Part 16
Man and art drift apart.
However, who can create man? For that matter, who can create a common pigeon? Or the mangiest dog? Or a horse?
And there is such mystery in this arm, this wrist, these fingers as I write. I would like to be able to trace these impulses: the thought, as it takes place in the brain, the thought as it becomes the letter L, as it becomes da Vinci, as that word connects with another word.
A dot becomes a sketch. A sketch becomes a tree (a tree becomes a sketch). Must there be limitations to the mind’s probings? Experience can shackle us. I resent shackles. I still believe in flying.
I love the horse more than all the animals because he gives me a sense of flying. Racing across a field, half- naked, bareback, I was free as a boy. I was above the earth. Galloping along a road, my cape fluttering, I was outside myself. Trotting underneath the stars I sensed another kind of freedom. The clopping of the horse was a drumbeat for liberty. I was often carried away.
Nuzzling my hand, I stroked his head, thanking him for this ecstasy.
March 2, 1517
Yesterday, a traveler, a Spaniard, a navy officer, a guest of the King, claimed at dinner that a Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de León, had discovered a land, and named it Florida. He said that Ponce de Leon discovered it four or five years ago.
“Where is Florida? Is it an island?”
I had a page bring my maps but the Spaniard could not locate Florida. He was ill at ease as if he had divulged a state secret. The arrogant officer’s face still bothers me, like the face of a diseased rat. Florida? A Spanish name: does it have a special meaning?
“Mon Capitan was hunting for Bimini...the fountain, the great fountain, that cures all diseases,” the officer said, pushing aside my maps, less like a traveler than a spoiled child.
Travel...
Francesco has never read the Travels of Marco Polo, but he is reading the book to me; he reads in the afternoons, maybe when the warm sun is in our western windows, maybe at the pergola, if it is pleasant. Sometimes, when I am tired, he reads to me by candlelight, beside my ducal bed.
I respect Marco Polo. I believe what he wrote. He was no millioni. He was fortunate to find a Rustichello to record his story. Perhaps Francesco is mine. When I visited Polo’s prison cell in Genoa someone showed me the painstaking calendar he had chiseled into the wall beside his cot...Chinese characters along the top section of the calendar—a dragon underneath.
In Florence, in Andrea’s home, I read Polo’s book and dreamed of crossing the Lop Desert on camelback; I imagined visiting the Khan’s great cities; I dreamed of sketching palaces, temples, courtiers. I wanted to climb lofty mountains; I thought of mapping rivers.
I told this to Francesco; he smiled and nodded. India? China? Tibet? For him they are words. He thinks only of his Italy, his Vaprio. I am afraid he considers that I have stolen years from his homeland by keeping him here. He writes his mother and father faithfully; when there are lapses in their correspondence he is troubled.
Alas—Salai and Tony have left me!
At Cloux they have spent less and less time at their painting on their own or under my tutelage. They have become infatuated by the King’s women—the prostitutes. Finally, in desperation, I urged them to return to Florence. Tony has serious family problems and is needed. Salai plans to build a house for himself, on my vineyard property. I will miss them... I will miss them! They have been an important part of my life! Francesco is pleased there will be no more rivalry and friction. Yet, apart from that, ours was a sad farewell, lingering, the wind blowing about us harshly. It was our last good-bye, I know. I know. They promise to write to me. When are letters alive!
NOTE—Baron Sabran visited me last week. We strolled about the château, and he related another of his wild boar stories as he glanced over some of my paintings. I enjoyed his visit, his chattiness, his effort to be friendly.
Today, I hear that he has passed away: Time...today’s friend, tomorrow’s enemy.
Cloux
How well I remember:
I was riding with other horsemen, perhaps a dozen of us, Duke Lorenzo on his favorite mare, both of us a little to the front of the Medici pennants, flags, and jousting gear. As we approached the Duke’s stables at a canter, he leaned toward me, and said:
“He’s yours, Leonardo... I know you like him! Tell the stable boys where you want to have him kept.”
A smile, no more.
