1517
1517
ClouxJanuary 6, 1517After walking along the Loire, the water grey, swallows passing underneath the grey arches of the château bridge, I sat where I could study the supports, estimating their bulk and weight. No notebook. Too many unfinished sketches and treatises. An ancient bridge and my face—ravaged by time.At the little chapel of Saint Hubert, which I admire so much, so complete in itself, pigeons were flying about. Wings again. What are the correct angles for flying? Which wing structure can lift the most weight? How to estimate the camber?Rain splattered me as I walked about. A drum roll reminded me of the thunder at Vinci. I climbed the Tour Hurtault and was a boy again, as I watched the rain, as I had watched it at my mother’s house. Then I used to try to estimate the number of drops, measure them, weigh them.What a superb château—this Amboise! I admire its bulk, its age. It is no wonder that kings have lived here! Amplitude. Privacy. Gardens. The gardens tempt me to walk on and on. Yesterday, I sketched the Tour des Minimes—emphasizing its massive base line, the skillful masonry; as I sketched a playful squirrel climbed a birch, flipped from branch to branch, nibbled. I must remember to sketch the bronze doors of the chapel. The sculptor stresses texture in his composition. Somehow Florentine!Wander...I wander...I wander alone or with Francesco.Inside the château, if it is raining or cold or misty, we prowl through the halls and public rooms. Halls, rooms, people. A door opens and there is someone. A door shuts, and you are alone with a dozen doors. Cold windows merge into cold mirrors, a door opens. Here are tapestries from Bruges. Someone coughs. Feminine laughter sounds.As I walked toward Cloux, lights blinked in window after window; a light appeared in my studio; someone passed carrying a torch. Maturina has a fire in my fireplace. She has the table set for Francesco and me. Glaring at me she scolds me for my damp clothes. “Your cough...you know! You never think of yourself. Your supper has been ready a long time. I’ve asked Francesco to look after you but he forgets. Only yesterday I said to him...”Whenever the Egyptian sultan presented the Florentines with a new animal, I made sketches. At one time, there were several lions in the town’s menagerie. An old lion had a stubby grey mane and a black splotch across his face. Since one of his paws was crippled, he limped badly. As he walked or stretched out in the summer sun, a friendly ibis often pecked about in his fur. Old and wise, he ate only two or three times a week...and outlived younger lions. Bruno, a keeper, let me measure him. Skull. Neck. Spine. Shoulders. Rump. Paws.I suggested large cages for the menagerie animals but no one listened. When I designed a cage for a lion on two levels, with a tree in a corner, nothing came of it.One night, in winter, a friar opened a cage and let a sick lion go; for days the young man had tried to cure the female. Running amok through town, she created quite a scare until she was trapped in a cul-de-sac by some of my apprentices. Muzzled, growling, she was returned to her cage where she died.It was only a few blocks from my studio to the menagerie and I often heard the animals roar while I worked.Cloux.Cage.Our incessant feuds, wars, brutalities, our pettiness, have rotted our minds.For years I have heard men describe roads frozen with sleet and dead, bloody ambuscades, military gear trapped in mud, mules and horses floundering, desolated villages. I have seen victory and defeat...Milan... Pisa...Bologna... Perugia...Surrounded by death, I have known many men who want more and more of it. I have remembered that as I painted my mural, myAnghiari. Some of my war sketches have been aberrations. It would have been wiser had I confined myself to my atelier. Among my drawings, sketches, cartoons, models, among my plants and fossils, I should have gone on and on painting. Who, better than I, through my anatomical studies, know the marvels of life! Now, I shun crossbows, guns, chariots. I have asked Francesco to destroy those sketches.Once again, as in Florence, as in my youth, I am putting art foremost. I am painting.Tomorrow, Francesco and I will go along the Loire, sketching. If tomorrow is a rainy day we will try the next day. I think he is overly concerned with the problems of perspective. We will talk about the elimination of detail.Painter and friend, I am lucky to have Francesco, my Cecchino!These days, I sleep longer, but, through the years, in Florence, in Milan, I never slept more than three or four hours a night. There were too many plans, sketches, paintings, bronzes, portraits, models, commissions...three or four hours...that was enough...Lie down, sleep...catch the dawn, the window shutters open. Mist on the Arno. Plunge face in icy water in that old white wash basin. Tie sketch pad onto belt. The town is sleeping; the birds are waking up. Careful, open the door quietly. Don’t disturb Andrea. Is that the moon, still hanging in the sky?I made my way to the Boboli Gardens...passed theDavid...rows of crooked cypress...marble satyr...pool of frogs...a beggar whined...A town sleeps a thousand years every night.ClouxOccasionally, while playing chess, I imagine there are no pawns; I imagine there are no knights; the good bishop has vanished; the castle has gone; there is no stalemate; instead, we are walking across checkered fields, Caterina and I. Soon, we’ll sit down to supper; then, when candles have burned low and lamps are dying down, we’ll lie in each other’s arms.I have never been a clever chess player: I have spoiled games by envisioning a spiral staircase, by designing a parachute or estimating the cost of draining a marsh instead of planning my next move. I can cast bronze better than tackle chess strategy.When King Francis and I play, I know the rules—those unwritten rules—and abide by them: the king must win.Checkmate...what are the rules in life...checkmate...how to play the final move?Someday our earth may be burdened with people (but I will not be there).Numbers cheapen us.Collective folly weakens us.Man and art drift apart.However, who can create man? For that matter, who can create a common pigeon? Or the mangiest dog? Or a horse?And there is such mystery in this arm, this wrist, these fingers as I write. I would like to be able to trace these impulses: the thought, as it takes place in the brain, the thought as it becomes the letter L, as it becomes da Vinci, as that word connects with another word.A dot becomes a sketch. A sketch becomes a tree (a tree becomes a sketch). Must there be limitations to the mind’s probings? Experience can shackle us. I resent shackles. I still believe in flying.I love the horse more than all the animals because he gives me a sense of flying. Racing across a field, half-naked, bareback, I was free as a boy. I was above the earth. Galloping along a road, my cape fluttering, I was outside myself. Trotting underneath the stars I sensed another kind of freedom. The clopping of the horse was a drumbeat for liberty. I was often carried away.Nuzzling my hand, I stroked his head, thanking him for this ecstasy.March 2, 1517Yesterday, a traveler, a Spaniard, a navy officer, a guest of the King, claimed at dinner that a Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de León, had discovered a land, and named it Florida. He said that Ponce de Leon discovered it four or five years ago.“Where is Florida? Is it an island?”I had a page bring my maps but the Spaniard could not locate Florida. He was ill at ease as if he had divulged a state secret. The arrogant officer’s face still bothers me, like the face of a diseased rat. Florida? A Spanish name: does it have a special meaning?