Feinberg L.J. The Young Leonardo: Art and Life in Fifteenth-Century Florence
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
3. The Cultural Climate of Florence
C
osimo’s p atron age of the visual ar ts was no less impressive
than his support of humanist scholars and literature. Under his
bullish, benevolent reign, Filippo Brunelleschi created the vast dome of
the cathedral, an architectural miracle, and the sculptor Lorenzo Ghib-
erti realized the sumptuous gilt bronze Gates of Paradise for the Baptis-
tery portal nearby. While Brunelleschi built for Cosimo what would
become the principal Medici church, San Lorenzo, the dependable
architect Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, at Cosimo’s request, renovated
the church and convent of San Marco (where Cosimo maintained a
penitential cell), constructed a grand new palace for the Medici on the
via Larga, and renovated villas for them in the sylvan backwaters of
Cafaggiolo, Careggi, and Trebbio. From his favorite artist, the sculptor
Donatello, Cosimo commissioned several important works, including
the controversial, sensuous bronze David, a rakish interpretation of the
biblical hero, with more sashay than swagger.
Cosimo kept busy the rambunctious Fra Filippo Lippi, seducer
of ladies and nuns alike, and all of the other major painters as well;
Lippi supplied a number of pictures for the new Palazzo Medici,
and Fra Angelico and Paolo Uccello painted altarpieces and frescoes
for the churches of San Marco and Santa Maria Novella. Some of
Lippi’s pictures, such as his Annunciation (c. 1439) in San Lorenzo,
followed what were the latest, progressive, “scientific” trends in art. He
defined the space of the painting through a strict, if vertiginous, one-
point perspective system – a striking application of mathematics and
geometry – and he rendered the foreground glass vase with impressive,
optical precision.
Other of Lippi’s works, among them the Adoration of the Christ
Child that he created for Cosimo’s personal chapel in the Medici palace
17
18 The Young Leonardo
(and a very similar picture for the private retreat of his profoundly
religious and cultured daughter-in-law, Lucrezia Tornabuoni), per-
petuated a mystical strain in Florentine painting (fig. 2). That darkly
suggestive work presents a visionary experience. The holy personages
are lost in contemplation; individual blossoms and natural elements
have an acutely alive and symbolic presence; the feral, rocky land-
scape and heavens less a setting than an enveloping cloak, hermetically
sealing off the back of the work. Lippi has re-created a mystical reve-
lation of the twelfth-century saint Bernard of Clairvaux, shown in the
background of the palace painting (now in Berlin), who, according
to legend, had a vision of the Nativity when he was a child. Signifi-
cantly, Leonardo seems to have found this introspective, artistic trend,
with its strange remoteness, as compelling as the new “rational” and
mathematic mode of Florentine painting.
Although much of this creative activity had been completed by
the time Leonardo and his father had reached Florence, the young
boy would have seen ongoing projects instigated by Cosimo’s son,
Piero the Gouty, and, later, his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent
(Il Magnifico). Upon his arrival, Leonardo would have been dazzled
by the opulent marble and porphyry tomb for Cosimo that his future
master Andrea del Verrocchio created and later erected in 1465 in San
Lorenzo and by Benozzo Gozzoli’s majestic fresco of the Procession of
the Magi, full of wondrous natural detail, in the Palazzo Medici – both
projects commissioned by the sickly and short-lived Piero. During
adolescence, Leonardo witnessed the execution and public installation
of several of the sculptures that Verrocchio fashioned for Lorenzo,
including the tombs for Piero and his brother Giovanni de’ Medici.
Years later, Leonardo would still recall with awe Verrocchio’s engi-
neering feat in fabricating and mounting the famous copper orb on
the lantern of the dome of Florence Cathedral in 1471. The entire
city marveled, the merchant Benedetto Dei thereafter calling the artist
“Verrocchio of the Ball” (della Palla). The versatile master’s accom-
plishment may have stimulated Leonardo’s own engineering interests;
several of the young man’s drawings from that period either record or
were inspired by the hoist and crane used to install the Duomo sphere.
Not only would Leonardo have admired the technological equipment;
but also, as one who dreamed of human flight, he must have enviously
imagined the view from atop that soaring perch, by far the highest
point in the city.
3. The Cultural Climate of Florence 19
Figure 2.
Filippo Lippi, Adoration
of the Christ Child,
c. 1459, oil on panel,
formerly at the chapel
in the Medici Palace,
now in Berlin, Staatliche
Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz,
Gem
¨
aldegalerie.
Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, NY.
Leonardo also saw the ascent, under Piero and Lorenzo, of the
major painters Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Antonio
and Piero Pollaiuolo, and Luca Signorelli. Piero ordered or purchased
important works by several of these innovative artists, among them
three large paintings by Antonio Pollaiuolo of the mythological Labors
of Hercules for the Medici palace on the via Larga (lost but known
through small, autograph replicas). Whereas the perpetually ill and
eczema-ridden Piero felt the need to display these unsubtle symbols
of power and military prowess, his sagacious wife, Lucrezia, adher-
ing to Cosimo’s strategy of humility, kept a relatively low profile,
retaining the unpretentious “Tornabuoni” as her family name rather
than reverting to her family’s original, noble appellation, Tornaquinci.
