake, to claim French
sovereignty over the Kingdom of Naples. Meanwhile, Sforza quickly
dispatched with the Milanese secretary of state and anyone else who, he
thought, might undermine his authority. Not coincidently, by Octo-
ber of that year, Ludovico’s nephew, Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza had
taken ill. Most suspected he had been poisoned. Upon Gian Galeazzo’s
185
186 The Young Leonardo
death, Il Moro had his widow and children arrested and imprisoned,
and proclaimed himself Duke of Milan.
Leonardo would somehow learn to deal with the complicated
Sforza, who was completely immoral and cynical but who sought
to live within a highly civilized milieu. The self-consciously lesser,
second son of the great Francesco, he was, nevertheless, gracefully
sociopathic, known for his painstakingly courteous and velvety man-
ner. The artist must have intuited that the callous and well-armed duke
was vulnerable to flattery, especially if it was the clever and urbane sort
in which Leonardo excelled. Nevertheless, although life was precari-
ous for all in the Renaissance, the young man from Vinci must have
felt that he continuously walked very close to a precipice. This was
a challenge that he probably enjoyed mastering. He conducted his
sexual life with utmost discretion, because the duke ostensibly banned
homosexual behavior from his court. He was also careful never to
contradict or offend the dark Sforza. A fragment of a letter from the
artist to his benefactor gives us some indication of their relationship,
as its tone and content, though frustratingly incomplete (the page is
torn vertically at right), goes beyond the usual deferential groveling:
My Lord, knowing the mind of your Excellency to be
occupied –
to remind your Lordship of my small matters, and I should
have maintained silence –
that my silence should make your Lordship become angry –
my life to your service I hold myself ever ready to obey –
One is tempted to read as autobiographical an inscription that
Leonardo appended to a drawing while in the duke’s employ: “Oh
slave to human misery, of how many things are you willing to become
a servant for money!” Much later, perhaps during his second period
in Milan (1506–13), he would write on the cover of one of his note-
books the pessimistic Latin verses, Decipimur votis et tempore fallimur: et
mors Deridet curas; anxia vita nihil – “we are deluded by promises and
deceived by time, and Death derides our cares; life is anxiety, nothing
else.” Leonardo’s Latin had not suddenly improved; he lifted the lines
from the Amores of 1502 by the German poet laureate and humanist
scholar Konrad Celtis.