101 Things You Didn't Know About Da Vinci (24 page)

In another instance, Leonardo designed a huge forest scene on the walls and ceiling of a room in Sforza's castle. It's thought his students painted this room, dubbed the
Salla delle Asse
(Tower Room), based on Leonardo's design. In addition to the various symbols of Sforza's family, including intertwining branches to symbolize his marriage, the inclusion of numerous willow trees is actually an allusion to Leonardo's hometown of Vinci, which has “willow” as one of its meanings.

As you can probably tell, symbolism was prevalent among Leonardo's works. Some objects, such as a carnation or a lamb, may seem random until you know the underlying religious significance. For instance, take Leonardo's early work
Madonna of the Carnation
, which shows Mary holding a carnation out for the infant Jesus: Since the carnation was actually a symbol of the Passion, its inclusion makes perfect sense. Another similar Madonna and child painting,
Madonna with the Cat
, shows the mother and child holding a cat. The inclusion of the cat comes from a story that a cat gave birth at the same moment Mary gave birth to Jesus.

Leonardo's most famous work, the
Mona Lisa
, is full of symbolism. The veil that the woman wears could symbolize widowhood. It could also symbolize chastity, which would have been appropriate for a married woman. The winding path shown in the background behind her could be the so-called path of virtue (from a myth about Hercules), and if so would indicate that Lisa was most likely a wife, not a mistress. It has also been suggested that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait of Leonardo as a woman!

Leonardo's interest in codes and hidden messages has caused people to scrutinize his works, especially the
Mona Lisa
, for any sign of hidden meaning. For instance, Lisa's dress has a neckline with numerous small detailed loops, and these loops have been searched for any signs of hidden meaning, to no avail. Historians have also searched the sheet music held in
Portrait of a Musician
for hidden puzzles, but without success.

94
"R-e-s-p-e-c-t"

Socrates once said, “The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” Clearly, Leonardo endeavored to be quite a lot during his lifetime, from artist to architect, and everything else in between. So how did he appear to his contemporaries, and were their feelings about him different from our view of him today?

Leonardo was a Renaissance celebrity. At the time, his popularity must have been like a modern-day rock star, actor, and best-selling novelist all rolled into one. How did Leonardo build up this reputation, and what kind of influence did he have on the generations to come? Was his genius enduring, like the Beatles, or fleeting, like the Monkees?

Leonardo was especially esteemed as a painter; even with his track record of seldom finishing paintings, he was sought after for commissions throughout his life. He was also held in a position of high esteem as an engineer, especially during his years with Duke Sforza and Cesare Borgia. In contrast, Leonardo's scientific pursuits seem to have been more solitary. Because his anatomical drawings required the dissection of cadavers, a practice forbidden during his time in Rome under the patronage of the pope, this work had something of an illicit nature that, combined with Leonardo's general secretiveness, likely made him even less inclined to share it with others.

Today, Leonardo is largely remembered and celebrated as a painter—his masterpiece
Mona Lisa
is one of the most recognized paintings in the world, gracing everything from postcards to mousepads. His other works aren't known as well, perhaps because many of them were unfinished or poorly preserved. Still, the handfuls of surviving paintings that remain today are sufficient to cement Leonardo's place as one of the most masterful artists of all time. The limited quantity of paintings, along with their mysterious, haunting nature, seems to increase both Leonardo's mystique and the desirability of his preserved works.

In large part because of Leonardo's secretive nature, few of his inventions or scientific discoveries have had much historical influence. Most of his inventions were never built; rather than sharing his plans and designs with others, Leonardo kept them to himself. There is evidence he planned to publish his notebooks at a later date, but this was yet another project that Leonardo never finished. Coupled with his notebooks' codelike mirror writing, which likely caused their value to go unrecognized after his heir Francesco Melzi's death, Leonardo's caution in sharing his discoveries led to the dispersion and loss of much of his work.

Leonardo could have rightfully taken his place as one of the fifteenth century's primary innovators, ushering in a new age of invention and innovation in the Renaissance. Instead, Leonardo stands in history as a man both ahead of his time and out of step with the world around him. It is astonishing to look at the creations in his notebooks, some of which were not reinvented for 500 years!

His notebooks contain many inventions that the techniques of the time were simply too crude to build, and others whose importance was just not recognized. His design for a bicycle, assuming that it wasn't merely a modern hoax, is eerily similar to modern bicycles, right down to details such as the chain assembly. Leonardo's invention of a multibarreled gun wasn't reinvented until modern times. His helicopter design was also remarkably innovative for the sixteenth century. In fact, a skydiver tested Leonardo's parachute in the year 2000 and found it worked perfectly. Unfortunately, in Leonardo's day, it just wasn't possible to get up high enough in the air to test it properly!

Due to his idiosyncrasies, as well as the progression of society at the time he was born, Leonardo truly stands as a man out of time. It's too bad that much of his work was not publicly available, since some of his inventions surely would have changed the course of history. It seems the Renaissance world just wasn't ready for many of his innovations.

95
Sincerest form of flattery

If Leonardo was truly such a genius, who wouldn't want to study with him? Lots of students seem to have tried, hoping that some of the great master's genius would rub off on them. Unfortunately, while Leonardo was certainly good at doing what he did, it's not clear that he was so good at actually explaining what he was doing. One of the downsides of genius is that it's hard to share.

At various points in his life, Leonardo had a studio or workshop full of students, assistants, and apprentices. Especially during his long stay in Milan, Leonardo appears to have had quite a number of students associated with his work. Most artists at the time had workshops full of students, and you can see the influence of the teacher in many of their works. Yet Leonardo's style proved more than just a new method to copy, and none of his students seems to have fully mastered his complete technique.

