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Title: Leonardo da Vinci, Pathfinder of Science

Author: Henry S. Gillette

Release date: June 2, 2017 [eBook #54827]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEONARDO DA
VINCI, PATHFINDER OF SCIENCE ***

Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, after a woodcut published in Lives of the
Painters, by Vasari. The Latin inscription reads
LIONARDO DA VINCI PITT. E SCVLTOR FIOR.
Leonardo da Vinci, Painter & Sculptor of Florence.

Immortals of Science

LEONARDO
DA VINCI
Pathfinder of Science

Henry S. Gillette
PICTURES BY THE AUTHOR

Franklin Watts, Inc., 575 Lexington Avenue
New York 22, New York

To my wife Trudy
FIRST PRINTING

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-8426
Copyright © 1962 by Franklin Watts, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America

DESIGNED BY BERNARD KLEIN

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It is natural that, within the confines of these few pages, many facets of
Leonardo’s extraordinary personality will be missing. That he was an artist,
a man of letters, a poet and a philosopher are well known. That he was also
a man of humor, as well as a prophet whose vision extended far beyond his

times, are facts that I have also tried to include in this biography. There are
many gaps in our knowledge of his life, and these I have sometimes filled
with my own imagination to give some continuity to his story. Little is
known of his early days, his period of travels after leaving Milan and his
years in Rome. There is, too, a certain mystery in his relations to those
around him, since our descriptions of him derive mostly from his often
cryptic, personal notes and from biographers who wrote of him many years
after he had died.

This book is about Leonardo the scientist, and to fully write of his many
accomplishments would require an encyclopedic mind. My intent has been
to extract the essence of his story in the hopes that it would arouse the
enthusiasm of a reader to further his interest in those other, more fully
documented books—and, above all, in the notebooks that Leonardo himself
wrote.

—H. S. G.

Rome, August 1961

Contents

1 The Shield 1
2 Florence 9
3 A Studio of His Own 20
4 Years of Frustration 28
5 Milan 37
6 The Monument 49
7 Success 60
8 The French 73
9 Cesare Borgia 86
10 Shattered Hopes 98
11 The Return to Milan 114
12 Rome 129
13 The Last Years 147
14 Mankind’s Debt to Leonardo 159
Significant Dates in Leonardo’s Life 162
Index 164

1

1
The Shield

Dusk was beginning to gather in the valley at the foot of Monte Albano as
young Leonardo turned toward home. Stopping by a rushing stream to wash
the dust of the day’s explorations from his face, he laid aside his cap and his
leather pouch and plunged his hands into the cold mountain water. He felt
the force of the current and watched the whirl and flow of bubbles around
his bare arms. There was the same feeling, he thought, to the flow of air he
had experienced blowing around the rocky crags of the mountains. 2

This evening, however, there was no time to sit awhile and think. He was in
a hurry to get home. Hastily scooping the water in his cupped palms, he
splashed it over his head and face, then shaking the water from his hair he
rose and picked up his cap. He took a satisfied look in his pouch, slung it
over his shoulder and headed down the stony trail to the village of Vinci.

Vinci was a small hill town situated on a spur of Monte Albano. Its castle
and the bell tower above the houses seemed like sentinels guarding the
slopes of vineyards and olive groves spreading down into the valley.

Leonardo da Vinci, which means “Leonardo from the town of Vinci,”
thought about his home. He knew that he had been born in Anchiano, near
Vinci, on April 15 of the year 1452, to a peasant girl named Caterina. At the
age of five, he had been sent for by his natural father, Piero da Vinci, to
come and live at his family’s house in Vinci, a comfortable and roomy place
with a spacious garden. Piero, five years before, had married Albiera di
Giovanni Amadori, a girl of sixteen. They had had no children of their own,

and Leonardo was welcomed into the home with affection by his young
stepmother.

When Leonardo was about eleven, young Albiera died, leaving a darkened
and saddened house. Two years later his father married another girl by the
name of Francesca Lanfredini. Although laughter and song soon replaced
the grief, Leonardo never forgot the love of his first stepmother.

Also in the house lived Antonio, his grandfather, who was eighty-five, 3
his grandmother, his uncle Allessandro Amadori and family, and, best
of all, his uncle Francesco. The da Vincis, who could trace their beginnings
in the town back to the thirteenth century, had always been respected
lawyers and landowners. Because Uncle Francesco was neither a lawyer nor
a great landowner, the people of the town said he did nothing; but he tended
the family vineyards, and, to the delight of Leonardo, he raised his own
silkworms.

As Leonardo entered the main gate, he noticed that the oil lamps were being
lit above the stalls of the marketplace, and the lively confusion of the last
hours of business was in full swing. People nodded and smiled to him, for
as a boy of fifteen he was already a striking figure. He was tall with long,
auburn hair falling to his shoulders and his face was so charming that it was
frequently compared to those of the angels painted in the chapels of the
church. The music of his lute, the sound of his voice, and the gentleness of
his person were such that all hearts and doors were open to him.

Tonight, however, Leonardo avoided the usual invitations to stop and chat.
His father would be back from Florence; he had been going there more and
more frequently as his fame as a lawyer grew. Now Leonardo was thinking
that he had almost finished the assignment his father, half jokingly, had
given him many weeks ago—so many weeks ago that he was sure his father
had forgotten about it. At that time a peasant, whose skill in providing fish
and game for the table of Piero’s big household was greatly appreciated,
had asked a favor of him. This man had a round, wooden shield cut from a
fig tree and he had asked Piero to have a design painted on it for him in
Florence. Piero, who had noticed the sketches his son was making of plants,
rock formations, and scenes in his wanderings about the countryside,
decided to test his son’s ability and gave the shield to the boy. In the secrecy

of his room, into which no one was allowed, Leonardo had smoothed and
prepared the wood, and on it he was painting a monster. 4

Scrambling over rocks, through streams, and into caves, Leonardo had been
in the habit of gathering all manner of creeping and crawling life. Patiently
he would bring these home in his leather pouch and carefully study and
draw them. Maggots, bats, butterflies, locusts, and snakes added to the
confusion of the boy’s already cluttered room. Everywhere he went he
collected the things that aroused his curiosity; and as a result, his room was
always filled with rocks, dried plants, flowers, the skeletons of small
animals—and his pages of notations and drawings. Now Leonardo had
combined the features of these small forms of life to make a monster—
emerging from a dark grotto and breathing fire and smoke—a thing more
terrifying than if done from imagination, for each feature was a duplicate of
a reality in nature.

Unobserved, Leonardo reached the privacy of his room and emptied 5
this day’s collection on a table beside the shield. He lit a candle and
examined his catch—a lizard and a large grasshopper. These would
complete his picture; and, the most extraordinary find of the day—a fossil
seashell found high on the slopes of a mountain! How did it get there? Was
it a result of the flood about which his religion had taught him? Had an
immense wave deposited this ancient sea-life high on the Albano
mountains? Looking more closely he saw that it was a type of sea-snail and
in almost perfect preservation. This he would have to think about and
examine later.

Now, however, the picture must be completed, for he hoped to surprise his
father in the morning. But just then, Leonardo heard the family stirring
below and his father calling him to dinner. Reluctantly he left his table,
made himself presentable and went downstairs.

“Ah, Leonardo,” his father said when he appeared in the family dining
room. “I saw Benedetto dell’Abbaco on the way in town and he tells me
you haven’t been to school as often as you should—is that true?”

“Yes, Papa—but I’m not doing badly.”

“Signor Benedetto might agree, at least in your mathematics. He tells me
you ask him questions that often make him stop and think. But Leonardo,
you have other subjects—Latin, reading, and writing—as well as
arithmetic. You mustn’t neglect the others, my boy. But come—let us eat.”

Together they sat down with the rest of the family—a large, prosperous, and
happy gathering. When dinner was over Leonardo made hurried excuses to
all the family, protesting that he was too tired to sing, and escaped back into
his room. For a long time he worked, unaware that the house was growing
quieter. Finally he laid down his brushes and his maul stick, pushed his
chair back and smiled a triumphant smile. The shield was finished.
Tomorrow he would ask his father in to look at it.

Conscious now that everybody had gone to bed, Leonardo blew out his 6
candle and opened the shutters. The night sky was a panoply of stars
and only here and there was the dark loneliness of the valley relieved by
pinpoints of light. Leonardo leaned his head against the window frame and
stared at the blue infinity above him. What exactly were the stars? Did all of
them move around the earth? What was the haze that obscured the horizon
ever so faintly? What was that sea-snail doing in the mountains? Why?
How?

The next morning Leonardo found his father and Uncle Francesco in the
garden deep in conversation about their vineyards and olive groves.

“Papa, I have a surprise for you up in my room—can you come now?”

“Yes, Leonardo. What is it you have found now—not a better way to raise
my grapes, I’ll wager!”

The elder da Vinci put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and went with him
up to the door of his room.

“Wait here, Papa, until I say to come in.”

Leonardo unlocked his door, lifted the cloth from the shield standing on the
easel and opened the shutter just a trifle so that a soft light filled the room.

“Papa—you can come in now.”

Piero entered—he had long forgotten the round piece of wood—and
suddenly he froze in the middle of the room.

“Have mercy on me!” he said when he saw the horrible fire-breathing
creature. In the dimness of the room, the monster and the murky cave from
which it was emerging were terribly real. Piero actually started to back out
of the room in fright, when Leonardo laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Papa, this work has served its purpose; take it away, then, for it has 7
produced the intended effect.”

The shield was the talk of the house; it was set up and marveled at. As for
Piero, he resolved to take it with him to Florence secretly and sell it, giving
his peasant friend some cheap substitute that he would buy in the
marketplace.

So, a few days later, Leonardo’s father saddled his horse and had the shield
wrapped and packed in his saddlebag. Also, unknown to his son, he took
some of the boy’s drawings. Piero had now realized that Leonardo might
have a rare talent. Moreover, he was planning to move to Florence with his
family so that he could be nearer to the Badia, or the law offices of the city,
for whom he had been frequently employed. There, thought Piero,
Leonardo’s talent could be developed under the best of teachers.

It was many days before Leonardo’s father returned; when he did, he
gathered his family together and it was obvious to all that he had exciting
news. First, Piero announced that he and Francesca would move to Florence
since he and a law partner were now engaged in securing office space from
the Badia. It was a handsome office centrally located opposite the palace of
the Podestà, or chief magistrate.

Then, turning to Leonardo, he said: “I have shown some of your drawings
to Master Andrea del Verrochio and his enthusiasm for your skill has
decided me to place you in his studio as an apprentice. What do you 8
think of that?”

Leonardo was stunned. Verrochio, the great artist and sculptor! Florence!
The city-state whose power and influence had spread far beyond her own
walls. Now he would study in earnest; now he would find the answers to his
never-ending questions. He embraced his father and could say nothing.

9

2
Florence

The Italy of Medieval and Renaissance days was not a unified country as it
is today. It was, of course, part of the Holy Roman Empire, but the main
governing forces in the land were in the city-states, of which Florence was
one of the most powerful. A city-state was much more than a city—it was
almost a kingdom in itself. Each had its own army, and very often there
were large-scale wars between such city-states as Milan, Naples, Rome,
Venice—and of course Florence. The Italians of those days considered
themselves citizens—not of Italy as a whole—but of their particular cities;
people coming from other cities were looked upon as “foreigners,” even
though they looked the same, wore the same style of clothing, and 10
spoke the same language!

All the power, influence, and ideas of this period in history were
concentrated within the city-states. A man might be a very fine artist,
engineer, or philosopher, but unless he managed to bring his work to the
attention of the ruler of one of the cities, he was likely to remain in
obscurity. Thus it was that Piero da Vinci, knowing that his son would have
to have a powerful patron if he was to succeed at all, brought Leonardo to
Florence.

In 1467, when the da Vinci family entered Florence, the city had been under
the rule of the Medici family for some thirty-three years. As it was in most
of these city-states, the head of the ruling family—at this time Piero de’
Medici—was in charge of the government of Florence and the surrounding

countryside. But Piero was fifty-one years old and ailing, and he had only
two years of life left at the time of Leonardo’s arrival.

None of this was in Leonardo’s mind as he rode with his father through one
of the great, guarded gates of the city. He was thinking, not of politics, but
of the fabulous sights that awaited him in this rich center of commerce and
activity.

The narrow streets of the city were so crowded that is was necessary for the
da Vinci family, together with their servants and the donkeys laden with
household effects, to go single file. Leonardo rode behind his father,
shouting questions, and, at the same time, turning his head from side to side
so as not to miss a thing. Brought up in the solitude of mountains and
valleys, and accustomed to the quiet life of a village, the boy of fifteen was
overwhelmed with the excitement of the city.

11

Leonardo rode behind his father, turning his head from side to side so as not
to miss a thing.

The party was now making its way past the booths of hundreds of 12
shops, past magnificent palaces built by wealthy merchants, and
across squares filled with the produce from hundreds of farms. Every now
and then, Leonardo caught a glimpse of the cathedral dome, one of the
architectural marvels of its day. He had seen the cathedral with its bell
tower and also the towering spire of the Palazzo della Signoria—which
means the Palace of the Lords—from a hill as they approached the city.
This palace still stands and today it is called the Palazzo Vecchio or Old
Palace. But now these sights were lost to view in the midst of the narrow
streets, other churches, flags, and the lines of washing that seemed to hang
everywhere. Frequently, Piero’s party was pressed against a wall as a
procession shoved its way through a street. Sometimes it was by armed
horsemen escorting a rich banker to some appointment; other times it was a
file of cowled monks observing some saint’s day and carrying huge wax
candles before them.

After they had crossed the magnificent square of the Signoria, in front of
the Palace of the same name, Piero leaned down from his horse and asked a
blacksmith where Verrochio’s studio might be. The man shouted above the
din of clanging hammers:

“Everybody knows that shop, Signor—it’s down that street and to the right!
You can’t miss it—ask anybody!”

The man was right, for the workshop of Verrochio was not hard to 13
find. Verrochio was considered one of Florence’s finest artists and
everybody knew of him. He was a short, broad-shouldered man of thirty-
two with a round face, shrewd eyes, a thin mouth and dark curly hair that
reached almost to his shoulders. In his workshop were two other
apprentices—young Pietro Perugino, who was six years older than
Leonardo, and Lorenzo di Credi, a boy of eight. They all lived in the house
together and, after Leonardo was shown where he would sleep and had put
away the few things he had brought with him from Vinci, he was taken to
the place where he would work.

Verrochio, whose real name was Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni,
had taken the name of his teacher, a renowned goldsmith, as was the custom
in the shops at that time. Verrochio himself was a skilled goldsmith. But to

be an artist and to have your own workshop in the year 1467 meant being a
specialist in many things. Into Verrochio’s place came a great variety of
artistic work—painting pictures, sculpting and architecture, goldsmithing,
designing and making armor, creating decorated furniture, designing
mechanical toys, and even preparing stage scenery.

Verrochio, of course, would attend to the greater creative tasks, while his
apprentices did the chores of grinding colors, preparing panels for painting,
making armatures for his sculpture, hewing to size the marble for a statue,
preparing molds for casting, building models for a new palace or church—
in fact, all the countless number of preparations to the finished work.
Sometimes, if an apprentice showed extraordinary talent, he would be
allowed to work on the finished painting or assist with the final strokes of
the chisel. Verrochio was a busy man and a successful artisan. To further his
own ambitions, he was now absorbed in the perfecting of 14
mathematical perspective and the study of geometry.

The curious Leonardo had come to the right man. In Verrochio’s workshop,
where so many crafts were learned at the same time, his powers of
observation were able to develop; his hunger to know about mathematics
was fed. In Verrochio, Leonardo found a teacher who would encourage
these investigations and urge him to study a wide variety of subjects.
Leonardo now felt his lack of a fuller education. He started to borrow
mathematics textbooks and to seek out men who could teach him what he
needed to know. After each day’s work was over, Leonardo would continue
on into the night, catching up on his neglected studies and discovering for
himself new areas of thought such as anatomy, movement and weight,
botany, and another subject which was to occupy much of his later years—
hydraulics, or the useful application of water power.

In these early years, Leonardo commenced his famous Notes. He had
developed his own “secret” writing in his childhood at Vinci. These notes—
consisting of observations, proportions, and reminders to himself—were
inscribed on his drawings. They were, however, unreadable to the eye—
until held up to a mirror. Leonardo was lefthanded and could write fluently
in this strange manner. It could have been for many reasons that he did so—
perhaps from a natural desire for secrecy, perhaps for reasons of safety from

possible enemies. In those days, plots and counterplots of all sorts were
commonplace—a rumor or a whisper in the right ear could destroy a
reputation or financially ruin a career.

Leonardo was popular in Florence. He traveled with the young men of 15
the town, and his handsome appearance and enormous strength (he
could bend a horseshoe in his hands) made him a welcome figure in many
houses. He continued to play the lute and the lyre. He wrote poetry,
composed his own music, and sang with a pleasing voice. His blue eyes
were kind and his manner gentle. He always avoided arguments and
competition when he could. When he walked through the marketplace and
came upon the caged birds, he would buy them—just to set them free.
Indeed, his love of animals had become so great that he no longer ate meat.

During these years in Verrochio’s service, Leonardo grew in stature as an
artist and rapidly developed into a scientist of promise. He amazed his
master when he painted an angel in an altarpiece that had been assigned to
Verrochio. He painted it in the new oil colors recently acquired from the
Flemish painters. So astounded was Verrochio with its grace that the master
vowed he would never lift a brush again if a “mere child” could so surpass
him. In this picture there is a tuft of grass beside a kneeling figure, also
painted by Leonardo, which indicates by its careful attention to detail the
amount of research he did before committing it to canvas. In other paintings
he made beautiful drawings of a lily and studies of animals and crabs,
giving a hint of what was to come. For, in these preparatory works,
Leonardo could not be satisfied until he had thoroughly studied the
characteristics of plants and animals in general. Later in life, he was to
become more and more absorbed in these researches until they occupied the
greater part of his time.

In 1469, when Leonardo had been in Florence only two short years, 16
Piero de’ Medici died and was succeeded by his son, the mighty
Lorenzo de’ Medici—or Lorenzo the Magnificent, as he was often called.
Now the city of Florence felt itself under the control of a man who really
knew how to use power. Lorenzo was Florence; nothing happened without
his making it happen, and he became one of the most prominent patrons of

art and scholarship in all of Italy. If Leonardo was to make any headway in
Florence, he would have to make himself noticed by this new Medici ruler.

But Leonardo was not yet worrying about how to make himself a success. A
young man of seventeen and still an apprentice of Verrochio, Leonardo
continued to meet new friends with new ideas. It was at about this time that
he met Benedetto Aritmetico, a prominent scholar and mathematician. It is
probable that this man drew Leonardo’s attention to the practical needs of
industry and commerce so that some of Leonardo’s energy was directed
toward the study and improvement of existing machinery and the invention
of labor-saving devices. At any rate, during these months Leonardo was
walking the streets of Florence, wandering into shops and mills, making
careful observations of all the various methods of manufacturing. The more
he saw, the more he thought to himself that one man could do the work of
many—if only he had the proper machine. He even made drawings of
laborers with picks and shovels to see if he could determine by mathematics
better ways to swing and hold the tools.

In addition, the particular problems in the engagement of joints 17
fascinated Leonardo, leading him on to the study of more general
problems such as the transmission of power by gears and the strength of
materials. He also spent long hours studying geometrical theories and
reading Greek and Latin classical works. Laboriously, he translated these
into his own formulas and made comments about them in his notebooks. He
attended the lectures of John Argyropoulos, a Greek, who talked of the
Aristotelian theories of natural history, and who had translated Aristotle’s
Physics.

The study of physics opened to Leonardo a whole new world of ideas. He
experimented with cogwheels, and with the improvement of ways to lift
weights. He became fascinated with the then-known laws of friction and
built a bench upon which he tested various devices for the overcoming of
frictional drag; he also tested the natural power of one body to set another
in motion. This bench with its rollers and weights was similar in principle to
the one used by the French physicist A. C. Coulomb almost three centuries
later. Leonardo was indeed growing into a man of genius. Now everything
from the stars to the flight of an insect occupied his thoughts.

At the same time, he continued his studies of drawing and painting.
Frequently he was seen in Florence following someone whose face had
interested him—sometimes for the better part of the day—and then at night
he would fill a page with sketches of this same person from memory.

By developing his powers of observation in this way Leonardo came 18
to rely more upon his own experiences and less upon what he was told
or what he read. This brought him into frequent conflict with the
astrologers, the alchemists and even the Church. The astrologers were men
who told fortunes by the movements of the stars. The alchemists, with their
knowledge of chemistry, pretended to be able to talk with ghosts and to tell
the future. These men Leonardo held in contempt. Although he was a
devoutly religious man, Leonardo objected to many attitudes of the Church
which he considered outmoded and which stood in the way of scientific
progress; because of these objections, he was frequently called a pagan.

In this same year of 1469, Leonardo met the aging Paolo del Pozzo
Toscanelli. Toscanelli was a famous physician, philosopher and
mathematician who, just the previous year, had marked off on the cathedral
floor the famous meridian line for determining the dates of the various
Church holidays. The old man and the boy became not only the famous
teacher and ardent pupil, but close friends.

One evening at Toscanelli’s house, the old man showed young Leonardo a
globe of the world. Much of it was marked “unknown,” but Toscanelli had
filled in some areas from his own careful calculations and from the stories
told him by sailors and travelers. Visions of distant lands, remote mountain
ranges and vast oceans filled Leonardo’s imagination as Toscanelli spoke.
Then Toscanelli tapped the globe to the westward of Spain, saying:

“Here will be found a quicker route to India than the world has ever known
before.” Then, turning to Leonardo he murmured, “You will see it happen,
my boy, in your lifetime.”

One by one, Leonardo’s childhood questions were being answered. 19
Toscanelli told him much about the stars, the fossils of creatures long
disappeared from the world, and how he believed the earth’s early
formation took place. He also taught the boy the art of drawing a map. Not

only did Toscanelli greatly influence Leonardo, but the course of history as
well. Ten years after Toscanelli had died, Christopher Columbus, struggling
westward over the Atlantic Ocean, was using a map that old Toscanelli had
sent him, carefully notated with all his accumulated wisdom.

Leonardo, in keeping with his own philosophy, tested all this knowledge
with experiments of his own. Because astronomical instruments were rare,
crude, and costly, Leonardo borrowed them where he could and later set
about making his own. He went on to experiment with time measurements,
devising the first example of the application of a pendulum to regulate a
clock; by means of two springs, it measured the minutes as well as the
hours. So for the next three years Leonardo worked in Verrochio’s studio
and continued his studies and experiments.

In 1472 Leonardo’s name was inscribed in the Red Book of the Painters of
Florence, which was the official guild, or artists’ union of that time. But he
was so poor that he couldn’t afford the dues and hardly had the money for
the necessary candles to be burnt before St. Luke, the patron saint of all
painters. Although his father now had a spacious apartment in a house on
one of the main squares of Florence, Leonardo continued to live with
Verrochio. In fact, he stayed on past his formal training period for about
four more years, grateful to the kindly man for the food and bed he offered.

20

3
A Studio of His Own

On Sunday, April 26, 1478, the bells of the cathedral were ringing loudly
over Florence, almost drowning out the noise of the crowds in the street.
Shutters were being thrown open and people were shouting excited
questions at each other. Distantly at first, but growing in volume, was
another sound—an ugly one—the sound of an approaching, angry mob.
Leonardo, holding a roll of drawings closer under his arm, stopped and
listened.

Suddenly the questioning voices stopped. The bells continued ringing 21
and now the angry shouts of the mob could be heard.

“Lorenzo is dead! Giuliano is dead! Death to traitors! Pazzi! Pazzi!”

“On to the Palace of the Signoria! They’ve captured the Archbishop! He’s a
prisoner there!”

“Get a ram and we’ll break the door down!”

The people in the street were caught up in the surging mass. Already
soldiers of the Medici were spreading out through the city. Cobblestones
were ripped from the street, and swords, knives, and clubs were being
brandished in the air.

Leonardo, backed against a wall of a house, was soon left in an almost
deserted street. Still holding the drawings, he made his way carefully back
to his studio.

As it turned out, Lorenzo was not dead at all.

It was on this Sunday that the Pazzi conspiracy had broken out in Florence.
In the cathedral, the ailing Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of Lorenzo, was
killed by assassins. Lorenzo himself escaped with only a scratched arm. The
Pazzi family were rival bankers of the Medicis and had joined in this plot
with Girolamo Riario, a relative of Pope Sixtus IV, and Francesco Salviati,
a long-time enemy of Lorenzo. A hired professional thug completed the
members of the conspiracy.

