Leonardo da Vinci - Kathleen Krull [4]
Still, he could be critical of church practices and didn’t become a regular churchgoer, following his beliefs in his own way instead. He seldom spoke about religion or miracles: “I do not attempt to write or give information of those things . . . which cannot be proved by an instance of nature.”
Because of his illegitimacy, he was not allowed to attend one of the famous universities in Italy. No one seemed to expect anything respectable of this boy. No one bothered to try to correct his left-handedness, at a time when this trait was forcibly discouraged and even considered evil by some.
All his life, Leonardo had to teach himself. Sometimes he was bitter about this, but as he grew older he also took pride in being what people called him: “unlettered.” By then, he had realized that what was being taught as fact wasn’t necessarily right.
CHAPTER THREE
“The Desire to Know Is Natural”
BEING ILLEGITIMATE WAS a lasting B black mark. Leonardo was barred by law from most respectable professions as well as from advanced schooling. Piero’s guild of notaries, for example, refused entry to the illegitimate, as well as to criminals.
Leonardo’s choices in life were limited: either join the army (where many illegitimate boys ended up) or get his hands dirty taking up a trade.
His father clearly felt responsible for Leonardo’s future. When the boy was twelve or thirteen, Piero took him along on one of his trips to the pulsing big city of Florence. One of five independent city-states in what is now Italy, Florence was the cutting-edge center of the art world.
Perhaps the boy had already impressed people with his talent for art. And artists didn’t necessarily have to be respectable. Piero might have considered a career in art the most viable option for his son.
Piero did have connections. He got his son apprenticed as a studio boy to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. This was one of the luckiest breaks of Leonardo’s whole life.
Verrocchio’s workshop was like a buzzing little art factory. A storefront, opening onto the street, enticed customers with its wares—paintings and sculptures, musical instruments, helmets, bells, and baskets. Spartan living quarters for the artists were on top of or behind the storefront, with beds of straw on the floor.
In exchange for working, Leonardo was fed and sheltered and paid a small amount. Verrocchio was now his legal guardian. He even had the right to beat him, though there is no evidence that he did.
Artists at that time had to be practical and versatile, to make things people really used. Leonardo plunged into an array of projects, such as painting altarpieces and panels, making large sculptures in marble and bronze, copying coats of arms, decorating pottery, designing tools for surgery. The young artists in the studio worked mostly in teams, finishing one another’s work, rarely signing their names. Art was about craft, not ego.
As a boy straight out of the country, the teenage Leonardo must have been a little gawky at first. But he soaked everything up, drew energy from his new environment, and simply blossomed.
As it happened, Florence was perhaps the most percolating place for anyone to be in the 1460s. The ruler, Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’ Medici, tried to encourage an atmosphere of commerce and culture. Other Italian cities, such as Bologna and Pisa, also nurtured new ideas. But merchants from all over loved Florence for its central location. After recovering from a deadly attack of the plague, its population was booming again, approaching 100,000 hustling and bustling people.
More than many other cities, Florence had people who were rich and well educated. For decades it