Leonardo da Vinci - Kathleen Krull [22]
At least one observer noticed that he had grown “weary of the paintbrush.” He often turned commissions over to his assistants. The reason to accept art commissions was to finance his experiments. He spent his days observing, measuring, dissecting, questioning, weighing, and analyzing—and cataloging it all in his notebooks.
In Florence, after the overthrow of the pleasure-loving, free-thinking Medici in 1494, the most powerful person was a teacher of religion named Girolamo Savonarola. In 1496, he staged a mass burning of what he considered immoral books and works of art. Luckily, only a few trusted friends knew about Leonardo’s notebooks, or even of his interest in science. But many of his friends, labeled decadent, suffered under Savonarola.
For a while Leonardo designed weapons and fortresses for the most notorious of Italian war-lords, Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna. Duke Borgia was out to conquer all the city-states of Italy, murdering anyone who stood in his way. Many historians have noted the irony here: Leonardo, who despised war and called it “bestialissima pazzia”— beastly madness—working for such brutal bosses. But this was the highest-status work available to him. He couldn’t afford to turn it down, and he was genuinely interested in devising anything mechanical. In this case, the job gave him the liberty to explore libraries and meet intellectuals all over Italy. He became friends with Niccolò Machiavelli, the important Italian political writer and statesman.
Wherever he traveled, he drew gorgeous maps, depicting geography with more detail and accuracy than any previous cartographers. But after nine months, Borgia’s atrocities may have proved too upsetting to Leonardo, who quit his post.
In 1504, he was invited to depict a Florentine battle victory for the city’s town hall. His archrival, the twenty-nine-year-old Michelangelo, was invited to paint another battle scene at the same time on another wall in the same room.
The two geniuses had never gotten along. Michelangelo showed no interest in science, which to Leonardo meant his art was inferior. Michelangelo had once publicly insulted the older artist for his habit of leaving things unfinished. Leonardo, for possibly the first time in his life, had no instant come-back. He just blushed.
Leonardo put three years into his battle scene. He struggled to convey all the horrors of war. But while he was experimenting, trying to achieve the most brilliant colors possible, the paint on the wall ran and . . . well, he never actually finished the painting.
Leonardo also worked on several portraits during these years. The only one that survives is one he never titled. We call it the Mona Lisa. Leonardo seems to have had a special affection for the picture, for he never sold it, taking it with him on all of his subsequent travels.
Leonardo’s worries would have been eased had he been able to count on a family inheritance. But when his father, Piero, died in 1504, Leonardo’s meddling half brothers and sisters arranged to deprive their illegitimate sibling of any part of the estate. Then, a few years later, his favorite uncle, Francesco, died, specifically leaving everything to Leonardo. His siblings fought him on this as well. After a year in the courts, Leonardo prevailed and wound up with a small piece of land and money.
For a while he worked for King Louis XII of France, who was then living in Milan. Leonardo’s job was building mechanical toys and other entertainments. Until he was an old man, Leonardo kept his love of toys, pranks, and riddles. Part of him remained childlike, playful, and open.
When asked to design a garden, Leonardo came up with a Renaissance Disneyland. It had musical instruments powered by water, a copper aviary for birds overhead, and miniature lakes with waterfalls to keep wine chilled. It even had playful sprays of water, “if one wanted to sprinkle the ladies’ dresses for fun.”
He and his intellectual friends gathered for dinners where they talked about science—and also fashioned paintings and sculptures