Girolamo Riario hated the Medicis because they refused him money for his
own ambitions, and the Pope opposed Lorenzo because Lorenzo was
supporting raids against papal territory. As for Archbishop Salviati, he had
for years nursed a personal hatred for Lorenzo.

22

Leonardo, backed against a wall, was soon left in an almost deserted street.

When the assassination attempt failed, the Archbishop and Francesco 23
de’ Pazzi fled to the Palace of the Signoria for protection. However,
the members of the Council of Florence, who were meeting, then became
suspicious and bolted the doors after them. Both men were later killed by
the Medici followers and their bodies were hung from the barred windows
of the Palace. In the terror of the days afterward, eighty victims lost their
lives. The Pazzi conspiracy also had an effect on Leonardo’s future, as we
shall see later on.

Leonardo had been on his way to the Palace that morning. He had been
given his first painting assignment, or commission, the previous January.
This was to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of San Bernardo in the Palace,
and just the month before he had received the sum of twenty-five florins as
a partial payment.

Some time before January of 1478, Leonardo had left Verrochio and had
found a place of his own. The commission had come to Leonardo through
the influence of his father, who was now one of the leading notaries, or
lawyers, of the city. Though still poor, Leonardo could now devote this new
independence to his widening fields of study.

Leonardo’s studio was like his childhood room in one respect—it was still
filled with all the different things that had aroused his curiosity. Books were
everywhere—on his tables and shelves and piled on the floor—books by
Ptolemy, Pliny, and Strabo on geography and natural history, by Aristotle on
physics, even one by Guido, a tenth-century monk, who has been called the
father of modern music. In addition, there were books on arithmetic,
agriculture, geometry, grammar, philosophy, fables, poetry and even one
containing jokes. A map of the world hung on the wall, together with his
drawings; and, scattered throughout the whole studio were the plants,
fossils, rocks and animal skeletons he was still collecting from his 24
trips into the country.

There was also a huge table extending down the middle of Leonardo’s
studio upon which were many drawings and instruments for working
geometrical problems. His easel near the window supported a painting—a
study for his commission in the Palazzo. And on his desk was a confusion
of papers containing notes all written in his “secret” writing.

At twenty-six Leonardo was deep in the study of mechanical law, geometry,
and botany. For example, he had observed the rings in trees and their
relationship to the age of the trees. In mechanics, he was absorbed in
drawing models of a “variable speed drive.” By meshing three cogged
wheels of different diameters to a common lantern wheel, Leonardo saw
that different speeds of rotation could be obtained at the same time. This
same principle is used in the gear shift of modern automobiles. About
mechanics Leonardo wrote that it was “the paradise of the mathematical
sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruit of mathematics.”

Now, too, he was starting to write about his observations on the flight of
birds, the formations of clouds and the behavior of smoke in the air. He
compared the flying of birds to the swimming of fish in the sea, and the
flow of air to the flow of water. Two hundred years before Newton,
Leonardo would define the principles of aerodynamic reciprocity, as
contained in Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

At this time, Leonardo had an idea for making the Arno river 25
navigable all the way from Florence to Pisa by the addition of canals,
thus giving Florence an outlet to the sea. He also had thoughts for the
improvement of irrigation in order to make use of land that did not have
enough water. Nothing that Leonardo saw in his day’s activities was too
small to pass unnoticed and unquestioned. The flight of a butterfly, the
stratification of rock in a cliffside, the shape of a mighty cumulus cloud, the
turning of a carriage wheel on a bumpy road, the play of muscles in a
farmer’s back, the curling of water around a rock in a stream—all of these
aroused Leonardo’s curiosity. Continually, he studied these things and
painstakingly drew them and wrote about them in his notebooks.

Unfortunately, Leonardo’s painting commission for the Palace of the
Signoria was never completed. By the end of the year 1478, the Pope,
angered by the killing of the Archbishop during the Pazzi conspiracy, had
declared war on the Republic of Florence. Ferdinand, the King of Naples,
was persuaded to help in this war against Florence and the Medicis. As the
papal forces were approaching the fortresses on the Florentine hills, the
Council of Florence discontinued Leonardo’s commission in order to
conserve money for the defense of the city.

Disappointed though he was, Leonardo did not allow this setback to 26
discourage him. From a page of drawings in the Uffizi Gallery of
Florence on which are sketched various arms and war materials, we learn
that he turned from his artistic to his mechanical skills and began designing
engines of war. Besides being a Florentine concerned with the defense of
his city, Leonardo was eager to gain an appointment with Lorenzo as
military engineer to make up for the painting commission he had just lost.
Also, as the fifteenth century was a turning point in the methods of waging
war, Leonardo was attracted to all the mechanical possibilities of the new
artillery. Before then soldiers had used spears, bows and arrows, and stone-
throwing catapults, among other primitive methods. One of Leonardo’s
designs included a light cannon whose barrel could be raised or lowered to
proper elevation by means of a hand-cranked screw and whose horizontal
direction could be determined by a maneuverable cradle.

The military appointment that Leonardo hoped for didn’t come.
Unfortunately for the Medicis, the war with the papal forces was being lost.
One by one, the fortresses under siege surrendered; more and more of the
Florentine troops were fleeing.

Leonardo continued the work on his military machines for, although he was
having some success painting Madonnas for private homes and had even
received a commission from the King of Portugal for a tapestry design, he
still wanted official recognition for his inventions from Lorenzo de’ Medici.

During these weeks late in the year of 1479, Leonardo conceived many
ingenious devices to wage war. Besides the small artillery piece, he
designed a bombard, or rock-throwing cannon, which did not recoil when it
was fired. This was followed by a light gun arranged in three tiers of
barrels, mounted so that while one tier was fired, the second was being
loaded and the third was cooling (a forerunner of the modern machine gun).
Another was a device to repel enemy ladders. It consisted of a horizontal
beam laid parallel to the top of a fortress wall; the beam could be pushed
outward by one man or several men using a system of pulleys. 27

Leonardo’s design for a machine gun. It had thirty-three barrels in three
banks of eleven each. While one bank was fired, one cooled and the other
was reloaded.

Unfortunately for Leonardo, just as he was ready to show these inventions
to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the last fortress outside Florence surrendered and a
three-month truce followed. Lorenzo himself went to Naples and persuaded
King Ferdinand to withdraw from the war. By 1480, peace returned once
again to Florence.

As for the Medicis, military machines no longer interested them. Greatly
disappointed at not having his inventions used—or even looked at—
Leonardo began to search about for new fields of creative activity.

28

4
Years Of Frustration

The old monk spread the papers out before him on the table.

“Master Leonardo,” he said, “these are the terms of the commission. We at
the monastery wish to have an altarpiece painted for our chapel. Your father
has recommended you, and, as you know, he is our lawyer. Of course your
reputation has already reached our ears, and we are satisfied in our choice.”

The year was 1480. The monk represented the monastery of San 29
Donato a Scopeto near the Porta Romana, just outside Florence.
Leonardo shook his head slowly at the terms of the commission. The
painting had to be completed in thirty months at the most. Moreover, he
must pay for his own colors and even—Leonardo looked up as if to protest
but resumed reading—even pay for any gold or gold leaf he might use.
Nevertheless, it was an opportunity, and Leonardo needed work. Since the
papal war had ended, he had not received any commissions—and his skill at
military engineering was still too unknown to have won him recognition.

Although Lorenzo de’ Medici was a great supporter of the arts and sciences,
he had not granted Leonardo any of his patronage. In Lorenzo’s court were
many men with much book-learning but little talent. They guarded their
positions jealously and kept the way to Lorenzo barred to any applicant
whom they did not like. Of them, Leonardo wrote in his notes: “They strut
about puffed up and pompous, decked out and adorned, not with their own
labors, but by those of others, and they will not even allow me my own.
And if they despise me who am an inventor, how much more blame be

given to themselves, who are not inventors but trumpeters and reciters of
the work of others?”

In accepting the commission to paint the altarpiece, Leonardo hoped to
attract attention to himself. Perhaps then Lorenzo might welcome him to his
court and grant him patronage. So, with his usual thoroughness, Leonardo
set about the task of preparing an Adoration of the Magi—a favorite subject
of that time. This was to be a picture of the Holy Family surrounded by the
three wise men from the East, shepherds and animals, old and young, rich
and poor, paying their adoration to the Christ child. 30

Since he wanted his subjects perfect in every detail, Leonardo set about
drawing countless youths, old men, sheep, oxen, horses, and donkeys. In a
separate drawing for the background, he worked out with mathematical
mastery the problems of perspective, that is, drawing objects to make them
appear three-dimensional and either close or far away in space. In addition,
he made studies for the composition of the whole picture—studies in which
his knowledge of geometry was used to heighten the excitement of this
great religious subject.

Leonardo’s hygrometer.

Among these sketches that Leonardo made for his “Adoration of the 31
Magi” is a page on which appears an inspiration for one of his greatest
masterpieces—a drawing of the “Last Supper.” And on this same page is
another drawing—one of a hygrometer. A hygrometer is an instrument for
measuring the amount of moisture in the air. Leonardo’s design consists of a
simple, graded disk with a balanced pointer, weighted at one end with sand
and at the other with a sponge or some salt. As the sponge or salt absorbed
the moisture in the air, the added weight was indicated on the graded disk,
thus measuring the amount of humidity.

Leonardo’s researches for the altar painting took him almost a year.
Although the monks began to grumble at his slowness, Leonardo would not
be hurried. He was determined to produce a painting that was perfect in all

respects. To quiet their impatience Leonardo did odd jobs for them in the
cloister. He repainted their old clock and for this extra work they advanced
him some much-needed money. In March of 1481 Leonardo was ready to
begin the actual drawing for the altarpiece. As he progressed with the
composition, the monks crowded around with exclamations of delight. So
different was it from all the other Adoration pictures they had ever seen,
that the monks sent Leonardo some sacks of corn as a token of their
appreciation.

One day, Leonardo was walking slowly toward the monastery over the
Ponte Vecchio—the Old Bridge—across the Arno River. He made his way
slowly up the hill past the construction for the new Pitti Palace. The
morning was hot and the farmers moving into the city with their heavily
laden carts were short-tempered. Leonardo stood to one side as he watched
a pair of oxen straining to haul a wagon up a rise in the road. Their owner,
his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, was shouting angrily, lashing the animals
with his leather-thonged whip. It was a cruel sight and Leonardo turned
away. From some experiments he had been making, Leonardo realized that
the poor animals were struggling not only with the hill, but the drag of
friction on the creaking axle. This drag could be eased, he thought to
himself, by simply resting the axle in two sets of roller-bearings attached to
the bottom of the cart near each wheel. In his mind he formed the plan for
such a model as he made his way to the monastery. 32

The drawing of the altarpiece was nearing completion. The monks were
fascinated by the spectacle of the Adoration appearing before their eyes.
The soft, umber outlines deepened with gray, the ochre highlighting the
central figures charmed them and they sent another gift to Leonardo’s house
—a cask of Tuscan red wine.

As it turned out, Leonardo never finished this altarpiece. It is not known
why. But the drawing for it can be seen today in the Uffizi Gallery in
Florence just as Leonardo left it.

It is certain, however, that Leonardo was far from idle during this time. He
drew the design for eliminating the friction of a turning axle by mounting
the axle in roller-bearings. He experimented with, and solved the problem

of, transmitting motion to revolving machine parts by friction—the possible
forerunner of our modern friction clutch. Another device, found in modern
automobiles—the differential—was also drawn by Leonardo. This idea
provided for the difference in speed between the two drive wheels when
rounding a curve.

Leonardo also drew the first known plans for a self-propelled vehicle 33
—an “automobile.” It was designed to operate by a system of elastic
springs wound by hand by the person on the vehicle; the “car” was then
supposed to run the short distance allowed it by the unwinding of the
springs.

In addition, Leonardo continued designing machines for both offensive and
defensive military action. One of these was a breech-loading cannon,
together with the first known projectiles that took into consideration better
penetration through the air and greater stability in their trajectory. Indeed,
these very much resembled present-day aerial bombs, with pointed noses
and stabilizing fins.

As the months passed, however, Leonardo began to feel that his time and
talents were being wasted in Florence. Although the monks and friends of
the monastery were pleased with the work he was doing, other artists were
being called to greater tasks in Rome. For example, Domenico di Tommaso
del Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, and even Leonardo’s fellow student,
Pietro Perugino, had left Florence to work in the chapel of Pope Sixtus IV
in Rome—known to us as the Sistine Chapel. Now, too, it was becoming
clear that Lorenzo and his court had no time for this solitary genius whose
ideas stretched beyond his age.

So Leonardo looked about him. He was thirty years old and the walls of
Florence seemed to bind his spirit. To what city could he go where his
talents would be put to fruitful use? Rome seemed to hold out no hope, for
no one had offered him a position there.

But Leonardo remembered that there had been a visitor to the Medicis 34
from another city in recent months. This man was Ludovico Sforza,
the ruling prince of Milan, the great city-state of the north. Ludovico, who
was also called “Il Moro” (the Moor) because of his dark complexion, was

seeking the friendship and alliance of the Medicis. He was fascinated with
the art and culture of Florence and sought to gather to his own court of
Milan as many artists, scientists, philosophers, and musicians as he could.

Perhaps, thought Leonardo, his future lay in Milan. So he began collecting
his countless drawings, diagrams of machines and instruments of war, his
notes, his plans for canals and irrigation—even a drawing for a monument
that he knew Ludovico wanted to erect to his father—and made a package
of it to send to Ludovico. Then he sat down to write a letter to that
nobleman. In it he set forth in ten numbered paragraphs his qualifications as
military and naval engineer, architect, and hydraulics expert. Almost as an
afterthought to the tenth item, he wrote: “I can carry out sculpture in
marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done,
as well as any other, be he who he may.”

When he had finished the letter, Leonardo took out a strange instrument. It
was a lyre of silver in the shape of a horse’s head. He had designed it
himself, and now with an air of peace, he commenced to play. Its rich tone
was sweet to hear and the music was his own composition.

Leonardo had also designed other instruments—lyres, lutes, viols, and 35
a kind of zither. He had perfected the single-stringed monochord of
Pythagoras, replacing the tablet of wood with thin strips of drum that gave
the instrument a low or high note according to the tightness of the string. In
addition, he introduced stops or small pistons in the holes of wooden reed
instruments; and, he had even invented a set of mechanical chords by using
a wheel of reeds which plucked a set of strings as it was turned. His skill as
a musician, composer, and singer was well known among his friends and
his bass voice had retained the pureness of his boyhood.

As it happened, news of Leonardo’s silver lyre had reached Lorenzo de’
Medici. All Leonardo’s paintings, all his designs for cannons and
fortifications, all his inventions for commercial machinery had failed to
interest Lorenzo—yet this single musical oddity excited the ruler’s
curiosity. Leonardo was summoned to the Medici palace.

Lorenzo was enchanted both by the instrument and Leonardo’s musical
talent. When Leonardo had finished playing, Lorenzo, surrounded by

members of his court, applauded and said,

“It would please us if Master Leonardo da Vinci would present us with this
beautiful instrument so that we, in turn, could make a gift of it to His
Highness, Ludovico Sforza, of Milan.”

Leonardo bowed and replied,

“Your Grace’s request is my pleasure. Moreover, Sire, it would further that
pleasure to bear the gift myself to His Excellency in Milan.”

The idea delighted Lorenzo. He immediately directed that Leonardo be
given a letter to Ludovico and that every protection be given Leonardo for
his journey.

Leonardo, with the silver lyre and the letter of recommendation, hurried
home to make his final preparations. He called on a friend and pupil, young
Atalante Migliorotti, to accompany him.

Toward the end of 1482 or the beginning of 1483, with the letter to 36
Ludovico folded in a leather pouch, Leonardo and Atalante mounted
their horses and left Florence for the long journey to Milan.

37

5
Milan

Milan at this time was one of the greatest and wealthiest city-states in all
Europe. Its battlements and the spires of its mighty cathedral rose
impressively from the lush plain of Lombardy. Towering over the city in the
distance were the snow-capped peaks of the Alps. Groves of mulberry trees
for the production of its famous silk industry and vast stretches of rice
paddies extended far into the surrounding countryside.

Leonardo and Atalante rode along the embankment of one of the 38
many canals. The sight of the city hastened their pace although the
journey had been a long one. Frequently on the trip Leonardo had stopped
to make notes. Riding over the mountains and ravines surrounding Florence
he had drawn some of the rushing streams and the stratifications of exposed
cliffs. And when they had descended to the plains he observed the irrigation
ditches and made notes on ways of improving the crude systems of dams
and waterwheels.

Leonardo was excited by this new city and by his prospects at the court of
Ludovico. On the way to his lodgings, he also noticed that Milan was a
great center of arms manufacture. Shop after shop displayed its wares of
swords, spears, shields, armor for man and horse, and signs advertising
foundries for the making of cannon. Perhaps here he might find an outlet
for his military inventions.

In the inn where he and Atalante stayed, Leonardo overheard the current
political rumors. All around him was talk of the war. Girolamo Riario was

again in the field, and Ludovico’s ally, Alfonso of Calabria, had just been
defeated by the Venetians in a bloody battle at Campo Morto.

Leonardo reread the letter he had written setting forth his own
accomplishments and decided that now was the time to present himself as a
military engineer. He would minimize the bronze monument, his music, and
his painting, and instead, he would stress his skills in the inventions of war.

When Leonardo appeared before Ludovico, he was a handsome young 39
man of thirty-one. Tall and strong, he was dressed not according to
fashion, but simply—almost severely. His hair hung in curls on his
shoulders and his auburn mustache and neatly trimmed beard accented his
ruddy complexion and deep-set blue eyes. Indeed, he presented a striking
contrast to the nobleman seated before him. Il Moro, with his dark skin and
straight black hair, his richly embroidered doublet with its broad sleeves
and the heavy gold chains across his thick chest, was the exact opposite of
Leonardo.

Ludovico set aside Leonardo’s letter, rose from his chair, and walked to the
heavy table on which Leonardo had spread out his drawings.

Plans for all manner of war machines were there—those that Leonardo had
designed for Lorenzo de’ Medici without success, together with many new
additions. For example, there were plans for a self-propelled bomb with
flames to be shot out in all directions—a bomb that was later to be called a
“rotatory rocket” when it was actually invented in 1846. Leonardo also
explained to Ludovico his idea for “poison gas” bombs containing sulfur:
the fumes of these bombs would “produce stupor,” and they could be used
both on land and sea, together with masks to protect those who were using
them. Shrapnel shells, hand grenades, and javelins that burst into flame
when they struck their objectives—these and many more were among his
ideas.

But perhaps the most unusual to Ludovico’s eyes was the design for an
armored vehicle. It was shaped like a giant turtle, with overlapping sheets
of reinforced wood so that enemy shells would bounce off its surface. The
armor was pierced by loopholes for the breech-loading cannon and there
was an opening at the top for ventilation. Power for the vehicle was

supplied by eight men inside turning cranks which in turn were cogged to
other wheels, setting in motion the four drive wheels. This of course was
the forerunner of the tank and the armored car used in modern 40
warfare.

Forerunner of the tank or armored car, as conceived by Leonardo. Motion
was supposed to be supplied by four cogged wheels turned by manpower.
Sheets of reinforced wood were supposed to serve as “armor” against
enemy projectiles.

In addition, Leonardo laid before Ludovico all manner of cannons and
designs for tunneling under the enemy’s defenses. Actually, with respect to
warfare itself, Leonardo called it a most brutal “madness”; however, he
recognized the necessity of being prepared. In his notebook, he wrote,
“When besieged by ambitious tyrants I find a means of offense and defense
in order to preserve the chief gift of nature, which is liberty.”

Ludovico was very much interested in the things Leonardo had showed
him. Although he was a man of limited imagination and was not able to
grasp the scope of Leonardo’s proposals, he was nevertheless involved in a
war. Since Ludovico’s aging military engineer was to be replaced, Leonardo
left the forbidding castle of the Sforzas with high hopes of getting the
position.

In the meantime, he was commissioned to paint the portrait of a young 41
girl from a noble family in Milan. At the same time, he began the
bronze equestrian statue of Ludovico’s father, Francesco Sforza. For this
work, he began an intensive study of horses. Since hunting was the popular
sport at the court of the Sforzas, Ludovico owned a stable of the finest
Arabian horses, and here Leonardo commenced his drawings. Again, his
research for a work of art led him beyond just making preparatory sketches.
His studies developed into notes, and his notes into a planned book on the
anatomy of the horse.

During these months of waiting for the appointment as military engineer,
Leonardo furthered his experiments with cannon. In the course of these
experiments, he came across a power that would later revolutionize all
industry—steam. He devised—although he attributed the original idea to
Archimedes—a water vessel connected to a copper tube which was heated
by a fire. The water when flowing into the red-hot tube changed into steam
and the pressure of the steam blew out a ball at the mouth of the tube with
great force. Leonardo experimented with steam in other ways. He built an
apparatus for measuring the transformation of water into vapor. It consisted
of a metal box in which was a thin animal bladder partly filled with water.
Resting on the top of the bladder was a flat lid attached by a cord hung from
two pulleys to a counterweight on the outside. As the water was heated, the
steam in the bladder pushed up the lid. As the lid rose both the volume and
the pressure could be measured. There were distillation experiments with
various condensers, one in particular that anticipated the modern condenser
of Leibig, introducing double walls that formed a complete jacket for
cooling with water in continual circulation. 42

Not content with having an idle moment, Leonardo again turned to
searching out books that he had not read and trying to fill the gaps in his
education. He became especially interested in the German philosopher,
Cardinal Cusanus. Cusanus, like himself, had been influenced by Toscanelli
and was a man devoted to the natural sciences. Leonardo also studied the
philosophy of Aristotle and the writings of St. Augustine. Throughout his
life Leonardo believed in an active mind for, as “iron rusts from disuse,
stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so
does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”

Unfortunately, the post of military engineer went to a man named Ambrogio
Ferrari. The extent and variety of Leonardo’s proposals were too great for
Ludovico to trust. He did not believe that one man could possibly bring all
those ideas into being. Ferrari, on the other hand, was a military engineer
only, and a man who was content with the customary methods of warfare.
Furthermore, Ludovico had at last decided that peaceful negotiations would
gain him more than fighting. Thus Leonardo’s chance of recognition was
again postponed.

Meanwhile, the money that Leonardo had brought with him from Florence
was almost gone. He had been forced to move from his apartment to a
single room and now he was barely able to live from day to day. Although
the court of Ludovico Sforza was one of the richest in the world, artists
were frequently treated as servants; often they were the last to be paid for
their services. Also, Leonardo was a foreigner in the city, which meant 43
he was regarded with suspicion.

Because of these reasons, Leonardo finally decided to do what the Milanese
artists did—they banded together in groups sharing work and costs.
Leonardo had met a young artist of twenty-eight, Giovanni Ambrogio de
Predis, at the court of Ludovico. Ambrogio was court painter to the Sforza
family and had achieved some success. Ambrogio recognized in the
handsome stranger from Florence, however, the touch of genius, and he
realized that his own talents would be furthered by learning from Leonardo.
The two young men decided to pool their abilities. Ambrogio offered both
lodging and a studio; and, in association with his two half-brothers, one a
woodcarver, another a miniaturist, and his elder brother, a minter of coins,
they would not lack for commissions.

Commissions weren’t long in coming. On April 25, 1483, a contract was
signed between Bartolommeo degli Scarlione, a prior of the Fraternity of
the Immaculate Conception, and Ambrogio and Leonardo for an altarpiece.
The fee was two hundred ducats, with a promise of more if it were
delivered on time and was satisfactory to the Fraternity. Delivery date was
to be December 8, 1484. Ambrogio was to paint the altar wings and
Leonardo the center piece—a picture of the Blessed Virgin and Child.

But when the painting was finished, it was not according to the 44
instructions set forth in the contract. Leonardo had too independent a
mind to be bound by conformity. Nor was it completed on time. Indeed, for
twenty years the quarrel between the Fraternity and the painters went on.
After ten years, Ludovico was asked to intervene for the money owed; after
he failed, another ten years went by and the King of France himself was
finally asked to settle the dispute. Leonardo wanted his one hundred ducats
and the Fraternity offered twenty-five. Eventually, a secret agreement was
arrived at and the painting was restored to Leonardo and Ambrogio.
Leonardo’s painting, the masterpiece entitled the “Virgin of the Rocks,”
now hangs in the museum of the Louvre in Paris.

