Chapter XLIII: Leonardo Da Vinci

(Pronounced Lay-o-nar'do dah Veen'chee)
_Florentine School_
1451-1519
_Pupil of Verrocchio_

Leonardo da Vinci was the natural son of a notary, Ser Pier, and he was born at the Castello of Vinci, near Empoli. From the very hour that he was apprenticed to his master, Verrocchio, he proved that he was the superior of his master in art. Da Vinci was one of the most remarkable men who ever lived, because he not only did an extraordinary number of things, but he did all of them well.

He was an engineer, made bridges, fortifications, and plans which to this day are brilliant achievements.

He was a sculptor, and as such did beautiful work.

He was a naturalist, and as such was of use to the world.

He was an author and left behind him books written backward, of which he said that only he who was willing to devote enough study to them to read them in that form, was able to profit by what he had written.

Finally, and most wonderfully, he was a painter.

He had absolute faith in himself. Before he constructed his bridge he said that he could build the best one in the world, and a king took him at his word and was not disappointed by the result.

He stated that he could paint the finest picture in the world--but let us read what he himself said of it, in so sure and superbly confident a way that it robbed his statement of anything like foolish vanity. Such as he could afford to speak frankly of his greatness, without appearing absurd. He wrote:

"In time of peace, I believe I can equal anyone in architecture, in constructing public and private buildings, and in conducting water from one place to another. I can execute sculpture, whether in marble, bronze, or terra cotta, and in painting I can do as much as any other man, be he who he may. Further, I could engage to execute the bronze horse in eternal memory of your father and the illustrious house of Sforza." He was writing to Ludovico Sforza whose house then ruled at Milan. "If any of the above-mentioned things should appear to you impossible or impracticable, I am ready to make trial of them in your park, or in any other place that may please your excellency, to whom I commend myself in proud humility."

Leonardo's experiments with oils and the mixing of his pigments has nearly lost to us his most remarkable pictures. His first fourteen years of work as an artist were spent in Milan, where he was employed to paint by the Duke of Milan, and never again was his life so peaceful; it was ever afterward full of change. He went from Milan to Venice, to Rome, to Florence, and back to Milan where his greatest work was done.

While Leonardo was a baby he lived in the Castle of Vinci. He was beautiful as a child and very handsome as a man. When a child he wore long curls reaching below his waist. He was richly clothed, and greatly beloved. His body seemed no less wonderful than his mind. He wished to learn everything, and his memory was so wonderful that he remembered all that he undertook to learn. His muscles were so powerful that he could bend iron, and all animals seemed to love him. It is said he could tame the wildest horses. Indeed his life and accomplishments read as if he were one enchanted. One writer tells us that "he never could bear to see any creature cruelly treated, and sometimes he would buy little caged birds that he might just have the pleasure of opening the doors of their cages, and setting them at liberty."

The story told of his first known work is that his master, being hurried in finishing a picture, permitted Leonardo to paint in an angel's head, and that it was so much better than the rest of the picture, that Verrocchio burned his brushes and broke his palette, determined never to paint again, but probably this is a good deal of a fairy tale and one that is not needed to impress us with the artist's greatness, since there is so much to prove it without adding fable to fact.

Leonardo was also a very far seeing inventor and most ingenious. He made mechanical toys that "worked" when they were wound up. He even devised a miniature flying machine; however, history does not tell us whether it flew or not. He thought out the uses of steam as a motive power long before Fulton's time.

Leonardo haunted the public streets, sketchbook in hand, and when attracted by a face, would follow till he was able to transfer it to paper. Ida Prentice Whitcomb, who has compiled many anecdotes of da Vinci, says that it was also his habit to invite peasants to his house, and there amuse them with funny stories till he caught some fleeting expression of mirth which he was pleased to reproduce.

As a courtier Leonardo was elegant and full of amusing devices. He sang, accompanying himself on a silver lute, which he had had fashioned in imitation of a horse's skull. After he attached himself to the court of the Duke of Milan, his gift of invention was constantly called into use, and one of the surprises he had in store for the Duke's guests was a great mechanical lion, which being wound up, would walk into the presence of the court, open its mouth and disclose a bunch of flowers inside.

Leonardo worked very slowly upon his paintings, because he was never satisfied with a work, and would retouch it day after day. Then, too, he was a man of moods, like most geniuses, and could not work with regularity. The picture of the "Last Supper" was painted in Milan, by order of his patron, the Duke, and there are many picturesque stories written of its production. It was painted upon the refectory wall of a Dominican convent, the Santa Maria delle Grazie; and at first the work went off well, and the artist would remain upon his scaffolding from morning till night, absorbed in his painting. It is said that at such times he neither ate nor drank, forgetting all but his great work. He kept postponing the painting of two heads--Christ and Judas.

