South of Lake Como he admired the size of the chestnut trees.
At Santa Maria Itre in the Valley of Rovagnate in the mountains of Brianza are rods of chestnuts of 9 braccia and one out of 100 will be as much as 14 braccia.149
On 21 October 1510 Leonardo took part in a consultation on the choir-stalls of Milan Cathedral.
Leonardo continued his studies in anatomy. The following note is written on a large sheet with drawings of muscles.
There are as many muscles of the feet as double the number of toes. But as I have not yet finished this discourse I will leave it for the present, and this winter of the year 1510 I look to finish all this anatomy.150
According to Vasari the famous anatomist Marc Antonio della Torre helped Leonardo in his researches. He was teaching at the University of Pavia in 1511, and Leonardo probably refers to him in the following note:
Book ‘on the water’ to Messer Marco Antonio.
[With drawing of child in womb.]
The heart of this child does not beat and the child does not breathe because it lies continually in water, and if it were to breathe it would be drowned, and breathing is not necessary to it since it receives life and is nourished from the life and food of the mother.151
Another note may refer to the behaviour by students in the anatomy classes:
Make a discourse on the censure deserved by students who put obstacles in the way of those who practise anatomy and who abbreviate research.152
Many of his notes at this time refer to the study of embryology.
See how the birds are nourished in their eggs.153
Whether the child while within the body of the mother is able to weep or produce any sort of voice or no. The answer is no; because it does not breathe, neither is there any kind of respiration; and where there is no respiration there is no voice.154
Ask the wife of Biagino Crivelli* how the capon rears and hatches the eggs of the hen when he is in the mating season.
They hatch the chickens by making use of the ovens by the fireplace.
Those eggs which are of a round form will be cockerels and the long-shaped ones pullets.
Their chickens are given into the charge of a capon that has been plucked on the under part of its body, and then stung with a nettle and placed in a hamper. When the chicken nestles underneath it, it feels itself soothed by the sensation of warmth and takes pleasure in it, and after this it leads them about and fights for them, jumping up into the air to meet the kite in fierce conflict.154
Monbracco, above Saluzzo—a mile above the Certosa, at the foot of Monte Viso has a quarry of stratified stone, white as Carrara marble and flawless, and as hard as porphyry or even harder; of which my friend Master Benedetto,* the sculptor, has promised to send me a small slab for the colours, on the 2nd day of January 1511.155
On 10 March 1511 Leonardo’s patron Charles d’Amboise died.
On the tenth of December 1511 at 15 o’clock the fire was kindled. On the 18th of December 1511 at 15 o’clock this second fire was kindled by the Swiss at Milan at the place called DCXC.156
These two notes are written on drawings of conflagrations by Leonardo but are not in his handwriting.
Soon afterwards the French were defeated, and the son of Ludovico Sforza was restored to the Duchy of Milan with the help of Swiss soldiery. But fighting continued, and Leonardo remained in his home awaiting the outcome.
And I saw one whose heart burst as he fled before his enemies. And he poured out sweat mixed with blood through all the pores of his skin.157
O speculator about this machine of ours let it not distress you that you gain knowledge of it through another’s death, but rejoice that our Creator has ordained the intellect to such excellent perception.158
Leonardo was continuing his anatomical researches. On a sheet with drawings of the diaphragm and various architectural sketches including a plan and elevation of a turret he wrote a date and the following notes.
January 9, 1513.
The room in the tower of Vaneri.
Look at the dead dog, its lumbar region, the diaphragm and the motion of the ribs.159
The following memoranda in the same manuscript throw further light on Leonardo’s interests and occupations. He passed some time at the villa of his young friend Melzi, situated on the banks of the river Adda at Vaprio.
Memorandum
To go to make arrangements for my garden.
Giordano, De Ponderibus.*
The conciliator, the flow and ebb of the sea—
Have two boxes made to go on a pack saddle
Look to Boltraffio’s lathe and have a stone taken away
Leave the book for Messer Andrea Tedesco
Make a balance with a cock and weigh the substance when heated and then weigh it again cold
The mirror of Master Luigi
Oil, rock oil;
[With a drawing.]
a. b. the flow and ebb of the waters; proved at the mill of Vaprio That power shows itself to be greater which is impressed upon a weaker substance.
This conclusion is universal and applies to the flow and ebb to prove that the sun or moon impresses itself so much the more upon the waters as they are of less depth; and therefore the shallow waters of marshes must receive the cause of the ebb and flow with greater efficacy than do the mighty depths of the ocean.160
Of the power of a vacuum formed instantaneously.
I saw at Milan a thunderbolt strike the Torre della Credenza on its northern side, and it descended with a slow movement down that side and then suddenly parted from that tower and carried with it and tore away a part of the wall, three braccia in breadth and length and two in depth; and this wall was four braccia thick and was built of old bricks, thin and small.161
His love of animals and the belief that plants afford sufficient nutriment for man induced him to forgo animal food (cf. p. 354).
