Notebooks (53 page)
Authors: Leonardo da Vinci,Irma Anne Richter,Thereza Wells
Tags: #History, #Fiction, #General, #European, #Art, #Renaissance, #Leonardo;, #Leonardo, #da Vinci;, #1452-1519, #Individual artists, #Art Monographs, #Drawing By Individual Artists, #Notebooks; sketchbooks; etc, #Individual Artist, #History - Renaissance, #Renaissance art, #Individual Painters - Renaissance, #Drawing & drawings, #Drawing, #Techniques - Drawing, #Individual Artists - General, #Individual artists; art monographs, #Art & Art Instruction, #Techniques
The following description compares the studio of a painter with that of a stone carver. He is describing himself at work:
The sculptor in creating his work does so by the strength of his arm and the strokes of his hammer by which he cuts away the marble or other stone in which his subject is enclosed—a most mechanical exercise often accompanied by much perspiration which mingling with grit turns into mud. His face is smeared all over with marble powder so that he looks like a baker, and he is covered with a snowstorm of chips, and his house is dirty and filled with flakes and dust of stone.
How different the painter’s lot—we are speaking of first-rate painters and sculptors—for the painter sits in front of his work at perfect ease. He is well dressed and moves a very light brush dipped in delicate colour. He adorns himself with the clothes he fancies; his home is clean and filled with delightful pictures and he often is accompanied by music or by the reading of various beautiful works to which he can listen with great pleasure without the interference of hammering and other noises.
69
69
During these years Leonardo painted the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli (
La Belle Ferronière,
Paris, Louvre) who in 1495 succeeded Cecilia Gallerani as mistress of Ludovico Sforza. A sheet with Latin epigrams, in praise of this picture by a court poet, was found among Leonardo’s notes.
La Belle Ferronière,
Paris, Louvre) who in 1495 succeeded Cecilia Gallerani as mistress of Ludovico Sforza. A sheet with Latin epigrams, in praise of this picture by a court poet, was found among Leonardo’s notes.
How well the master’s art answers to nature. Da Vinci might also have rendered the soul as he has rendered the rest. But he did not, so that his picture might be a better likeness. For the soul of his model is possessed by Il Moro, her lover. The Lady’s name is Lucrezia to whom the gods gave all things lavishly. Beauty of form was bestowed on her and Leonardo painted her. Il Moro loved her; one is the greatest of painters the other of princes. By this likeness the painter roused the jealousy of nature and of the goddesses on high. Nature lamented that the hand of man could attain so much, the goddesses that immortality should have been bestowed on so fair a form which should have been perished. But Leonardo did it for Il Moro’s sake, and Il Moro will protect Leonardo. Men and gods alike fear to injure Il Moro.
70
70
In the cathedral at the pulley of the nail of the Cross.
71
71
This note is accompanied by a drawing of a pulley. The nail believed to be of the Cross is still one of the most precious relics of Milan Cathedral and is kept in the vaults. Leonardo supplied a device for lowering it on special occasions. Ritter Arnold von Harff on his visit to Milan in 1499 in the course of his pilgrimage through Europe to Egypt, described the nail being suspended above the high altar.
On 17 March 1498 Leonardo was in Genoa accompanying Ludovico Sforza to examine the damage done to the breakwater by a tempest. He refers to this visit in the following note, written beside a drawing of an apparatus for shaping metal, the principle of which is embodied in some of the machinery of the modern rolling mill.
The iron bar is to be drawn out into the shape of a rod. In the ruined part of the breakwater at Genoa the iron was drawn out into rods by less power than this.
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72
On these journeys he pursued his studies of nature. The following notes written in Florence some years later record recollections of his travels.
The flow and ebb in our Mediterranean seas does not cause so much variation because in the Gulf of Genoa it does not vary at all. . . .
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73
At Alessandria della Paglia in Lombardy there are no stones for making lime but such as are mixed up with infinite variety of things native to the sea, which is now more than 200 miles away.