“Mon Capitan was hunting for Bimini...the fountain, the great fountain, that cures all diseases,” the officer said, pushing aside my maps, less like a traveler than a spoiled child.Travel...Francesco has never read theTravels of Marco Polo, but he is reading the book to me; he reads in the afternoons, maybe when the warm sun is in our western windows, maybe at the pergola, if it is pleasant. Sometimes, when I am tired, he reads to me by candlelight, beside my ducal bed.I respect Marco Polo. I believe what he wrote. He was nomillioni. He was fortunate to find a Rustichello to record his story. Perhaps Francesco is mine. When I visited Polo’s prison cell in Genoa someone showed me the painstaking calendar he had chiseled into the wall beside his cot...Chinese characters along the top section of the calendar—a dragon underneath.In Florence, in Andrea’s home, I read Polo’s book and dreamed of crossing the Lop Desert on camelback; I imagined visiting the Khan’s great cities; I dreamed of sketching palaces, temples, courtiers. I wanted to climb lofty mountains; I thought of mapping rivers.I told this to Francesco; he smiled and nodded. India? China? Tibet? For him they are words. He thinks only of his Italy, his Vaprio. I am afraid he considers that I have stolen years from his homeland by keeping him here. He writes his mother and father faithfully; when there are lapses in their correspondence he is troubled.Alas—Salai and Tony have left me!At Cloux they have spent less and less time at their painting on their own or under my tutelage. They have become infatuated by the King’s women—the prostitutes. Finally, in desperation, I urged them to return to Florence. Tony has serious family problems and is needed. Salai plans to build a house for himself, on my vineyard property. I will miss them... I will miss them! They have been an important part of my life! Francesco is pleased there will be no more rivalry and friction. Yet, apart from that, ours was a sad farewell, lingering, the wind blowing about us harshly. It was our last good-bye, I know. I know. They promise to write to me. When are letters alive!NOTE—Baron Sabran visited me last week. We strolled about the château, and he related another of his wild boar stories as he glanced over some of my paintings. I enjoyed his visit, his chattiness, his effort to be friendly.Today, I hear that he has passed away: Time...today’s friend, tomorrow’s enemy.ClouxHow well I remember:I was riding with other horsemen, perhaps a dozen of us, Duke Lorenzo on his favorite mare, both of us a little to the front of the Medici pennants, flags, and jousting gear. As we approached the Duke’s stables at a canter, he leaned toward me, and said:“He’s yours, Leonardo... I know you like him! Tell the stable boys where you want to have him kept.”A smile, no more.Cheppo was a three-year-old, four-gaited, almost as distinguished in bone and muscle as Cermonino, yet wider across the withers. I sketched him, studied him, studied him as I had studied Cermonino. Cheppo had a way of shaking his mane, flopping out his upper lip—nuzzling. He was a competent beggar: if I failed to remember a treat he would squeeze me against the stable wall and regard me sadly. Once I was in the saddle he was obedient, alert.Cheppo had been Lorenzo’s favorite. Certainly no one else could have given him more competent training than the Duke. I was so pleased to have him and spoiled him, until I left for Milan—never to find another his equal.My mirror writing came naturally; it began as a boy; I have always been ambidextrous; yet my left hand’s skill surpasses that of the right. There were reasons for my mirror writing: for abbreviations and symbols, the prying of idle apprentices, the intrusion of rivals, the circumvention of blabbers. It also satisfied me personally—esthetically.Tonight, I am alone, writing: the manor house is still.It is raining hard, and has been raining hard throughout the day. The fire in the fireplace is comfortable. The lamps are well trimmed.As I sat at my desk, continuing the journal, someone tried to pry open the door lock. Metal on metal. I waited. Again I heard the intruder. The rain beat on the door; the door shook. I heard the lock give. Picking up a broken easel leg I waited, in case the lock gave way. The man outside coughed. He shuffled about, then left.Perhaps I should get a dog.Devotion is the best quality, human devotion and devotion to one’s art. Certainly my devotion to Francesco—trust and affection—has been reciprocated.And, when I am dead, he will remember me. That is what artists need—men who care. If there are those who care, it is as if one’s atelier continues on and on. And, if the apprentices think along the guidelines already laid down, that is another continuation, another defiance.One of these days, Francesco will return to his Vaprio, to paint. He may set up a studio in Milan. Perhaps there will come a time when he places a canvas and sits on his stool and paints my beard, thinning hair, protruding eyebrows, strange nose and strange eyes.He will say to himself:“That’s how the old man looked, at Cloux.“Shall I paint on open window behind him...shall I paint some rock formations in the distance?”Although the King and his court go out of their way to befriend me I could not tolerate this voluntary exile, this foreignness, this remoteness, were it not for Francesco. When he is away, at the château, in the village, in Paris, traveling somewhere, I am at a loss. I glance about: where is he? When will he return?Often, when Cecchino comes back from one of his rambles, he has a gift or two, a plant, a seed, a leaf, a rock...he tells me what happened, details. He’s good at verbal paintings. Excited sometimes. No matter. He may have sketches to show me, charcoal, pencil, chalk.“This is something you must take a look at, Maestro...here, this face? Isn’t it Greek, the nose, the forehead? And this gypsy woman, what about her? And this fellow...ever see anyone dressed like that? And this fountain...”He sits on a bench beside my easel.“We must ride to Paris...we must visit Cluny...the churches...there’s a great Van Eyck...and Chambord...now is the time to visit Chambord, when the court’s away...we ought to see how your canal and irrigation jobs are coming along...remember, Sr. Migliarotti is pretty lazy...”Francesco hopes to make me feel like I am thirty years old.It is May and I am in the Amboise garden, soaking up the noon sun, courtiers milling about on the many paths; yet I am alone, with my sketchbook, to write, to think. And I am thinking about Francesco, how he arrived at my studio in the pouring rain. Drenched. He had ridden from Vaprio. I don’t forget that rain, that stormy Florentine afternoon, that eager, wet face of his, his mud-spattered horse, his servants’ horses, how they looked in the street, as Francesco spoke to me. Cold, very cold, even for April. Tiled roofs were choked with rain. Drowned cobbles. Leaves and mud.But there he was at my door, bowing, smiling.“Maestro da Vinci...I want to be your pupil.”That was seventeen years ago. Was he only fifteen? It doesn’t seem possible he was so young. He was my favorite from the start. I love Salai as a son, but this young man, this gracious young man, is friend and ardent disciple. Painter! When I have been his guest at Vaprio, I am honored. Francesco’s father and mother make their villa a place of rest. I know. I have fled there, from thecondottieri. I am always protected by the Melzis.His illness upset the studio.“Melzi’s sick! Francesco’s sick!”Fever day after day, hands like ice, coma. Shivering though his apartment was sunny. I thought he might have malaria. The plague. I called in the best doctors; I sent for Francesco’s father. His uncle came instead. Other doctors came. And in his delirium, Francesco painted a large canvas, with a flock of white birds in the sky, carrying a blue tree. October, November—bad months for sickness. But by December he was up, skinny, hungry, forever hungry.And there was his father’s gratitude to me, his uncle’s gratitude, as if I had been the physician. That summer, as Francesco convalesced at Vaprio, I vacationed there. The family purchased my portrait ofA Boy. That rolling land, the swift Adda, those canals, the villa gardens with their Roman statues and roses...roses...the women in the gardens, picking roses. But I have written about this before? ...I am getting forgetful.We sketched and painted.I remember a puppy lying in my lap as I dozed in one of the gardens, the one with the apple trees. Good food, good wine, summer, that was Villa Vaprio. I learned about summer there—what summer really means.ClouxThe King wants me to move to a spacious studio in the château. I prefer a smaller room. Small rooms sometimes discipline the mind. I have explained that my studio, in the manor house, has everything essential to my work: cupboards, cabinets, tables, shelves.