101 Things You Didn't Know About Da Vinci (22 page)

While his artistic talent was obvious, he didn't have artistic heirs or followers—he was really one of a kind. Either that or he was just a terrible teacher! The world would have been dramatically different if he'd been able to pass on his scientific and engineering ideas. Most of his inventions were right on the money, not to mention way ahead of their time. Leonardo's secrecy and tendency to work alone, though, impeded his legacy. The disorganization of his notebooks and their dispersion after his death shafted his potential glory. Still, Leonardo is clearly the archetype of the Renaissance man, good at everything he put his mind to. To be fair, maybe Leonardo wasn't as good an engineer as he was a painter; given how skilled he was with a paintbrush, though, the art world came out a clear winner.

85
Vegetable soup for a gentle soul

Leonardo the Artist had a well-documented career. So did Leonardo the Painter, Leonardo the Architect, and Leonardo the Inventor. But what about Leonardo the Man? Leonardo was intensely private, and much of his personal life remains a mystery. Still, glimpses of Leonardo's personality have been revealed through his notebooks and from his contemporaries' observations.

Animals were an important part of Leonardo's life. He sketched and painted from nature frequently, studying animal movement closely to allow accurate representations. Later in life he performed animal dissections, learning ever more about anatomical systems and how they related to the whole body.

Leonardo was, by all accounts, extremely fond of horses. Horses were actually important to all Italians because they played essential military and civilian roles. Leonardo took great pride in the appearance and comfort of his animals; he realized that they were separate living creatures who deserved the same comfort and humane treatment as people. He even designed elaborate horse stables with archways and ventilation systems.

In keeping with this deep compassion for animals, Leonardo was a vegetarian, probably for most of his life. His notebooks and other writings even contain a few vegetarian recipes! He also mentioned vegetarian chefs by name, including Bartolomeo Platina (1421–1481), in his notebooks. Common vegetarian recipes of the day focused on innovative combinations of herbs and spices with vegetables and pasta.

He seems to have felt a particular kinship for caged animals. Perhaps he felt trapped by many of Renaissance Italy's conservative tendencies, or perhaps his motley upbringing led to his feeling stifled. In his adult life, he was known to purchase cages full of animals and set them free.

During the Renaissance, good looks were important. Handsome artists were more likely to secure patronages than those who weren't as easy on the eyes; equitable or not, the royal families of the day preferred to surround themselves with fine-looking craftsmen. Leonardo was in good stead in this regard, plus, he was comfortable around royalty and had no qualms about dressing to the nines; he clothed himself in fashionable gear and was known for his jokes, stories, lyre playing, and songs. While he was intensely private about personal matters, Leonardo was fully capable of working a crowd!

Generally speaking, Leonardo was regarded as a humanitarian. He was not known for fits of temper, and despite his inability to finish many products he was easy to work with and enjoyed collaboration. He was also kind to his servants; in his will, he remembered several of them. His will provided candles for a number of beggars to carry in his funeral procession; he was thoughtful enough to take care of these sorts of details. Leonardo was the sort of person who would have made an excellent friend: loyal, kind, and considerate.

86
Highly personal accusations

Some people write tell-all memoirs, while others keep their personal lives to themselves. Although we might wish that he had been a bit more open, Leonardo was always very secretive about his personal life. Though thousands of pages of his writings survive, he mentions almost nothing about his innermost thoughts and feelings. This intense privacy could date from an incident in 1476, at the very beginning of Leonardo's professional career as an artist.

In 1476, the twenty-four-year-old Leonardo was still officially part of Verrocchio's studio, but was beginning to take on outside commissions. On April 8, 1476, an anonymous accusation was placed in a wooden box, put up for this purpose in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence. Someone had accused Leonardo and three other young men of having a homosexual affair with a male model and suspected prostitute, seventeen-year-old Jacopo Saltarelli. A second anonymous accusation against Leonardo was made on June 7.