Cheppo was a three-year-old, four-gaited, almost as distinguished in bone and muscle as Cermonino, yet wider across the withers. I sketched him, studied him, studied him as I had studied Cermonino. Cheppo had a way of shaking his mane, flopping out his upper lip—nuzzling. He was a competent beggar: if I failed to remember a treat he would squeeze me against the stable wall and regard me sadly. Once I was in the saddle he was obedient, alert.
Cheppo had been Lorenzo’s favorite. Certainly no one else could have given him more competent training than the Duke. I was so pleased to have him and spoiled him, until I left for Milan—never to find another his equal.
My mirror writing came naturally; it began as a boy; I have always been ambidextrous; yet my left hand’s skill surpasses that of the right. There were reasons for my mirror writing: for abbreviations and symbols, the prying of idle apprentices, the intrusion of rivals, the circumvention of blabbers. It also satisfied me personally—esthetically.
Tonight, I am alone, writing: the manor house is still.
It is raining hard, and has been raining hard throughout the day. The fire in the fireplace is comfortable. The lamps are well trimmed.
As I sat at my desk, continuing the journal, someone tried to pry open the door lock. Metal on metal. I waited. Again I heard the intruder. The rain beat on the door; the door shook. I heard the lock give. Picking up a broken easel leg I waited, in case the lock gave way. The man outside coughed. He shuffled about, then left.
Perhaps I should get a dog.
Devotion is the best quality, human devotion and devotion to one’s art. Certainly my devotion to Francesco—trust and affection—has been reciprocated.
And, when I am dead, he will remember me. That is what artists need—men who care. If there are those who care, it is as if one’s atelier continues on and on. And, if the apprentices think along the guidelines already laid down, that is another continuation, another defiance.
One of these days, Francesco will return to his Vaprio, to paint. He may set up a studio in Milan. Perhaps there will come a time when he places a canvas and sits on his stool and paints my beard, thinning hair, protruding eyebrows, strange nose and strange eyes.
He will say to himself:
“That’s how the old man looked, at Cloux.
“Shall I paint on open window behind him...shall I paint some rock formations in the distance?”
Although the King and his court go out of their way to befriend me I could not tolerate this voluntary exile, this foreignness, this remoteness, were it not for Francesco. When he is away, at the château, in the village, in Paris, traveling somewhere, I am at a loss. I glance about: where is he? When will he return?
Often, when Cecchino comes back from one of his rambles, he has a gift or two, a plant, a seed, a leaf, a rock...he tells me what happened, details. He’s good at verbal paintings. Excited sometimes. No matter. He may have sketches to show me, charcoal, pencil, chalk.
“This is something you must take a look at, Maestro...here, this face? Isn’t it Greek, the nose, the forehead? And this gypsy woman, what about her? And this fellow...ever see anyone dressed like that? And this fountain...”
He sits on a bench beside my easel.
“We must ride to Paris...we must visit Cluny...the churches...there’s a great Van Eyck...and Chambord...now is the time to visit Chambord, when the court’s away...we ought to see how your canal and irrigation jobs are coming along...remember, Sr. Migliarotti is pretty lazy...”
Francesco hopes to make me feel like I am thirty years old.
It is May and I am in the Amboise garden, soaking up the noon sun, courtiers milling about on the many paths; yet I am alone, with my sketchbook, to write, to think. And I am thinking about Francesco, how he arrived at my studio in the pouring rain. Drenched. He had ridden from Vaprio. I don’t forget that rain, that stormy Florentine afternoon, that eager, wet face of his, his mud-spattered horse, his servants’ horses, how they looked in the street, as Francesco spoke to me. Cold, very cold, even for April. Tiled roofs were choked with rain. Drowned cobbles. Leaves and mud.
But there he was at my door, bowing, smiling.
“Maestro da Vinci...I want to be your pupil.”
That was seventeen years ago. Was he only fifteen? It doesn’t seem possible he was so young. He was my favorite from the start. I love Salai as a son, but this young man, this gracious young man, is friend and ardent disciple. Painter! When I have been his guest at Vaprio, I am honored. Francesco’s father and mother make their villa a place of rest. I know. I have fled there, from the condottieri. I am always protected by the Melzis.
His illness upset the studio.
“Melzi’s sick! Francesco’s sick!”
