The Lost Battles Read online

  Michelangelo, compositional drawing for The Battle of Cascina, 1504–5. This tiny, delicate drawing is far more sensual than copies of Michelangelo’s lost work by other artists. (color insert 15.10)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Heads of Two Soldiers, 1504–5. The old warrior’s ashen skin as he opens his mouth in a scream is shaded by death and doubt. (color insert 15.11)

  Michelangelo, Adam and Eve, circa 1504. Michelangelo drew this passionate red chalk response to a fresco of the naked Adam and Eve by Masaccio while he planned his nudes for The Battle of Cascina. (color insert 15.12)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Proportion Studies and Horsemen, horsemen drawn 1503–4. Men are at one with their horses, almost like centaurs, in Leonardo’s sketches for The Battle of Anghiari. (color insert 15.13)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of Expression in Horses, Lions, and Humans, 1503–4. The passion and rage of The Battle of Anghiari astonished observers and can be seen in these sketches. (color insert 15.140)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Galloping Cavalry and Footsoldiers, 1503–4. The upper horse pulses with energy, while that below is a caricature of speed and power. (color insert 15.15)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Horse Study, 1503–4. Leonardo tries to draw the frenzied motions of a rearing horse, inventing Futurism and cinema several centuries early. (color insert 15.16)

  Michelangelo, vestibule of the Laurentian Library, Florence, 1523–33, staircase 1555–8. The menacing claustrophobia of Michelangelo’s library suggests how forbidding his military architecture must have been. (color insert 15.17)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Mortars Bombarding a Fortification, circa 1504. This eerily beautiful tracery of fire was probably drawn as a practical suggestion in the Florentine Republic’s war with Pisa. (color insert 15.18)

  Michelangelo, Doni Tondo, circa 1504–7. This is Michelangelo’s best-preserved painting and reveals the brightness of his palette. (color insert 15.19)

  Michelangelo’s teenaged masterpiece was inspired by the poet Polziano, who also influenced Botticelli. (color insert 15.20)

  Michelangelo, David, 1501–4. Leonardo revealed his hostility to Michelangelo when, at a meeting to discuss the young artist’s bold new statue, he called for its loins to be decently covered. (color insert 15.21)

  Michelangelo, Bacchus, 1496–7. The drunken god stood in a garden in Rome in the sixteenth century. (color insert 15.22)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Foetus in the Womb, circa 1510. The marvel of humanity is displayed by Leonardo like a nut in its shell. (color insert 15.23)

  Leonardo da Vinci, Muscles and Veins of the Arm and Chest, and Head of an Old Man, circa 1509–10. Leonardo tells in his notes of how he observed the peaceful death of an old man in the Florentine hospital where he undertook dissections. (color insert 15.24)

  Michelangelo, Rondanini Pieta, 1550s–64. If Leonardo left his works unfinished, Michelangelo turned this habit to profoundly expressive ends. His last sculpture is a hesitant, incomplete masterpiece of anguished self-expression: a barely coherent dying prayer. (color insert 15.25)

  NOTES

  All quotations in the text are translated by the author unless otherwise stated in the notes.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  Richter 1 and 2: Jean-Paul Richter, ed., The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, vols. 1 and 2, London, 1883. This remains a superb anthology of the Italian texts with literal translations; but for dating and modern references to the manuscripts, see the version with a commentary by Carlo Pedretti, Oxford, 1977.

  Rime: Michelangelo, Rime, introduction by Giovanni Testori, chronology etc. by Ettore Barelli, sixth ed., Milan, 1998.

  Madrid I and II: Leonardo da Vinci, De Codices Madrid, facsimile ed. of Madrid Codices I and II, Antwerp, 1974.

  Vasari: Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, de Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri, ed. Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi from the first ed. of 1550, Turin, 1986.

  Condivi: Ascanio Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti (1553), ed. Giovanni Nencioni with M. Hirst and C. Elam, Florence, 1998.

  Uccelli: Leonardo da Vinci, Codex on the Flight of Birds (Sul volo degli uccelli), Biblioteca Reale, Turin, facsimile ed., Munich, 2000.

  INTRODUCTION

  1 “And you, who say it would be better”: Richter 2, n. 796, pp. 107–8.

  2 “Beard to the sky”: Rime, 5, pp. 45–6.

  3 It was observed: Heinrich Wölfflin, Classic Art (originally published 1899 as Die klassische Kunst), trans. Peter and Linda Murray, fifth ed., London, 1994, p. 57.

