Leonardo and the Last Supper (54 page)

12
Serge Bramly,
Leonardo: The Artist and the Man
(London: Michael Joseph, 1992), 242.

13
Elisabetta Ulivi,
Per la genealogia di Leonardo: Matrimoni e altre vicende nella famiglia da Vinci sullo sfondo della Firenze rinascimentale
(Vinci: Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci, 2008).

14
Thomas M. Izbicki, trans. Gerald Christianson and Philip Krey,
Reject Aeneas, Accept Pius: Selected Letters of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II)
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 159–60.

15
Gino Arrighi, ed.,
Piero Della Francesca: Trattato d’abaco
(Pisa: Domus Galileana, 1970), 51. For schooling in Renaissance Tuscany, see Ronald Witt, “What Did Giovannino Read and Write? Literacy in Early Renaissance Florence,”
I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance
6 (1995): 83–114; and Robert Black,
Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany: Teachers, Pupils and Schools, c. 1250–1500
(Leiden: Brill, 2007).

16
Lives of the Artists
, 255.

17
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §§1421 and 1525.

18
Quoted in Bramly,
Leonardo
, 117. For Ser Piero as Cosimo de’ Medici’s notary, see James Beck, “Leonardo’s Rapport with His Father,”
Antichità viva
27 (1988), 5–12. For his professional association with the Jewish community, see Alessandro Cecchi, “New Light on Leonardo’s Florentine Patrons,” in Carmen C. Bambach, ed.,
Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman
, (New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2003), 123.

19
Stefano Ugo Baldassarri and Arielle Saiber eds.,
Images of Quattrocentro Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History and Art
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 40 and 73. For the purveyors of luxury goods, see David Alan Brown,
Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 12.

20
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
, 256. For Ser Piero’s association with Verrocchio, see Cecchi, “New Light,” 124.

21
Ugolino Verino, quoted in Brown,
Origins of a Genius
, 34.

22
Maud Cruttwell,
Verrocchio
(London: Duckworth & Co., 1904), 27.

23
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
, 258. Leonardo’s involvement in the painting of this angel is widely accepted: see Brown,
Origins of a Genius
, 142.

24
Leonardo’s participation in this work, first noted by William Suida in 1954 but widely dismissed, has more recently been recognized by David Alan Brown: see
Origins of a Genius
, 51. Brown further suggests (p. 54) that Tobias’s head may also be by Leonardo.

25
Steinitz and Feinblatt, trans., “Leonardo da Vinci by the Anonimo Gaddiano,” in Goldscheider, 32.

26
For Leonardo’s list of clothes, see Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 332. For fifteenth-century fashions, see Michael Baxandall,
Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 14–15, and Carole Collier Frick,
Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes and Fine Clothing
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 3.

27
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1369. On Leonardo’s involvement with the
landscape background of Verrocchio’s
Baptism of Christ
, see Brown,
Origins of a Genius
, 140.

28
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §987.

29
Ibid., vol. 2, §721.

30
Cruttwell,
Verrocchio
, 37.

31
Francesco Sacchetti,
Il Trecento Novelle
, ed. Antonio Lanza (Florence: Sansoni, 1984), 44.

32
Quoted in Bramly,
Leonardo
, 123. I discuss Leonardo’s pessimistic view of family life in
The Fantasia of Leonardo da Vinci: His Riddles, Jests, Fables and Bestiary
(Delray Beach, FL: Levenger Press, 2010), 47.

33
Steinitz and Feinblatt, trans., “Leonardo da Vinci by the Anonimo Gaddiano,” in Goldscheider, 30.

34
D. A. Covi, “Four New Documents Concerning Andrea del Verrocchio,”
Art Bulletin
48 (March 1966): 97–103.

35
Steinitz and Feinblatt, trans., “Leonardo da Vinci by the Anonimo Gaddiano, in Goldscheider, 30. For evidence of Leonardo’s participation in Lorenzo’s garden, see Lodovico Borgo and Ann H. Sievers, “The Medici Gardens at San Marco,”
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
, 33. Bd., H. ⅔ (1989), 237–56; and Caroline Elam, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Sculpture Garden,”
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
, 36. Bd., H. ½ (1992), 41–84.

36
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §663.

37
William Roscoe,
The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici
(London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847), 236.

38
Vasari,
Lives of the Artists
, 258.

39
For Ser Piero’s Benci connections, see Cecchi, “New Light,” 129.

40
For the contract for the altarpiece, see Villata, ed.,
Documenti
, 13–14.

41
Baldassarri and Saiber, eds.,
Images of Quattrocento Florence
, 209.

42
For a discussion of the “visual ungainliness” of the Christ Child in these two paintings, see Larry J. Feinberg, “Sight Unseen: Vision and Perception in Leonardo’s Madonnas,”
Apollo
(July 2004): 28–34.

43
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 1, §500.

44
Paolo Giovio, “Life of Leonardo da Vinci,” in Goldscheider, 29.

45
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §§1448 and 1432.

46
Other pioneers were Petrarch, who climbed Mount Ventoux in 1336, and Pietro Bembo, the future cardinal, who ascended Mount Etna in 1494.

