Records of da Vinci up to 1493
“The Records up to 1493” from Leonardo da Vinci by Edward McCurdy, 1904.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“The Records up to 1493” from Leonardo da Vinci by Edward McCurdy, 1904.
In the taxation return made by Antonio da Vinci for the year 1457 his household is stated to consist of his wife, Monna Lucia, aged sixty-four; his son, Ser Piero, aged thirty; another son, Francesco, aged twenty-two; Albiera, the wife of Ser Piero, aged twenty-one; and Lionardo, illegitimate son of the said Ser Piero, aged five, whose mother was Chateria (Caterina), who at the time of the taxation return was the wife of Chartabriga di Piero del Vaccha, of Vinci.
This is the source of the accepted belief that Leonardo was born in 1452. It is confirmed by a taxation return for 1469 in which his age is given as seventeen. The "Anonimo Fiorentino" says his mother was of gentle blood. There are several references in Leonardo's MSS. to Caterina, his housekeeper, and a detailed statement of the costs of her interment, but there is nothing to suggest that this Caterina was his mother.
His father, Ser Piero da Vinci, notary to the Signoria of Florence in 1469 and 1483, represented the fifth consecutive generation of his ancestors who had followed the vocation of notary at Florence Vinci or Anchiano.
In the year of Leonardo's birth he married Albiera di Giovanni Amadori, one of a family of the Florentine nobility. The "Anonimo’s '' statement as to the status of Leonardo's mother may be a confusion of this fact
Ser Piero was married four times, and had eleven children by his third and fourth wives, the eldest being born in 1476.
Paolo Giovio says, "Leonardus e Vincio ignobili Etruriae vico"
The village of Vinci lies on the western slope of Monte Albano, about six mIles from Empoli. Tradition fixes Leonardo's birth at Anchiano, in a low, red-tiled, two-storied house with yellow plastered rubble walls, which stands about a mile and a half above Vinci on a spur of the hills. In a vineyard about twenty yards away from this house are the foundations of the walls of a smaller house, pointed out to me as that in which, according to the Sindaco of Vinci, the birth actually took place.
The position of Vinci, which commands the valley of the Arno, was of strategic importance in the wars between Florence and the neighbouring republics, The castle was unsuccessfully besieged by Sir John Hawkwood in 1361, but after this it appears no more in history. At Vinci, at his grandfather's house, Leonardo passed the years of his childhood and youth. Ser Antonio died before 1469, when the family occupied another house at Vinci and part of a house at Florence on the site of what is now the Palazzo Gondi in the Piazza di S. Firenze.
At about this date—M. Ravaisson-Mollien says conjecturally in 1470—Leonardo entered the bottega of Andrea Verrocchio, where Lorenzo di Credi became his fellow-pupil, and where he became acquainted with Botticelli and Perugino. In the beginning of July, 1472, his name appears in the Red Book of the Debtors and Creditors of the Company of Painters of Florence as being then admitted to membership.
A pen drawing in the Uffizi of a valley between two ranges of hills, that on the left crowned by a fortified town, is inscribed "the day of S. Mary of the Snow, the 5th day of August, 1473." It is the earliest of Leonardo's dated work. His method of writing is already from right to left. The festival of "S. Mary of the Snow" was a customary one in Italy, where are many churches with this dedication. We may instance that in Siena, built by Francesco di Giorgio. Professor Uzielli says the scene recalls the valley of the Arno under Montelupo, with Monte Albano and the Pisan hills. The resemblance though not exact is considerable; the landscape is, at any rate, Tuscan in character.
He is mentioned in two documents dated 1476, and was then still living with Verrocchio.
To the following year M. Ravaisson-Mollien would assign the date of his leaving Verrocchio's bottega and the commencement of his period of service under Lorenzo de' Medici, of which the "Anonimo Fiorentino " speaks.
