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L E O N A R D O

Rome and France , 1506 - 19

In the spring of 1506, at the request of Charles d'Amboise, Lord of Clairmontsur-Loire, and Governor of Milan in the name of Charles XII, Leonardo was back in that city. He had been granted three months leave by the Signoria, but he returned to Florence only in the fall of 1507 to end the legal battle with his family and to settle with the friars of San Francesco over the disputed commission for the Madonna of the Rocks. Once all litigation was complete, he returned to the French court at Milan, where he stayed until 1512. Joining him in Milan as his pupils were Francesco Meizi (the son of his old friend from Vaprio), Giovanni Boltraffio and Gian Giacomo Caprotti do Ornone, nick-named 'Salai' or 'little devil'. Salai had been part of Leonardo's 'household' since 1491 and was employed as a household servant and occasional model. Beautiful [according to Vasari), obstinate, greedy, a liar and a thief, Salai was also a talented artist and a faithful companion to Leonardo, staying with his master until he died. In Milan Salai was known as the painter Andrea Salaino.

On '27 May 1507 Louis XII made his official entry into Milan, and once again it fell to Leonardo to devise the official celebrations. According to Vasari he designed a vast lion 'which came forward several paces and then opened its breast which was full of lilies.'

For some years Leonardo had also been working in what was to become the most famous portrait in the history of painting, the Mona Lisa. Mona or Madonna Lisa Gheraditi was identified by Vasari as the model. She came from a noble Neapolitan family and in 1495, aged about 17 or 18, she married a Florentine silk merchant, Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giacondo ( hence the painting's other title La Giaconda). Francesco was about 20 years older than Lisa. She was his second wife, his first, Camilla Rucellai (whose family were also traders in silk) having died in childbirth.

It is very likely that Vasari's identification was based on a misinterpretation, as Anonimo Gaddiano recorded that Leonardo painted Francesco del Giacondo and not his wife. Other inconclusive evidence in documents of various dates has linked the woman in the painting with both Isabella d'Este (which seems unlikely given Leonardo's efforts to avoid her) and the Duchess of Burgundy, the wife of Louis XII. Since Louis was in effect Leonardo's patron, this thesis is not unreasonable. Whoever the portrait represents, Leonardo spent around four years on it. He took the portrait with him to Milan and it is unlikely that any money passed between him and Giacondo, which suggests that the MonaLisa may not have been a commission at all, but a single painting in which Leonardo worked out all that he had been trying to achieve in his portraits of women, including those of angels, saints and Madonnas.

The presentation and setting of the figure in the Mono. Lisa is highly original and, although the panel has been trimmed at the sides, we can see enough of the balustrade to recognize that the figure is seated on a balcony with a landscape vista behind her. Such an image was almost totally unprecedented in Florentine portraiture. Even Leonardo's previous female portraits, such as those of Cecilia Gallerani and Ginevra de' Benci, had no such background, or just a glimpse, as through a small window, of such a scene. In the Mona Lisa the background is no longer merely a decorative backdrop. The treatment of the figure and the landscape are a reflexion of Leonardo's twin areas of study in the early years of the sixteenth century, the anatomy of the human body, and the movement and development of landscapes through geological and meteorological changes. The twisting flow of drapery and head veil echoes the action of the flowing water, while the spiralling curls of her hair are reflected in the pattern of the waterfall. But the reason for the Mono. Lisa's fame rests less on this novelty than on the famous 'Giaconda Smile'. The key to the painting's success is the very ambiguity of her expression, and the question of whether or not Mona Lisa is smiling. Whatever our interpre- tation, we remain transfixed by her gaze.

At this time Leonardo was working on some of the finest botanical drawings ever produced. The majority of the extant studies are related to the years 1508 and after, when Leonardo seems to have been working on the Mono. Lisa and on variations on the theme of Leda and the Swan, depicting a standing Leda and a kneeling Leda. The story of Leda tells how Jupiter, disguised as a swan, fathered four children: Castor, Pollux, Clytemnestra and Helen, who were all hatched from eggs. The painting of Leda is known only from drawings and from sixteenth-century copies of the work. The earliest studies for the painting date from around 1504 (the same time that Leonardo was working on the Battle of Anghiari). These, and subsequent studies up to around 1506, developed the theme of Leda kneeling with one arm around the swan. The kneeling Leda had classical precedents in a type of kneeling Venus. Some time around 1507-8 Leonardo transformed Leda into a standing figure and we can assume that this pose became the basis for the painting, since the best copies of the work use this format.

