Fritjof Capra (16 page)

Figure 4-4: Codex on the Flight of Birds, folio 8r; 1505, Biblioteca Reale, Turin

When he had built flying machines in Milan and tested them in his workshop in the Corte Vecchia, Leonardo’s main concern had been to find out how a human pilot could flap mechanical wings with enough force and velocity to compress the air underneath and be lifted up. For these tests he had designed various types of wings modeled after those of birds, bats, and flying fish. Now, ten years later, he embarked on careful and methodical observations of the flight of birds. He spent hours in the hills surrounding Florence, near Fiesole, observing the behavior of birds in flight, and he filled several Notebooks with drawings and comments that analyzed the birds’ turning maneuvers, their ability to maintain their equilibrium in the wind, and the detailed mechanisms of active flight. His aim was to design a flying machine that would be able, like a bird, to maneuver with agility, keep its balance in the wind, and move its wings with enough force to allow it to fly.
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Leonardo summarized his observations and analyses in a small Notebook called
Codice sul volo degli uccelli
(Codex on the Flight of Birds), which is full of gorgeous drawings of birds in flight as well as of complex mechanisms designed to mimic their precise movements (see Fig. 4-4). His observations and analyses led him to the conclusion that human flight with mechanical wings might not be possible because of the limitations of our anatomy. Birds, he observed, have powerful pectoral muscles to move their wings with a force humans cannot summon. However, he speculated that “soaring flight,” or gliding, might be possible. He would return to his research on human flight once more during the last phase of his life, combining the study of natural flight with theoretical studies of wind and air in an attempt to outline a comprehensive “science of the winds.”
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Leonardo continued to work on
The Battle of Anghiari
throughout 1505. However, because of defective materials, the painting suffered (the colors could not be fixed and began to run), and he was unable to repair the damage.
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At the same time, the French king, Louis XII, who was a great admirer of the artist, requested Leonardo’s presence at his court in Milan from the Signoria. The Florentines resisted, arguing that they had spent large sums of money for the fresco in their council chamber and needed it to be finished. A diplomatic tussle ensued that lasted several months, but eventually the Signoria was forced to relent. In May 1506, abandoning his fresco, Leonardo left once more for an extended sojourn in Milan.

A STAGE OF MATURITY

King Louis XII was represented at his court in Milan by his lieutenant, Charles d’Amboise, whom Louis had appointed as its governor. Charles was a powerful ruler, but convivial and keenly interested in promoting the arts. And, like his king, he was a great admirer of Leonardo. He received the artist warmly at the French court and treated him royally. Leonardo was given a generous allowance that was not tied to specific commissions, was consulted on all kinds of artistic and technical projects, and his company and service were eagerly sought by every important person at court. Leonardo was delighted to be back in Milan, the city where he had achieved great fame fifteen years earlier, and he easily fell back into the lifestyle of the court artist and engineer that he knew so well from his days at the Sforza court.

Once more there were plenty of masques and pageants for which he was asked to design splendid sets and costumes. As he had done before, Leonardo also worked on improving the locks and dams of some of the Lombard canals, and to show his gratitude to Charles d’Amboise, he designed a villa with luxurious gardens for the governor. According to the surviving notes, his garden designs were quite extraordinary. They included scented groves of oranges and lemons, a large aviary covered by a copper net to keep exotic birds inside while letting them fly around freely, a fan of revolving sails to create a pleasant breeze in the hot summers, a table with running water to cool wine, automatic musical instruments powered by water, and so on.
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At age fifty-five, Leonardo’s appearance must have approached that of the archetypal sage in his famous Turin self-portrait.
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Although his eyesight had weakened (he had worn glasses for a few years), his energies, artistic creativity, and intellectual drive continued undiminished. The sympathetic understanding and generosity of Charles d’Amboise gave him the freedom to dedicate as much time as he desired to his studies and to pursue them in any direction he wished. This unprecedented freedom, combined with his mature age, brought forth a period of broad systemic reflection, of revision and synthesis, allowing him to map out comprehensive treatises on many of his favorite subjects: the flow of water, the geometry of transformations, the movement of the human body, the growth of plants, and the science of painting.

The six years Leonardo spent at the French court in Milan marked a stage of maturity both in his science and his art. During those years the artist slowly developed and refined three of his mature master paintings: the
Madonna and Child with Saint Anne
, the
Leda
, and his most famous painting, the
Mona Lisa
. In these masterworks, Leonardo perfected the characteristics that established his uniqueness as a painter—the serpentine forms that brought movement and grace into his figures, the delicate smiles and gestures that mirrored the “movements of the soul,” and the subtle melting of shades, or sfumato, that became a unifying principle of his compositions. In all three of these works, Leonardo used his extensive knowledge of geology, botany, and human anatomy to explore the mystery of the procreative power of life, in the macrocosm as well as in the female body. As he continued to work on them year after year, he turned each painting into a meditation on the origin of life.
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In 1507, Leonardo met a young man, Francesco Melzi, who became his pupil, personal assistant, and inseparable companion. Melzi was the son of a Lombard aristocrat who owned a large estate at Vaprio, near Milan. When they met, Francesco was around fifteen and, according to Vasari, a
bellissimo fanciullo
(“a very beautiful boy”), who showed considerable talent as a painter. The adolescent boy and the elderly artist were immediately attracted to each other, and soon after their first meeting, Francesco announced to his parents that he wished to join Leonardo’s household. For an aristocratic family, such a move was highly unusual, but surprisingly they did not object. Persuaded perhaps by Leonardo’s fame or his personal charisma, they not only allowed their son to join him, but invited the master and his entourage to stay at their spacious villa for almost two years after he left Milan. From that point on, Melzi never left Leonardo’s side. He took care of the master’s affairs, wrote entries in the Notebooks from his dictation, nursed him when he was ill, and eventually was entrusted with Leonardo’s legacy.