On the 1st of January, 1478,' he received a commission for an altarpiece for the chapel of S. Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio. On the 16th of March he was paid twenty-five florins on account of this work. Only eight days before giving the commission to Leonardo, the Signoria had bestowed it upon Piero del Pollaiuolo. The suddenness of the change in their decision suggests that the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici had been exerted on behalf of his protege. But the work was never executed, and the Signoria, after waiting five years, gave the commission to Domenico Ghirlandaio, and finally to Filippino Lippi, who completed it in 1485.
In March, 1480, Leonardo was commissioned by the monks of S. Donato at Scopeto, outside the Porta Romana, to paint the altarpiece for the high altar. The time allowed for the work was twenty-four or at most thirty months. In case he failed to complete it within this time the monks reserved power to terminate the contract without compensation. His remuneration was fixed as a third of a small property in the Val d'Elsa, or—at the discretion of the monks—300 florins. He undertook to provide his own colours and gold and all other materials. The records of the monastery mention the advance of various sums on account for colours, and in July, 1481, the sending to him at Florence a load of wood and 1 lira 6 soldi for painting the clock. Whatever progress the work may have made, it was never completed, and in 1496 the monks gave the commission to Filippino Lippi. He painted for them the Adoration of the Magi now in the Uffizi.
There is no direct evidence as to the subject of Leonardo's composition for either of these commissions. The fact of Leonardo's unfinished picture of the Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi being almost exactly similar in size to Filippino's picture, and that size the very unusual one of an almost exact square, suggests that they were intended for the same altarpiece, and that Filippino, in taking up Leonardo's commission, also took his subject.
It is also possible to trace a direct connection between the two pictures. In the figure kneeling before the Virgin, immediately to the right, Filippino has very closely reproduced in reverse profile the features and pose of head of the youngest of the Magi in Leonardo's picture.
M. Müntz holds that Leonardo's picture for the monks of S. Donato was more advanced than the Uffizi cartoon, which is only a sketch in bistre, and the records of the monastery show that ultramarine was provided for Leonardo's work. But the entry of the ultramarine is a month previous to the payment to Leonardo for painting the clock, and is probably connected with it.
The subject of an altarpiece for a chapel of S. Bernard would presumably refer to the saint, as did the former altarpiece by Bernardo Daddi and that executed in 1485 by Filippino Lippi, which was placed in the Sala del Consiglio instead of the chapel. It is now in the Uffizi. It represents the Madonna enthroned with S. Victor, S. John the Baptist, S. Bernard and S. Zenobius.
The "Anonimo Fiorentino” refers to it in the life of Filippino: "He painted in the lesser council chamber of the Palace of the Signoria the altarpiece containing a Madonna with other figures which Leonardo had commenced to paint "; and in the life of Leonardo he says it was finished by Filippino from his cartoon. The composition of the picture gives no support to these statements. Can their origin have been a similarity in subject?
A pen drawing in the Uffizi (No. 446) of an old man's head in right profile, and a head of a young man in left profile with shaven crown looking up, has below it a note partly torn, "... bre 1478 ichomiciai le. 2. Vgine Marie." The preceding letter partly visible was I believe 0. The month, from its termination, must be one of the last four, say, "October 1478 I commenced the two of the Virgin Mary."
The younger of the two heads is connected with S. Leonard in the Berlin Ascension of Christy which is the work of a pupil who took the head from the drawing.
The other head presents strong analogies to one of an old man in a sheet of studies for the Adoration in the British Museum.
Both heads might in fact be studies for the Adoration, the youthful head having a strong resemblance to the figure seen in profile with raised right hand on the right of the Madonna in the Uffizi cartoon.
But 1478 is the year of the commission for the chapel of S. Bernard for which the picture which he began contained, according to the "Anonimo," "a Madonna with other figures." The most natural interpretation of this note is that it refers to studies for this composition, marking the date at which Leonardo commenced two alternative cartoons.
The younger of the two heads may be a study for the same composition. The devout upturned gaze suggests S. Bernard beholding the Madonna in vision. The characteristics of the face are not dissimilar to the far less dramatic presentation of the saint in Filippino’s picture in the Uffizi.
