Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Leonardo’s three months’ allotted absence from Florence, however, were soon past and a letter arrived from Soderini demanding either Leonardo’s return or a forfeiture of the one hundred and fifty florins deposit. Now a tug-of-war developed between the Viceroy of Milan and the governor of Florence over Leonardo. The Signoria reminded Charles that Leonardo had his work to complete, while Charles d’Amboise and Geffroy Carles demanded an extension of time. One month more was granted. More letters were exchanged until the affair became so heated that the King of France himself intervened. In January of 1507 the French King informed Soderini and the Signoria that Leonardo was “not to move from Milan until our arrival.” Since Florence at this time was under the protection of the French, such final authority silenced the Signoria. Shortly afterwards Leonardo discharged his obligation to the Signoria by relinquishing the one hundred and fifty florins, and he at last became free from the demands of his native city.

On May 24, 1507 King Louis XII re-entered Milan with all the splendor and color that France and the Dukedom of Milan could confer upon their ruler. Knights in armor and the ladies of the courts followed the king who rode in flowing white and gold under a canopy of blue decorated with the lilies of France.

With such pomp and display in Milan, Leonardo was soon back at his old occupation of designing pageants and tournaments. While some of the people from the days of the Sforzas returned, not many remembered Duke Ludovico, who was slowly dying in a French dungeon. Among the people that Leonardo now met, there appeared Francesco de’ Melzi, a noble from an old Milanese family, who entered Leonardo’s life at this time as a pupil. Soon the young man became like a son to Leonardo. Of handsome appearance, he had the sensitivity to appreciate the essential loneliness of Leonardo and so, almost without realizing it, he filled a gap in Leonardo’s life that was to last until the end of his days.

Yet, as Franceso de’ Melzi opened one door of Leonardo’s life another door closed. He received word that his beloved uncle Francesco had died at Vinci and that he had become the heir to his uncle’s property. No sooner had this news been delivered when Leonardo was notified that Giuliano, a son of Piero, and now a lawyer in his own right, was contesting the will. All the frustrations of his life in Florence now rose to an angry pitch and he set out once again for Florence to fight for his own rights.

Wisely, Leonardo had armed himself with letters from his new, influential patrons and even one from King Louis himself recommending, “... we request that you will cause this dispute to be settled in the best and briefest delivery of justice....” In August of that same year—1507—Charles d’Amboise added his personal letter suggesting that the king could not spare Leonardo too long from the court at Milan.

It was with the title of Painter and Engineer to the King of France that Leonardo rode back to Florence to await the outcome of the judges in his case. He went to stay with a sculptor friend, Giovanni Rustici, a man of thirty-five and also an ex-student of Verrochio. They lived in a house lent to Rustici by a wealthy scholar and patron named Piero Martelli.

Leonardo soon found that he and Rustici had much in common. Rustici, too, collected the odds and ends of his journeys into the country. Flying about the house were a tame eagle and a raven, while, at dinner, a pet porcupine begged for food. Rustici, however, was a believer in alchemy and magic. To practice these arts the young man devoted one room to the strange mixtures which bubbled over flames as he attempted to change base metals into gold, or to call upon the spirits to predict the future.

Leonardo settled into the life of the house very quickly and even helped his friend on an important sculpture commission. This was a group composition of St. John between the Pharisee and the Levite for over the doors of the baptistry. He also started to gather together his scattered notes on all the subjects that he had written about, going through them making corrections and erasing the repetitions. Possibly Leonardo was considering the publication of all his material for he wrote, “Begun at Florence in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22nd day of March, 1508. This will be a collection without order, made up of many sheets which I have copied here, hoping afterwards to arrange them in order in their proper places according to the subjects of which they treat....” This “collection without order” of almost forty years extended into practically all branches of human knowledge, founded on years of observation and experiment. Indeed, it was the magnificent effort of one extraordinary mind to push back the curtains of ignorance in order to let the light of natural truth shine through to mankind.

In addition, Leonardo returned to his studies of anatomy and comparative anatomy. For this latter he made many beautiful drawings of the legs of animals as compared to those of man. With them, Leonardo tried to indicate man’s place in the natural order of the world. He pointed out that our physical bodies are basically the same as those of animals, and that the muscular and organic differences are those of function only. For example, bird and man have the same chest muscles, called the pectoralis. But the bird, in order to fly, has developed these into powerful instruments of motion. Man, on the other hand, has learned to stand and move in an upright position. He has developed the muscles of the back, called the erectores spinae, and those of the buttocks to hold him erect. Leonardo intended to enlarge upon his studies of comparative anatomy to include all living creatures, even the insects.

Meanwhile, the Viceroy of Milan was becoming impatient for Leonardo’s return. The judgment against his half-brothers had been settled in Leonardo’s favor, and he hastened back to Milan. By the summer of 1508 he was once more in the routine of the court’s activities. King Louis had granted Leonardo a regular allowance and it was the first time he had enjoyed such a long freedom from the concerns of earning a living. With these steady payments Leonardo now had the leisure and support to pursue his own multitude of interests.

As his notes began to take shape and he thought of printing them, it was natural for the inventive Leonardo to design his own printing press. It is one of the earliest such designs on record. Because the carrying bed which held the type and the paper was automatically adjusted to the handlebar, the press could be operated by one man. Besides his notes Leonardo also considered printing a work by Roger Bacon, the thirteenth century English scientist.

