Leonardo Da Vinci (2 page)

Piero seems to have been a player, a man-about-town. One of his relationships was with Caterina, a local peasant woman. Marriage was never the goal; we don’t even know her last name. But she had a baby: Leonardo. Being born illegitimate would set up roadblocks for Leonardo all his life.

Children with unwed parents were common enough. The nobility and peasantry took them in stride, but for people in the middle class, people like Piero, these children were bastards—embarrassing, even hated. To be illegitimate was like having a bright red tattoo on your forehead—you were an affront to morality, a mistake better off erased.

A few months after his son was born, Piero married someone else—a fifteen-year-old girl. In all, Leonardo was going to have four stepmothers to deal with, plus at least fifteen half brothers and sisters.

So he was born an outsider. Even as a baby he had no clear home. No one knows where he spent his first few years. He probably lived with Caterina for at least a year and a half so that she could nurse him. A few years later, she married and moved to another village. Without Leonardo. After this, every time he saw her, on religious holidays, she would be nursing a new baby—she had five more children.

When he was four, a powerful storm bombarded the area around Vinci, with flooding, fierce winds, and immense destruction. “Against the fury [of water], no man can prevail,” Leonardo later wrote. “An act of God” was how most people explained such a storm, but Leonardo came to think otherwise. He developed a lifelong interest in storms and water, which he saw as natural forces. For the rest of his life, he was obsessed with the study of water—how it behaved, and especially how it might be controlled.

By age five Leonardo was living with his grand-parents. His grandmother was sixty-four, his grandfather almost eighty-five. Truly ancient!

From what is known, Leonardo’s sounds like the loneliest of childhoods. Children in the 1400s were not coddled or entertained. They were thought of as miniature adults. The only one to show interest in Leonardo was his uncle, Francesco. Sixteen years older than his nephew, he farmed the family’s land. He coaxed it into producing olives, wheat, and grapes.

Francesco was a bit of a scientist-farmer, brim ming with practical knowledge, always experimenting with different crops. Leonardo spent many hours helping his uncle with farm chores and taking long walks in the hills. The boy observed all creatures with equal fascination, even the lizards and worms in the vineyard. He learned the names of plants and herbs and all about variations in weather. Francesco loved nature and seemed to pass this on to his nephew.

The area around Vinci is one of the most gorgeous spots in the world—both then and now. Streams and waterfalls intersect fairy-tale forests and faraway mountains with castles perched on top. Fields of glowing wheat melt into groves of silvery olive trees. Rolling hills in every shade of green, all dotted with the red-tiled roofs of farmhouses, are bathed in misty light that shimmers and glows.

There are stories that young Leonardo carried a drawing pad with him at all times—that he drew constantly and sculpted models out of clay. Most people had little access to pencils or expensive paper, but he had them in his house because of the family’s business. It was said that he collected everything—flowers, leaves, pieces of wood, animals.

The natural world was Leonardo’s first laboratory. In the hills around Vinci, he spent hours observing—the movement of birds’ wings in flight, how a frog’s legs allowed it to leap so far, water running in a river—which in turn led to a greater understanding of the forces of nature and to a fascination with sciences like biology, botany, and geology.

His formal schooling was minimal. His grandpar ents might have hired private teachers or had him taught by the parish priest. He learned basic math using Roman numerals and an abacus, and how to read and write in Italian, the everyday tongue of the people. It didn’t occur to anyone to teach him Latin, the international language of scholars.

Leonardo was four when a major breakthrough in communication occurred. For the first time, a book was printed, following Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in 1456. The first printed book in Europe was, of course, a Bible. And soon, books—all kinds of books—were easily available.

Did Leonardo have any books as a child? None of his own, certainly. His family might have owned one or two. As a member of a Christian family, young Leonardo would have heard Bible readings and seen paintings in the local church. All his life, the more he learned about the workings of the world, the more respect he had for the mind of God. “The Creator does not make anything superfluous or defective,” he marveled.