  4 this culture gave birth to the modern individual: Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (originally published 1860 as Kultur der Renaissance in Italien), trans. S. G. C. Middlemore, new introduction by Peter Burke, notes by Peter Murray, Harmondsworth, 1990. See esp. part 2, “The Development of the Individual,” pp. 98–119. For an influential modern rethink of “individualism,” see Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Chicago, 1980; and for exemplary studies of selves being fashioned in the Renaissance world, see Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre, Cambridge, MA, 1983, and Trickster Travels: The Search for Leo Africanus, New York, 2006.

  ONE: THE INSULT

  1 “One gown of taffeta”: Madrid II, 4 verso.

  2 “was most attractive”: Vasari, p. 551.

  3 “thief, liar obstinate”: Richter 2, n. 1458, p. 438.

  4 the disdainful individual in black: Lorenzo Lotto, Young Man Before a White Curtain, c. 1506–8, oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

  5 The painter, he exulted: Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, trans. and annotated A. P. McMahon, Princeton, 1956, vol. 2: Facsimile, n. 51, p. 20 recto and verso.

  6 The most recent (perhaps quixotic) restoration: For a full account and detailed illustrations of the restoration, see Pinin Brambilla Barcilon and Pietro C. Marani, Leonardo: The Last Supper, trans. Harlow Tighe, Chicago and London, 2001.

  7 “A little tan cap”: Richter 1, n. 664, p. 345.

  8 “this serpent”: Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary, trans. Alice de Rosen Jervis, London and New York, 1927, p. 181.

  9 Shakespeare was to get: William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, Basingstoke, 2007, pp. 1678, 2085.

  10 Vasari’s tone is rhapsodic: Vasari, p. 545.

  11 “poisoned with its breath”: Ibid., p. 548.

  12 “A paroxysm came”: Ibid., p. 555.

  13 “There was very great disdain”: Ibid., p. 554.

  14 This goes back: Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A Selection, ed. John F. Healy, rev. ed., London, 2004, book 35: “Painting, Sculpture and Architecture,” esp. pp. 329–36.

  15 Boccaccio himself: Boccaccio, Decameron (Florence 1554), ed. Vittore Branca, Milan, 1985, Giornata VI, novella 5, pp. 524–6.

  16 One of the earliest accounts: Matteo Bandello, Tutte le opera, edited by Francesco Flora, vol. 1, Milan, 1935, pp. 646–50.

  17 The autobiography of the Florentine: Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography, trans. George Bull, rev. ed., Harmondsworth, 1998.

  18 This was a fiercely competitive world: On honour, see Roger Chartier, ed., A History of Private Life III: Passions of the Renaissance, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1989, esp. pp. 21–67, 571–611.

  19 Vasari tells tales: The murder story appears in his “Life of Andrea dal Castagno,” Vasari, pp. 393–4.

  20 “by the benches at Palazzo Spini”: Il Codice Magliabechiano cl. XVII. 17 contenente notizie sopra l’arte degli antichi e quella de’ fiorentini da Cimabue a Michelangelo Buonarroti, scritta da anonimo fiorentino, ed. Carl Frey, Berlin, 1892, p. 115.

  21 “[Leonardo] cut a fine figure”: Ibid.

  22 “Una gabanella”: Madrid II, 4 verso.

  23 When the great German poet: Goethe on Art, ed. and trans. John Gage, London, 1980, pp. 171–2.

  24 “I’ve been at his house”: La Mandragola, act 4, scene 2; Niccolò Machiavelli, Teatro, ed. Guido
Davico Bonino, new ed., Turin, 2001, p. 113.

  25 “on [a] cart”: Luca Landucci, Diario Fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 …, ed. Iodoco del Badia, Florence, 1883, p. 210, entry for 26 February 1501: “Andorano in sul carro, attanagliatti per tutta la terra molto crudelmente; e qui a’ Tornaquinci si spezzòèel caldano dove affocava le tanaglie. E non v’essendo molto fuoco, che non infallivava, el cavaliere, minacciando il manigoldo, fece fermare el carro, e’l manigoldo scese del carro e andò pe’ carboni al calderaio, e per fuoco al Malcinto fornaio, e tolse un paiuolo per caldano, onde fece grande fuoco. El cavaliere gridava sempre: falle roventi; e così tutto’l popolo disiderava fare loro grande male sanza compassione. E fanciugli volevano assassinare el manigoldo se non gli toccava bene, onde gli fece molto gridare terribilissamente. E tutto questo vidi qui a’ Tornaquinci.”

  26 But this beauty: On violence in Florentine politics, Lauro Martines, April Blood, London, 2003, narrates the Pazzi plot to murder Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici; Lorenzino de’ Medici, Apology for a Murder, trans. Andrew Brown, London, 2004, is a self-justifying account by the assassin of Alessandro de’ Medici; and Benedetto Varchi, “Della istoria fiorentina,” in Thesaurus antiquitatum et historiarum Italiae, Leiden, 1723, pp. 301–2, tells how gangs of adolescents were licensed to destroy villas outside the city on the eve of the siege of Florence in 1529. There are vivid examples of violence in everyday Florentine life in Cellini, pp. 17–18, 23–7.

  27 The entire Sixth Day: Boccaccio, Decameron, p. 507.

  28 “Someone once told off a man of worth”: Madrid II, 65 recto.

  29 “Between painting and sculpture”: Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise, n. 51, fol. 20.

  30 “You explain it yourself”: Il Codice Magliabechiano, p. 115.

  31 The nineteenth-century painter Lord Leighton: Lord Frederic Leighton, Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna Is Carried in Procession Through the Streets of Florence, 1853–5, National Gallery, London.

  32 Michelangelo is simply: Vasari, pp. 880–81.

  33 “In more robust days”: Condivi, p. 63.

  34 “terrible,” terrifying and sublime: Letter from Michelangelo’s friend Sebastiano del Piombo recounting a conversation with the Pope, in P. Barocchi and R. Ristori, eds., Il Carteggio di Michelangelo, vol. 2, Florence, 1967, no. cdlxxvii, pp. 252–3.

  TWO: THE FAME MACHINE

  1 The wealth of the Medici: Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494, Cambridge, MA, 1963; George Holmes, “How the Medici Became the Pope’s Bankers,” in Nicolai Rubinstein, ed., Florentine Studies, London, 1968.

  2 Cosimo il Vecchio: Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, Oxford, 1966; John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575, Malden, Oxford, and Victoria, 2006, pp. 278–306.

  3 the bloody lottery that was medieval urban life: Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy, new ed., London, 2002; Leonardo Bruni, History of the Florentine People, vol. 1, trans. James Hankins, Cambridge, MA, 2001; Najemy, pp. 11–27.

  4 Tuscany threw up a particularly dazzling constellation: On Mediterranean urbanism, see Marc van de Mieroop, A History of the Near East ca. 3000–323 B.C., Malden, Oxford, and Victoria, 2004, pp. 17–37; M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, second ed., Harmondsworth, 1992, pp. 123–49; Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Europe, 400–1500, Malden, Oxford, and Victoria, 2007, pp. 99–121, 180–81; Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilisation and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, vol. 1, London, 1981, pp. 479–525; Daniel Whaley, The Italian City-Republics, third ed., Harlow, 1988; Gene A. Brucker, Renaissance Florence, suppl. ed., Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1983.

  5 But there were so many offices: Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence, New York and London, 1984, pp. 17–20.

  6 By the early 1400s Florence: Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, Princeton, 1966, and Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1: The Renaissance, Cambridge, 1978, offer classic—and opposed—interpretations of how Republican thought evolved in medieval Italy.

  7 “citizens … might return”: See Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre, New Haven and London, 2000.

  8 Suddenly the Republic actually was a republic: Alison Brown, “Rethinking the Renaissance in the Aftermath of Italy’s Crisis,” in John M. Najemy, ed., Italy in the Age of the Renaissance 1300–1550, Oxford, 2004, pp. 246–65, and J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, second ed., Princeton and Woodstock, 2003, are modern analyses of the crisis of 1494. However, the classic history of the French invasion and its aftermath, and a fundamental source for this book, is the sixteenth-century Florentine statesman Francesco Guicciardini’s History of Italy, written in his retirement in the 1530s. Guicciardini, The History of Italy, trans. Sidney Alexander, Princeton, 1969, is a convenient selection from this vast work. Gilbert’s Machiavelli and Guicciardini contextualises Guicciardini’s history.