The Rotterdam Leda includes a drawing of the plant Sparganum erectum, which is also seen in the study Flowering Rushes. In the Chatsworth Leda, a highly finished drawing of the kneeling Leda, Leonardo included both this elegant marsh plant and a spiraling plant, Omithogalum umbrellatum, at Leda's feet. The study of this plant, the Star of Bethlehem, in red chalk, pen and ink, is probably Leonardo's best known botanical drawing, as well as being the most spectacular; there are in fact three different species of plant depicted on this page. It has been suggested by botanists that in its leaf formation the 'star of Bethlehem' does not have such a pronounced spiral arrangement. Its appearance was most likely due to Leonardo's method of observation and analysis, which, as in some of his anatomical studies, tended to result in an emphasis on the underlying structure of things and the patterns that these structures produced. Nevertheless, while he was aware of the iconography of plants and flowers in paintings, Leonardo also en- sured that any plant life appeared in its proper 'ecological' setting; while the plants and flowers carry symbolic meaning, they are also true to nature.

The spiraling form that is evident in the ringlets of the Mono. Lisa and in the drawing of the Star of Bethlehem, and the energies embodied in such spirals, were an area of interest to which Leonardo often returned. We can see them in his studies of water, in cloud formations, in the Deluge drawings, and in the braided hair of the Leda herself. The sheer number of drawings of landscapes and plants testifies to the passionate interest with which Leonardo observed nature. In addition to recording the slight variations within families of trees, Leonardo laid the basis for a theory of landscape in his Treatise on Painting. For Leonardo a landscape, as a work of art, had to be not merely decorative but also to correspond to something actual and true. His manuscripts reveal his interest in the changing appearance of trees under different lighting conditions, as well as in their growth patterns, and he excelled, in both his paintings and drawings, in modeling forms by gradations of light and dark.

Some of the botanical studies are also related to architectural forms, such as arches and vaults. The grass Coix Lachryma-Jobi was a relatively new plant to Europe when Leonardo made his study of it, A Long-stemmed Plant, and we can see a similar shape in his studies for churches and in the triburio for Milan Cathedral. At the same time this study of grass also explores the theme of reproduction that can be seen in other drawings of seeding, flowering and fruiting plants. Some of the drawings which at first sight appear to be purely botanical studies are in fact related to motifs that appear in paintings. Oak Leaves with Acorns and Dyer's Greenwood, comes from a group of studies in the Royal Collection at Windsor related to the lost Leda painting. The oak also appears as a motif in the lunette garlands of The Last Supper and in St John-Bacchus.

The large number of different studies of plants gives credence to the belief that Leonardo was planning a book on thes subject. Had he produced one, it would have been the first of its kind, since the notes that accompany the drawings make no mention of any medicinal properties the plants have. Instead of producing a traditional 'herbal', he was studying and drawing plants in the manner of a true botanist, revealing the qualities of each plant for no other purpose than that of understanding its structure, growth, flowering and reproductive patterns.

Both Leda and the Mona Lisa represent ideas that Leonardo had formulated earlier in Florence. While there he was deeply involved in anatomical and geological studies, which were then worked on over a number of years up to and even perhaps after 1516, when he left Italy for France. The first date in Leonardo's notebooks on the subject of anatomy comes from April 1489; presumably he was undertaking illegal dissections, a practice strictly forbidden by papal decree. It is possible that rumors of this secret work were spread abroad in Florence, leading to the accusations of his being a heretic and of 'making magic'.

The majority of Leonardo's anatomical drawings, including the famous studies of the heart and of embryoes, were in fact carried out during the second period in Milan, between 1506 and 1513. These studies gained impetus from a particular dissection that had taken place in Florence in the winter of 1507-8, carried out on the body of an old man, the 'centenarian'. Leonardo believed that the old man's death was brought about by the failure of the blood to maintain a supply of life-giving humors to the parts of the body. In an analogy with the earth and the landscape, Leonardo saw the old man's channels as silted up and no longer able to irrigate the body. The 'irrigation' system of the human body was examined by Leonardo in his Dissection of the Principal Organs of a Woman, dating from c.l 507, in which some forms appear in section, some are transparent, while others are shown three-dimensionally. Some organs, including the liver, spleen, kidneys and bronchial tubes, demonstrate the knowledge Leonardo had gained from dissections, while others, such as the heart and womb, are conceptualized.