“Do you need pigment...oils...turpentine...brushes?” He is impatient... you must want something!We have space for our paintings. We have the right amount of light. We have quiet. And on our mantelpiece we have a place for my Greek and Roman antiquities—things I collected in Campania (along with malaria): iridescent vases, bronze and alabaster lamps, household figurines, a few coins. I have one with a porpoise leaping. The Greeks were master minters-designers. Francesco says he knows a place in Paris that sells Greek antiquities. If I can ever get there I want to purchase an ivory Venus for my desk. We have not surpassed those ancient artisans.Such things make a bright enclosure.I am fortunate...I have had many friends.I had many friends in Florence, Milan, Rome, Genoa, and Venice. I shall name a few: Marco d’Oggiono, Vitelli, Tomaso Masini, Amalia, Father Pacioli, Ferrera, Machiavelli, Francesco, Mona, Cristofer, Andrea...and now King Francis.I see them in my sketches as I leaf through them now and then: Benci, in pen and ink, beside a juniper tree; Andrea, at work on a bronze figurine; here is a pastel of Ambrogia, puttering over his careful palette; here is red-headed Filippo Lippi finishing the background for a madonna; here is Cecelia, sipping wine, asking for sweets...Madonna Lisa and her graceful beauty, her soft voice, patience...She and I had many hours for thegamboa...we ate together...played cards, talked about myAnghiari...when she posed I had singers for her... I loaned her little sums; she lent me money; she sent me baskets of fruit; I gave her sketches and drawings.If all these friends could be with me, at Cloux, to walk with me, visit the château and its gardens, prowl the mirror hallways, enjoy my studio, my latest paintings...talk...talk...As an apprentice I longed to fix in my mind every detail: I must look and look, a second and a third time and a fourth. I must fill a notebook. Quickly. I must follow that bearded Corsican and draw his face.All of us apprentices respected Andrea del Verrochio, as artisan, as teacher. We were at home in his workshop. We were proud of his accomplishments, proud of our own accomplishments; at the same time we were eager, pushy, ready to challenge other artists. Ready to consider a commission, evaluate it, carry it through to perfection.And what were my best years, the best of my mature years, I ask myself? Those dedicated to my mural, my outcry against war, years that included many paintings? Or was it the time dedicated to the creation of the Sforza horse—IL COLOSSO? If I could have had the metal and cast the statue it would have been that success above others. And the years that went intoThe Last Supper: Three years. There were also the years of dissection and anatomical studies. Best years? There were the easel paintings. I suppose there have never been any best years. There were discoveries and discovery made another discovery possible...and so the years went along.Last night, Francesco burst into my bedroom.“I can’t find them,” he exclaimed.“What?”“I have looked everywhere...your letters are missing.”“What letters, Francesco?”“I have your list...letters from King Francis...from Duke Lorenzo...from Christopher Columbus...Machiavelli...Father Pacioli...Beatrice d’Este...Cesare Borgia...Salai...”“Did you open the trunk in the storeroom? They may be in there. Look carefully. I want to destroy some of them...let’s go over everything together.”“We had them in Milan...”“Look again... I’m sure you’ll find them.”(Yesterday, in the château’s hall of mirrors I saw Caterina: she was talking with a young man, a man her age: she had on a summer gown, with one breast almost bare: she smiled at her companion who was dressed in grey.)ClouxJune 1, 1517After I completed my silverpoint of Francis, he ordered his tailor to cut an elegant velvet smock for me. In carnelian. Two pockets. Belt of silver lozenges hooked together on braided silver wires.Francesco is framing the portrait and it will hang in the château library, along with a Rafael, a de Predis, a Bosch, a Dürer. Francis has his eyes on Francesco’s new canvas, hisColumbine, but I tell the King it is not finished.“Not finished? Of course it is finished, Mon Père.” But Francesco listens to me.I continue with my drawings of the deluge: I go on with the terror, the falling of buildings, the erosion of life, the force of wind, the weight of torrents... I go on with this feeling... I must express it.The gloomy air must be beaten by the wind and perpetual hail...there must be ancient trees, uprooted trees, torn to pieces by the fury...the fragments of mountains must spill into valleys...immensity must burst the barrier of rivers.It is my last judgment...certainly there is nothing that does not have an ending ...twisted forms...fear...puny man...I hear the resounding air, the lamentations.Mountains are to be torn open for their minerals...all animals will languish...all will be pursued or destroyed...trees will be laid level...due to man’s malice there will be great losses...how much better for man to go back to hell.ClouxIt is late.A fire burned all evening in my studio, and King Francis has sat by the fire with me, talking. He was depressed because bankers have been demanding exorbitant sums: he plans to sell royal titles to recoup funds.“All this will take months...there are many hazards...”Abruptly:“Do you see something in my face, something ominous?”“I don’t understand...”“It seems to me...I feel that the future has something tragic... I’m worried... Do you believe in foretelling?”He had been jousting: I blamed fatigue. But he would not be put aside by a few casual words.“Mon Père...tell me...some say that you can foretell? Is that true?”“I can not.”“Who can?”“Nobody.”“Nobody?”“Divinations...those occult doings...forget them. You must think clearly, your Majesty. Don’t let men hoodwink you. Nobody knows tomorrow.”“Tonight, as I walked through the tunnel from the château...tonight I had three guards... I was afraid...like a Borgia...assassinations...pretty bad...”He laughed at himself.It has been sunny and cool for several days: I have gone on pleasant walks, along the river, through the château gardens, through the grove that leads into the King’s forest: paths are becoming familiar: I shake hands with old trees. At the château I have watched the King play tennis: they are having a tournament. Francis plays with ugly ferocity. His partners play warily. I see that diplomacy begins on the tennis courts.StudioSeptember 3, 1517My lamp is guttering. Candle stubs are smoking.Was it thirty years ago, in Milan, that I understood? Windows were open and heat-lightning was flickering beyond my studio. My anatomy drawings were spread on the corner table. Then I saw. Saw clearly. Knew. Saw that man’s blood resembles the tides of the sea; from the seat of the heart it circulated throughout the body. Let an artery or vein burst or suffer injury and blood raced to the injured spot. Incessant currents of the blood, passing through the arteries and veins, caused them to thicken and become callous. So, I had additional proof of circulation. Each dissection revealed further confirmation of the system. Why was I slow in grasping the obvious?I have explained my theory to some but was often rebuffed and yet when I told her—using my drawings—she grasped the significance. She understood many things. And when she lay dying there seemed little left for me... I held her hand. Her eyes were closed. Grey eyes. She never spoke. God, how I stumbled down those rat infested stairs, stairs with a cross gouged in each step. Ah, those flooded streets!Some men of science and art have copies of my first treatise. Some. They hesitate. Resent. Last year I explained circulation to King Francis. He was not interested; he fondled his diamond-studded belt and stared stupidly at me. I must tell Francesco that the treatise is packed in the third trunk—the one with the smashed lock.I must sequence my drawings:1 - Skin2 - Muscles3 - Tendons4 - BonesIndicate effect of emotions, labor, illness, age.ClouxOctober 15, 1517Francesco is copying this:I have been unable to write or work for several days. These days she is in my mind all of the time. Maturina begs me to eat...my appetite has gone. The weather is perfect but I can not go outside. Here, in my studio, I have her portrait to console me; sometimes I have to turn away from it. I thought that she would live for many years. I thought that she was contented. Her family loved her.The letter, written by her brother, says nothing about how Mona died. Was she ill a long while? I can’t remember when she wrote me last time...was it as much as a year ago? Why am I confused? Did the plague kill her? Was she with her family? How they will miss her! The letter took four months to reach me—a hundred and twenty days! She died in Genoa, on the 2nd or 3rd of July. I can’t make out the date.The King knows of her death. Francesco told him, because I can not ride with the hunters... I can not ride... Francis has presented me with a small jeweled hourglass. A note accompanied it.Life and death...old friends, old enemies.My face is a cemetery.Gossips said that Mona was my mistress.We were friends.In those days, when I was beginning her portrait, I had Gorgio play for her: she liked his viola da gamba skill. He would usually appear a little late, but always with a smile, a bow. Sometimes a choir boy sang motets; it seems to me he recited poetry too. Did he always wear a brown cloak?Our sittings were often far apart: there was illness in her family: she was away from Florence for months at a time: on her return it was hard to recapture our mood. She was patient with me but I have often stood before her picture quite perplexed...especially if the light had changed...my colors had changed.I was late for one of our sittings and she put on an apron and scrubbed brushes and mortars, made my apprentices scurry; then laughed at my objections.