Toward the end of 1507, Leonardo’s beloved uncle Francesco died in Vinci and left his entire estate to his favorite nephew. But the family, led by Ser Piero’s youngest son, challenged the will, and Leonardo had to go to Florence to plead his case. He was obliged to stay there for several months, until judgment was finally reached in his favor.
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During these months, Leonardo was the guest of the wealthy Florentine patron Piero di Braccio Martelli, an accomplished mathematician, who was also extending his hospitality to the sculptor Giovan Francesco Rustici.

According to Vasari, Leonardo was very fond of Rustici, who had been his fellow apprentice in Verrocchio’s workshop. Rustici, Vasari tells us, was not only an excellent sculptor but also a delightful eccentric who loved to host fanciful feasts and play elaborate pranks. He kept a large menagerie in his studio that included an eagle, a raven, numerous snakes, and a porcupine trained like a dog, which would occasionally rub its pricks against people’s legs under the table. Leonardo, who loved animals and was himself used to playing practical jokes, felt very much at home in the relaxed and playful ambience of the Casa Martelli and gladly participated in Rustici’s spirited entertainments. According to Vasari, he also helped the sculptor model a group of bronze statues for the Baptistery of St. John in Florence during that time.
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Leonardo’s main activity in Martelli’s house, however, was of a far more serious nature. He used his ample free time to bring some order into his vast collection of notes, dating from the previous twenty years. He threw himself into this enormous task with great energy, systematically reviewing the contents of all his Notebooks. But he soon realized that rearranging the entire collection was too ambitious a job. He decided, therefore, to limit himself to a more manageable task, assembling a few selections on his favorite subjects—water, anatomy, painting, and botany—about which he would write comprehensive treatises. “Begun in Florence, in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22nd of March 1508,” he wrote on the opening page of a new codex, now known as Codex Arundel. “This will be a collection without any order, made up of numerous sheets that I have copied here in the hope of later putting them in order in their proper places, according to the subjects they treat.”
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Over the following years, Leonardo mapped out the structure of his treatises in some detail and began to compose them. He may have finished some, although no full treatises are extant among the existing Notebooks today.

While reviewing his notes in Martelli’s house in Florence, Leonardo decided that human anatomy was an area he needed to revisit thoroughly. During the next four years he performed more dissections than ever before, and his anatomical drawings reached their highest degree of accuracy. He planned to publish a formal treatise on anatomy, and outlined it in great detail. During his first phase of anatomical studies, twenty years earlier, he had been concerned with the physiology of vision, the pathways of the nerves, and the “seat of the soul.” Now he concentrated on the grand theme of the human body in motion.

In his outline, Leonardo described in meticulous detail how he would demonstrate “in 120 books” the combined actions of nerves, muscles, tendons, and bones. “My configuration of the human body will be demonstrated to you just as if you had the natural man before you,” he announced, and he explained why this would require numerous dissections.

You must understand that such knowledge will not leave you satisfied on account of the very great confusion that results from the mix-up of membranes with veins, arteries, nerves, tendons, muscles, bones, and blood….

Therefore it is necessary to perform more dissections, of which you need 3 to have full knowledge of the veins and arteries, destroying with the utmost diligence all the rest; and another 3 to have knowledge of the membranes; and 3 for the tendons, muscles, and ligaments; 3 for the bones and cartilages; and 3 for the anatomy of the bones which have to be sawn through to demonstrate which is hollow and which is not….

Through my plan…there will be placed before you 3 or 4 demonstrations of each part from different aspects in such a way that you will retain a true and full knowledge of what you want to know about the human body.
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We do not know how many of the 120 chapters (or “books”) of his treatise Leonardo composed. However, the superb drawings that survived, which are now in the Windsor Collection, make it evident that his promises were not exaggerated.

In his Anatomical Studies, Leonardo gives a vivid description of the dreadful conditions under which he had to work. As there were no chemicals to preserve the cadavers, they would begin to decompose before he had time to examine and draw them properly. To avoid accusations of heresy, he worked at night, lighting his dissection room by candles, which must have made the experience even more macabre. “You will perhaps be impeded by your stomach,” he writes, addressing an imaginary apprentice, “and if this does not impede you, you will perhaps be impeded by the fear of living through the night hours in the company of these corpses, quartered and flayed and frightening to behold.”

It is evident that Leonardo needed a steely will to overcome his own aversion, but he persevered and carried out his dissections with the most delicate care and attention to detail, “taking away in its minutest particles all the flesh” to expose blood vessels, muscles, or bones until the corpse’s state of decay was too advanced to continue. “One single body was not sufficient for enough time,” he explains, “so it was necessary to proceed little by little with as many bodies as would render the complete knowledge. This I repeated twice in order to observe the differences.”
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While he was still in Florence going through his notes and planning his treatises, Leonardo was able to perform a postmortem on an old man he met by chance at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, where he had done his earlier anatomical studies, and who died in his presence. This dissection became a milestone in his anatomical work and led him to some of his most important medical discoveries. The story itself is highly significant and very moving. It shows how Leonardo was capable of performing his most precise dissections and scientific analyses without losing sight of human dignity: