The Lost Battles Read online

  3 “After living happily for many years”: Wilde, 3 verso.

  4 still more manifestly Leonardesque battle: Michelangelo, A Battle Scene, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 294 (cat. no. from K. T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. 2, Italian Schools, Oxford, 1956).

  5 On 24 October 1503: See chap. 2, note 31.

  6 The repairs started: Luca Beltrami, ed., Documenti e memorie riguardanti la vita e le opere di Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, 1919, docs. 132 (16 December 1503) and 134 (8 January 1504), pp. 82–3.

  7 A diatribe against cannibals: The sheet in question is RL 19084 in the Royal Library, Windsor.

  8 “And he cherishes them”: Giorgio Vasari, Delle Vite de’ più eccellenti pittore … (rev. 2nd ed. of Lives), Florence, 1568, vol. 2, p. 6.

  9 The first attempt to put them in order: Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, trans. and annotated A. P. McMahon, Princeton, 1956, is the standard modern edition of Melzi’s Codex Urbinas in the Vatican Library. Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker, Leonardo on Painting, New Haven and London, 1989, combines Melzi’s manuscript with other notes by Leonardo to create an enhanced version.

  10 the sprawling diversity of Leonardo’s thought: Another great edition is Edward MacCurdy, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols., London, 1938, which includes more scientific notes than Richter.

  11 They ranged from a volume on palmistry: Madrid Codex II, fols. 2 verso, 3 recto, and 3 verso.

  12 recorded on an earlier inventory: Richter 2, n. 1469, 442–5, gives the earlier list of his books. It contains fewer religious works than the list of books stored in the monastery in 1504.

  13 the manuscript of di Giorgio’s treatise: Codice Asburnham 361, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.

  14 in his notebooks from his time in Milan: In his Manuscript B, Institut de France, Paris. See also MacCurdy, pp. 810–33.

  15 some key Florentine Humanist works: See Madrid Codex II, fols. 2 verso, 3 recto and 3 verso.

  16 “I have found in the Histories of the Spaniards”: Richter 2, n. 1498, p. 451.

  17 Amadis of Gaul: Madrid II, fol. 52 verso.

  18 In the chest in 1504: Ibid., fol. 3 recto.

  19 In February 1504: Beltrami, n. 136, 28 February 1504, p. 84.

  20 “a chest, where it is possible”: Richter 1, n. 512, p. 257.

  21 in a woodcut of Savonarola’s study: The woodcut appears in Savonarola’s Della Semplicita della vita christiana, Florence, 1496, and is reused in other Savonarolan pamphlets in the 1490s.

  22 “Il Vespuccio wishes”: Richter 2, n. 1452, p. 436.

  23 “Tapestry / compasses / Tommaso’s book”: Ibid., n. 1416, p. 428.

  24 “The morning of St. Peter’s Day”: Ibid., n. 1526, pp. 457–8.

  25 “The morning of Santo Zenobio”: Ibid., n. 1548, p. 464.

  26 the technique defines the pace: See Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook, trans. Daniel V. Thompson Jr., New Haven and London, 1933, pp. 42–50.

  27 The contract of May 1504: Beltrami, n. 140, p. 88.

  28 “a book of horses, sketched”: Madrid II, fol. 3 recto.

  29 the 1504 inventory includes: Ibid., fol. 2 verso.

  30 The drawing depicts a halved onion: RL 12603 recto, Royal Library, Windsor; MacCurdy, p. 193.

  31 “Man has been called by the ancients”: Richter 2, n. 929, p. 179.

  32 War was fought by men on horses: On the medieval image of the mounted knight, see Maurice Keen, Chivalry, New Haven and London, 1984, esp. pp. 23–30; Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonisation and Cultural Change, 950–1350, London, 1993, pp. 60–63.

  EIGHT: NAKED TRUTH

  1 “Go every Saturday to the baths”: Richter 2, n. 1421, p. 429.

  2 Bertoldo di Giovanni: E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form: Gombrich on the Renaissance 1, vol. 1, fourth ed., London, 1985, p. 56.

  3 a spa, where anything might happen: Niccolò Machiavelli, La Mandragola, act 1, scene 1, in Teatro, ed. Guido Davico Bonino, new ed., Turin, 1979, pp. 75–6.

  4 Eighteenth-century connoisseurs: Kenneth Clark, The Nude, London, 1956.

  5 They themselves spoke openly: Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, New York and Oxford, 1996; Michel Foucault, La Volonté de savoir, Paris, 1976; Sigmund Freud, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood,” in James Strachey and Albert Dickson, eds., Sigmund Freud, vol. 14: Art and Literature, Harmondsworth, 1990, pp. 151–231; Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, 2nd ed., Chicago and London, 1996.

  6 discovered this sensual, evocative medium: Compare Michael Hirst, Michelangelo and His Drawings, New Haven and London, 1988, pp. 4–7.

  7 One youth drawn in brown ink: Louvre, Paris, Inventaire 712. Paul Joannides, Inventaire général des dessins italiens: Michel-Ange, élèves et copistes, Paris, 2003, pp. 78–80.

  8 The youth is proud and beautiful: British Museum, London, 1887-5-2-116.

  9 Christian as well as classical: Steinberg, pp. 19–22.

  10 As Adam walks cast out from Paradise: Louvre, Inventaire 3897; Joannides, p. 67.

  11 “to Paolo for a …”: Richter 2, n. 1534, p. 460.