74
74
At Candia in Lombardy, near Alessandria della Paglia, while making a well for Messer Gualtieri of Candia, the skeleton of a very large boat was found about ten braccia beneath the ground; and as the timber was black and fine it seemed good to the said Gualtieri to have the mouth of the well enlarged in such a way that the ends of the boat should be uncovered.
In the mountains of Verona the red marble is found all mixed with cockle shells turned into stone. Some have been filled at the mouth with the cement that is the substance of the stone; and some have remained separate from the mass of the rock around them because the outer covering of the shell had interposed and had prevented them from uniting with it. In other places this cement had petrified the shells and destroyed the outer skin.
26
26
One fine day in July he climbed the Monte Rosa.
And this may be seen, as I saw it, by anyone who goes up the Momboso [Monte Rosa], a peak of the Alps that divide France from Italy. At the base of this mountain spring the four rivers which flow four different ways and water all Europe; and no other mountain has its base at so great an elevation. It lifts itself to so great a height as almost to pass above all the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in summer when the clouds are at their greatest height; and there this hail accumulates, so that if it were not that the clouds rarely thus rise and discharge themselves, which does not happen twice in a lifetime, there would be an enormous mass of ice there, piled up by the layers of hail, and in the middle of July I found it very considerable.
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73
He went as far as Savoy and witnessed the flooding of a valley.
That there are springs which suddenly break forth in earthquake or other convulsions and suddenly fail; and this happened in a mountain in Savoy where certain forests sank in and left a very deep gap; and about four miles from there the earth opened like a gulf in the mountain, and threw out a sudden and immense flood of water which scoured the whole of a little valley of the tilled soil vineyards, and houses, and wrought the greatest damage wherever it overflowed.
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74
The river Arna, a quarter of a mile from Geneva in Savoy, where the fair is held on midsummer day in the village of Saint-Gervais.
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75
On one occasion above Milan, towards Lake Maggiore, I saw a cloud shaped like a huge mountain full of rifts of fire, because the rays of the sun which was already setting red on the horizon tinged it with its own hue. And this cloud attracted to it all the little clouds which were round about it, and the great cloud did not move from its place, and it retained on its apex the light of the sun for an hour and a half after sunset, so immense was its size; and about two hours after night had fallen there arose a great wind, a thing stupendous and unheard of.
And this, as it became closed up, caused the air which was pent up within it, being compressed by the condensation of the cloud, to burst and escape by the weakest part, rushing through the air with incessant tumult, acting like a sponge squeezed by a hand under water, from which the water wherein it is soaked escapes between the fingers of the hand that squeezes it escaping by rushing through the other water. So it was with the cloud, driven back and compressed by the cold that clothes it, driving away the air with its own impetus and striking it through the other air, until the heat that is mingled with the moisture of the cloud and has drawn it to so great a height flies back towards the centre of the cloud, fleeing the cold which is its contrary, and gathering in the centre becomes powerful, taking fire and spouting damp steam, which surrounds it and creates a furious wind that moves with the fire thrown out by increasing pressure of the steam . . . and this is the thunderbolt which afterwards rains and smashes to pieces whatever opposes its destined course.
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On 21 April 1498 Gualtieri Bascape reports to Ludovico Sforza on the decoration by Leonardo of two rooms in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan—the Saletta Negra and the Sala delle Asse.
On 26 April 1498 Isabella d’Este writes to Cecilia Gallerani asking her to send Leonardo’s portrait of her to Mantua for inspection (see p. 275).
August 1498.
Canal of Ivrea fed by the river Dora; the mountains of Ivrea have a wild part, and a fertile one towards the south.
The great weight of the barge which passes through the river which is supported by the arch of the bridge does not add weight to this bridge, because the barge weighs exactly as much as the weight of the water that the barge displaced.
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On 2 October 1498 Ludovico Sforza presented Leonardo with a vineyard sixteen rods (approximately eighty metres) in extent outside Porta Vercellina. Leonardo refers to the measurements of this vineyard and gives plans of adjacent plots of ground in MS I.
