Leonardo’s Shadow

by Christopher Grey

  The Master says nothing. He looks too tired to speak.

  “What say you to four hundred ducats?” says the Duke.

  “Four hundred, my lord? Well …”

  That woke him up! Money always does.

  “Five hundred? Done, then!” the Duke says. “You start work on it after Easter.”

  “Yes, my lord, willingly.”

  “That’s what I like to hear—we are friends again, are we not?”

  “We were never not, my lord, and, I hope, we will still be always.”

  And the Duke looks as bewildered by the Master’s words as the Master wanted him to be. With a quick shake of the head, as if to clear his mind of the confusion, the Duke says: “Then I release you to your work and me to mine. Come, counselors, we have much to decide concerning our joint response to the new French king.”

  And while the Duke strides off, trailing his advisors and attendants behind him like great Neptune his fronds of seaweed, the knights on horseback dismount and lead away their steeds, the Duke’s armed men march in formation to their barracks, and the nobles and courtiers disperse to resume their pleasantries and pastimes.

  Soon the Master, Maggio, his two men, and I are the only ones left on the grassy plain. We, and our faithful flying machine. The odor of roasting meat coming from the Castle kitchens makes the Master wrinkle his nose with distaste, and my mouth fill up with water. I haven’t eaten yet. I hope Margareta has left something out for us.

  “Shall I commence taking apart the flying machine, Master Leonardo?” Maggio asks.

  Judging by the broken wing, it will not need much assistance.

  “Leave it where it is, Maggio, for the moment. I am too tired to think right now. But if we are not allowed to fly it, I can see no reason to have anything more to do with it.”

  “But, Master, will we not build another one, faster, more powerful?” I say.

  “That decision no longer rests with us,” he replies.

  He thanks Maggio for all his work, and Maggio thanks the Master for the honor of working with him. And then they embrace each other. Perhaps, between Maggio and me, we have taught Leonardo da Vinci, who has always worked alone, that he can share his work with others, without sacrificing his reputation.

  I shake hands with Rodolfo and the other one whose name I cannot recall or have never known. Maggio goes off to find his cart. The Master and I make our way across the Castle grounds.

  At the gates there is no farewell ceremony, no gift from the Duke, not even a courtier with a plumed hat to wave us out.

  We walk home in silence. The Sforza Way is deserted. Everyone has gone to the Cathedral to hear Pope Alexander speak. But neither the Master nor I have any desire for that, I think. We have heard the Pope speak enough.

  I want to say something to the Master, to thank him for the honor of flying his machine, and to reassure him that one day I will fly it again, or the like of it, only better. But I cannot find the words.

  The Last Supper is finished, but it has already begun to decay.

  And the flying machine will remain on the ground.

  Now I ask you, after all the work, has anything been accomplished?

  XLII

  It is a warm day in early May. More than a month has gone by.

  I am walking to Santa Maria, carrying the bag with the Master’s tools. I will take the measurements for the wall opposite the Last Supper, in preparation for the painting of Lady Beatrice that the Duke wants him to start forthwith—and is making a great noise about, too, because he has not. But neither has my master been paid the five hundred ducats that were promised.

  Father Vicenzo still has not managed to rid himself of the Master and me, even though he pleaded with the Duke to send us—or him!—elsewhere to work. The new painting in the refectory means that we will keep our old house for a time yet—perhaps for a long time, knowing the Master—and Father Vicenzo will be obliged to suffer us in silence. Indeed, he has not said a word to me since he came to our house and complained about the face of Judas. Long may this state continue!

  And the Master will begin my painting lessons tomorrow. So he has said, anyway. He promised to start them the day after Easter, but there was too much to do. Well, after all, I understand. The Master is not like other men. He simply has more in his head than the rest of us, and what he has takes up so much more of his time.

  I wish Caterina was still here. I miss her. And her voice, which I heard so strongly in my head after she died, has not returned. But I know she will always be with me, close to me, somehow. She would have had much to say about everything that has happened recently. Her tongue would have unhinged itself telling her friends and neighbors all about the Pope and the Last Supper and the flying machine and everything!

