by The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance
In Rome, Leonardo finished the three masterpieces he had brought with him from Milan—the Saint Anne, the Mona Lisa, and the Leda.71 And he painted Saint John the Baptist, his last and perhaps most intriguing work. Like all of Leonardo’s great paintings, Saint John the Baptist is unique in several ways. Bereft of all religious symbolism, the saint is neither the traditional child nor the ascetic of the desert, but is shown as a graceful young man whose charming face and naked torso display a seductive, sensuous beauty. Not surprisingly, the painting has often been seen as incongruous, sometimes even blasphemous.
From an artistic point of view, the picture exemplifies several of the painter’s original contributions to Renaissance art—a dramatic use of chiaroscuro to make the figure stand out against a strikingly dark background, a subtle and intriguing spiral movement of the body, and the full use of sfumato to create a pervading sense of mystery. But Leonardo’s “manifesto on the art of painting,” as David Arasse calls it,72 goes beyond mere technical achievements. About ten years earlier Leonardo had written a famous passage in his Treatise on Painting about the artist’s power to inflame the viewer to love:
The painter…seduces the spirits of men to fall in love with and to love a painting that does not represent a living woman. It has happened to me that I have painted a picture with a religious theme, bought by a lover who wanted to remove the attributes of divinity from it so that he could kiss it without guilt; but in the end, his conscience overcame his sighs and desires, and he had to remove the picture from his house.73
In Saint John the Baptist, Leonardo demonstrates this power to inflame the viewer once again. And this time the subject is not a woman, but an angelic, mysterious, and sensuous young man. The saint’s alluring smile and enigmatic gesture—the index finger pointing heaven-ward—draw viewers in emotionally with a magnetism that many have found disturbing, probably because of its androgynous nature. However, it is also quite captivating and moving. Having kept his sexual feelings private throughout his life, Leonardo, it seems to me, finally declares himself to the world in his last painting. Saint John the Baptist is his personal genius and embodies his desire, which is fully revealed in its androgynous haunting beauty, grace, and transcendence.
LAST JOURNEYS
During his years in Rome, Leonardo was consulted by his patron Giuliano de’ Medici and by other members of the Medici family about various architectural and engineering projects, which involved making trips to Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, as well as longer journeys to Parma, Piacenza, Florence, and Milan. That he could manage to travel that much at his advanced age, when such journeys were arduous and long, in addition to continuing his extensive scientific studies and his painting, is nothing short of miraculous.
While Leonardo patiently brushed fine layers of oil on his panels to perfect the magical luminosities of his last paintings, political events once again intervened in his life, changing it decisively for the last time. In January 1515 the French king Louis XII died. He was succeeded by his cousin François I. The young king—not yet twenty when he ascended the throne—aspired to be a noble warrior in the mold of the French chivalric knights. He enthusiastically went into battle in the front lines of his troops. Yet he also loved poetry, classical literature, and philosophy as well as music, dancing, and other courtly pleasures.
Soon after he was crowned king, François crossed the Alps with his troops to reconquer Lombardy. The French army swept aside the Italian troops and Swiss mercenaries, and in July, François I captured Maximiliano Sforza and entered Milan in triumph. But in a magnanimous gesture, he did not throw Maximiliano into prison but welcomed him at his court as a cousin.74 The pope had initially allied himself with the Milanese to fight the French troops. But when François emerged victorious, he realized the power of the new king and proposed peace talks, which were held in October in Bologna.
Leonardo may well have accompanied Pope Leo X to Bologna, although there is no clear documentation of his presence in the papal suite. If he did make the journey, however, he would have met the young king; and soon François would become his last and most generous patron. What we know from the historical record is that Giuliano de’ Medici asked Leonardo to create an unusual entertainment for the event. Although Leonardo had very little time for the project, he produced a unique piece of art and technology—a mechanical lion. As Vasari described it, “After making a few steps, [the lion] opened its breast to reveal a cluster of lilies.”
