Leonardo Da Vinci*
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All his life, Leonardo had to teach himself. Sometimes he was bitter about this, but as he grew older he also took pride in being what people called him: “unlettered.” By then, he had realized that what was being taught as fact wasn’t necessarily right.
CHAPTER THREE
“The Desire to Know Is Natural”
BEING ILLEGITIMATE WAS a lasting B black mark. Leonardo was barred by law from most respectable professions as well as from advanced schooling. Piero’s guild of notaries, for example, refused entry to the illegitimate, as well as to criminals.
Leonardo’s choices in life were limited: either join the army (where many illegitimate boys ended up) or get his hands dirty taking up a trade.
His father clearly felt responsible for Leonardo’s future. When the boy was twelve or thirteen, Piero took him along on one of his trips to the pulsing big city of Florence. One of five independent city-states in what is now Italy, Florence was the cutting-edge center of the art world.
Perhaps the boy had already impressed people with his talent for art. And artists didn’t necessarily have to be respectable. Piero might have considered a career in art the most viable option for his son.
Piero did have connections. He got his son apprenticed as a studio boy to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. This was one of the luckiest breaks of Leonardo’s whole life.
Verrocchio’s workshop was like a buzzing little art factory. A storefront, opening onto the street, enticed customers with its wares—paintings and sculptures, musical instruments, helmets, bells, and baskets. Spartan living quarters for the artists were on top of or behind the storefront, with beds of straw on the floor.
In exchange for working, Leonardo was fed and sheltered and paid a small amount. Verrocchio was now his legal guardian. He even had the right to beat him, though there is no evidence that he did.
Artists at that time had to be practical and versatile, to make things people really used. Leonardo plunged into an array of projects, such as painting altarpieces and panels, making large sculptures in marble and bronze, copying coats of arms, decorating pottery, designing tools for surgery. The young artists in the studio worked mostly in teams, finishing one another’s work, rarely signing their names. Art was about craft, not ego.
As a boy straight out of the country, the teenage Leonardo must have been a little gawky at first. But he soaked everything up, drew energy from his new environment, and simply blossomed.
As it happened, Florence was perhaps the most percolating place for anyone to be in the 1460s. The ruler, Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’ Medici, tried to encourage an atmosphere of commerce and culture. Other Italian cities, such as Bologna and Pisa, also nurtured new ideas. But merchants from all over loved Florence for its central location. After recovering from a deadly attack of the plague, its population was booming again, approaching 100,000 hustling and bustling people.
More than many other cities, Florence had people who were rich and well educated. For decades it had been controlled by the Medici family, who were wealthy from banking. Although often cruel and corrupt, the Medici did nourish the arts. Verrocchio’s workshop, in fact, was generously supported by orders from the powerful Medici—for sculptures, candelabra, banners and other decorations, and even their tombs.
A new boy (at the time, artists’ apprentices were always boys) would start out sweeping the floor, running errands, cleaning paintbrushes, and heating up varnish or glue. As he learned the basics of drawing, his special talents would reveal themselves. He would graduate to crafting paintbrushes from animal hair, stretching canvases, mixing the paints from scratch, and applying gold leaf to backgrounds.
The apprentice would learn about the use of color, how to lay down the first coats of tempera (an egg-based paint), how to transfer a drawing to another surface, how to paint directly onto walls, and how to carve stone. He might be allowed to finish whole sections of paintings depending on whether he was good at landscapes, clothes, or faces. He would have to work some twelve hours a day, every day of the week except Sunday, every week of the year.
Leonardo was continually practicing his drawing. There was a lot to learn. In the Middle Ages, images in paintings had appeared flat, limited to two dimensions. But in 1413, the architect and artist Filippo Brunelleschi worked out the mathematical principles of linear perspective. Now paintings could give the illusion of depth. A young artist like Leonardo would need to study mathematics in order to portray nature as it actually appeared, in three-dimensional space.
The workshop was like another laboratory for Leonardo, after the natural world of his early childhood. Its spirit was almost as much scientific as artistic, with observations and experiments leading to new techniques. An apprentice would be always experimenting with potions—oil of cypress with water to make an amber-colored paint, saliva to keep pens wet. One job was to prepare wood panels for painting; in later life, Leonardo revealed his recipe as a lengthy process using twice-distilled turpentine, arsenic, boiled linseed oil, and human urine.
The first big project Leonardo probably helped see through to completion was a two-ton giant bronze ball. It was for the city’s famous cathedral—to go atop its dome, designed by Brunelleschi. Every man and boy in the workshop was called upon to help. The final hoisting of the ball into place was a huge celebration that Leonardo certainly attended—along with the whole shouting city.
Being an artist could clearly bring sparkling acclaim.
It also brought approval from his father.
One day Piero stopped by the workshop. He had a plain wooden shield he needed painted as a favor to someone. Leonardo took the job and went all out. He decided the picture on a shield must be frightening, so he collected lizards, bats, crickets, snakes, insects. Then he dissected them. He arranged the most interesting body parts into the scariest possible monster, spitting fire. He painted the beast on the shield, which he displayed in a corner of a dark room, and invited his father in for a dramatic unveiling.
