The clay statue of the horse made by Messer Leonardo is complete and I was able to see it yesterday in all its majesty in the Corte de l’Arengo, from where it will be taken to the square outside the castle. Imagine if you can, My Most Illustrious Lord, the beauty and wonder this work inspires. It seems to move and walk like a horse of flesh and blood, and almost everyone who sees it flees the courtyard, afraid of being kicked and trampled.
This horse will remain of clay. Leonardo will not cast it, having discovered an error in his calculations, originating from the fact that the hundred thousand pounds of bronze he has estimated as sufficient would not hold up, and the animal’s joins would break. But it was a useful error. The mistake yielded a good result, since in calculating the melting and cooling of the bronze, Leonardo learned the secret of the manufacturing of the contraptions the French call cannons.
Up until yesterday, it was the custom to cast the cannon cum its mold placed so that its mouth was down and its rear was up, and in this way the casting is easier and the bronze hotter and runnier so that it fills the mold better in the part of the mouth, which is narrow and hard to fill. But if the bronze is poured into the cannon mold the other way around, that is, with the rear at the bottom and the mouth up, the bronze that flows to the bottom cools down much more quickly, and is richer in copper than tin, and the rear remains solid and does not melt or burst open like a flower at the first shot, as happens with our bombards.
His Most Illustrious Lordship Ludovico has therefore decided to use for cannons the bronze he was saving for the horse, and Leonardo is now teaching the skill to our Master Zanino. When there is war, we will have cannons that function well.
Because war there will be. His Most Illustrious Lord has approved the loan to His Most Christian Majesty and sent Signor Belgioioso beyond the Alps to attend to the manufacturing of the contraptions and then bring them here. In the New Year, His Most Christian Majesty will go to Genoa and from there set sail for Naples. Ludovico states that it is his firm intention not to move any soldiers from Milan.
Giacomo Trotti put the quill down. This was how it would be. King Charles would head for Naples, and the alliance between Milan, Ferrara, Venice, and Florence would protect the rest of the peninsula, unless some new upheaval altered the alliances once again. And so King Charles would squander all his forces on conquering the Kingdom of Naples from the Aragons, while Milan and Ferrara would remain undisturbed, the former under the will of Ludovico il Moro, and the latter, his homeland, in the strong and capable hands of its undisputed lord, Ercole Duke of Ferrara,
to whose benevolence I commend myself, as always.
Mediolano, XXX octubris 1493
Servus Jacomo Trotti
My Most Illustrious Lord,
I present my respects to you and to His Most Christian Majesty. In the end, despite the various accidents that occurred, Duke Ludovico has agreed to lend us the thirty thousand ducats we need to start the war. Signor Belgioioso has received specific instructions to ensure that they are spent judiciously.
There has recently been an extraordinary event in Milan, that is, the killing of a man in the Piazzale delle Armi, and Father Diodato da Siena, whom I introduced to you last year together with His Eminence Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, was found guilty. They say he was at the head of a ring that forged fake letters of credit, and that the quantity of fake money it would have unleashed would have put the bank in a crisis. They are saying on the street that Messer Leonardo had a role in investigating the matter and resolved it.
At this point, the next thing is for Ludovico to be appointed Duke. The young Duke Gian Galeazzo is in very poor health, and many people are saying that he will soon die.
Your most humble servant, Perron de Basche
It was early November in Lyons, and the cold was damp and heavy. The only cheerful thing in the room was the crackling fire, near the desk.
The Duke of Orléans folded the letter, folded it again, and threw it into the flames.
Then, leaning back in his armchair, he sighed.
It had been a possibility, but it had gone up in smoke.
He remembered that Jesuate well. Giuliano della Rovere had introduced him the previous year and they had spoken for a long time. They had spoken of the way il Moro held the city in his fist with money that wasn’t his, and of how little respect his government showed toward Christian values.
It was then that the Duke of Orléans had said that if the Medici Bank were to go bankrupt, there would be a great upheaval in the city. And how can one bankrupt a bank? the Jesuate had asked, laughing. You would just need to persuade all its customers to withdraw their money on the same day, the Duke had replied, laughing too.
But it was no laughing matter.
The fellow had tried it in earnest.
* * *
The Duke of Orléans started thinking about what could have happened.
* * *
The bank bankrupted, its credits uncollectible, money in short supply. Crisis. Just like in Florence a hundred and fifty years earlier, when Florentine bankers had faced the same situation. And they had gone bankrupt, dragging the city into a bottomless abyss.
In Florence, the Bardis had been replaced by the Medicis. In Milan, people worn down by taxes and enraged by the crisis would have invoked the only possible contender to the throne. That is, himself, the Duke of Orléans.
And he would have been nearby, on reconnaissance with Charles VIII’s expedition, an expedition that would have set off as soon as news of the crisis arrived, while Ludovico would have had to be away, at the head of the procession taking the new bride to the Emperor.
* * *
The Duke shook himself out of his reverie.
It hadn’t turned out that way. It would never turn out that way. Well, never mind.