Fever day after day, hands like ice, coma. Shivering though his apartment was sunny. I thought he might have malaria. The plague. I called in the best doctors; I sent for Francesco’s father. His uncle came instead. Other doctors came. And in his delirium, Francesco painted a large canvas, with a flock of white birds in the sky, carrying a blue tree. October, November—bad months for sickness. But by December he was up, skinny, hungry, forever hungry.
And there was his father’s gratitude to me, his uncle’s gratitude, as if I had been the physician. That summer, as Francesco convalesced at Vaprio, I vacationed there. The family purchased my portrait of A Boy. That rolling land, the swift Adda, those canals, the villa gardens with their Roman statues and roses...roses...the women in the gardens, picking roses. But I have written about this before? ...I am getting forgetful.
We sketched and painted.
I remember a puppy lying in my lap as I dozed in one of the gardens, the one with the apple trees. Good food, good wine, summer, that was Villa Vaprio. I learned about summer there—what summer really means.
Cloux
The King wants me to move to a spacious studio in the château. I prefer a smaller room. Small rooms sometimes discipline the mind. I have explained that my studio, in the manor house, has everything essential to my work: cupboards, cabinets, tables, shelves.
“Do you need pigment...oils...turpentine...brushes?” He is impatient... you must want something!
We have space for our paintings. We have the right amount of light. We have quiet. And on our mantelpiece we have a place for my Greek and Roman antiquities—things I collected in Campania (along with malaria): iridescent vases, bronze and alabaster lamps, household figurines, a few coins. I have one with a porpoise leaping. The Greeks were master minters-designers. Francesco says he knows a place in Paris that sells Greek antiquities. If I can ever get there I want to purchase an ivory Venus for my desk. We have not surpassed those ancient artisans.
Such things make a bright enclosure.
I am fortunate...I have had many friends.
I had many friends in Florence, Milan, Rome, Genoa, and Venice. I shall name a few: Marco d’Oggiono, Vitelli, Tomaso Masini, Amalia, Father Pacioli, Ferrera, Machiavelli, Francesco, Mona, Cristofer, Andrea...and now King Francis.
I see them in my sketches as I leaf through them now and then: Benci, in pen and ink, beside a juniper tree; Andrea, at work on a bronze figurine; here is a pastel of Ambrogia, puttering over his careful palette; here is red-headed Filippo Lippi finishing the background for a madonna; here is Cecelia, sipping wine, asking for sweets...Madonna Lisa and her graceful beauty, her soft voice, patience...
She and I had many hours for the gamboa...we ate together...played cards, talked about my Anghiari...when she posed I had singers for her... I loaned her little sums; she lent me money; she sent me baskets of fruit; I gave her sketches and drawings.
If all these friends could be with me, at Cloux, to walk with me, visit the château and its gardens, prowl the mirror hallways, enjoy my studio, my latest paintings...talk...talk...
As an apprentice I longed to fix in my mind every detail: I must look and look, a second and a third time and a fourth. I must fill a notebook. Quickly. I must follow that bearded Corsican and draw his face.
All of us apprentices respected Andrea del Verrochio, as artisan, as teacher. We were at home in his workshop. We were proud of his accomplishments, proud of our own accomplishments; at the same time we were eager, pushy, ready to challenge other artists. Ready to consider a commission, evaluate it, carry it through to perfection.
And what were my best years, the best of my mature years, I ask myself? Those dedicated to my mural, my outcry against war, years that included many paintings? Or was it the time dedicated to the creation of the Sforza horse—IL COLOSSO? If I could have had the metal and cast the statue it would have been that success above others. And the years that went into The Last Supper: Three years. There were also the years of dissection and anatomical studies. Best years? There were the easel paintings. I suppose there have never been any best years. There were discoveries and discovery made another discovery possible...and so the years went along.
Last night, Francesco burst into my bedroom.
“I can’t find them,” he exclaimed.
“What?”
“I have looked everywhere...your letters are missing.”
“What letters, Francesco?”
“I have your list...letters from King Francis...from Duke Lorenzo...from Christopher Columbus...Machiavelli...Father Pacioli...Beatrice d’Este...Cesare Borgia...Salai...”
“Did you open the trunk in the storeroom? They may be in there. Look carefully. I want to destroy some of them...let’s go over everything together.”
