Part 14
Patience—we need patience.
Going from village to village, town to town, means walking five days, four days, two. It is a five day walk to Nazareth. It is a two day walk to the village of Gehazi. Most walks are pleasant. It can be cold, windy, hot; and when it rains there is seldom any shelter.
Sometimes we travel together; sometimes we walk alone; these days I prefer my solitary walks. I am aware of close communion when alone. Patience, patience...but the calendar moves on: Shevat, Adar, Nisan, Iyyar, Sivan...
ÿ
Peter’s
Tammuz 3
I
will miss Peter’s little house, its rough walls, its crooked windows, its clumsy thatched roof. The floors have interested me. He found pieces in some Babylonian structure; he hauled them here in an ox cart. I have come to love this isolation, its olive trees.
Today is a summer’s day.
Great clouds, great sky.
Peter sought me out as I sat in the bedroom reading. Again he asked for forgiveness. Kneeling by me he promised he would carry the word... “to Rome, if you wish. Teach me courage, teach me strength, teach me to be wise...”
He and I have worked at the carpenter’s bench lately, in Lazarus’ shed. It took the three of us to line up a door. Of course it was very old. Laughing, we had to admit our clumsy workmanship.
We are proud that there are more than seventy of us now. I send them out in pairs.
ÿ
The home of Lazarus
Tammuz 8
It seems to me I view mankind with a sense of compassion—a constant perception. Mine is a brief, swift looking back: I heal the sick, I renew lives... I re- member the hart and the brook...man’s insatiable thirst.
Children come and animals come...the ox and the donkey have been friends. A shepherd, I still follow hills, hills of resurrection they may be. Perhaps history may call me a man of righteousness. Perhaps history may not stop. I speak to history. I say, once again:
“Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost...”
Teach as I have taught...remind them of grace.
ÿ
Tammuz 11
I leave no tomb, no crypt, no marker.
Finality may not be a friend...
When I leave shall I carry a handful of earth with me?
James, Peter, Matthew, Mark...Mother and Father...Lazarus...Miriam... each one is mine but for how long?
Peter will pick up my sandals and say:
“These were his.”
Father will say:
“He helped me make this box.”
The Godhead is before me and I struggle with delight and with astonishment.
ÿ
Tammuz 12
I am entrusting my journal to Matthew. Since we have friends at the synagogue in Capernaum he will leave my journal there.
Verily, verily I say: Fear God and keep His commandments. This is the duty of man.
ÿ
FAREWELL THOUGHTS
I
hope these thoughts may be helpful. It is very late and lamplight flickers...
Inside a man of light there is light and with this light he lights the world.
The angels and the prophets will come to you and give you strength.
Blessed are the ones who have heard the Father’s word and kept it in truth.
Have you then discovered the beginning so that you ask the end? Where the beginning is, there the end will be.
The kingdom is inside you. When you really understand you will know that you are the son of the living Father. If you do not understand yourself you will be in poverty.
Split wood and I am there. Pick up a stone; there you will find me.
Come to me because my yoke is easy, my lordship gentle. You will find rest.
The kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it.
Blessed are the solitary and the elect; you shall find the kingdom because you have come from it and you shall go there again.
I say, whenever one is one he will be filled with light, but whenever he is divided he will be filled with darkness.
Love your brother as your own soul. Guard him as the apple of your eye.
There will be days when you seek and you will not find me.
ÿ
NOTE:
These logia appear for the first time in a journal.
They are from the 4th century Coptic book,
The Gospel According to Thomas,
discovered in Hammadi, Egypt,
quoted through the courtesy
of the translator, Dr. Ray Rummers,
Chairman, Department of English, Baylor University.
LEONARDO DA VINCI’S JOURNAL
“Both those who recently attempted to fly came to grief.
Leonardo da Vinci also tried to fly,
but, he, too, failed.”
– Girolamo Cardano, 1555
For Elizabeth
Leonardo da Vinci
APRIL 15, 1452 – MAY 2, 1519
ILLUSTRATIONS
The illustrations are originals by the author— interpretations of work by da Vinci.