This project for printing his own books, however, was never realized by Leonardo. Lately, he had received a commission which took him back in memory to the days of Ludovico. The subject was Marshal Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, a soldier-of-fortune. Originally this man was a loyal commander of Galeazzo Sforza’s but when Ludovico came to power he had had Trivulzio banished from Milan. Embittered, Trivulzio had become a stubborn enemy of Ludovico from that time on, serving under any banner that marched against the house of Sforza. A stocky, square-faced man, his body was covered with the scars of many battles. He had been fighting with the French ever since the time Ludovico had betrayed Charles VIII. Trivulzio had seen the great monument that Leonardo had modeled and, although it was riddled by French arrows and damaged by wind and rain, the Marshal was impressed and wished for a similar memorial to himself.

Leonardo set to work immediately. His past experience with the Sforza monument was now to his advantage. This time there was no need for experimenting. He knew how much material he needed and the approximate cost of everything including the casting. He submitted an estimate of three thousand and forty—six ducats for the completed work, one hundred of which would go to Leonardo. The sum was acceptable to Trivulzio and Leonardo began his preliminary studies.

As he gathered the material for this new equestrian statue, Leonardo and the French Viceroy Charles d’Amboise became interested in the further canalization of the plains of Lombardy. The use of canals and locks had been in practice for roughly a hundred years and around Milan there were already some fifty miles of canals and about twenty-five locks. Leonardo started another survey of the area. In his imagination, he envisioned a vast hydraulic engineering project.

On September 12, 1508 Leonardo announced in his notes the beginning of a book on the nature of water. He had decided to separate this book from the one on hydraulics because it was necessary to separate theory and practice. His pages treating the science of hydraulics, or the practical applications of water power, had reached to “forty books of benefits.” By the spring of 1509 he had expanded his notes on the nature of water to include the greatest wave to the smallest raindrop.

Concerning the practical applications of water power, Leonardo put forth many designs for new locks. He introduced new methods of raising the gates by windlasses and chains which could easily be set in motion by one man. But most important is Leonardo’s discovery of the use of centrifugal force for draining marshes—the ancestor of the centrifugal pump. When you rapidly rotate a stick in a pail of water, the water spins in a spiral rising on the sides, and, if you rotate the stick fast enough it bares the bottom of the pail. When you remove the stick suddenly, the water continues to whirl as it slowly subsides.

This is basically the same principle Leonardo used to raise the water from a marsh to a level above the sea so that it could be drained away.

The centrifugal pump was also used with a hydraulic screw which converted water power to mechanical power. The force of a stream of water was injected into the base of a vertical cylinder. In the base of this cylinder was a six-bladed propeller mounted on a vertical shaft. The force of the water turned the screw and at the same time the water was forced to rise in the cylinder to an outlet above. The turning propeller revolved the vertical shaft. This shaft, emerging from the top of the cylinder, turned a cogged wheel. This wheel was joined to another cogged wheel mounted on a horizontal shaft, thus providing the mechanical power. Not only is this the forerunner of the turbine, but the use of the propeller, itself, for propulsion in water, was a new idea not to be thought of again until the eighteenth century. For certain types of hydraulic pumps he conceived of the cone-headed mitre valve still in use today.

Leonardo, besides studying the practical applications of water power, explored the very nature of water itself. In his proposed books on this subject he intended to examine why clouds and fog form, why rain falls and the raindrop itself—even how the raindrop is held together. He understood the nature of capillary attraction, which holds the raindrop together, and his notes show us that he was exploring the science of hydrostatics which relates to the pressure and equilibrium of liquids in general.

Now that Leonardo had a steady income and the relief from meeting painting commissions by fixed dates, he was free to explore his other favorite avenues of knowledge. It seemed that his ever-active mind could never stop roaming over the whole field of scientific knowledge. He continued with his early interests—the nature and movement of air, astronomy and geometry. He was also still concerned with movement and weight, for he set down in his notes, “The thing which moves will be so much the more difficult to stop as it is of greater weight.” This is a hint at a principle formulated by Isaac Newton almost two hundred years later in his First Law of Motion—the law concerning inertia. For example, the motion of an arrow shot into the air maintains itself in flight so long as the influence of the initial force is maintained in it.

On a note dated April 28, 1509 he wrote, “Having for a long time sought to square the angle of two curved sides ... I have solved the proposition at ten o’clock on the evening of Sunday.” As always, Leonardo was deeply involved in the study of mathematics. Too deep perhaps to recognize the new rumblings of war.

Louis XII, still pursuing his campaign in northern Italy, had again arrived in Milan amid the salutes of the French artillery. Following his personal banner of a gold porcupine on a white field, he had come back prepared to do battle with the Venetians whose power, as it diminished in the east, was extending westward into Italy. Alarmed at this Venetian expansion, the French King had allied himself with Pope Julius II and the powers of Europe to form the League of Cambrai to push back this threat. Charles d’Amboise, the French Viceroy, had already taken to the field and at the castle of Cassano, overlooking the Adda river near Milan, he awaited the arrival of his king.