From a note accompanying a drawing of a foot and lower leg, it appears that Leonardo was hoping to complete all his studies of human anatomy in the winter of 1510. He was convinced that his true task as an investigator was to explain each detail of the human body on the basis of its function. Thus the bones and muscles were conceived as perfect mechanical designs: small and economical, yet capable of many complex movements.

In the last decade of his life, particularly when he was in Rome in 1513, where he was given a dispensation allowing him to continue his studies in anatomy using cadavers possibly because the papal authorities were convinced that he was searching for the 'seat of the soul'), Leonardo concentrated his studies on two fundamental areas: the heart and the embryo. He was the first to draw the uterine artery and the vascular system of the cervix and vagina, as well as the single-chambered uterus at a time when it was generally believed to be made up of several compartments. This was the explanation given for the mysteries of twin births and litters. Furthermore, Leonardo was the first to describe the fetus in utero, correctly tethered by the umbilical cord.

The circulatory system was described in detail, often lavishly, in over 50 drawings of the heart. For Leonardo the circulation of blood in the heart, the flow of sap inplants and of waters in the earth were all analogous processes. Leonardo planned an unrealized treatise on anatomy like his Treatise on Painting; although he observed the human body with an anatomist's eye, he was neither surgeon nor physician but a painter. For Leonardo, the knowledge of anatomy was not in itself enough; the artist had to penetrate deeper in order to express the human spirit. The body for Leonardo was the physical expression of the spirit; as a painter he could only give expression to this spirit by understanding and 'reconstructing' the body.

One project that occupied Leonardo for a much shorter period of time was for the Trivulzio Monument. In 1504 the Milanese condottiere Giovanni Giacomo Trivulzio had assigned 4000 ducats to pay for a monumental tomb to be erected in his honor in the church of San Navarro. This commission seems to have offered Leonardo some compensation for the destruction of his masterpiece-never to-be, the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza. He toyed with the idea of a rearing horse, but the scheme he seems to have settled on was for a walking horse mounted on a canopy, over an effigy of Trivulzio on a coffin. Once again, however, the Trivulzio Monument was never completed; Trivulzio was not on good terms with Charles d'Amboise, the Governor of Milan, and was forced to flee to Naples. After Charles's death in 1511, Trivulzio returned to Milan and Leonardo's drawing of that date suggests that he hoped that the project might be resumed, but presumably the funds Trivulzio had set aside for were put to some other use. Most likely they were swallowed up in Milan's preparations against hostilities on its eastern borders.

When Pope Alexander VI had died in 1503, he had been succeeded (after the brief papacy of Pius II) by Julius II, and Cesare Borgia had found himself cut off from the papal treasury and opposed to Julius, who was a longtime enemy of the Borgias. As Cesare's Romagna dukedom fell apart, Venice was on hand to pick up the spoils. But since the land now claimed by Venice technically belonged to Rome, Julius, in preparation for war on Venice, entered into an alliance with the Emperor Maximilian and Louis XII of France. As pressure on Venice mounted, she ceded some of the lands formerly held by the Borgias but refused to give up others. Despite backing by Swiss and Romagna mercenaries, Venice was swiftly relieved of Trieste, Gorizia, Pordenone, Fiume and further territories in Hungary. At this point Julius and Maximilian successfully fostered anti-Venetian sentiments in Europe, and the result was the League of Cambrai, December 1508, which allied all major western powers against Venice.

In a sudden reversal of policy, however, in which Louis XII was now seen as the great enemy, Pope Julius resolved to rid Italy of the French through a coalition, the Holy League of 1511, which allied the Pope with Venice and Spain, with additional resources supplied by the English and Swiss. In 1512 Massimiliano Sforza, son ofLudovico II Moro, entered Milan with the Pope, the Emperor and the Venetians and finally expelled the French.

Leonardo was in a tricky position: he would not be very popular with Massimiliano, since he had fled Milan and Ludovico at the first sign of trouble. Fortunately for him, a bloodless revolution in Florence had returned Lorenzo II de' Medici as head of state, and the following year Giovanni de' Medici was hailed as Pope Leo X and his brother Giulano became Prince of Florence. On 24 September 1513 Leonardo and his companions Salai and Francesco Meizi were on their way to Rome.