Powered by springs and a system of wheels, the lion was a masterpiece of Leonardo’s stagecraft, and its symbolism was ideal for the peace talks being conducted between the French king and the pope. The lion alluded to the name of the pope, Leo; the stylized lily (or fleur de lis) was the symbol of French royalty, and also of Florence. By revealing the lilies in its heart, Leonardo’s lion offered, with a grand flourish, a powerful symbol of the union between France and Florence, and between the French king and the Medici pope. The automaton, which has since disappeared, greatly impressed the assembled statesmen. It was mentioned repeatedly and with great enthusiasm by commentators even a hundred years later.75
François I clearly was enchanted and flattered by Leonardo’s mechanical lion. If the artist was indeed present, the king may have personally offered him the position of peintre du Roy (royal painter) at his court in France. In any event, offer it he did. But Leonardo did not accept the king’s offer immediately. However, when Giuliano de’ Medici died a few months later, he no longer hesitated. He knew that he could not find a more generous and understanding patron than the young French ruler.
Sometime toward the end of 1516, Leonardo put his affairs in order and prepared to make the move across the Alps. He packed his trunks with everything he owned, including all of his Notebooks and his now-completed master paintings, knowing that he was not likely to return to his native lands. He set off on the long journey on horseback with the faithful Melzi and a couple of servants, his chests and trunks carried by several mules. From Rome the caravan took the familiar route north to Florence and Milan, the cities in which Leonardo had spent most of his life. From Milan, the travelers proceeded to Turin, crossed the Alps to Grenoble, and reached the Rhône valley at Lyon. There they probably continued westward until they reached the river Cher and followed it to the Loire, ending up at Amboise, near Tours, after a journey of about three months.76
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE KING
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the mild climate and natural beauty of the Loire valley attracted successive generations of French royalty and nobility, who built splendid castles and elegant mansions along the river. The Château d’Amboise was the home of French kings and queens for over 150 years. François I had spent his childhood and youth there, and used it as his principal residence.
The king received Leonardo at Amboise with boundless generosity. He installed the artist and his entourage in the spacious manor of Cloux, known today as Clos-Lucé, adjacent to the château. The manor house had comfortable rooms with high-vaulted ceilings, including a studio, a library, a sitting room, and several bedrooms. The property included elegant gardens, a vineyard, meadows and trees, and a stream for fishing.77 The manor’s gardener was Italian, as were several members of the court, allowing Leonardo to speak in his native tongue.
François also granted his famous guest a generous income. In return, he asked nothing but the pleasure of his company, which he enjoyed almost every day. There was a secret underground tunnel between Cloux and the royal castle, which allowed the king to visit Leonardo easily for long conversations whenever he wished to do so. Just as Alexander the Great, another young warrior-king, had been tutored by Aristotle, the great philosopher of antiquity, so François I was now tutored by Leonardo da Vinci, the great sage and genius of the Renaissance. He never tired of hearing Leonardo explain to him the subtleties of his science of living forms—the complexities of turbulent water and air, the formation of rocks and the origin of fossils, the intricacies of human m
ovement and the flight of birds, the nature of light and perspective, the canons of beauty and proportion, the pathways of the senses and the vital spirits that sustain our life, and the origin of human will and power in the seat of the soul.
The king treasured his conversations with Leonardo, as we know from the firsthand account of the Florentine goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, who worked at the court of François I twenty years after Leonardo’s death. Cellini wrote,
I cannot resist repeating the words which I heard the King say about him, in the presence of the Cardinal of Ferrara and the Cardinal of Lorraine and the King of Navarre; he said that he did not believe that a man had ever been born who knew as much as Leonardo, not only in the spheres of painting, sculpture and architecture, but that he was also a very great philosopher.78
Leonardo, who had always been famous as an artist and engineer, was deeply appreciated and acclaimed by the king of France for his intellectual achievements as a philosopher, or, as we would say today, a scientist.
