Leonardo Da Vinci

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Leonardo Da Vinci Page 46

by Charles Nicholl


  This quality of scrimmage, of formless mêlée, of contortion and commotion, is precisely seen in his preparatory sketches. Thus, between Florentine spin and eyewitness truth, Leonardo gropes towards the composition.

  News that Leonardo is at work on a major new project has reached the ears of the ever-hopeful Isabella d’Este in Mantua, but has not deterred her. In a letter dated 14 May 1504 she instructs Angelo del Tovaglia to ask

  Anghiari studies. Top: preparatory drawing of the heads of two soldiers, and a mêlée of horsemen in combat, c. 1503–4. Bottom: a copy of Leonardo’s lost Battle of Anghiari, attributed to Peter Paul Rubens.

  Leonardo to paint her a small religious painting – ‘and if he gives an excuse that he has no time, because of the work he has begun for the most excellent Signoria, you can tell him that it will be a recreation and relaxation when the fresco grows wearisome, and that he can paint it whenever it seems pleasant to do so.’ On the same date she writes a letter to Leonardo himself, to be delivered by Tovaglia. It reads:

  Maestro Leonardo –

  Understanding that you are settled in Florence, we are hopeful that we can get from you what we have so much desired, which is to have something from your hand. When you were in these parts, and did my portrait in charcoal, you promised me that sometime you would do one in colour for me. As this is now almost impossible, since it is not convenient for you to travel here, we hope you will want to satisfy the obligations of our agreement by converting our portrait into another figure even more gracious, that of a Youthful Christ, of about twelve years old, at the age when he disputed in the Temple, done with that air of sweetness and comeliness [suavita] in which your art so especially excels…

  She winds up in a tone of steely courtesy: ‘In expectation of your devoted reply, we offer you our best wishes…’

  Tovaglia duly delivered the letter to the artist at Santa Maria Novella, but received the familiar polite brush-off: ‘He has promised me he will do it at certain hours, when he can spare the time from the work he has undertaken for the Signoria.’ Tovaglia has also been asked to chase up Pietro Perugino, who is supposed to be producing a painting for Isabella’s studiolo. He concludes wryly:

  I will continue to encourage Leonardo in this, and also Perugino in the other. Both of them are full of promises, and seem very desirous to serve Your Ladyship, however I fear there will be a competition in lateness [gara de tarditate] between them. Who knows which of them will win this – my money is on Leonardo!109

  Isabella did not give up, and a couple of years later she found a more promising emissary, someone with family connections with Leonardo – Alessandro Amadori, canon of Fiesole, the brother of Leonardo’s first stepmother, Albiera. But, as we gather from Amadori’s letter to her, this new tack proved equally fruitless.110

  By the early summer of 1504 Leonardo is ready to synthesize his small sketches and clay models into the single full-scale image of the cartoon, drawn and painted on to the huge patchwork of paper held in a framework in the refectory of Santa Maria Novella. In June a baker named Giovanni di Landino brings ‘88 lb of sifted flour… for coating the cartoon’. From the apothecary come 28 pounds of Alexandrian white lead and 36 pounds of baking soda and 2 pounds of gesso, ‘required by Leonardo for painting’. And a blacksmith is paid for iron pins and rings and wheels for ‘Leonardo’s carriage’ – ‘il carro di Leonardo’: another platform, this time on wheels, enabling him to move around the large area of the cartoon.

  MICHELANGELO

  Whether or not it was originally in the minds of the Signoria, by the late summer of 1504 the decision was documented: Leonardo’s fresco or mural on the wall of the Council Hall was to be matched by one by Michelangelo, illustrating another famous Florentine victory, the Battle of Cascina, on the opposite wall. They thus envisaged the two greatest Florentine artists of the day working opposite one another in the Council Hall, and it is hard to believe they did not conceive this as a sort of competition, or indeed a clash of the Titans, in which the natural rivalry of excellence, spiced (as it seems) with personal antagonism, would spur each man on to greater feats of artistic ingenuity.

