101 



VINCI, LIONARDO DA. 



VINCI, LIONARDO DA. 



402 



VI'NCI, LIONA'RDO DA, one of the most accomplished men of an 

 accomplished age, and for the extent of his knowledge in the arts and 

 sciences yet unrivalled, was horn at the Cartel da Vinci in the Val 

 d'Arno below Florence, in 1452. His father Pietro da Vinci, of whom 

 he was a natural son, was a notary, and in the year 1484 notary to the 

 signory of Florence. Ho had three wives, but his son Lionardo was 

 born before his first marriage, in his twenty-third year ; the mother of 

 Liommlo is not known. Lionardo evinced as a boy remarkably quick 

 abilities for everything that he turned his attention to, but more par- 

 ticularly for arithmetic, music, and drawing ; his drawings appeared 

 to be something wonderful to his father, who showed them to Andrea 

 Verrocchio. This celebrated artist was likewise surprised to see such 

 productions from au uninstructod hand, and willingly took Lionardo 

 as a pupil ; but he was soon much more astonished when he perceived 

 the rapid progress his pupil made ; ho felt his own inferiority, and 

 when Liouardo painted an angel in a picture of the Baptism of 

 Christ, so superior to the other figures, that it marie the inferiority of 

 Verrocchio apparent to all, he gave up painting from that time for 

 ever. This picture is now in the academy of Florence. The first 

 m-k'iiial picture of Lionardo's mentioned by Vasari, was the so-called 

 ILotdla del Fico, a round board of fig-tret 1 , upon which his father 

 requested him to paint something for one of his tenants. Lionardo, 

 wishing to astonish his father determined to execute something extra- 

 ordinary that should produce the effect of the head of Medusa ; and 

 having prepared the rotella and covered it with plaster, he collected 

 almost every kind of reptile and composed from them a monster of 

 most horrible appearance ; it seemed alive, its eyes flashed fire, and it 

 appeared to breathe destruction from its open mouth. It had the 

 desired effect upon his father, who thought it so wonderful that he 

 carried it immediately to a picture dealer of Florence, sold it for a 

 hundred ducats, and purchased for a trifle an ordinary piece, which he 

 sent to his tenant. This curious production was afterwards sold to the 

 duke of Milan for three hundred ducats. 



Although Lionardo devoted himself enthusiastically to painting, 

 he appears to have found time also to study many other arts and 

 sciences sculpture, architecture, engineering, and mechanics gene- 

 rally, botany, anatomy, mathematics, and astronomy ; he was also a 

 poet and an excellent extempore performer on the lyre. He was not 

 only a student in these branches of knowledge, but a master. His 

 acquirements cannot be better told than in his own words, in a letter 

 to Ludovico il Moro, duke of Milan, when he offered him his services: 

 "Most Illustrious Signer Having seen and sufficiently considered 

 the specimens of all those who repute themselves inventors and 

 makers of instruments of war, and found them nothing out of the 

 common way : I am willing, without derogating from the merit of 

 another, to explain to your excellency the secrets which I possess ; and 

 I hope at fit opportunities to be enabled to give proofs of my efficiency 

 iu all the following matters, which I will now only briefly mention. 



" 1. I have means of making bridges extremely light and portable, 

 both for the pursuit of or the retreat from an enemy; and others that 

 shall be very strong and fire-proof, and easy to fix and take up again. 

 And I have means to burn and destroy those of the enemy. 



" 2. In case of a siege, I can remove the water from the ditches ; 

 make scaling-ladders and all other necessary instruments for such an 

 expedition. 



" 3. If through the height of the fortifications or the strength of 

 the position of any place, it cannot be effectually bombarded, I have 

 means of destroying any such fortress, provided it be not built upon 

 stone. 



" 4. I can also make bombs most convenient and portable, which 

 shall cause great confusion and loss to the enemy. 



" 5. I can arrive at any (place ?) by means of excavations and crooked 

 and narrow ways made without any noise, even where it is required to 

 pass under ditches or a river. 



" 6. I can also construct covered waggons which shall be proof 

 against any force, and entering into the midst of the enemy will 

 break any number of men, and make way for the infautry to follow 

 without hurt or impediment. 



" 7. I can also, if necessary, make bombs, mortars, or field-pieces of 

 beautiful and useful shapes quite out of the common method. 



" 8. If bombs cannot be brought to bear, I can make crossbows, 

 ballistae, and other most efficient instruments ; indeed I can construct 

 fit machines of offence for any emergency whatever. 



" 9. For naval operations also I can construct many instruments both 

 of offence and defence : I can make vessels that shall be bomb-proof. 



''10. In times of peace I think I can as well as any other make 

 designs of buildings for public or for private purposes; I can also 

 convey water from one place to another. 



I will also undertake any work in sculpture, in marble, in bronze, 

 or in terra-cotta : likewise in painting I can do what can be done as 

 well as any man, be he who he may. 



" I can execute the bronze horses to be erected to the memory and 

 glory of your illustrious father, and the renowned house of Sforza. 



"And if some of the above things should appear to any one im- 

 practicable and impossible, I am prepared to make experiments in 

 your park or in any other place in which it may please your Excel- 

 lency, to whorn I most humbly recommend myself," &c. 



There is no dato to this letter, but it was probably written about 



BIOQ. DIV. VOL. VI. 



1483, or perhaps earlier; it is written from right to left, as are all tbe 

 manuscripts of Lionardo, and is in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. 