Leonardo’s self-portrait 225
Rendering of Leonardo’s signature in his “mirror handwriting” 225
Silhouette of head 227
Head of horse 233
Madonna’s hand 243
Prisoner 248
Sforza horse 251
Birds in flight 261
Plants and designs 264
Mona Lisa 278
Christ’s hand 283
Bicycle 296
Head of man 308
Glider 317
This journal was kept by Leonardo da Vinci during the years 1516 to 1519 while he lived in France as the guest of King Francis I; there, he lived in the small residence of Cloux, near the King’s summer palace at Amboise on the Loire River. Leonardo writes of his boyhood, his mother, his friends, his easel and mural paintings, his dissections, his colossal bronze horse.
He tells of his attempts at flying, his inventions... This is a codex of his mind as he divulges his art and the scope of his interests.
To the end of his life he was painting, map-making, carrying out architectural commissions, arranging his treatises on perspective, anatomy, horses, flight, and the arts. His patron, King Francis, called him “Mon Père.” Da Vinci’s last years, at Cloux, near Paris, were friendly years.
1516
Cloux
December 10, 1516
MEMORY . . .
MEMORY. . .
I
remember that hot, dusty afternoon in Florence. I ordered everybody out of my studio. I got up from my workbench and demanded that they leave: the tattlers, the oafs, the bores, the faithful. I packed them off. Yelled at them. Stormed. I had work to do, work that would keep me until dawn. I had to have serenity, no ribaldry, no disgruntled silence, no questions, no interruptions of any sort.
I slammed the doors, bolted them.
A mouse scuttled across the room.
Until I resolved the perfect angles, sheet after sheet went into the making of that pelvic drawing.
Queer how memory is: I can see that messy workshop, easels, clay figures on stands, rags, canvases, frames, chisels, pigments, brushes... I can see the mouse watching me from beneath a basket. Again I sense that long afternoon, that long night... I had dried bread, cheese, and port. I remember the church bells. At dawn I slid my work into a special portfolio, then concealed it. I was often hiding things in those days, hiding sketches, hiding determination, hiding frustrations, goals.
Memory...it gives you what you want and supplies absurdities as well, like the dream that I had in Florence, recurrent: I was lying on my cot... I was dead... I was carried to a morgue and dumped there, among cadavers...blood and mould saturated my drawings and my writings...my canvases were being eaten by termites... how well I remember that dream.
I remember a fat Milanese who used to haunt me while I was decorating the walls and ceiling of the Sala delle Asse: he was a pompous member of the Sforza household, a great nose-picker, who had done nothing at all through his long life. While I worked, he sat, hunched in a princely brocade chair, in elegant clothes, sometimes asleep in spite of my assistants, ladders, and scaffolding.
That Sala delle Asse work was boring. Like many a commission it was compulsory. To arrange masses of foliage on walls and ceiling seemed absurd. Designs were refused, at the outset. The employment of immense tree trunks satisfied. As I painted, I mingled knotted cords with the foliage, intermingled branches, established a rhythm. I kept my greens from becoming monotonous. I achieved a kind of helmeted bark on the tree trunks. Before I finished, the Sala’s canopy, the forest umbrella, became more meaningful.
My fat friend slept on and on.
How much did I earn? I have forgotten. Was I ever paid?
I would like to return to the castle and walk through that Sala; I would like to be alone; I would like to try to think as I thought in those days; I would like to sense my aspirations; I would sit on a bench under that deluge of foliage: I would list geology, hydraulics, painting, sculpture, geometry, anatomy, medicine...
Cloux
When Michelangelo showed me his cartoon for his mural in the Consejo, I complained that a scene of idling nude bathers was not the best way to depict war. He was critical of my cartoon, saying “you are more concerned with horses than men.”
My objective was to show war’s anguish: pain was to be sixty feet long by twenty feet wide. Twelve hundred square feet of pain. All of my draughtsmanship went into this Anghiari conflict: I painted rage, rage against war, the rage of dying men, the rage of the wounded, my hate, my affirmation.
All of 1503 and 1504 went into my preliminary sketches. I often rode about the countryside to sketch horses, sketch riders; I sketched in the Sforza stables; the stablemen posed for me; my apprentices posed. Friends had their chance to exhibit their horses in action. Gamin posed. The militia.
