Leonardo Da Vinci

by Charles Nicholl

  50. CA 704bv/262r-c; cf. a similar recipe in CA 195v/71v-a (R 619), a sheet containing fragments of poetry datable to c. 1480 (see p. 154 above).

  51. Villata 1999, no. 17. The Ingesuati, whose monastery stood outside the Porta a Pinti, were another of Ser Piero da Vinci’s clients (Cecchi 2003, 123).

  52. Dull landscapes: CU 33v, McM 93. Indecorous Annunciation: CU 33r, McM 92. Botticelli’s Annunciation (Uffizi) is not the only candidate for Leonardo’s criticism (see, for example, Luca Signorelli’s, Johnson Coll., Philadelphia). ‘Sandro!’: CA 331r/120r-d; the dispute hinted at here may be part of a deeper split between the religiosity of Botticelli in his post-Savonarolan phase and the proudly scientific Leonardo (Argan 1957, 127f.)

  53. Baxandall 1988, 111–14. Giovanni Santi or de Santis was court painter to the Duke of Urbino. The ostensible context of the poem is the Duke’s visit to Florence in the spring of 1482, but these lines seem to have been written earlier. By 1482 Perugino was about thirty-three and Leonardo thirty, thus hardly ‘young men’, and neither was still in Florence. The poem also commends Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Botticelli and Luca Signorelli (‘il cortonese Luca’). The phrase ‘par d’amori’ probably means ‘equal in the number of their lovers’, i.e. equally admired.

  54. On Credi’s Annunciation (Louvre), see Marani 1999, 67–8; Zöllner 2003, 220.

  55. GDA 19.675, s.v. Lorenzo di Credi; Covi 1966.

  56. Contracts for Piero della Francesca’s Madonna della Misericordia, San Sepolcro, 1445, and Filippino’s Strozzi-chapel frescos, 1487: Baxandall 1988, 20–21.

  57. According to Vasari, the Pollaiuolo Tobias (Gall. Sabauda, Turin) was by both brothers in collaboration, and was painted for the guild hall of Orsanmichele (Vasari 1987, 2.74).

  58. Brown 2000, 14–19; cf. W. Suida, ‘Leonardo’s activity as a painter’, in Marazza 1954, 315–29.

  59. Scalini 1992, 62–3.

  60. Landucci 1927, 33, 42. Gostanzo ‘won twenty palii [in various cities] with his Barbary horse, Draghetto’ – the ‘Little Dragon’.

  61. CA 629av/231v-b, R 707. Architectural designs on the verso are for the summerhouse of Charles d’Amboise, c. 1508, suggesting that the ‘comedy’ was for the French in Milan. ‘Birds which can fly’: Lomazzo 1584, 106.

  62. Baxandall 1988, 71–6; Ventrone 1992, 57–9.

  63. Martines 2003, 14.

  64. Lubkin 1999, app. 4.

  65. Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, Bk 7, ch. 28 (Machiavelli 1966, 2.729).

  66. Coll. Bartolini-Salimbeni, Florence. The painting is sometimes attributed to Giovanni Battista Bertucci (or Utili).

  67. 1987, 1.235–6. The orb we see today is not Verrocchio’s, which was dislodged by lightning on the night of 17 January 1600 and was replaced by the present ball, which is larger than Verrocchio’s, in March 1602.

  68. Landucci 1927, 9, and note citing entries in the Quaderno di Cassa of the Opera del Duomo.

  69. G 84v.

  70. Vasari 1987, 1.146–7. The incident is not found in the earlier biography attributed to Antonio Manetti.

  71. On the construction of the dome, see King 2001, 83–107; R. Mainstone, ‘Brunelleschi’s dome of S. Maria del Fiore’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society 42 (1969–70), 107–26.

  72. Kemp 1989, 219–22, on which this paragraph is based. See also Pedretti 1976, 9–13; Reti 1965. The later date is suggested by details of Brunelleschian mechanisms on a sheet dated 1478 (Uffizi GDS 446E).