In Florence, homosexuality was common and not particularly stigmatized, and the authorities usually ignored such conduct. However, sodomy was a criminal offense, and once formal charges were made, they had to be prosecuted. Leonardo and the others were actually taken into custody by the authorities and held for two months in confinement.

Fortunately for Leonardo and the other three accused, the charges were dropped due to lack of conclusive evidence and witnesses. It is also possible that the powerful Medici family influenced the outcome; one of the other young men accused along with Leonardo da Vinci was Lionardo de Tornabuoni, a relative of Lorenzo de Medici. This acquittal was conditional, however: It only applied if Leonardo and the others were never again subject to a similar accusation.

Because of this scandal, Leonardo and the others ended up being targets of the “Officers of the Night” in Florence, a loosely run organization that was the Renaissance equivalent of a vice squad! This group, known as the Uffiziali de Notte in Italian, was created in 1432 specifically to find and prosecute crimes of sodomy. Florence was the first European city to have such an authority.

Perhaps due to the accusation, there is no record of Leonardo's work or even his whereabouts from 1476 to 1478, although it is assumed that he remained in Florence. Leonardo appears to have recovered his equilibrium by 1478, however, for it was in that year that he received his first official commission,
The Adoration of the Shepherds
. This work, while never finished, seems to have launched Leonardo on his way to becoming an acclaimed artist.

While Leonardo appears to have put the accusation of homosexuality behind him fairly quickly, it is also likely that it influenced him for the rest of his life. His general paranoia could have been expressed in his mirror writing, which served as a foil to casual observers. His grotesque drawings of gossiping village people show exactly what he thought of rumormongers. In his writings, he also mentions the spreading of malicious rumors as a highly evil trait.

Leonardo may have eventually left Florence, his home city, to escape the memory of such accusations. As a budding artist, Leonardo needed a solid reputation, and escaping the Florence rumor mill may have put him back on the right track.

87
Amigos, compadres … lovers?

Leonardo was not what you would call a playboy. He wasn't hanging out in bars, picking up gorgeous women. In fact, he didn't have any relationships with women that we know about. He did, however, have two long-term male companions during his lifetime. The first, Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, was brought into Leonardo's household in 1490 when he was ten years old. He had a changing role in Leonardo's life, though few details are known. Was he an adopted son, an art student, a servant, or an intimate companion? Given the indulgence that Leonardo showed him, and the length of their twenty-five-year relationship, it seems clear that he was much more than just a common servant.

Giacomo was quickly nicknamed Salai, which means “little satan,” or “devil,” and this fellow lived up (or down) to his nickname. Leonardo's notes describe his early antics, especially his thievery. Salai began stealing from Leonardo as soon as he moved in; he even stole the money Leonardo had given him to buy new clothes. Not exactly the way to repay someone's kindness!

Undoubtedly a large part of Salai's appeal, in addition to his apparently indomitable spirit, was his beautiful appearance. His long, blonde curls were a favorite with Leonardo, and a number of his sketches of Salai show off his fine features. In particular, Salai was likely the model for the young man in Leonardo's
Portrait of an Old Man and a Youth
.

Leonardo tried to teach Salai to paint, but he does not seem to have been particularly talented. Under Leonardo's tutelage, he did produce a few paintings, which Leonardo is rumored to have retouched. The affection between the two men seems to have been genuine, and Salai remained with Leonardo until almost the end of Leonardo's life, over twenty-five years. Many marriages today do not survive that long! In Leonardo's will, he left Salai a house and half of his vineyard.

Leonardo's second long-term companion was Francesco Melzi, a minor noble from Florence who joined Leonardo's household in 1505, at age fifteen. Melzi appears to have been a more talented painter than Salai, and less of a handful! Melzi was also supposedly a very handsome young man, like Salai.

A number of Melzi's paintings and drawings survive, including a portrait of Leonardo. Leonardo-inspired elements are clearly visible, but Melzi's work lacks depth. His paintings appear almost flat, and his sense of proportion is less well defined.