The day this contract was signed, Leonardo walked back through the city to
Ambrogio’s studio near the Ticino gate. He was low in spirits from reading
the petty instructions of the contract, and, in this mood, he became aware of
the city streets and crowds about him. The noise, the confusion, the smells
—yes, the smells were the worst. Garbage, filth, and dust were in heaps
where the last rainwater had left them and they buzzed with flies.

Moreover the houses were jammed together and shopkeepers crowded their
wares to the edges of the streets, leaving just enough room for the
occasional horseman to get through. Latrines were only for the better
houses; here, the streets, alleys and even open doorways were toilets.
People flung their scraps out of the window and at night in the poorly lit
streets could be heard the scurrying of rats. Leonardo stopped, thinking half
aloud:

“Two levels. Streets running one above the other—one for pedestrians 45
and one for carts and horses. Yes, and cutting through the whole city a
system of canals to carry the city’s waste to a river or to the sea. Why not
even ten cities of, say, five thousand houses in each—say, no more than
thirty thousand people to a city?”

Intent now on his thoughts he hurried to his home, his mind busy with his
visions of new cities.

During the years 1484 and 1485 the bubonic plague swept Italy—the same
dreaded Black Death so prevalent in medieval times. Milan was one of the
cities most severely stricken. Every courtyard became a hospital and the
streets were deserted except for the rumbling carts picking up the dead. On
the roads from the city were lines of refugees fleeing to the country.
Surrounding cities that had not been infected manned their fortress walls as
in wartime to keep the fleeing populations out.

Ludovico at first tried to protect Milan from the spread of the disease; then,
frightened, he and his court fled. Even the ruler’s official documents had to
be “disinfected” by perfume and then held for a period of time before he
would allow them near him.

Leonardo, sensing opportunity, drew out his plans for his new cities. Canals
running through them were to be used for barges and the underground
conduits greatly resembled those of modern sewage systems. Paths were to
have gutters for the adequate drainage of the streets. Public toilets were to
be installed. Leonardo even had plans for the control of smoke collecting
over the city—by sending it up tall chimneys where it was picked up by
fans and driven away over the roofs. The widths of the streets were to be in
proportion to the heights of the houses—light and air would circulate freely.
Two levels would be connected by graceful ramps—the lower level for the
commercial traffic and the upper level for the pedestrians. Where stairs
were used they were designed so one could ascend or descend without one
person seeing the other. Stables were devised so that animals were fed
through openings in their mangers and under these were tunnels of flowing
water for the removal of waste.

46

The results of the bubonic plague in Italy, 1484-85. Streets were deserted
except for the carts picking up the dead.

These sweeping plans Leonardo laid before Ludovico when the 47
epidemic had subsided. But Ludovico, once his fear was overcome,
brushed them aside as impossible dreams.

So Leonardo returned to the commission for the Fraternity and the designs
for the bronze monument of Francesco Sforza. These jobs kept Leonardo
from brooding about his rejections.

Often, too, Leonardo worked with Bernardino de Predis, the elder brother
of Ambrogio. Bernardino was a minter of coins. As Leonardo watched him
at the laborious task of first cutting disks from ingots and then hammering
the design into the hot metal, he suggested to Bernardino an easier method,
then used in Germany. This was to prepare smooth ribbons of metal of the
desired thickness and with a punch, impress the design into the ribbon at the
necessary intervals and then, punch out the coin. Leonardo went on to
improve this system by designing precise punches for both faces of the
coin. A single machine then cut out and stamped the coins, using a falling
weight raised by little winches. This machine was later destined for the
Vatican mint in Rome.

On March 26, 1485 an event occurred in Milan that was viewed with 48
mingled fear, superstition, curiosity and excitement. There was a total
eclipse of the sun. To some, coming as it did so soon after the plague, it was
a judgment of God; to others, it was regarded as an omen—a sign for
astrologers to use for predicting the future.

But to Leonardo the eclipse was a moment of great scientific importance. At
this time in history, the Ptolemaic, or geocentric theory of the universe was
the popular belief. This theory taught that the earth is fixed and the sun and
moon revolve around it. Leonardo himself had believed this theory for a
long time. As he grew older, however, he read and heard discussions of the
heliocentric theory. This theory proposed that the sun is fixed and the earth
and stars move around it. Now, as he watched the eclipse, his doubts of the
Ptolemaic concept were renewed and he resolved to make experiments of
his own. The new theory was so daring for his times, however, that it would
be many years before he became convinced of its truth.

Later that night, deep in thought over the experience of the day, he noted
down his observations of the eclipse and his doubts of the medieval concept
of the heavens. The Church believed the earth was the fixed center of the
universe. Scholars and scientists supported the belief of Aristotle in the four
elements, earth, water, air, and fire—but something was wrong. What were
the planets—what was the moon? He picked up his pen and on a clean sheet
of paper he wrote, “Make glasses in order to see the moon large.”

49

6
The Monument

During this time, Leonardo had been struggling with the design for the
bronze equestrian statue. Drawing after drawing lay scattered on his studio
floor. Lately, however, a daring plan for this statue had come to him. It was
to be a huge bronze warrior, Francesco Sforza, mounted on a rearing horse.
Weighing perhaps a hundred thousand pounds, it was to be cast in sections
in five furnaces—a fitting monument to the power of the Sforza family. But
there still remained a big problem to be solved: how could he balance the
plunging horse and man on just the two rear legs of the horse? 50

Meanwhile, Leonardo had another problem to work on—a wooden model
of the Milan cathedral. He had entered his name with the cathedral
authorities as a competitor in the design and construction of the cathedral’s
dome. Many architects had been brought in and had failed, partly because
of the antagonism of the Milanese workmen to foreign craftsmen, and
partly because the committee found it difficult to decide what designs it
liked. Leonardo had sent them a letter outlining his own recommendations
and had drawn many pages of possible plans. He put forward his knowledge
of various building materials, his understanding of classical architecture,
and his wish to keep his own ideas in harmony with the Gothic tradition of
the cathedral itself. Often he would make a point of walking about the city,
observing the different constructions under way and drawing up plans to
shorten the labor by mechanical means.

In July of 1487 Leonardo received a payment from the cathedral authorities
for the wooden model he had submitted. Still, however, no final decision

had been reached. Now, as Leonardo looked at the model in his studio, he
felt the urge to improve it further—to make it more perfect. Yet he held his
impatience in check and decided he would wait a little longer. Instead, he
decided to work on some of his ideas for construction devices. He had
already made many drawings, but they could be improved, he thought, and
he began to make calculations.

Among these notes and drawings was an improvement on a device for 51
the raising of columns. It was a mobile windlass with a transmission
gear for transporting and erecting columns and obelisks. Another device
was an earth drill resembling a modern corkscrew with double handle bars.
The upper bar, when turned, drilled the screw into the earth while the lower
bar—when turned the opposite way—carried the dirt up and out. Also there
was a double crane mounted on a circular trolley which carried the dirt of
excavation up and then the crane was moved around on its trolley so the dirt
could be unloaded in different directions.

Other labor-saving devices that Leonardo designed were an automatic pile
driver, the weight of which was raised by a winch and tripped automatically
at its height to fall on the piling; a lift for raising iron bells to bell towers;
and a machine for boring tree trunks to make pipes for carrying water.

In the fall of 1488, Leonardo was interrupted by a summons from
Ludovico, who wanted him to design and build the decorations for the
forthcoming marriage of his nephew, young Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza, to
Isabella of Aragon, granddaughter of the King of Naples. He worked on this
steadily until the wedding ceremony in February of the following year.
When the day arrived, the street from the cathedral to the grim castle was
trimmed with flags and banners of the two royal houses. The inner
courtyards of the castle were transformed into delicate arbors of laurel
boughs. Yet it was the evening’s reception and entertainment which were to
be the climax and to them Leonardo had brought all his mechanical skill.
However, the announcement of the death of the bride’s mother cut short the
celebration and, after the bride and groom had left for Pavia, the wedding
party soon dispersed. Disappointed that his decorations had not been fully
appreciated, Leonardo returned to his studio and the problem of the 52
monument.

He was still struggling with the problem of balancing the rearing horse.
And, indeed, a solution was soon found. By placing a fallen soldier with his
arm upraised in protection under the forefeet of the horse, Leonardo could
balance the enormous weight and provide for the proper casting of the
molten bronze.

Finally, Leonardo made a small wax model of the proposed statue and
showed it to Ludovico. The nobleman was impressed by its originality.
Most of the ideas contributed by other sculptors were mere variations of
what had already been done many times. Also, the other plans called for
bronze of not more than two thousand pounds, while Leonardo envisioned a
statue fifty times that size! Ludovico awarded the commission to Leonardo.

Leonardo was to work on this commission for ten years and it was destined
never to be immortalized in bronze, for reasons that will be explained later.
His energies, as usual, were poured into many schemes. Growing out of his
work on the monument he planned one book on the subject of casting in
bronze and another on the anatomy of the horse. But the one subject, which
he began to study in this period and which would occupy the remainder of
his life, was the study of human anatomy. So Leonardo, in the midst of all
his other activities, wrote in his notes, “On the second day of April 1489 the
book entitled Of the Human Figure.”

The sources of anatomical study up to Leonardo’s day had been the 53
Greeks—Hippocrates and Galen—and the Arab—Avicenna. Books on
this subject were few, and the anatomical diagrams were crude and
inaccurate. Galen, for example, had based his studies on the dissection of
monkeys. Renaissance anatomists had explained his errors by pointing out
that man had probably changed since Galen’s time. The Church had stepped
in during the fourteenth century with an edict that was interpreted as a
prohibition against dissection of the human body. In Italy, however, there
were some dissections. They could only use, for this purpose, the bodies of
criminals, slaves, and people of foreign birth. In Florence, anatomy was
studied by the artists, and Leonardo had undoubtedly watched Pollaiuolo at
work on a corpse that that artist had dissected.

In 1489 Leonardo, from the results of his own investigation, produced
drawings of the skull and backbone whose careful attention to detail are—

even today—classics in art and anatomy. With infinite patience and with a
saw of his own invention he had halved a skull and drew for the first time
with accuracy the curves of the frontal and sphenoid bones. He drew the
lachrymal (tear) canal, and he was the first to show the cavity in the
superior maxillary bone—not discovered again until 1651, by Highmore—
now named “the antrum of Highmore.” He was the first to demonstrate the
double curvature of the spine and its accompanying vertebrae, the
inclination of the sacrum, the shape of the rib cage, and the true position of
the pelvis. He planned a whole series of books that would include from
head to foot and from inside to outside every section of the human
apparatus.

Meanwhile he had been working on the monument, redesigning it to 54
conform to the practical needs of casting. Now it had reached an even
grander scale—a colossus that would require two hundred thousand pounds
of bronze! He recorded in his notes the very day that this work was started,
“On the twenty-third day of April 1490 I commenced this book and
recommenced the horse.” The “horse,” of course, was the monument and
“this book” referred to still another subject which had grown out of his
studies of anatomy and perspective.

The title of the proposed book was to be Light and Shade. It would include
the subject of optics or the mechanism of the eye, the problems of reflection
and refraction and it would lead him eventually to a re-examination of his
studies of the sun and moon.

In Leonardo’s day, and even for a long while afterwards, the popular belief
of vision was one that had originally been put forth by the Platonic school
and expanded by Euclid and Ptolemy. This belief was that the eye sent forth
rays that brought back the image to the soul. Leonardo, in his younger days,
had believed in the same theory. Not content with what had been written on
the subject, however, he began to experiment for himself.

These experiments led him to an examination of the eye itself. He 55
noted the various parts of the eye—the optic foramen or opening, the
pigment layer, and the iris. These were already known by the Arabs.
Leonardo discovered, however, the crystalline area of the eye. He explained
binocular vision, or three-dimensional images, by correctly noting the

positions of the two eyes in the head. He described the variations in the
diameter of the pupil according to the surrounding light. Further
experiments with light brought him to the conclusion that light and images
are received by the eye. He took a piece of paper, for example, and pierced
it with a small hole. With this he looked at the source of light. He noted the
cone shape of the rays funneling into the tiny hole and then when the paper
was held next to a white wall he noted that the rays spread out again. He
established that light travels in straight lines. He constructed the first
“camera obscura”—a box with a small hole in it. Inside the box an object
was placed near the hole and behind that a lighted candle. When the box
was closed the image of the object was cast on the wall. Leonardo was
already acquainted with lenses, and he placed a magnifying lens over the
hole to create an enlarged image.

Leonardo’s “camera obscura” which he used for projecting an image of an
object on a wall or screen.

He also demonstrated various laws relative to optical illusion, such as 56
irradiation—when a metal rod is made red-hot at one end, that end
seems thicker than the other. A brightly lit object seems larger than one
exactly like it that is dimly lit; a dark object placed against a light

background seems smaller than it is; a light object seems larger than its real
size when placed against a dark background; and the illusion of a light
swung in a circle appears as a complete circle of light.

Many years before Newton, Leonardo described the experiment of breaking
up a ray of white light into the solar spectrum. Also he compared two
sources of light and measured their intensity by the depth of their shadows
accompanied by a drawing that was the forerunner of Rumford’s
photometer three centuries later! He stated the law of reflection—that is,
that the angle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence.

About this time Leonardo left the studio of Ambrogio de Predis and moved
into the Sforza Castle. Ludovico had put at his disposal a studio in the Corte
Vecchia and the use of a room in one of the towers—which Leonardo
always kept locked. To his growing list of work, Leonardo now had to add
the preparations for the delayed wedding reception of Ludovico’s nephew,
Gian Galeazzo Sforza.

On a cold winter evening of January 1490 the guests assembled again.
Silks, satins and gold brocade, diamonds, rubies and pearls glittered in the
brilliant lights. Princes of the Church mingled with ambassadors of foreign
lands. Music and perfume filled the air and as the party quieted down the
entertainment began. There were dances in gay costumes. Poetry was
recited that flattered the bride and groom. There were allegorical
processions. The jokes and antics of the court jester made the audience
laugh.

Then, at midnight, the curtain that hung from wall to wall at the end 57
of the ballroom was raised. Applause and cries of delight greeted the
spectacle. The rising curtain revealed a room in which there was a
hemisphere surrounded by the signs of the zodiac and the planets. While the
planets in their niches flickered with concealed lights and the signs of the
zodiac glowed, lines were spoken in honor of the house of Sforza to the
accompaniment of a choir. The ancient gods swept down from the heavens,
and the Virtues and Graces moved across the scene with nymphs waving
lanterns. The music drowned out the sound of the mechanism. This was the
kind of mechanics that Ludovico could understand and appreciate.

The success of this entertainment so pleased Ludovico that Leonardo was
encouraged to present another amusing idea. This one was an “alarm clock”
and it utilized what we call today the mechanical relay principle. When a
small power is suddenly switched over, the power is reinforced. The
“alarm” clock worked by placing a shallow basin of water at one end of a
tubed lever. At the other end was another empty basin. Water was led drop
by drop into the second basin and as this slowly filled the increasing weight
lowered the lever. The shallow basin of water at the first end was suddenly
emptied and the immediate switch in weight flipped the lever up and this in
turn pushed up the sleeper’s feet.

58
Leonardo decided to withdraw from the competition for the cathedral
dome. Although the cathedral authorities were pleased with his design, they
could not decide to whom the commission should be awarded. In the
summer of 1490 Ludovico was called upon to settle the issue and he
decided in favor of Antonio Amadeo from Milan. But the work that
Leonardo had done so impressed Ludovico that he sent him to Pavia in
company with an architect from Siena, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, to
inspect the work on the cathedral of that city. Leonardo, who had his own
workshop and apprentices now, took along one of them, Marco
d’Oggionno, a young boy of twenty.

In Pavia one of the greatest libraries in all of Italy was in the ducal palace.
Here Leonardo wandered among shelves of books and illuminated
manuscripts bound in rich velvets and gold-embossed leather all bound to
their places with silver chains. One book that he records in his notes was
written in the thirteenth century by Witelo, a Polish scholar, who wrote
extensively on perspective. Leonardo, by the necessity of his art, had solved
many problems in perspective. He had invented a pair of proportional
compasses, the forerunners of those used today for the transfer of a drawing
from one scale to duplicate the same drawing in a larger scale. Leonardo
had also designed in very careful detail a parabolic compass for drawing a
parabola in one continuous movement. He now determined to write his own
book on perspective and, as the subject was so close to his studies of the
eye, he would entitle it Introduction to Perspective, or the Function of the
Eye.

Leonardo submitted a number of plans for the completion of the cathedral
to the authorities in Pavia and then returned to Milan. He worked through
the rest of the summer on the equestrian statue and at the same time he
continued to expand his notes on anatomy, light and shade, and perspective.

Late on a cold December night in 1490, Leonardo lit his lamp. This 59
was a very special lamp that he had invented. It had already created a
great deal of comment. It was so unusual, he had received an order from the
court for another which he made with a richly carved pedestal. Candles,
torches, and oil lamps, the only methods of artificial illumination in those
days, were poor substitutes for light. They flickered, smoked, went out, and
frequently caused damage with their hot drippings. As a side result of his
experiments in light, Leonardo had put a glass cylinder in the middle of a
larger glass globe. A wick in olive oil was placed in the cylinder and the
outside globe was then filled with water. The result was a bright, steady
light magnified by the water in the globe.

He sat down by the small fire and arranged his papers in front of him. Then,
with a glance at his lamp, he picked up his goose-quill pen and wrote, “No
substance can be comprehended without light and shade; light and shade are
caused by light.”

60

7
Success

It was January of 1491, and a light snow had fallen in Milan, edging with
white all the roofs, the massive spires of the cathedral and the red
battlements of the Sforza castle. Soon Ludovico was to be married to
Beatrice d’Este of the ducal house of Ferrara.

Once more the streets of Milan echoed to the carpenters’ hammers.
Messengers rode to and from the castle and endless carts full of provisions
pushed through the crowded city. Guests began to arrive from all the allied
courts of Italy with their bodyguards and servants. The rooms of the castle,
the palaces of the nobles, and even the inns were filling with the royal
processions.

Leonardo was again summoned by the court to prepare the 61
decorations, the costumes for the masquerades, and the arena for the
jousting tournaments. An invitation had been sent to all the friendly courts
to attend these contests-at-arms. So, accompanying each new party’s arrival
was a band of armored knights, their breast-plates, helmets, and shields
glistening in the winter sun.

Leonardo enjoyed designing mechanical toys and entertaining the guests
with them. One of these was a mechanical drum. Ordinarily most of the
entertainment began with normal drum rolls, but Leonardo’s rolls were
made on a kind of wheelbarrow. On it was mounted an enormous drum.
When the “wheelbarrow” was pushed, it put into motion a cogged wheel
geared to the axle. This wheel in turn was geared to two rotary cylinders
with pegs mounted around the top. The pegs moved against five drumsticks

on either side of the drum and thumped out a rhythm according to the
position of the pegs.

Ludovico’s marriage to Beatrice d’Este, a girl of little more than fifteen
years, further isolated Leonardo from the court. Being almost a child,
Beatrice loved parties and festivities, and she surrounded herself with
people who catered to her frivolous whims. As a result so serious a man as
Leonardo was forced into the background of the court life. He was called
upon more and more to act as stage-designer while his more important work
went unnoticed. Because these entertainments were easy for Leonardo to
design, they did give him more time to work on his giant equestrian
monument of Francesco Sforza. Working one day on the scaffolding
surrounding the clay figure of his statue, Leonardo heard a knock at 62
his studio door.

“Come in,” he shouted as he climbed down. “The door’s open.”

Three peasants cautiously entered the room and quickly took off their caps.
One of them was holding a carefully wrapped bundle.

“Master Leonardo, we have brought you some shells we found on a ridge of
Monferrato. Remember, you asked us to bring anything we found that was
unusual?”

“Yes, Pietro. Thank you. Put them here on the table.”

Leonardo opened the bundle. He smiled when he saw the shells. He
remembered how, as a young boy, he had found seashells like these high in
the mountains. Leonardo questioned Pietro and his companions as to where
they had been found and under what circumstances. He gave them some
coins and, when they had gone, he looked among his growing collection of
notes and drawings on the shelves. It took some time for him to find what
he wanted, for the pages were in such confusion. Finally, he sat down at the
table with several of the sheets and, putting the seashells in front of him, he
began to make notes.

The shells were fossil shells but, thought Leonardo, their presence on 63
the high mountains of Lombardy could hardly be attributed to the

great flood as described in the Bible. In his notes, Leonardo cited the case
of the cockle which, out of water, is like the snail. It makes a furrow in the
sand and can travel in this furrow about three to four yards a day. By such
means, he calculated, it could not possibly have reached Monferrato from
the Adriatic in forty days (which was supposed to have been the duration of
the flood)—a distance of 250 miles. Nor were these simply dead shells
deposited by the waves—for the living creatures are recognized by being in
pairs, and these in front of him had certainly been traveling in pairs.
Consequently, they could have been left there only when they were alive
and the mountains were covered by the primeval oceans. Moreover,
Leonardo also described how living matter in prehistoric times fell into the
mud and died, and how this mud, as the waters receded and years had
passed, was changed into rock forming a mold about the fossil—literally
making a cast of its original living appearance.

By such deductive reasoning and the testing of the evidence before him
against the common beliefs, Leonardo struggled to free the minds of men
from medieval superstitions and beliefs. Indeed, these medieval
superstitions existed everywhere. Astrologers, or men who told fortunes by
the position of the stars at a given moment; and necromancers, those who
by tricks of magic claimed to be able to talk to departed spirits—these men
profited from the ignorant. The Church, with its preaching of devils and
hells, provided the background against which these fakers flourished.

Ludovico Sforza was himself a believer in such things. His own 64
physician and astrologer was a man by the name of Ambrogio da
Rosate, who had such influence over the court that he was given a post in
the University of Pavia, and his fame was so great that he was called upon
to predict the future of Pope Innocent VIII! Leonardo’s dislike of these men
was intense. He scorned the supernatural and asked men to look about them
at the real world and the real heavens. Observation and experiment—these
were Leonardo’s key words. But he was a lonely figure in his thinking—
like a man awake while the rest of the world slept.

At last the full-size model of the Sforza monument was nearing completion.
Ludovico had ordered it ready for exhibition in the courtyard of the castle
for yet another marriage festival that was soon to take place. This time it

was the marriage of his niece Bianca Maria to Maximilian I of Germany.
Leonardo and his assistants were busy with the finishing touches on the
monument, and with building a wagon on which to carry it from the studio
to the courtyard.

During these last months Leonardo had had to struggle with all kinds of
heavy loads. Already he had improved on pulleys by inventing a new kind
of tackle, and he also had utilized many kinds of levers. One of his simpler
discoveries for raising heavy weights was a jack which, in appearance and
principle, was the forerunner of our own automobile jack.

In 1493 when the clay model of the Sforza monument was completed, it
was put on the cart and wheeled to its place of exhibition where a curtain
was thrown around it. Again Milan was the host to a gathering of noble
courts, and this time Ludovico outdid himself in the display of luxury.
Tapestries hung from the buildings and rich carpets were laid down the
steps of the cathedral. Everything that Milan had to show was on exhibition
—even a crocodile.

But the most impressive sight of all was the unveiling of Leonardo’s 65
colossal statue. It rose in majesty against the red walls of the castle.
The name of Leonardo da Vinci was suddenly on everyone’s lips. As the
word of his artistic achievement spread from city to city, messages of praise
came pouring in. And, for a while the years of frustration and failure to gain
recognition melted away. Leonardo at forty-one had at last achieved some
success.

Now there was a breathing spell, and Leonardo returned to some of his own
projects. For a long time he had continued his observations of his two
favorite elements—air and water. To him they were related in their
movements. The birds flying in the currents of air and the fish swimming in
the flow of water seemed very similar to him. He had already designed
various instruments to tell him about the direction of wind and its velocity,
and he had also commenced to analyze the wing structure of birds and bats.
To soar through the air like a bird was an ancient dream of man, yet for
Leonardo it had become a passion. Ceaselessly, he sketched the flights of
birds, the flutterings of butterflies and analyzed their flying patterns.

But to Leonardo, understanding the dynamics, or motion, of air was the
most important thing. He built an anemoscope, an instrument like a
weather-vane for telling the direction of the wind; and, he also constructed
several types of anemometers for measuring the velocity or force of the
wind. One of these latter consisted of a thin rectangle of metal hanging
straight down in front of an upward-curving wooden arc. This arc was
marked off in units of measurement. When the wind blew, it pushed the thin
rectangle up the arc; thus, by noting at which gradation it stopped,
Leonardo could tell the velocity.

