by Alex Parsons
There’s no doubt the boy’s got talent. He doesn’t see the people and the things he paints as flat shapes you draw an outline around. He sees them as 3-D** bodies that are there all right, but you only get to see them because of the light that falls on them. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, but his people kind of come at you from the shadows.
And he does like to make life difficult for himself. Any normal artist would be quite happy to sign his pictures in a normal way: Not hard. But he doesn’t do that, it would be far too simple. He writes: which only makes sense if you hold a mirror up to it. In fact he’s started writing in his notebooks in this tiny spidery mirror-writing. “Why?” I asked him. “It makes life more of a challenge,” he replied.
Personally I think he’s being coy, or secretive. Maybe he thinks his ideas might get stolen. Or maybe he doesn’t want The Church to understand anything if they should happen to take a peek at his notebooks. Priests never like anyone who tries to find out how God puts things together.
Or perhaps it’s just that he’s left-handed and so he’s worked out a way of moving his pen over the page so his writing doesn’t get smudged.
Florence, 1482
Leonardo is talking about moving to Milan. I wonder why? There aren’t as many great artists in Milan, which could have something to do with it. So could the fact that the top man in Milan, Lodovico Sforza, is looking for a sculptor who can cast a three-times-life-sized bronze sculpture of a man on a horse in memory of his dear departed Papa.
Leonardo knows how to sculpt horses and how to cast bronze, but no one has ever cast a horse as big as this before. That’s probably why Leonardo has accepted the commission – there’s nothing my boss likes better than a challenge. So it looks like I’ll be up to my ears in molten bronze for the next few years. Andiamo allora!* I’d better get packing.
Milan, 1483
We are living in a very fine apartment in one of Lodovico Sforza’s palaces, and very nice it is too. Leonardo’s made plenty of new friends. There’s Francesco, a military engineer; a mathematician called Luca Paciloli; and a guy named Marcantonio who spends his days cutting up dead bodies – it’s called studying anatomy, apparently.
Not a very arty bunch you could say, but they’re up till all hours ‘exchanging ideas’. Leonardo is now wildly keen on dead bodies, maths and military engineering, and is teaching himself Latin to keep up with the upper classes. How does that rhyme go? ‘Latin is a language as dead as dead can be, it killed the ancient Romans and now it’s killing me.’ Doesn’t sound like much fun, but there’s no accounting for taste.
“The horse, the horse,” I keep saying rather feebly. “We must get on with it, otherwise Lodovico will be saying arrivederci*.”
“Armoured cars! Thirty-three-barrelled gun carriages!” he mutters back. He’s forgotten about the horse!
As it happens, Lodovico is a bit preoccupied with war, as Milan seems to be under constant threat from Venice. Leonardo has now offered his services as a designer of military and naval weaponry and as architect, painter, drainage engineer (no kidding!) and (finally) sculptor.
Terrifico! Where do I, a humble paint pigment crusher and pourer of molten metal, come into all this? Can’t the guy just concentrate on one thing? Who does he think he is, Renaissance Man**?
Milan, April 1483
Yes! Someone has asked Leonardo to paint an altarpiece! You always know where you are with an altarpiece. Actually, he shares the commission with a couple of other painters. I’m sure the church is acting on good advice here, knowing if it was up to Leonardo alone, they’d probably get their painting some time in the 17th century.
But there you go, you never know where you are with The Maestro. Just when you think he’s going to rush off and re-arrange Milan’s drainage system, leaving you to explain about the empty panels above the altar, he comes up with two paintings and they’re both absolutely stunning. The other guys never got to pick up a brush.
Milan, 1485
The Maestro’s an absolute genius, but I think he’s a few pigments short of a palette with this armoured car. It’s like a huge metal pie, and under the crust of the pie eight guys are supposed to crank the wheels and fire the guns. How do they see where they’re going? How do they move this massive, heavy contraption across the average muddy battlefield? How soon would the soldiers inside the tin pie go deaf from the sound of gunfire?
Give him his due, though. Leonardo closed his notebook the other day and got on with a painting of Lodovico’s mistress, a pretty girl called Cecilia. Obviously Leonardo’s learned how to please his patron, and instead of calling the painting Hey Everyone! This is Lodovico’s Girlfriend! he’s called it Lady with an Ermine. Very discreet.
Milan, 1488
Cathedrals, cathedrals, cathedrals! Now he’s got a thing about architecture and he’s dreaming up vast vaulted cathedrals with domes everywhere. They’re all very geometrical and symmetrical, as you might expect.
He was only asked to design a covered passageway for Milan Cathedral. But you might have known he wouldn’t stop there.
I think the authorities at Milan Cathedral were a bit spooked too, when instead of a little passageway, they got designs for a dozen cathedrals, plus engineering drawings, plus a long lecture on how the proportion of a dome was like the proportion of a skull and how a good strong building was like a healthy body.
I think they will think he’s mad and I think they will say ‘thanks but no thanks’ to his cathedrals.