So, I did not paint a wall: I painted the smash of steel against steel, the plunge of steel into flesh, the grunting of frightened horse against frightened horse, men stumbling, men falling, dying, their helmets of fear, helmets of pain...yellows, blues, greys, reds.
On Friday, June 6, 1505, I began to paint the Anghiari battle. It was my greatest challenge. Here I could render something more meaningful than the madonnas. Not Christ on the cross, but man on the cross. Pigment and light were to come together in harmony. The day that I began to paint was beautiful but the weather changed quickly for the worst. Some of my assistants were called away—they were ordered to attend a trial.
The wind caught me unprepared and ripped the cartoon. In a few minutes the storm took over in earnest. I laid aside my brushes and pigments and dismissed the remaining apprentices. Half of Florence was inundated that night.
PAZZIA BESTIALISSIMA!
That is man’s disease: he can not refrain from political madness. Again and again he is willing to be duped.
The central group in my Anghiari mural is the struggle for a military flag: I painted life-size horses, life- size men, life-size hatred: the central struggle fans out across the mural, expressing this futility.
I seldom eat at the King’s table although I am always welcome. Sometimes it seems like a long walk to the château, sometimes it is raining. In the evening fifteen courses are certainly gourmet adventures, but a little late at night.
The King often sends me three or four trays—a retinue of pages brings them to my studio, laughter and ribaldry, and then decorum as they file into the studio. Soufflés, artichokes in cream and butter sauce, crêpes, pastries, glacés, Vouvray. I am partial to grapes and someone on the royal staff hunts them up for me.
Sometimes I find five or six silver dishes with as many kinds of nuts. Francis claims that he could not survive for a month on my vegetarian diet.
Maturina fusses over almost everything the King sends:
“Now, let me see, let me see,” she mutters. “You should eat this first...it’s better for you that way...and these pastries, why they’re much too rich for you!”
She arranges the dishes on the dining table (you must not eat in the studio); she places my chair, lights the candles, unfolds my napkin and spreads it across my lap. What a splendid old ragamuffin she is! Too bad she has lost most of her teeth; her features are leaden, her hair is twisted under a net in lumps, her arms dangle crookedly. She is bones hooked together with shrunken gut. She has been working as a servant for thirty-five years, she tells me. I’ve had her for fifteen years.
Cloux
The French call this place Le Clos-Luce, and it is a bright enclosure. I think of the royalty who have lived here through the years, the many mistresses who came and went. As I look across the lawn of the manor house I can see the little chapel of St. Hubert and the rooftops of the château; it often seems to me that I have been here before! With Francesco, Salai and Giovanni busy in the adjoining studio, I try to believe I am a young man...time is of no importance!
Salai rushed in as I worked at my easel.
“Look, look at this...”
He had found a sketch among my sketches, a sketch he made in Florence long ago, when he was about ten. It shows a bicycle. There it is on a scrap of paper, among pornographic scribbles and graffiti.
“You did pretty well, riding that thing...at first,” I reminded.
“There weren’t any brakes, remember?”
“Well, when I connected the chain drive to the pedals and adjusted the handlebars you rode it into the Arno.”
“Some splash!” said Francesco, coming in with Giovanni. “You could have gotten the bicycle out of the river...it floated,” reminded Giovanni.
“I couldn’t get hold of it...the current was too fast!”
“It should have been made of steel, to last.” I said.
“Let’s make a bicycle for the King,” suggested Salai. “I’ll show him my drawing...no, you make one for him. I can see the courtiers riding about...we can improve on the one we made in Florence.”
Cloux
Certainly a bird is an instrument performing according to mathematical laws which are within the capacity of man to understand. How does it climb, dive, spiral, hover? I asked these questions yesterday as I watched a flock of ducks along the Loire; I asked the same questions in Florence, in Milan, in Rome. If we ask questions we can eventually achieve some kind of answer. Persistence then!
Why does the heart pump a certain beat? What starts it pumping? Just when? Why, at that given moment? Does a nerve trigger it? Heart beats in the womb must be automatic.
If we understand the mechanism of the heart we may be able to help when it is damaged.