In addition, Leonardo at this time constructed a device which has been 66
compared to the modern instrument used for testing the weight-
carrying capacity of airplane wings. He fashioned a wing resembling a
bird’s wing and attached it to a lever so that it would be possible to lower
the wing by pushing rapidly down on the lever. This wing in turn was
mounted on a plank that was in weight equal to that of a human being. He
then calculated that two wings of this kind would have to be about twelve
meters wide and twelve meters long to raise a man and his machine
together. Another device resembling those found in airplanes today that
Leonardo constructed was an inclination gauge. He made this by
suspending a heavy ball on a cord within a glass bell. This ball was then
supposed to guide the flyer by telling him whether he was flying level,
diagonally, up, or down.

One of Leonardo’s anemometers. The wind blew against the strip of metal,
pushing it up the curved gauge and thereby measuring the force of the wind.

67

Leonardo’s inclination gauge, designed to guide a man in flight. The ball in
the glass cylinder was supposed to tell a “flyer” whether or not he was
flying level or tipped.

To Leonardo, water was also a phenomenon that from his youth never failed
to excite his curiosity. The use of water power to run machines, to irrigate
fields and to carry boats inland was a subject that he never ceased
investigating. Out of his experiments at this time he constructed a device for
raising water to high levels. It was based on the geometric spiral of
Archimedes. He took a piece of gut, inflated it, and let it dry. Then,
covering it with a coat of wax to make it waterproof, he wound it around a
thin staff in a spiral. He put one end in a stream and attached it by gears to a
cogged water wheel; this set the long screw to turning, and he was able to
raise water from a low level to any height he desired. With a multiple
system of these screws he could raise water in continuous circulation to the
reservoirs on the highest towers.

68

In the year 1494, King Charles VIII of France crossed the Alps at the head
of an army of twenty-five thousand men. Now Ludovico, by a series of
diplomatic maneuvers, had allied himself with Charles and had, by secret
negotiation, actually invited the invasion. By such an alliance he hoped to
use Charles’ army to overcome the forces of the Pope which stood in the
path of Ludovico’s ambition to become the most powerful ruler in Italy.
Outwardly Charles was asserting his rights to the Kingdom of Naples, but
inwardly he dreamt of leading a crusade against the infidels in the Holy
Land. At the same time young Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, was
dying. Ludovico desired this title for himself; however, until Galeazzo was
out of the way, he could not have it. There were ugly rumors that young
Sforza had been poisoned. Moreover, in 1494, the Medicis—another
powerful obstacle—were expelled from Florence, and a republic was
established.

Soon young Gian Galeazzo died, leaving a son, Francesco. This son was the
rightful heir to the Dukedom of Milan but Ludovico usurped the boy’s
claim and declared himself Duke of Milan. Now Ludovico was in a position
to await the impending battle between Charles and the Pope.

With such military and political ambitions in mind, Duke Ludovico now
assigned Leonardo the task of reviewing Milan’s defenses. Again Leonardo
submitted to Ludovico his plans for strengthening fortresses and designs for
new ones. The great architect Bramante was also assigned the task of seeing
to the city’s defenses, and for some time the two brilliant men worked
together.

Then, in the spring of 1494, Leonardo was sent to Vigevano where 69
Ludovico’s young wife was staying. This town was also the birthplace
of Ludovico, and Leonardo was given the job of designing and building a
small summer house and garden there for Beatrice. In addition, Leonardo
built a kind of “air conditioner” for her bedroom. It consisted of a large
waterwheel that cooled the air circulated into her room. Although this
ancient device had long been known to the Greeks and Romans, Leonardo
was the one who succeeded in perfecting it.

During this time Leonardo’s highly original mind was also at work on other
devices. One of these was an odometer, an instrument for measuring the

distance traversed by a vehicle. Dials, turned by a system of gears attached
to the wheel of a wheelbarrow, measured the distance traveled as the barrow
was pushed along the ground. In addition, Leonardo conceived a kind of
odometer to be used at sea; this consisted essentially of a spinner that was
towed by a ship which registered its speed. Leonardo even invented an
automatic spit operated by metal vanes mounted in the chimney that
revolved with the pressure of the hot air rising from the fire—and a pair of
large floating shoes for walking on water!

In the meantime, Charles VIII of France had marched through Rome and
entered Naples. The conquest was without opposition. Charles was then
crowned King of Naples and all Italy was at his feet. Yet his triumph was a
short one. Ludovico, having used the king to get rid of his enemies, now
plotted against the king himself. He formed an alliance with the Pope,
Venice, Spain, and the German emperor. Charles, faced with this league,
hastily beat a retreat to France. Fighting his way to the border, he there
signed a peace treaty. Thus Ludovico had swept Italy clean of all opposition
and was now the most powerful prince in the land. 70

Yet Ludovico was quick to realize that his position could only be held by
force and he set about strengthening himself and his allies. To provide for
more cannons, a hundred and fifty thousand tons of bronze were sent to
manufacturing works in Ferrara. This, however, included the very bronze
Leonardo needed for the casting of his equestrian statue, and this is why the
statue was never cast. Years of Leonardo’s work now seemed to vanish
overnight. Ludovico also needed large sums of money to secure friends in
high places and Leonardo’s own payments were suddenly dropped. Forced
again to worry about paying for his daily bread and for his household and
apprentices, he wrote letters to Ludovico complaining of his lack of funds
and asking for money that was owed him for work done. He looked about
for other commissions, but none were available. Moreover, because he was
still court painter to Ludovico, he was ordered to paint the decorations of
some rooms in the castle. But this was more than Leonardo could take—he
walked off the job without finishing it.

Despite all of these misfortunes, Leonardo continued struggling with the
problems of flight. He kept working out the proportions of wing span to the

weight of the load. Indeed, he had already started designs for a flying
machine. He had chosen a room which was the highest in one of the towers
of the castle and which had access to a roof. Leonardo’s plans for a flying
machine were a secret, and, with the exception of an assistant, no one knew
about them. He made sure that he could not be seen by the workmen on the
dome of the cathedral and proceeded to block off his room with beams
which he planned to use as supports for his model. 71

He had thought at first that any attempted flight should take place over
water in order to cushion a possible crash—but as his plans progressed he
designed a parachute. It was a pyramid-shaped “tent of linen” twenty-four
feet broad and twenty-four feet high, and it is believed to have been
successfully tried out from a tower especially constructed for that purpose.

Since Leonardo was no longer working for Ludovico, he lived more simply
than ever. He made regular lists of his expenses down to the last penny. His
habits were frugal although he always kept himself neat. His meals were
spare; he drank a little wine at meals and never ate meat. To his pupils and
apprentices, he recommended regular habits such as not sleeping during
midday, eating only when hungry and chewing well, exercising moderately,
and sleeping well covered.

Yet, even though Leonardo lived cheaply, he was now greatly in need of
money. Swallowing his pride, he wrote to Ludovico, placing himself at the
duke’s service once again. His absence from court, he said, had been
necessary so that he could earn a living. In this and other ways, Leonardo
attempted to heal the break between them.

It turned out that Ludovico was glad to have Leonardo back. Perhaps 72
mindful of the fame that the model of the equestrian monument had
brought the house of Sforza, he now commissioned Leonardo to paint a
picture. The Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie was the
nearest church to the Sforza castle and a favorite retreat of Ludovico. Here
he used to walk in the quiet garden while the white-robed monks silently
went about their chores. In gratitude for the peace he found there, Ludovico
had had the refectory rebuilt and on the back wall, a crucifixion scene had
been painted by Montorfano, a Lombard. But the front wall was given to

Leonardo. On this Leonardo decided to paint a picture of the Last Supper—
the painting that has since become one of the best known in the world.

73

8
The French

The noonday sun was baking the deserted streets of Milan as 74
Leonardo hurried across the drawbridge of the castle. The guard
dozing in the entrance arch started to his feet, but when he saw who it was
he sat down again, muttering about a madman. Taking the shortest way,
Leonardo arrived at the monastery gate and pulled on the bellcord. When
the gate opened Leonardo brushed past the startled monk and made directly
for the scaffolding in the refectory. He looked at his almost completed
painting for a moment, took a brush and mixed a color swiftly on the large
palette. Then he climbed the scaffolding and very quickly applied three or
four strokes. With this he sighed and smiled. Then, just as abruptly, he put
away his brushes and, without a backward glance, he left, making his way
back to the castle in the hot sun.

For three years, Leonardo had been working this way on the “Last Supper.”

Sometimes he would work from dawn to dusk forgetting to eat; other times,
he would stay away for days and then run back just to add a touch. Once he
arrived and, with his arms folded across his chest, he stood in front of it for
two hours just studying what he had done.

Now, in 1498, the painting was nearing completion and the only faces still
left blank were those of Christ and Judas. Leonardo had drawn hundreds of
sketches, taking his models wherever he found them—once he sketched a
man just for his hands. Now that his name had become well known he
always had an audience while he worked. His pupils, the monks, visiting

nobility, church officials, and frequently Ludovico himself watched him as
he painted the “Last Supper.”

But Leonardo, as usual, was involved in many different tasks. He was 75
supervising the installation of a hydraulic pump over seventy feet high
beside a stream which would use the power of the stream itself to pump
water into the castle. Mindful, too, of the uncertainty of court patronage, he
was designing commercial machinery, hoping thereby to secure an income
outside the court. Among the most notable of these were an olive press, an
automatic file-cutter, a hydraulic saw, and a needle sharpener. This latter
was a forerunner of modern sharpeners with their mass-production
methods. With it, Leonardo dreamt of sharpening four hundred needles at a
time, or forty thousand an hour so that in twelve hours one person could
sharpen four hundred and eighty thousand needles! The needles were
arranged successively on a moving belt of leather and brought against a
rotating grindstone. This grindstone was set in such a way that the needles
were sharpened into curvilinear points rather than the usual triangular
points.

In his travels to Vigevano and other parts of the countryside around Milan,
Leonardo had studied flour mills. He had talked with the workmen, asked
the prices of grain, and noted the time that it took to do the milling. Then he
made calculations on ways to cut down the time, and, in fact, redesigned the
entire mill. He mounted twelve cylindrical millstones in rows of four on one
side of a canal and another twelve on the other side. In the canal were
hydraulic wheels or paddlewheels. Each wheel was attached to a rod that
ran underneath four millstones. Geared to the one rod were four grinding
levers to the stones above. In this way it was possible to have twenty-four
millstones operating at the same time.

But most fascinating to Leonardo now was the construction of his 76
flying machine. His first models involved the principle of an air-screw
mounted on a platform on which a man stood. But where would the
necessary power come from to lift his machine from the ground? At first he
thought of operating his air-screw by means of a steel spring coiled around
a drum, but this he apparently abandoned. Later, however, Leonardo did
design another model on this principle which has been called the forerunner

of the modern helicopter. It was to be operated by four men standing on a
platform. Each man would hold a bar which wound a spring-driven
mechanism, much as in a modern clockworks. The air-screw was a broad
blade spiraling about a vertical shaft—the ancestor of the modern propeller.

The model that Leonardo wanted to construct now, however, was of a
different principle. Instead of an air-screw he substituted a pair of wings
fashioned after those of the birds. There was still a platform on which the
flyer stood and two springs were still the essential “motor” to raise and
lower the wings. But as Leonardo worked on his apparatus he began to
realize that it would be too much at the mercy of a sudden gust of wind or a
violent updraft. It was necessary to return to his study of the air and its
currents.

With all of this activity in mechanical devices Leonardo had reawakened his
interest in mathematics. During this time he was introduced to a man at
Ludovico’s court who became his friend and collaborator. He was a
Franciscan monk named Fra Luca Pacioli who had been appointed a
professor of mathematics by Ludovico. He, too, came from Florence, and in
1496, when he met Leonardo, he was forty-six years old and the author of
Summa di Arithmetica, the first printed scientific work of his time. Pacioli
was now at work on a book of geometry to be entitled De Divina
Proportione and he enlisted Leonardo’s aid in drawing the plates for his
book. As Leonardo had already made a study of human proportions, the
association with Pacioli was of benefit to them both. Among Leonardo’s
best known drawings of human proportion is a beautifully rendered figure-
study of a standing man with his arms at his sides and then outstretched, his
legs together and then apart, inscribed within a square and a circle. It was
made to illustrate a passage from Vitruvius on the proportions of a human
figure and demonstrated, among other things, “the span of a man’s 77
outstretched arms is equal to his height.”

Moreover, Leonardo found with Pacioli confirmation of many of his own
observations and experiments and in turn Pacioli gave to Leonardo a
confidence in his own methods. Pacioli also helped Leonardo with his
arithmetic, a subject that Leonardo had neglected in his impatience to study
geometry. The association also helped to free him further from the cobwebs

of medieval beliefs. For Pacioli, the friendship with Leonardo was a
revelation. Although Pacioli was a learned mathematician, Leonardo
demonstrated to him that the application of his science encompassed all
sciences—even art—for Leonardo later wrote, “Let no one read me who is
not a mathematician....”

Legend relates that Leonardo became so absorbed in his studies that the
prior of the monastery complained to Ludovico that the “Last Supper,”
although nearly completed, still lacked the faces of Christ and Judas.
Ludovico summoned Leonardo to court and laid the complaint before him.
Leonardo, however, was quick to reply.

“The good prior is an esteemed man, your Grace, but he is a monk and not a
painter. Little does he know that I spend at least two hours a day on my
painting.”

“But Master, he says he never sees you there, so how do you explain 78
these two hours a day?”

“Excellency, the figure of Judas must be of incomparable evil. Every day I
search for this face in the criminal quarter, and every day I fail to find the
evil that I am looking for. If I cannot find this man, however, I can use the
head of the prior—it would do admirably, but I have hesitated for fear of
hurting his feelings.”

Ludovico slapped his knees and roared with laughter. There were no more
complaints.

Finally, in 1498, the scaffolding was removed from the painting and
Leonardo’s masterpiece was revealed. The twelve apostles grouped at the
table are shown each responding in his own way to the words of Christ,
“One of you shall betray me.” Again hundreds flocked to see this latest
marvel of Leonardo’s. Its striking influence was felt by generations of
painters. Even now, more than four hundred and fifty years later, the world
still comes to stand before the genius of Leonardo da Vinci in the refectory
of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

The clouds of war were gathering again over Italy. In April of 1498, Charles
VIII of France died and his successor was Louis of Orleans, who became
Louis XII. The new King of France laid claim to the Dukedom of Milan,
and Ludovico again tried to form an alliance against him. But the years of
juggling enemy against enemy and friend against friend were now coming
to an end. No one trusted Il Moro any more, and suddenly he realized that
he was to be alone in this new fight. After nearly twenty years of power
sustained by powerful alliances, Ludovico was forced to turn to his own
people of Lombardy. Frantically he tried to correct the injustices of years.
The people had been cruelly taxed to support the extravagances of the
Sforza court, and, in addition, they had been badly treated by petty
government officials. Ludovico now sought to repay the past miseries of his
people and to rally them to his support. In such a spirit he remembered his
court painter, Leonardo da Vinci, and gave him a vineyard and considerable
piece of land not far from the Porta Vercellina. 79

Now, for the first time in his life, Leonardo knew financial security. With
the income from the vineyard, and in the peace of his estate, he was left free
to follow his own researches. He took no notice that his “peace” was
surrounded by the threat of war. Indeed, he remained aloof from politics
and court intrigues as much as was possible for a man living in the midst of
such chaotic times.

Leonardo now had the opportunity to follow up an early interest—the study
of plants. He made many beautiful drawings; no plant was too small to
catch his eye. His notes on botany began to grow. With his genius for
observation and analysis of nature, Leonardo made some extraordinary
discoveries of botanical laws entirely unknown before his time. He wrote of
the phenomenon of heliotropism, or the movement of plants toward or away
from the sunlight. In addition, he described the phenomenon known as
geotropism, or the growth of plants according to gravitational law, as for
example, roots growing downward and shoots growing upward. He also
defined the laws of phyllotaxis, which describe the system or order of leaf
arrangement on a plant’s stem. That is, leaves are arranged spirally around a
stem so that the third leaf above grows out over the third leaf below on one
type of plant; or, on another type, the two third leaves are over the two third
leaves below. The same natural laws apply to the branches of plants as well;

they occur so that every leaf and branch can receive sufficient air and light.
Amazingly enough, these laws, which Leonardo described so completely,
were not rediscovered until almost two centuries later! 80

Leonardo went even further in his botanical studies. He experimented with
gourds, planting them in various aqueous solutions; this anticipated modern
methods of growing plants in chemicals. He also tested the actions of
arsenic and mercury poisons in plants. He reproduced the shape and form of
leaves by pressing them on paper coated with lampblack, a method that was
not used again until the nineteenth century. Carefully noted, too, in his
writings was the rising of sap from the roots to the branches by capillary
action; this, too, was not rediscovered until much later—in the eighteenth
century. Leonardo also extracted oils and essences from flowers and studied
the influences of altitude on the development of vegetation. Indeed
Leonardo’s very approaches to a systematic classification of plants were the
forerunners of modern methods of classifying.

In the seclusion of his own home, as he continued his studies of 81
geometry with Pacioli, Leonardo again turned to his observations of
the heavens. On the roof of his house he had set up a small observatory for
watching the sky at night. Often he looked at the stars through a pinhole in
a sheet of paper. Leonardo did this to stop the “twinkling” of the stars which
he recognized as an optical illusion. Moreover, by looking at the stars in
this manner, he noticed that some were larger than others, and imagined to
himself how our own earth might look from them. Would we not be but
another “star” in a vast collection of stars? And if that were true—how
could the earth be the center of the universe? By the same imaginary
reasoning, he speculated on how we must look to someone on the moon.
Realizing that the moonlight on earth faintly illuminates the dark side of the
earth, he reasoned that then there must be an “earthlight” doing the same on
the moon. Thus he was the first to explain the dim reflected light on the
dark side of the moon. Moreover, Leonardo is known to have looked at the
moon through a convex lens, and perhaps even a form of telescope. Indeed,
he had built telescopic-type tubes with lenses in them and had written
directions for their use. It seems certain that at about this time Leonardo
became convinced of the heliocentric theory, the theory that states the sun is

the center of our universe. On a sheet of mathematical notes Leonardo
wrote in large letters, “the sun does not move.”

During this time he continued to seek out books on astronomy. Leonardo
was familiar with Aristotle’s Meteorology, Archimedes’ On the Center of
Gravity, and with Problems in Aristotle’s Books of the Sky and the World, a
work by Albert of Saxony. This last book Leonardo had to read with the
help of a Latin dictionary, because his Latin was not good. He had already
read Plutarch, who had defined the moon as a solid. Plutarch had written
further that the “spots” on the moon were the result of shadows cast by
irregularities on its surface. This theory, that was apparently abandoned
during the Middle Ages, supported the conclusions that Leonardo had
reached by his own observations. But he still struggled against a mistaken
idea of his own. For a long while he maintained that there were seas and
waters upon the moon which accounted for the sunlight being reflected so
brilliantly. 82

Meanwhile, in July of 1499, the French army had reached Lombardy.
Ludovico was now in a state of desperation. He tried to appeal to the people
of Milan, explaining that their heavy taxes had been due to the constant
threats from abroad. But, however hard he tried to arouse their sense of
loyalty to him, the public of Milan turned a deaf ear. They had not forgotten
how Ludovico had allied himself with Charles VIII—a foreign king!
Ludovico now had to put his trust in his army commander, Galeazzo da
Sanseverino, despite warnings that this was a man of doubtful loyalty.
Moreover, to make matters worse, Louis XII had succeeded in forming an
alliance against Ludovico; and, among his allies was a powerful cardinal,
son of Pope Alexander VI—the notorious Cesare Borgia.

From a note on a page of designs for supplying and heating a bath we know
that Leonardo continued his quiet life, only vaguely disturbed by the
political upheaval taking place around him. His note reads, “On the first day
of August 1499 I wrote here of movement and weight.” He had made many
experiments and calculations concerning the movement and weight of
objects. He had drawn, for example, the flight of an arrow to describe
motion through air and although he wrote no specific formula, he marked
the three stages of its trajectory—the initial push, the slowing and the

steeper downward path as the arrow’s momentum was overcome by the
resistance of the air. He also defined the law of movement on an inclined
plane and he arrived at the root principle of Newton’s law of gravitation
when he wrote, “every weight tends to fall toward the center by the 83
shortest way.”

A diagram of this period is probably the first scientific graph. Leonardo had
experimented with two balls dropped from a height. First he dropped them
together and then one after the other. In attempting to solve the
mathematical problems presented by these falling bodies he drew a graph of
vertical and horizontal lines. The times it took for the balls to fall were
marked on the horizontal lines and the distances on the vertical lines—thus,
he could trace their relationship.

But this peaceful time of productive work was running out for Leonardo.
Ludovico’s commander, Galeazzo, had yielded the fortress of Alessandria to
the French at the first battle. Ludovico himself had sent his sons and his
treasure to his brother, Cardinal Ascanio, in Germany. When he saw that his
cause was lost, he turned the Sforza castle over to Bernardino da Corte, a
trusted commander, making certain that it was fully supplied with arms and
food. Then in sorrow, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, left his city for the
last time as ruler of Lombardy. The gates of Milan were opened to the
French in October of 1499, and Bernardino da Corte surrendered the Sforza
castle.

French soldiers now occupied Milan as conquerors and the people of 84
the city were in a state of confusion. Those who could made their
peace with the French; but others, who had been supporters of Ludovico,
fled to avoid arrest. Leonardo, who would be suspect to the French, packed
up his few possessions—although he did manage to retain his estate—and
left, together with Pacioli and an apprentice, for Mantua.

85

Leonardo had to flee Milan.

86

9
Cesare Borgia

Leonardo, Pacioli, and Salai, the apprentice, arrived in Mantua in February
of the year 1500. They were given refuge in the castle of Isabella d’Este,
who was the sister of Beatrice, and the wife of Francesco Gonzaga,
governor of Mantua. Isabella was one of the eminent women of her time
and attracted to her court the intellectual life of Italy. In Leonardo she
recognized the man of genius; indeed, she treated him as an equal, putting
her castle at his disposal. She persuaded him to paint her portrait and 87
Leonardo commenced a preparatory drawing.

In the evenings at the castle there were discussions and music and here
Leonardo again met his pupil and companion on the trip from Florence so
many years ago—Atalante Migliorotti who had left Milan in 1490 to
assume the post of court musician to Isabella.

Although Leonardo had found a haven of peace in the political storm that
raged about the city state of Mantua, he and Pacioli took to the road again
for reasons unknown. Isabella d’Este, who still wanted Leonardo at her
court, sent many a letter and messenger in the following years to bring
Leonardo back—first to finish the portrait and then, when that failed, to sell
to her any picture that Leonardo wished to send. Strangely enough,
however, Leonardo seems to have turned his back upon the one sympathetic
person he had met in a world of indifference.

The first, warm breezes of spring were blowing over the lagoons of Venice
when Leonardo and Pacioli stepped ashore on the Piazzetta, or Little Square

of San Marco. But the beauty of this jewel-like city rising from the sea was
momentarily ignored by the two travelers for an angry, frightened crowd
had gathered about the Doge’s palace on the Piazzetta.

The people of Venice were fearful because their fleet had just suffered 88
a crushing defeat by the Turks. This meant that their power at sea,
once supreme, was now no more. Year by year, moreover, their possessions
in the east had been slowly whittled away, and now the city itself was
threatened by invasion. At this same time, the Venetian ambassador,
Manenti, hoping to make peace with the Turks, had been rudely rejected by
them. Panic soon swept the city and rumors of the bloodthirsty infidel
passed from person to person like the rush of an ugly wind. Barricades were
put up and windows were barred. In this charged atmosphere, Leonardo and
Pacioli sought out their lodgings.

Soon after Leonardo’s arrival here—either because his reputation had
preceded him or, more likely, because of Fra Luca Pacioli’s
recommendations—he became directly involved with the defenses of
Venice. Immediately he was sent on an inspection trip of the city’s existing
defenses, especially those inland from where an invasion would probably
come. When he had seen them, he recommended a system of defenses along
the Isonzo river near the present border of Yugoslavia, using the river itself
to the disadvantage of the enemy. He also made suggestions for the
improvement of forts, and even drew up plans for a completely new type—
a circular fort. This consisted of a central, circular fort surrounded by two
belts of fortresses each separated by a moat. In the outside moat were four
semicircular outposts. Communication was by underground galleries. The
total absence of superstructure and projecting balconies was a new idea for
the times. Another new defense idea was to station in the moat itself a low,
thick tower almost completely submerged, defended by a thin opening near
the waterline. It was reached from the main fort by an underground passage
and the gunsmoke was removed by vents. According to Leonardo no enemy
could conceal himself in any part of the defenses and not be seen from such
an outpost.