“Next time you’re late, I’ll clean your leggio,” she said, and smiled teasingly.Her smile...I used to think of it as hiding family secrets, feminine secrets, her own loneliness (“Yes, Leonardo...yes...there are times...”)I could not always arrange for a musician; when she posed during those silences I felt the bonds of our friendship...when we ate together, when she described her travels, it was another aspect of our friendship.I was welcome at her home. Her distinguished husband bought fine pieces of art. They were happy to share.At her home and in my studio we often talked about myAnghiariand she was eager to follow its progression.October 29thMasculine skies...feminine skies...at this season of the year they are mostly masculine, with snow falling, wind blowing. My feet are cold because of the weather, or is it because my fireplace chimney needs cleaning? Cold, I have moved to the library.As I mull over my papers I observe the great books around me. I must concentrate. I must push on. There is so much to be done with the organization of my treatises. So much.Maturina rouses me.“You are cold, Maestro...it is chilly in this room.”So, I am cold!Perhaps I have cathedral sickness!It is good to be writing again. My journal suffers when my hand is unsteady.Francesco is away; that troubles me.I wish I were young and could bend horseshoes instead of two sheets of paper.Maturina has found a bird stricken by the cold; we hover over it. A dove. A flyer. Where are my sketches for the glider? The one Francesco and I tested. He must find it for me when he returns.Interruptions...interruptions...Francesco has adopted a stray cat, from among the dozens that haunt the château. The cat beds under his easel, among cleaning rags. He always stinks of turpentine and oil.I have never seen a cat so eager to sleep; perhaps half of his life has gone into carousing. He is bone white, has one orange ear, a twisted nose, one orange foot, and a black-tipped tail. His greenish eyes glare out of skinniness.Crabby.Maturina hates him.Francesco calls him “Michelangelo.”My four-poster must have been made for a cardinal or bishop, or someone’s mistress. I am tempted to remove the garnet canopy and drapes. But it’s a snug bed when it’s cold. I often lie there and watch the fire playing about. It’s a chance to weigh the past—and plan ahead.Sometimes, when I am very tired and have turned in early, Francesco rolls his easel into the room, and sits on the side of the bed and we talk brush strokes or ways of grinding the new pigments, how much overpainting is feasible, the dangers of black as an under pigment. Shop talk.ClouxAndrea Salaino—Why did I adopt him in the first place?That’s an easy answer: because I loved him!What a waif Salai was! I took him into my household, my studio, twenty-some years ago. It can’t be possible that so much time has lapsed.He stole...stole shirts, shoes, brushes, gold leaf. He stole gold leaf and sold it. He took money. I was right to christen him “Salai.” It took months to straighten him out...if I really did. Yellow-headed, curly-headed, tall, foolish, loveable... when he puts his arm around me...He is a capable artist, incapable of continuous effort; perhaps time can change him but I doubt it.Now that he is gone...I often think I hear his voice... I think, ah, he has come back for a while...The King and Queen have asked me how I had hoped to castIl Cavallo, so I placed my drawings on tables in the salon, and we walked from one to another and I explained them.“Mon Père,” Francis mumbled, as he examines drawings and sketches, “Mon Père...these are workable.”I am silent.“When did you begin actual casting?” the Queen asks. I try to disregard her obvious skepticism.She is dressed in white and gold; he has on one of his dark cloaks lined with down; he has rings set with emeralds; she reeks of cologne and sweat. Her pinched face is regally ugly—somehow provincial.“I began casting the horse in December...’93...casting it on its side. I placed the mould in a shallow cavity. I opened it on the left side. I could have completed the casting if there had been sufficient bronze. I am sure you know that cannons had priority at that time.”They knew, too, about the Gascon bowmen.I understand they had watched the archers, as they used my clay model for target. Watched myCavallodisintegrate.I watched, hating, hating those bowmen. How they cheered as arrows pierced the model.Now I watched the King and Queen.“In Milan, in those days, the Sforza stables were at my disposal. I chose a magnificent horse—Cermonino—as my model. Alone, or with a groom, I would ride into the country, where it was pleasant and we were free of gapers. I would dismount and sketch my horse. Or the groom would lead him back and forth, while I sketched, to record a sense of motion.“Other times I would ride Cermonino, race him, sweat him; then I’d draw his distended mouth, his swollen nostrils, his wild mane...“Leaning forward in the saddle, baton in hand, the Duke was to symbolize leadership and power...he was pleased...his baton would have been more than thirty feet above the ground.”Visitors and courtiers annoy me, though I do not show my annoyance. I have learned how to patronize. I pretend I have nothing to do...my life is one of leisure. Then, at night, through most of the night, lamps and candles burning, Francesco and I work with my drawings and texts.Francesco realizes that I am homesick but he does not quite realize that I am homesick for a Florence that does not exist. I don’t admit it but I am also remembering Vinci, the only home I ever had. I would like to walk into the rambling stone house and sit by a front window. I would like...but why go on?Bottegheor ateliers have their points but they are never home. Guilds, with their rivalries, their rascalities, are continually broiling. Greedy apprentices. Raw apprentices. Rowdiness. So many crowns for this piece of work, so manysoldifor this job. Dissension over models. Spats about religion. Muddy sex.Perhaps I should have lived out my life in my vineyard. Much sun. Quietude. Animals. Olive trees in the sunset. The mistral. Peasants. Fidelity.What delusions.Tomorrow I look forward to working again on mySaint John. I have decided to darken the background.I knew Sandro Botticelli well. Now that he is dead and I am far away, leaving this personal journal to a mere boy, I can write about him. We called Sandro “Our Little Barrel.” He was fat enough, to be sure. Success favored his belly. Drink gave him a pleasant stupor.I thought hisPrimaveraa piece of ostentation: the picture flaunts showmanship in many ways. The background is especially weak. I have shied away from gigantic canvases. A painting should not pretend to be a mural or a fresco.However, Sandro’s illustrations for Dante have a lightness: his lines are right.Maybe I am not respectful of Sandro. Michelangelo dislikes my work. Who is right?When my fellow Florentines legally murdered Savonarola I was repelled. Savonarola was reformer, dictator, fanatic. His bigotry alarmed me; all bigotry alarms me. I prefer the Alpine heights and passes to heavenly promises; I prefer rivers and lakes to the Dantesque. Savonarola’s ashes were thrown into the Arno... I anticipate further degradations...ashes... whose ashes were thrown into the river? Ours? No matter what we say in defense of religion there seems to be another road. Some things surpass religion. My mother’s gentleness, for one thing. I say, let us worship beauty. Now, in my old age, I say let us worship beauty.Thinking of beauty, I hoped for many years to do a bronze of Hercules, Hercules firing his arrow at the Stymphalian birds, head back, eyes upward, his right arm tensing the cord, fingers ready to let the arrow go: Hercules in the nude, among rocks, one knee cocked at the same angle as his bow arm.
Cloux
January 6, 1517
A
A
fter walking along the Loire, the water grey, swallows passing underneath the grey arches of the château bridge, I sat where I could study the supports, estimating their bulk and weight. No notebook. Too many unfinished sketches and treatises. An ancient bridge and my face—ravaged by time.
