by The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance
“Finally,” Vasari writes, “he did a cartoon showing Our Lady with Saint Anne and the infant Christ. This work not only won the astonished admiration of all the artists but, when finished, for two days it attracted to the room where it was exhibited a crowd of men and women, young and old, who flocked there, as if they were attending a great festival, to gaze in amazement at the marvels he had created.” Leonardo could not have wished for a more enthusiastic reception by the city to which he had at last returned.
In the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, as the painting is called today, Leonardo had again broken new ground with both his composition and the theological interpretation of a traditional religious theme.37 Rather than presenting Mary and her mother, Saint Anne, in a static configuration—seated next to each other with Jesus in Mary’s arms between them, or with Saint Anne seated higher in a majestic, hierarchical composition—Leonardo upset tradition by adding a lamb as a fourth figure. Jesus, having slipped to the ground, reaches for the lamb as Mary tries to restrain him, and Saint Anne seems to hold her back.
Figure 4-3: Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1508 onward, Musée du Louvre, Paris
The theological message embodied in Leonardo’s highly original composition can be seen as a continuation of his long meditation on the destiny of Christ, which he had begun with the Virgin of the Rocks. Mary, in an anxious gesture, attempts to pull her son away from the lamb, the symbol of the Passion, while Saint Anne, representing the Mother Church, knows that Mary’s gesture is futile—the Passion is Christ’s destiny and cannot be avoided.
The completion of the painting took Leonardo more than a decade, during which he made numerous drawings with variations on compositional and theological themes. After the original cartoon, which is now lost, he produced a larger one, now in the National Gallery in London, in which Mary and Saint Anne are seated side by side and the lamb is replaced by Saint John the Baptist. But eventually he returned to his original idea. The final painting (Fig. 4-3), now in the Louvre, is a complex and masterful synthesis of his previous variations. The figures almost blend into each other in their rhythmic balance, with Leonardo’s dreamy mountains, foreshadowing the landscape of the Mona Lisa, in the background.
TRAVELS IN CENTRAL ITALY
When Leonardo arrived in Florence, he found a city that was quite different from the one he had left eighteen years earlier. In 1494 the French king, Charles VIII, at that time still in alliance with Ludovico Sforza, had expelled the Medici and returned Florence to a republic. In the ensuing confusion, the city fell under the spell of the fanatical teachings of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, who managed to transform the republic into a fundamentalist theocracy.38 For the next four years, Savonarola ruled as a virtual dictator until he was excommunicated by the pope, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake.
In the meantime, Pope Alexander VI had enlisted his son, the young military commander Cesare Borgia, to help him build a papal empire in central Italy. Intelligent, cruel, and ruthlessly opportunistic, Cesare subdued one city after another for the papacy, from Piombino on the west coast to Rimini on the Adriatic. He was well aware, however, that unless his new conquests were systematically fortified, they were vulnerable to attack from hostile neighbors. To protect them, Cesare turned to the military engineer with the greatest reputation, Leonardo da Vinci.
In 1502, Leonardo was hired by Cesare to travel throughout central Italy, inspect the ramparts, canals, and other fortifications of the newly conquered cities, and make suggestions for their improvements. To confirm his appointment, Cesare provided him with a passport that gave him complete freedom of movement, encouraged him to take any initiative he deemed appropriate, and allowed him to travel in comfort with his entourage. For Leonardo, this appointment must have sounded like a tremendous opportunity, and he took full advantage of it, even though he must have known that the conflict between Borgia’s cruel and violent nature and his own compassion and pacifism would eventually become unbearable.
During the next six to eight months, Leonardo traveled extensively in Tuscany and the adjacent Romagna—Piombino, Siena, Arezzo, Cesena, Pesaro, Rimini—making exquisite maps of various regions, working at schemes to build canals and drain marshes, studying the movements of waves and tides, and filling his Notebooks with drawings of ingenious new fortifications designed to withstand the impact of cannonballs that were now being fired at increased velocities.39 During those months he kept a fairly detailed account of his movements and projects in a pocket-sized notebook, now known as Manuscript L.