47
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1060. See Nicholas and Nina Shoumatoff,
The Alps: Europe’s Mountain Heart
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 192–93.

48
This account, by Count A. G. Rezzonico, was published in 1780, and is quoted in Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 175. Pedretti notes that the story is “puzzling” but also that Count Rezzonico may have had access to documents that no longer exist.

49
For these early designs, see Kemp,
Marvellous Works
, 58–66. For the springald, see Domenico Laurenza,
Leonardo’s Machines: Secrets and Inventions in the Da Vinci Codices
(Florence-Milan: Giunti, 2005), 75–79. Laurenza dates the design to c. 1482.

50
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1154.

51
Claire Farago, “Aesthetics before Art: Leonardo Through the Looking Glass,” in Claire Farago and Robert Zwijnenberg, eds.,
Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art In and Out of History
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 56.

52
For the contract, see Villata, ed.,
Documenti
, 19–28. Hannelore Glasser discusses both the contract and the legal fallout at length in
Artists’ Contracts of the Early Renaissance
(New York: Garland, 1977), 208–70.

53
Villata, ed.,
Documenti
, 35.

54
Glasser,
Artists’ Contracts
, 345. The authority to whom the painters appealed was addressed as “Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord,” which almost certainly makes him Lodovico Sforza. However, the identity of the prospective buyer cannot be settled so easily.

55
Quoted in Baxandall,
Painting and Experience
, 6.

56
Ann Pizzorusso, “The Authenticity of
The Virgin of the Rocks
,”
Leonardo
, 29 (1996): 197.

57
For an identification of the plants in the paintings, see Brian Morley, “The Plant Illustrations of Leonardo da Vinci,”
The Burlington Magazine
121 (September 1979):559.

58
It is often assumed that Lodovico Sforza purchased the painting and presented it as a wedding gift to Maximilian. The hypothesis is feasible but unsupported by any documents except the Anonimo Gaddiano’s assertion that Lodovico sent to Maximilian a “most beautiful and unusual work” painted by Leonardo. Steinitz and Feinblatt, trans., “Leonardo da Vinci by the Anonimo Gaddiano,” in Goldscheider, 31.

59
The Prince
, 54.

60
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §§1356, 1357 and §1179; and Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 309.

Chapter 3

1
Elizabeth McGrath, “Lodovico il Moro and his Moors,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
65 (2002): 85.

2
Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 246.

3
The Memoirs of Philip de Commines
, 153.

4
Guicciardini,
The History of Italy
, 58.

5
Quoted in Jane Black,
Absolutism in Renaissance Milan: Plenitude of Power under the Visconti and the Sforza, 1329–1535
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 70.

6
For Bianca Maria’s table manners, see Cartwright,
Beatrice d’Este
, 219.

7
Commines,
Memoirs
, 137.

8
Quoted in Welch, “Patrons, Artists and Audiences in Renaissance Milan,” 46.

9
Carlo Pedretti, “The Sforza Sepulchre,”
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
89 (1977): 121–31; and
S. Lang, “Leonardo’s Architectural Designs and the Sforza Mausoleum,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
31 (1968): 218–33.

10
On this relationship, see Carlo Pedretti, “Newly Discovered Evidence of Leonardo’s Association with Bramante,”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
32 (October 1973): 223–227. For Leonardo and the German masons, see Lang, “Leonardo’s Architectural Designs,” 221. For his note on the book on Milan and its churches, see Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1448.

11
Quoted in Henry Hart Milman,
History of Latin Christianity
, vol. 4 (London: John Murray, 1855), 251.

12
Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica
, vol. 15 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1933), 90–91.

13
Michael M. Tavuzzi,
Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy, 1474–1527
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), 255.

14
Jacobus de Voragine,
The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints
, vol. 2, ed. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 44–45.

15
St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa theologiae
, vol. 1, ed. Thomas Gilby (Cambridge and London: Blackfriars, in conjunction with Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964), 3.

16
Voragine,
The Golden Legend
, vol. 2, 44.

17
Aquinas,
Summa theologiae
, vol. 43 (1968), 115.

18
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1340.

19
Quoted in Baxandall,
Painting and Experience
, 26.

20
Louisa S. Maclehose, trans., and G. Baldwin Brown, ed.,
Vasari on Technique
(New York: Dover, 1960), 222.

21
Richter, ed.,
The Literary Works
, vol. 2, §1344. Carlo Pedretti dates this letter (found in the
Codex Atlanticus
, folio 315v) to approximately 1495. See Pedretti,
Commentary
, vol. 1, 296.

22
Guicciardini,
The History of Italy
, 66.

23
Quoted in Kenneth M. Setton,
The Papacy and the Levant
,
1204–1571
, vol. 3 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984), 456.

24
Quoted in Setton,
The Papacy and the Levant
, vol. 3, 477.

25
Commines,
Memoirs
, 149.

26
Quoted in Ludwig Pastor,
The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages
, vol. 5, ed. F. I. Antrobus (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, 1898), 454.