At the little chapel of Saint Hubert, which I admire so much, so complete in itself, pigeons were flying about. Wings again. What are the correct angles for flying? Which wing structure can lift the most weight? How to estimate the camber?
Rain splattered me as I walked about. A drum roll reminded me of the thunder at Vinci. I climbed the Tour Hurtault and was a boy again, as I watched the rain, as I had watched it at my mother’s house. Then I used to try to estimate the number of drops, measure them, weigh them.
What a superb château—this Amboise! I admire its bulk, its age. It is no wonder that kings have lived here! Amplitude. Privacy. Gardens. The gardens tempt me to walk on and on. Yesterday, I sketched the Tour des Minimes—emphasizing its massive base line, the skillful masonry; as I sketched a playful squirrel climbed a birch, flipped from branch to branch, nibbled. I must remember to sketch the bronze doors of the chapel. The sculptor stresses texture in his composition. Somehow Florentine!
Wander...
I wander...
I wander alone or with Francesco.
Inside the château, if it is raining or cold or misty, we prowl through the halls and public rooms. Halls, rooms, people. A door opens and there is someone. A door shuts, and you are alone with a dozen doors. Cold windows merge into cold mirrors, a door opens. Here are tapestries from Bruges. Someone coughs. Feminine laughter sounds.
As I walked toward Cloux, lights blinked in window after window; a light appeared in my studio; someone passed carrying a torch. Maturina has a fire in my fireplace. She has the table set for Francesco and me. Glaring at me she scolds me for my damp clothes. “Your cough...you know! You never think of yourself. Your supper has been ready a long time. I’ve asked Francesco to look after you but he forgets. Only yesterday I said to him...”
Whenever the Egyptian sultan presented the Florentines with a new animal, I made sketches. At one time, there were several lions in the town’s menagerie. An old lion had a stubby grey mane and a black splotch across his face. Since one of his paws was crippled, he limped badly. As he walked or stretched out in the summer sun, a friendly ibis often pecked about in his fur. Old and wise, he ate only two or three times a week...and outlived younger lions. Bruno, a keeper, let me measure him. Skull. Neck. Spine. Shoulders. Rump. Paws.
I suggested large cages for the menagerie animals but no one listened. When I designed a cage for a lion on two levels, with a tree in a corner, nothing came of it.
One night, in winter, a friar opened a cage and let a sick lion go; for days the young man had tried to cure the female. Running amok through town, she created quite a scare until she was trapped in a cul-de-sac by some of my apprentices. Muzzled, growling, she was returned to her cage where she died.
It was only a few blocks from my studio to the menagerie and I often heard the animals roar while I worked.
Cloux.
Cage.
Our incessant feuds, wars, brutalities, our pettiness, have rotted our minds.
For years I have heard men describe roads frozen with sleet and dead, bloody ambuscades, military gear trapped in mud, mules and horses floundering, desolated villages. I have seen victory and defeat...Milan... Pisa...Bologna... Perugia...
Surrounded by death, I have known many men who want more and more of it. I have remembered that as I painted my mural, myAnghiari. Some of my war sketches have been aberrations. It would have been wiser had I confined myself to my atelier. Among my drawings, sketches, cartoons, models, among my plants and fossils, I should have gone on and on painting. Who, better than I, through my anatomical studies, know the marvels of life! Now, I shun crossbows, guns, chariots. I have asked Francesco to destroy those sketches.
Once again, as in Florence, as in my youth, I am putting art foremost. I am painting.
Tomorrow, Francesco and I will go along the Loire, sketching. If tomorrow is a rainy day we will try the next day. I think he is overly concerned with the problems of perspective. We will talk about the elimination of detail.
Painter and friend, I am lucky to have Francesco, my Cecchino!
These days, I sleep longer, but, through the years, in Florence, in Milan, I never slept more than three or four hours a night. There were too many plans, sketches, paintings, bronzes, portraits, models, commissions...three or four hours...that was enough...
Lie down, sleep...catch the dawn, the window shutters open. Mist on the Arno. Plunge face in icy water in that old white wash basin. Tie sketch pad onto belt. The town is sleeping; the birds are waking up. Careful, open the door quietly. Don’t disturb Andrea. Is that the moon, still hanging in the sky?
I made my way to the Boboli Gardens...passed theDavid...rows of crooked cypress...marble satyr...pool of frogs...a beggar whined...
A town sleeps a thousand years every night.
Cloux
Occasionally, while playing chess, I imagine there are no pawns; I imagine there are no knights; the good bishop has vanished; the castle has gone; there is no stalemate; instead, we are walking across checkered fields, Caterina and I. Soon, we’ll sit down to supper; then, when candles have burned low and lamps are dying down, we’ll lie in each other’s arms.
I have never been a clever chess player: I have spoiled games by envisioning a spiral staircase, by designing a parachute or estimating the cost of draining a marsh instead of planning my next move. I can cast bronze better than tackle chess strategy.
When King Francis and I play, I know the rules—those unwritten rules—and abide by them: the king must win.
Checkmate...what are the rules in life...checkmate...how to play the final move?
Someday our earth may be burdened with people (but I will not be there).
Numbers cheapen us.
Collective folly weakens us.
Man and art drift apart.
However, who can create man? For that matter, who can create a common pigeon? Or the mangiest dog? Or a horse?
And there is such mystery in this arm, this wrist, these fingers as I write. I would like to be able to trace these impulses: the thought, as it takes place in the brain, the thought as it becomes the letter L, as it becomes da Vinci, as that word connects with another word.
A dot becomes a sketch. A sketch becomes a tree (a tree becomes a sketch). Must there be limitations to the mind’s probings? Experience can shackle us. I resent shackles. I still believe in flying.
I love the horse more than all the animals because he gives me a sense of flying. Racing across a field, half-naked, bareback, I was free as a boy. I was above the earth. Galloping along a road, my cape fluttering, I was outside myself. Trotting underneath the stars I sensed another kind of freedom. The clopping of the horse was a drumbeat for liberty. I was often carried away.
Nuzzling my hand, I stroked his head, thanking him for this ecstasy.
March 2, 1517
Yesterday, a traveler, a Spaniard, a navy officer, a guest of the King, claimed at dinner that a Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de León, had discovered a land, and named it Florida. He said that Ponce de Leon discovered it four or five years ago.
“Where is Florida? Is it an island?”
I had a page bring my maps but the Spaniard could not locate Florida. He was ill at ease as if he had divulged a state secret. The arrogant officer’s face still bothers me, like the face of a diseased rat. Florida? A Spanish name: does it have a special meaning?
“Mon Capitan was hunting for Bimini...the fountain, the great fountain, that cures all diseases,” the officer said, pushing aside my maps, less like a traveler than a spoiled child.
Travel...
Francesco has never read theTravels of Marco Polo, but he is reading the book to me; he reads in the afternoons, maybe when the warm sun is in our western windows, maybe at the pergola, if it is pleasant. Sometimes, when I am tired, he reads to me by candlelight, beside my ducal bed.
I respect Marco Polo. I believe what he wrote. He was nomillioni. He was fortunate to find a Rustichello to record his story. Perhaps Francesco is mine. When I visited Polo’s prison cell in Genoa someone showed me the painstaking calendar he had chiseled into the wall beside his cot...Chinese characters along the top section of the calendar—a dragon underneath.
In Florence, in Andrea’s home, I read Polo’s book and dreamed of crossing the Lop Desert on camelback; I imagined visiting the Khan’s great cities; I dreamed of sketching palaces, temples, courtiers. I wanted to climb lofty mountains; I thought of mapping rivers.