  When Leonardo left Florence in 1482, Michele Agnolo di Lodovico Buonarroti was a seven-year-old boy living with a stonemason’s family at a marble-quarry in Settignano owned by his nobly descended but impecunious father. By the time that Leonardo returned, eighteen years later, Michelangelo was the charismatic new star, the new blood pumping through the veins of Renaissance sculpture.111 Having been the apprentice of Domenico Ghirlandaio for three years (1488–91), and the protégé of Lorenzo de’ Medici until the latter’s death in 1492, he had swiftly established a name for himself with such early Florentine works as the marble Cupid and the dramatic bas-relief The Battle of the Centaurs, in which the classical influence of Lorenzo’s sculpture-garden is already mixed with the straining muscles and contorted limbs of his mature work. In 1496 he was summoned to Rome by Cardinal San Giorgio: there he created the tipsy, subversive Bacchus, which has, as Vasari notes, ‘the slenderness of a youth combined with the fullness and roundness of a female form’, and the beautiful Pietà of St Peter’s. In late 1500 or 1501 he returned to Florence, and it was probably then that he and Leonardo met for the first time. We might imagine (though only imagine) Michelangelo among the throng packed into the Annunziata to view Leonardo’s St Anne cartoon in the spring of 1501 – a brash, tousled, powerfully built young man, shabbily dressed, with an aura of aggressive self-confidence, and already sporting the famous boxer’s nose, having had it smashed in a fight with a fellow sculptor, Pietro Torrigiano.

  Michelangelo Buonarroti.

  He soon began work on his most characteristic – and characteristically Florentine – work, the monumental David, described in contemporary documents as the ‘marble giant’ or simply ‘the giant’. The contract with the Signoria is dated 16 August 1501, with a term of delivery of two years; according to Vasari the fee was 400 florins. Over 16 feet tall and weighing about 9 tons, the David is said to have been carved from a spoiled block of marble which had been hanging around in the fabbriceria of the Duomo for years; it had been ‘botched’, according to Vasari, by a sculptor called Simone da Fiesole, presumably meaning Simone Ferrucci; another account names the botcher as Agostino di Duccio. Vasari also says that Gonfalonier Soderini ‘had often talked of handing the block over to Leonardo’, but gave it to Michelangelo instead. There is no real confirmation of this.112

  By mid-1503 the great sculpture was taking shape: ‘freed’ in Michelangelo’s famous phrase, ‘from the prison of the marble’. A note beneath a rough sketch of David’s left arm furnishes a vivid gladiatorial image of the sculptor: ‘Davide colla fromba e io coll’arco’ – ‘David with his sling and I with my bow’, in other words with the bow-shaped marble-drill.113 Leonardo meanwhile – if we accept the evidence supplied by Vasari – was starting work on his portrait of Lisa del Giocondo: no doubt a good deal less remunerative. These two famous works epitomize the dual mentality of the Renaissance: the one big and breathtakingly confident; the other cool, interior, ungraspable.

  On 25 January 1504 the works department of the Duomo convened an extraordinary committee (routine enough administratively, but extraordinary for its concentration of Renaissance artistic talent) to decide on the most ‘convenient and congruous’ location to display the massive marble giant, which was now ‘almost finished’.114 Thirty men were invited: it is noted in the margin that one of them, Andrea da Monte Sansavino, was absent in Genoa, so it appears that the remaining twenty-nine were present. Besides Leonardo there were Andrea della Robbia, Piero di Cosimo, David Ghirlandaio (younger brother of the late Domenico), Simone del Pollaiuolo (known as Il Cronaca), Filippino Lippi, Cosimo Rosselli, Sandro Botticelli, Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi. Also present were ‘Vante miniatore’, to whom Leonardo had lent money in 1503; ‘Giovanni piffero’, probably the musician Giovanni di Andrea Cellini; and ‘El Riccio orafo’, Cur
ly the goldsmith, who may be the same as the ‘Riccio Fiorentino’ later named by the Anonimo Gaddiano as one of Leonardo’s assistants on the Anghiari fresco.