As far as he was concerned, his entry into Milan had merely been postponed. One day, he would enter that city that had entered his heart, not as a warlord, but as Duke and ruler.
And when that day came, he would like to have at his side a man like Leonardo da Vinci.
My Most Excellent Lord, whom I alone may call mine,
There is no greater pain for a man than to strive at a task, see it almost reach completion and in the end crash to the ground, destroyed beyond remedy. This is what would happen to the horse, my horse, if I were to melt it and cast it in the form and in the proportions I have conceived so far. Look at the legs of a rat, so slight and thin in comparison to its body. They are much thinner, proportionately, than those of a rabbit or a cat, which have thicker supports, just like horses and dogs. Look at the elephant, whose legs are enormous and fat, almost like pillars in comparison with the architrave of the body, rather than, as in the case of the rat, like twigs beneath an onion.
The weight of the beast increases like the cube of its height. Take a ten-sided cube; the area of the sides of the cube is ten times ten, that is, one hundred, and its volume and therefore its weight is ten times ten, taken another ten times, that is, a thousand.
In this way, it becomes clear that if the animal is one pace tall, and its weight one pound, when it is two paces tall it weighs the cube of two, or two times two times two, that is, eight pounds. And the weight that must be borne by the legs of an animal that is twice as tall as one of its companions equal to it in all its proportions is not two times but eight times.
If you maintain these proportions, you will have a leg that is four times as thick or that has four times the surface of the section, but the weight that it must bear is eight times.
This is why nature gives the rat slender legs, the cat and the rabbit plump legs, and the elephant large, pillar-like legs. An animal as tall as an elephant, and with the shape and proportion of a rat, would collapse to the ground. The same would happen to my horse.
So that it may bear the weight of a small specimen, one pace tall, the bronze
must be one finger thick; but if you make the horse ten paces tall, the bronze can no longer be ten fingers thick but will have to be much larger, or the weight of the bronze on top of it will overwhelm it, like an elephant that has the shape of a rat.
The specimen horse I made from clay cannot be used as a model for casting the bronze horse. And that was my first error.
I estimated that one hundred thousand pounds of bronze would be enough to cover the horse, using simple proportion, but as I have said, that is not sufficient. Much more than that would be needed, but I do not feel in the right state of mind to make the calculation now. And that is my second mistake.
These pounds of bronze that Ludovico has already accumulated will be used for making bombards, the way I taught Zanino the Ferrarese, according to the system you learned while making casts for your horse.
Never in these papers have I written two errors on the same paper. But that is the purpose of these letters, which I send to you, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, so that you may remember two things.
The first is that no thing or creature is without error, and that the taller you become, the farther you may fall. Only he who does nothing never errs.
The second is that without error, and without the knowledge of his error, man can never learn from his experience. In the same way as an infant learns to crawl, then pulls himself up, and only when he falls on his backside does he learn the art of standing on his own two feet, in just that way, every time you err and acknowledge the fact, you will immediately amend it, and you will remember it.
You will immediately amend it, unlike Rambaldo, who did not realize the seriousness of what he was doing until it was too late, although he thought he could remedy it by asking forgiveness. And you will remember it because man tends to commit the very same errors over and over again, that is his nature.
Respect every man for the way he deals with his every error. Because we are born small and defenseless, and a two-year-old child is weaker and less complete than a dog, a horse, or even an elephant of the same age. But as we grow we overtake and dominate every animal in the world and that is why it is in growing and learning, and not in his birth, that we see the measure of a man.
It is only by observing nature, and other men, that man learns. But without comparing what we do with what we believe, what we expect with what happens, man cannot grow to be healthy in his intellect and judgment. And the only way to have knowledge of one’s error is to measure oneself against nature itself, since, unlike man, she never lies.
I bid you farewell until we meet again, yours and ever yours
Leonardo
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A Book Full of Errors
For a historian to attempt to write a book about Leonardo da Vinci that contained no errors would be presumptuous. For a novelist to believe he can do so, especially a novelist with a chemistry degree, would have been madness. So I have no doubt that there are many errors, both historical and artistic, in this book, and that sooner or later they will be spotted. On the other hand, some aspects that might seem curious or far-fetched are historically verified.
* * *
It is true, for example, that one of the things making Milanese life at that time particularly stressful was traffic congestion, caused by carts driven exclusively by women; equally true is the story of Pesserer and Crancz, the two men arrested for forgery who were released after being recognized as alchemists.
It is plausible that Leonardo, during the period covered by this book, lived with his mother: starting with a note he makes on a sheet of paper dated 1493, in which he writes Caterina came on 16 July 1493, and finishing with a sheet from 1494 concerning the expenses of the burial of Caterina amounting to 123 soldi, that is, six imperial lire, or if you prefer, about a ducat—a not inconsiderable sum for a funeral at the time, and one that would have been hard to justify for a domestic servant. It is also interesting that the note about Caterina’s arrival does not contain the formula to stay with me which is used for the arrivals of his apprentices, from Salaì to Giulio the German. A number of scholars, among them Luca Beltrami, agree with this hypothesis.