I told this to Francesco; he smiled and nodded. India? China? Tibet? For him they are words. He thinks only of his Italy, his Vaprio. I am afraid he considers that I have stolen years from his homeland by keeping him here. He writes his mother and father faithfully; when there are lapses in their correspondence he is troubled.
Alas—Salai and Tony have left me!
At Cloux they have spent less and less time at their painting on their own or under my tutelage. They have become infatuated by the King’s women—the prostitutes. Finally, in desperation, I urged them to return to Florence. Tony has serious family problems and is needed. Salai plans to build a house for himself, on my vineyard property. I will miss them... I will miss them! They have been an important part of my life! Francesco is pleased there will be no more rivalry and friction. Yet, apart from that, ours was a sad farewell, lingering, the wind blowing about us harshly. It was our last good-bye, I know. I know. They promise to write to me. When are letters alive!
NOTE—Baron Sabran visited me last week. We strolled about the château, and he related another of his wild boar stories as he glanced over some of my paintings. I enjoyed his visit, his chattiness, his effort to be friendly.
Today, I hear that he has passed away: Time...today’s friend, tomorrow’s enemy.
Cloux
How well I remember:
I was riding with other horsemen, perhaps a dozen of us, Duke Lorenzo on his favorite mare, both of us a little to the front of the Medici pennants, flags, and jousting gear. As we approached the Duke’s stables at a canter, he leaned toward me, and said:
“He’s yours, Leonardo... I know you like him! Tell the stable boys where you want to have him kept.”
A smile, no more.
Cheppo was a three-year-old, four-gaited, almost as distinguished in bone and muscle as Cermonino, yet wider across the withers. I sketched him, studied him, studied him as I had studied Cermonino. Cheppo had a way of shaking his mane, flopping out his upper lip—nuzzling. He was a competent beggar: if I failed to remember a treat he would squeeze me against the stable wall and regard me sadly. Once I was in the saddle he was obedient, alert.
Cheppo had been Lorenzo’s favorite. Certainly no one else could have given him more competent training than the Duke. I was so pleased to have him and spoiled him, until I left for Milan—never to find another his equal.
My mirror writing came naturally; it began as a boy; I have always been ambidextrous; yet my left hand’s skill surpasses that of the right. There were reasons for my mirror writing: for abbreviations and symbols, the prying of idle apprentices, the intrusion of rivals, the circumvention of blabbers. It also satisfied me personally—esthetically.
Tonight, I am alone, writing: the manor house is still.
It is raining hard, and has been raining hard throughout the day. The fire in the fireplace is comfortable. The lamps are well trimmed.
As I sat at my desk, continuing the journal, someone tried to pry open the door lock. Metal on metal. I waited. Again I heard the intruder. The rain beat on the door; the door shook. I heard the lock give. Picking up a broken easel leg I waited, in case the lock gave way. The man outside coughed. He shuffled about, then left.
Perhaps I should get a dog.
Devotion is the best quality, human devotion and devotion to one’s art. Certainly my devotion to Francesco—trust and affection—has been reciprocated.
And, when I am dead, he will remember me. That is what artists need—men who care. If there are those who care, it is as if one’s atelier continues on and on. And, if the apprentices think along the guidelines already laid down, that is another continuation, another defiance.
One of these days, Francesco will return to his Vaprio, to paint. He may set up a studio in Milan. Perhaps there will come a time when he places a canvas and sits on his stool and paints my beard, thinning hair, protruding eyebrows, strange nose and strange eyes.
He will say to himself:
“That’s how the old man looked, at Cloux.
“Shall I paint on open window behind him...shall I paint some rock formations in the distance?”
Although the King and his court go out of their way to befriend me I could not tolerate this voluntary exile, this foreignness, this remoteness, were it not for Francesco. When he is away, at the château, in the village, in Paris, traveling somewhere, I am at a loss. I glance about: where is he? When will he return?
Often, when Cecchino comes back from one of his rambles, he has a gift or two, a plant, a seed, a leaf, a rock...he tells me what happened, details. He’s good at verbal paintings. Excited sometimes. No matter. He may have sketches to show me, charcoal, pencil, chalk.
“This is something you must take a look at, Maestro...here, this face? Isn’t it Greek, the nose, the forehead? And this gypsy woman, what about her? And this fellow...ever see anyone dressed like that? And this fountain...”
He sits on a bench beside my easel.
“We must ride to Paris...we must visit Cluny...the churches...there’s a great Van Eyck...and Chambord...now is the time to visit Chambord, when the court’s away...we ought to see how your canal and irrigation jobs are coming along...remember, Sr. Migliarotti is pretty lazy...”
Francesco hopes to make me feel like I am thirty years old.
It is May and I am in the Amboise garden, soaking up the noon sun, courtiers milling about on the many paths; yet I am alone, with my sketchbook, to write, to think. And I am thinking about Francesco, how he arrived at my studio in the pouring rain. Drenched. He had ridden from Vaprio. I don’t forget that rain, that stormy Florentine afternoon, that eager, wet face of his, his mud-spattered horse, his servants’ horses, how they looked in the street, as Francesco spoke to me. Cold, very cold, even for April. Tiled roofs were choked with rain. Drowned cobbles. Leaves and mud.
But there he was at my door, bowing, smiling.
“Maestro da Vinci...I want to be your pupil.”
That was seventeen years ago. Was he only fifteen? It doesn’t seem possible he was so young. He was my favorite from the start. I love Salai as a son, but this young man, this gracious young man, is friend and ardent disciple. Painter! When I have been his guest at Vaprio, I am honored. Francesco’s father and mother make their villa a place of rest. I know. I have fled there, from thecondottieri. I am always protected by the Melzis.
His illness upset the studio.
“Melzi’s sick! Francesco’s sick!”
Fever day after day, hands like ice, coma. Shivering though his apartment was sunny. I thought he might have malaria. The plague. I called in the best doctors; I sent for Francesco’s father. His uncle came instead. Other doctors came. And in his delirium, Francesco painted a large canvas, with a flock of white birds in the sky, carrying a blue tree. October, November—bad months for sickness. But by December he was up, skinny, hungry, forever hungry.
And there was his father’s gratitude to me, his uncle’s gratitude, as if I had been the physician. That summer, as Francesco convalesced at Vaprio, I vacationed there. The family purchased my portrait ofA Boy. That rolling land, the swift Adda, those canals, the villa gardens with their Roman statues and roses...roses...the women in the gardens, picking roses. But I have written about this before? ...I am getting forgetful.
We sketched and painted.
I remember a puppy lying in my lap as I dozed in one of the gardens, the one with the apple trees. Good food, good wine, summer, that was Villa Vaprio. I learned about summer there—what summer really means.
Cloux
The King wants me to move to a spacious studio in the château. I prefer a smaller room. Small rooms sometimes discipline the mind. I have explained that my studio, in the manor house, has everything essential to my work: cupboards, cabinets, tables, shelves.
“Do you need pigment...oils...turpentine...brushes?” He is impatient... you must want something!
We have space for our paintings. We have the right amount of light. We have quiet. And on our mantelpiece we have a place for my Greek and Roman antiquities—things I collected in Campania (along with malaria): iridescent vases, bronze and alabaster lamps, household figurines, a few coins. I have one with a porpoise leaping. The Greeks were master minters-designers. Francesco says he knows a place in Paris that sells Greek antiquities. If I can ever get there I want to purchase an ivory Venus for my desk. We have not surpassed those ancient artisans.
Such things make a bright enclosure.