  Leonardo’s opinion about the placing of David is recorded in the minutes of the meeting. ‘I say that it should be placed in the Loggia’ – the Loggia dei Lanzi, opposite the Palazzo Vecchio – ‘as Giuliano has said, behind the low wall where the soldiers line up. It should be put there, with suitable ornaments, in such a way that it does not interfere with the ceremonies of state.’ This opinion, shared by Giuliano da Sangallo but counter to the general view, already expresses an antagonism, a deliberate refusal to be impressed. Let this oversized statue be sidelined in a corner where it won’t get in the way. The true wish expressed is the sidelining of the sculptor himself: this awkward, intrusive genius. Further nuances of umbrage may have arisen in relation to that earlier Florentine David, sculpted by his master Verrocchio, for which the teenage Leonardo is said to have been the model: now, forty years on, this new David outmodes that image of his own youthful promise.

  His advice was not heeded, and in May the statue was duly placed on the platform outside the main entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio, where it remained for several centuries, and where the nineteenth-century replica now stands. The diary of Luca Landucci gives a vivid account of the transporting of it (and sheds incidental light on the problem of vandalism in Renaissance Florence):

  14 May 1504 – The marble giant was taken out of the works department at the 24th hour [8 p.m.], and they had to break down the wall above the door so that it could get through. During the night stones were thrown at the giant to injure it, therefore it was necessary to keep watch over it. It took four days to get it to the Piazza [della Signoria], arriving there on the 18th at the twelfth hour of the morning [8 a.m.]. It was moved along by more than forty men. Beneath it were fourteen greased beams which were changed from hand to hand.115

  It was finally erected on 8 July, Donatello’s Judith having been banished to an inner courtyard to make room. Perhaps Leonardo was present at this ceremony or perhaps he was pointedly absent: back at Santa Maria Novella, aloof on his wheeled trolley, attending to certain small adjustments of the Anghiari cartoon.

  It was perhaps around this time that the rivalry between the two artists erupted in a brief public spat, which is recorded by the Anonimo Gaddiano in a vivid little vignette which leaps out of the generally rather bland pages of his biography of Leonardo. It is preceded by the phrase ‘Dal Gav.’, which suggests that the source was the same ‘P. da Gavine’ whom the account mentions as Leonardo’s companion. It is, in other words, an eyewitness account.

  Leonardo was walking with P. da Gavine through [Piazza] Santa Trinità, and they passed the Pancaccia degli Spini where there was a gathering of citizens arguing over a passage of Dante; and they called out to the said Leonardo, asking him to explain the passage. At that point, by chance, Michele Agnolo was passing by, and Leonardo answered their request by saying, ‘There’s Michele Agnolo, he’ll explain it for you.’ Upon which Michele Agnolo, thinking he had said this to insult him, retorted angrily, ‘Explain it yourself – you who designed a horse to cast in bronze, and couldn’t cast it, and abandoned it out of shame.’ And so saying he turned his back on them and walked off. And Leonardo was left there, his face red because of these words.

  The anecdote is precisely located: they are in the Piazza Santa Trinità; the group discussing Dante is lounging around an old loggia in front of the medieval palazzo of the Spini family (now Palazzo Ferroni-Spini). This building stands on the southern side of the piazza and runs down to the river-front by the Ponte Santa Trinità. It no longer has a loggia, but one can work out where this was by looking at the frescos by Domenico Ghirlandaio painted in the mid-1480s in the nearby church of Santa Trinità. They depict the life of St Francis but are placed, as is Ghirlandaio’s way, in a contemporary Florentine setting. The central fresco, showing the miraculous healing of a child, is precisely set in Piazza Santa Trinità: viewed from a point to the north of the piazza, it shows the church on the right (though without its late-sixteenth-century façade), the receding line of the Ponte Santa Trinità in the middle background, and the Palazzo Spini on the left. There is nothing resembling a loggia on the two walls visible (the northern and western walls), thus confirming what common sense would anyway suggest: that it was on the southern side, looking out over the river.116 We can thus place this trenchant exchange between Leonardo and Michelangelo precisely on the Lungarno, a little to the east of the bridge, in front of what is now the smart fashion-outlet Salvatore Ferragamo.

  It is also closely characterized: the retiring Leonardo, who pleasantly declines the invitation to pontificate about the passo dantesco; the touchy, intemperate Michelangelo furiously reacting to this supposed slight (where none can have been intended, as the story is given, unless there was a touch of sarcasm about it, as if to say, ‘Here’s Michelangelo, who knows everything.’). The latter’s abrupt departure – ‘voltò i rene’, literally ‘he turned his kidneys’ – leaves Leonardo speechless, embarrassed and angry: ‘per le dette parole diventò rosso’ – he became red. Leonardo was instinctively courteous, Michelangelo instinctively offensive.