  73. Reversible hoist or collo grande (illustrated): CA, 1083v/391v (Kemp 1989, plate 120). On this device, also called the ‘ox hoist’, and a drawing of it by Mariano Taccola, see King 2001, 58–61. Revolving crane: CA 965r /349r-a (Kemp 1989, plate 121). Crane on rails: CA 808r/295r-b (Pedretti 1976, plate 7).

  74. CA 909v/333v.

  75. Milanese domes: B 18v, 2ir, 22r, etc.; CA 849v/31ov-a. Herring-bone bricks: CA 933v/341v-a.

  76. ASF Accademia del Disegno 2, 93v; Villata 1999, no. 5.

  77. G. Moreni, Notizie (Florence, 1793), 6.161; Ottino della Chiesa 1967, 88; Marani 2000a, 48–52.

  78. Brown 1998, 76–9, 194–5

  79. The lectern also quotes from the tomb of Carlo Marsuppini, sculpted in the 1450s by Desiderio di Settignano, and doubtless seen by Leonardo in the church of Santa Croce a few minutes’ walk from the bottega.

  80. Kemp 1981, 54. Errors of perspective: Clark 1988, 53.

  81. Baxandall 1988, 49–56.

  82. Ibid., 50, citing Roberto Caraccioli, Sermones de laudibus sanctorum (Naples, 1489).

  83. Clark 1988, 62.

  84. Natali 1998, 269–70; Cecchi 2003, 126–7. Simone di Cione was abbot in 1471–3 and 1475–8.

  85. CA 225r/83r-a, c. 1513–15; PC 2.351. A meeting between them in Florence in 1506 is recorded in a letter from Amadori to Isabella d’Este (see p. 375) Ottaviano de’ Medici (d. 1546) was a younger cousin of Lorenzo, whose granddaughter Francesca he married.

  86. Ottino della Chiesa 1967, 89.

  87. CU 6v, McM 24.

  88. CU 135r, McM 554, from BN 2038 29r. Dragon drawings: RL 12370; Louvre, Coll. Rothschild 7810.

  89. Lomazzo 1584, Bk 2, ch. 20; W. Suida, Leonardo und sein Kreis (Munich, 1929), fig. 117.

  90. Antonio was the first of twelve legitimate children belatedly fathered by Ser Piero: his second child, Maddalena, died in infancy, but the others survived him. Six were born to his third wife, Margherita di Francesco di Iacopo di Guglielmo (d. 1486), and six to his fourth wife, Lucrezia di Guglielmo Giuliani. The latter was nearly forty years younger than Ser Piero, and twelve years younger than Leonardo, and outlived both of them. Most prominent among Leonardo’s half-brothers was the second son, Giuliano (b. 1480), who became notary to the Signoria in 1516 and Florentine orator at the Helvetic League in 1518. Lorenzo (b. 1484) was a wool-merchant who penned an edifying religious essay, the ‘Confessionale’ (see Part I n. 31). Guglielmo (b. 1496) inherited the house at Anchiano, which was sold by his grandson and namesake in 1624. The youngest son, Giovanni (b. 1498), is heard of as ‘innkeeper and butcher’ at Mercatale, near Vinci, where Accattabriga once had his kilns. The son of Bartolomeo (b. 1497), Pierfrancesco or Pierino da Vinci, became a talented sculptor, but died in his early twenties in 1553.

  91. Ottino della Chiesa 1967, 89–90; Walker 1967.

  92. On Ginevra and her family see articles in DBI; Fletcher 1989; Cecchi 2003, 129–31. Cecchi notes the notarial presence of Ser Piero, who handled various Benci documents between 1458 and 1465, including the will of Ginevra’s grandmother Maddelana in 1460. Leonardo remained friendly with Ginevra’s brother Giovanni (1456–1523), and in 1482 left the unfinished Adoration of the Magi in his safe keeping. (Vasari says he left it at the ‘house of Amerigo de’ Benci’, which is sometimes misinterpreted as referring to Ginevra’s father; it refers to Giovanni’s son, who was head of the family when Vasari was writing.) Giovanni is mentioned in Leonardo memoranda of the early 1500s: ‘the map of the world which Giovanni Benci has’ (CA 358r/130r-a), and ‘book of Giovanni Benci’s’ (L IV). It is possible that the latter is the book of veterinary science (Jordanus Ruffus, De medicina veterinaria) now in the Laurentian Library, Florence, bearing the inscription ‘Questo libro è di Giovanni d’Amerigo Benci, 1485’, and further possible that the same book is described in Leonardo’s book-list of 1504 as ‘libro di medicina di medicina di cavalla’ (‘book about medicine for horses’): see Solmi 1908, 92; PC 2.361.