By the end of May, Leonardo was in the saddle once more. Surrounded by the best knights of France and the nobles of Milan, he personally accompanied the French King as military engineer to the meeting with the Viceroy of Milan at Cassano.

During the next three months, through the battles and defeat of the Venetians at Aquadello where sixteen thousand dead were left on the field, and the siege of Caravaggio and the capture of Peschiera, Leonardo served as military consultant and map maker. More than ever his eye was attracted to the possibilities of utilizing the many rivers they crossed both for warfare and commerce. He envisioned making the Adda river navigable from Milan to Lake Como. During this time, he devised not only a revolving bridge but even one of two layers in a single span—the upper level for pedestrians and the lower one for vehicles.

By July, Leonardo had returned with the king and the French army to Milan. Here was planned a great celebration of the French victory over the Venetians. In front of the cathedral, to the delight of the hundreds of spectators, Leonardo devised a mechanical lion scaring a dragon out of an artificial lake into the beak of a cock which picked the dragon’s eyes out. After the festivities Leonardo returned to his everyday work. In time, he had a thriving workshop and as he became more and more preoccupied with his scientific explorations, his art commissions were turned over to his assistants. He did continue, however, to work on the plans for Marshal Trivulzio’s monument and in his preparatory work for this assignment he expanded his notes and drawings of comparative anatomy.

This renewed interest in anatomy led him to attend a lecture in the winter of 1509. The lecturer was Marcantonio della Torre, a young man in his late twenties and one of the best-known anatomists of the times. He had been a professor at the University of Padua, but this city had fallen into the hands of the Venetians. Marcantonio was forced to flee Padua and had settled at Pavia. The two men, when they met, recognized in each other a devotion to science and they began a professional collaboration that grew into a friendship. Leonardo now developed his anatomy studies to the point where he is today recognized as the foremost medical anatomist of the Renaissance.

Returning to his dissections, Leonardo now proceeded to explore the heart and system of veins in the human body. His drawings of the heart are nearly perfect. Indeed, he was probably the first to discover the endocardium membrane that sheathes the valves and sinews of the heart. Also, he pictured and described the moderator band, “the first cause of the motion of the heart.” His work on this organ led him to the doorstep of discovering the circulation of the blood—later to be carried out by William Harvey in the seventeenth century.

Further, Leonardo was the first to accurately draw a representation of the _foetus_, or unborn child, in the womb of its mother, writing in his notes that, “we conclude therefore, that a single soul governs the bodies and nourishes the two.” In addition, he drew a remarkable picture of the female figure and for the first time accurately placed her organic structure. In his notes, he also pointed the way to the laws governing metabolism when he wrote, “The body of anything whatsoever that receives nourishment continually dies and is continually renewed....” By pouring wax into a hole in the skull he made the first casts of the ventricles of the brain. Several hundred years were to pass before this method was rediscovered.

As Leonardo’s work progressed, his admiration for the complexity of the human body grew. Many times in the middle of explaining a section of anatomy he inserted a sentence or two of wonder or praise at the magnificent creation that is the human being. Indeed, these drawings and notes represent the sum of many, many dissections; moreover, Leonardo had to work under conditions that placed many obstacles in his path—the crude lights and instruments, the difficulties of obtaining corpses and, above all, the opposition of the superstitious and ignorant.

The following year Leonardo entered in his notes, “This winter of the year 1510 I look to finish all this anatomy.” And yet, however sincerely he might express such a wish, Leonardo was a person who was literally never “finished.” The scientific and artistic tasks he had chosen for himself were clearly beyond the limits of any one man. Besides, the pressures of the outside world were once more threatening the peace and quiet of his home and work.

Pope Julius II became increasingly fearful of the French victories over the Venetians. Secretly, he concluded a peace with Venice and, allying himself with his former enemy, he now turned against the French. When the conflict continued, Charles d’Amboise, the patron of Leonardo, was killed at the battle of Correggio. He was replaced by a new French Viceroy, Gaston de Foix. Although the Pope now hired Swiss mercenaries, this invasion from the North was defeated by the young Gaston. Not to be outdone, the Pope then brought in Spanish troops.

In the ensuing bloody battle at Ravenna, the French completely defeated the armies of the Pope and Spain, despite their use of battle-cars armed with razor-sharp sickles on their wheels—strangely like the early inventions that Leonardo designed for Lorenzo de’ Medici! Although the French were victorious, they lost their brilliant young leader, Gaston de Foix, and with him they lost their heart. As a result, they were soon disorganized. The Pope’s armies renewed their attacks, and the French began a long retreat.

Once again the plague infested Milan and Leonardo’s friend, Marcantonio della Torre, died of it. After some futile attempts at recovery, the French fled across the Alps and with them went Marshal Trivulzio. Milan was left temporarily under the martial rule of the Swiss, and Leonardo with only his few apprentices was left again without a patron.

Tired and prematurely old at sixty-one, Leonardo resignedly gathered his possessions together once more and with Francesco de’ Melzi and four of his loyal pupils, he turned his back on Milan for the last time. The date was September 29, 1513. Their destination was Rome.

12
_Rome_

“Name?”

“Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Where from and where are you staying?”

“We are coming from Milan by way of Florence. I have quarters being prepared for me at the Belvedere in the Vatican—by order of the Pope. Now, young man, let us pass.”