‘King of animals’ as thou hast been described. I should rather say ‘king of beasts’, thou being the greatest, because thou dost only help them in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast tried to make a sepulchre for all animals. . . .
Now does not nature produce enough simple [i.e. vegetarian] food for thee to satisfy thyself? And if thou art not content with such canst thou not by the mixture of them make infinite compounds, as Platina* describes and other writers on food.162
V. ROMAN PERIOD (1513-1516)
In September 1512 a bloodless revolution in Florence permitted the return of the Medici. Giuliano de’ Medici, known as ‘Il Magnifico’, was placed at the head of the state; and in March of the following year his brother Giovanni was elected Pope Leo X. Giuliano became gonfaloniere of the papal forces. The rise of the Medici to power induced Leonardo to leave Milan for Rome in the hope of finding a more fruitful field for work under the patronage of the two art-loving sons of Lorenzo de’ Medici who would surely remember his Florentine origin and fame. His decision was taken after the exhausted French garrison had abandoned the Castello Sforzesco in Milan on 19 September 1513 and there did not seem any likelihood of an early return of the French, who had been his patrons.
I left Milan for Rome on the 24th day of September 1513 with. Giovanni, Francesco Melzi, Salaì, Lorenzo and il Fanfoia.161
In crossing the Apennines he passed the Sasso della Vernia, described by Dante as ‘the frowning rock between the sources of the rivers Arno and Tiber’. On his way he looked out for fossils.
And I found some shells in the rocks of the high Apennines and mostly at the rock of La Vernia.161
The ancient bottoms of the sea have become mountain ridges.163
In Rome Leonardo was lodged in the Belvedere, a luxurious summer palace built on the top of the Vatican Hill. His patron, Giuliano de’ Medici, was interested in art and science, but was weak and unstable.
Finished on the seventh day of July at the twenty-third hour at the Belvedere in the studio given me by the Magnifico. 1514.164
> It is not known what work was completed on this date.
At this time the Pope had found in Raphael an artist entirely to his taste. A story told by Vasari reveals his attitude to Leonardo, to whom he had given a commission to paint a picture. ‘On learning that he had set out by experimenting on the varnish he proposed to use, the Pope exclaimed: “Alas, this man will never get anything done, for he is thinking about the end before he begins.” ’ Two Germans in Leonardo’s employment were the source of much irritation, as is revealed in the following drafts of letters addressed to Il Magnifico. Among other complaints he states that his anatomical studies at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito were being misinterpreted. These notes give a sad picture of Leonardo’s life in Rome. It was a period when his hopes of employment had been frustrated and his nerves were reacting to the misbehaviour of an apprentice.
So greatly did I rejoice, most illustrious Lord, at the desired restoration of your health that my own malady almost left me. But I greatly regret that I have been unable to satisfy completely the wishes of Your Excellency by reason of the wickedness of that German deceiver, for whom I have left nothing undone which I thought might give him pleasure, and at first I invited him to lodge and board with me so that I should constantly see the work he was doing and with greater ease correct his errors, and moreover he would learn the Italian tongue, and so be able to talk with greater ease without an interpreter.
At first his moneys were always given him in advance of the time, then he asked that he might have the models finished in wood, just as they were to be finished in iron, and wished to carry them away to his own country. But this I refused, telling him that I would give in drawing the width, length, height and form of what he had to do, so we remained at ill will. The next thing was that in the room where he slept he made himself another workshop with pincers and tools and there he worked for others; afterwards he went to dine with the Swiss of the Guard where there are idle fellows, but he beat them all at it; then he used to go out and often two or three of them went together with guns to shoot birds among the ruins, and this went on until the evening. . . .165
As I saw that he was seldom in the workshop, and consumed a great deal, I sent him word that if he liked I could make a bargain with him for whatever he made and would give him what we might agree to be a fair valuation; he took counsel with his neighbour and gave up his room, selling everything and went to find . . .
This other has hindered me in anatomy blaming it before the Pope and likewise at the hospital; and he has filled the whole Belvedere with workshops of mirrors and workmen; and he has done the same thing in Maestro Giorgio’s room. . . .
He never did any work without discussing it every day with Giovanni, who then spread the news of it and proclaimed it everywhere, stating that he was a master of such art: and as regards the part which he did not understand he announced that I did not know what I wanted to do, thus shifting the blame of his ignorance upon me. I cannot make anything secretly because of him for the other is always at his elbow, since the one room leads into the other. But his whole intent was to get possession of these rooms in order to get to work on the mirrors. And if I set him there to make my model of a curved one he would publish it.166
Leonardo evidently wished to keep his experiments to himself and could not trust his workmen. The model of a curved mirror, referred to above, may have some connection with a projected arrangement of lenses to serve as telescope or to his studies of convex and concave mirrors. His notebooks contain sketches of machines for grinding and polishing lenses.