Leonardo’s most unusual scheme for defending Venice, however, was 89
his idea of approaching an enemy fleet under the water and then

putting holes in the hulls of their ships. Actually, the idea of diving was not
a new one. Aristotle had written of diving and diving bells, and certainly the
stories of pearl fishers in the Orient were well known in the Renaissance.
But Leonardo designed a diver’s suit closely resembling those used today.
This consisted of a complete suit of leather with helmet and eyepieces; it
was made airtight by spirals of steel at the joints. He then added a bladder
for holding air which fastened inside the suit at the diver’s chest. It is
possible that Leonardo also invented an air chamber that could be used by
the diver while under water—but he was very secretive about this invention
for fear of how men might abuse such a discovery. He wrote, “... and this I
do not publish or divulge, on account of the evil nature of man, who would
practice assassinations at the bottom of the seas....”

Leonardo felt the same way about a “submarine” that he presented to the
Councilors and Tribunal of Venice. This resembled a turtle’s shell with a
raised bump on the center which was the “periscope.” When submerged the
water probably rose to an area just around the “periscope,” but, again, the
information about its air-supply is missing and the only reference to it is a
reminder to close the “l—.” In addition, he invented a system of screws
mounted in tongs with the borer in the middle for putting holes in the
bottoms of enemy ships, and at the same time he thought of a defense
against such an attack by designing the defending vessels with double hulls.

Among Leonardo’s other maritime devices were designs for boats that 90
could dredge canals, harbors, and lagoons. What was the result of all
these plans? We do not know. Whether any one of them was used against
the Turks is a mystery.

At any rate, Leonardo and Pacioli left Venice that same spring and arrived
in Florence in April of 1500. One of the purposes of Leonardo’s journey
was to visit his father who was now living on Via Ghibellina with his fourth
wife. Leonardo was now forty-eight. Still tall and straight with the strength
of his youth, his face prematurely aged and his hair thinning back from his
high forehead, Leonardo was more than ever an outstanding looking man.
He still scorned fashionable clothes and dressed according to his own
comfort which made him even more noticeable among the crowd. His deep-

set eyes with their direct and penetrating glance, framed by his full, reddish
beard, never missed a thing, although he now wore spectacles at his work.

Now that he was back in Florence, Leonardo needed lodgings and a job. He
had banked his small savings, and he did not want to touch that. His father’s
house with the five children of his present wife plus the sons from his
previous marriages was too full to accommodate Leonardo. Moreover, the
relationship between Piero and Leonardo was polite but distant, as Piero
preferred the children of his later marriages.

Luckily, the place to live and the commission Leonardo needed 91
presented themselves at the same time. The Church of the
Annunciation of the Servite Order of Monks needed an altarpiece, and, as
Leonardo’s fame was great, they offered him and his apprentice quarters in
the monastery. Here, in the solitude of a monastic cell, Leonardo was able
to return to his own researches. His long association with Fra Luca Pacioli
continued as they worked together on Pacioli’s edition of Euclid’s Elements.
At the same time, with his absorption in geometry, Leonardo commenced
his studies of the transformation of solids; that is, changing the shape of
something to another shape without diminishing or increasing its substance.

In his preoccupation with geometry, Leonardo had apparently done little
about the commission which the Servite monks had given him. He finally
yielded to their complaints, however, and commenced to draw the
preliminary study for the subject, which was “St. Anne with the Virgin and
Child.” Again his knowledge of geometry is most apparent in the finely
constructed composition, every gesture of which is as plotted as a geometric
exercise. In April of 1501, the drawing was finished; it caused an immediate
sensation throughout Florence. For two days the public was allowed to pass
in front of it.

But now a change was taking place in Leonardo. He was no longer content
with simply painting. His highly original researches for pictures had slowly
grown to the point where the research was more important than painting. In
a sense the scientist had taken the brush from the artist. In two letters from
Isabella d’Este’s emissary in Florence we learn, “He is entirely wrapped up
in geometry and has no patience for painting.” This excerpt from a letter
dated April 8, 1501, was followed six days later by another which said in

part, “In brief, his mathematical experiments have made painting so
distasteful to him that he cannot even bear to take up a brush.” 92

A few months after the completion of the St. Anne drawing, Leonardo
received a letter signed by Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois. Leonardo
frowned and thought back to his last days in Milan. When King Louis XII
of France had entered the city, he had summoned the painter of the “Last
Supper” to an audience. The king had been generous in his praise and had
tried to persuade Leonardo to remain. At that same audience had also been
Cesare Borgia, an ally of the French. Leonardo remembered the man now—
the dark hair and eyes, the black, arched eyebrows, and the face marked by
some old disease. He was a powerful-chested, thin-hipped man who had
originally been made a cardinal by his father, Pope Alexander VI. But the
attractions of secular power soon persuaded him to abandon this title. With
the enthusiastic help of his father, Borgia had fought, murdered, and
deceived his way to a formidable position of authority in these last years.
Leonardo, in the seclusion of the monastery, had lately heard that Borgia’s
army had even been at the gates of Florence.

The letter addressed to Leonardo was an offer to assume the post of
Architect and Military Engineer to His Excellency, Cesare Borgia. He
thought of Ludovico Sforza—defeated and captured at the battle of Novara
just a year ago as he attempted to regain his dukedom. Now the duke was a
prisoner at Loches in Touraine; Leonardo had written of him, “The duke
lost his State, his personal possessions and his liberty, and none of his
enterprises have been completed.” And Leonardo also thought of his
equestrian monument still standing in the castle being used for target
practice by the French archers. Like the duke, nothing of his own had been
completed either. Perhaps this Borgia offer was an opportunity. 93
Leonardo decided to accept it.

In May of 1502, after having presented himself to Cesare Borgia in Rome,
Leonardo began his hectic travels through Tuscany and Umbria. He was to
inspect the fortresses and cities of Cesare’s new conquests there, and to
make whatever recommendations he felt necessary for their improvements.
Arriving in Piombino, he at once set down a project for draining the
marshes and reclaiming the land. Also, while he was here, he spent hours by

the sea watching the waves curl in from the Adriatic and studying the crash
of water over the beaches. Moving on to Arrezzo, he drew up the first in a
series of remarkable maps for the army of Vitellozzo which, with the
backing of Cesare Borgia, was marching against Florence. These maps are
bird’s-eye views of Tuscany and Umbria, and somewhat resemble modern
aerial photographs. Drawn from Leonardo’s own observations, the green
mountains stand, according to their height, in relief, with the roads winding
over them and down through the valleys. The streams and their tributaries
are in blue and even the villages and cities are drawn with great exactitude.
Indeed Leonardo had learned his lessons from old Toscanelli well, and he
was one of the first to bring the art of cartography to such perfection.

In July and August Leonardo was in Urbino and Pesaro, and by the 94
8th of August he had reached Rimini. Here he strengthened the
fortifications and then rode quickly on to Cesena. Between Cesena, capital
of the Romagna, and Porto Cesanatico, he spent from the middle of August
to September planning a canal between the two, redesigning government
buildings, and drawing up a new quarter to be built for the city of Cesena.
At this time he constructed an instrument for telling him the speed of water
currents in a stream. It told him whether the flow was swifter at the surface
or at the bottom or on one side or the other of the stream’s bed.

In the meantime, Florence, alarmed at the growing power of Cesare Borgia,
appealed to Charles d’Amboise, Regent of Milan for France, to come to her
aid. Charles responded in the absence of the French King and helped to
protect Florence. The enemies of Cesare took advantage of this to form an
alliance, and soon Cesare was being forced back from his newly won
possessions. Cesare himself then hastened to Milan, and there he suddenly
came face to face again with Louis, the King of France, who was on his
way to Naples. Borgia, who could exert great charm and influence when he
wished, persuaded the king that, all rumors to the contrary, he, Cesare, was
fighting the enemies of France. Again he won over the French, which
greatly strengthened his position. Then, from Pavia, he issued a decree
placing every facility possible at Leonardo’s disposal. In addition, he
instructed all officials to help Leonardo in every matter, referring to him as
“our highly esteemed court architect.”

While Leonardo was in Porto Cesanatico, a delegation from Bayzid II, 95
Sultan of Turkey, paid a visit to Cesare Borgia. Among other things
the delegation was looking for an engineer to build a bridge between
Constantinople and Pera to replace a temporary wooden structure. Leonardo
designed for them a single-arched bridge with double ramps at either end
(looking very much like a present-day “thruway” entrance). He provided
that it should be approximately twelve hundred feet long, eighty feet wide,
and one hundred and forty feet above the water.

Da Vinci’s proposed bridge from Constantinople (Istanbul) to Pera.
Looking very much like a modern “thruway” entrance, it was to have
double ramps on both sides.

In his travels through the countryside, Leonardo could not help but notice
how primitive the mills were. Feeling how strongly the wind blew in from
the sea, he designed a windmill with a roof that turned with the sails. For
the mechanism inside he devised a band brake—a semicircle of wood into
which the large cogwheel of the mill was forced. This mill resembles the
“Dutch” mills of the Netherlands and was among the first of its type to be
brought into existence.

In the fall Leonardo was at Imola. There he created another of his 96
beautifully rendered maps. He drew this with the help of a magnetic
compass of his own invention. It consisted of a board with an arc on it and a
compass needle, and was probably the first magnetic needle on a horizontal
axis. This time the map was of the city itself, the walls, the castle and the
principal buildings all touched with color and the river winding through the
fields. Drawn in the shape of a circle, it resembles a view through a
telescope from directly above. In Imola, too, he met Niccolò Machiavelli,
the famous historian and political scientist, who was an emissary from the
Signoria, the Council which now governed Florence. These two men
became friends and, later, collaborators in Leonardo’s scheme to make the
Arno river navigable to the sea.

At this time Cesare Borgia, having achieved great success in his military
campaigns and confident of his conquests, decided to return to Rome. With
the disbanding of Borgia’s headquarters at Imola, Leonardo’s duties were
finished. Together with his new friend Niccolò Machiavelli and two other
Florentines, he left Imola and the service of Cesare Borgia to return to
Florence.

In January of 1503, a mathematician named Giovanni Battista Danti
attempted a flight in a machine that he had designed. This flight was part of
the entertainment at a wedding reception in Perugia. Danti climbed into his
apparatus on top of the tower of St. Mary of the Virgin. It was pushed off
into the air, hovered a few seconds, then began slowly drifting toward the
ground. But suddenly, one of its wings hit a building projection and it
crashed. Danti was carried away with a broken leg.

The news of the event traveled quickly to Florence.

When Leonardo heard about it, he eagerly questioned all those who 97
had either seen it or had heard it described first hand. Danti’s
attempted flight excited Leonardo for now he realized that he was no longer
alone in his search. With a sense of urgency he returned to the problems of
flying. He felt now that the solution to flight might be in the swift gusts of
air through the ravines and the spread wings of the eagle drifting high in the
sky.

98

10
Shattered Hopes

Before Leonardo could return to the problem of flight, however, he was
again faced with the necessity of supporting himself and his growing
household. The small fees he received for taking on apprentices hardly
covered the cost of housing and feeding them. Moreover, the equipment he
had to buy for his scientific researches added further to his strained budget.
So, when a servant from Francesco del Giocondo, a rich Florentine
merchant, presented himself at the gate with the request that Leonardo
accept a commission to paint Francesco’s wife, Leonardo was only too glad
to accept. The name of Francesco’s wife was Madonna Lisa, or Mona Lisa
for short. Leonardo painted her portrait on and off for the next three years.
Thus, what started as a minor commission ended as the one painting—in
addition to the “Last Supper”—that most people today associate with 99
the name of Leonardo da Vinci.

Having secured this work, Leonardo turned back to his studies of birds in
flight and the nature of air. The soaring wings of eagles and hawks and the
way they rode the currents with hardly a dip of their spread wings guided
Leonardo’s thinking from pure mechanics to machines that act more on the
principle of the glider. He proposed to write a treatise on the nature of birds’
flight, and, with his usual thoroughness, he began to weigh, dissect, and
reconstruct various types of birds and their wing structure. He realized that
one of the main difficulties of gliding was maintaining balance, or, more
accurately, maintaining the center of gravity. From previous observations
Leonardo had noted that man is capable of making the same motions that a
bird does. He had also measured the strength of a man’s legs and had

calculated that man has twice the power in his leg muscles that he needs for
standing. Consequently he began to redesign his machine making use of
man’s arms and legs to operate or “flap” the wings instead of standing him
on a platform.

The first of Leonardo’s new designs was a sort of harness apparatus 100
strapped across the shoulders of the flyer who was supposed to be
able to keep himself balanced by moving the lower part of his body. He
could manipulate the flight by handles that were connected to the flexible,
outer parts of the wings. These wings were designed from the webbed
wings of the bat. Surprisingly enough, this device closely resembled the
experimental gliders used by Otto Lilienthal almost four centuries later in
Germany.

Leonardo was now approaching other solutions to pure flight when further
hostilities interrupted his work. Florence and Pisa were in bitter rivalry, and
their struggle had assumed the proportions of a major war. The Florentine
army was now practically at the gates of Pisa. Niccolò Machiavelli urged
the Signoria to enlist the help of Leonardo da Vinci, who might be able to
think of an immediate plan for destroying Pisa and her army. Never one to
think in terms of an immediate battle or a temporary success, Leonardo put
forth a daring and sweeping plan that would forever reduce the power of
Pisa. The plan was as simple as it was monumental—divert the Arno river
from its course into two canals that would empty into the sea at Leghorn
south of Pisa. In this way, Pisa would lose her water supply and her opening
to the sea.

The plan met with immediate approval and by the end of July 1503,
Leonardo was sent out to survey the entire course of the river. He was
accompanied by Giovanni “the Piper,” a man who was frequently employed
on minor engineering projects and who was the official player of the pipes
to the city of Florence. Giovanni was also the father of Benvenuto Cellini,
who became the most famous goldsmith of the Renaissance. As they made
their way to Pisa, Leonardo made some more of his extraordinary maps of
the area, paying particular attention to the course of the Arno and its
tributaries. These maps later inspired him to plan a whole series 101
showing the main watersheds of Italy.

When he rode into the Florentine camp drawn up before Pisa, Leonardo
designed from his observations and maps, a dam on the Arno to regulate the
course of the river. This bird’s-eye view map is a marvel of exactness. It
shows the flow of the river hitting the dam with its swirling backwash and
overflow. Leonardo’s knowledge of the movement of water was so great
and his craftsmanship in drawing so fine that the water in this map seems to
flow before one’s eyes. One of the main problems in regulating the Arno
was its tendency to continually be shifting its bed by the deposits of new
sediment, and Leonardo realized it would be a long time before this project
could be completed.

When he returned to Florence he presented to the Signoria, as part of his
survey, various machines to hasten the excavation of the Arno. He had
designed a crane that would assist in the digging out of two different levels
at the same time. He also submitted the results of his calculations on the
saving of muscular energy by the use of such machines. In addition,
Leonardo proposed to use the water in the canals for irrigation purposes and
had even calculated what the volume and velocity of a jet of water would be
if projected from an opening in the bottom of the canal wall into an
irrigation ditch. As if this were not enough, he had invented a practical
method of piling as a foundation for the lock-basins to protect them against
the dangers of erosion.

A separate map of this period on the flow of rivers in general was 102
intended to relate to his treatise on the nature of water. In this treatise
is the first outline of the fundamental principles of hydrodynamics, as for
example:

The velocity of a current increases with the slope and decreases with the
winding of the riverbed.

The volume of a river is in proportion to the width of its bed, the slope and
the depth of the water being equal.

The slope and width being equal, the speed of the current is greatest in the
deepest part of the river.

The excavation force increases at the narrowest section of the river.

Because of the grumbling of the military commanders at what they
considered a waste of time, Machiavelli had to intervene with the Signoria
before Leonardo was sent out again with documents of authority to continue
with his plans. He spent well into the fall surveying the Arno and in October
he was back in Florence.

Meanwhile the fighting between Pisa and Florence had been lessened by
two political changes. In August Pope Alexander VI had died and his son
Cesare Borgia became seriously ill. The Republic of Florence was now free
of its most dangerous enemies—the Borgias. The city relaxed in its new
security and the hostilities between Florence and Pisa died down to an
uneasy armed watch.

Leonardo quickly took advantage of the situation to present an early 103
dream of his to the Signoria. He again put forth his idea of a
commercial canal to the sea and made mention of the great advantages there
would be for all the mills, lumber yards, forges and other commercial
interests in utilizing the water power that would be available from his
project. Piero Soderini, the governor of the city-state of Florence, was
impressed and thought of the glory it would bring to Florence and himself.
He told Leonardo he would present it to the Signoria.

Leonardo now plunged into a winter of great activity. Forced to draw from
his savings, he had rejoined the guild of painters in October of 1503, and
then applied for the commission of painting the murals in the council
chamber of the Palace of the Signoria. It had been planned to decorate this
great hall with scenes commemorating famous Florentine victories, and
Leonardo chose the battle of Anghiari where the soldiers of Florence
defeated the Milanese in 1440. In addition to working on the “Mona Lisa”
and continuing with the canal project—for which he was now designing
great suction pumps to lift rivers from one level to another—he turned
again to astronomy and geology.

Leonardo, while investigating the course of the upper Arno, had come
across much evidence that the land there had at one time been completely
under water. Various types of ancient ocean life and vegetation lay scattered
in layers along the ridges of the mountains, and these Leonardo collected
and brought back to his studio. He wrote, “above the plains of Italy where

now birds fly in flocks, fishes were wont to wander in large shoals.” He
reread Ptolemy, the ancient Greek geographer Strabo, and even Sir John
Mandeville, an English author of travel books, in his quest for knowledge
of distant places. He talked to travelers, sailors, and wrote to friends to send
him information about the countries they had seen or lived in. Strabo, in
particular, had set forth the doctrine that the earth’s transformation had
taken place by the forces of volcanoes and water, but the wisdom of these
early men had been obscured by the closed minds of the Middle 104
Ages.

Even in his own time of reawakening knowledge—the Renaissance—
Leonardo had to contend with the combined superstition of the Church and
the ignorance of misguided scholars. For example, the Church believed in
the great flood, as described in the Bible, and the scholars claimed that if
what Leonardo said were true—that the earth was the result of an
evolutionary process—there would have been written records. To this latter
Leonardo responded, “... sufficient for us is the testimony of things
produced in the salt waters and now found again in the high mountains far
from the seas.” But Leonardo’s conception of the evolution of the earth was
mistaken in one respect. He regarded the earth as organic—living—and the
flow of water he believed to be like the flow of blood in man. Indeed,
according to Leonardo, all living creatures were reflections of a living,
breathing earth. It was only when he again turned his eyes inquiringly
toward the moon and the laws of the universe that he began to realize his
error.

It had been the idea that the earth was the center of the universe 105
which supported Leonardo’s theory of an organic earth. Yet after
years of observation and study he abandoned this theory and, with the eye
of a man centuries ahead of his time, he wrote in his notes, “The moon has
every month a winter and a summer. And it has greater colds and greater
heats and its equinoxes are colder than ours.” He went further and identified
the elements existing on the moon such as “water, air, and fire,” and
described them and their functions as being like those on our own earth. In
so doing he recognized the existence of the moon as a solid in space,
reflecting the light of the sun—one of many “stars” in a universe. With his
acceptance of this concept he realized that the earth could not be organic.

In May of 1504, the Signoria complained to Leonardo that there had been
no progress on the proposed paintings for their council chamber, even
though he had already been partially paid for them. Accordingly, he was
forced to sign a document that he must be finished by February of next year
or refund all monies paid him. As was his custom he had made many
preliminary drawings. Although he was well acquainted with horses he had
again researched their anatomy and actions. Pages of rearing, frightened
horses and men in combat covered his studio tables. On one of these pages
there are sketches of the heads of a lion, some horses and a man—all with
fierce expressions on their faces. Here Leonardo hinted at the comparative
anatomy of expression in man and animal that Darwin was to write about
almost four hundred years later.

But the paintings could wait, for now the Arno River was in spring 106
flood. The time had arrived to make the first attempts at diverting the
river into its new course. Leonardo was again in the field supervising the
work. There had been much opposition to Leonardo’s canal from both the
army captains and the Signoria. It was called a whim and a crazy idea, but
Piero Soderini and Niccolò Machiavelli were stubborn in their defense of
Leonardo’s plan and they overcame all opposition to it. And indeed, the
raising of the sluice gates was successful and the Arno actually flowed into
its new bed. The tensions in the camp and in the Council of Florence were
eased. The only sad person was Leonardo, for he had just learned of the
death of his father.

Leonardo felt the loss deeply. Outwardly, however, he only acknowledged
the death of his father at a distance. Not only had Leonardo and his father
drifted apart over the years, Piero left nothing to Leonardo in his will. His
father’s other children quarreled among themselves over what money he did
leave. Leonardo’s one friend in the family was Uncle Francesco, who was
still living in Vinci. When he heard of his brother’s will, Francesco made
out a will of his own and left everything to the nephew he loved—
Leonardo.

After having successfully diverted the Arno river, it was now necessary for
Leonardo to return to the painting commissioned by the Signoria for its
council chamber. But recently, Leonardo had suffered a rebuff in this work.

Originally he had been given the whole room to do but now the opposite
wall had been assigned to another man—Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Leonardo had first met the young Michelangelo when he helped to judge
the best location for Michelangelo’s monumental statue of David. The two
men were opposites in every way. Leonardo, fifty-two years old, carefully
dressed, cool and detached, was a man whose every action was the result of
a thoughtful and analytical mind. Michelangelo, twenty-six years old, his
clothes rumpled and covered with marble dust, was passionate and moody
—an impulsive youth totally dedicated to art. They did not like each other,
and now Leonardo was forced into a rivalry for which he had no 107
heart.

The duel between these two giants of art aroused the whole of Florence and
there was a constant stream of people watching them at work. Michelangelo
was given a studio in the hospital of Sant’ Onofrio and Leonardo was
working in the Papal Chamber in Santa Maria Novella. Among the many
people who came to watch Leonardo was a young man of nineteen. He was
already a pupil of Perugino and the experience of meeting and learning
from Leonardo was to influence him the rest of his life. His name was
Raffaello Sanzio—one of the great Renaissance painters of Italy and known
to us by the name of Raphael.

While Leonardo worked at Santa Maria Novella he had the opportunity of
continuing his studies in anatomy. Dissections at that time were novelties
and when one was performed the doors were thrown open to the public.
Leonardo must have attended the public dissections at the Church of Santa
Croce. Now at Santa Maria Novella there was a hospital, and here Leonardo
was able to continue his own dissections without interruption. In a cool
room below the hospital where bodies were kept Leonardo worked late into
the night. By the flickering lights of candles and in the silence of the world
about him he studied, drew, and wrote in his notes of the wonders of the
human body.

108

In a cool room below the hospital, Leonardo worked late into the night.

He performed autopsies on people who had died natural deaths—a 109
special permission granted to him by the monks of the church, and
among these autopsies are the first written reports of some of the diseases
that are the causes of death. Arteriosclerosis, or stony growths in the blood
vessels, and pulmonary tuberculosis, a nut-like growth in the lung, are
among the discoveries Leonardo made in his lonely searches, although he
did not use these medical names for them.

Above all Leonardo was attracted to the function of the muscles, especially
those in the arms and legs. So faithfully, in fact, did he record the origin and
insertion of all the various muscles that these drawings can be used as
anatomical models today. Moreover, he believed that a good drawing was
worth pages of words describing human anatomy. The muscles were
rendered as cords so as to better understand their function. He described this
function as one of pulling instead of pushing and he noted that for every
muscle there is an opposing muscle. When one contracts the other expands.
For example, when you tighten the biceps in your arm you can feel the
looseness of the triceps, the muscle on the opposite side.