In October, Leonardo joined Cesare Borgia in Imola, where the troops had taken up winter quarters. He spent the rest of the year designing new fortifications for the citadel and drawing a highly original and very beautiful circular map of the town. In Imola he also met the famous politician and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, one of the most figures of the Renaissance. Born in Florence, Machiavelli had entered the political service of the republic as a diplomat and rapidly risen in importance. He was sent on many prominent missions in Italy and France, during which he shrewdly observed the fine details of power politics, which he later described and analyzed in his bestknown work, The Prince. His “ideal” Renaissance prince was an amoral and cunning tyrant, apparently modeled on Cesare Borgia.
A brilliant intellectual, Machiavelli was also a renowned poet and playwright; Leonardo was likely fascinated by him, and they remained on friendly terms for many years. When they met in Imola, Machiavelli had been sent to Romagna as an envoy of the Florentine republic, probably to keep an eye on the devious Borgia, in whose company he remained for the whole winter. There is no record of the many conversations this extraordinary trio—Cesare Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Leonardo da Vinci—must have had during their long winter evenings at Imola. However, it seems that they brought Leonardo face-to-face with the numerous crimes that had accompanied Borgia’s rise to power.
Until then, Leonardo had always traveled independently of the army, working mostly on defensive systems without ever witnessing a battle. But in the extended company of both Borgia and Machiavelli, he must have heard firsthand accounts of Cesare’s many massacres and murders. Perhaps he was so repelled by them that he felt he had to leave Borgia’s employ. In his Notebooks, Leonardo mentions neither when he left Cesare, nor why, but by February 1503 he was back in Florence, and he withdrew money from his account, possibly because he had left Borgia abruptly, without being paid.
Leonardo did not have to wait long for a new appointment. Florence was at war with Pisa and had laid siege to the town, which was of great strategic importance because of its port. After several months of siege the Pisans still refused to surrender. The Florentine Signoria (the city’s government) asked Leonardo to come up with a military solution. In June he visited the region and, as in Friuli three years earlier, drew a detailed map of its topography before devising a strategic plan.40
When he returned to Florence, he proposed to divert the Arno away from Pisa, which would deprive the town of its water supply and also provide Florence with a pathway to the sea. He argued that this strategy would end the siege quickly and without bloodshed. Leonardo’s plan had the enthusiastic support of Machiavelli. It was accepted by the city fathers, and work on the project began in August. However, during the subsequent months it encountered many difficulties, from a shortage of manpower and military protection to unexpected floods. After half a year, the scheme was abandoned.
FLIGHTS OF FANCY
Leonardo used his study of the Arno valley to revive his old dream of creating a navigable waterway between Florence and Pisa. He drew numerous beautifully colored maps, showing how the proposed canal would avoid the steep hills west of Florence and instead run in a large arc past Prato and Pistoia, and cut through the heights of Serravalle before rejoining the Arno east of Pisa. He imagined that this waterway would provide irrigation for parched land as well as energy for numerous mills that could produce silk and paper, drive potters’ wheels, saw woo
d, and sharpen metal.41 It was his hope that the multiple benefits of such an “industrial” canal would bring peace and prosperity to the warring cities. Leonardo’s dream of peace through technology was never realized, but he would probably have been pleased to know that five hundred years later the autostrada linking Florence with Lucca and Pisa would follow exactly the route he proposed for his waterway.
While he drew his maps of the Arno watershed, Leonardo studied the smooth and turbulent flows of water in rivers, the erosion of rocks, and the deposits of gravel and sand. On a larger scale, he speculated about the formation of the earth out of the waters of the sea and the movement of the “watery humors” through the macrocosm. He studied strata of rock formations and their fossil contents, which he recognized as telltale signs of life in the distant geological past. He saw mountain lakes as cutoff portions of the primeval sea, and pictured in his maps and paintings how they gradually found their way back to the oceans through narrow gorges.