  93. As in all Renaissance texts, virtus or virtù has a more complex meaning than today’s morally tinged ‘virtue’. Philosophically it refers to the spiritual essence contained, or imprisoned, inside the material world – the sense still used, with an alchemical overtone, when we talk of the curative ‘virtues’ of a plant. In an applied sense it refers to personal qualities of intellectual power, excellence, aspiration, talent; Leonardo uses the word frequently in this sort of sense.

  94. RL 12558r. A hypothetical reconstruction of the original Ginevra, based on the extant portrait, the Win
dsor hands and the Verrocchio posy, has been generated by the Washington National Gallery’s Department of Imaging: Brown 2000, plate 3. The Verrocchio bust was not the only sculpture of Ginevra: an account of works destroyed in the Savonarolan bonfires of 1497–8 includes a sculpted head of ‘the beautiful Bencia’ (Butterfield 1997, 96).

  95. Bembo’s copy of De amore: Bodleian Library, Oxford, Can. Class. Lat. 156. Bembicae Peregrinae: Eton College Library, Cod. 156. See Fletcher 1989, 811. The emblem of the laurel and palm in the Peregrinae (IIIV) was drawn by Bembo’s friend Bartolomeo Sanvito; it is very close to Leonardo’s version, and may have been a direct source of it. Technical analysis of the Ginevra (Zöllner 2003, 219) shows that the motto on the reverse originally read ‘Virtus et Honor’, as in the Peregrinae emblem. On Bembo see N. Giannetto, Bernardo Bembo, umanista e politico Veneziano (Florence, 1985). His son was the famous humanist Pietro Bembo, one of the interlocutors in Castiglione’s The Courtier.

  96. Poliziano, Stanze per la Giostra (1476), Bk 1, lines 43–4.

  97. Brown 2000, 124–5.

  98. On the philosophical context of Botticelli’s paintings see Gombrich 1945; G. Ferruolo, ‘Botticelli’s mythologies, Ficino’s De amore, Poliziano’s Stanze per la giostra’, Art Bulletin 3 (1965).

  99. Ficino, De vita coelitus, ch. 18, in Opera omnia (Basle, 1576), 557; see Yates 1965, 71. On Ficinian magic, see D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London, 1959).

  100. Yates 1965, 281–2. The ‘furor amoris’ (‘ecstasy of love’) which Ficino associates with Venus becomes a familiar motif in Elizabethan poetry; a sonnet sequence by the Italian occultist Giordano Bruno, Gli eroici furori (London, 1586), is a particular link. This train of influence suggests a remote but attractive consanguinity between Leonardo’s Ginevra and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593).

  101. Leonardo probably owned a copy of Ficino’s Theologica Platonica, completed in 1474 and published in 1482. In his book-list of c. 1492. (CA 5 59r/210r-a) he includes a book or manuscript designated ‘de immortalità d’anima’: the subtitle of Ficino’s book is ‘De animarum immortalitate’. But the phrase ‘Ermete filosofo’ (‘Hermes the philosopher’), jotted on the cover of Paris MS M, is not enough to show that Leonardo knew Ficino’s translations of the mystical Hermetica, the Pimander. To call Leonardo an ‘Aristotelian’ should not be taken as dogmatic. Bembo himself, Fletcher notes (1989, 814), ‘proved resistant to the philosophical aspects of Ficino’s neo-Platonism’, having been deeply influenced by Aristotelian and Averroist teachers at Padua university.

  102. CA 18/4r-b, v-b (R1553, 1359). On the identity of Bernardo see PC 2.384. Another name on the sheet is ‘Franco d’Antonio di Ser Piero’, i.e. Uncle Francesco. Bramly (1992, 154) notes that the last three words, written ‘di s pero’, also spell out ‘dispero’ (‘I despair’): it is tempting to hear a punning comment about his relationship with his father, though the name refers in this instance to Leonardo’s great-grandfather.