A drawing in the collection of M. Bonnat can also with certainty be ascribed to this period. It represents the body of a young man hanging suspended from a rope, with long loose garments, with his hands bound behind his back. The face is sketched again at the bottom of the sheet. Above the drawing is the note: "Small tan-coloured cap, black satin doublet, lined black jerkin, blue cloak lined with fur of foxes' breasts, and the collar of the cloak covered with velvet speckled black and red; Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli; black hose."
This ringleader in the conspiracy of the Pazzi, who was the first to stab Giuliano de' Medici, escaped from the fury of the populace and fled to Constantinople, but was given up by the Sultan to Lorenzo's emissaries, taken back to Florence and hanged from a window of the Bargello on the 29th of December, 1479. The drawing proves that Leonardo was then in Florence. The details of the description suggest that the sketch was intended to serve as material for a picture.
Vasari mentions a decree of the Signoria that the traitors should be painted in fresco on the facade of the Bargello, but attributes the execution of the work to Andrea del Castagno, who at the time of the conspiracy had already been dead twenty years. The real authorship is established by an entry in the minutes of the Council of Eight, dated 21st July, 1478, sanctioning the payment of forty florins to Botticelli for his labour in painting the traitors.
The "Anonimo Fiorentino" says that Bernardo di Bandini was represented in Botticelli's fresco hanging by the neck with a condemnatory epitaph below; but as he was then still a fugitive, this can only have been an anticipation of the event of which Leonardo's drawing is a record. Leonardo, from his connection with Lorenzo, might very conceivably have been associated with Botticelli in the commission or selected to add to his work.
That he no longer lived as a member of his father's household is evidenced by the fact that in Ser Piero's taxation return for 1480 his name does not occur. The documents already cited establish his presence in Florence in 1472, 1476, 1478, 1480, and as late as August, 1481.
The next time-references of equal definiteness relate to the year 1487. He was then already established in Milan. Bernardo Bellincioni alludes to him in a poem, "La Visione,” among the illustrious men whom Ludovic has gathered at his Court,
Da Fiorenza un Apelle ha qui condotto,
The reference is explained in a note at the side as "Magister Lionardo da ufnci." The poem must have been written in 1487 on account of the description in it of Gian Galeazzo, who was born in 1468, as being then about nineteen years old ("egli e gik d' anni presso a quattro lustri").
Sabba da Castiglione (1485?-1554), in his "Ricordi." says that Leonardo was at work on the Sforza statue for sixteen years continuously. This argues his presence in Milan in 1483, as he had quitted the city by the close of the year 1499.
The date tallies with the statement of the “Anonlmo Fiorentino” that Leonardo, when aged thirty, was sent by Lorenzo de' Medici to the Duke of Milan with a lute, from which it would follow that he went to Milan in 1482 or 1483.
The Milanese Court offered a greater scope for his ambition. How high that ambition soared the records of his life at Milan set forth; but it is foreshadowed in the draft of a letter in which Leonardo offered his services to Ludovic. The writing is from left to right, and M. Ravaisson-Mollien considers in consequence that the original connection of the letter with Leonardo is a matter of uncertainty. The handwriting in Leonardo's manuscripts is from right to left. Occasionally, however, he wrote in the usual manner. Two such instances of his signature may be cited, viz., that on No. 1640 of the Louvre drawings, The Scene of Magic, and that reproduced from the Windsor MSS. on p. 175 of Mr. Cook's "Spirals."
His manuscripts were usually intended solely for his own use; but if this letter were to be read by Ludovic it would have to be written presumably in the ordinary manner, and the draft at its commencement may have bid fair to be the definite letter. But suppose it written by a pupil! The question of calligraphy is of little import. The contents are the strongest proof of its authenticity.