As the end of the summer of 1504 approached, Leonardo’s dream of the
canal from Florence to the sea was destroyed. The summer had been hot
and without rain. The water in the canal dried up and the Arno river
returned to its original course. All the old arguments against the plan were
revived. The Florentine army captains rebelled against the job of defending
a useless project. Again Soderini and Machiavelli intervened. After heated
debates in the Council of Eighty, which had been called into special session,
Machiavelli himself was sent out to oversee the work. It was brought almost
to completion when in late October disaster struck. The rains that had failed
to come in summer fell from the heavens in great cloudbursts. Storm after
storm swept the valleys. The workmen left and the soldiers were recalled.
The Pisan army rushed in to fill up the diggings and one final storm washed
away the dream to nothing but eroded mounds of dirt. 110

Leonardo buried his disappointment in other work. When the drawing for
the Battle of Anghiari was ready for transfer to the wall of the council
chamber, he had a special scaffolding made of his own invention which
worked on the principle of a pair of scissors standing on end, with a long

platform on top. As the legs were spread the scaffolding was lowered and
when they were pinched together it was raised. The wall had been prepared
with a special mixture which he hoped would bring out the brilliance of his
tempera colors. With several assistants who had been assigned to him by the
Signoria the violence of the Battle of Anghiari was transferred to the wall
and the actual painting was begun.

During the winter months Leonardo would relax from his work on the huge
painting and his dissections to roam the country around Florence. He visited
the slaughterhouses where the animals were killed and prepared for market.
Here he was able to examine the hearts of animals just slaughtered and to
note that the heart retained its action until the body was almost cold. He
made a glass model of the aorta (the main artery leading from the heart) of
an ox with which he could experiment on the flow of the blood. He
intended to add to it a glass tube for one of the semilunar valves of the
heart. He also experimented with a frog, dissecting its brain, heart, and
entrails and noted that it ceased to twitch only when the spinal cord was
severed. In his notes, he wrote, “The frog instantly dies when the spinal
cord is pierced; and previous to this it lived without head, without heart or
any bowels or intestines or skin; and here therefore it would seem lies the
foundation of movement and life.” He was of course searching for the
reasons that muscles moved and from where the impulses originated. 111

One of Leonardo’s favorite places to visit was Fiesole where his uncle
Allessandro Amadori lived. Uncle Allessandro was the brother of
Leonardo’s first stepmother and, since he had loved her so much, he
likewise felt an affection for Allessandro. At Fiesole, which rises over
Florence in a steep ascent, Leonardo could watch the birds circling in the
air below him.

On these lofty heights, he would unfold his drawings of flying machines.
Leonardo had progressed now to a point where an actual flight was all that
was left. He had designed a sort of flying boat—a shell with wings that
moved up and down and he had introduced a tail like that of a bird. He had
noted that the tail of a bird acts as a rudder, a stabilizer and a brake when
landing.

But Leonardo’s most recent design was one that was called an ornithopter.
It consisted of a wooden frame, two huge wings like a bat’s, a series of
ropes and pulleys and a windlass, all planned with the lightest of materials.
The flyer, lying prone in the frame, his feet in leather stirrups connected to
the wings by pulleys, would move his feet up and down to flap the wings
while, at the same time, he operated the windlass with his arms in order to
guide the machine. Soon he hoped to build this machine and try it out.

Meanwhile, Leonardo returned to his painting in the council chamber 112
with impatience, for spring was approaching and the time to finally
realize his dream of flying would be at hand. Aside from an assistant who
had tested the pedals and windlass, no one knew of his plan to actually put
his machine in the air.

The ornithopter, one of Leonardo’s designs for a “flying machine.” By
pumping his feet in the stirrups, the flyer could flap the device’s wings.

Weeks passed and the painting was almost finished. The huge wall was
covered with plunging horses and embattled soldiers. The colors were
brilliant on the special mixture he had prepared for the wall—but they were
not drying as they should have. Something was wrong. To speed the drying
process, Leonardo had a special fire built in the room that directed the heat
onto the painting. Spectators were allowed to watch as the waves of hot air

rose against the wall. Then—disaster began slowly with a small trickle of
paint from the top! Before anybody could put out the fire, the great figures
and horses slowly melted down the wall in shiny, sticky streaks of color.
Leonardo fled the room in an agony of shame. 113

With his own friends discouraged, the Signoria hostile, and the friends of
Michelangelo triumphant, Leonardo went back to Fiesole. He went back
with his secret dream of flight. The world would soon forget the Battle of
Anghiari—but the conquest of the air, if he could achieve it, would live
forever.

In the spring of 1506, from the slopes of Monte Cecero near Fiesole, legend
tells us that a great bird sailed into the air and disappeared. No one knows
whether Leonardo actually flew his machine or not but Girolamo Cardano,
the son of a friend of Leonardo, wrote, long after Leonardo had died,
“Leonardo da Vinci also attempted to fly, but he failed. He was a fine
painter.” Another dream had been shattered.

114

11
The Return to Milan

Leonardo felt his fifty-four years that spring day in 1506. The bitterness of
his failures and the frustration of his dreams added considerably to the
weight of his years. All morning he had wasted in argument with Soderini
and the Signoria. If it had not been for the letter from Charles d’Amboise,
Viceroy of the King of France for Milan, he would have felt like a beggar.
Charles d’Amboise had been appointed military governor of Milan by
Louis XII ever since the French had conquered that city and captured Duke
Ludovico Sforza. But the authority of the letter had finally won a grudging
consent from Soderini. Leonardo looked about him to see if he had
forgotten anything and slowly climbed onto his horse. He nodded to Salai,
his apprentice, looked back to see if his servant had the pack-horses ready,
and started down the street leading the small procession. He was 115
going back to Milan.

Leonardo took out the letter and reread it. The words were respectful and
admiring—and in French. They requested the presence of “Maître Leonard
de Vinci” at the court of Charles d’Amboise, for purposes of painting and
other “diverse projects” for the King of France. The letter restored a
measure of confidence to Leonardo’s self-respect. Before Leonardo left,
Soderini had made him sign a letter in which Leonardo promised to return
to Florence within three months and to leave a deposit of one hundred and
fifty florins which would be held against his return. It was signed, notarized
and dated May 30, 1506. Nevertheless, Leonardo had decided to accept the
French envoy’s offer; moreover, he looked forward to the prospect of

returning to his vineyard at Porta Vercellina and the understanding of a
sympathetic patron.

Indeed, Charles d’Amboise turned out to be more than sympathetic. He
recognized Leonardo as a great artist; but even more, he was one of the few
patrons who could appreciate the magnitude of Leonardo’s scientific and
mechanical genius. In the court of Charles, Leonardo once more enjoyed a
time of peace and an assured income. The French Vice-Chancellor of Milan,
Geffroy Carles, who was second in command, was also a distinguished
scholar and a patron of the arts and natural sciences. With the admiration
and support of these two men and especially with the distant backing of
King Louis XII of France, Leonardo’s dismal memories of Florence 116
began to fade.

Leonardo’s three months’ allotted absence from Florence, however, were
soon past and a letter arrived from Soderini demanding either Leonardo’s
return or a forfeiture of the one hundred and fifty florins deposit. Now a
tug-of-war developed between the Viceroy of Milan and the governor of
Florence over Leonardo. The Signoria reminded Charles that Leonardo had
his work to complete, while Charles d’Amboise and Geffroy Carles
demanded an extension of time. One month more was granted. More letters
were exchanged until the affair became so heated that the King of France
himself intervened. In January of 1507 the French King informed Soderini
and the Signoria that Leonardo was “not to move from Milan until our
arrival.” Since Florence at this time was under the protection of the French,
such final authority silenced the Signoria. Shortly afterwards Leonardo
discharged his obligation to the Signoria by relinquishing the one hundred
and fifty florins, and he at last became free from the demands of his native
city.

On May 24, 1507 King Louis XII re-entered Milan with all the splendor
and color that France and the Dukedom of Milan could confer upon their
ruler. Knights in armor and the ladies of the courts followed the king who
rode in flowing white and gold under a canopy of blue decorated with the
lilies of France.

With such pomp and display in Milan, Leonardo was soon back at his 117
old occupation of designing pageants and tournaments. While some

of the people from the days of the Sforzas returned, not many remembered
Duke Ludovico, who was slowly dying in a French dungeon. Among the
people that Leonardo now met, there appeared Francesco de’ Melzi, a noble
from an old Milanese family, who entered Leonardo’s life at this time as a
pupil. Soon the young man became like a son to Leonardo. Of handsome
appearance, he had the sensitivity to appreciate the essential loneliness of
Leonardo and so, almost without realizing it, he filled a gap in Leonardo’s
life that was to last until the end of his days.

Yet, as Franceso de’ Melzi opened one door of Leonardo’s life another door
closed. He received word that his beloved uncle Francesco had died at Vinci
and that he had become the heir to his uncle’s property. No sooner had this
news been delivered when Leonardo was notified that Giuliano, a son of
Piero, and now a lawyer in his own right, was contesting the will. All the
frustrations of his life in Florence now rose to an angry pitch and he set out
once again for Florence to fight for his own rights.

Wisely, Leonardo had armed himself with letters from his new, influential
patrons and even one from King Louis himself recommending, “... we
request that you will cause this dispute to be settled in the best and briefest
delivery of justice....” In August of that same year—1507—Charles
d’Amboise added his personal letter suggesting that the king could not
spare Leonardo too long from the court at Milan.

It was with the title of Painter and Engineer to the King of France 118
that Leonardo rode back to Florence to await the outcome of the
judges in his case. He went to stay with a sculptor friend, Giovanni Rustici,
a man of thirty-five and also an ex-student of Verrochio. They lived in a
house lent to Rustici by a wealthy scholar and patron named Piero Martelli.

Leonardo soon found that he and Rustici had much in common. Rustici,
too, collected the odds and ends of his journeys into the country. Flying
about the house were a tame eagle and a raven, while, at dinner, a pet
porcupine begged for food. Rustici, however, was a believer in alchemy and
magic. To practice these arts the young man devoted one room to the
strange mixtures which bubbled over flames as he attempted to change base
metals into gold, or to call upon the spirits to predict the future.

Leonardo settled into the life of the house very quickly and even helped his
friend on an important sculpture commission. This was a group composition
of St. John between the Pharisee and the Levite for over the doors of the
baptistry. He also started to gather together his scattered notes on all the
subjects that he had written about, going through them making corrections
and erasing the repetitions. Possibly Leonardo was considering the
publication of all his material for he wrote, “Begun at Florence in the house
of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22nd day of March, 1508. This will be a
collection without order, made up of many sheets which I have copied here,
hoping afterwards to arrange them in order in their proper places according
to the subjects of which they treat....” This “collection without order” of
almost forty years extended into practically all branches of human
knowledge, founded on years of observation and experiment. Indeed, it was
the magnificent effort of one extraordinary mind to push back the curtains
of ignorance in order to let the light of natural truth shine through to 119
mankind.

In addition, Leonardo returned to his studies of anatomy and comparative
anatomy. For this latter he made many beautiful drawings of the legs of
animals as compared to those of man. With them, Leonardo tried to indicate
man’s place in the natural order of the world. He pointed out that our
physical bodies are basically the same as those of animals, and that the
muscular and organic differences are those of function only. For example,
bird and man have the same chest muscles, called the pectoralis. But the
bird, in order to fly, has developed these into powerful instruments of
motion. Man, on the other hand, has learned to stand and move in an
upright position. He has developed the muscles of the back, called the
erectores spinae, and those of the buttocks to hold him erect. Leonardo
intended to enlarge upon his studies of comparative anatomy to include all
living creatures, even the insects.

Meanwhile, the Viceroy of Milan was becoming impatient for Leonardo’s
return. The judgment against his half-brothers had been settled in
Leonardo’s favor, and he hastened back to Milan. By the summer of 1508
he was once more in the routine of the court’s activities. King Louis had
granted Leonardo a regular allowance and it was the first time he had
enjoyed such a long freedom from the concerns of earning a living. With

these steady payments Leonardo now had the leisure and support to pursue
his own multitude of interests.

As his notes began to take shape and he thought of printing them, it 120
was natural for the inventive Leonardo to design his own printing
press. It is one of the earliest such designs on record. Because the carrying
bed which held the type and the paper was automatically adjusted to the
handlebar, the press could be operated by one man. Besides his notes
Leonardo also considered printing a work by Roger Bacon, the thirteenth
century English scientist.

This project for printing his own books, however, was never realized by
Leonardo. Lately, he had received a commission which took him back in
memory to the days of Ludovico. The subject was Marshal Gian Giacomo
Trivulzio, a soldier-of-fortune. Originally this man was a loyal commander
of Galeazzo Sforza’s but when Ludovico came to power he had had
Trivulzio banished from Milan. Embittered, Trivulzio had become a
stubborn enemy of Ludovico from that time on, serving under any banner
that marched against the house of Sforza. A stocky, square-faced man, his
body was covered with the scars of many battles. He had been fighting with
the French ever since the time Ludovico had betrayed Charles VIII.
Trivulzio had seen the great monument that Leonardo had modeled and,
although it was riddled by French arrows and damaged by wind and rain,
the Marshal was impressed and wished for a similar memorial to himself.

Leonardo set to work immediately. His past experience with the Sforza
monument was now to his advantage. This time there was no need for
experimenting. He knew how much material he needed and the approximate
cost of everything including the casting. He submitted an estimate of three
thousand and forty—six ducats for the completed work, one hundred of
which would go to Leonardo. The sum was acceptable to Trivulzio 121
and Leonardo began his preliminary studies.

As he gathered the material for this new equestrian statue, Leonardo and the
French Viceroy Charles d’Amboise became interested in the further
canalization of the plains of Lombardy. The use of canals and locks had
been in practice for roughly a hundred years and around Milan there were
already some fifty miles of canals and about twenty-five locks. Leonardo

started another survey of the area. In his imagination, he envisioned a vast
hydraulic engineering project.

On September 12, 1508 Leonardo announced in his notes the beginning of a
book on the nature of water. He had decided to separate this book from the
one on hydraulics because it was necessary to separate theory and practice.
His pages treating the science of hydraulics, or the practical applications of
water power, had reached to “forty books of benefits.” By the spring of
1509 he had expanded his notes on the nature of water to include the
greatest wave to the smallest raindrop.

Concerning the practical applications of water power, Leonardo put forth
many designs for new locks. He introduced new methods of raising the
gates by windlasses and chains which could easily be set in motion by one
man. But most important is Leonardo’s discovery of the use of centrifugal
force for draining marshes—the ancestor of the centrifugal pump. When
you rapidly rotate a stick in a pail of water, the water spins in a spiral rising
on the sides, and, if you rotate the stick fast enough it bares the bottom of
the pail. When you remove the stick suddenly, the water continues to whirl
as it slowly subsides.

This is basically the same principle Leonardo used to raise the water 122
from a marsh to a level above the sea so that it could be drained
away.

The centrifugal pump was also used with a hydraulic screw which
converted water power to mechanical power. The force of a stream of water
was injected into the base of a vertical cylinder. In the base of this cylinder
was a six-bladed propeller mounted on a vertical shaft. The force of the
water turned the screw and at the same time the water was forced to rise in
the cylinder to an outlet above. The turning propeller revolved the vertical
shaft. This shaft, emerging from the top of the cylinder, turned a cogged
wheel. This wheel was joined to another cogged wheel mounted on a
horizontal shaft, thus providing the mechanical power. Not only is this the
forerunner of the turbine, but the use of the propeller, itself, for propulsion
in water, was a new idea not to be thought of again until the eighteenth
century. For certain types of hydraulic pumps he conceived of the cone-
headed mitre valve still in use today.

Leonardo, besides studying the practical applications of water power,
explored the very nature of water itself. In his proposed books on this
subject he intended to examine why clouds and fog form, why rain falls and
the raindrop itself—even how the raindrop is held together. He understood
the nature of capillary attraction, which holds the raindrop together, and his
notes show us that he was exploring the science of hydrostatics which
relates to the pressure and equilibrium of liquids in general.

Now that Leonardo had a steady income and the relief from meeting 123
painting commissions by fixed dates, he was free to explore his other
favorite avenues of knowledge. It seemed that his ever-active mind could
never stop roaming over the whole field of scientific knowledge. He
continued with his early interests—the nature and movement of air,
astronomy and geometry. He was also still concerned with movement and
weight, for he set down in his notes, “The thing which moves will be so
much the more difficult to stop as it is of greater weight.” This is a hint at a
principle formulated by Isaac Newton almost two hundred years later in his
First Law of Motion—the law concerning inertia. For example, the motion
of an arrow shot into the air maintains itself in flight so long as the
influence of the initial force is maintained in it.

Da Vinci’s cone-headed mitre valve for use in a hydraulic pump.

On a note dated April 28, 1509 he wrote, “Having for a long time 124
sought to square the angle of two curved sides ... I have solved the
proposition at ten o’clock on the evening of Sunday.” As always, Leonardo
was deeply involved in the study of mathematics. Too deep perhaps to
recognize the new rumblings of war.

Louis XII, still pursuing his campaign in northern Italy, had again arrived in
Milan amid the salutes of the French artillery. Following his personal

banner of a gold porcupine on a white field, he had come back prepared to
do battle with the Venetians whose power, as it diminished in the east, was
extending westward into Italy. Alarmed at this Venetian expansion, the
French King had allied himself with Pope Julius II and the powers of
Europe to form the League of Cambrai to push back this threat. Charles
d’Amboise, the French Viceroy, had already taken to the field and at the
castle of Cassano, overlooking the Adda river near Milan, he awaited the
arrival of his king.

By the end of May, Leonardo was in the saddle once more. Surrounded by
the best knights of France and the nobles of Milan, he personally
accompanied the French King as military engineer to the meeting with the
Viceroy of Milan at Cassano.

During the next three months, through the battles and defeat of the
Venetians at Aquadello where sixteen thousand dead were left on the field,
and the siege of Caravaggio and the capture of Peschiera, Leonardo served
as military consultant and map maker. More than ever his eye was attracted
to the possibilities of utilizing the many rivers they crossed both for warfare
and commerce. He envisioned making the Adda river navigable from Milan
to Lake Como. During this time, he devised not only a revolving bridge but
even one of two layers in a single span—the upper level for pedestrians and
the lower one for vehicles. 125

By July, Leonardo had returned with the king and the French army to
Milan. Here was planned a great celebration of the French victory over the
Venetians. In front of the cathedral, to the delight of the hundreds of
spectators, Leonardo devised a mechanical lion scaring a dragon out of an
artificial lake into the beak of a cock which picked the dragon’s eyes out.
After the festivities Leonardo returned to his everyday work. In time, he
had a thriving workshop and as he became more and more preoccupied with
his scientific explorations, his art commissions were turned over to his
assistants. He did continue, however, to work on the plans for Marshal
Trivulzio’s monument and in his preparatory work for this assignment he
expanded his notes and drawings of comparative anatomy.

This renewed interest in anatomy led him to attend a lecture in the winter of
1509. The lecturer was Marcantonio della Torre, a young man in his late

twenties and one of the best-known anatomists of the times. He had been a
professor at the University of Padua, but this city had fallen into the hands
of the Venetians. Marcantonio was forced to flee Padua and had settled at
Pavia. The two men, when they met, recognized in each other a devotion to
science and they began a professional collaboration that grew into a
friendship. Leonardo now developed his anatomy studies to the point where
he is today recognized as the foremost medical anatomist of the
Renaissance.

Returning to his dissections, Leonardo now proceeded to explore the 126
heart and system of veins in the human body. His drawings of the
heart are nearly perfect. Indeed, he was probably the first to discover the
endocardium membrane that sheathes the valves and sinews of the heart.
Also, he pictured and described the moderator band, “the first cause of the
motion of the heart.” His work on this organ led him to the doorstep of
discovering the circulation of the blood—later to be carried out by William
Harvey in the seventeenth century.

Further, Leonardo was the first to accurately draw a representation of the
foetus, or unborn child, in the womb of its mother, writing in his notes that,
“we conclude therefore, that a single soul governs the bodies and nourishes
the two.” In addition, he drew a remarkable picture of the female figure and
for the first time accurately placed her organic structure. In his notes, he
also pointed the way to the laws governing metabolism when he wrote,
“The body of anything whatsoever that receives nourishment continually
dies and is continually renewed....” By pouring wax into a hole in the skull
he made the first casts of the ventricles of the brain. Several hundred years
were to pass before this method was rediscovered.

As Leonardo’s work progressed, his admiration for the complexity of the
human body grew. Many times in the middle of explaining a section of
anatomy he inserted a sentence or two of wonder or praise at the
magnificent creation that is the human being. Indeed, these drawings and
notes represent the sum of many, many dissections; moreover, Leonardo
had to work under conditions that placed many obstacles in his path—the
crude lights and instruments, the difficulties of obtaining corpses and, above
all, the opposition of the superstitious and ignorant. 127

The following year Leonardo entered in his notes, “This winter of the year
1510 I look to finish all this anatomy.” And yet, however sincerely he might
express such a wish, Leonardo was a person who was literally never
“finished.” The scientific and artistic tasks he had chosen for himself were
clearly beyond the limits of any one man. Besides, the pressures of the
outside world were once more threatening the peace and quiet of his home
and work.

Pope Julius II became increasingly fearful of the French victories over the
Venetians. Secretly, he concluded a peace with Venice and, allying himself
with his former enemy, he now turned against the French. When the conflict
continued, Charles d’Amboise, the patron of Leonardo, was killed at the
battle of Correggio. He was replaced by a new French Viceroy, Gaston de
Foix. Although the Pope now hired Swiss mercenaries, this invasion from
the North was defeated by the young Gaston. Not to be outdone, the Pope
then brought in Spanish troops.

In the ensuing bloody battle at Ravenna, the French completely defeated the
armies of the Pope and Spain, despite their use of battle-cars armed with
razor-sharp sickles on their wheels—strangely like the early inventions that
Leonardo designed for Lorenzo de’ Medici! Although the French were
victorious, they lost their brilliant young leader, Gaston de Foix, and with
him they lost their heart. As a result, they were soon disorganized. The
Pope’s armies renewed their attacks, and the French began a long 128
retreat.

Once again the plague infested Milan and Leonardo’s friend, Marcantonio
della Torre, died of it. After some futile attempts at recovery, the French
fled across the Alps and with them went Marshal Trivulzio. Milan was left
temporarily under the martial rule of the Swiss, and Leonardo with only his
few apprentices was left again without a patron.

Tired and prematurely old at sixty-one, Leonardo resignedly gathered his
possessions together once more and with Francesco de’ Melzi and four of
his loyal pupils, he turned his back on Milan for the last time. The date was
September 29, 1513. Their destination was Rome.

129

12
Rome

“Name?”

“Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Where from and where are you staying?”

“We are coming from Milan by way of Florence. I have quarters being
prepared for me at the Belvedere in the Vatican—by order of the Pope.
Now, young man, let us pass.”

The guard at the Porta del Popolo changed his manner. He dropped his
halberd and motioned to the other guards to let the riders through. He
touched his helmet roughly and with a grin he said,

“I’m sorry, Sire—but you know how it is. All these people—there’s 130
bound to be them that we don’t want here. Go ahead, your
Excellency. Make way there!”

With these words he laid his spear against a jostling group of broad-hatted
pilgrims blocking the entrance to the city of Rome.

Leonardo heeled his horse and with Francesco de’ Melzi at his side,
followed by his servant and students, pushed past the crowd at the gate. To
the left rose the Pincio hill with its stately pines where, in the days of
Imperial Rome, Lucullus had walked in his gardens. But Leonardo had no
time to look about. It was a damp December day, and rain threatened from

the gray skies. He was tired, and as Francesco glanced at him he could see
Leonardo pull his cape around him with a little shiver as the chill wind
stirred the long, graying hair on his shoulders. They made their way through
the crowded, noisy city. They crossed the Tiber and rode past Castel’ Sant’
Angelo, the papal fortress built on the tomb of Emperor Hadrian. After
another inspection by the Swiss guards in beribboned uniforms of white,
green and gold under their shining breastplates, they entered the walls of the
Vatican. That evening after he had settled himself in the Belvedere
apartments and dinner had been eaten, Leonardo, gazing into the embers of
the fire, looked back over his new stroke of fortune.

The Medicis had returned to power. Pope Julius II had died, and 131
Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo, had become Pope Leo X at the
age of thirty-seven. With his election to the head of the Christian world, the
Republic of Florence became a city of the Medicis once more and Leonardo
had received an appointment in Rome. Giuliano de’ Medici, Pope Leo’s
favorite younger brother, in his new rise to power and wealth, became
Leonardo’s patron. The two must have met sometime during the Medici’s
exile. Leonardo was given the apartments in the Vatican and a salary of
thirty-three ducats (approximately eighty-five dollars) a month and a
workshop was fitted for him and his pupils. He was also assigned an
exclusive German assistant named Georg.

The Pope’s court in the Vatican was like the Medici court in the Florence of
Leonardo’s youth—multiplied by hundreds. Leo X saw himself as the
center of the artistic world, and being a man of luxurious tastes with the
wealth of the church behind him, the Vatican was soon filled with a mixture
of the wise and foolish. Pompous classic-quoters, third-rate poets and
clowns mixed with the world’s scholars and statesmen. The two greatest
artists were Bramante, the architect and friend of Leonardo’s first years in
Milan, and Bramante’s pupil Raphael, the painter.