Piero was actually frightened at first, then delighted. He took it away and picked up a cheap shield (decorated with a simple heart pierced by an arrow) to give to his friend. Did Piero keep his son’s shield? No. He sold it for a nice sum.
Verrocchio encouraged his apprentices to dissect small dead animals as a way to learn to portray anatomy. This was something easy, if unusual, for Leonardo to do. In fact, in the study of anatomy at that time, artists were as knowledgeable as anyone, even medical students.
Verrocchio required his artists to depict the human form with complete accuracy, which meant they were expected to study how the body was constructed. Instead of working from the imagination, they had to draw live models. They could also make plaster casts of body parts, both their own or those of corpses.
It seems Verrocchio was one of those inspiring teachers who change lives. He was like a one-man university himself. He knew everything about art, plus he was an experimenter and innovator. He encouraged his shop to break new ground in the arts, not just to repeat the past. To think big.
“The painter must strive to be universal,” Leonardo would write later. From Verrocchio he learned that an artist should be capable of rendering anything in nature.
Leonardo was definitely a quick learner. Word spread fast that the new apprentice could draw and paint like an angel. Verrocchio delegated more and more work to him. The boy’s confidence must have soared.
Life at Verrocchio’s was not all work and no play. The shop was a gathering place for artistic and literary young men. Artists from other shops would stop by, as would travelers passing through Florence. They exchanged recipes for paints, modeled for one another, and drank wine. Ideas ricocheted about all things—philosophy, nature, science, and the latest books.
Leonardo’s early education in scientific matters came from chatting with visitors to Verrocchio’s workshop. Collectors in Turkey and Greece who had libraries of ancient manuscripts—including the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle�
��were now selling them to collectors in Florence. Every time a manuscript from ancient times was translated, a buzz would go around the city.
Leonardo and his friends also enjoyed playing the role of artistic rebels, out to shock respectable citizens with frivolous behavior. Nothing too outrageous, as the laws were strict and penalties often severe. Mainly pranks—Leonardo was famous for the stink balls he created out of fish remains or decomposing animals.
Leonardo seemed to fit right in. Perhaps it was the only time in his life when this was true. He had friends from all walks of life, respectable and otherwise. A good singer, he also excelled at the viol, a stringed instrument played with a bow. He invented party tricks, like throwing red wine into a cup of boiling oil to make colorful flames erupt. Witty at parties, he told good riddles and funny stories (most of which haven’t stood the test of time).
Even accounts that rarely describe appearances always call Leonardo handsome. He was probably asked to pose for other artists. While long flowing robes were the fashion of the day, he wore rose-colored tunics that stopped short of his knee. His hair and beard were carefully combed and curled. In an age when bathing was optional, he was fanatic about being clean. He hated getting any paint under his fingernails.
The Medici fostered a party atmosphere around Florence, with jousting tournaments, carnivals, feasting, and other pleasurable amusements. Having fun was more important than anything. Leonardo, besides helping to provide decorations via the workshop, was reportedly an enthusiastic partygoer.
But he was also a private person. He spent time alone, thinking. He still took long walks in the hills nearby, carrying pen and paper everywhere in his sack. Even then he did not believe in walking for mere relaxation—it was an opportunity to “exercise” his eyes. A true artist never stopped perfecting observation skills.
His mind was open to beauty and to its opposite. In slums and hospitals, he looked for people he considered grotesque or deformed, furthering his study of anatomy. He would follow unusual-looking people for days, sketching.
“The desire to know is natural to good men,” Leonardo wrote later, endlessly curious about more and more subjects.
Meanwhile, Florence was becoming famous—or notorious, depending on your point of view—for its openness to new, even controversial, ideas.
Once Gutenberg invented movable type, books began to be printed at a rapid rate. Because there were so many more books around, many more people learned to read. Now, ancient works of literature were printed and bound into books that people (wealthy ones) could actually buy. For any one new book on the market, thirty buyers were fighting to buy it and read it.
The universities cultivated independent thought. Paolo Toscanelli, the most famous astronomer of the time, taught in Florence. An engaging teacher, Toscanelli may have been the first one to guide Leonardo toward science. Independently wealthy, he was able to devote his life to science, especially to studying the paths of comets. He knew as much about celestial phenomena and the characteristics of Earth as anyone in his day. A geographer as well, Toscanelli once wrote a letter encouraging explorer Christopher Columbus in his belief that the lands of the East could be reached by sailing west around the globe.
Toscanelli’s good friend, the artist-writer-engineer Leon Battista Alberti, had even more impact on Leonardo. One of the great intellectuals of the time, he advocated the application of science to art—artists should know about geometry, optics, the mathematical rules of perspective, and as much about human anatomy as possible. When Leonardo read Alberti’s statement, “The painter ought to possess all the forms of knowledge useful to his art,” he was electrified.