One of the few documents about Leonardo’s final years at Amboise is the travel diary of Antonio de Beatis, secretary to the Cardinal of Aragon, who visited the artist with the cardinal in October 1517. Beatis wrote that Leonardo appeared to be “over 70 years old” (in reality he was 65) and that he could no longer work in color, “for he is paralyzed in the right arm,” but that he could still draw, and was assisted by a pupil (no doubt Francesco Melzi) who “worked to excellent effect” under the master’s supervision.79 Art historians surmise that Leonardo’s paralysis, probably as a result of a stroke, did not prevent him from writing and drawing, which he did with his left hand. But it would have affected the nuanced painting he was famous for, which would have required the freedom to move both arms. For Leonardo, this handicap, combined with his failing eyesight, must have been deeply depressing.
Beatis reported that Leonardo showed the cardinal three master paintings—“the portrait of a certain Florentine lady” (the Mona Lisa), Saint John the Baptist, and the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne. The cardinal and his secretary were amazed by Leonardo’s anatomical drawings as well as his writings on other subjects.80 Then he added: “All these books, written in Italian, will be a source of pleasure and profit when they appear.”81 This leaves one with the impression that Leonardo discussed with the cardinal his plans to publish the Notebooks.
Indeed, Leonardo spent most of his working time at Cloux systematically reorganizing his Notebooks, most likely in view of future publication. In spite of his diminished health, he did so with characteristic enthusiasm and intellectual vigor, making plans for at least half a dozen new treatises or discourses.82 From the titles he listed, it is clear that he was reviewing his entire life’s work—his science of the “qualities of forms”83—trying to summarize it in a few representative treatises.
Leonardo began his list with the planned Treatise on Painting as well as a Treatise on Light and Shade. He decided to lay out, at least in principle, the mathematical foundations of his science, and to do so, planned to write two mathematical treatises. The first, a Book on Perspective, would deal with the laws of perspective and geometrical optics that needed to be mastered in order to understand vision, the representation of solid objects, and the rendering of light and shade. The second, a Treatise on Continuous Quantity with a companion volume titled De ludo geometrico (On the Game of Geometry), would discuss the geometry of transformations, which Leonardo considered to be the appropriate mathematics for describing the qualities of living forms.84 He had explored this new type of geometry for over ten years and continued to do so at Cloux. With regard to anatomy, Leonardo proposed to write a Discourse on the nerves, muscles, tendons, membranes, and ligaments as well as a Special book on the muscles and movements of the limbs. Together, these two books were to represent the author’s definitive treatment of the human body in motion.
Since historians do not know how many treatises were contained in Leonardo’s lost Notebooks, it is difficult to judge to what extent the plan he outlined at Cloux would have allowed him to publish the results of his lifelong scientific research as an integrated body of knowledge. However, it is evident that the treatises he proposed, together with those that were well advanced and have been preserved, would have gone a long way toward accomplishing such a goal. In Leonardo’s mind, his science of living forms was certainly an integrated whole. At the end of his life, his problems were no longer conceptual; they were simply the limitations of time and energy. As he wrote several years before his death, “I have been impeded neither by avarice nor by negligence, but only by time.”85 And yet, Leonardo never gave up. In June 1518 he wrote what may have been the last entry in his Notebooks: “I shall go on.”86
During his time at Amboise, Leonardo also advised the king on various architectural and engineering projects, in which he revived his conception of buildings and cities as “open systems” (to use our modern term), in which people, material goods, food, water, and waste need to move and flow easily for the system to remain healthy.87 He produced designs for rebuilding the royal château, including water closets connected by flushing channels within the walls and ventilating shafts that reached all the way up to the roof.88 In December 1517 he accompanied the king to Romorantin, some fifty miles from Amboise, where François I wanted to build a new capital and royal residence. Leonardo stayed in Romorantin for several weeks, working on plans for a splendid palace and for an ideal “healthy” city, based on the revolutionary designs he had developed in Milan more than thirty years earlier.89
Like most Renaissance courts, that of François I indulged in lavish pageants and dazzling spectacles, perhaps even more so than other courts because of the energetic and convivial nature of its young king. Leonardo contributed to these festivities, creating spectacular performances, designing costumes and royal emblems, and showing off his stage magic. To do so, he had recourse to the large repertoire of designs and inventions he had produced during his years at the Sforza court. This included his most famous creation, the “Masque of the Planets,” which was performed at Amboise in a new production in May 1518.
