Leonardo da Vinci - Kathleen Krull [7]
Toscanelli’s good friend, the artist-writer-engineer Leon Battista Alberti, had even more impact on Leonardo. One of the great intellectuals of the time, he advocated the application of science to art—artists should know about geometry, optics, the mathematical rules of perspective, and as much about human anatomy as possible. When Leonardo read Alberti’s statement, “The painter ought to possess all the forms of knowledge useful to his art,” he was electrified.
Alberti was one of the first men of the Renaissance to urge humans to strive, to excel. This was a revolutionary idea at the time—that humans had great, untapped potential. The self did matter—one person could make a difference. There was great optimism about the future.
Leonardo deliberately sought out older, more educated men. Everything interested him—“all the forms of knowledge” that Alberti spoke of. He may have sat in on lectures at the university, may have approached professors to ask questions. It’s possible that while working on a project, he boarded with Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the Medici then in power. There he would have been exposed to the movers and shakers in Italy, people almost as smart as he was.
By 1472, at age twenty, Leonardo was no longer an apprentice. He was entered as an official member of the Florentine painters’ guild, one of the two dozen trade associations representing various careers. The painters’ guild of St. Luke had split off from the guild of doctors and druggists (who sold the materials for paints).
He was a full citizen now and could set up his own shop. Yet he remained as Verrocchio’s assistant, perfecting his skills. He stayed twelve to thirteen years more with his teacher, which was longer than normal for most apprentices. Later in his life, when stressed, he would return to hang out here. It was a happy, sheltered place for him.
But not as sheltered as he thought. At some point during his years with Verrocchio, Leonardo was being spied upon.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Nothing but Full Privies”
WHEN LEONARDO WAS twenty-four, W omething awful happened. He was arrested.
The Medici family schemed and plotted to keep Florence under its thumb. One way was to encourage citizens to inform on one another. Anonymously, people could make accusations about illegal or immoral behavior by simply writing and slipping the allegations into boxes called buchi della Verità (“mouths of Truth”), which were prominently displayed at churches.
The idea was to keep people in line, or at least on edge. Anybody could accuse anyone of anything, with or without proof. That was enough to start a police investigation. So the system was an easy way to get someone you didn’t like into trouble with the authorities.
The dreaded Office of the Night had only one function. It was to check out accusations of homosexual sex, which was interpreted as being against the teachings of the Bible and considered a serious crime. During its seventy-year reign over Florence, the Office of the Night investigated 17,000 accused men, convicting some 3,000. The penalty tended to be a crushing fine, which was mild compared to punishments inflicted elsewhere or at other times in Florence—public whipping, exile, castration, indefinite imprisonment, or even death by burning. Part of the fine went as a reward to the informer, and the rest went to pay the expenses of the six Officers of the Night.
This was the office that summoned Leonardo in 1476. Someone had anonymously accused four men—Leonardo, a goldsmith, a tailor, and someone related to Lorenzo de’ Medici—of having sex with a male prostitute.