Many copies of Leonardo's works exist. This artistic plagiarism is actually fortunate because in some cases, as with
Leda and the Swan
and
Madonna of the Yarnwinder
, Leonardo's original has been lost over time. Other works by students in Leonardo's studio bear trademarks of Leonardo himself, and it is easy to imagine the master reviewing the unfinished paintings of his students. He may have even applied his own brush to a troublesome area in order to demonstrate a technique to his students.

One such painting, which is clearly not by Leonardo yet bears some traces of his style, is
Portrait of a Young Woman
. This painting, a stiff profile view, is utterly unlike the naturally posed three-quarters views Leonardo favored in his portraits. It was most likely painted by Leonardo's collaborator and student Ambrogio de Predis between 1495 and 1500. Yet some details of Leonardo's influence are visible in the young woman's elaborate headdress, as well as her pearls and elegantly tied ribbons Leonardo was particularly known for his skill in painting knots.

Leonardo's influence clearly helped de Predis; during his time in association with Leonardo he produced his two best works, the portrait mentioned above and a portrait called
Bartolommeo Archinto
. Unfortunately, after he left Leonardo's studio de Predis's talents seem to have sharply declined, and he produced little of interest for the rest of his career.

A similar story applies to many of Leonardo's other students. One of his more successful, Francesco Melzi, seems to have had a talent for copying Leonardo's paintings, but produced little of note on his own. Other students and imitators, such as Bernardini Luini, managed to portray the outer trappings of Leonardo's work in their own compositions, but their paintings seem flat and lifeless when compared with the subtle complexity of Leonardo's works.

Perhaps Leonardo's genius was too great, or his talent too far-reaching, for him to truly inspire and train artistic heirs. Many have tried to imitate Leonardo, with little to no success. The simple elements visible in his works—the enigmatic smile and the misty, fantastical backgrounds—are easy to replicate; however, the sense of depth and inner serenity of a work like the
Mona Lisa
is much more difficult to capture. Leonardo's paintings have an inner wisdom, as well as a darkness to them, which makes them more than just colors on a canvas. When you view them, they seem to come alive.

No records of Leonardo's methods or techniques as a teacher exist. It is possible to imagine that with his immense talents and natural abilities, he might have had difficulty explaining the basics. Concepts that were obvious to Leonardo were probably less intuitive to a group of talented (but not genius) apprentices. Though Leonardo tried, it doesn't appear that he was able to fully convey the nature of his work to his students. As a result, though Leonardo worked with many aspiring artists, he had no real artistic heirs. No one before or since has been able to produce the signature genius and mystery of a Leonardo original!

96
A horse of a different color

Imagine a twenty-six-foot-tall bronze horse and rider. If it would be spectacular today, imagine how amazing such a sculpture would have seemed 500 years ago! One of Leonardo's greatest disappointments could have been that his massive
Statue of Francesco Sforza
(see number 29) was never built. Leonardo's larger-than-life masterpiece from 1483 would have been the biggest equestrian statue on the continent.

Leonardo made many study sketches for this project and also made a large-scale clay model. Unfortunately, Leonardo's bronze was swiped by the military, who needed it to make silly things like cannons. French soldiers ultimately destroyed the clay model in the early sixteenth century when they used it for target practice.

Now, fast-forward 500 years to an American airplane pilot named Charles Dent reading about the destruction of Leonardo's clay masterpiece in a 1977
National Geographic
article. Creating this horse sculpture quickly became Dent's obsession; he felt it would honor both Leonardo da Vinci and all of Milan. He wanted to donate the sculpture to the people of Italy in celebration of Leonardo's achievements. Dent, an amateur sculptor, set to work creating his own scale model of the horse.

In order to fund his project, Dent created Leonardo da Vinci's Horse, Inc., a nonprofit group dedicated to raising funds to cast the enormous equestrian work. When he died in 1994, Dent bequeathed a large amount of money to this foundation. From that point on, the project took off at a rapid pace. The group gathered funds in later years by selling smaller-scaled reproductions of Leonardo's horse.

Eventually, a smaller model of the horse was sent to the Tallix Art Foundry for casting. Numerous problems surfaced, though, so the Foundry decided to start over. The master sculptor was a woman named Nina Akamu. She had been trained in Renaissance art and sculpture, and was keenly interested in seeing the project completed. She spent at least a year researching the project, then another year creating a new scale model. This model was then upsized at the Foundry to create the final bronze sculpture. Akamu and her team proceeded to build a fifteen-ton, twenty-six-foot bronze of Leonardo's design. The similarity to the original work was retained, and observers later commented that the strength, poise, and force of Leonardo's original red-chalk drawings were preserved in the Foundry's replica.

In deference to Dent's wishes, the magnificent sculpture was sent to Milan. The giant horse had to be split into seven pieces for safe travel and welded back together in Italy. It was unveiled there in September 1999, where a grand ceremony accompanied its unveiling to the public. Since Akamu's horse was actually cast twice, a second copy resides at the Frederik Meijer Botanical Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This version is known as the “American Horse.”

The Frederik Meijer Botanical Gardens and Sculpture Park is owned by the same Frederik Meijer who created the national grocery chain stores. Check out
www.meijergardens.org
for details.

97
In the beginning, there was religion

Many of Leonardo's paintings concern religious subjects, but what did Leonardo actually think of religion? Was he a true believer, or was he just another sheep in the flock?