  103. ASF, Ufficiali di Notte 18/2, 41V (9 April), 51r (7 June); Villata 1999, nos. 7, 8.

  104. Smiraglia Scognamiglio 1896, 313–15. Milanesi’s reference: Vasari 1878, 4.22n. Uzielli 1884, 200–201, 441–8.

  105. Sogni (see Introduction n. 22), 136v–137v. Possibly Lomazzo had confidential first-hand information about Leonardo’s private life from Melzi; more likely he is stating something that other biographers knew but did not state. The statement is discreet in that Lomazzo never published the Sogni.

  106. Ar 44r; Pedretti 2001, 71–4. In anatomical texts Leonardo generally uses verga or membro for the penis, but see RL 19030r, c. 1506–8, where the cazzo is said to be ‘the minister of the human species’. On ‘The Running Cock’ (Fors 2 4or), see C. Pedretti, ALV 4 (1991); A. Marinoni, RV 24 (1992), 181–8. Phallic animals: CA 132–133v/48r-a, r-b.

  107. Saslow 1986; Rocke 1996; Orto 1989. See also Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982).

  108. Cellini 2002, 301. Though Botticelli was not convicted, an assistant of his was, in 1473. See R. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli: Life and work (London, 2 vols., 1978), 1.152–4.

  109. Rocke 1987.

  110. Dante, Inferno, cantos 14–15. Dante’s response is complicated by the presence of his former teacher, Ser Brunetto Latino, among the damned. On hardline attitudes further to the 1484 papal bull ‘Summis desiderantes affectibus’, see M. Consoli, Independence Gay (Viterbo, 2000), ch. 1; T. Herzig, ‘Witchcraft and homosexuality in Pico’s Strix’, Sixteenth-Century Journal 34/1 (2003), 60–71.

  111. Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Codex Hamilton 201; Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reginense Lat. 1896. Between them these contain illustrations for 25 cantos of the Inferno (cantos 2–7, 9 and 14 are lost), all 33 cantos of the Purgatorio, and 31 cantos of the Paradiso (cantos 31 and 33 are missing, possibly never done).

  112. Giovanni di Renzo: ASF, Catasto 1427, Indice delle famiglie. Bartolomeo, Antonio, Bernardo: ASF, Catasto 1457, Sommario dei campioni 2 (Santa Croce), C3. One of these three, who are assessed together in 1457, may be the father of Giovanni (thus named after his grandfather) and Jacopo; their actual portata (filza 798, carta 78) has so far proved elusive, though Jacopo, who was only seventeen in 1476, would not be on it.

  113. DBI s.v. Benci, Antonio (the birth-name of Pollaiuolo, the latter being a soprannome referring to his father’s trade of poulterer; no relationship to Ginevra’s family is apparent).

  114. CA 68ov/252v-a. Dated c. 1504–5 by Pedretti (PC 2.311–12) for its similarities to CA 84r/3or-b, which has a sketch related to the Anghiari mural. A standing man on RL 12328r, also c. 1505, may conceivably be connected to the ‘grown up’ Christ. Richter (R 1364n) gallantly but implausibly suggests that the debacle over the Christ-child arose from the Madonna and Child with a Cat studies of the late 1470s, which ‘would have been considered strange and irreverent by the Church authorities’.

  115. CA 1094r/394r-b; 32r/9r-b.

  116. BN 2037, 10r.

  117. Uffizi GDS 446E. Different readings: R 1383; Thus 1913, 151; PC 2.327–8.

  118. It is possibly a studio patronym: ‘Fioravanti pupil of Domenico’. The workshops of Domenico Ghirlandaio and Domenico di Michelino (mentioned by Leonardo in a note of c. 1480, CA 42v/12v-a) spring to mind, but the name is very common.

  119. On the Fortaguerri monument, see Butterfield 1997; GDA 19.675–6.

  120. RL 12572. The study of St Donatus (Coll. Wildenstein, New York) is attributed to Verrocchio, but recent analysis reveals left-handed brush-strokes in the shading of the face and throat. It was shown at the exhibition ‘Leonardo e dintorni’ (Arezzo, 2001).