He had worked painstakingly and with enthusiasm till that point, but deferred what he was hardly willing to trust himself to perform. He had certain conceptions of these features which he almost feared to execute, so tremendous was his purpose. He let that part of the work go, month after month, and having already spent two years upon the picture, the monks began to urge him to a finish. He was not the man to endure much pressure, and the more they urged the more resentful he became. Finally, he began to feel a bitter dislike for the prior, the man who annoyed him most. One day, when the prior was nagging him about the picture, wanting to know why he didn't get to work upon it again, and when would it be finished, Leonardo said suavely: "If you will sit for the head of Judas, I'll be able to finish the picture at once." The prior was enraged, as Leonardo meant he should be; but Leonardo is said actually to have painted him in as Judas. Afterward he painted in the face of Christ with haste and little care, simply because he despaired of ever doing the wonderful face that his art soul demanded Christ should wear.

The one bitter moment in Leonardo's life, in all probability, was when he came in dire competition with Michael Angelo. When he removed to Florence he was required to submit sketches for the Town Hall--the Palazzo Vecchio--and Michael Angelo was his rival. The choice fell to Angelo, and after a life of supremacy Leonardo could not endure the humiliation with grace. Added to disappointment, someone declared that Leonardo's powers were waning because he was growing old. This was more than he could bear, and he left Italy for France, where the king had invited him to come and spend the remainder of his life. Francis I. had wished to have the picture in the Milan monastery taken to France, but that was not to be done.

Doubtless the king expected Leonardo to do some equally great work after he became the nation's guest.

Before leaving Italy, Leonardo had painted his one other "greatest" picture--"La Gioconda" (Mona Lisa)-and he took that wonderful work with him to France, where the King purchased it for $9,000, and to this day it hangs in the Louvre.

But Leonardo was to do no great work in France, for in truth he was growing old. His health had failed, and although he was still a dandy and court favourite, setting the fashion in clothing and in the cut of hair and beard, he was no longer the brilliant, active Leonardo.

Bernard Berensen, has written of him: "Painting ... was to Leonardo so little of a preoccupation that we must regard it as merely a mode of expression used at moments by a man of universal genius." By which Berensen means us to understand that Leonardo was so brilliant a student and inventor, so versatile, that art was a mere pastime. "No, let us not join in the reproaches made to Leonardo for having painted so little; because he had so much more to do than to paint, he has left all of us heirs to one or two of the supremest works of art ever created."

Another author writes that "in Leonardo da Vinci every talent was combined in one man."

Leonardo was the third person of the wonderful trinity of Florentine painters, Raphael and Michael Angelo being the other two.

He knew so much that he never doubted his own powers, but when he died, after three years in France, he left little behind him, and that little he had ever declared to be unfinished--the "Mona Lisa" and the "Last Supper." He died in the Château de Cloux, at Amboise, and it is said that "sore wept the king when he heard that Leonardo was dead."

In Milan, near the Cathedral, there stands a monument to his memory, and about it are placed the statues of his pupils. To this day he is wonderful among the great men of the world.

PLATE--THE LAST SUPPER

This, as we have said, is in the former convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan. It was the first painted story of this legendary event in which natural and spontaneous action on the part of all the company was presented.

To-day the picture is nearly ruined by smoke, time, and alterations in the place, for a great door lintel has been cut into the picture. Leonardo used the words of the Christ: "Verily, I say unto you that one of you shall betray me," as the starting point for this painting. It is after the utterance of these words that we see each of the disciples questioning horrified, frightened, anxious, listening, angered--all these emotions being expressed by the face or gestures of the hands or pose of the figures. It is a most wonderful picture and it seems as if the limit of genius was to be found in it.

The company is gathered in a half-dark hall, the heads outlined against the evening light that comes through the windows at the back. We look into a room and seem to behold the greatest tragedy of legendary history: treachery and sorrow and consternation brought to Jesus of Nazareth and his comrades.

This great picture was painted in oil instead of in "distemper," the proper kind of mixture for fresco, and therefore it was bound to be lost in the course of time. Besides, it has known more than ordinary disaster. The troops of Napoleon used this room, the convent refectory, for a stable, and that did not do the painting any good. The reason we have so complete a knowledge of it, however, is that Leonardo's pupils made an endless number of copies of it, and thus it has found its way into thousands of homes. The following is the order in which Leonardo placed the disciples at the table: Jesus of Nazareth in the centre, Bartholomew the last on the left, after him is James, Andrew, Peter, Judas--who holds the money bag--and John. On the right, next to Jesus, comes Thomas, the doubting one; James the Greater, Philip, Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon. Jesus has just declared that one of them shall betray him, and each in his own way seems to be asking "Lord, is it I?" In the South Kensington Museum in London will be found carefully preserved a description, written out fairly in Leonardo's own hand, to guide him in painting the Last Supper. It is most interesting and we shall quote it: "One, in the act of drinking puts down his glass and turns his head to the speaker. Another twisting his fingers together, turns to his companion, knitting his eyebrows. Another, opening his hands and turning the palm toward the spectator, shrugs his shoulders, his mouth expressing the liveliest surprise. Another whispers in the ear of a companion, who turns to listen, holding in one hand a knife, and in the other a loaf, which he has cut in two. Another, turning around with a knife in his hand, upsets a glass upon the table and looks; another gasps in amazement; another leans forward to look at the speaker, shading his eyes with his hand; another, drawing back behind the one who leans forward, looks into the space between the wall and the stooping disciple."

Other paintings of Leonardo's are: "Mona Lisa," "Head of Medusa," "Adoration of the Magi," and the "Madonna della Caraffa."