Still, he could be critical of church practices and didn’t become a regular churchgoer, following his beliefs in his own way instead. He seldom spoke about religion or miracles: “I do not attempt to write or give information of those things . . . which cannot be proved by an instance of nature.”

Because of his illegitimacy, he was not allowed to attend one of the famous universities in Italy. No one seemed to expect anything respectable of this boy. No one bothered to try to correct his left-handedness, at a time when this trait was forcibly discouraged and even considered evil by some.

All his life, Leonardo had to teach himself. Sometimes he was bitter about this, but as he grew older he also took pride in being what people called him: “unlettered.” By then, he had realized that what was being taught as fact wasn’t necessarily right.

CHAPTER THREE

“The Desire to Know Is Natural”

BEING ILLEGITIMATE WAS a lasting B black mark. Leonardo was barred by law from most respectable professions as well as from advanced schooling. Piero’s guild of notaries, for example, refused entry to the illegitimate, as well as to criminals.

Leonardo’s choices in life were limited: either join the army (where many illegitimate boys ended up) or get his hands dirty taking up a trade.

His father clearly felt responsible for Leonardo’s future. When the boy was twelve or thirteen, Piero took him along on one of his trips to the pulsing big city of Florence. One of five independent city-states in what is now Italy, Florence was the cutting-edge center of the art world.

Perhaps the boy had already impressed people with his talent for art. And artists didn’t necessarily
have
to be respectable. Piero might have considered a career in art the most viable option for his son.

Piero did have connections. He got his son apprenticed as a studio boy to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. This was one of the luckiest breaks of Leonardo’s whole life.

Verrocchio’s workshop was like a buzzing little art factory. A storefront, opening onto the street, enticed customers with its wares—paintings and sculptures, musical instruments, helmets, bells, and baskets. Spartan living quarters for the artists were on top of or behind the storefront, with beds of straw on the floor.

In exchange for working, Leonardo was fed and sheltered and paid a small amount. Verrocchio was now his legal guardian. He even had the right to beat him, though there is no evidence that he did.

Artists at that time had to be practical and versatile, to make things people really used. Leonardo plunged into an array of projects, such as painting altarpieces and panels, making large sculptures in marble and bronze, copying coats of arms, decorating pottery, designing tools for surgery. The young artists in the studio worked mostly in teams, finishing one another’s work, rarely signing their names. Art was about craft, not ego.

As a boy straight out of the country, the teenage Leonardo must have been a little gawky at first. But he soaked everything up, drew energy from his new environment, and simply blossomed.

As it happened, Florence was perhaps the most percolating place for anyone to be in the 1460s. The ruler, Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’ Medici, tried to encourage an atmosphere of commerce and culture. Other Italian cities, such as Bologna and Pisa, also nurtured new ideas. But merchants from all over loved Florence for its central location. After recovering from a deadly attack of the plague, its population was booming again, approaching 100,000 hustling and bustling people.

More than many other cities, Florence had people who were rich and well educated. For decades it had been controlled by the Medici family, who were wealthy from banking. Although often cruel and corrupt, the Medici did nourish the arts. Verrocchio’s workshop, in fact, was generously supported by orders from the powerful Medici—for sculptures, candelabra, banners and other decorations, and even their tombs.

A new boy (at the time, artists’ apprentices were always boys) would start out sweeping the floor, running errands, cleaning paintbrushes, and heating up varnish or glue. As he learned the basics of drawing, his special talents would reveal themselves. He would graduate to crafting paintbrushes from animal hair, stretching canvases, mixing the paints from scratch, and applying gold leaf to backgrounds.

The apprentice would learn about the use of color, how to lay down the first coats of tempera (an egg-based paint), how to transfer a drawing to another surface, how to paint directly onto walls, and how to carve stone. He might be allowed to finish whole sections of paintings depending on whether he was good at landscapes, clothes, or faces. He would have to work some twelve hours a day, every day of the week except Sunday, every week of the year.