She understood the danger of appearing too aristocratic in republican
Florence.
20 The Young Leonardo
Their son, Lorenzo, preferred writing poetry and collecting gems
and other small objets d’art to the acquisition of paintings. Nonethe-
less, he did commission portraits and an altarpiece from Botticelli, fres-
coes from Ghirlandaio, and obtained some pictures in oil by esteemed
Flemish masters. In his relatively accessible, ground-floor bedroom in
the palace hung Uccello’s paintings of the mythological Judgment of
Paris and a scene of lions fighting dragons (these were joined, in 1484,
by Uccello’s famous tri-paneled Battle of San Romano). The precocious
Leonardo would have especially enjoyed the lion-and-dragon combat
when he was permitted to examine these paintings from time to time.
During his early apprenticeship with Verrocchio, Leonardo drew the
snarling heads of a lion and a dragon in confrontation – beasts for
which he seems to have had an enduring fondness (fig. 3). (Report-
edly, much later, for French king Francis I, he made a grand image of
a dragon fighting a lion, distorted in extreme perspective, or anamor-
phosis.) By the later 1470s, the young artist managed to gain entrance
into Lorenzo’s famed garden beside San Marco, where Lorenzo kept
part of his sculpture collection and allowed a lucky few to study and
work.
Despite this privilege, there is no evidence to suggest that Leonardo
was admitted into the meetings of the “Platonic Academy,” the name
an informal group of intellectuals at the Medici court invented for
themselves in the 1460s. The “academicians,” who often gathered at
Lorenzo’s refurbished villa at Carreggi, included Ficino, the famous
Greek scholar Johannes Argyropouos, whom Cosimo had brought to
Florence, the erudite young poets Angelo Poliziano and Cristoforo
Landino (a commentator on the works of Virgil, Horace, and Dante),
and the architect, art theorist, and writer Leon Battista Alberti, who
gloried in the role of venerable counselor and was, until his death in
1472, probably Leonardo’s most direct connection to the group. The
Neoplatonists, as they came to be called, discussed not only arcane
subjects, such as Plato’s views on the immortality of the soul and the
nature of God, but also the relative merits of the active life versus
the contemplative life and what personal qualities or accomplishments
determined “nobility.”
Although these issues were not central or pressing for Leonardo,
whose investigations were more pragmatic and Aristotelian, concern-
ing the observable, natural world, his exclusion from the academy’s
conversations may account for the anger he occasionally expressed.
3. The Cultural Climate of Florence 21
Figure 3.
Leonardo da Vinci,
Study of the Virgin
Nursing with St. John the
Baptist, Figure and Head
Studies, Heads of a Lion
and Dragon,c.1480,
pen and ink, Windsor
Castle, Royal Library
(12276r). The Royal
Collection
C
2010
Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II.
(Ficino sometimes referred to intellectuals who, like Leonardo,
were not proficient in the classical languages, as levissimi, Latin for
“lightweights.”) Notwithstanding his lack of scholarly credentials,
Leonardo was probably permitted, once in a while, to attend lec-
tures given by Alberti, Argyropoulos (an authority on Aristotle’s
writings), and other members. Lorenzo seems occasionally to have
made the Medici library available to the artist. This contained at least
six works of Aristotle and some scientific and medical tracts, such
as Cornelius Celsus’ first-century On Medicine (De medicina), Pliny
the Elder’s first-century Natural History, Theophrastus’ On Botany
22 The Young Leonardo
(third century b.c.) and Flavius Vegetius Renatus’ fourth-century vet-
erinary manual De mulomedicina, along with many volumes of poetry
and historical and religious texts.
Meanwhile, Leonardo’s father performed well enough as a notary
to attain, by 1469, a job at the Palazzo del Podest
`
a (the present-day
Bargello), the seat of the highest law officer and main criminal court
in Florence. In the next year, he moved to the via delle Prestanze
(later called the via dei Gondi), in the neighborhood of the Palazzo
della Signoria, the city hall, into what would have been an upscale
house with airy rooms appointed, in the Florentine manner, with
small assemblies of painted furniture, set against mainly bare walls.
The relative austerity of the interior d
´
ecor reflected the frugal way in
which the typical Florentine household was run.
The forty-three-year-old Ser Piero brought to the new casa asec-
ond wife, Francesca di Ser Giuliano Lanfredi, and hopes for many chil-
dren. Unfortunately, his wishes were delayed. His first legitimate heir,
Antonio, arrived seven years later, born to his third wife, Margherita,
in 1476. He quickly went on to have another son with Margherita,
however, and seven more sons and two daughters with a fourth spouse,
Lucrezia. Because of the Renaissance’s high mortality rate of women
in childbirth, it was not unusual for a man to marry a few times
and to change residences, as his family evolved and grew. Leonardo,
by far the oldest of Ser Piero’s brood (by almost twenty-four years),
would have lived, as was customary for workshop assistants, mainly at
Verrocchio’s house and shop in the via dell’Agnolo, near the church of
S. Ambrogio. We know nothing of Leonardo’s relationships with his
stepmothers in Florence, but one of Leonardo’s biological analogies
may offer a clue. Observing how trees give abundant sap to grafted
limbs, the artist asserted that fathers and mothers “bestow much more
attention upon their stepchildren than upon their own children.”