 The duke took Lionardo into his service, with a salary of 500 scudi 

 per annum. Why he chose to leave Florence is not known : be had 

 made several propositions for the improvement of the city and the 

 state, which were not listened to. This however may have had no 

 such influence upon him as to make him leave Florence. One of his 

 propositions was to convert the river Arno, from Florence to Pisa, into 

 a canal. 



Though Lionardo devoted more time to painting than to anything 

 else, he did not make many designs before he went to Milan. The 

 following are mentioned by Vasari : a cartoon of Adam and Eve, for 

 the king of Portugal, to be worked in tapestry in Flanders ; it was 

 considered in its time to have been the best work that had ever been 

 produced : a painting of the Madonna, in which there was a vase of 

 flowers admirably painted ; it was afterwards purchased at a great 

 price by Pope Clement VII. : a design of Neptune, drawn in his car 

 by sea-horses, surrounded by tritone and mermaids, with other acces. 

 saries : and the head of an Angel, which was in the Palazzo Vccchio. 

 Da Vinci's application was indefatigable ; he sketched from memory 

 striking faces that he saw in the streets; witnessed trials and execu- 

 tions for the sake of studying expression; invited people of the 

 labouring class to sup with him, told them ridiculous stories, and 

 drew their faces ; some of these drawings were published by Clarke, 

 in 1786, from drawings by Hollar, taken from the Portland Museum. 

 He painted also before he went to Milan the Medusa's Head, now in 

 the Florentine gallery. The silly story told by Vasari that the duke of 

 Milan invited Lionardo to go and play the lyre and sing to him, is an 

 imputation on the common sense of the duke, that he could send, and 

 an insult on the manly character of the painter that he could accept, 

 such an invitation. Liouardo does not even mention music in his 

 letter to Ludovico, although he was accounted the best performer on 

 the lyre of his age. In Milan, besides performing many and various 

 services for the duke, Lionardo established for him an academy of the 

 arts about 1485, and formed a great school. His first public work in 

 the arts was the model of a bronze equestrian statue of Francesco 

 Sforza, mentioned in his letter. He painted also for Ludovico por- 

 traits of his two favourites, Cecilia Qallerani and Lucrezia Crevelli : 

 there is a copy of the former in the Milanese gallery ; the second is 

 said to be in the Louvre at Paris (No. 1091). 



When the duke went to meet Charles VIII. at Pavia in 1494, Lio- 

 nardo accompanied him, and he took that opportunity of studying 

 anatomy with the celebrated Marc Antonio della Torre, with whom he 

 became on very friendly terms. Lionardo made many anatomical 

 drawings in red chalk for Delia Torre; and Dr. Hunter, who ex- 

 amined some of them in one of the royal collections in London, says 

 in his Lectures, published in 1784, that they are most minutely cor- 

 rect. About the year 1495 Lionardo wrote a treatise upon the respec- 

 tive merits of painting and sculpture, and dedicated it to the duke, but 

 it is now lost. 



All the various works executed or written by Lionardo da Vinci 

 cannot be mentioned in a short notice. The bare enumeration of the 

 titles alone of his treatises, of which he wrote several at this period, 

 would occupy much space. In 1496 he painted a picture of the 

 Nativity, which Ludovico presented to the emperor Maximilian the 

 same year, at Pavia ; it is now in the gallery at Vienna. 



In 1497 he commenced his celebrated painting of the Last Supper, 

 on a wall of the refectory of the Dominican convent of the Madonna 

 delle Grazie. This work, the greatest that had then appeared, was 

 copied several times while it was in a good state, and it is well known 

 from Frey's, Morghen's, and other numerous engravings of it. One of 

 the best copies is that in the Royal Academy of London, made by 

 Marco Oggioni, purchased by Sir Thomas Lawrence in Italy : there are 

 twelve old copies still extant. It was restored by Bellotti in 1726. 

 There was nothing of the original work remaining at the end of the 

 last century, except the heads of three apostles, which were very faint: 

 it was nearly destroyed about fifty years after it was painted ; and 

 some French soldiers in the time of the Revolution finished its de- 

 struction by amusing themselves with firing at the various heads in it. 

 It was painted in some new manner in oil, and its rapid decay has 

 been attributed to the imperfect or bad vehicles used by Lionardo. 

 This was the last work of importance in painting which Lionardo 

 executed in Milan. He was obliged to leave that place without having 

 cast his great equestrian statue of Ludovico's father, Francesco Sforza : 

 the mould was ready, and he was waiting only for the metal ; but this 

 Ludovico was not able to give him ; he required 200,000 pounds of 

 bronze. The affairs of the duke were in so bad a state that he could 

 not even pay Lionardo his salary, which, in 1499, was two years in 

 arrear ; but he made him a present of a small freehold estate near the 

 Porta Vercellina. After the duke's flight from Milan in that year, 

 before Louis XII. of France, Lionardo had no longer any reason for 

 staying there ; but when he saw his works destroyed by the French, 

 who broke up his model for the statue of Francesco Sforza, he left the 

 place in disgust, and returned to Florence in the year 1500, accom- 

 panied by his favourite scholar and assistant, Salai, and his friend Luca 

 Paciolo. He was well received by Pietro Soderini, the gonfaloniere, 

 who had him enrolled in the list of artists employed by the govern- 

 ment, and fixed an annual pension upon him. His first great work 



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