Once in the Eternal City, Leonardo was lodged in the Belvedere, the summer palace at the top of the Vatican hill. Also in Rome were Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo, all of whom seemed to be the preferred artists, since papal commissions for Leonardo were few. Rumors were being spread again that Leonardo was a sorcerer, rumors fueled, no doubt, by stories of night-time dissections. Of the commissions he did receive, one which interested Leonardo greatly was the project for draining the Pontinemarshes around Rome. By transforming the Afonte river into a controled canal system, the marshes could be drained and the land reclaimed for much needed building land.

When the Pope finally awarded Leonardo a painting commission, he noted that he never expected the work to be completed. Leo X had learnt (according to Vasari) that Leonardo was experimenting with a varnish and he is said to have commented that Leonardo would never get any painting done because he was too busy thinking about the end of the project before he had even started!

The only surviving painting which seems, on the strength of a drawing relating to it, to belong entirely to the period after Leonardo left Florence in 1508 is St John the Baptist. The effects of age must surely play a part in the overall darkness of this painting, but this is merely an exaggeration of the original effect. The three-dimensionality of the figure is achieved by its being brightly lit against a dark background. This chiaroscuro effect is present to a greater or lesser degree in all of Leonardo's paintings, but in this instance it is used to underline St John's message, with the crucifix and the gesture of the raised finger found so often in Leonardo's paintings from The Adoration of the Magi onward.

It is difficult to determine what paintings Leonardo was working on after 1510, apart from presumably continuing work on the Mona Lisa and Leda. Some red chalk drawings from 1510 and after may be studies for a 'Christ, a Demicorps' being recorded as being at Fontainebleau in 1642. Several versions of the Salvator Mundi, a hieratic figure of Christ with a globe in one hand and the other raised, must be copies of the painting for which these drawings are preliminary studies.

At least partly by Leonardo, though largely by one of his pupils is the St John Bacchus, a painting based closely on a red chalk drawing by Leonardo formerly in the mountain monastery at Varese. The drawing is of a seated St John figure, and the transformation of the figure in the painting to Bacchus, for reasons we can only speculate on, was achieved by merely adding the crown of vine leaves and the leopard skin.

The year 1515 proved to be yet another turning point for Leonardo, as it did for most of Italy. The first day of the year brought him the news of the death of the French king Louis XII. Succeeding him, Francis I set out to regain the Duchy of Milan for France. Allied with the Venetians, Francis quickly gained control of Genoa and defeated the combined forces of Maximilian, Ferdinand of Spain, Massimiliano Sforza, the Swiss cantons and Pope Leo X. In September 1515, against cavalry, artillery and some 20,000 Swiss pikemen, Francis was the victor at the Battle of Marignano. On 14 December 1515, Francis and Leo held secret discussions in Bologna and, according to statements in the Vatican archives which show that he was paid 33 ducats for expenses, Leonardo was in the Pope's retinue. It was in Bologna that Leonardo was probably introduced to the French king, who would have been familiar with the French court at Milan and his work for Charles d'Amboise.

Following Giuliano de' Medici's death in 1516, Leonardo realized that he had again lost a possible patron and looked with disdain on the prospect of working for the Pope. Francis offered Leonardo a pension and a small chateau at Cloux, near Amboise on the Loire river, and Leonardo entered France with the title 'Foremost Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King of France and Technician of the State . Once again Leonardo was a celebrity adored by the French court, whose king is said to have visited him in his studio.

Leonardo, at the age of 65, was crippled with rheumatism and was suffering from the effects of a stroke. While he continued to devise pageants (there are designs for spectacular animals, such as dragons), canal systems, and even a royal residence, drawn up between 1516 and 1518 and planned as the Queen Mother's residence at Romorantin, Leonardo was unable to paint.

After a hard winter, and in declining health, Leonardo dictated his last will and testament to a royal notary at Amboise on 23 April 1519. To his student and friend Francesco Meizi he bequeathed his books, his instruments and the remaining portion of his pension.

To a servant, Batista, he left half his Milanese vineyard, and to the ever faithful Salai he left the other half. To the poor of the parish of Saint Lazarre he left 70 soldi. On 2 May 1519 Leonardo da Vinci died, as one story has it, in the arms of the French king. Although certainly groundless, this has contributed to the tangled web of myth that has surrounded and embellished the few known facts of Leonardo's life. In August 1519 he was buried in the monastery of Saint Florentine in Amboise. In his life he had never settled and, ironically, in death Amboise was not to be his final resting place; Leonardo's mortal remains were scattered during the French Wars of Religion.

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