Ser Piero’s elevated status and the many important connections
he made in his new position – with Verrocchio, the sculptor Andrea
della Robbia, and other artists and potential patrons – may have helped
solidify Leonardo’s place in Verrocchio’s workshop and sometime later,
by 1472, secure his membership in the painters’ confraternity or pro-
fessional club, the Compagnia di S. Luca (Company of Saint Luke).
Through his contacts and clients, Ser Piero seems to have worked
continuously to advance Leonardo’s career. No record has been
found, however, to indicate that the artist’s father ever took steps to
3. The Cultural Climate of Florence 23
“legitimate” him, a legal process involving the approval of Florence’s
governing councils. This would have made Leonardo eligible to
inherit property and, more important, would have removed some
of the stain of dishonor. This is a curious fact, given Ser Piero’s pro-
fession and status and – what must have been a great and growing
concern – his failure, during twenty-three years of marriage, to pro-
duce a legitimate heir.
4. First Years in Florence and
the Verrocchio Workshop
D
espite a certain confidence born of his many gifts,
the newly arrived, adolescent Leonardo must have found
the urban congestion of Florence and the desperate squalor of so
many who lived there a bit intimidating. From the airy public squares
spanned countless, winding streets and blind passages, many made
almost impassible by vendors’ stalls and filthy shacks. As in most
European cities, the poor, rural
´
emigr
´
es, and itinerant workers – alto-
gether, roughly half of Florence’s population – mainly hunkered down
in makeshift housing, crude wooden structures and lean-tos, braced
against churches and other masonry buildings.
Agricultural life was then much more intrusive and obtrusive than
it is today. Horses, donkeys, cattle, and other livestock were every-
where led through the narrow streets. Piles of hay and manure were
ubiquitous. Carts and mule trains, loaded with wool, raw silk, leather,
and produce, angled their way past these obstacles and large open-pit
quarries of pietra forte, the stone from which most of the palaces and
houses were built. Animal parts that could not be used by butchers or
leather makers were freely discarded in the streets, usually at the spots
where the livestock had been slaughtered. Carcasses floated in the
Arno as well, along with massive debris and chemical residues gener-
ated by the wool workers and dyers, who labored under lofty wooden
sheds (tiratoi) and pavilions along the river. A perpetual source of flood
and the city’s main sewer, the Arno was considered by most to be,
in Dante’s words, a “cursed and unlucky ditch” (Purgatory,XIV,51).
In January 1465, probably just a year or so after Leonardo’s arrival in
Florence, the river flooded all the way to the Canto a Monteloro (now
the corner of via degli Alfani and Borgo Pinti), causing lay benches
to float there from the church of Santa Croce, and filling the ground
25
26 The Young Leonardo
floors of the Podest
`
a (later, Ser Piero’s workplace) and nearby apothe-
caries with water and waste. Needless to say, rodents were always a
problem, as was disease, which the populace attributed to the putrid
smells of the city rather than to the true source, rat-borne fleas. After
the Black Death had wiped out half of the Florentine citizenry in
the mid-fourteenth century, plagues came cyclically, nearly every few
years, throughout the fifteenth.
Fortunately, nature also intruded into the city in more benevolent
ways. Many people owned fine horses and kept hounds, songbirds, and
other pets. Some of the more affluent had gardens, with flowers both
native and imported from afar, such as exotic varieties of jasmine. Most
convents and monasteries maintained their own private gardens and
small orchards. At that time, there were also many small, unpaved, and
untended open spaces, where grasses and shrubs grew wildly and trees
provided shelter and shade. These were not parks in the modern sense,
but neglected places that offered respite or, in the case of one lightly
wooded, if ragged, tract of land near the church of SS. Annunziata,
opportunity for sketching. Not far from the city’s center, on the part
of the Arno far to the east of the Ponte Vecchio (upstream from
the wool industry), waterbirds thrived and fisherman armed with
poles and huge nets hauled in bounties of carp, cod, and trout. On
the outskirts of Florence, there were pastures and the lush, flowery
meadows from which the city had derived its name. Thus, Leonardo
found in and around the city at least some semblance of his former
life and surroundings.
When, perhaps in 1465 or 1466, he entered Verrocchio’s large
bottega or shop, which produced marble and bronze sculptures as well
as paintings and frames, it had an extensive crew and well-established,
if alternating, divisions of labor. Of an inherently sensitive nature,
Leonardo was probably initially overwhelmed by the din of stone-
chipping and metal-clanging and by the visible air, choked with marble
dust, sulphur, and the pungent odor of spilt wine. At that time, he
may have seen some craftsmen on their knees polishing the large
bell, years later affectionately called La Piagnona, the “great weeping
lady.” The bell was so-named because it summoned to the church of
San Marco the piagnoni, the “weeping” followers of the controversial
Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, burned at the stake for heresy
in 1498. Leonardo possibly observed in another part of the studio