The guard at the Porta del Popolo changed his manner. He dropped his halberd and motioned to the other guards to let the riders through. He touched his helmet roughly and with a grin he said,

“I’m sorry, Sire—but you know how it is. All these people—there’s bound to be them that we don’t want here. Go ahead, your Excellency. Make way there!”

With these words he laid his spear against a jostling group of broad-hatted pilgrims blocking the entrance to the city of Rome.

Leonardo heeled his horse and with Francesco de’ Melzi at his side, followed by his servant and students, pushed past the crowd at the gate. To the left rose the Pincio hill with its stately pines where, in the days of Imperial Rome, Lucullus had walked in his gardens. But Leonardo had no time to look about. It was a damp December day, and rain threatened from the gray skies. He was tired, and as Francesco glanced at him he could see Leonardo pull his cape around him with a little shiver as the chill wind stirred the long, graying hair on his shoulders. They made their way through the crowded, noisy city. They crossed the Tiber and rode past Castel’ Sant’ Angelo, the papal fortress built on the tomb of Emperor Hadrian. After another inspection by the Swiss guards in beribboned uniforms of white, green and gold under their shining breastplates, they entered the walls of the Vatican. That evening after he had settled himself in the Belvedere apartments and dinner had been eaten, Leonardo, gazing into the embers of the fire, looked back over his new stroke of fortune.

The Medicis had returned to power. Pope Julius II had died, and Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo, had become Pope Leo X at the age of thirty-seven. With his election to the head of the Christian world, the Republic of Florence became a city of the Medicis once more and Leonardo had received an appointment in Rome. Giuliano de’ Medici, Pope Leo’s favorite younger brother, in his new rise to power and wealth, became Leonardo’s patron. The two must have met sometime during the Medici’s exile. Leonardo was given the apartments in the Vatican and a salary of thirty-three ducats (approximately eighty-five dollars) a month and a workshop was fitted for him and his pupils. He was also assigned an exclusive German assistant named Georg.

The Pope’s court in the Vatican was like the Medici court in the Florence of Leonardo’s youth—multiplied by hundreds. Leo X saw himself as the center of the artistic world, and being a man of luxurious tastes with the wealth of the church behind him, the Vatican was soon filled with a mixture of the wise and foolish. Pompous classic-quoters, third-rate poets and clowns mixed with the world’s scholars and statesmen. The two greatest artists were Bramante, the architect and friend of Leonardo’s first years in Milan, and Bramante’s pupil Raphael, the painter.

Bramante was busy building the new church of St. Peter’s and, as the architect of this favorite project of the Popes, he was sole master of the Roman art world. Raphael, as his protege, was the recipient of the better painting commissions in Rome. The elderly Bramante and the thirty-year-old assistant were a famous pair in the Rome of 1513. Equally as famous, however, was Michelangelo; he was still living in Rome, but was without patronage after Julius II’s death. Leonardo’s old rival had scored his triumph with his extraordinary paintings in the Sistine Chapel.

Although the young Raphael, who owed so much to the example of Leonardo, now rode through the streets as a wealthy nobleman, Leonardo himself received no great commissions. While Pope Leo was indulgent of his brother’s whims he himself had no use for this tall, serious old man who roamed the shaded walks of the Vatican poking at the strange plants in the botanical garden or making drawings of the foreign animals in the private zoo. In reality, Leonardo’s patron, Giuliano de’ Medici was a weak man. He played at being a patron but, like his brother the Pope, he lacked the force and decision of his famous father Lorenzo. Nevertheless, he did give Leonardo one small commission for a picture. Immediately Leonardo, excited by the exotic plants in the Vatican gardens, commenced to experiment with them to find a resin to make a varnish with which to cover the future painting. Pope Leo made fun of him exclaiming, to the delight of his court, “This man will never get anything done, he thinks of the end before the beginning.”

This ridicule by the Pope made Leonardo a joke to many in the circles of the Vatican who were a little afraid of this strange man with the searching eyes. Leonardo also suffered the humiliations of a man who did not conform to the fashions of his day. His knowledge of Latin, for example, was weak and although he could read it with the help of a dictionary he could not speak it. And, among the people who surrounded the Pope, Latin was the only language allowed. Prizes of great sums of money and important positions were often granted on the strength of an improvised speech in Latin (with many quotations from the classical authors) or a flattering Latin verse. Faced with such setbacks and ridicule, Leonardo—not surprisingly—began to withdraw into himself.

And yet, Leonardo refused to remain idle—he had to work. The need for mirrors in the vast halls and rooms of the papal palace was great. Leonardo turned his mechanical skill to redesigning and improving methods of making them, and even inventing his own machines for the grinding of the glass. Also, for Giuliano, who dabbled in alchemy and magic, he made distorting mirrors and burning lenses. In addition, Leonardo invented a machine which could be run hydraulically for producing long strips of copper of equal width for use in soldering the mirrors.