Milan, 1489
We’ve been in Milan for eight years now, but Leonardo still hasn’t done the horse for Lodovico. But among all the plans for new cathedrals, the allegorical drawings* (did I mention the philosophy?), the sonnets (did I mention the poetry?) and the essays on painting (did I mention the writing?), we finally have some drawings of a horse! Lodovico will be pleased.
We’ve got great snorting, pawing beasts trampling on people (very difficult to balance) and proud walking horses (easier to balance and a lot less controversial). Eight years into the commission, this is a good start, although Lodovico might be disappointed to discover that as yet there’s no drawing of the rider. Those of us with long memories will not need reminding that the original idea of the monument was to glorify the memory of Lodovico’s Papa, Francesco, not his horse. But try telling that to Leonardo.
Milan, 1490
Now Leonardo has yet another job at Lodovico’s court. He’s the grand master of fun and games, pageants and processions, fireworks and feasting, and is known as the Official Artificer. What jolly fun. It’s all costume fittings and seating plans at the studio now, and if you asked me to lay my hands on a tin of paint or a block of marble, I wouldn’t know where to look.
Lodovico’s nephew is marrying Isabel of Aragon and Lodo wants to party. The theme is Paradise – and why not? Leonardo has designed costumes that make the performers look like the planets, kind of yellow and round. They hang around, as planets do, and then speak words of praise in honour of the bride. What she will make of it I don’t know, but it’s costing Lodo a packet.
Leonardo’s made a mechanical lion! He made it to honour the visit of the King of France to Milan. Funny that. Seeing how they are always at war, I would have thought Lodovico would greet the King of France with a barrage from a thirty-three-barrelled revolving gun, but that’s politics for you. This lion had some kind of clockwork mechanism inside. It walked forward a few paces (it did! it did!), a trap door in its belly was released, and whoosh! Out fell a thousand lilies. Magnifico!
Milan, April 1490
It will come as no surprise to you, dear Diary, that Lodovico is still waiting for his horse. Apparently he wrote to the Medici family at the end of last year asking them if they knew anyone else who a) could make the horse and b) might be slightly quicker at it than the esteemed Leonardo da Vinci.
This did speed The Maestro up. He’s actually decided to start work on the horse! Fantastico! It’s the reason we came here nine years ago, after
all.
Milan, 1491
Leonardo has just drawn a brilliant diagram. I actually posed for the first sketch in my underpants, but then he sent me out to find a fair, curly-haired young man who didn’t mind taking his clothes off, so he could complete the drawing.
(Apparently, these young male models are not naturally blond. They are often up all night with the bleach bottle and the curling tongs.)
The diagram is based on the ideas of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who had a theory that the human body could be used as a basis for proportion. Leonardo has got out his geometry set and proved it. Your head is a fifth of your body height and so on. I did point out that not all people were perfect. Some people have long backs and short legs, for instance. But Leonardo is only interested in perfection.
Milan, 1492
Leonardo is spending a lot of time drawing horses now, which is good, because when Lodovico’s men pop round from time to time asking anxiously about the progress of the monument, I can say, with my hand on my heart, “Tell your boss everything’s fine, he’s down at the stable sketching horses.”
Problem is, he’s not actually working on Lodovico’s monument at all. He’s trying to come up with a proportion system for horses similar to the one he’s worked out for the human body. And he’s got so carried away by the bunching of muscle and the wrinkling of flesh that he’s writing a treatise* for painters on the subject. I’m sure one day everyone will be very grateful to read this definitive work on How to Paint a Horse, but you can see my problem, can’t you? He gets side-tracked so easily that NOTHING GETS FINISHED! I just hope Lodovico doesn’t blame me.
Milan, December, 1493
You are not going to believe this, but the horse is ready for casting*. You won’t believe the size of it either. Three-times-life-sized is a great deal bigger than it sounds. I know, because I heaved every bag of clay into the barn where it stands, and every bag of plaster that made the mould. We are just waiting for Lodovico to send over the bronze that he’s had set aside for this project, and then we’ll be done – a mere twelve years late.
Leonardo has spent almost as much time on working out how to cast the horse as he has on sculpting the model. He’s drawn details of a massive corset of iron bars and hooks to fit on the outside of the mould to stop it collapsing.
The guys from the foundry came round and scratched their heads and walked away again because, in spite of the iron corset, they can see the difficulties. The horse is supposed to be hollow, a shell four centimetres thick, but it’ll still weigh sixty-five tons.
“There’s another little problema you might like to consider, Maestro,” I piped up after the foundry workers had gone home to their spaghetti. “There’s the small matter of the rider.”
“Who?” queried our greatest living Italian.
“The guy this monument’s all about. The guy we’ve not done a drawing of yet or made a model of. The three-times-life-sized guy who’s going to sit on this horse and crush it into the ground like tissue paper.”
“Oh, him,” said Leonardo, quickly picking up his sketchbook. “I knew I’d forgotten something.”