What are the essential differences between the heart of a squirrel and the heart of a man? Between the heart of a cat and a man? Between the heart of a cow and the heart of a man? Knowing the differences should help.
I must check through my anatomical drawings and compare notes and analyze the results. There is so much to be learned. And it is all there, ready to be apprehended.
Amore sol la mi fa remirare... love only makes me remember; love gives me pleasure...
So it was, long ago, when I loved, when I composed a rebus every day. There was so much to sing about. I played my lira da braccio. Made notations. As a boy, I thought seriously of becoming a musician. Perhaps a troubadour. At Andrea’s shop I created a silver harp, in the shape of a horse’s skull. The fame of that harp took me to Milan—changed my life.
“The song of men is the remedy to pain...”
I almost believed that.
I designed drums, multiple beaters; I could change the pitch of my drums through holes in the sides...I built three portable organs... I designed glissando recorders...I made a lute for Nicolaio del Turco...I made a wind-chest con gomito for the prioress...
Perhaps I should compose some rebuses for the King.
No.
The music I hear now is not that music.
I might have spent my life in the world of music; yet, often, even as I played, I puzzled over the enigmas of ocean and mountain, the enigmas of the body, of sound: why was one sound more resonant than another; why were there echoes; why was a woman’s voice unlike a man’s; why were there changes in the songs of birds?
Ah, those apprentice years!
Those apprentice years!
Getting up at dawn, working before breakfast, working till late, forgetting to eat, going for a swim in the Arno, rushing back to work, forgetting to sleep; work, work, it was a beautiful thing.
I was forever gathering plants, drying them, mounting them, identifying them. I roamed alone. Good to get away from the studio. I was forever dissecting animals and birds. With every bird I asked: how does it propel itself? How can man go aloft? Those birds, those caged birds...it was right to hoard money, to buy them, to liberate them. I followed them, I sat with them, I ran with them, studying every possible angle.
I filled sketchbooks with sketches of the hawk in flight, the raven, another with the sparrow.
My glider, based on the studies of the hawk, flew around our workshop. Again and again we tested it, wondering why it flew.
Andrea had me working bronze...there was so much, so much. He was always encouraging. What a fine master. What a fine artist. Now with gold leaf, now with new pigments, now something in the way of a discovery with silverpoint.
He had so little money. Sometimes he went hungry. Sometimes we had to find money for him and his family. Little Lila, little Lila had to have a toy. Tony had to have crayons. Bread, milk.
Writing this journal I am attempting to indicate the important things in my life. However, I am perplexed: I can’t decide what has been significant, I am trapped by small things...little things crowd the important. If life is a mural then every detail is important. As I write I am learning who I was. And the omissions, are they carelessness or are they deliberate? As for important lapses I must make an effort to fill them in, if there is time. If weariness does not overcome.
Looking back at Milan, at my first year there, I remember: no, remember is not the word: I have never forgotten that meeting at the Duke’s festa: I was playing a lute; she was introduced to me; she wanted me to repeat the song; we talked. Love? That is not the right word. But is there better?
Caterina had my mother’s name; that meant something to me.
I wish I could describe her as I saw her at the festa but she has become unreal through the years. I see her in the sunlight, I see her as I sketched her, I see her as she lay dead. There is no easy way to describe our love. I am unable to separate beauty from tragedy. I wish I could.
Caterina was nineteen. She was my blonde, my Leda. Was our love unique? Maybe it was rather ordinary. That does not matter. It matters that there were long brush strokes in the mind. There is no need to retouch our emotions. Certainly her death and our daughter’s death need no retouching.
I hear her singing one of my songs, a song I composed for her... I hear her laughing and I hear our daughter laughing, as they play together. Laughter—in memory—does not blur as words and faces blur.
Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one...we had three years together: there was money enough: there was time enough: then Milan was besieged. Both were killed by the bombardment. But before they died, Mother visited us and for a while I had two Caterinas, two loving women, two gentlewomen. Our child was learning to walk. Not many people know of those three years.
Cloux
Today, Maturina has served me her special pasta, several kinds of bread, dried figs, camembert, her three- layered pastry, and Moselle wine. She appreciates my fondness for sweets.