Leonardo was continually practicing his drawing. There was a lot to learn. In the Middle Ages, images in paintings had appeared flat, limited to two dimensions. But in 1413, the architect and artist Filippo Brunelleschi worked out the mathematical principles of linear perspective. Now paintings could give the illusion of depth. A young artist like Leonardo would need to study mathematics in order to portray nature as it actually appeared, in three-dimensional space.

The workshop was like another laboratory for Leonardo, after the natural world of his early childhood. Its spirit was almost as much scientific as artistic, with observations and experiments leading to new techniques. An apprentice would be always experimenting with potions—oil of cypress with water to make an amber-colored paint, saliva to keep pens wet. One job was to prepare wood panels for painting; in later life, Leonardo revealed his recipe as a lengthy process using twice-distilled turpentine, arsenic, boiled linseed oil, and human urine.

The first big project Leonardo probably helped see through to completion was a two-ton giant bronze ball. It was for the city’s famous cathedral—to go atop its dome, designed by Brunelleschi. Every man and boy in the workshop was called upon to help. The final hoisting of the ball into place was a huge celebration that Leonardo certainly attended—along with the whole shouting city.

Being an artist could clearly bring sparkling acclaim.

It also brought approval from his father.

One day Piero stopped by the workshop. He had a plain wooden shield he needed painted as a favor to someone. Leonardo took the job and went all out. He decided the picture on a shield must be frightening, so he collected lizards, bats, crickets, snakes, insects. Then he dissected them. He arranged the most interesting body parts into the scariest possible monster, spitting fire. He painted the beast on the shield, which he displayed in a corner of a dark room, and invited his father in for a dramatic unveiling.

Piero was actually frightened at first, then delighted. He took it away and picked up a cheap shield (decorated with a simple heart pierced by an arrow) to give to his friend. Did Piero keep his son’s shield? No. He sold it for a nice sum.

Verrocchio encouraged his apprentices to dissect small dead animals as a way to learn to portray anatomy. This was something easy, if unusual, for Leonardo to do. In fact, in the study of anatomy at that time, artists were as knowledgeable as anyone, even medical students.

Verrocchio required his artists to depict the human form with complete accuracy, which meant they were expected to study how the body was constructed. Instead of working from the imagination, they had to draw live models. They could also make plaster casts of body parts, both their own or those of corpses.

It seems Verrocchio was one of those inspiring teachers who change lives. He was like a one-man university himself. He knew everything about art, plus he was an experimenter and innovator. He encouraged his shop to break new ground in the arts, not just to repeat the past. To think big.

“The painter must strive to be universal,” Leonardo would write later. From Verrocchio he learned that an artist should be capable of rendering anything in nature.

Leonardo was definitely a quick learner. Word spread fast that the new apprentice could draw and paint like an angel. Verrocchio delegated more and more work to him. The boy’s confidence must have soared.

Life at Verrocchio’s was not all work and no play. The shop was a gathering place for artistic and literary young men. Artists from other shops would stop by, as would travelers passing through Florence. They exchanged recipes for paints, modeled for one another, and drank wine. Ideas ricocheted about all things—philosophy, nature, science, and the latest books.

Leonardo’s early education in scientific matters came from chatting with visitors to Verrocchio’s workshop. Collectors in Turkey and Greece who had libraries of ancient manuscripts—including the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle—were now selling them to collectors in Florence. Every time a manuscript from ancient times was translated, a buzz would go around the city.

Leonardo and his friends also enjoyed playing the role of artistic rebels, out to shock respectable citizens with frivolous behavior. Nothing too outrageous, as the laws were strict and penalties often severe. Mainly pranks—Leonardo was famous for the stink balls he created out of fish remains or decomposing animals.

Leonardo seemed to fit right in. Perhaps it was the only time in his life when this was true. He had friends from all walks of life, respectable and otherwise. A good singer, he also excelled at the viol, a stringed instrument played with a bow. He invented party tricks, like throwing red wine into a cup of boiling oil to make colorful flames erupt. Witty at parties, he told good riddles and funny stories (most of which haven’t stood the test of time).