Milan, November, 1494
The horse is just one big headache. I have just heard that the bronze we’ve been waiting for has been used to make CANNONS! So no horse. All that work for nothing. The clay model sits there like a lump, the moulds are piled up in a corner, I am distracted, Lodovico has lost all interest in art because he’s too busy fighting the French, and Leonardo has gone back to drawing cathedrals. I should have got a job in a bakery.
What a waste of time all this war business is. We hear that the French have triumphantly entered Florence, but instead of fighting them, the Florentines welcomed eight hundred knights in armour, a company of archers and the French king on a black charger surrounded by a hundred bodyguards. They even took down a section of the city walls so they could march in more easily. They probably gave them all free ice-creams too.
Milan, 1495
More news from Florence – ah home, sweet home! There’s been a revolution there. Some mad preacher called Savonarola has revolted on behalf of the people and publicly burnt works of art belonging to the rich, which he says are the works of the Devil. He called it the Bonfire of the Vanities. If he’s burnt anything I’ve worked on, he’ll know about it.
Leonardo was particularly thrilled to hear that the painting that annoyed Savonarola the most is the one in the Tornabuoni chapel that young Michelangelo had a hand in. He’s a painter and sculptor who’s attracting a bit too much attention for the boss’s liking. Actually they’re not bad frescoes, it’s just that they make the Tornabuoni family look as if they’re up there with God Almighty.
Here in Milan we’re always at war with Venice or France, while over in Florence they are permanently at loggerheads with Pisa. Well, now apparently there’s a Great Council of citizens in Florence, so the people (well, some of them) have a say in how things (mostly bonfires, I suppose) are run.
The wars are heating up a bit here, and my wife Giulia and I are trying to persuade Leonardo to consider moving.
“No horse, no point in staying,” I said to him.
“Ah,” he replied. “But I’ve just been commissioned to paint The Last Supper in the refectory* of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and I’m going to start it right away.”
He’s working like crazy on the preliminary drawings. The Last Supper is to be a fresco on the end wall. It’s going to be a masterpiece of perspective**, so that when the monks are eating in their refectory, they will feel like they are in the same room as Christ and his disciples.
Ambitious, but if anyone can pull it off, Leonardo da Vinci can.
He is also filling notebooks with formulas for working out the way light and shade behave across the surface of an object. It all sounds too brainy for me, but Leonardo says he’s trying to take the guesswork out of painting light. But that’s him all over. Most artists would just get on and paint what they saw. Leonardo has to analyse and explain everything.
To paint a fresco you have to work fast, because you have to paint while the plaster on the wall is wet. So you get about a day to paint a section of wall, and if you make a mistake you have to put on a new layer of plaster and start again.
Working fast and on wet plaster, now that’ll be a challenge for The Maestro!
Milan, January, 1496
Did I say working fast? Leonardo has decided to use another technique. It’s called working extremely slowly on dry plaster. Leonardo’s mania for invention has resulted in a new chemical mixture to stick the paint to the wall. It may work, and on the other hand it may not, but it certainly gives Leonardo plenty of time to stand around in front of his painting. He waits for inspiration and then dabs on three or four brushstrokes from time to time. I see another Sforza Horse disaster coming up.
He has been summoned to the monastery to explain the delay. You have to admire his talent for making excuses. He told them that he was waiting for inspiration from within, in order to paint the face of Jesus, which must be ideal.
What could they do but agree with him?
Milan, Spring, 1497
The Prior* of Santa Maria delle Grazie, who commissioned this work some three years ago and was hoping to have the whole thing finished in a matter of months, has started peeking through the keyhole. All he sees is Leonardo standing there, arms folded, doing nothing. He had the nerve the other day to suggest to Leonardo that he might possibly stop messing around and get a move on.
Leonardo turned slowly to look at him. “I am standing here because I am having problems imagining the face of anyone as evil as Judas.” He smiled sickeningly, and continued: “If you are in a hurry, Prior, then the problem could be solved by using your face as the model.”
I blended into the background and the Prior quietly left town, leaving Leonardo staring thoughtfully at his unfinished painting.
Milan, January, 1498
Well, it’s finished. They look like
a bunch of real people up there eating the Last Supper together, but every one of them has a distinct personality and you can tell that they’ve all got something different on their minds.
Leonardo is pleased with his fresco, particularly because it is so real and alive. He gave himself a pat on the back by saying to the world at large that “the most praiseworthy form of painting is the one that most resembles what it imitates.” Well, it’s certainly lifelike!
Milan, Winter, 1499
One of the reasons The Last Supper took so long was because of the book. Leonardo and Luca the mathematician have produced a book called Divine Proportions.
I told them straight up that the title was misleading. I mean, a man might rush out and buy a book like that, thinking it would be full of pictures of curvy girls.
How wrong they would be. It is full of geometrical shapes.
Milan, October, 1499
It’s all happening here. Lodovico has been defeated. The French troops, not content with invading Milan, have broken up the clay model of the horse. I am not going to go into what I said when I heard the soldiers had used it for target practice, but it is time to go and I am packing the bags. I think we should go back to Florence. They’ve burnt the mad preacher Savonarola at the stake, so the city is fit for artists and their patrons once again.