  The earth underfoot is dry, a pleasant buzzing and droning of small insects fills my ears, and the fields are changing color as the crops grow and ripen. There is a faint smell of lavender in the air. They say it will be a good year for olives and lemons.

  A red fox is running between the hedgerows, a dash of brightness in the brush; and skimming the treetops to the east is a golden eagle, as easeful on the currents of the air as the Master’s flying machine will, I fear, never be. But I have no doubt that one day man will float above the clouds as easily as he now runs beneath them; the Master and I will be long gone by then, although we will always have the honor of knowing that we were the first to raise a man above the earth.

  Our flying machine did not remain in the Castle grounds for very long. The Master requested permission to have it moved back to the Lazaretto, where he might rebuild the right wing and make adjustments and improvements, and to keep it there until such time as the Pope comes to his senses and decrees that a man with wings does not contravene the Gospel. But it was too late. The Pope had already demanded that it be transported to Rome for examination by the Holy Inquisition, which had taken a great interest in it. The last thing anyone wants is the interest of the Holy Inquisition. They do not love art or invention. Indeed, they do not love anything. They live to hate and to destroy whatever they think is a threat to the Church.

  It is even possible that the Master will be summoned to Rome to explain himself. You do not want to have to explain yourself to the Holy Inquisition; if you fail to do so successfully, you might find yourself in their torture chamber. And even if you succeed, there is a good chance of ending up in the same place.

  But, thanks be to God and His holy Saints, we have thus far heard nothing. Let us hope it stays that way. No doubt the Pope has more on his mind than Leonardo da Vinci, which, sadly, is probably the reason we have not been invited to Rome, in spite of His Holiness’s admiration for the Last Supper.

  The French are still, it is rumored, somewhere beyond our borders, waiting to attack. But the city of Milan goes about its business as if they weren’t. We only fear the unknown. Now that we know they are out there, we prefer not to think about them. If we have to fight, we will. Is the Pope our faithful ally? That is a question yet to be settled. My master says that His Holiness did renew his pact with the Duke, after seeing the Last Supper. But rumor has it that the Pope’s son, Cesare, the one who was sent to France to look for a wife, has married a niece of King Louis.

  The Duke, meanwhile, has been strangely silent of late.

  Cecilia has written to us from her country estate. My master read me the letter. The painting hangs in her bedchamber, where she can look at it every night before sleep. And, as I suspected, the Duke has not missed it, among so many others.

  Tombi made his escape from Milan. And just in time. When I returned to the Street of Apothecaries three days later, everything was in ruins. Doors had been broken down, awnings torn away, and everywhere there was broken glass, colored powders, and shattered crystals. The Duke’s men had entered the street without warning and forced their way into the shops, chasing out the apothecaries while they searched. But whatever it was they were looking for (and it is unlikely they knew), they did not find
it. The whole event was staged purely to give vent to the Duke’s fury. When a great man has been duped, he will always take it out on those lower down.

  I hope Tombi will send word soon. It would make me happy to hear that he is safe. And Assanti? My master says that he will not be back, if he values his skin. But a man like Assanti does not forget the injuries done to him, nor those responsible for them. I sleep with my dagger under the pillow.

  One of these days I am going to invite Emilia to the Last Supper for a private viewing. Yes, I think I will. I know rather a lot about it, after all. And perhaps, after the Master has started giving me my lessons, he will not object if she joins us. I think she might like that. I know I would.

  I intend to have finished my first painting by Saint Michael’s Day. It will be a poor effort—how could it not be?—but it will be a start. Every artist has to start somewhere. The important thing, once started, is to keep going until you come to the end.

  My friends, we are almost there now.

  After a long struggle, I have finally won the Master’s respect. That means the world to me.

  I still have not discovered the identity of my parents, but that can wait, because I have learned something just as important: who I am.

  I am Giacomo, and I am going to be an artist.

  The past can stay where it is. The future is what matters now.

  The future with my master, Leonardo da Vinci.