  121. RL 12685, c. 1503–4, marked as ‘Sangenaio’. On the church, see G. Lera, Capannori: vicende di una civiltà contadina (Lucca, 1996), 88.

  122. L. Bertolini and M. Bucci, Arte sacra dal VI al XIX secolo (Lucca, 1957), no. 210; Pedretti 1998b, 16–22; local information, 11 June 2003.

  123. D 4r.

  124. Jean Lemaire, Plainte du désiré (1509), in Nicodemi 1934, 8.

  125. CA 807r/295r-a.

  126. CU 20v, McM 51.

  127. Fors 3 83r.

  PART THREE: Independence, 1477–1482

  1. ASF, Mediceo avanti il principato 37, 49; ALV 5 (1992), 120–22.

  2. ASF, Signori e Collegi 94, 5v (10 January 1478), 27r (16 March); Villata 1999, nos. 9, 10.

  3. It is also possible that the Anonimo was confused – Filippino did later paint an altarpiece for the Palazzo Vecchio (c. 1486), though it was commissioned by the Otto di Pratica (the magistrature) and has no connection with the San Bernardo commission; and he did paint an altarpiece to substitute for an unfinished work by Leonardo (his Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato). The Anonimo’s statement may be a garbling of these two paintings.

  4. Clark 1933, 136–40; see illustrations on p. 239 above.

  5. B. Berenson, Study and Criticism of Italian Art, vol. 3 (London, 1916); S. Brandi, La Fiera litteraria (Rome, 1967). />
  6. E. de Liphart, Starye Gody (St Petersburg, 1909), in Ottino della Chiesa 1967, 90.

  7. Embolden 1987, 120.

  8. Uffizi GDS 212F (illustrated), sometimes attributed to Verrocchio; Louvre, Cabinet des Dessin 486 (Zöllner 2003, no. 118); BM 1860–6–16–100r (Zöllner 2003, no. 4).

  9. C. Pedretti, ‘Il disegno di Oporto’, RV 27 (1997), 3–11. Windsor word-lists: RL 12561.

  10. Madonna and child with the infant St John: RL 12276; Clark and Pedretti 1968, 1.3–4. Madonna and child with a cat: rapid sketches: BM 1857–1–10–1r, v (verso illustrated), 1860–6–16–98; Musée Bonnat, Bayonne (Zöllner 2003, nos. 110–13); more finished studies: BM 1856–6–26–1r, v; private coll.; Uffizi GDS 421E (Zöllner 2003, nos. 115–17, 119).

  11. On the conspiracy, see Martines 2003; Acton 1979; Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, Bk 8, chs. 1–9 (Machiavelli 1966, 2.738–46); A. Poliziano, Conjurationis Pactianae commentario.

  12. Martines 2003, 257ff.

  13. Vasari 1987, 1.239–40; G. Milanesi, Archivio storico 6 (1862), 5.

  14. Landucci 1927, 28, though another contemporary source, Belfredello Alfieri’s Chronichetta, dates the execution to the 29th (R 664n).

  15. Musée Bonnat, Bayonne. Poliziano described Bernardo as a ‘desperado’ (uomo perduto), but the Baroncelli were an established Florentine clan of the Santa Croce quarter; Maddalena Bandini Baroncelli (d. 1460) was Ginevra de’ Benci’s paternal grandmother. It is not impossible that Leonardo knew the man whose execution he recorded.

  16. ASF, Operai Palazzo, Stanziamenti 10, 79V, 80v.

  17. See Brescia and Tomio 1999 for recent discoveries, including a seventeenth-century transcript of his funeral monument at Sant’Agata.

  18. Ammirato 1637, 2.242. ‘Zoroastro’, after the Persian magus Zarethustra, is garbled to ‘Geroastro’ in the anonymous Antiquarie prospettiche Romane, iv (see Part V n. 119). Ammirato adds two further variations: ‘Alabastro’ and ‘Chiliabastro’.

  19. I2 49v, R 704; cf. I2 47v, showing costumes decorated with shells, beads and cords.