"Having, most illustrious lord, seen and considered the experiments of all those who pass as masters in the art of inventing instruments of war, and finding that their inventions differ in no way from those in common use, I am emboldened, without prejudice to anyone, to solicit an opportunity of acquainting your Excellency with certain of my secrets:
"1. I can construct bridges which are very light and strong and very portable, with which to pursue and defeat the enemy; and others more sohd» which resist fire or asault, yet are easily removed and placed in position; and I can also burn and destroy those of the enemy,
"2. In case of a siege I can cut off water from the trenches and make pontoons and scaling ladders and other similar contrivances,
“3. If by reason of the elevation or the strength of its position a place cannot be bombarded, I can demolish every fortress if its foundations have not been set on stone,
“4, I can also make a kind of cannon which is light and easy of transport, with which to hurl small stones like hail, and of which the smoke causes great terror to the enemy, so that they suffer heavy loss and confusion,
“5. I can noiselessly construct to any prescribed point subterranean passages either straight or winding, passing if necessary underneath trenches or a river,
"6. I can make armoured wagons carrying artillery which shall break through the most serried ranks of the enemy, and so open a safe passage for the infantry,
"7, If occasion should arise I can construct cannon and mortars and light ordnance in shape both ornamental and useful and different from those in common use.
“8. Where it is impossible to use cannon I can supply in their stead catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other instruments of admirable efficacy not in general use. In short, as occasion requires I can supply infinite means of attack and defence.
"9, And if the fight should take place upon the sea I can construct many engines most suitable either for attack or defence, and ships which can resist the fire of the heaviest cannon, and powders or vapours.
“10, In time of peace I believe that I can give you as complete satisfaction as any one else in the construction of buildings both public and private, and in conducting water from one place to another.
"I can further execute sculpture in marble, bronze or clay, also in painting I can do as much as any one else whoever he may be.
"Moreover I would undertake the commission of the bronze Horse, which shall endrue with immortal glory and eternal honour the auspicious memory of your father and of the illus- trious house of Sforza.
"And if any of the aforesaid things should seem to anyone impossible or impracticable, I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your park or in whatever place shall please your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility."
In so far as the evidence of Leonardo's own MSS. can avail to substantiate the claims made in this astonishing document they are found to have been literally true. Dr. Müller-Walde, in the section of his work which treats of Leonardo as military engineer, has proved by quotations and sketches taken from the MSS. at Milan, Paris and Windsor that Leonardo did in fact study deeply the construction and use of each method and instrument of warfare of which the first seven clauses of the letter offer the practical application. It would be difficult to conceive who could have had a sufficiently comprehensive knowledge of Leonardo's studies to enable him to make without error the statements made in the letter, or who could have had any possible motive in doing so.
Leonardo looked to find immediate employment for his activities as military engineer. Cursory in comparison with the preceding detail is the enumeration of his artistic activities in the final clauses—introduced by the phrase, "in time of peace," as a period in the future.
The war clouds which are seldom absent from a usurper's political horizon loomed portentously above Ludovic's path at the outset, and never wholly lifted throughout the two decades of his power. His lavish subsidies, which impoverished Milan, his skill in pitting adversary against adversary, the grace in diplomacy of the Duchess Beatrice all availed only to delay the impending storm, which broke and swept him before it in the autumn of 1499. In the first years of his regency Venice was his greatest menace, and the reference to the possibility of combats being by sea suggests Venice as the enemy against whom arose the immediate occasion for the services which the letter offered. Hostilities broke out between the two states in 1483, but the issue was reached by diplomacy, not by arms. Ludovic preferred other methods of combat, and there is nothing to show that at this period he employed Leonardo as military engineer.
The record of performance in the Duke's service relates to the final clauses of the letter. We may instance his work on the statue, his design for the cupola of the Duomo, the sketches of the pavilion for the garden of the Duchess of Milan, the architectural studies for palaces and castles, the notes and sketches in reference to the fertilizing of the plain of the Lomellina by constructing water-courses, and the plans for rendering navigable the Martesana canal.
His talent as musician, as to which there is rare unanimity among the early biographers, finds no place in the letter. It was as musician, according to Vasari, that he made his first appearance in Milan, sent, according to the "Anonimo Fiorentino," by Lorenzo with a lute as a present to Ludovic. This may, as Dr. Richter suggests, be the very reason of his silence as to his musical proficiency; for it needed no mention in a recital of talents by the exercise of which he hoped to be retained in Ludovic's service.