  What will happen to us? That’s a story for another time.

  But now it’s time I began measuring this wall!

  The doors are opening; I can hear someone entering the refectory.

  Ah, it is my master.

  I’d better look busy.

  “What, Giacomo, have you not finished that simple task yet?”

  “Soon, Master, soon.”

  He makes me smile, my master. No matter how much I change, he’ll never change the way he speaks to me.

  And, truth be told, I do not think I ever want him to.

  The Fate of the Last Supper

  Soon after the Last Supper was completed, it began to deteriorate.

  In the 1540s a contemporary observer called it “half ruined”; in 1568 the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari called it “nothing but a blurred stain.” Twenty years after that, Paolo Lomazzo, in his treatise on painting, wrote: “Today the painting is in a state of total ruin.”

  Since then it has been restored several times; the most recent attempt was completed in 1999, but what now remains of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece is little more than a shadow of his original work.

  Author’s Note

  My main source for the story was a copy of Leonardo’s Notebooks. In my edition there was a section entitled “Leonardo’s Path through Life”; this became my chronological guide for the period during which the book’s main action is set, 1495-1498. What appealed to me most as a writer, however, were the gaps. Gaps in the chronology, fragments of information, and Leonardos own half-finished thoughts. These were what ignited my imagination. I avoided a close reading of the biographies, especially such standard text as Kenneth Clark’s Leonardo da Vinci: An Account of His Development as an Artist, because I did not want to have anybody else’s analysis of the great man’s personality dominating my own. The most important factor for me was the tone of voice, and in his writings, Leonardo came across as long-suffering, impatient, disciplined, pompous, arrogant, humble, confident, and fearful. Highly contradictory, in other words. As for Giacomo, well, Leonardo refers to him sporadically in the Notebooks, and none of it is very complimentary! Nevertheless you can sense the affection he felt for the boy. I decided to make Giacomo someone who, instead of being an incorrigible rascal, was always being misunderstood by his master. And the story would be, at least in part, the story of how the two of them came to accept each other. Because Giacomo suddenly appears in the Notebooks—without any explanation—it gave me the idea that the two of them met each other unexpectedly and miraculously. And it seemed logical, given that Leonardo says nothing of Giacomo’s past, to make him a boy without a past.

  I would, of course, recommend for further (and factual) reading: Kenneth Clark’s classic Leonardo da Vinci, and recent biographies by Charles Nicholl and Martin Kemp. An interesting book on painting materials and methods in the late Middle Ages (one book I did use for factual information) is Cennino Cennini’s The Craftsman’s Handbook. The classic story of the lives of many great Renaissance artists, including Leonardo, is Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari.

  Some informative and engrossing websites:

  British Library’s Leonardo da Vinci gallery

  www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/leonardo/leonardo.html

  BBC interactive site

  www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/studio/main.swf

  Information concerning the Last Supper (the biblical event)

  www.newadvent.org/cathen/14341a.htm

  Fun site showing influence of Leonardo’s designs on modern life

  www.leonardo-da-vinci.org/

  Milan’s Museum of Science

  www.museoscienza.org/english/leonardo/

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Christopher Grey

  The image on the case cover of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci is courtesy of Getty Images.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Book design by Christopher Grassi

  The text for this book is set in Adobe Caslon Pro.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Leonardo’s shadow: or, my astonishing life as Leonardo da Vinci’s servant / Christopher Grey.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fifteen-year-old Giacomo—servant to Leonardo da Vinci—helps his procrastinating master finish painting The Last Supper while also trying to find clues to his parentage and pursue his own career as an artist in late fifteenth-century Milan.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-416-90543-1

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-1564-0

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-0543-X

  1. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519—Juvenile fiction. [1. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519—Fiction. 2. Household employees—Fiction. 3. Artists—Fiction. 4. Painting—Fiction. 5. Identity—Fiction. 6. Milan (Italy)—History—15th century—Fiction. 7. Italy—History—1452-1519—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G8647Leo 2006

  [Fic]—dc22 2005032502