I asked her to sit down with me. As usual, she declined.
“I want your company...everyone’s away.”
Boltraffio, Francesco, Salai and others had gone for the day. Another holiday!
“Are you homesick?”
Her sad face became a little sadder. She sat down and clasped her hands in her lap and stared at them.
“I think you should visit your people.”
She nodded.
“...But I couldn’t leave you.”
“For a month or two?”
“It’s a long, long way to Vinci...and alone!”
“Salai is returning to Florence soon...”
“But I can’t...”
“You should see your family. People in Vinci would like to hear about us, how we’re getting along. We have money enough.”
Abruptly, hands to her face, she got up, and shuffled away. “I’m too old,” she said.
Cloux
As we rode along the Loire, following the river road, Francesco and I talked:
“So you received a letter from your mother yesterday? How are things at Vaprio?”
“Quiet...everyone is well. Papa has fully recovered. Mama says that conditions are very bad in Milan...fighting in the streets...hungry mobs...looting.”
“Vaprio continues to escape...I hope nothing changes that!”
“You asked me about the pigments I bought in Paris. We have a good assortment. I’ve been grinding them. We’ll have a beautiful green, that laurel green you’re fond of.”
“I’m still partial to green. I suppose you bought the Dutch pigments...”
Our horses, side by side, kept an even pace: both from the same stable, they liked walking together: the road was familiar to them: the afternoon was sunny; shafts of light rebounded from the Loire; a pair of squirrels chittered at us; hunters and their dogs passed—someone saluted us with a playful toot of his horn.
“Mama insists that we stay away from Milan...she warns us...she said that I’m to tell you.”
“I understand. We’re lucky to be here; Cloux is like Vaprio; beautiful countryside; a sketch here, a sketch there.”
“We should ride to Chambord.”
“I prefer the river trip...”
“Shall we go on the river?”
“All right, Cecchino. You arrange the trip. Certainly, there’s no finer château than Chambord. Let’s spend a few days there. We can find new paintings, new marbles and bronzes...from Milan...Athens...Rome...the greatness of stolen art...”
As we left our horses at the stable, Francesco asked:
“Did I mention that the Princess de Lamballe has a son? He’s my age. He wants to study painting. Do you want a Prince for a pupil?”
Cloux
The King and I talked far into the night.
Youth can be so sincere: youth can evaluate and assess: last night, on the part of others, he apologized: the Gascon archers were much on his mind...
“I have thought of them many, many times...those Gascon fools...nothing else to do...made a target of your cavello...our archers...”
Bronze for cannons...he knew about that...he searched about for a solution, as if it might be possible to cast the horse. As he saw it, he felt he had rescued me. Had he? I turned over that thought. Recompense? Was Cloux recompense? He did not say so. I think we both wished to believe it was respect, admiration. His talk made us feel awkward at times.
I had not complained: I had not mentioned the monument. Divulging his sincerity got Francis beyond his scope.
He referred to Amboise and Cloux as my home. Haven, of course. Retreat? Voluntary exile. Those thoughts could be brought in. I tried my best to avoid any embarrassing approach. Presently, he was excusing the battle of man against man. Again we were faltering. His innate shrewdness came to our rescue, and we discussed architectural changes at Amboise...
“We must do everything we can to improve it...it can never be like Chambord ...help me give it a manorial feeling...walk about with me tomorrow...let’s write down some of your ideas...that stairway...the entry...we have to make it less grim...harmony...”
IL CAVELLO...the words haunted us as we said good night.
I lay down under my canopy. The bed seemed to grow immense. On one side I saw a child, a bend in a river, a hill...the bed drifted...the room changed... I saw men pouring bronze into a mould... I saw a great horse in a city square...
SALAI—He is either in studio rags or elegant, foppish; he bursts with energy (has a brisk, haughty walk); he is quick with his pigments; he is as lean-featured as a fox; he is yellow-headed, tall. He has a wonderful laugh, a tooth-spread grin. His brown eyes are spoked with yellow. A girl-chaser. My Salai will never become an accomplished artist. I still have to remind him to wash himself. Ai, Salaino! And will he ever quit that foreign habit, the habit of smoking?