Melzi remained with Leonardo until Leonardo's death, upon which he became the executor of Leonardo's will. Leonardo left the bulk of his estate to Melzi, including his clothes, the paintings in his possession, and perhaps most importantly, his notebooks. Melzi faithfully kept the notebooks safe until the end of his life, around 1570, and is thought to have organized some of them into a longer version of
A Treatise on Painting
. Unfortunately, by the time of Melzi's death the importance of the notebooks had been forgotten, and they were scattered by Melzi's heirs (see number 71). Although no direct evidence exists to prove that Leonardo and Melzi had a sexual relationship, the fact that Leonardo named Melzi as his heir and left his precious notebooks in Melzi's care indicates the deep love and trust he felt for his former student.

88
Let's talk about sex

Today, celebrities' sex lives are fair game for tabloids, TV talk shows, and dinner table discussions. In the Renaissance, gossip was probably a similar occupation, although without the modern media frenzy the pace of the rumor mill was probably a bit slower. Many aspects of Leonardo's life indicate that he was most likely homosexual. It is likely that his two long-time companions, Salai and Melzi, were his lovers (see number 87). There are also indications of his sexual orientation throughout his work. Generally, Leonardo had to be careful with regard to his private life; Renaissance society was certainly not as liberal as modern-day San Francisco.

Leonardo never married, and he is never recorded as having shown any nonprofessional interest in women. He even expressed his disgust for male-female sexual intercourse in his notebooks. A famous quote from his notebooks reads:

“The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.”

Leonardo drew both male and female nudes, but there are fewer female drawings and they are much less detailed. Unlike other Renaissance painters, who were prolific in their renderings of the female body, Leonardo produced only one formal painting of a female nude,
Leda and the Swan
. Leonardo's anatomical sketches also include drawings of both male and female genitalia. While the drawings of male sexual organs are detailed and accurate, the female genitals are depicted with less detail and accuracy; more often Leonardo used them for his medical studies. Perhaps Leonardo had more ready access to male models than to female ones, but this disparity could also indicate Leonardo's disinterest in the female body.

Some of Leonardo's drawings may also suggest, in a more symbolic manner, his distaste for heterosexual intercourse. Many of his sketches and paintings depict phallic rock formations and womblike tunnels and caverns, rendered to appear harsh and unappealing. Is this analysis the product of modern interpretation, or was it Leonardo's original intention?

In spite of Leonardo's seeming preference for the male figure, he did not always portray these figures as hypermasculine. For example, in Leonardo's famous work
The Last Supper
, St. John is very effeminate-looking and appears somewhat androgynous. This portrayal has actually led to talk that the figure at Christ's right is actually a woman, with some art historians speculating that the figure may have represented Mary Magdalene, not St. John. This scenario is particularly unlikely, however, given the Church's influence and the subsequently strict adherence to traditional renditions at that time.

While Leonardo clearly enjoyed painting and drawing beautiful men, it seems almost ironic that he also painted one of the most celebrated and beautiful women of all time with the
Mona Lisa
. Perhaps he was capturing the true inner beauty of the model, or perhaps the
Mona Lisa
is a subtle self-portrait of Leonardo himself as a woman!

89
Warning: Genius at work

So what makes a genius? We generally consider a genius to be someone who shows an intellectual prowess that makes him or her stand out from the crowd. Geniuses are extraordinarily skilled in at least one area; they're often outstanding in multiple fields. They also tend to have skills that come naturally—they create works of amazing impact with seemingly little effort.

Leonardo's genius is obvious. He was a skilled painter, architect, inventor, scientist, and geometrician. He designed animal stables and tried to reroute rivers. His interests and skills were diverse. But did he actually have
too
many artistic gifts? Many of his projects went unfinished, and many of his skills could have been further developed. If Leonardo had only been good at painting, for example, he probably would have finished more works and, in turn, these pieces might have been of an even higher quality. But because Leonardo was good at so many things, he simply did not have time to focus on all of them.