But, with the making of these mirrors, Leonardo began to run into trouble with his German assistant, Georg. The boy was a loafer; he spoke little Italian and took every opportunity to spend his days with his countrymen in the Swiss guard. Leonardo tried to alter the situation by suggesting that the boy have his meals with him at his worktable, thus giving Georg a better chance to learn the language. This however did not appeal to him. Then, because Leonardo’s inventions were so extraordinary, he began to give away the secrets of their mechanisms to Johannes the mirror-maker, another German, who had been replaced by Leonardo in the favors of Giuliano. This naturally made Johannes jealous of Leonardo. Georg gossiped, too, and told stories about the old, eccentric man who lived like a miser in the midst of all the luxury and who drew crazy circles on pages of paper.

These “crazy circles” were geometric exercises that had fascinated Leonardo from the time he had wandered across Italy with Fra Luca Pacioli. Pacioli’s book _De Divina Proportione_, containing sixty illustrations from designs of Leonardo, had been published in Venice in 1509. Leonardo intended to entitle these geometric exercises _De Ludo Geometrico_. In geometry a lune is a crescent-shaped figure bounded by two intersecting arcs of circles on a plane or a sphere. Leonardo drew pages of these lunes and then proceeded to transform their curvilinear figures into squares of equal area. He also reviewed Archimedes’ method of squaring a circle and developed it into a variety of ways for cubing spheres and cylinders.

He returned as well to formulating theories of friction. He wrote in his notes, “the tallest wheel is the easiest to pull”—for example, a big wheel turning at the same speed as a smaller one has less friction to overcome because it makes less revolutions. His experiments in friction predated men like Amontons and Coulomb by two and three centuries. He established a formula for the building arch which he described as “a strength caused by two weaknesses”—if one half of an arch is removed, the other half collapses. They support and give strength to each other. In addition, Leonardo determined, before Galileo, the center of gravity of any pyramid and of a tetrahedral, or four-sided body.

As the days went by and he waited for commissions to come, Leonardo took to wandering about the streets of Rome. He stood in the half-buried Forum of the Caesars surrounded by grazing sheep and grunting pigs. Wooden shacks where crude cartwheels were made and where the marble from the ancient temples was cut and sold, were built against the sides of crumbling ruins. The old triumphal arches, now overgrown with creepers, were boarded into towers and cattle were penned between the shafts of columns that once supported the grandeur of temple roofs. Here and there a classical scholar would be sketching or writing from the worn, Latin inscriptions on a marble slab tilted crazily from the ground where it had fallen hundreds of years ago. Goats wandered on the Palatine hill, once the home of Emperors, and the great baths of the Emperor Diocletian were now a deer park and a hunting ground for royalty.

During the course of these wanderings, Leonardo became interested in the primitive methods of carpentry. Such things as screws, for example, were rare. Those that were used were either made of wood or, if of metal, by goldsmiths laboriously making each one by hand, soldering wire around a pin and another wire into the hole to hold the screw. Sometimes they were made by filing pieces of metal individually. All these methods were time-consuming and costly.

Leonardo had thought of this problem before, and now he concentrated on perfecting his ideas about it. Previously, he had thought of casting the metal in wooden molds and then turning the metal on thread-cutters. The designs he finally drew in careful detail, however, are essentially the methods used today. The new machines did with a few turns of a handle and adjustments of a few cogged wheels what it took one man many hours to perform. He also drew designs for a mechanical plane and a machine for drawing wire that worked by water power.

Leonardo now lived and worked in the Belvedere of the Vatican—more a man on exhibition than an active participant in the great artistic activities taking place around him. True, he received his thirty-three ducats a month, but Michelangelo had been paid three thousand for his work in the Sistine Chapel, while Raphael had earned twelve thousand for each room he painted in the Vatican.

Thus Leonardo drifted farther and farther away from his painting. This, in itself, caused people to talk in the papal city. For he had earned fame as a painter, but his passion for science was regarded as strange and whimsical. Occasionally, he did receive a small commission from the workshop of Raphael, yet these were like the crumbs from a rich man’s table.

Even the toys Leonardo made at this period for the amusement of his patrons were looked upon as somewhat weird. For example, he would take small pieces of wax and mold them into strange little animals and then inflate them so that they floated in the air in front of a startled guest. Once he caught a curious lizard in the garden and spent hours putting scales all over the tiny body, attached to it a little beard and horns, then let it out from a box at a banquet. The guests jumped back with fear and the women became hysterical.

One of Leonardo’s jokes that has been passed down in accounts of his life at this period must have created quite a sensation. He showed the company the cleaned entrails of a sheep resting on the palm of his hand. After telling them to wait and watch he took the entrails in another room and with a bellows inflated them with warm air. As the entrails filled with air they expanded and extended. They crept into the room where the company waited. Slowly they grew and grew until they began to fill the room. The guests overturned their chairs in their hurry to get out of the way of this shapeless, translucent creature. Then Leonardo appeared, the air-filled entrails giving way before him, and said:

“Sires, this is but an example and symbol of virtue. As you can see, the smallest virtue is capable of the greatest growth.”

The guests laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laugh. Thus another story was added to the legend of Leonardo as an odd old man.

Leonardo, whose work—particularly his anatomical studies—had constantly been interrupted by the fortunes of war, had found another hospital in Rome where he could continue these studies. This time it was his intention to write a treatise on speech. He dissected and drew the anatomy of the larynx (the voice box), the vocal cords and the trachea (the air passage to the lungs), and all the muscles that control the movements of the tongue and the lips. If you pronounce each letter of the alphabet you will feel these muscles of the lips, especially with the letters “o,” “p,” and “f.” Carefully he noted how the air vibrations from the trachea form themselves into vowels and consonants, and he drew the membrane which, when air is pressed against it, makes the sound “aah.”