In October 1503, while the war with Pisa dragged on, Leonardo received the tremendously prestigious commission for The Battle of Anghiari, the large fresco to be painted for the Signoria in its new council chamber at the Palazzo Vecchio. The artist accepted immediately. He registered his name once more with the painters’ guild of San Luca and was given sumptuous premises for himself and his household in the convent of Santa Maria Novella, including the spacious Sala del Papa (Hall of the Pope), which he used as his studio.
The following summer, Leonardo recorded the death of his father in a brief and rather formal statement: “On the 9th day of July 1504, on a Wednesday at seven o’clock, died Ser Piero da Vinci, notary to the Palazzo del Podestà, my father…. He was 80 years old and left tensons and two daughters.”42 From all we know, Leonardo was never close to his father, an ambitious man who was mostly interested in his own career. Nevertheless, it is surprising that he did not add any personal reflections to this entry in his private notebook. The distant tone of the note is reinforced by the unusual fact that it is not written in Leonardo’s customary mirror writing, but rather is written from left to right, as if it were a draft for a public statement.
Leonardo worked on the large cartoon for the fresco and on painting its central portion, The Struggle for the Standard, for about three years. But with the horrors of Cesare Borgia’s massacres still fresh in his mind, his Battle of Anghiari would not be a celebration of the military glory of Florence, as the city fathers expected. Instead, it would stand for all the world to see as his definitive condemnation of that pazzia bestialissima, the madness of war.43
During these years, Leonardo continued to reflect on the basic characteristics of the flow of water. In so doing, he realized that Euclidean geometry was insufficient to describe the shapes of waves and eddies. Around 1505 he began a new Notebook, now known as Codex Forster I, with the words “A book entitled ‘On Transformation,’ that is, of one body into another without diminution or increase of matter.”44 In forty folios of this Notebook he discussed and drew a great variety of transformations of geometrical shapes into one another—half circles into crescents, cubes into pyramids, spheres into cubes, and others. These pages were the beginning of his long fascination with a new type of geometry, a geometry of forms and transformations known today as topology.45
During the same years, Leonardo pursued with great intensity two engineering projects that excited his imagination. One was his long-contemplated plan for a waterway between Florence and Pisa; the other was his work on flying machines, which he took up with renewed vigor while he was also exploring the geometry of transformations and painting his battle scene in the Palazzo Vecchio.
Figure 4-4: Codex on the Flight of Birds, folio 8r; 1505, Biblioteca Reale, Turin
When he had built flying machines in Milan and tested them in his workshop in the Corte Vecchia, Leonardo’s main concern had been to find out how a human pilot could flap mechanical wings with enough force and velocity to compress the air underneath and be lifted up. For these tests he had designed various types of wings modeled after those of birds, bats, and flying fish. Now, ten years later, he embarked on careful and methodical observations of the flight of birds. He spent hours in the hills surrounding Florence, near Fiesole, observing the behavior of birds in flight, and he filled several Notebooks with drawings and comments that analyzed the birds’ turning maneuvers, their ability to maintain their equilibrium in the wind, and the detailed mechanisms of active flight. His aim was to design a flying machine that would be able, like a bird, to maneuver with agility, keep its balance in the wind, and move its wings with enough force to allow it to fly.46
Leonardo summarized his observations and analyses in a small Notebook called Codice sul volo degli uccelli (Codex on the Flight of Birds), which is full of gorgeous drawings of birds in flight as well as of complex mechanisms designed to mimic their precise movements (see Fig. 4-4). His observations and analyses led him to the conclusion that human flight with mechanical wings might not be possible because of the limitations of our anatomy. Birds, he observed, have powerful pectoral muscles to move their wings with a force humans cannot summon. However, he speculated that “soaring flight,” or gliding, might be possible. He would return to his research on human flight once more during the last phase of his life, combining the study of natural flight with theoretical studies of wind and air in an attempt to outline a comprehensive “science of the winds.”47
Leonardo continued to work on The Battle of Anghiari throughout 1505. However, because of defective materials, the painting suffered (the colors could not be fixed and began to run), and he was unable to repair the damage.48 At the same time, the French king, Louis XII, who was a great admirer of the artist, requested Leonardo’s presence at his court in Milan from the Signoria. The Florentines resisted, arguing that they had spent large sums of money for the fresco in their council chamber and needed it to be finished. A diplomatic tussle ensued that lasted several months, but eventually the Signoria was forced to relent. In May 1506, abandoning his fresco, Leonardo left once more for an extended sojourn in Milan.