Bramante was busy building the new church of St. Peter’s and, as the
architect of this favorite project of the Popes, he was sole master of the
Roman art world. Raphael, as his protege, was the recipient of the better
painting commissions in Rome. The elderly Bramante and the thirty-year-
old assistant were a famous pair in the Rome of 1513. Equally as famous,

however, was Michelangelo; he was still living in Rome, but was without
patronage after Julius II’s death. Leonardo’s old rival had scored his
triumph with his extraordinary paintings in the Sistine Chapel.

Although the young Raphael, who owed so much to the example of 132
Leonardo, now rode through the streets as a wealthy nobleman,
Leonardo himself received no great commissions. While Pope Leo was
indulgent of his brother’s whims he himself had no use for this tall, serious
old man who roamed the shaded walks of the Vatican poking at the strange
plants in the botanical garden or making drawings of the foreign animals in
the private zoo. In reality, Leonardo’s patron, Giuliano de’ Medici was a
weak man. He played at being a patron but, like his brother the Pope, he
lacked the force and decision of his famous father Lorenzo. Nevertheless,
he did give Leonardo one small commission for a picture. Immediately
Leonardo, excited by the exotic plants in the Vatican gardens, commenced
to experiment with them to find a resin to make a varnish with which to
cover the future painting. Pope Leo made fun of him exclaiming, to the
delight of his court, “This man will never get anything done, he thinks of
the end before the beginning.”

This ridicule by the Pope made Leonardo a joke to many in the circles of
the Vatican who were a little afraid of this strange man with the searching
eyes. Leonardo also suffered the humiliations of a man who did not
conform to the fashions of his day. His knowledge of Latin, for example,
was weak and although he could read it with the help of a dictionary he
could not speak it. And, among the people who surrounded the Pope, Latin
was the only language allowed. Prizes of great sums of money and
important positions were often granted on the strength of an improvised
speech in Latin (with many quotations from the classical authors) or a
flattering Latin verse. Faced with such setbacks and ridicule, Leonardo—
not surprisingly—began to withdraw into himself.

And yet, Leonardo refused to remain idle—he had to work. The need 133
for mirrors in the vast halls and rooms of the papal palace was great.
Leonardo turned his mechanical skill to redesigning and improving methods
of making them, and even inventing his own machines for the grinding of
the glass. Also, for Giuliano, who dabbled in alchemy and magic, he made

distorting mirrors and burning lenses. In addition, Leonardo invented a
machine which could be run hydraulically for producing long strips of
copper of equal width for use in soldering the mirrors.

But, with the making of these mirrors, Leonardo began to run into trouble
with his German assistant, Georg. The boy was a loafer; he spoke little
Italian and took every opportunity to spend his days with his countrymen in
the Swiss guard. Leonardo tried to alter the situation by suggesting that the
boy have his meals with him at his worktable, thus giving Georg a better
chance to learn the language. This however did not appeal to him. Then,
because Leonardo’s inventions were so extraordinary, he began to give
away the secrets of their mechanisms to Johannes the mirror-maker, another
German, who had been replaced by Leonardo in the favors of Giuliano.
This naturally made Johannes jealous of Leonardo. Georg gossiped, too,
and told stories about the old, eccentric man who lived like a miser in the
midst of all the luxury and who drew crazy circles on pages of paper.

These “crazy circles” were geometric exercises that had fascinated 134
Leonardo from the time he had wandered across Italy with Fra Luca
Pacioli. Pacioli’s book De Divina Proportione, containing sixty illustrations
from designs of Leonardo, had been published in Venice in 1509. Leonardo
intended to entitle these geometric exercises De Ludo Geometrico. In
geometry a lune is a crescent-shaped figure bounded by two intersecting
arcs of circles on a plane or a sphere. Leonardo drew pages of these lunes
and then proceeded to transform their curvilinear figures into squares of
equal area. He also reviewed Archimedes’ method of squaring a circle and
developed it into a variety of ways for cubing spheres and cylinders.

He returned as well to formulating theories of friction. He wrote in his
notes, “the tallest wheel is the easiest to pull”—for example, a big wheel
turning at the same speed as a smaller one has less friction to overcome
because it makes less revolutions. His experiments in friction predated men
like Amontons and Coulomb by two and three centuries. He established a
formula for the building arch which he described as “a strength caused by
two weaknesses”—if one half of an arch is removed, the other half
collapses. They support and give strength to each other. In addition,

Leonardo determined, before Galileo, the center of gravity of any pyramid
and of a tetrahedral, or four-sided body.

As the days went by and he waited for commissions to come, Leonardo
took to wandering about the streets of Rome. He stood in the half-buried
Forum of the Caesars surrounded by grazing sheep and grunting pigs.
Wooden shacks where crude cartwheels were made and where the marble
from the ancient temples was cut and sold, were built against the sides of
crumbling ruins. The old triumphal arches, now overgrown with creepers,
were boarded into towers and cattle were penned between the shafts 135
of columns that once supported the grandeur of temple roofs. Here
and there a classical scholar would be sketching or writing from the worn,
Latin inscriptions on a marble slab tilted crazily from the ground where it
had fallen hundreds of years ago. Goats wandered on the Palatine hill, once
the home of Emperors, and the great baths of the Emperor Diocletian were
now a deer park and a hunting ground for royalty.

During the course of these wanderings, Leonardo became interested in the
primitive methods of carpentry. Such things as screws, for example, were
rare. Those that were used were either made of wood or, if of metal, by
goldsmiths laboriously making each one by hand, soldering wire around a
pin and another wire into the hole to hold the screw. Sometimes they were
made by filing pieces of metal individually. All these methods were time-
consuming and costly.

Leonardo had thought of this problem before, and now he concentrated on
perfecting his ideas about it. Previously, he had thought of casting the metal
in wooden molds and then turning the metal on thread-cutters. The designs
he finally drew in careful detail, however, are essentially the methods used
today. The new machines did with a few turns of a handle and adjustments
of a few cogged wheels what it took one man many hours to perform. He
also drew designs for a mechanical plane and a machine for drawing wire
that worked by water power.

Leonardo now lived and worked in the Belvedere of the Vatican—more a
man on exhibition than an active participant in the great artistic activities
taking place around him. True, he received his thirty-three ducats a month,
but Michelangelo had been paid three thousand for his work in the Sistine

Chapel, while Raphael had earned twelve thousand for each room he
painted in the Vatican.

136

Leonardo became interested in various methods of carpentry.

Thus Leonardo drifted farther and farther away from his painting. 137
This, in itself, caused people to talk in the papal city. For he had
earned fame as a painter, but his passion for science was regarded as strange
and whimsical. Occasionally, he did receive a small commission from the
workshop of Raphael, yet these were like the crumbs from a rich man’s
table.

Even the toys Leonardo made at this period for the amusement of his
patrons were looked upon as somewhat weird. For example, he would take
small pieces of wax and mold them into strange little animals and then
inflate them so that they floated in the air in front of a startled guest. Once
he caught a curious lizard in the garden and spent hours putting scales all
over the tiny body, attached to it a little beard and horns, then let it out from
a box at a banquet. The guests jumped back with fear and the women
became hysterical.

One of Leonardo’s jokes that has been passed down in accounts of his life
at this period must have created quite a sensation. He showed the company
the cleaned entrails of a sheep resting on the palm of his hand. After telling
them to wait and watch he took the entrails in another room and with a
bellows inflated them with warm air. As the entrails filled with air they
expanded and extended. They crept into the room where the company
waited. Slowly they grew and grew until they began to fill the room. The
guests overturned their chairs in their hurry to get out of the way of this
shapeless, translucent creature. Then Leonardo appeared, the air-filled
entrails giving way before him, and said: 138

“Sires, this is but an example and symbol of virtue. As you can see, the
smallest virtue is capable of the greatest growth.”

The guests laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laugh. Thus another story
was added to the legend of Leonardo as an odd old man.

Leonardo, whose work—particularly his anatomical studies—had
constantly been interrupted by the fortunes of war, had found another
hospital in Rome where he could continue these studies. This time it was his
intention to write a treatise on speech. He dissected and drew the anatomy
of the larynx (the voice box), the vocal cords and the trachea (the air

passage to the lungs), and all the muscles that control the movements of the
tongue and the lips. If you pronounce each letter of the alphabet you will
feel these muscles of the lips, especially with the letters “o,” “p,” and “f.”
Carefully he noted how the air vibrations from the trachea form themselves
into vowels and consonants, and he drew the membrane which, when air is
pressed against it, makes the sound “aah.”

At this same time he was also busy finishing a treatise on painting which he
had begun when he was working on the “Last Supper” for Ludovico Sforza.
But it was for his knowledge of military engineering that he was sent to the
city of Parma by the Pope on September 25, 1514. Here he stayed at the
Bell Inn while examining the fortifications and other defenses of the city.

Leonardo’s patron, Giuliano de’ Medici, had been appointed 139
governor of this particular area and, since Pope Leo X was fearful of
two powerful countries, France and Spain, he was preparing the papal
territory against possible invasion. Another fear of the Pope—and indeed of
everybody in Rome—was malaria, the disease carried by the mosquitoes
that bred in the Pontine marshes west and southwest of the city. At that
time, however, no one knew the cause was mosquitoes; rather, they thought
it was the bad air from the marshes.

As Leonardo had already been effective in draining the pestilential marshes
of Piombino for Cesare Borgia and, later, those around Milan for Charles
d’Amboise, he was assigned the same task for the Pontine marshes. He
surveyed the entire area to the sea and made another extraordinary aerial
type map. His recommendations included draining the entire area, enlarging
and regulating the Martino river and cutting an extra outlet from the river
Livoli to the sea. These plans were adopted some years later and parts of the
marshes were drained successfully, yielding new land for the cultivation of
crops.

By December of 1514 Leonardo had finished his treatise on speech and,
possibly in an effort to attract the attention of the Pope, he submitted it to
the Privy-Chamberlain, Battista dell’Aquila. As Pope Leo was surrounded
by an army of secretaries and assistants who passed on everything
submitted, this manuscript with its beautiful drawings was mislaid and lost
and only a few notes and sketches remain.

The continual discouragement of his life in Rome was offset by a 140
visit from his half-brother, Giuliano, around Christmas. Leonardo
was held in esteem by his family despite the quarrel over his father’s and
his uncle Francesco’s will, and his half-brothers were pleased to tell of their
famous relative who lived in the Belvedere as guest of the Medicis. Yet they
knew little of Leonardo’s scientific dreams and his lack of recognition in
the papal city.

Often, Leonardo’s greatest comfort was to return to his notes. The challenge
of geometry and the mysteries of the movement of air and water kept him
from brooding about his lonely life. Francesco de’ Melzi, Leonardo’s young
friend, had more and more taken over the practical responsibilities of his
everyday life. Except for his workshop, where the troublesome Georg
worked at the making of mirrors, and an occasional small commission for a
painting, Leonardo was free to study.

In addition to his geometrical investigations, Leonardo now experimented
with the science of statics (objects that are stationary), and dynamics
(objects in motion). One of his most important discoveries in the science of
mechanics came about during this period. Concerning the division of
weight, he wrote, “There are three conditions of gravity of which the one is
its simple natural gravity, the second is its accidental gravity, the third the
friction produced by it. But the natural weight is in itself unchangeable, the
accidental which is joined to it is of infinite force, and the friction varies
according to the places wherein it occurs, namely rough or smooth places.”
Thus he realized and formulated what composes the movement of an object.
He found that movement is the result of separate forces acting upon the
object from different directions, as for example, the initial push, the pull of
gravity and the resistance of friction. And, before Galileo, Leonardo further
experimented with objects dropped from a height. As the result of repeated
experiments, he noted that the fall was being affected by the earth’s
rotation. That is, the object dropped always fell in a slight eastward
direction rather than vertically downward—a fact later proved conclusively
by Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke in the next century. 141

He also became fascinated with spiral motion, such as is found in a
spinning top or in a whirlpool of water. Because of his interest in

hydrodynamics, or the movement of water, he began to sketch imaginary
“Deluge compositions.” These were drawings showing the world—
probably inspired by the Bible—in a chaos of wind and floods. They were
based on his years of scientific research. Indeed, his drawings of actual
whirlpools are still among the greatest of his scientific art. Today, with all
the latest technical aids, such as dusting a whirlpool with powdered rosin
and then photographing it, an accurate three-dimensional picture is
impossible. Yet Leonardo, by sheer observation and analysis coupled with
his genius for drawing, could reproduce the complicated shape of whirling
water.

In the relatedness of his explorations of water, air and movement, and
weight, he worked out the similarity between the laws of equilibrium
controlling solids and liquids. The equation between the motive force and
resistance that makes for equilibrium or balance in solids can be compared
to the equation between the upward pressure of liquids and the downward
pressure exerted on them.

Far into the night Leonardo worked on his papers. He tired more 142
easily now, and his eyes had grown weaker. To provide the increase
in light that his failing eyesight demanded, he had improved on his original
oil lamp by making the wick rise as the oil was burned away, and he had
extra lamps fitted to the ceiling.

On January 9, 1515 Leonardo wrote in his notes, “Il Magnifico Giuliano de’
Medici set out on the ninth day of January 1515 at daybreak from Rome, to
go and marry a wife in Savoy. And on that day came the news of the death
of the King of France (Louis XII).” This meant that his new patron had left
and his old patron had died. Leonardo’s note was a sad one and perhaps he
felt, in the departure of his patron, more alone than ever in the crowded life
of the Vatican. Giuliano, on the urging of his brother, was marrying
Philiberta of Savoy, in an effort to strengthen the prestige of the Medici.
Louis XII, before he died, had formed a league against Spain, and with the
marriage of the Pope’s brother to a noble house of France, the league would
be strengthened by keeping the Pope on the side of France. Actually Pope
Leo was playing both sides, for at the time he was also friendly with Spain.

Shortly after Giuliano’s departure from Rome, Leonardo fell ill, presumably
from a mild heart attack complicated by a touch of malarial fever. The
doctor had been called. It was a warning, the doctor told Francesco de’
Melzi, and Leonardo must remain quiet for quite awhile.

By the end of the winter Leonardo was back on his feet and apparently
feeling completely well again. Giuliano himself had fallen ill about 143
the same time and the news that he had recovered and was finally
returning to Rome cheered Leonardo. He sat down and wrote a long letter
to his patron expressing his joy. This letter also included a long list of
complaints against Georg and Johannes. Georg was now using his room in
Leonardo’s apartment to do work for others. He lied to Leonardo and flew
into such a rage when he was questioned that no one could go near him.
Moreover, Johannes, the mirror-maker, was now moving back into the
Vatican and turning out mirrors for everyone, even using Georg’s room as
his own workroom. Johannes boasted of his skill and told everybody that
Leonardo did not know what he was doing. Thus, it was not surprising that
Leonardo, in his long complaint, was taking out the anger and frustration he
felt against all the injustices of his life in Rome.

But by summer Leonardo was again employed as a military engineer.
Francis I had succeeded to the throne of France. The new French King was
anxious to secure his lost title to the Dukedom of Milan and was preparing
another invasion of Italy. Pope Leo X, still trying to play both sides at once,
was making secret agreements with Francis while at the same time joining
the King of Spain, Milan, Genoa, and the Swiss in an alliance against
France. Consequently, he sent Leonardo out to inspect the fortifications of
Civitavecchia, a city on the Tyrrhenian coast not too far from Rome. When,
in August, Francis I crossed into Italy with an army of thirty-five thousand
men including Marshal Trivulzio, the Pope ordered his brother, Giuliano, to
take command of the papal forces. On the way to assume this command,
Giuliano fell ill and collapsed. His sickness this time was soon to be 144
fatal.

Leonardo returned to Rome with his survey of Civitavecchia, where he
immediately learned of his patron’s latest illness. Perhaps realizing that
Giuliano was fatally ill, Leonardo made a desperate effort to gain the

recognition he felt should be his. He entered the competition for a new
façade of San Lorenzo in Florence. Among the other competitors was
Michelangelo, his younger and yet oldest rival.

In October of 1515, Francis I had recaptured Milan and by Christmas was
in Rome. Leonardo may have met the new King of France in Bologna
where Pope Leo X had personally traveled in order to settle a peace treaty
with France. Certainly it is known that he attended Francis’ court in Rome.
Leonardo’s name was well respected in French circles and, as Francis had
already admired the pictures by Leonardo, the meeting was a happy
occasion for them both. Indeed, the recognition that Leonardo had sought in
his native land was never as great as that accorded to him by the French.

As Francis I prepared to leave for France in January he must have offered
Leonardo a position at his court. While he still hoped that Giuliano de’
Medici would recover from his illness and return to Rome, Francis’ offer
gave him support in the knowledge that he had a powerful, new friend.

March of 1516 brought the first of three events that were to change 145
the course of Leonardo’s last years. Giuliano de’ Medici died, leaving
Leonardo not only without a patron, but without a friend in the Vatican.
Now sixty-four years old, he was reluctant to leave his comfortable quarters
in the Belvedere with its workshop and pleasant gardens. Besides, deep
within himself, he felt that Rome could still offer him the fame that had
always escaped him.

Spring ripened into summer and the second event occurred. The
competition for the new façade of San Lorenzo in Florence was won by
Michelangelo. To Leonardo the news was a blow. The success of his old
rival weakened his position in the Vatican even further and added to the
growing hostility he had felt in the people surrounding the Pope.

The third event was the sum of many small events. Georg and his friend
Johannes, in their jealousy, had spread much gossip about Leonardo in court
circles. They now took advantage of Giuliano’s death to circulate stories
about Leonardo’s dissections of bodies in the hospital. These were added to
vicious gossip that Leonardo was pro-French. This news eventually reached
Pope Leo X. The Pope himself was perfectly aware of the practice of

dissection and, personally, he had turned his eyes the other way. However,
as dissection was contrary to Church doctrine, an official complaint to the
head of the Church could not be ignored. The Pope used it as an excuse to
be rid of this tiresome old man whom he had tolerated only for his brother’s
sake. Leonardo was abandoned.

The year 1516 was drawing to a close. Leonardo had decided to seek 146
the patronage offered him by Francis I. So he and Francesco de’
Melzi, his loyal young friend, left Rome for the long journey into France.
As he left his native land for the last time, Leonardo looked back over his
years—from the silver lute that had sent him to Milan, to the death of
Giuliano, to the final rejection of Pope Leo X. Remembering how Lorenzo
de’ Medici had sent him to Ludovico so many years before, Leonardo
thought to himself with great sadness, “The Medici created and destroyed
me.”

147

13
The Last Years

Leonardo looked around from where he was leaning on the parapet of the
Chateau d’Amboise to watch a group of young lords and ladies playing
croquet on the emerald-green lawn. The click of the mallets and balls was
mingled with the shouts and laughter of the young people. It was late
afternoon in May and although the sun was warm the breeze from the west
was chilly. Leonardo looked down again from the sheer height of the castle
wall across the wide sweep of the Loire river and the valley extending as far
as the eye could see. Swallows were swooping low over the banks below
and the wind carried their shrilling cries up to him. The forested islands and
sandbars interrupted the steady flow of the river and Leonardo could see the
reflections sway in the current. He had been studying the river but he
realized that his aging eyes were not up to the task of concentrating for
long. The wind made them water, so he turned away and started back 148
to his home.

There was much that was familiar in the castle at Amboise. The thick, high
walls and round towers and especially the graceful, lacy spires of the king’s
residence brought back much that he had known in his native land. The
gardens had been planted by Italians—there were orange trees and even a
mulberry tree from his beloved plains of Lombardy. The king’s residence
and chapel had been constructed and the decorations carved in stone by
Italian artisans. Leonardo could stop and talk in his native tongue with
many of the men employed by the king. Since the time of Charles VIII, the
French had brought in the latest Renaissance styles from Italy. Leonardo’s
steps took him back from the castle grounds and down a path with a hand-

railing. The steep roofs of the town of Amboise with their chimneys could
be seen below him. The path led to a small manor house, like a miniature
castle with sharp spires and lacy, carved-stone gables that was set in green
lawns and gravel paths.

The Manoir de Cloux, as Leonardo’s house was called, had been a hunting
lodge for Francis I, but when Leonardo had arrived he gave the house to
Leonardo for his home. Francis, in his admiration for this great man, also
gave him seven hundred crowns a year, together with a pension of four
hundred for Francesco de’ Melzi.

149

Leonardo at Chateau d’Amboise on the Loire.

The long journey from Rome had left Leonardo tired and weak and 150
he had fallen ill again shortly after his arrival. This time the attack
was more serious and had left him with his right hand permanently crippled.
He looked at it now as he opened the door to his room. “Another warning,”
he thought, “and there’s still so much to do.”

The young, robust King Francis was everywhere at once. He gloried in
knightly tournaments, hunts, and sports of all kinds. Always restless, he
might appear at any place unannounced. Frequently there would be a
clamor at the gates of Leonardo’s home and the king would ride in with one
or two of his nobles. With a great jingling of spurs he would bound up the
stairs of the manor house calling for Leonardo. He delighted in long talks
with the old man, and would listen respectfully as Leonardo, his deep-set
eyes brooding over his notes, would demonstrate some scientific point on a
blank sheet of paper.

At this time, Leonardo was engaged on three projects which demanded his
immediate attention. One was the entertainment for a banquet that Francis
was giving for his sister, Marguerite de Valois, and her husband. Another
was a new design for the king’s castle at Amboise, and the third was a
design for making a navigable waterway from Amboise to Romorantin.
Although these three projects were the main ones that occupied Leonardo’s
time, there was always the supervising of his pupils’ painting on the walls in
the little chapel of the manor house, his own work on a painting of St. John
the Baptist, and the continual ordering and revising of his notes. 151

The banquet took place in October of 1517, and the mechanical lion
Leonardo had made was an immediate success. It “walked” by means of a
spring motor, into the hall, opening and closing its fierce mouth while
swaying its head from side to side. With a wand that he had been given,
Francis I stepped down from his seat and tapped the lion three times. The
toy fell apart and from it a cascade of white lilies poured out at the king’s
feet.

Also at this time there was a distinguished guest at the castle of Amboise.
He was a fellow-countryman of Leonardo and his name was Cardinal Luigi
d’Aragona. With him was his secretary Antonio de’ Beatis. As Leonardo
was now a famous member of King Francis’ court, the cardinal paid him a

visit accompanied by Antonio. The extraordinary anatomy drawings and all
his notes were shown to the cardinal; he and his secretary were deeply
impressed. They were also surprised to learn that Leonardo had never been
accorded the same recognition by his own countrymen. Antonio de’ Beatis
wrote home that “This gentleman has written a treatise on anatomy,
showing by illustrations the members, muscles, nerves, veins, joints,
intestines and whatever else is to discuss in the bodies of men and women,
in a way that has never yet been done by anyone else. All this we have seen
with our own eyes; and he said that he had dissected more than thirty
bodies, both of men and women of all ages. He has also written of the
nature of water, and of divers machines, and of other matters which he has
set down in an endless number of volumes, all in the vulgar tongue
[meaning Italian not Latin], which, if they be published, will be profitable
and delightful.” 152

By now Leonardo had accumulated thousands of pages of notes, and they
lay stacked in all manner of chests and boxes. Often now, as Leonardo
surveyed the work of his lifetime, he realized that he would never see the
day of their publication. Time was slipping through his fingers. Already
summer had come and gone and now the sharp winds of fall were lifting the
leaves from the ground in dancing whirls. Fortunately these were years of
peace and for the first time in a long while the people were free of wars.
The scheme to canalize the waterway to Romorantin had grown to a vast
idea for making a thoroughfare of water from the Loire river all the way
down France to Lyons and then into Italy! Leonardo, old and ailing as he
was, had surveyed parts of the rivers Loire and Cher, braving the rough
roads and crude accommodations.

In addition, Leonardo had designed a castle for Francis I’s widowed mother
in Romorantin. This castle was never built, but many of the ideas that
Leonardo had incorporated in its design were used in the gigantic and
magnificent castle of Chambord. Also, at Francis’ request, he had reviewed
the work being done at the castle in Blois and there is reason to think that
the beautiful outside stairwell that spirals from left to right might have been
designed by Leonardo.