At this same time he was also busy finishing a treatise on painting which he had begun when he was working on the “Last Supper” for Ludovico Sforza. But it was for his knowledge of military engineering that he was sent to the city of Parma by the Pope on September 25, 1514. Here he stayed at the Bell Inn while examining the fortifications and other defenses of the city.

Leonardo’s patron, Giuliano de’ Medici, had been appointed governor of this particular area and, since Pope Leo X was fearful of two powerful countries, France and Spain, he was preparing the papal territory against possible invasion. Another fear of the Pope—and indeed of everybody in Rome—was malaria, the disease carried by the mosquitoes that bred in the Pontine marshes west and southwest of the city. At that time, however, no one knew the cause was mosquitoes; rather, they thought it was the bad air from the marshes.

As Leonardo had already been effective in draining the pestilential marshes of Piombino for Cesare Borgia and, later, those around Milan for Charles d’Amboise, he was assigned the same task for the Pontine marshes. He surveyed the entire area to the sea and made another extraordinary aerial type map. His recommendations included draining the entire area, enlarging and regulating the Martino river and cutting an extra outlet from the river Livoli to the sea. These plans were adopted some years later and parts of the marshes were drained successfully, yielding new land for the cultivation of crops.

By December of 1514 Leonardo had finished his treatise on speech and, possibly in an effort to attract the attention of the Pope, he submitted it to the Privy-Chamberlain, Battista dell’Aquila. As Pope Leo was surrounded by an army of secretaries and assistants who passed on everything submitted, this manuscript with its beautiful drawings was mislaid and lost and only a few notes and sketches remain.

The continual discouragement of his life in Rome was offset by a visit from his half-brother, Giuliano, around Christmas. Leonardo was held in esteem by his family despite the quarrel over his father’s and his uncle Francesco’s will, and his half-brothers were pleased to tell of their famous relative who lived in the Belvedere as guest of the Medicis. Yet they knew little of Leonardo’s scientific dreams and his lack of recognition in the papal city.

Often, Leonardo’s greatest comfort was to return to his notes. The challenge of geometry and the mysteries of the movement of air and water kept him from brooding about his lonely life. Francesco de’ Melzi, Leonardo’s young friend, had more and more taken over the practical responsibilities of his everyday life. Except for his workshop, where the troublesome Georg worked at the making of mirrors, and an occasional small commission for a painting, Leonardo was free to study.

In addition to his geometrical investigations, Leonardo now experimented with the science of _statics_ (objects that are stationary), and _dynamics_ (objects in motion). One of his most important discoveries in the science of mechanics came about during this period. Concerning the division of weight, he wrote, “There are three conditions of gravity of which the one is its simple natural gravity, the second is its accidental gravity, the third the friction produced by it. But the natural weight is in itself unchangeable, the accidental which is joined to it is of infinite force, and the friction varies according to the places wherein it occurs, namely rough or smooth places.” Thus he realized and formulated what composes the movement of an object. He found that movement is the result of separate forces acting upon the object from different directions, as for example, the initial push, the pull of gravity and the resistance of friction. And, before Galileo, Leonardo further experimented with objects dropped from a height. As the result of repeated experiments, he noted that the fall was being affected by the earth’s rotation. That is, the object dropped always fell in a slight eastward direction rather than vertically downward—a fact later proved conclusively by Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke in the next century.

He also became fascinated with spiral motion, such as is found in a spinning top or in a whirlpool of water. Because of his interest in _hydrodynamics_, or the movement of water, he began to sketch imaginary “Deluge compositions.” These were drawings showing the world—probably inspired by the Bible—in a chaos of wind and floods. They were based on his years of scientific research. Indeed, his drawings of actual whirlpools are still among the greatest of his scientific art. Today, with all the latest technical aids, such as dusting a whirlpool with powdered rosin and then photographing it, an accurate three-dimensional picture is impossible. Yet Leonardo, by sheer observation and analysis coupled with his genius for drawing, could reproduce the complicated shape of whirling water.

In the relatedness of his explorations of water, air and movement, and weight, he worked out the similarity between the laws of equilibrium controlling solids and liquids. The equation between the motive force and resistance that makes for equilibrium or balance in solids can be compared to the equation between the upward pressure of liquids and the downward pressure exerted on them.

Far into the night Leonardo worked on his papers. He tired more easily now, and his eyes had grown weaker. To provide the increase in light that his failing eyesight demanded, he had improved on his original oil lamp by making the wick rise as the oil was burned away, and he had extra lamps fitted to the ceiling.

On January 9, 1515 Leonardo wrote in his notes, “Il Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici set out on the ninth day of January 1515 at daybreak from Rome, to go and marry a wife in Savoy. And on that day came the news of the death of the King of France (Louis XII).” This meant that his new patron had left and his old patron had died. Leonardo’s note was a sad one and perhaps he felt, in the departure of his patron, more alone than ever in the crowded life of the Vatican. Giuliano, on the urging of his brother, was marrying Philiberta of Savoy, in an effort to strengthen the prestige of the Medici. Louis XII, before he died, had formed a league against Spain, and with the marriage of the Pope’s brother to a noble house of France, the league would be strengthened by keeping the Pope on the side of France. Actually Pope Leo was playing both sides, for at the time he was also friendly with Spain.