Leonardo in the draft of a letter to the Commissioners of Buildings at Piacenza, speaks of himself as having been invited from Florence to make the equestrian statue of the Duke Francesco. Of all the offers of service which the letter to Ludovic contained this alone would seem to have found immediate acceptance.
The letter to Piacenza thus confirms the testimony of Sabba da Castiglione and the "Anonimo Fiorentino" as to the date at which he proceeded to Milan. But the commission given, it was some years before he did much towards carrying it to completion. There is no evidence of his presence in Milan between 1483 and 1487. It might seem not unnatural that these years, if spent in Milan, should be comparatively without record, for Leonardo, who always worked slowly, would have to win his position. But when references do occur they are such as to suggest that his Florentine prestige attended him at the outset, and that he immediately stepped into the foremost place among the artists of Ludovic's court; cf. the statement of Bellincioni that Ludovic
Da Fiorenza un Apelle ha qui condotto.
These four years constitute a rather perplexing hiatus in the history of Leonardo's life. According to the "Anonimo Fiorentino" he left Milan after his first visit there on Lorenzo's mission, and returned for a time to Florence.
But there are absolutely no records of his presence in Florence between 1481 and 1495, nor anywhere in Italy between 1483 and 1487. May we fill the void in part by interpreting as records of actual experience the letters in the "Codice Atlantico" addressed to the Devatdar of Syria, the lieutenant of the Sultan of Egypt, the writer being, as he states, employed in the Sultan's service as engineer in Armenia? The letters contain somewhat exculpatory references to the performance of official duties, and a description of the regions of Mount Taurus and of the effects of an earthquake or landslip in those parts. Accompanying the text are drawings of rock formations and scenery, and there is also a sketch map of Armenia in which the classical instead of the mediaeval forms of names have been used.
For a detailed consideration of the letters and the varied interpretations of them, which range from their acceptance as fact to their treatment as a flight of fantasy, with the halfway house of considering them the record of the travels of another, I must refer to the works of Dr. Richter, Professor Uzielli, and the articles by Professor Govi and Mr. Douglas Freshfield. I am disposed to regard the letters as statements of fact, and to believe that Leonardo was in Syria in a capacity somewhat analogous to that in which he had offered his services to Ludovic Sforza, and did subsequently serve Caesar Borgia.
In 1487 he was established in Milan in the service of Ludovic. From this date down to the close of 1499 his presence there except for brief intervals is shown by records of his work, Sabba da Castiglione, by way of explaining how few of his paintings were to be seen at Milan besides the Last Supper, says that "when he ought to have worked at painting, in which he would without doubt have proved a new Apelles, he gave himself up entirely to Geometry, Architecture and Anatomy." But he was also general artificer to the Court. He appears as deus ex machina to perform whatever the occasion required.
He is described as Ludovic's architect in the record of the application made to him for a design for the cupola of the cathedral.' Payments commencing in August, 1487, were made to him and to a wood-carver in his service by the Consiglio della Fabbrica del Duomo for the expenses of the construction of a model completed on the nth of January, 1488. Such of his drawings as are studies for it are classified by M. de Geymiiller and Dr. Richter in treating of his work in architecture (Richter, ii.).
On the 10th of May, 1488, Leonardo obtained the return of his model on condition of restoring it if required. On the 17th he received money on account for the expenses of constructing a second model, but of this there is no record. The commission was finally awarded the Milanese architects, Omodei and Dolcebuono, in April, 1490.
In June of the same year Leonardo left Milan with Francesco di Giorgio to advise as to the construction of the cathedral at Pavia. They were the guests of the city, and their bill at the Locanda del Saracino, amounting to twenty lire, was paid on June 21st Immediately afterwards Francesco di Giorgio returned to Milan.
Leonardo remained in Pavia until the close of the year, returning in consequence of a letter sent by the Duke's secretary to all the Milanese artists in connection with the preparations for the marriage of Ludovic with Beatrice, and of Anne, sister of Gian Galeazzo, with Alfonso d'Este.
His time was spent in study and observation. He speaks in his MSS. of consulting Vitellio's treatise on Mathematics in the Library. He sketched churches, e,g. Santa Maria in Pertica di Pavia, He described the crenellation of the castle. Watching the rebuilding of a part of the city wall which stood on the river bank, he noted the varying effects of time in the various woods used in the piles of its foundations.
