Friday 26 May 2006

The Da Vinci King

This month a movie, based on a book, inspired by a masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, opened all over the world, 487 years and 17 days after the artist�s death on May 2, 1519. Before he died at age 67 he assumed he was just a washed-up old hack, his works and his contributions forgotten by the numerous princes, dukes, popes and aristocrats that had supported his checkered career. But it is the final philosopher-king in his life who Hollywood, the Tourist Boards of Italy, London, Paris and Edinburgh, scientists, architects, and the rest of us can thank for making sure his legacy lived on.

Leonardo was born the eldest of his father Piero�s 12 children, but his mother, whom history knows only as Caterina, was not any of his four young wives. Bastardy in those days was perfectly acceptable, and he was baptized in the church. But after that he and his mother were banished to the country until he was four. When it became clear that wife #1, who Piero had married when she was 16, was not going to produce an heir, he brought Leonardo back to his house in Vinci, a small Tuscan village where he had an active career as a notary. It became quite obvious early to Piero that his son was very gifted and apprenticed him to an artist�s studio in Florence. After his apprenticeship was over Leonardo set out to make his living-not as a painter but as a singer, lute player and composer for the Medici family.

The Medici was a very wealthy and very bizarre family that virtually ran Florence under the power of their bank. They fancied themselves as ancient Romans, striding about in togas and speaking posh Latin. Leonardo, who never got the hang of Latin, and thought the whole thing pretty silly, soon lost patience with them. And as he had earned a reputation for never finishing anything, they with him. Now 30 years old he decided that perhaps Milan was more his kind of town, so he set off northward, not returning to Florence for nearly 20 years.

He told everyone he was going to the court of Ludovico Sforza, uncle of the boy Duke of Milan, as official lute player. Actually he thought he would be more useful as a designer of military weapons and transport-something every good despot needed if he was going to keep what he had already stolen from somebody else. It was a sideways career move. It was supposed that if you could cast a bronze statue you could cast a cannon just as easily.

Sforza, who had taken over power from his weakling nephew, preferred the cloak-and-dagger approach to war instead of actually fighting. He was also a big spender in a court where everything, and everyone, was for sale. He had a lot of bad habits and unfortunately for Leonardo �forgetting� to pay his artists was one of them.

Leonardo worked on and off for 16 years on a favourite bronze equestrian sculpture of Ludo�s father on a horse (he worked hard on designing the horse rearing up, but could never figure out how to do it). He also worked on ideas for preventing further plaque outbreaks and a city street design that was picked up by and used in London. When Ludo married his nephew off to the granddaughter of the King of Naples Leonardo was put to work designing a massive and extravagant pageant to celebrate the wedding. That kind of project he really enjoyed, and went all out for. Unpaid for two years though, his savings soon ran out.

Sforza�s position was always precarious and he finally lost power when he appealed to King Charles VIII of France to come help him defend Milan against the King of Naples. Once Charles was over the Alps and saw the riches around him, he decided to press an ancient French claim to the region. In a panic Sforza went in with Naples (well, they were family now after all) to send the French packing. Charles died first, but his successor Louis XII charged back over the mountains, and sent Sforza back to Paris in chains, where he died in jail. Leonardo took this as an omen that it was time to go home.

He did get some major projects finished during this period though, such as painting The Last Supper on the wall of a monastery in Milan. He worked on it haphazardly for 15 of those years. Some days he would spend from dawn to dark working feverishly, stopping for nothing. Others he would come and stare at it for hours. Sometimes he would pop in on his lunch hour and make a few dabs in between other projects. He also produced Madonna of the Rocks and Lady with an Ermine (said to be Sforza�s 17-year-old mistress Cecilia).

Once back in Florence he unwittingly jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Next employer- one Cesare Borgia. Cesare was just one of the many illegitimate children of Pope Alexander VI, and had been made a Cardinal by his father when he was 17. However he found life at the Vatican to be a bit too restrictive, so the Pope released him from his vows and he set out on a life of crime, mayhem, murder and just plain thuggery. But Cesare was smart enough to know he needed help so he employed Leonardo to help come up with ways for him to defend what he already had while taking whatever else he wanted.

Leonardo had a unique ability in that he could emotionally detach himself completely from the world around him and make no judgments. He saw no particular objection to working out a way for Cesare to trick the Duke of Urbino into lending him some weapons, and then using those same weapons to defect Urbino�s army. It was there in Romangna that Leonardo met and became best friends with Niccolo Machiavelli. They had many common interests. But nevertheless in 1503, when Cesare had one of his friends murdered, Leonardo decided enough was enough and asked Niccolo for some ideas on where to go next. Niccolo found him one of the best commissions there was.

The City Fathers decided they wanted a depiction of The Battle of Anghiari�, an occasion when the Florentine forces were most successful, painted on the wall of their council chamber. It was too much for one artist, so they also hired some kid named Michelangelo. Every once in a while a 21-year-old Raphael would pop in to help things along.

Grateful as he was he and his young associate didn�t always get along, so he spent much of his time doing a portrait of Lisa, the third wife of Francesco Gioconda, now a middle-aged 24.

The Battle was damaged and the Council kept demanding that Leonardo fix it, and just when it looked like he would actually have to he was saved by Charles d�Amboise, Lord of Chaumont. Chaumont was governor for Louis XII in Milan. Louis had loved The Last Supper so much he was all for tearing down the monastery so he could transport the whole wall back to France. On Louis� behalf he wrote to Florence, �requesting� da Vinci�s services. Reluctantly the council agreed, but only to three months. Leonardo was now 54.