Shortly after Giuliano’s departure from Rome, Leonardo fell ill, presumably from a mild heart attack complicated by a touch of malarial fever. The doctor had been called. It was a warning, the doctor told Francesco de’ Melzi, and Leonardo must remain quiet for quite awhile.

By the end of the winter Leonardo was back on his feet and apparently feeling completely well again. Giuliano himself had fallen ill about the same time and the news that he had recovered and was finally returning to Rome cheered Leonardo. He sat down and wrote a long letter to his patron expressing his joy. This letter also included a long list of complaints against Georg and Johannes. Georg was now using his room in Leonardo’s apartment to do work for others. He lied to Leonardo and flew into such a rage when he was questioned that no one could go near him. Moreover, Johannes, the mirror-maker, was now moving back into the Vatican and turning out mirrors for everyone, even using Georg’s room as his own workroom. Johannes boasted of his skill and told everybody that Leonardo did not know what he was doing. Thus, it was not surprising that Leonardo, in his long complaint, was taking out the anger and frustration he felt against all the injustices of his life in Rome.

But by summer Leonardo was again employed as a military engineer. Francis I had succeeded to the throne of France. The new French King was anxious to secure his lost title to the Dukedom of Milan and was preparing another invasion of Italy. Pope Leo X, still trying to play both sides at once, was making secret agreements with Francis while at the same time joining the King of Spain, Milan, Genoa, and the Swiss in an alliance against France. Consequently, he sent Leonardo out to inspect the fortifications of Civitavecchia, a city on the Tyrrhenian coast not too far from Rome. When, in August, Francis I crossed into Italy with an army of thirty-five thousand men including Marshal Trivulzio, the Pope ordered his brother, Giuliano, to take command of the papal forces. On the way to assume this command, Giuliano fell ill and collapsed. His sickness this time was soon to be fatal.

Leonardo returned to Rome with his survey of Civitavecchia, where he immediately learned of his patron’s latest illness. Perhaps realizing that Giuliano was fatally ill, Leonardo made a desperate effort to gain the recognition he felt should be his. He entered the competition for a new façade of San Lorenzo in Florence. Among the other competitors was Michelangelo, his younger and yet oldest rival.

In October of 1515, Francis I had recaptured Milan and by Christmas was in Rome. Leonardo may have met the new King of France in Bologna where Pope Leo X had personally traveled in order to settle a peace treaty with France. Certainly it is known that he attended Francis’ court in Rome. Leonardo’s name was well respected in French circles and, as Francis had already admired the pictures by Leonardo, the meeting was a happy occasion for them both. Indeed, the recognition that Leonardo had sought in his native land was never as great as that accorded to him by the French.

As Francis I prepared to leave for France in January he must have offered Leonardo a position at his court. While he still hoped that Giuliano de’ Medici would recover from his illness and return to Rome, Francis’ offer gave him support in the knowledge that he had a powerful, new friend.

March of 1516 brought the first of three events that were to change the course of Leonardo’s last years. Giuliano de’ Medici died, leaving Leonardo not only without a patron, but without a friend in the Vatican. Now sixty-four years old, he was reluctant to leave his comfortable quarters in the Belvedere with its workshop and pleasant gardens. Besides, deep within himself, he felt that Rome could still offer him the fame that had always escaped him.

Spring ripened into summer and the second event occurred. The competition for the new façade of San Lorenzo in Florence was won by Michelangelo. To Leonardo the news was a blow. The success of his old rival weakened his position in the Vatican even further and added to the growing hostility he had felt in the people surrounding the Pope.

The third event was the sum of many small events. Georg and his friend Johannes, in their jealousy, had spread much gossip about Leonardo in court circles. They now took advantage of Giuliano’s death to circulate stories about Leonardo’s dissections of bodies in the hospital. These were added to vicious gossip that Leonardo was pro-French. This news eventually reached Pope Leo X. The Pope himself was perfectly aware of the practice of dissection and, personally, he had turned his eyes the other way. However, as dissection was contrary to Church doctrine, an official complaint to the head of the Church could not be ignored. The Pope used it as an excuse to be rid of this tiresome old man whom he had tolerated only for his brother’s sake. Leonardo was abandoned.

The year 1516 was drawing to a close. Leonardo had decided to seek the patronage offered him by Francis I. So he and Francesco de’ Melzi, his loyal young friend, left Rome for the long journey into France. As he left his native land for the last time, Leonardo looked back over his years—from the silver lute that had sent him to Milan, to the death of Giuliano, to the final rejection of Pope Leo X. Remembering how Lorenzo de’ Medici had sent him to Ludovico so many years before, Leonardo thought to himself with great sadness, “The Medici created and destroyed me.”