He also studied the antique equestrian statue of Regisole, which the "Anonimo" described as representing Odoacer, King of the Goths. It stood in the Piazza del Duomo until its destruction in 1796. The composition is preserved in a fresco in S. Teodoro at Pavia. Dr. Müller-Walde connects such drawings as seem to owe suggestion to it with the Trivulzio monument, a project of his later years. To me it seems more probable that notes and sketches were made during this residence at Pavia, and refer to the Sforza statue, which he recommenced in April of the same year.
In February, 1489, he had constructed the scenery for a representation of "II Paradiso" by Bernando Bellincioni, written in honour of the marriage of Gian Galeazzo with Isabella of Aragon. It opened with an address by Jove to the planets after which they all descended to earth to praise the Duchess Isabella. After considerable debate Apollo presents the lady with a book of words, and the play ends with songs by the Graces and the Virtues.
In January, 1491, he was present in the house of Galeazzo di San Severino to arrange the festival of the tournament, and records rather helplessly the thefts and malpractices of his apprentice, Giacomo, aged ten, on this occasion as also repeatedly before at Pavia.
A sketch of pulleys and cords inscribed "in the Cathedral for the pulley of the Nail of the Cross," is cited by Amoretti to show that in 1489 Leonardo constructed an apparatus of pulleys and cords to transport the relic of the Sacred Nail to a more venerable place in the cathedral. It is not, however, possible to ascertain on what evidence Amoretti relied in fixing the date of the ceremony, and Dr. Richter dates the MS. as written in 1502.
His employment as architect in the service of the Court is to be inferred from a drawing of a dome-shaped pavilion inscribed "pavilion of the garden of the Duchess of Milan," and another of a ground-plan "foundation of the pavilion which is in the middle of the labyrinth of the Duke of Milan." On the same page' is the date 10 July, 1492. Such a pavilion in the labyrinth of the garden of the castle existed in 1480, and was then described by Giovanni Ridolfi, son of the Florentine orator, who stated the foundation to be of brick, the rest being presumably of more fragile material. Leonardo's drawing may have been a sketch for a more solid structure in its stead. Other notes relate to the construction of a bath for the Duchess Isabella, the wife of Gian Galeazzo.
It has been assumed that this bath was in the pavilion, and therefore the notes refer to parts of the same work; but beyond the fact that at the presumed date of the pavilion the "Duchess of Milan" would be the Duchess Isabella, there is nothing to connect what may have been entirely separate commissions.
To this same period of varied employment in court service belongs the earliest of the treatises in which he commenced to embody the results of his scientific study of the problems underlying the practice of art. " On the 2nd day of April, 1489, the book entitled ‘Concerning the human figure.”
The influence of Verrocchio in whom the scientist wrestled for mastery with the artist, predominating in the study of protuding tendons in the gaunt fleshless left arm of the S. John in the picture in the Accademia, of anatomy as a necessary part of the artist's equipment.
How far the result of such studies was already perceptible in his art even before leaving Florence is visible in the emaciated figure of S. Jerome in the Vatican, and in certain of the heads in the Adoration.
His zeal for the subject was stimulated during his residence in Pavia and continued for years afterwards. When in Rome in 1515 he was still the "disciple of experience," studying the human figure from the life by the practice of dissection.
The supremely subtle rendering of the effects of light and shade constitutes perhaps the most fundamental difference between the works which he executed after his removal to Milan and those of his Florentine contemporaries. The study had already occupied his thoughts while in Florence, and the result is in evidence in the Adoration.
At Milan, however, in this period of many undertakings the results of his study of the problem assumed literary form. The date is fixed by a note in the MSS. of the Institut C. 15: "On the 23rd of April, 1490, I commenced this book and recommenced the horse."
The MS. in which the note occurs treats of "light and shade," the contents being intended to form part of the "Trattato della Pittura."
McCurdy, Edward. Leonardo da Vinci. George Bell and Sons, 1904.
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