On the first of August 1499 I wrote on motion and weight.
78
What is percussion, what is its cause? What is rebound?
78
What is percussion, what is its cause? What is rebound?
Aristotle, Third of Physics, and Albertus [Magnus] and Thomas [Aquinas] and others on the rebound, in the Seventh of the Physics; De Coelo et Mundo.
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79
[
With figures
.]
With figures
.]
I ask in what part of its curving movement will the cause that moves leave the thing moved or movable.
Speak with Pietro Monti of these ways of throwing spears.
80
80
List of books in Leonardo’s possession before his departure from Milan.
Book on Arithmetic [
abbaco
].
abbaco
].
Flowers of virtue [a medieval bestiary].
Pliny [
Natural History
].
Natural History
].
Lives of Philosophers [by Diogenes Laertius].
The Bible.
Lapidary.
On Warfare [by Robertus Valturius].
Epistles of Filelfo [Francesco Filelfo, humanist].
The first, the third, the fourth Decades [by Livy].
On the preservation of health [by Ugo Benzo of Siena].
Cecco d’Ascoli [
Acerba,
encyclopaedia in verse of the fourteenth century].
Acerba,
encyclopaedia in verse of the fourteenth century].
Albertus Magnus [on Aristotelian philosophy and science].
Guido. New treatise on Rhetorics [probably Guidotto da Bologna,
Retorica nova
].
Retorica nova
].
Piero Crescentio [on agriculture].
Cibaldone [
Miscellanea,
a treatise on health translated from a work by the Arab physician Rhazes].
Miscellanea,
a treatise on health translated from a work by the Arab physician Rhazes].
Quadriregio [the four realms, religious scientific poem by the Dominican, Federigo Frezzi].
Aesop [Fables].
Donatus [a short Latin syntax].
Psalms.
Justinus [History].
On the immortality of the soul [Dialogue by Francesco Filelfo].
Guido [Guido Bonatti’s treatise on astronomy?].
Burchiello [Sonnets].
Doctrinale [Italian translation of
Doctrinal de Sapience
by Guy de Roy].
Doctrinal de Sapience
by Guy de Roy].
Driadeo [by Luca Pulci].
Morgante [by Luigi Pulci].
Petrarch.
Jehan de Mandeville [Travels].
On honest recreation [by Bartolomeo Sacchi, Platina].
Manganello [a satire on women].
The Chronicle of Isidore [History from the creation to AD 615 by Isidore of Seville].
The Epistles of Ovid.
Sphere [by Goro Dati].
The Jests of Poggio.
Chiromancy.
Formulary of letters [by Miniatore Bartolomeo].
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81
Meanwhile Ludovico Sforza’s policy was proving disastrous, and he had to flee while the French king entered Milan in October 1499. Louis XII was severe and pitiless towards his enemies, but their works of art appealed to him. On seeing Leonardo’s painting of the
Last Supper
he coveted it so much that he anxiously enquired from those standing around whether it might be detached from the wall and transported forthwith to France, though this would have meant the destruction of the famous refectory.
Last Supper
he coveted it so much that he anxiously enquired from those standing around whether it might be detached from the wall and transported forthwith to France, though this would have meant the destruction of the famous refectory.
Among the French invaders was Count Louis of Ligny, who was planning an exploit on his own account in the hope of gaining possession of the estate in Naples which had been the property of his late wife, a Neapolitan princess. His agent was hoping to get financial support from Venice. That Leonardo had been asked to help and was making plans to leave Milan for Naples is revealed by the following note. He hoped on the way to visit his place of birth.
Find Ligny and tell him that you will wait for him at Rome and will go with him to Naples.* Have the donations paid, and take the book by Vitolone and the measurements of the public building. Have two covered boxes made ready for the muleteer, bed-covers will be best, there are three of which you will leave one at Vinci. Take the stoves from the Grazie. Get from Giovanni Lombardo the theatre of Verona.
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