13
_The Last Years_

Leonardo looked around from where he was leaning on the parapet of the Chateau d’Amboise to watch a group of young lords and ladies playing croquet on the emerald-green lawn. The click of the mallets and balls was mingled with the shouts and laughter of the young people. It was late afternoon in May and although the sun was warm the breeze from the west was chilly. Leonardo looked down again from the sheer height of the castle wall across the wide sweep of the Loire river and the valley extending as far as the eye could see. Swallows were swooping low over the banks below and the wind carried their shrilling cries up to him. The forested islands and sandbars interrupted the steady flow of the river and Leonardo could see the reflections sway in the current. He had been studying the river but he realized that his aging eyes were not up to the task of concentrating for long. The wind made them water, so he turned away and started back to his home.

There was much that was familiar in the castle at Amboise. The thick, high walls and round towers and especially the graceful, lacy spires of the king’s residence brought back much that he had known in his native land. The gardens had been planted by Italians—there were orange trees and even a mulberry tree from his beloved plains of Lombardy. The king’s residence and chapel had been constructed and the decorations carved in stone by Italian artisans. Leonardo could stop and talk in his native tongue with many of the men employed by the king. Since the time of Charles VIII, the French had brought in the latest Renaissance styles from Italy. Leonardo’s steps took him back from the castle grounds and down a path with a hand-railing. The steep roofs of the town of Amboise with their chimneys could be seen below him. The path led to a small manor house, like a miniature castle with sharp spires and lacy, carved-stone gables that was set in green lawns and gravel paths.

The Manoir de Cloux, as Leonardo’s house was called, had been a hunting lodge for Francis I, but when Leonardo had arrived he gave the house to Leonardo for his home. Francis, in his admiration for this great man, also gave him seven hundred crowns a year, together with a pension of four hundred for Francesco de’ Melzi.

The long journey from Rome had left Leonardo tired and weak and he had fallen ill again shortly after his arrival. This time the attack was more serious and had left him with his right hand permanently crippled. He looked at it now as he opened the door to his room. “Another warning,” he thought, “and there’s still so much to do.”

The young, robust King Francis was everywhere at once. He gloried in knightly tournaments, hunts, and sports of all kinds. Always restless, he might appear at any place unannounced. Frequently there would be a clamor at the gates of Leonardo’s home and the king would ride in with one or two of his nobles. With a great jingling of spurs he would bound up the stairs of the manor house calling for Leonardo. He delighted in long talks with the old man, and would listen respectfully as Leonardo, his deep-set eyes brooding over his notes, would demonstrate some scientific point on a blank sheet of paper.

At this time, Leonardo was engaged on three projects which demanded his immediate attention. One was the entertainment for a banquet that Francis was giving for his sister, Marguerite de Valois, and her husband. Another was a new design for the king’s castle at Amboise, and the third was a design for making a navigable waterway from Amboise to Romorantin. Although these three projects were the main ones that occupied Leonardo’s time, there was always the supervising of his pupils’ painting on the walls in the little chapel of the manor house, his own work on a painting of St. John the Baptist, and the continual ordering and revising of his notes.

The banquet took place in October of 1517, and the mechanical lion Leonardo had made was an immediate success. It “walked” by means of a spring motor, into the hall, opening and closing its fierce mouth while swaying its head from side to side. With a wand that he had been given, Francis I stepped down from his seat and tapped the lion three times. The toy fell apart and from it a cascade of white lilies poured out at the king’s feet.

Also at this time there was a distinguished guest at the castle of Amboise. He was a fellow-countryman of Leonardo and his name was Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona. With him was his secretary Antonio de’ Beatis. As Leonardo was now a famous member of King Francis’ court, the cardinal paid him a visit accompanied by Antonio. The extraordinary anatomy drawings and all his notes were shown to the cardinal; he and his secretary were deeply impressed. They were also surprised to learn that Leonardo had never been accorded the same recognition by his own countrymen. Antonio de’ Beatis wrote home that “This gentleman has written a treatise on anatomy, showing by illustrations the members, muscles, nerves, veins, joints, intestines and whatever else is to discuss in the bodies of men and women, in a way that has never yet been done by anyone else. All this we have seen with our own eyes; and he said that he had dissected more than thirty bodies, both of men and women of all ages. He has also written of the nature of water, and of divers machines, and of other matters which he has set down in an endless number of volumes, all in the vulgar tongue [meaning Italian not Latin], which, if they be published, will be profitable and delightful.”

By now Leonardo had accumulated thousands of pages of notes, and they lay stacked in all manner of chests and boxes. Often now, as Leonardo surveyed the work of his lifetime, he realized that he would never see the day of their publication. Time was slipping through his fingers. Already summer had come and gone and now the sharp winds of fall were lifting the leaves from the ground in dancing whirls. Fortunately these were years of peace and for the first time in a long while the people were free of wars. The scheme to canalize the waterway to Romorantin had grown to a vast idea for making a thoroughfare of water from the Loire river all the way down France to Lyons and then into Italy! Leonardo, old and ailing as he was, had surveyed parts of the rivers Loire and Cher, braving the rough roads and crude accommodations.

In addition, Leonardo had designed a castle for Francis I’s widowed mother in Romorantin. This castle was never built, but many of the ideas that Leonardo had incorporated in its design were used in the gigantic and magnificent castle of Chambord. Also, at Francis’ request, he had reviewed the work being done at the castle in Blois and there is reason to think that the beautiful outside stairwell that spirals from left to right might have been designed by Leonardo.