In the autumn of 1516, an unusual parade passes a throng of curious onlookers and through the gates of the Château d’Amboise. A solemn old man with a full white beard sitting on a donkey is looking around at the place that will become part of his everyday life. On the wagon behind him, a number of chests are piled up, full of books, scrolls and objects of all kinds, amongst which we can see the portrait of a young lady with a mysterious smile, a painting today admired by millions of people the world over. The old man is the 64-year-old Leonardo da Vinci.
“Here, you will have the opportunity to live, create, think and work freely.” He is welcomed by King Francis I of France, who invited him to the town of Amboise, bequeathing him the title “First Painter, Architect and Engineer to the King”.
The King lets him stay in the Clos Lucé manor house, alongside his two Milan companions, Francesco Melzi and Battista da Vilanis. From his very first day there, Leonardo tirelessly researches and works, but his paralytic hand no longer allows him to paint. When Leonard dies in his room at Clos Lucé manor in Amboise three years later, the King cries over the loss of a man he lovingly referred to as “padre”, and grants him a grand funeral. Thus on 2 May 1519 passed one of the greatest artists, humanists and thinkers in human history. He left behind an extraordinary heritage, celebrated around the world, led by that picture of the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile. More than any other town, today the name Amboise is linked to the life and work of this Tuscan master.
Leonardo was the illegitimate son of notary Ser Piero and country woman Catarina da Vinci. His father adopted him and secured him a general education. No records of his childhood have survived, so we can only guess as to his youth. All we know of the young Leonardo was that he was of pleasing appearance and so strong that he could bend an iron bar. It is to this period that his dream of a bird is attributed, a bird that attacked Leonardo in his crib and inspired an entire book, “Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood” by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Another likely story from his childhood is an incident with a rough wooden shield, which its purchaser gave to Leonardo’s father to have it painted with a heart. Leonardo refused to do such a trivial painting, instead apparently painting it with an incredible portrayal of a mythical beast, striking all who saw it with fear. Ser Piero sold this painting to a Jew at great profit and gave the purchaser a peddler’s painting of a heart, with the poor countryman not even realising it.
When Leonardo was 14, he moved with his father to Florence and became a pupil of the artist Andrea del Verrocchio, alongside Botticelli, Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi. Here, he acquired his technical skills, learning the functional, precise and objective portrayal of objects. In his 20s, he was admitted to the famous Guild of Saint Luke for painters. He was 24 when he independently painted three famous paintings, Annunciation, Madonna of the Carnation, and the portrait Ginevra de’ Benci. By 1478, he had begun to take an interest in science, first studying military engineering, and he began to write the Codex Atlanticus.
In 1482, the young Leonardo left Florence for Milan at the invitation of the powerful duke, Ludovico Sforza. Here, he collected a group of followers, some of whom remained loyal to him till the end of his life. In Florence he had not enjoyed such admiration, as his distinctive style and avant-garde ideas were too innovative at the time for sceptical Florentines, who could never have given him the recognition he deserved.
As a genius of his time, Leonardo created a unique language. His style was balanced between strong poetical feelings and the will of an artist, complemented by unique mystical gestures. Leonardo rejected the geometric form of perspective in order to create deep landscape views in his pictures. He freely utilised compositions involving the rich relationships of all living things on the canvas. In his pictures, he expressed the internal dynamics of figures in a curved body shape, which became one of the core models for classical figures in the 16th century.
He was 30 years old when he began to study aerodynamics and physics, anatomy, meteorology, astronomy and cosmography. He was interested in Pythagoras’s mathematics, which he soon mastered, making it the basis for his own research. He applied the findings he obtained in his scientific research to his composition of paintings and sculptures. Thus art and science were inseparable values for Leonardo. In 1487, he took part in an architectural competition for a model of the dome above the crossing in Milan Cathedral. All his designs, however, were too novel and bold, and so the cathedral was completed according to plans that were more Gothic in nature.
In 1495, he began work on The Last Supper. He used new techniques with tempera and oil, but these proved unfortunate and vulnerable to humidity, and the work soon began to deteriorate. Leonardo’s composition of the painting exudes a mysterious, almost esoteric spirit and the viewer is transported to a world of emotion and unending light dynamics. His choice of colours became a means for describing atmosphere, a subtle combination of light and shade creating a new form and supporting the viewer’s imagination. Figures on the canvas are shown in typical Renaissance style, and in combination with the background achieve a final impression of monumentality and balance. By the mid-16th century, the work was said to be entirely destroyed, hence the Last Supper became subject to many future attempts at repair.
In 1499, Leonardo left for Venice because his benefactors, the Sforzas of Milan, were overthrown. His period of wandering had begun. A year later, he left Venice to return to Florence and illustrate the Divine Proportions for the mathematician Pacioli. On the basis of his studies of anatomy and the work of Vitruvius (architect for the Roman Emperor Augustus), he drew the image of a man in ideal proportions within a circle, setting new benchmarks for architecture and construction still used today.
Leonardo was 52 when he began working on La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) for a Florentine purchaser, Francesco del Giocondo, who commissioned a painting of his third wife, Lisa. It is probably one of the most famous paintings in the world, and Leonardo hones it to perfection using a blending technique known as “sfumato”. In the end, he doesn’t want to give the painting away, and he takes it with him to France in 1516.
In 1513–1514, two years before leaving for Amboise on the invitation of the King of France, he lived in Rome at the palace of Guiliano de’ Medici (the younger brother of the Pope at that time, Leo X) and received a wage as his protégé. This was a very welcome change for Leonardo, who until then had often lived in poverty, despite his renown.
Why is Leonardo today considered a genius? His life’s work is extensive and has influenced art and science around the world. He wasn’t just a painter and artist, but also an engineer, architect, scientist, inventor, cartographer, anatomist, botanist and writer. He was a master in all his fields. He came up with the concept of the tank and helicopter before anyone else. He drew maps before cartography was established as a field. He described and drew the growth and movements of a foetus before anyone knew the science of anatomy, and so much more besides.
A large number of his artworks and scientific papers were destroyed, but research of his diaries is ongoing. He left many plans for many buildings in his diaries, although it is likely that none were actually implemented. During his life, he endeavoured to write a number of books on various aspects of his knowledge. His notes, however, are fragmented and scattered. Leonardo’s literary legacy of about 7000 pages was later assembled, and today these pages can be found under codified titles in distinguished galleries and many European libraries, as well as in the hands of private collectors (e.g. Bill Gates). We know that Leonardo was working on a masterpiece of anatomy, painting, nature, light and shade. Unfortunately, none of his series of notes were completed in publishable form. Leonardo once said he had written 120 or 114 books, and he had not completed the Mona Lisa even after three years of work.
The last scientific study into why he did not complete many of his works of art and science concluded that he suffered from attention deficit disorder along with hyperactivity. Historical records show that Leonardo spent a large amount of time planning his projects, but that he also lacked patience in their implementation. It would not be historically correct to adopt a romantic image of da Vinci as a lone genius, unappreciated by his peers because his ideas were ahead of their time. Leonardo had a tendency to “flip” between jobs, and to work without break the whole night, sufficing with just a short period of deep sleep. His peers likely were unable to understand or forgive him for his lack of discipline, rather than for his vision.
Leonardo’s scientific works and research laid the foundation for modern science, and his masterpieces of painting remain today astonishing in their perfection. A Leonardo da Vinci portrait sold in 2017 for 450.3 million dollars at Christie’s, the highest sum a work of art has ever been sold for at auction. This too is proof of the greatness of this artist of the Italian Renaissance, perhaps one of the greatest geniuses of our era .
Author: Ing. Arch. Iva Drebitko