“We had them in Milan...”
“Look again... I’m sure you’ll find them.”
(Yesterday, in the château’s hall of mirrors I saw Caterina: she was talking with a young man, a man her age: she had on a summer gown, with one breast almost bare: she smiled at her companion who was dressed in grey.)
Cloux
June 1, 1517
After I completed my silverpoint of Francis, he ordered his tailor to cut an elegant velvet smock for me. In carnelian. Two pockets. Belt of silver lozenges hooked together on braided silver wires.
Francesco is framing the portrait and it will hang in the château library, along with a Rafael, a de Predis, a Bosch, a Dürer. Francis has his eyes on Francesco’s new canvas, his Columbine, but I tell the King it is not finished.
“Not finished? Of course it is finished, Mon Père.” But Francesco listens to me.
I continue with my drawings of the deluge: I go on with the terror, the falling of buildings, the erosion of life, the force of wind, the weight of torrents... I go on with this feeling... I must express it.
The gloomy air must be beaten by the wind and perpetual hail...there must be ancient trees, uprooted trees, torn to pieces by the fury...the fragments of mountains must spill into valleys...immensity must burst the barrier of rivers.
It is my last judgment...certainly there is nothing that does not have an ending ...twisted forms...fear...puny man...
I hear the resounding air, the lamentations.
Mountains are to be torn open for their minerals...all animals will languish...all will be pursued or destroyed...trees will be laid level...due to man’s malice there will be great losses...how much better for man to go back to hell.
Cloux
It is late.
A fire burned all evening in my studio, and King Francis has sat by the fire with me, talking. He was depressed because bankers have been demanding exorbitant sums: he plans to sell royal titles to recoup funds.
“All this will take months...there are many hazards...”
Abruptly:
“Do you see something in my face, something ominous?”
“I don’t understand...”
“It seems to me...I feel that the future has something tragic... I’m worried... Do you believe in foretelling?”
He had been jousting: I blamed fatigue. But he would not be put aside by a few casual words.
“Mon Père...tell me...some say that you can foretell? Is that true?”
“I can not.”
“Who can?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“Divinations...those occult doings...forget them. You must think clearly, your Majesty. Don’t let men hoodwink you. Nobody knows tomorrow.”
“Tonight, as I walked through the tunnel from the château...tonight I had three guards... I was afraid...like a Borgia...assassinations...pretty bad...”
He laughed at himself.
It has been sunny and cool for several days: I have gone on pleasant walks, along the river, through the château gardens, through the grove that leads into the King’s forest: paths are becoming familiar: I shake hands with old trees. At the château I have watched the King play tennis: they are having a tournament. Francis plays with ugly ferocity. His partners play warily. I see that diplomacy begins on the tennis courts.
Studio
September 3, 1517
My lamp is guttering. Candle stubs are smoking.
Was it thirty years ago, in Milan, that I understood? Windows were open and heat-lightning was flickering beyond my studio. My anatomy drawings were spread on the corner table. Then I saw. Saw clearly. Knew. Saw that man’s blood resembles the tides of the sea; from the seat of the heart it circulated throughout the body. Let an artery or vein burst or suffer injury and blood raced to the injured spot. Incessant currents of the blood, passing through the arteries and veins, caused them to thicken and become callous. So, I had additional proof of circulation. Each dissection revealed further confirmation of the system. Why was I slow in grasping the obvious?
I have explained my theory to some but was often rebuffed and yet when I told her—using my drawings—she grasped the significance. She understood many things. And when she lay dying there seemed little left for me... I held her hand. Her eyes were closed. Grey eyes. She never spoke. God, how I stumbled down those rat infested stairs, stairs with a cross gouged in each step. Ah, those flooded streets!
Some men of science and art have copies of my first treatise. Some. They hesitate. Resent. Last year I explained circulation to King Francis. He was not interested; he fondled his diamond-studded belt and stared stupidly at me. I must tell Francesco that the treatise is packed in the third trunk—the one with the smashed lock.
I must sequence my drawings:
1 - Skin
2 - Muscles
3 - Tendons
4 - Bones
Indicate effect of emotions, labor, illness, age.