As I propose to treat of the nature of the moon, it is necessary that I first describe the perspective of mirrors, whether plane, concave, or convex.167
Construct glasses to see the moon magnified.168
[With plans.]
Stable for the Magnifico . . . one hundred and ten braccia long and forty braccia wide . . . the lower part is divided into thirty-four rows for horses and each of these rows is divided into thirty-two spaces, called intercolumnar, each of which can accommodate two horses with a swing-bar interposed between them. This stable therefore can accommodate 128 horses.169
The following note was accompanied by drawings of a hand-operated mint, built to stamp coins for the Papal State. One side of the apparatus cut the metal disk and the other side stamped the impression.
Mint at Rome
All coins which do not have the rim complete are not to be accepted as good; and to secure the perfection of their rim it is requisite above everything that all coins should be a perfect circle; and be made perfect in weight, size and thickness.
Therefore have several plates of metal made of this same width and thickness all drawn through the same gauge so as to come out in strips. And out of these strips you will stamp the coins, quite round, as sieves are made for sorting chestnuts; and these coins can then be stamped in the way indicated above &c. . . .
This cuts the coins perfectly round and of the exact thickness and weight; and saves the man who cuts and weighs and the man who makes the coins round. It therefore passes only through the hands of the gauger and of the stamper, and the coins are very superior.170
In the autumn of 1514 Leonardo made a trip to Lombardy, perhaps to look after his vineyard. He put up at an inn at Parma.
At the Campana at Parma on the 25th day of September, 1514.171
On the banks of the Po near S. Angelo on the 27th day of September 1514.172
At the end of the year Leonardo had returned to Rome. In a letter dated 14 December 1514 his sister-in-law Alessandra, writing to her husband Ser Giuliano da Vinci in Rome, sent greetings to Leonardo, ‘a very excellent and most singular man’. On the back of this sheet Leonardo noted that his book on ‘Voice’ was in the hands of Gian Battista Branconi, who was a confidential member of the papal court, and a friend of Raphael. This book may have been submitted to the Pope in order to prove the absence of every element of heresy or scandal from his anatomical studies. It contained a description of the structure of the mouth and throat and of the mechanism of human speech.
Messer Battista dell’ Aquila has my book ‘de vocie’ in his hands.173
The same treatise is mentioned again in a notebook that Leonardo used during this time.
‘De Vocie’—why a swift wind passing through the pipes makes a shrill sound.174
During his stay in Rome Leonardo made excursions into the neighbourhood, pursuing his interest in geology.
Let them show you where are the shells on Monte Mario.175
His project for draining the Pontine Marshes probably dates from this time. He drew a careful map of the district which is now at Windsor.
The Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici left [Rome] on the 9th of January 1515 at daybreak to take a wife in Savoy; on the same day fell the death of the King of France.147
Leonardo here records the receipt of the news of the death of his former patron Louis XII on 1 January 1515. His successor Francis I set out at once to recover the duchy of Milan and won the battle of Marignano in September of that year.
On 14 December 1515 Pope Leo X held a secret conference with King Francis at Bologna, and Leonardo may have met the king for the first time, who some months later was to induce him to come to France. A statement in the Vatican archives regarding Leonardo’s expenses at Bologna records that he received 33 ducats for himself and 7 ducats for Giorgio, the German, 40 ducats in all.
The Pope travelled via Civitavecchia, and Leonardo’s notes on the antique ruins of the harbour may have been made on that journey. He profited by the visit in order to make a close inspection of antique Roman methods of construction.
[With drawings.]
. . . Like this are the stones standing in front of the mole in the harbour of Civitavecchia. . . . A block is ten braccia wide and 12 long and half a braccio deep built of mortar and slabs of tenacious tufa spongy and hard, tenacious in themselves without crumbling, and the surface of this cement is well plastered with perfect mortar and sand. The above menti
oned half braccio of concavity is filled with big and hard gravel half a braccio deep, and over this gravel is placed a layer of mortar and minute pieces of brick, and this is a third of a braccio deep, over which the mosaic is laid with various designs of foliage and groups of stones in various colours; and these are the floors of the imperial rooms, built over the mole of the port; in front of these rooms were porticoes with big columns to which the ships were tied. And in front of this portico were nine steps down to the water: that is 3 braccia.176
In a letter dated 1515 Andrea Corsali writes to Giuliano de’ Medici of some gentle people called Guzzarati who refused to partake of food that had blood, who had agreed among themselves to do no harm to any living thing, ‘just like our Leonardo da Vinci’.
With the death of Giuliano de’ Medici on 17 March 1516 Leonardo lost his patron, and his hopes of finding a fruitful field for his activities in Rome were shattered. The following note reflects his disappointment. He was thinking of the brilliant outset of his career when Lorenzo il Magnifico had sent him to Ludovico Sforza, and of the indifference and incomprehension of the Pope, his son.
The Medici made me and destroyed me.177
His last dated note written in Rome shows him interested in the measures of one of its basilicas.
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