But in the midst of the gaiety and pomp, Leonardo’s physical strength continued to decline. His conversations with the king, however, went on. Nor was he perturbed by contemplating his approaching death. “Just as a well-spent day brings a happy sleep,” he had written thirty years earlier, “so a well-employed life brings a happy death.”90 In April 1519, shortly after his sixty-seventh birthday, Leonardo went to see a notary and carefully recorded his last will and testament. He set out in great detail the customary arrangements for his burial, left the savings remaining in his account at Santa Maria Nuova to his half brothers, and made various bequests to his servants.91 To Francesco Melzi, whom he named as executor of his estate, he left all his personal belongings as well as his entire artistic and intellectual legacy, including his paintings and the complete collection of his Notebooks.
A few days after completing his will, on May 2, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci died in the manor of Cloux—according to legend, in the arms of the king of France.
THE FATE OF THE NOTEBOOKS
After Leonardo’s death, Francesco Melzi stayed at Amboise for several months to take care of Leonardo’s affairs. He first notified Leonardo’s family, conveying his grief to them in a moving letter:
He was like the best of fathers to me, and the grief that I felt at his death seems to me impossible to express. As long as there is breath in my body, I shall feel the eternal sadness it caused and with true reason, for he gave me every day proof of a passionate and ardent affection. Each of us must mourn the loss of a man that nature is powerless to recreate.92
Before returning to Milan, Melzi entrusted to the king the paintings his master had brought to France; and there they remained, eventually ending up at the Louvre. The Notebooks, by contrast, were scattered all over Europe. Some of them were disassembled, cut into pieces arbitrarily, and reassembled into various collections. In the process, over the centu
ries more than half of the manuscripts disappeared. The dispersion of Leonardo’s Notebooks is convoluted and distressing, and like his biography, it has been documented by scholars only fairly recently, with a great deal of detective work.93
When Melzi returned to Lombardy, he set aside a special room in his villa at Vaprio to exhibit his master’s Notebooks. Over the years he proudly showed them to visitors, including the artists and writers Vasari and Giovanni Lomazzo. Francesco hired two scribes to help him classify Leonardo’s notes and compile the anthology known today as Trattato della pittura (Treatise on Painting). The work, even though incomplete, was acquired by the duke of Urbino and then by the Vatican, where it was cataloged as Codex Urbinas and eventually published in 1651.
After Melzi’s death in 1570, his son Orazio, who did not share his father’s reverence for the great Leonardo, carelessly stuffed the Notebooks into several chests in the villa’s attic. When it became known that batches of Leonardo’s exquisite drawings could easily be obtained from Orazio, souvenir hunters turned up at Vaprio; they were allowed to take whatever they wanted. Pompeo Leoni of Arezzo, sculptor at the court of Madrid, obtained close to fifty bound volumes in addition to about two thousand single sheets, which he took to Spain in 1590. Thus, at the turn of the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, Spain had the largest concentration of Leonardo’s writings and drawings.
Leoni sorted and rearranged the manuscripts according to his own tastes, cutting them up, throwing away what he deemed uninteresting, and pasting what he liked on large folios, which he bound into two volumes. The first, known as Codex Atlanticus because of its large, atlassize folios, changed hands a couple of times after Leoni’s death before ending up at the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. The second volume was bought from Leoni’s heirs by the British art collector Lord Arundel, who donated it to the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, where the pages were detached and mounted individually. Lord Arundel also bought another large collection of manuscripts in Spain, which now bears his name, Codex Arundel, and is housed in the British Library.