A STAGE OF MATURITY
King Louis XII was represented at his court in Milan by his lieutenant, Charles d’Amboise, whom Louis had appointed as its governor. Charles was a powerful ruler, but convivial and keenly interested in promoting the arts. And, like his king, he was a great admirer of Leonardo. He received the artist warmly at the French court and treated him royally. Leonardo was given a generous allowance that was not tied to specific commissions, was consulted on all kinds of artistic and technical projects, and his company and service were eagerly sought by every important person at court. Leonardo was delighted to be back in Milan, the city where he had achieved great fame fifteen years earlier, and he easily fell back into the lifestyle of the court artist and engineer that he knew so well from his days at the Sforza court.
Once more there were plenty of masques and pageants for which he was asked to design splendid sets and costumes. As he had done before, Leonardo also worked on improving the locks and dams of some of the Lombard canals, and to show his gratitude to Charles d’Amboise, he designed a villa with luxurious gardens for the governor. According to the surviving notes, his garden designs were quite extraordinary. They included scented groves of oranges and lemons, a large aviary covered by a copper net to keep exotic birds inside while letting them fly around freely, a fan of revolving sails to create a pleasant breeze in the hot summers, a table with running water to cool wine, automatic musical instruments powered by water, and so on.49
At age fifty-five, Leonardo’s appearance must have approached that of the archetypal sage in his famous Turin self-portrait.50 Although his eyesight had weakened (he had worn glasses for a few years), his energies, artistic creativity, and intellectual drive continued undiminished. The sympathetic understanding and generosity of Charles d’Amboise gave him the freedom to dedicate as much time as he desired to his studies and to pursue them in any direction he wished. This unprecedente
d freedom, combined with his mature age, brought forth a period of broad systemic reflection, of revision and synthesis, allowing him to map out comprehensive treatises on many of his favorite subjects: the flow of water, the geometry of transformations, the movement of the human body, the growth of plants, and the science of painting.
The six years Leonardo spent at the French court in Milan marked a stage of maturity both in his science and his art. During those years the artist slowly developed and refined three of his mature master paintings: the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, the Leda, and his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. In these masterworks, Leonardo perfected the characteristics that established his uniqueness as a painter—the serpentine forms that brought movement and grace into his figures, the delicate smiles and gestures that mirrored the “movements of the soul,” and the subtle melting of shades, or sfumato, that became a unifying principle of his compositions. In all three of these works, Leonardo used his extensive knowledge of geology, botany, and human anatomy to explore the mystery of the procreative power of life, in the macrocosm as well as in the female body. As he continued to work on them year after year, he turned each painting into a meditation on the origin of life.51
In 1507, Leonardo met a young man, Francesco Melzi, who became his pupil, personal assistant, and inseparable companion. Melzi was the son of a Lombard aristocrat who owned a large estate at Vaprio, near Milan. When they met, Francesco was around fifteen and, according to Vasari, a bellissimo fanciullo (“a very beautiful boy”), who showed considerable talent as a painter. The adolescent boy and the elderly artist were immediately attracted to each other, and soon after their first meeting, Francesco announced to his parents that he wished to join Leonardo’s household. For an aristocratic family, such a move was highly unusual, but surprisingly they did not object. Persuaded perhaps by Leonardo’s fame or his personal charisma, they not only allowed their son to join him, but invited the master and his entourage to stay at their spacious villa for almost two years after he left Milan. From that point on, Melzi never left Leonardo’s side. He took care of the master’s affairs, wrote entries in the Notebooks from his dictation, nursed him when he was ill, and eventually was entrusted with Leonardo’s legacy.
