Leonardo Da Vinci (3 page)

Even accounts that rarely describe appearances
always
call Leonardo handsome. He was probably asked to pose for other artists. While long flowing robes were the fashion of the day, he wore rose-colored tunics that stopped short of his knee. His hair and beard were carefully combed and curled. In an age when bathing was optional, he was fanatic about being clean. He hated getting any paint under his fingernails.

The Medici fostered a party atmosphere around Florence, with jousting tournaments, carnivals, feasting, and other pleasurable amusements. Having fun was more important than anything. Leonardo, besides helping to provide decorations via the workshop, was reportedly an enthusiastic partygoer.

But he was also a private person. He spent time alone, thinking. He still took long walks in the hills nearby, carrying pen and paper everywhere in his sack. Even then he did not believe in walking for mere relaxation—it was an opportunity to “exercise” his eyes. A true artist never stopped perfecting observation skills.

His mind was open to beauty and to its opposite. In slums and hospitals, he looked for people he considered grotesque or deformed, furthering his study of anatomy. He would follow unusual-looking people for days, sketching.

“The desire to know is natural to good men,” Leonardo wrote later, endlessly curious about more and more subjects.

Meanwhile, Florence was becoming famous—or notorious, depending on your point of view—for its openness to new, even controversial, ideas.

Once Gutenberg invented movable type, books began to be printed at a rapid rate. Because there were so many more books around, many more people learned to read. Now, ancient works of literature were printed and bound into books that people (wealthy ones) could actually buy. For any one new book on the market, thirty buyers were fighting to buy it and read it.

The universities cultivated independent thought. Paolo Toscanelli, the most famous astronomer of the time, taught in Florence. An engaging teacher, Toscanelli may have been the first one to guide Leonardo toward science. Independently wealthy, he was able to devote his life to science, especially to studying the paths of comets. He knew as much about celestial phenomena and the characteristics of Earth as anyone in his day. A geographer as well, Toscanelli once wrote a letter encouraging explorer Christopher Columbus in his belief that the lands of the East could be reached by sailing west around the globe.

Toscanelli’s good friend, the artist-writer-engineer Leon Battista Alberti, had even more impact on Leonardo. One of the great intellectuals of the time, he advocated the application of science to art—artists should know about geometry, optics, the mathematical rules of perspective, and as much about human anatomy as possible. When Leonardo read Alberti’s statement, “The painter ought to possess all the forms of knowledge useful to his art,” he was electrified.

Alberti was one of the first men of the Renaissance to urge humans to strive, to excel. This was a revolutionary idea at the time—that humans had great, untapped potential. The self
did
matter—one person could make a difference. There was great optimism about the future.

Leonardo deliberately sought out older, more educated men. Everything interested him—“all the forms of knowledge” that Alberti spoke of. He may have sat in on lectures at the university, may have approached professors to ask questions. It’s possible that while working on a project, he boarded with Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the Medici then in power. There he would have been exposed to the movers and shakers in Italy, people almost as smart as he was.

By 1472, at age twenty, Leonardo was no longer an apprentice. He was entered as an official member of the Florentine painters’ guild, one of the two dozen trade associations representing various careers. The painters’ guild of St. Luke had split off from the guild of doctors and druggists (who sold the materials for paints).

He was a full citizen now and could set up his own shop. Yet he remained as Verrocchio’s assistant, perfecting his skills. He stayed twelve to thirteen years more with his teacher, which was longer than normal for most apprentices. Later in his life, when stressed, he would return to hang out here. It was a happy, sheltered place for him.

But not as sheltered as he thought. At some point during his years with Verrocchio, Leonardo was being spied upon.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Nothing but Full Privies”

WHEN LEONARDO WAS twenty-four, W omething awful happened. He was arrested.

The Medici family schemed and plotted to keep Florence under its thumb. One way was to encourage citizens to inform on one another. Anonymously, people could make accusations about illegal or immoral behavior by simply writing and slipping the allegations into boxes called
buchi della Verit
à (“mouths of Truth”), which were prominently displayed at churches.

The idea was to keep people in line, or at least on edge. Anybody could accuse anyone of anything, with or without proof. That was enough to start a police investigation. So the system was an easy way to get someone you didn’t like into trouble with the authorities.

The dreaded Office of the Night had only one function. It was to check out accusations of homosexual sex, which was interpreted as being against the teachings of the Bible and considered a serious crime. During its seventy-year reign over Florence, the Office of the Night investigated 17,000 accused men, convicting some 3,000. The penalty tended to be a crushing fine, which was mild compared to punishments inflicted elsewhere or at other times in Florence—public whipping, exile, castration, indefinite imprisonment, or even death by burning. Part of the fine went as a reward to the informer, and the rest went to pay the expenses of the six Officers of the Night.

This was the office that summoned Leonardo in 1476. Someone had anonymously accused four men—Leonardo, a goldsmith, a tailor, and someone related to Lorenzo de’ Medici—of having sex with a male prostitute.

It was a nasty turn of events. Leonardo and his three companions had to appear in a court of justice. They may have been imprisoned in a cell overnight or longer. Torture and other incentives were commonly used to get people to confess. But the four men didn’t; they declared their innocence. Still, for some reason, another hearing was called.

Leonardo must have been frightened. Normally, parents would help out in such a crisis. But Leonardo probably dreaded his father’s reaction to this particular charge. Piero, whose notary business was thriving, needed to maintain his respectability. Artists and intellectuals may have been more tolerant of homosexuality, but not the average citizen. Possibly, Leonardo feared a showdown between his father and himself, or considered arrest equal to failure in his father’s eyes.