In February of 1517, a son had been born to Queen Claude and 153
Francis I. The king decided to postpone the baptism of the dauphin
(the title given to the eldest son of a French King) until May of the
following year. At that time there would be a double celebration at
Amboise, for a nephew of Pope Leo X, the young Lorenzo de’ Medici, was
being married to Madelaine d’Auvergne. As usual, Leonardo was given the
assignment of preparing the festivities. Although he was fond of preparing
these entertainments, Leonardo now felt the pressure of time; for indeed,
the interruptions of this eager young king were sometimes a hardship. He
felt that his years were drawing to an end. His notes were unfinished and his
dreams of extending man’s knowledge of his world and of himself were
hindered not only by such petty chores but also by the limits of his own
physical endurance.

As Leonardo was sketching one day from the window of his room where he
could see the castle walls and the chapel of Saint-Hubert, he set aside the
drawing for a moment to write a memorandum to himself. “Write of the
quality of time as distinct from its mathematical divisions.” Was this
extraordinary man sensing the road down which Einstein—in his studies of
relativity—was to travel hundreds of years later?

Spring arrived again and with it came the first wild flowers and 154
roses, the songs of the birds in the woods and the blossoming of the
chestnut trees. The time for the double celebration came, too, and Leonardo
was seen busily preparing the decorations and mechanical delights for the
large crowds already assembling. In addition to the tournaments-at-arms
that so delighted the king, there was to be a mock battle with a besieged
city, and for this Leonardo had had constructed imposing castle walls of
wood with a backdrop of a city’s spires and towers. The party lasted for
weeks, and the climax was performed on the lawns of Leonardo’s house
where a great ballroom had been set up. Here he repeated an earlier success,
the one that had so enchanted Ludovico’s guests so many years ago in the
Sforza castle at Milan. There was again a dome over the ballroom across
which the stars moved mechanically and artificial figures representing
various gods and goddesses spoke and sang by means of a hidden choir,
while the sun and moon shone in their own lights.

This display ended the festivities. It was already late June and Leonardo
was anxious to return to his plans for the water route to Italy. There was the
area near Sologne which, when flooded, would make the surrounding
countryside a marshland. This would have to be drained by the same
method as he had planned for the Piombino and the Pontine marshes.
Francis I was interested, too, in the improvements Leonardo had suggested
for his own castle, and he would have to talk with the castle superintendent
about them. As always, there seemed to be so many things to do, to plan, to
work on. Then Leonardo wrote in his notes: “On the 24th of June, the day
of St. John, 1518, at Amboise, in the palace of Cloux....” and underneath, “I
will continue—”

“I will continue—” It was almost a note of defiance against the obstacles of
advancing age and sickness and the interruptions of the practical world.

155
The sound of jingling spurs and bridle chains and the snorting of
many horses announced another surprise visit from the young king.
Leonardo could hear him below shouting something to Battista, the servant
who had come to Amboise with Leonardo. Now, as usual, Francis was
running up the stairs with all the energy of youth shouting for “le maître”
(the master). Resignedly and with patient humor, Leonardo stepped out to
greet the king. The gold chains around Francis’ thick neck and over his
broad chest glinted in the semi-light of the hall, and he was holding his
plumed hat at his side and mopping his forehead with a dainty embroidered
handkerchief.

“Master Leonardo! We are going on a tour of the river and I want you to
look at the place that I told you about. Where I want to put that bridge. You
remember?”

“Sire, give me but a moment to gather some material together.”

A chest was made ready and soon Leonardo was at the door, calling to
Francesco and Battista to help him into the saddle of his horse, while the
king’s servants hoisted the chest onto one of the carts already piled high
with tents and provisions.

When Francis was restless—which was often—a “tour” could mean many
hours or many days of travel. Wagons were always kept ready with all the
equipment for a long journey and Leonardo, himself, had learned to accept
these sudden whims and kept chests of his own ready for any such trip.
Now, as always, the king kept his horse reined back out of regard for this
tall, stooped man with the long beard and simple clothes.

Yet when Leonardo returned from this “tour” he realized that he 156
could no longer make such trips. The hardships of sleeping in tents,
riding over the hot roads, and the necessary work involved in surveying the
possible sites for a bridge had left him almost exhausted. He had made one
suggestion, however, and that was to build houses that could be carried and
then assembled with a few wooden locking devices, then just as quickly
taken down and moved to the next place. They could also be left standing
where the country people could use them while the court was away. Indeed,
such structures would seem to be the ancestors of our own prefabricated
houses.

The winter of 1519 was a bitter one. When the cold fog spread over the
valley shrouding the bare trees it chilled the big, white-washed rooms of
Cloux. The wind blew down from the north sending blasts down the
chimneys and scattering ashes and sparks. Leonardo, huddled against the
huge fireplace with its roof projecting into the room, pulled his black cloak
lined in soft leather around him and reminded himself to include it in his
will for Mathurine, the faithful domestic who cooked for him and took care
of his house.

The aged Leonardo, who had observed and analyzed so much of man and
nature, knew now that his own days were numbered. When the first, pale
sunlight of March shone through the small leaded-glass windows of his
house, he applied to the king for permission to make out his own will.
French law demanded that the property of any foreigner dying in France
went to the Crown. The permission was granted, and on April 23, 1519,
Guillaume Boureau, the Royal Notary of Amboise was summoned with
witnesses.

To his half-brothers in Florence Leonardo left his property at Fiesole 157
and four hundred ducats. To his faithful friend and companion,

Francesco de’ Melzi, nobleman of Milan, Leonardo willed his notes,
drawings, and paintings. Battista was given the income that Louis XII had
granted Leonardo from the tolls of the canal at San Cristoforo near Milan.
Mathurine was granted the “good black cloth, trimmed with leather” and
two ducats. Moreover, Leonardo outlined in detail the plans for his own
funeral, right down to the use of ten pounds of candles.

Too weak now to stand any more, Leonardo was confined to his big four-
poster bed with the canopy. From it he could see the tracery of the Chapel
of Saint-Hubert against the pale, foreign sky through the little window in
the corner. The vicar of the church of Saint-Denis was called, with two
priests and two Franciscan friars, and Leonardo received the last sacraments
at his bedside.

An entry in his notes reads, “While I thought I was learning to live, I have
been learning how to die.” But death was not easy for him. With tears
rolling down his sunken cheeks for “his wasted life,” he died on May 2,
1519—fighting even this final interruption to all his work.

King Francis I, who was at St. Germain-en-Laye with his court, wept 158
when the news was brought to him. Francesco de’ Melzi was so
overcome with grief that he waited until June before writing to the half-
brothers of Leonardo of the Master’s death. He wrote, in part, “He was to
me the best of fathers, and it is impossible for me to express the grief that
his death has caused me. Until the day when my body is laid under the
ground, I shall experience perpetual sorrow, and not without reason, for he
daily showed me the most devoted and warmest affection.”

And in a closing paragraph Francesco added these words: “His loss is a
grief to everyone, for it is not in the power of nature to reproduce another
such man.”

159

14
Mankind’s Debt to Leonardo

When Leonardo died his notebooks began their separate journeys into
obscurity. They traveled to different lands and became parts of widely
disparate collections. It has only been within the last fifty years that efforts
were made to bring them all together between the covers of one volume—a
dream that Leonardo himself entertained but never realized. As the
manuscripts and drawings were brought to light, translated and published,
the extraordinary scope of Leonardo’s scientific explorations was revealed.

Mathematician, anatomist, botanist, astronomer and geologist form 160
only part of the long list of his accomplishments and give the clue to
the man who considered all the natural world within his province of study.
Because of the universality of Leonardo’s scientific thought he has been
frequently mentioned as the forerunner of such men as Galileo Galilei, Sir
Isaac Newton, James Watt, Francis Bacon and William Harvey. Although
Leonardo cannot be credited with the actual discoveries that these men
made, his methods of investigation pointed the way down the paths that
they would follow.

The key to Leonardo’s methods lies in a quotation from his notes on vision.
He wrote of vision as saper vedere—“to know how to see”—and he
referred to the eye as “the window of the soul.” Again and again, he
stressed the importance of observation and personal experience. Although
he himself was well read, he emphasized that “science comes by
observation not by authority.” His supreme talent for drawing underlines his
credo and is inseparable from his science. What he saw in the natural world

about him needed investigating. The results of these investigations were
transformed into drawings as the most certain method for passing this
knowledge along to others. The best example of this attitude is represented
by his anatomical studies. To merely draw the living figure in front of him
was not sufficient—it was imperative to know what he was drawing. He
turned to the dissecting room and after intensive study produced some of
the finest anatomical drawings in the world—and among the easiest for
others to understand.

What Walter Pater wrote of the Renaissance—“in many things great 161
rather by what it designed or aspired to than by what it actually
achieved”—could be a summation of Leonardo’s own lifetime of effort in
science. He labored to bring mankind from the morass of medieval
superstitions onto the firm ground of natural facts. With an insatiable
curiosity Leonardo attempted the impossible task of encompassing all
knowledge. Thus he established his right to immortality—for it was an
attempt that shone like a beacon in a world dark with ignorance.

162

Significant Dates in Leonardo’s Life

1452 April 15. Birth of Leonardo.
1467 Commences apprenticeship with Verrochio in Florence.
1478 Commissioned for altarpiece in the Palace of the Signoria.
1481 Commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Convent of San Donato.
1482- Leonardo leaves Florence for the court of Ludovico Sforza in
83(?) Milan.
1483 Begins equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza for Ludovico.
1484-86 Plague in Milan.
1490 April 23. Recommences equestrian monument and starts book on
light and shade.
1496 Meets with Fra Luca Pacioli, professor of mathematics.
1498 The Last Supper completed.
1499 Apr. Land awarded to Leonardo near Porta Vercellina. Oct. French
occupy Milan. Dec. Leonardo leaves Milan with Pacioli.
1500 Leonardo arrives in Mantua. Travels to Venice and returns to
Florence.
1502 In the service of Cesare Borgia.
1503 Returns to Florence, commences work on a canal to sea.
1504 Begins the painting of battle of Anghiari. Father dies. Attempt at
flight (?).
1506 May. Leaves Florence for Milan at summons of Charles
d’Amboise, French military governor.
1507 Sept. Goes to Florence to settle father’s will.
1508 July. Returns to Milan.
1511 Works with Marc Antonio della Torre on anatomical research.
1512 French lose Milan.
1513 Leonardo leaves Milan for Rome. Serves Giuliano de’ Medici,
brother of Pope Leo X.

1516 Leonardo leaves Rome for France to serve King Francis I.
1519 May 2. Death of Leonardo.
164

Index

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V
W X Y Z

A
Abbaco, Benedetto dell’, 5
Adda river, 124
“Adoration of the Magi,” 29, 30
Adriatic, the, 62, 93
“Air conditioner,” 69
Air, study of, 65, 66, 99
“Alarm clock,” 57
Albert of Saxony, 81
Alessandria, fortress of, 83
Alfonso of Calabria, 38
Alps, the, 37, 67
Amadeo, Antonio, 58
Amadori, Albiera di Giovanni, 2
Amadori, Alessandro, 3, 111
Amboise, see Chateau d’Amboise
Amontons, 134
Anatomy, human, 52, 53, 107, 109, 119, 125-127, 138
Anchiano, 2
Anemometer, 65, 66
Anemoscope, 65
Anghiari, battle of, 103, 110, 113
Aquadello, 124
Aquila, Battista dell’, 139
Arabs, the, 54
Archimedes, 41, 67, 81, 134
Architecture, 50, 58
Argyropoulos, John, 17

Aristotle, 17, 23, 42, 48, 81, 89
Arithmetic, 77
Arithmetico, Benedetto, 16
Armored vehicle, 39, 40
Arno river, 25, 31, 96, 100-106, 109
Arrezzo, 93
Ascanio, Cardinal, 83
Astronomy, 80-82, 104, 105
Atlantic Ocean, 19
“Automobile,” 32, 33
Autopsies, 107
Avicenna, 53

B
Bacon, Francis, 160
Bacon, Roger, 120
Badia, the, 7
Battista, 155, 157
Bayzid II, 94
Beatis, Antonio de’, 151
Bianca Maria, 64
Bible, the, 62, 104, 141
Birds, flight of, 24, 65, 66, 76, 99, 119
Black Death, see Bubonic plague
Blois, 152
Bologna, 144
Bombard, 26
Bombs, 39
Borgia, Cesare, 82, 86-97, 102, 139
Borgias, the, 102
Botticelli, Sandro, 33
Boureau, Guillaume, 156
Bramante, 68, 131
Bridge building, 95
Bubonic plague, 45-47
Buonarroti, Michelangelo, see Michelangelo

C
“Camera obscura,” 55
Campo Morto, battle of, 38
Cannon, 26, 33, 41 165
Caravaggio, siege of, 124
Cardano, Girolamo, 113
Carles, Geffroy, 115, 116
Carpentry, 135, 136
Cassano, castle of, 124
Castel’ Sant’ Angelo, 130
Caterina, 2
Cellini, Benvenuto, 100
Centrifugal pump, 121, 122
Cesena, 94
Chambord, castle of, 152
Charles d’Amboise, 94, 114-117, 121, 124, 127, 139
Chateau d’Amboise, 147-156
Cher river, 152
Christ, 30, 74, 77, 78
Church of the Annunciation of the Servite Order of Monks, 90
Church, the, 18, 48, 53, 63, 104, 145
Cioni, Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’, see Verrochio, Andrea del
City Planning, 44, 45, 47
City-states, 9, 10
Civitavecchia, 143, 144
Cloux, Manoir de, 148, 154, 156
Coins, minting of, 47
Collections, 4
Columbus, Christopher, 19
Constantinople, 95
Corte, Bernardino da, 83
Corte Vecchia, 56
Coulomb, A. C., 17, 134
Council of Eighty, 109
Council of Florence, 23, 106
Councilors and Tribunal of Venice, 89
Credi, Lorenzo di, 13

Cusanus, Cardinal, 42

D
Dams, 101
Danti, Giovanni Battista, 96, 97
d’Aragona, Cardinal Luigi, 151
Darwin, 105
d’Auvergne, Madelaine, 153
David, statue of, 106
De Ludo Geometrico, 134
d’Este, Beatrice, 60, 61, 69, 86
d’Este, Isabella, 86, 87, 91
Diocletian, Emperor, 135
Diseases, 109
Dissection, 53, 126, 145
Diver’s suit, 89
Drawing, see Painting
Drum, mechanical, 61
Dynamics, 140

E
Earth, the, 104, 105
Eclipse of the sun, 48
Einstein, 153
Equilibrium, 141
Euclid, 54, 91
Eye, the, 54, 55

F
Ferdinand, King of Naples, 25, 27
Ferrara, 70
Ferrari, Ambrogio, 42
Fiesole, 111, 113, 156
Flemish painters, 15
Flight,
of arrow, 82, 83
of birds, 24, 65, 66, 76, 99, 119

problems of, 70, 71, 75, 76, 96-100, 111-113
Florence, 7-19, 25-27, 32, 38, 53, 68, 93-96, 100-103
Flying machine, 70, 71, 75, 76, 112
Foix, Gaston de, 127
Forts, 88
Forum of the Caesars, 134
Four elements, 48
France, 67-69, 78, 82-84, 94, 114-120, 125, 127, 128, 139, 142-145, 152
Francis I, 143-145, 148-157
Fraternity of the Immaculate Conception, 43, 44, 47
Friction, 140, 141

G
Galen, 52, 53
Galileo, Galilei, 134, 141, 160
Genoa, 143
Geocentric theory, see Ptolemaic theory
Geography, 18, 19
Geology, 103, 104
Geometry, 91, 134
Georg, 131, 133, 140, 143, 145
Geotropism, 79
Germany, 47, 69 166
Ghirlandaio, Domenico di Tommaso del, 33
Giocondo, Francesco del, 98
Giovanni “the Piper,” 100
Gonzaga, Francesco, 86
Gothic tradition, 50
Gravity, 140, 141
Greeks, the, 69
Guido, 23
Guild, 19

H
Hadrian, Emperor, 130
Harvey, William, 126, 160
Heavens, observation of, 80

Heliocentric theory, 48, 81
Heliotropism, 79
Highmore, 53
Hippocrates, 52
Holy Roman Empire, 9
Hooke, Robert, 141
Horse, anatomy of the, 41
Hydraulic pump, 74, 122, 123
Hydraulics, 14
Hydrodynamics, 141
Hygrometer, 30, 31

I
Imola, 95, 96
Inclination gauge, 66, 67
India, 18
Introduction to Perspective, or the Function of the Eye, 58
Inventions, 25-27, 38-40
Irradiation, 55
Irrigation, 101
Isabella of Aragon, 51
Isonzo river, 88
Istanbul, see Constantinople

J
Johannes, 133, 143, 145
Judas, 74, 77, 78

K
King Charles VIII, 67-69, 78, 82, 120, 148

L
Lake Como, 125
Lamps, 59
Lanfredini, Francesca, 2, 7
“Last Supper,” 30, 72, 74, 77, 92, 99, 138
League of Cambria, 124
Leghorn, 100

Leibig, 41
Leonardo da Vinci,
and the Church, 18, 48, 104, 145
birth of, 2
death of, 157
early years of, 1-8
illness of, 142, 150
moves to Florence, 10
notebooks of, 25, 29, 140, 152, 159, 160
Levite, 118
Light and Shade, 54
Lighting, 59
Lilienthal, Otto, 100
Livoli river, 139
Loches, 92
Loire river, 147, 149, 152
Lombardy, 37, 62, 78, 82, 83, 121,148
Louis XII (of Orleans), 78, 82, 92, 94, 114, 116, 119, 124, 142, 157
Louvre, the, 44
Lucullus, 130
Lyons, 152
Lyre, silver, 34, 35

M
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 96, 100, 102, 106, 109
Machine gun, 27
Machinery, improvement of, 16
Madonna Lisa, see Mona Lisa
Malaria, 139
Mandeville, Sir John, 103
Manenti, 88
Mantua, 84, 86, 87
Mapmaking, 19, 93, 95, 96, 100, 101
Martelli, Piero, 118
Martini, Francesco di Giorgio, 58
Martino river, 139
Mathurine, 156, 157

Maximilian I, 64
Medici, Giovanni de’, 130
Medici, Giuliano de’, 21, 130, 132, 138-146
Medici, Lorenzo de’, 16, 21, 26, 27, 29, 35, 39, 127, 130, 132, 146, 153
Medici, Piero de’, 10, 16
Medicis, the, 10, 21, 23, 26, 27, 33, 34, 68, 130, 131, 140, 142, 146
Melzi, Francesco de’, 117, 128, 130, 140, 142, 145, 150, 155, 157, 158 167
Michelangelo, 106, 107, 113, 131, 137, 144, 145
Middle Ages, 81, 104
Migliorotti, Atalante, 35-38, 87
Milan, 9, 33-48, 60, 64, 68, 78, 82, 83, 85, 95, 114-128, 143, 144
Milan cathedral, 50
Military,
defenses, 88, 89
machines, 25-27, 33, 38-40
Millstones, 75
Mitre valve, 123
Mirrors, 133
“Mona Lisa,” 99, 103
Monferrato, 62
Monte Albano, 1, 2, 5
Monte Cecero, 113
Montorfano, 72
Muscles, 109, 119
Music, 34, 35

N
Naples, 9, 27, 68, 69
Needle sharpener, 75
Netherlands, the, 95
Newton, Isaac, 24, 56, 123, 141, 160
Newton’s First Law of Motion, 123
Newton’s law of gravitation, 83
Notes, 14
Novara, battle of, 92

O

Odometer, 69
Oggionno, Marco d’, 58
Orient, the, 89
Ornithopter, 111, 112

P
Pacioli, Fra Luca, 76, 77, 80, 84, 86-91, 133
Padua, 125
Painting, 4-7, 29-32, 43, 44, 71, 72, 91, 99, 105, 110, 112
Palatine hill, 135
Palazzo della Signoria, 12, 21-25, 103
Palazzo Vecchio, 12
Parachute, 71
Paris, 44
Parma, 138
Pater, Walter, 161
Pavia, 51, 58, 125
Pazzi conspiracy, 21, 23, 25
Pazzi, Francesco de’, 23
Pera, 95
“Periscope,” the, 89
Perugia, 96
Perugino, Pietro, 13, 33, 107
Pesaro, 93
Peschiera, 124
Pharisee, 118
Philiberta, 142
Phyllotaxis, 79
Physics, 17
Piazzetta, the, 87
Pincio hill, 130
Piombino, 93, 139, 154
Pisa, 25, 100-102, 110
Pitti Palace, 31
Plague, see Bubonic plague
Plants, study of, 79, 80
Platonic school, 54

Pliny, 23
Plutarch, 81
Pollaiuolo, 53
Ponte Vecchio, 31
Pontine marshes, 139, 154
Pope Alexander VI, 82, 92, 102
Pope Innocent VIII, 63
Pope Julius II, 124, 127, 128, 130, 131
Pope Leo X, 130-132, 139, 142-146, 153
Pope Sixtus IV, 21, 33
Porta del Popolo, 129
Porta Romana, 29
Porta Vercellina, 79, 115
Porto Cesanatico, 94
Portugal, 26
Predis, Bernardino de, 47
Predis, Giovanni Ambrogio de, 43, 44, 47, 56
Ptolemaic theory, 48
Ptolemy, 23, 54, 103

Q
Queen Claude, 152

R
Raphael, 107, 131, 137
Ravenna, battle of, 127
Red Book of the Painters of Florence, 19
Reflection, law of, 56 168
Renaissance, 89, 104, 125, 161
Riario, Girolamo, 21, 38
Rimini, 93
Rome, 9, 33, 47, 69, 128-146
Romorantin, 150, 152
Rosate, Ambrogio da, 63
Rumford, 56
Rustici, Giovanni, 118

S
“St. Anne with the Virgin and Child,” 91, 92
St. Augustine, 42
Saint-Denis church, 157
St. Germain-en-Laye, 157
Saint-Hubert, chapel of, 153, 157
St. John, 118, 154
St. John the Baptist, 151
St. Luke, 19
St. Mary of the Virgin, 96
St. Peter’s, church of, 131
Salai, 86, 115
Salviati, Francesco, 21
San Bernardo, chapel of, 23
San Cristoforo, 157
San Donato a Scopeto, 29
San Lorenzo, 144, 145
San Marco, Little Square of, 87
Sanseverino, Galeazzo da, 82, 83
Sant’ Onofrio, hospital, 107
Santa Croce, church of, 107
Santa Maria delle Grazie, 71, 78
Santa Maria Novella, 107
Sanzio, Raffaello, see Raphael
Savoy, 142
Scarlione, Bartolommeo degli, 43
Sculpture, 41, 49, 52-54, 58-64, 118
Sforza, Duke Gian Galeazzo, 51, 56, 68, 120
Sforza, Francesco, 41, 47, 49, 61, 64
Sforza, Francesco (child), 68
Sforza, Ludovico, 33-47, 51, 52, 56, 57, 60-72, 76-79, 82-84, 92, 115, 117,
120, 138, 146, 154
Sforza monument, 49-59, 61, 64, 120
Sforzas, the, 40, 56, 57, 71, 79, 83, 117, 120, 154
Shells, 62, 63
Signoria, the, 96, 100-106, 110, 114, 116
Sistine Chapel, 33, 132, 137

Soderini, Piero, 103, 106, 109, 114-116
Sologne, 154
Spain, 18, 69, 127, 139, 142, 143
Statics, 140
Steam, 41
Strabo, 23, 103, 104
Swiss, 127, 128, 143

T
Ticino gate, 44
Torre, Marcantonio della, 125, 128
Toscanelli, Paolo del Pozzo, 18, 19, 42, 93
Touraine, 92
Trivulzio, Marshal Gian Giacomo, 120, 121, 125, 128, 143
Turks, the, 87-90, 94
Tuscany, 93
Tyrrhenian coast, 143

U
Uffizi Gallery, 25, 32
University of Padua, 125
University of Pavia, 63
Urbino, 93

V
Valentinois, Duke of, see Borgia, Cesare
Valois, Marguerite de, 150
Vatican, the, 47, 130-145
Venice, 9, 69, 87-89, 124, 125, 127
Verrochio, Andrea del, 7, 12-19, 23, 118
Via Ghibellina, 90
Vigevano, 68, 75
Vinci, 2, 13
Vinci, da, Giuliano, 117
Vinci, da, Piero, 2-7, 10, 12, 90, 106, 117
“Virgin of the Rocks,” 44
Vitellozzo, 93

Vitruvius, 77

W
Water, study of, 67, 101, 102, 121, 122
Watt, James, 160
Witelo, 58

Y
Yugoslavia, 88

Transcriber’s Notes
Silently corrected a few typos.
Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.

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