Cloux
October 15, 1517
Francesco is copying this:
I have been unable to write or work for several days. These days she is in my mind all of the time. Maturina begs me to eat...my appetite has gone. The weather is perfect but I can not go outside. Here, in my studio, I have her portrait to console me; sometimes I have to turn away from it. I thought that she would live for many years. I thought that she was contented. Her family loved her.
The letter, written by her brother, says nothing about how Mona died. Was she ill a long while? I can’t remember when she wrote me last time...was it as much as a year ago? Why am I confused? Did the plague kill her? Was she with her family? How they will miss her! The letter took four months to reach me—a hundred and twenty days! She died in Genoa, on the 2nd or 3rd of July. I can’t make out the date.
The King knows of her death. Francesco told him, because I can not ride with the hunters... I can not ride... Francis has presented me with a small jeweled hourglass. A note accompanied it.
Life and death...old friends, old enemies.
My face is a cemetery.
Gossips said that Mona was my mistress.
We were friends.
In those days, when I was beginning her portrait, I had Gorgio play for her: she liked his viola da gamba skill. He would usually appear a little late, but always with a smile, a bow. Sometimes a choir boy sang motets; it seems to me he recited poetry too. Did he always wear a brown cloak?
Our sittings were often far apart: there was illness in her family: she was away from Florence for months at a time: on her return it was hard to recapture our mood. She was patient with me but I have often stood before her picture quite perplexed...especially if the light had changed...my colors had changed.
I was late for one of our sittings and she put on an apron and scrubbed brushes and mortars, made my apprentices scurry; then laughed at my objections.
“Next time you’re late, I’ll clean your leggio,” she said, and smiled teasingly.
Her smile...I used to think of it as hiding family secrets, feminine secrets, her own loneliness (“Yes, Leonardo...yes...there are times...”)
I could not always arrange for a musician; when she posed during those silences I felt the bonds of our friendship...when we ate together, when she described her travels, it was another aspect of our friendship.
I was welcome at her home. Her distinguished husband bought fine pieces of art. They were happy to share.
At her home and in my studio we often talked about my Anghiari and she was eager to follow its progression.
October 29th
Masculine skies...feminine skies...at this season of the year they are mostly masculine, with snow falling, wind blowing. My feet are cold because of the weather, or is it because my fireplace chimney needs cleaning? Cold, I have moved to the library.
As I mull over my papers I observe the great books around me. I must concentrate. I must push on. There is so much to be done with the organization of my treatises. So much.
Maturina rouses me.
“You are cold, Maestro...it is chilly in this room.”
So, I am cold!
Perhaps I have cathedral sickness!
It is good to be writing again. My journal suffers when my hand is unsteady.
Francesco is away; that troubles me.
I wish I were young and could bend horseshoes instead of two sheets of paper.
Maturina has found a bird stricken by the cold; we hover over it. A dove. A flyer. Where are my sketches for the glider? The one Francesco and I tested. He must find it for me when he returns.
Interruptions...interruptions...
Francesco has adopted a stray cat, from among the dozens that haunt the château. The cat beds under his easel, among cleaning rags. He always stinks of turpentine and oil.
I have never seen a cat so eager to sleep; perhaps half of his life has gone into carousing. He is bone white, has one orange ear, a twisted nose, one orange foot, and a black-tipped tail. His greenish eyes glare out of skinniness.
Crabby.
Maturina hates him.
Francesco calls him “Michelangelo.”
My four-poster must have been made for a cardinal or bishop, or someone’s mistress. I am tempted to remove the garnet canopy and drapes. But it’s a snug bed when it’s cold. I often lie there and watch the fire playing about. It’s a chance to weigh the past—and plan ahead.
Sometimes, when I am very tired and have turned in early, Francesco rolls his easel into the room, and sits on the side of the bed and we talk brush strokes or ways of grinding the new pigments, how much overpainting is feasible, the dangers of black as an under pigment. Shop talk.
Cloux
ANDREA SALAINO—Why did I adopt him in the first place?
That’s an easy answer: because I loved him!
What a waif Salai was! I took him into my household, my studio, twenty-some years ago. It can’t be possible that so much time has lapsed.