I am fortunate...I have had many friends.
I had many friends in Florence, Milan, Rome, Genoa, and Venice. I shall name a few: Marco d’Oggiono, Vitelli, Tomaso Masini, Amalia, Father Pacioli, Ferrera, Machiavelli, Francesco, Mona, Cristofer, Andrea...and now King Francis.
I see them in my sketches as I leaf through them now and then: Benci, in pen and ink, beside a juniper tree; Andrea, at work on a bronze figurine; here is a pastel of Ambrogia, puttering over his careful palette; here is red-headed Filippo Lippi finishing the background for a madonna; here is Cecelia, sipping wine, asking for sweets...Madonna Lisa and her graceful beauty, her soft voice, patience...
She and I had many hours for thegamboa...we ate together...played cards, talked about myAnghiari...when she posed I had singers for her... I loaned her little sums; she lent me money; she sent me baskets of fruit; I gave her sketches and drawings.
If all these friends could be with me, at Cloux, to walk with me, visit the château and its gardens, prowl the mirror hallways, enjoy my studio, my latest paintings...talk...talk...
As an apprentice I longed to fix in my mind every detail: I must look and look, a second and a third time and a fourth. I must fill a notebook. Quickly. I must follow that bearded Corsican and draw his face.
All of us apprentices respected Andrea del Verrochio, as artisan, as teacher. We were at home in his workshop. We were proud of his accomplishments, proud of our own accomplishments; at the same time we were eager, pushy, ready to challenge other artists. Ready to consider a commission, evaluate it, carry it through to perfection.
And what were my best years, the best of my mature years, I ask myself? Those dedicated to my mural, my outcry against war, years that included many paintings? Or was it the time dedicated to the creation of the Sforza horse—IL COLOSSO? If I could have had the metal and cast the statue it would have been that success above others. And the years that went intoThe Last Supper: Three years. There were also the years of dissection and anatomical studies. Best years? There were the easel paintings. I suppose there have never been any best years. There were discoveries and discovery made another discovery possible...and so the years went along.
Last night, Francesco burst into my bedroom.
“I can’t find them,” he exclaimed.
“What?”
“I have looked everywhere...your letters are missing.”
“What letters, Francesco?”
“I have your list...letters from King Francis...from Duke Lorenzo...from Christopher Columbus...Machiavelli...Father Pacioli...Beatrice d’Este...Cesare Borgia...Salai...”
“Did you open the trunk in the storeroom? They may be in there. Look carefully. I want to destroy some of them...let’s go over everything together.”
“We had them in Milan...”
“Look again... I’m sure you’ll find them.”
(Yesterday, in the château’s hall of mirrors I saw Caterina: she was talking with a young man, a man her age: she had on a summer gown, with one breast almost bare: she smiled at her companion who was dressed in grey.)
Cloux
June 1, 1517
After I completed my silverpoint of Francis, he ordered his tailor to cut an elegant velvet smock for me. In carnelian. Two pockets. Belt of silver lozenges hooked together on braided silver wires.
Francesco is framing the portrait and it will hang in the château library, along with a Rafael, a de Predis, a Bosch, a Dürer. Francis has his eyes on Francesco’s new canvas, hisColumbine, but I tell the King it is not finished.
“Not finished? Of course it is finished, Mon Père.” But Francesco listens to me.
I continue with my drawings of the deluge: I go on with the terror, the falling of buildings, the erosion of life, the force of wind, the weight of torrents... I go on with this feeling... I must express it.
The gloomy air must be beaten by the wind and perpetual hail...there must be ancient trees, uprooted trees, torn to pieces by the fury...the fragments of mountains must spill into valleys...immensity must burst the barrier of rivers.
It is my last judgment...certainly there is nothing that does not have an ending ...twisted forms...fear...puny man...
I hear the resounding air, the lamentations.
Mountains are to be torn open for their minerals...all animals will languish...all will be pursued or destroyed...trees will be laid level...due to man’s malice there will be great losses...how much better for man to go back to hell.
Cloux
It is late.
A fire burned all evening in my studio, and King Francis has sat by the fire with me, talking. He was depressed because bankers have been demanding exorbitant sums: he plans to sell royal titles to recoup funds.
“All this will take months...there are many hazards...”
Abruptly:
“Do you see something in my face, something ominous?”
“I don’t understand...”
“It seems to me...I feel that the future has something tragic... I’m worried... Do you believe in foretelling?”
He had been jousting: I blamed fatigue. But he would not be put aside by a few casual words.
“Mon Père...tell me...some say that you can foretell? Is that true?”
“I can not.”
“Who can?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“Divinations...those occult doings...forget them. You must think clearly, your Majesty. Don’t let men hoodwink you. Nobody knows tomorrow.”
“Tonight, as I walked through the tunnel from the château...tonight I had three guards... I was afraid...like a Borgia...assassinations...pretty bad...”
He laughed at himself.
It has been sunny and cool for several days: I have gone on pleasant walks, along the river, through the château gardens, through the grove that leads into the King’s forest: paths are becoming familiar: I shake hands with old trees. At the château I have watched the King play tennis: they are having a tournament. Francis plays with ugly ferocity. His partners play warily. I see that diplomacy begins on the tennis courts.
Studio
September 3, 1517
My lamp is guttering. Candle stubs are smoking.
Was it thirty years ago, in Milan, that I understood? Windows were open and heat-lightning was flickering beyond my studio. My anatomy drawings were spread on the corner table. Then I saw. Saw clearly. Knew. Saw that man’s blood resembles the tides of the sea; from the seat of the heart it circulated throughout the body. Let an artery or vein burst or suffer injury and blood raced to the injured spot. Incessant currents of the blood, passing through the arteries and veins, caused them to thicken and become callous. So, I had additional proof of circulation. Each dissection revealed further confirmation of the system. Why was I slow in grasping the obvious?
I have explained my theory to some but was often rebuffed and yet when I told her—using my drawings—she grasped the significance. She understood many things. And when she lay dying there seemed little left for me... I held her hand. Her eyes were closed. Grey eyes. She never spoke. God, how I stumbled down those rat infested stairs, stairs with a cross gouged in each step. Ah, those flooded streets!
Some men of science and art have copies of my first treatise. Some. They hesitate. Resent. Last year I explained circulation to King Francis. He was not interested; he fondled his diamond-studded belt and stared stupidly at me. I must tell Francesco that the treatise is packed in the third trunk—the one with the smashed lock.
I must sequence my drawings:
1 - Skin
2 - Muscles
3 - Tendons
4 - Bones
Indicate effect of emotions, labor, illness, age.
Cloux
October 15, 1517
Francesco is copying this:
I have been unable to write or work for several days. These days she is in my mind all of the time. Maturina begs me to eat...my appetite has gone. The weather is perfect but I can not go outside. Here, in my studio, I have her portrait to console me; sometimes I have to turn away from it. I thought that she would live for many years. I thought that she was contented. Her family loved her.
The letter, written by her brother, says nothing about how Mona died. Was she ill a long while? I can’t remember when she wrote me last time...was it as much as a year ago? Why am I confused? Did the plague kill her? Was she with her family? How they will miss her! The letter took four months to reach me—a hundred and twenty days! She died in Genoa, on the 2nd or 3rd of July. I can’t make out the date.
The King knows of her death. Francesco told him, because I can not ride with the hunters... I can not ride... Francis has presented me with a small jeweled hourglass. A note accompanied it.
Life and death...old friends, old enemies.
My face is a cemetery.
Gossips said that Mona was my mistress.
We were friends.