Alberti was one of the first men of the Renaissance to urge humans to strive, to excel. This was a revolutionary idea at the time—that humans had great, untapped potential. The self did matter—one person could make a difference. There was great optimism about the future.
Leonardo deliberately sought out older, more educated men. Everything interested him—“all the forms of knowledge” that Alberti spoke of. He may have sat in on lectures at the university, may have approached professors to ask questions. It’s possible that while working on a project, he boarded with Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the Medici then in power. There he would have been exposed to the movers and shakers in Italy, people almost as smart as he was.
By 1472, at age twenty, Leonardo was no longer an apprentice. He was entered as an official member of the Florentine painters’ guild, one of the two dozen trade associations representing various careers. The painters’ guild of St. Luke had split off from the guild of doctors and druggists (who sold the materials for paints).
He was a full citizen now and could set up his own shop. Yet he remained as Verrocchio’s assistant, perfecting his skills. He stayed twelve to thirteen years more with his teacher, which was longer than normal for most apprentices. Later in his life, when stressed, he would return to hang out here. It was a happy, sheltered place for him.
But not as sheltered as he thought. At some point during his years with Verrocchio, Leonardo was being spied upon.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Nothing but Full Privies”
WHEN LEONARDO WAS twenty-four, W omething awful happened. He was arrested.
The Medici family schemed and plotted to keep Florence under its thumb. One way was to encourage citizens to inform on one another. Anonymously, people could make accusations about illegal or immoral behavior by simply writing and slipping the allegations into boxes called buchi della Verità (“mouths of Truth”), which were prominently displayed at churches.
The idea was to keep people in line, or at least on edge. Anybody could accuse anyone of anything, with or without proof. That was enough to start a police investigation. So the system was an easy way to get someone you didn’t like into trouble with the authorities.
The dreaded Office of the Night had only one function. It was to check out accusations of homosexual sex, which was interpreted as being against the teachings of the Bible and considered a serious crime. During its seventy-year reign over Florence, the Office of the Night investigated 17,000 accused men, convicting some 3,000. The penalty tended to be a crushing fine, which was mild compared to punishments inflicted elsewhere or at other times in Florence—public whipping, exile, castration, indefinite imprisonment, or even death by burning. Part of the fine went as a reward to the informer, and the rest went to pay the expenses of the six Officers of the Night.
This was the office that summoned Leonardo in 1476. Someone had anonymously accused four men—Leonardo, a goldsmith, a tailor, and someone related to Lorenzo de’ Medici—of having sex with a male prostitute.
It was a nasty turn of events. Leonardo and his three companions had to appear in a court of justice. They may have been imprisoned in a cell overnight or longer. Torture and other incentives were commonly used to get people to confess. But the four men didn’t; they declared their innocence. Still, for some reason, another hearing was called.
Leonardo must have been frightened. Normally, parents would help out in such a crisis. But Leonardo probably dreaded his father’s reaction to this particular charge. Piero, whose notary business was thriving, needed to maintain his respectability. Artists and intellectuals may have been more tolerant of homosexuality, but not the average citizen. Possibly, Leonardo feared a showdown between his father and himself, or considered arrest equal to failure in his father’s eyes.
The anxiety and uncertainty lasted for over two months, through a second hearing—and then a third. In the end, the Office of the Night dismissed the charges. There were no signed statements from wit nesses, nor apparently any firm evidence. It’s possible Leonardo was simply a bystander in a plot to make trouble for the Medici.
Even though he escaped punishment, the artist was left bruised. The public embarrassment alone would have pained an intensely private person like Leonardo. And this particular case probably attracted greater publicity because of the Medici connection.
Homosexuality was illegal. Other cities prosecuted vigorously, but the authorities in Florence generally fostered a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. In fact, homosexuality there was so widespread that the German word for homosexual at the time was Florenzer. But being discreet was crucial. The scandal of an investigation and conviction could ruin one’s reputation. And career.
For the rest of his life, Leonardo would feel persecuted, whether or not he had reason to. He despised being the subject of gossip. As to the idea of prison, he declared, “It is better to die than to lose one’s freedom.” Two of his very first designs were for devices to escape from a locked cell.
After the humiliating arrest, he structured his life so that he was free to be himself, isolated as much as possible from nosy neighbors. Was it then that his mistrust of and disdain for other people began? “How many people there are,” he once wrote, “who could be described as mere channels for food,” producing “nothing but full privies,” or toilets.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Lying on a Feather Mattress”
IT MAY SEEM that Leonardo was taking he slow route to becoming a scientist. Investigating the natural world, that took time and earned him no money. As much as he dreaded what he called being a “slave” for money, he did need it. So his investigations into scientific subjects were, for the time being, hobbies.
Over the next several years, he buried himself in his work, attempting to strike out on his own as an independent master. He had his own studio and lived alone, but visited Verrocchio often. He probably had pets—he loved animals.