The use of the term do to indicate the first note of the musical scale is inaccurate, but only just: such a term is not known to have been used until the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The title of duke attributed to Philippe de Commynes is undeserved. The fact is, as I have noted, there are so many dukes in this story that I couldn’t help myself.
It is plausible, though, that Salaì was something halfway between a favorite pupil and an adopted son. He would follow Leonardo practically everywhere, and even though there would be plenty of quarrels and disagreements, it seems that the relationship between the two was never thrown into question.
It is possible, although unlikely, that Leonardo received the payment for The Virgin of the Rocks as I have indicated. The whole “you owe me money for this painting” question dragged on for about twenty years. The other thing that went on for a long time was the matter of the Sforza horse, which in the end Leonardo never completed, due to both technical and financial problems.
For a detailed account of the problems posed by the casting of the horse, and the huge effort involved, the best source, without any doubt, is Leonardo e il monumento equestre a Francesco Sforza, by Andrea Bernardoni (Giunti). Which leads me to mention some of the books that might be of interest to those who, even if only for their own pleasure, would like to learn more on the subject of “Leonardo the Renaissance man” from sources much more serious than this novel.
* * *
As suggested above, a lifetime would not be long enough to learn all there is to learn about the genius of Da Vinci. A good starting point is Walter Isaacson’s fine book, Leonardo da Vinci (Simon and Schuster). An agreeable read, although prone to a perhaps excessive lyricism, is Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s novel, Leonardo da Vinci: The Resurrection of the Gods (Alma Classics), among other things the first work of fiction to feature the hypothesis that Leonardo lived with his mother during his time in Milan. (By the way, there are many—perhaps too many—fictional works in which Leonardo appears as either the protagonist or as a supporting character. My favorite imaginary Leonardo is the one who appears in the animated film, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, along with the absent-minded genius who struggles to understand the workings of a toilet flusher in the Roberto Benigni-Massimo Troisi film Nothing Left to Do but Cry.)
* * *
It is impossible to talk about Leonardo without talking about the Florence of the Medicis, where he trained, in Verrocchio’s workshop and elsewhere, or without talking about the importance of money. Florentine society is probably one of the first societies for which money becomes a fundamental, abstract value, and not just an ancillary object, giving rise to the kind of finance we still use today.
On the academic level, Raymond De Roover’s book Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1494 (W. W. Norton) is still, I think, the benchmark work for anyone interested in the history of the Florentine bank. It is a difficult book, far from easy to read, and requires time and patience, as well as an economic and financial expertise that not everyone has; I, for example, don’t have it, and some concepts only became clear to me after reading the livelier and much more enjoyable Medici Money, by Tim Parks (W. W. Norton), and 1345. La bancarotta di Firenze, by Lorenzo Tanzini (Salerno). This aspect is also explained in a very engaging way in Eric Weiner’s fine book The Geography of Genius (Simon & Schuster).
* * *
The other protagonist of this book is Ludovico il Moro, and therefore, indirectly, Milan itself. If Florence was the city where the Renaissance was born, Milan is the city where it developed most completely, in all its artistic, scientific, and social aspects.
The court of Ludovico il Moro was a focal point of this development, and it is worth trying to find out more about it.
A perhaps somewhat dated but hi
ghly enjoyable account is provided by the four volumes of Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri’s La corte di Lodovico il Moro (Hoepli). For anyone wishing to take a look at court life, not superficially but in depth, as revealed in the correspondence between ambassadors and rulers, the two books by Guido Lopez (Leonardo e Ludovico il Moro. La roba e la libertà and Festa di nozze per Ludovico il Moro, both Mursia) are definitely pleasant reads, as well as solidly documented. Just as pleasant, but I don’t know how easy to find, is Beatrice d’Este by Silvia Alberti de Mazzeri (my edition is Fabbri), a fictionalized but well managed account of the short but intense life of Beatrice d’Este.
* * *
To approach a figure like Leonardo, and claim the right to describe his thoughts, requires a certain amount of nerve. I wouldn’t have done it on my own initiative, but now I can’t help but be pleased. I therefore thank my publishers, Giunti, for thinking of me for this project, and Giulia Ichino, a friend first and an editor second, for following this book every step of the way and putting me in touch with genuine experts on the subject whenever my ignorance made it necessary (in other words, often). The number of things I learned in this year and a half of studying the Renaissance man par excellence far exceeded my expectations. I thought I knew a lot about Leonardo, and I discovered that I had barely scraped the surface.
I would, of course, never have managed to learn all these things alone. In primis, my thanks go to Dario Dondi for introducing me to the world of Leonardo’s autograph manuscripts and for his skill in grasping exactly what I needed to know. I also thank, in no particular order, Edoardo Rossetti for his matchless expertise in the history and urban development of the Milan of the Sforzas, Gabriele Baldassari for helping me with tenacity and a sense of humor to write in the Ferrarese idiom of the fifteenth (almost sixteenth) century, Luca Scarlini for his advice on the history of fashion and armor at the time, and Maristella Botticini for reassuring me on certain aspects of the history of finance with which I was unfamiliar—not that I know all that much now, but at least I know how to write about it . . .
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