The anxiety and uncertainty lasted for over two months, through a second hearing—and then a third. In the end, the Office of the Night dismissed the charges. There were no signed statements from wit nesses, nor apparently any firm evidence. It’s possible Leonardo was simply a bystander in a plot to make trouble for the Medici.

Even though he escaped punishment, the artist was left bruised. The public embarrassment alone would have pained an intensely private person like Leonardo. And this particular case probably attracted greater publicity because of the Medici connection.

Historians disagree about Leonardo’s sex life, or whether he even had one. But most think he was probably homosexual. He left no record of any relationship with a woman, not even a friendship. Various writings show he shared the common male attitude of his time: women were less intelligent than men and full of “useless chatter.” He described the act of procreation as “repulsive.”

Homosexuality was illegal. Other cities prosecuted vigorously, but the authorities in Florence generally fostered a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. In fact, homosexuality there was so widespread that the German word for homosexual at the time was
Florenzer
. But being discreet was crucial. The scandal of an investigation and conviction could ruin one’s reputation. And career.

For the rest of his life, Leonardo would feel persecuted, whether or not he had reason to. He despised being the subject of gossip. As to the idea of prison, he declared, “It is better to die than to lose one’s freedom.” Two of his very first designs were for devices to escape from a locked cell.

After the humiliating arrest, he structured his life so that he was free to be himself, isolated as much as possible from nosy neighbors. Was it then that his mistrust of and disdain for other people began? “How many people there are,” he once wrote, “who could be described as mere channels for food,” producing “nothing but full privies,” or toilets.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Lying on a Feather Mattress”

IT MAY SEEM that Leonardo was taking he slow route to becoming a scientist. Investigating the natural world, that took time and earned him no money. As much as he dreaded what he called being a “slave” for money, he did need it. So his investigations into scientific subjects were, for the time being, hobbies.

Over the next several years, he buried himself in his work, attempting to strike out on his own as an independent master. He had his own studio and lived alone, but visited Verrocchio often. He probably had pets—he loved animals.

He was known around Florence as the young star artist from Verrocchio’s studio, a strikingly attractive man who seemed good at . . . everything. He was funny and intelligent, capable of discussing any topic. He had a fine singing voice and was considered the best impro viser in verse of his time—a sort of Renaissance rap artist. He was even good at sports, known for great strength, particularly as an excellent horseman.

But Leonardo did have flaws.

For someone with no other means of support, he was careless about business dealings. When he finally got commissions to do work, sometimes he followed through—and sometimes he didn’t. With his first solo commission, in 1478, for a painting in a chapel, he got only as far as a sketch before quitting.

Later, in 1481, he was hired to create
The Adoration of the Magi
, a painting for the friars of a Florentine monastery. This was never finished, either.

In fact, Leonardo left behind more sketches and plans—and less finished work—than probably any other artist in history. How to explain this apparent lack of follow-through? Art lovers throughout history have mourned Leonardo’s lack of productivity. The number of paintings (finished or unfinished) that we know to be his is only
thirteen
.

Is it possible for someone to be
too
smart? For him, a man with so many talents and so many passions, focusing on one idea or project may have been tricky. In a case, perhaps, of Renaissance attention deficit disorder, he always wanted to be on to the next thing.

Painting was not a means of self-expression for Leonardo—he thought of each painting as “a thing of the mind,” a set of problems a brain could gnaw on. He was always much more interested in the conception of a project—figuring out how it would look or be constructed—than the completion of it. Sometimes he was so ambitious in his designs that he imagined ways of doing projects that were technically impossible, that no human could pull off.

It sounds like he could be bristly to work with. He turned down commissions from people he didn’t like, or who had the nerve to treat him in a demeaning way. He hated being given orders or being rushed. Deadlines and contracts were obviously not sacred to him.

Perhaps Leonardo daydreamed instead of focusing. The artist did always have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. “Lying on a feather mattress or quilt will not bring you renown,” he once wrote, as if scolding himself. One of his early designs was for a personal alarm clock cleverly powered by water.

Or maybe he was growing ambivalent about fame, realizing it could bring attention of an unwanted kind.

Anyway, he was busy—busy reading, another pastime that earned him nothing. But it was important to him to fill in the craters in his education. Luckily, he was talented at teaching himself. He made notes of books he needed to read. By the time he was twenty-nine, in 1481, some 40,000 titles were in print.

Florence was home to a flourishing library, protecting thousands of rare items collected by the Medici. Like all libraries at that time, it wasn’t open to the public, but Leonardo could have made the right connections to gain entry, reading what had been translated into Italian.

He also made notes of scholars to meet—an astronomer and geographer, a doctor, several mathematicians, a scholar of Greek. He must have discovered the fact that most experts adore talking about their area of expertise.

He was currently most interested in animal and plant biology, human organs, and the principles of flight. A beloved subject of Florentine art was the Greek myth of Icarus, the boy who flew too near the sun with wings of wax and feathers. Leonardo was obsessed with the possibility of flying. A long-standing legend is that Leonardo, who cherished animals, would often buy caged birds at the market just to set them free. First, though, he would study them—even his earliest paintings of angels showed that he was using real bird wings as models. He studied birds’ wings and tails, how their feathers were arranged. Then he watched and made notes describing how birds flew up and down, changing direction, soaring, gliding, and coming in for a landing without breaking their legs.

His papers from this time show his deep interest in classical learning. He knew about Archimedes, the mathematician who was considered the greatest scientist of ancient Greece. Among other accomplishments, Archimedes had worked out the principles of the lever, using notions that were two thousand years ahead of his time.

Leonardo was also getting acquainted with the work of Plato, the Greek philosopher who linked knowledge with virtue.