When he got there he found he wasn�t actually contracted to do anything. Louis just wanted him there as a status symbol. When Florence wrote that it was time to send him back, Louis declared da Vinci was now in his indefinite service- or else! So for the next six years he was paid well to wander about at will and do whatever scientific studying he fancied. But in 1512, the French were driven out of Milan, and the now 60-year-old found himself broke, unemployed, a faded star with no major patrons on the horizon. He languished fearfully until Pope Julius II died (he�d always liked Michelangelo best), and Leo X, a Medici, succeeded him.

Hoping his old association with the family would be of benefit he arrived in Rome to be greeted by the Pope�s brother and set up in rooms in the Belvedere Palace. He was sadly disappointed if he thought his old contemporaries like Raphael, Michelangelo or the architect Bramante would hurry to his side. Leo did give him one project but threw his arms up in frustration when it became clear it would never be finished, as usual. It was here he did his last painting, St. John, and began to suffer the effects of the small strokes that would eventually kill him. It paralyzed his right hand, and everyone assumed that he was finished as an artist. So did his last, and most beneficial, royal benefactor.

As France�s last Capet king Louis XII sired only one child, a daughter named Claude. As France operated under Salic Law, which states the throne can only be passed down through the eldest male in line, Claude was married to her father�s first cousin Francis. The throne then passed to him, and she became Queen Consort. Francis I was born in 1494, the first of the truly Renaissance kings of France. Like his contemporary Henry VIII of England, he was fond of wine, women and jousting, but he was also determined to wrench France out of the dark ages. Under Charles and Louis France had been more concerned with war than culture, and Francis wanted to broaden his people�s horizons in the worst way.

He was crowned at Rheims in 1515 and ruled until his death in 1547. His tutors and his mother, Louise of Savoy, inoculated him with all the new thinking from Italy. As he embarked on his grand scheme to rebuild his country the Italian Renaissance movement came to influence everything he did. He was a poet and man of letters, who set out to build his people a great library. He built grand palaces based on Italian Renaissance designs. And he was also into collecting great works of art and artists. And since he couldn�t go to him, he invited Leonardo to come to live near him in France.

All Leonardo had to do for his all-expenses-paid live-in arrangement at Clouf Manor, near Francis�s grand Chateau at Amboise, was talk with the 22-year-old King. Since this was an offer he couldn�t possibly refuse he packed up all his notebooks, his drawings, and his Mona, St. John and St. Anne, and with his companions Melzi and Salai, he traveled to his new home 100 miles outside of Paris. The King gave him the fancy title of First Painter and Architect to the King, but never expected him to paint anything. His right hand didn't work too well, but that didn�t matter because he was actually left-handed. Nobody had ever seemed to notice.

At any hour of the day or night an excited and curious King would come flying down the tunnel that connected the two buildings whenever he had a question that only his resident genius could answer. He told Leonardo he was welcome at court whenever he wished to come, which was not often. Leonardo did draw up some plans on how to build canals on the Loire and its tributaries. Here too he staged a few royal pageants (including one where he built a huge mechanical lion that chased the king around the room until it stopped to let a mass of lilies spill from its mouth). He drew up the architectural plan of a castle-town Francis eventually wanted to build. He also designed the magnificent Chateau de Chambord for him. It is also likely that he drew up the blueprints for the new Louvre Palace, where one day his own Mona Lisa would hang in a place of honour.

To Francis Leonardo was all things wonderful, a 24-hour a day source to whom he could come for inspiration. So it must have been a huge blow to him when Leonardo died. He buried his hero at Amboise among princes, but the cemetery was destroyed during the Huguenot Wars, and his remains were scattered when his lead coffin was probably melted down to make weapons. Bones that were thought to match the physical description of the man-tall with a large skull to fit that big brain-were assembled and reburied behind the castle.

Today these are claimed to da Vinci�s, but where his bones really are is as big a mystery as the man himself. In 67 years he went from bastard son of a Florentine notary to oracle to a King. Francis� Chateau Louvre was added to by successive monarchs and Napoleons I and III, and today is owned by the French State, as are his masterpieces.

After his death all his papers were willed to his secretary Melzi, who took them back to Milan. He treasured these but after he died his son Orazio started dispersing them to the highest bidders. The vast majority has disappeared, perhaps into private collections. Others can be found in Milan, Venice, Madrid, Paris, London and the Earl of Leicester�s library. The British Crown claims some in their possession have mysteriously disappeared, but are probably hidden. Napoleon, when he invaded Milan in 1796, found the Codex Atlanticus, one of two scrapbooks put together by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, taking cuttings of Leonardo�s scientific papers. They were in no real order and take up 1,222 pages. He sent this back to Paris, declaring that all geniuses had to be French whether born there or not. It is now back at the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. Other pages of his drawings were remounted and are preserved in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.

Not too long ago a traveling museum exhibition of da Vinci�s life and works crossed North America. The Jester spent a delightful Sunday afternoon muscling through the crowds to see just a tiny fraction of what that one remarkable man had come up with. One can only boggle at the mysteries of a mind 500 years before its time. But if it hadn�t been for those medieval crowned heads, and one Renaissance King in particular, what was left of da Vinci�s works may never have been preserved to inspire the imagination of millions centuries after he produced them. If he had a grave he would be spinning in it as we speak. He could have really used the royalties.

See ya at the movies!

Anon,

- The Court Jester