  9 The most influential voice: Guicciardini, pp. 76–85; Najemy, pp. 375–400; Gilbert, pp. 11–29.

  10 Savonarola’s sermons: Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494–1545, Oxford, 1994; Lauro Martines, Scourge and Fire: Savonarola and Renaissance Italy, London, 2006; Savonarola, Compendio di revelatione dello inutile servo di Iesu Christo frate Hieronymo da Ferrara dello ordine de frati predicatori, Florence, August, 1495.

  11 There was such a thing in Venice: See Pocock, pp. 103–13, on Savonarola and the myth of Venice.

  12 all but calling the Pope an Antichrist: Savonarola’s extremism in his later sermons is reported by the young Niccolò Machiavelli, in a letter dated 9 March 1498, in Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, ed. James B. Atkinson and David Sices, DeKalb, IL, 1996, pp. 8–10.

  13 Even so, some people waded: Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary …, trans. Alice de Rosen Jervis, London and New York, 1927, pp. 142–3.

  14 Machiavelli is infamous: Isaiah Berlin, “The Originality of Machiavelli,” in The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, London, 1998, pp. 269–325, is a great introduction to Machiavelli’s importance. Skinner, Gilbert, and Pocock all offer detailed accounts of Machiavelli’s thought. His correspondence, in Atkinson and Sices, eds., brings his world engagingly to life. Peter Constantine, The Essential Writings of Machiavelli, New York, 2007, and Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa, The Portable Machiavelli, Harmondsworth, 1979, are excellent selections from his writings, although neither contains the full text of The Discourses. For a precise translation of this work, which is key to understanding his republicanism, consult Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov, Chicago and London, 1996. The thesis of “Machiavellian intelligence” in chimpanzees is debated in Andrew Whiten and Richard W. Byrne, eds., Machiavellian Intelligence II, Cambridge, 1997.

  15 In Elizabethan England: Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, Prologue spoken by Machevil, c. 1590, in Frank Romany and Robert Lindsey, eds., Marlowe: The Complete Plays, London, 2003, pp. 248–9; William Shakespeare, The Third Part of Henry the Sixth, c. 1591, act 3, scene 2, in Shakespeare, Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, Basingstoke, 2007, p. 1269.

  16 “It seemed a very new thing”: Luca Landucci, Diario Fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 …, ed. Iodoco del Badia, Florence, 1883, p. 254: “E parve cosa molto nuova vedere abitare donne in Palagio.”

  17 “What was the relationship”: Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873), Oxford, 1986, p. 73.

  18 “In this head”: Vasari, p. 552.

  19 In the margin of its early printed volume: Heidelberg, University Library, Incunabulum with handwritten comments, D7620 qt. INC, Cicero, Epistolae ad familiares, Bologna 1477, B1. 11a.

  20 This work may well survive: Vasari, p. 551. For this view of the
National Gallery cartoon, see Luke Syson with Larry Keith, Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, London and New Haven, 2011, pp. 284–85.

  21 “And this work by Leonardo”: Vasari, p. 552.

  22 The old authors make him sound radical: Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A Selection, trans. John F. Healy, rev. ed., London, 2004, p. 332. For a modern attempt to reconstruct Apelles’ achievements, see E. H. Gombrich, The Heritage of Apelles, London, 1976, pp. 3–18.

  23 Angels must have helped: J. Wilde, “The Hall of the Great Council of Florence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 7 (1944), pp. 65–81.

  24 “to honour and ornament”: Ibid., p. 76.

  25 “at the door of the Signori”: Landucci, p. 208: “e posesi alla porta de’ Signori un Cristo di rilievo molto bello, come parve che noi volessimo dire ‘Non abbiamo altro re che Cristo.’ Credo fussi una permissione divina, come più volte aveva detto frate Girolamo, che Firenze non aveva altro re che Cristo.”

  26 Filippino Lippi had been commissioned: Wilde, p. 77.

  27 “It remains to satisfy”: “Discursus florentinarum rerum post mortem iunioris Laurentii Medices,” in Machiavelli, Opere, vol. 2, Turin, 1986, pp. 216–17.

  28 Portraits were revered in Florence: Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, full trans. of second ed. of 1568 by Gaston de Vere, London, 1996, pp. 555–7.

  29 Isabella wrote: L. Beltrami, ed., Documenti e memorie riguardanti la vita e le opere di Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, 1919, doc. 88.

  30 In October 1503 Leonardo: Ibid., doc. 130; Archivio di Stato, Florence, Signori e Collegi, Deliberazioni in Forza d’Ordinaria Autorità, 105, fol. 106 recto, 24 October 1503.