In those days, when I was beginning her portrait, I had Gorgio play for her: she liked his viola da gamba skill. He would usually appear a little late, but always with a smile, a bow. Sometimes a choir boy sang motets; it seems to me he recited poetry too. Did he always wear a brown cloak?
Our sittings were often far apart: there was illness in her family: she was away from Florence for months at a time: on her return it was hard to recapture our mood. She was patient with me but I have often stood before her picture quite perplexed...especially if the light had changed...my colors had changed.
I was late for one of our sittings and she put on an apron and scrubbed brushes and mortars, made my apprentices scurry; then laughed at my objections.
“Next time you’re late, I’ll clean your leggio,” she said, and smiled teasingly.
Her smile...I used to think of it as hiding family secrets, feminine secrets, her own loneliness (“Yes, Leonardo...yes...there are times...”)
I could not always arrange for a musician; when she posed during those silences I felt the bonds of our friendship...when we ate together, when she described her travels, it was another aspect of our friendship.
I was welcome at her home. Her distinguished husband bought fine pieces of art. They were happy to share.
At her home and in my studio we often talked about myAnghiariand she was eager to follow its progression.
October 29th
Masculine skies...feminine skies...at this season of the year they are mostly masculine, with snow falling, wind blowing. My feet are cold because of the weather, or is it because my fireplace chimney needs cleaning? Cold, I have moved to the library.
As I mull over my papers I observe the great books around me. I must concentrate. I must push on. There is so much to be done with the organization of my treatises. So much.
Maturina rouses me.
“You are cold, Maestro...it is chilly in this room.”
So, I am cold!
Perhaps I have cathedral sickness!
It is good to be writing again. My journal suffers when my hand is unsteady.
Francesco is away; that troubles me.
I wish I were young and could bend horseshoes instead of two sheets of paper.
Maturina has found a bird stricken by the cold; we hover over it. A dove. A flyer. Where are my sketches for the glider? The one Francesco and I tested. He must find it for me when he returns.
Interruptions...interruptions...
Francesco has adopted a stray cat, from among the dozens that haunt the château. The cat beds under his easel, among cleaning rags. He always stinks of turpentine and oil.
I have never seen a cat so eager to sleep; perhaps half of his life has gone into carousing. He is bone white, has one orange ear, a twisted nose, one orange foot, and a black-tipped tail. His greenish eyes glare out of skinniness.
Crabby.
Maturina hates him.
Francesco calls him “Michelangelo.”
My four-poster must have been made for a cardinal or bishop, or someone’s mistress. I am tempted to remove the garnet canopy and drapes. But it’s a snug bed when it’s cold. I often lie there and watch the fire playing about. It’s a chance to weigh the past—and plan ahead.
Sometimes, when I am very tired and have turned in early, Francesco rolls his easel into the room, and sits on the side of the bed and we talk brush strokes or ways of grinding the new pigments, how much overpainting is feasible, the dangers of black as an under pigment. Shop talk.
Cloux
Andrea Salaino—Why did I adopt him in the first place?
That’s an easy answer: because I loved him!
What a waif Salai was! I took him into my household, my studio, twenty-some years ago. It can’t be possible that so much time has lapsed.
He stole...stole shirts, shoes, brushes, gold leaf. He stole gold leaf and sold it. He took money. I was right to christen him “Salai.” It took months to straighten him out...if I really did. Yellow-headed, curly-headed, tall, foolish, loveable... when he puts his arm around me...
He is a capable artist, incapable of continuous effort; perhaps time can change him but I doubt it.
Now that he is gone...I often think I hear his voice... I think, ah, he has come back for a while...
The King and Queen have asked me how I had hoped to castIl Cavallo, so I placed my drawings on tables in the salon, and we walked from one to another and I explained them.
“Mon Père,” Francis mumbled, as he examines drawings and sketches, “Mon Père...these are workable.”
I am silent.
“When did you begin actual casting?” the Queen asks. I try to disregard her obvious skepticism.
She is dressed in white and gold; he has on one of his dark cloaks lined with down; he has rings set with emeralds; she reeks of cologne and sweat. Her pinched face is regally ugly—somehow provincial.
“I began casting the horse in December...’93...casting it on its side. I placed the mould in a shallow cavity. I opened it on the left side. I could have completed the casting if there had been sufficient bronze. I am sure you know that cannons had priority at that time.”
They knew, too, about the Gascon bowmen.
I understand they had watched the archers, as they used my clay model for target. Watched myCavallodisintegrate.
I watched, hating, hating those bowmen. How they cheered as arrows pierced the model.
Now I watched the King and Queen.
“In Milan, in those days, the Sforza stables were at my disposal. I chose a magnificent horse—Cermonino—as my model. Alone, or with a groom, I would ride into the country, where it was pleasant and we were free of gapers. I would dismount and sketch my horse. Or the groom would lead him back and forth, while I sketched, to record a sense of motion.
“Other times I would ride Cermonino, race him, sweat him; then I’d draw his distended mouth, his swollen nostrils, his wild mane...
“Leaning forward in the saddle, baton in hand, the Duke was to symbolize leadership and power...he was pleased...his baton would have been more than thirty feet above the ground.”
Visitors and courtiers annoy me, though I do not show my annoyance. I have learned how to patronize. I pretend I have nothing to do...my life is one of leisure. Then, at night, through most of the night, lamps and candles burning, Francesco and I work with my drawings and texts.
Francesco realizes that I am homesick but he does not quite realize that I am homesick for a Florence that does not exist. I don’t admit it but I am also remembering Vinci, the only home I ever had. I would like to walk into the rambling stone house and sit by a front window. I would like...but why go on?
Bottegheor ateliers have their points but they are never home. Guilds, with their rivalries, their rascalities, are continually broiling. Greedy apprentices. Raw apprentices. Rowdiness. So many crowns for this piece of work, so manysoldifor this job. Dissension over models. Spats about religion. Muddy sex.
Perhaps I should have lived out my life in my vineyard. Much sun. Quietude. Animals. Olive trees in the sunset. The mistral. Peasants. Fidelity.
What delusions.
Tomorrow I look forward to working again on mySaint John. I have decided to darken the background.
I knew Sandro Botticelli well. Now that he is dead and I am far away, leaving this personal journal to a mere boy, I can write about him. We called Sandro “Our Little Barrel.” He was fat enough, to be sure. Success favored his belly. Drink gave him a pleasant stupor.
I thought hisPrimaveraa piece of ostentation: the picture flaunts showmanship in many ways. The background is especially weak. I have shied away from gigantic canvases. A painting should not pretend to be a mural or a fresco.
However, Sandro’s illustrations for Dante have a lightness: his lines are right.
Maybe I am not respectful of Sandro. Michelangelo dislikes my work. Who is right?
When my fellow Florentines legally murdered Savonarola I was repelled. Savonarola was reformer, dictator, fanatic. His bigotry alarmed me; all bigotry alarms me. I prefer the Alpine heights and passes to heavenly promises; I prefer rivers and lakes to the Dantesque. Savonarola’s ashes were thrown into the Arno... I anticipate further degradations...ashes... whose ashes were thrown into the river? Ours? No matter what we say in defense of religion there seems to be another road. Some things surpass religion. My mother’s gentleness, for one thing. I say, let us worship beauty. Now, in my old age, I say let us worship beauty.
Thinking of beauty, I hoped for many years to do a bronze of Hercules, Hercules firing his arrow at the Stymphalian birds, head back, eyes upward, his right arm tensing the cord, fingers ready to let the arrow go: Hercules in the nude, among rocks, one knee cocked at the same angle as his bow arm.
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