  On the following page of the Anonimo’s manuscript, after a digression about Michelangelo’s skill as an anatomist, there is a further instance of Michelangelo’s jeering tone towards Leonardo: ‘On another occasion Michele Agnolo, wanting to hurt [mordere – literally ‘to bite’] Leonardo, said to him, “So those idiot Milanese actually believed in you?”’ ‘Que’ caponi de’ Melanesi’ is literally ‘those Milanese big heads’, but caponi carries the sense of stupidity or obstinacy rather than boastfulness. If this too is a genuine report, it shows real sneering antipathy.

  There is no hint in the text as to the date of the Santa Trinità episode. It could have occurred between early 1501 (when Michelangelo returned from Rome) and summer 1502 (when Leonardo left Florence to join Borgia), or between March 1503 (Leonardo’s return to Florence) and early 1505 (Michelangelo’s departure for Rome). Both insults refer to Leonardo’s failure with the Sforza Horse, which might suggest the earlier date, but they would be equally appropriate in the context of the David committee – Leonardo’s sniffy attitude to the statue calling forth this invective about his own failures in the arena of large-scale sculpture. This would place the spat in early 1504 – spring 1504, perhaps, when the weather is warm enough for men to lounge in a loggia discussing Dante. In the text the anecdote is preceded by some comments about the painting of the Anghiari fresco, also from ‘Gav.’ or Gavine.

  It is in this context of bitter rivalry that the Signoria hit on the idea of getting Michelangelo to paint another battle-scene in the Council Hall to counterpoint – or compete with – Leonardo’s. As Michelangelo himself later phrased it, he ‘undertook to do half the Council Hall’.117 His subject, the Battle of Cascina, was part of an earlier war against Pisa. The first indication of Michelangelo’s involvement is a document dated 22 September 1504, in which he is granted (as Leonardo had been the previous year) free use of a large studio space, the sala grande at the Ospedale di Sant’Onofrio. This was ratified on 29 October.118 Here, Vasari relates,

  Copy of Michelangelo’s cartoon for the Battle of Cascina, attributed to Aristotile da Sangallo.

  he started work on a vast cartoon which he refused to let anyone see. He filled it with naked men who are shown bathing in the River Arno because of the heat when suddenly the alarm is raised in the camp because of an attack of the enemy. And as the soldiers rush out of the water to dress themselves, Michelangelo’s inspired hand depicted them… in various unusual attitudes, some upright, some kneeling or leaning forward, or halfway between one position and another, all exhibiting the most difficult foreshortenings.

  The following February Michelangelo received payment of 280 lire from the Palazzo della Signoria ‘for his labour in painting the cartoon’. This was then the equivalent of about 40 florins: we don’t k
now precisely what time-span this covers, but it seems to compare favourably with Leonardo’s stipend of 15 florins a month. Michelangelo’s cartoon was probably complete by then. ‘When they saw the cartoon,’ says Vasari, ‘all the other artists were overcome with admiration and astonishment.’ Shortly after this Michelangelo departed for Rome, to discuss the ill-fated project of the tomb for Julius II. He seems to have taken no further part in the Council Hall project: there is no evidence that he ever began painting. The cartoon itself is lost, but survives in a fine copy at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, the former seat of the Earls of Leicester and until the 1980s the home of the Leonardo notebook called the Codex Leicester.

  How Leonardo viewed this challenge or intrusion is not recorded, but he seems to have left Florence in September or early October 1504, and though there are other reasons for his departure, this coincides precisely with the commissioning of Michelangelo ‘to do half the Council Hall’, and may in part be a piqued withdrawal from the scene: a walk-out. He had by this stage completed his own cartoon, probably by the end of July, which is the date of his last recorded payment; he did not begin painting in the Palazzo Vecchio until the first weeks of 1505. Confrontation is not in his nature: he avoids or eludes it. Thus begins the great clash of the Renaissance giants: Michelangelo is there at the door, ready to fight – but the room is empty.

 

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