  12 “Now, if I do him as an adult”: Ibid., n. 1364, p. 414. See also Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, selected by Irma A. Richter, ed. Thereza Wells, Oxford, 2008, p. 271.

  13 In April 1476: Archivio di Stato, Florence, Ufficiali di Notte e Monasteri, Deliberazioni, Parte II, fol. 41 recto, 9 April 1476, and fol. 51 verso, 7 June 1476.

  14 The Office of the Night: Rocke. The high proportion of unmarried males in Florence is revealed in David Herlihy and Christine Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families, New Haven and London, 1985: 12.1 percent of men were still single in their late forties and early fifties. Needless to say, Leonardo and Michelangelo belonged to that group.

  15 His name was Paolo de Leonardo: P. C. Marani, Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2000, p. 92.

  16 “He has … loved the beauty of the body”: Condivi, p. 62.

  17 “Well, alas!”: Rime, 58, dated 1532, p. 107.

  18 They are ideas for a nude: RL 12337, Royal Library, Windsor.

  19 they illuminate how Leonardo spewed out: British Museum, London, 1875-6-12-17.

  20 Michelangelo insists on Christ’s full humanity: Compare Steinberg.

  21 “Of Christians”: Richter 2, n. 1293, p. 355.

  22 Ludovico was a good Christian man: Condivi, p. 8. Michelangelo’s respectful letters to his father include one from Rome reassuring the old man that he does not carry money about the streets but keeps it in the bank, and that he does not go about denouncing the Medici family: The Letters of Michelangelo, trans., ed., and annotated by E. H. Ramsden, London, 1963, vol. 1, letter 85, pp. 81–2.

  23 In 1504 he was a good son: He protests in a letter written in 1531 (Ramsden, letter 185, p. 176) that he has always made sacrifices for his family.

  24 “O anatomical painter”: Richter 1, nh. 363, p. 190.

  NINE: MASTER OF WAR

  1 The year 1494 is a critical date: J. R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, Stroud, 1998, esp. pp. 15–16 on the “new era” that began in 1494; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, rev. ed., Cambridge, 2000, for a conceptualisation of the coming of artillery warfare; Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe, Cambridge, 2000, chap. 3: “The Red Horse: War, Weapons and Wounds,” pp. 92–199, for the psychological consequences; Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History, London, 2003, pp. 80–94, on the significance of 1494 for Machiavelli.

  2 “many pieces which were even more mobile”: Francesco Guicciardini, La Historia di Italia, Florence, 1561, p. 32: “Ma i franzesi, fabricando pezzi molto più espediti né d’altro che di bronzo, i quali chiamavano
cannoni, e usando palle di ferro, dove prima di pietra e senza comparazione più grosse e di peso gravissimo s’usavano, gli conducevano in sulle carrette, tirate non da buoi, come in Italia si costumava, ma di cavalli, con agilità tale d’uomini e di instrumenti deputati a questo servigio che quasi sempre al pari degli eserciti camminavano, e condotte alle muraglie erano piantate con prestezza incredibile …”

  3 A tower explodes: RL 12652 verso, Royal Library, Windsor.

  4 Walk around the old walls: Or read Machiavelli’s report on how to modernise them, “The Account of a Visit Made to Fortify Florence,” in Allan Gilbert, ed., Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, Durham and London, 1989, vol. 2, pp. 727–34.

  5 The new ideas had first been advanced: Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991, esp. pp. 100, 104–5.

  6 Low and sinister, more like pyramids: Compare Parker and also “The Artillery Fortress as an Engine of European Overseas Expansion, 1480–1750,” in his Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe, London, 2002, pp. 194–218.

  7 there are buildings in the world visibly indebted: Ludwig H. Heydenreich, Architecture in Italy, 1400–1500, rev. Paul Davies, New Haven and London, 1996, pp. 148–51.

  8 a murderous fireworks display: RL 12275 and RL 12337 verso, Royal Library, Windsor.

  9 “where men are stood to batter”: Madrid II, 36 verso.

  10 to deny enemy gunners a target: Ibid., 37 recto.

  11 to minimise their exposure to this enemy: Ibid., 45 verso.

  12 The design of bastions: Hale, pp. 206–8.

  13 whose writings on military achitecture he transcribed: Leonardo transcribed di Giorgio’s writings on fortifications in Madrid Codex II, 86 recto–98 verso.

  14 “for a bastion to have spring in it”: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. Edward MacCurdy, London, 1938, vol. 2, p. 835.

  15 “Throwing smoke and flames”: Madrid II, 39 recto.

  16 “rage, bitterness and revenge”: Vasari, p. 553.

  17 “we may discern some lust”: Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, Oxford, 1986, p. 81.

  18 In this fierce little masterpiece: RL 12326 recto, Royal Library, Windsor.

  19 “the contrast between our education”: Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Corrado Vivanti, Turin, 2000, book 2, chap. 2, p. 141.

  20 “But in republics”: Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, ed. Giorgio Inglese, new ed., Turin, 1995, chap. 5, p. 31.

  21 “These replace the elephants”: Manuscript B, Institut de France, 82 verso.

  22 many military inventions and stratagems: Edward MacCurdy, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, London, 1938, vol. 2, pp. 842–4.

  23 satires or intellectual games: Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, new ed., Oxford, 2006, pp. 163–64, sees an element of satire in some of his military designs.

  24 “Frauncesse George of Sena”: Niccolò Tartaglia, Three Books of Colloquies Concerning the Art of Shooting in Great and Small Pieces of Artillerie …, trans. Cyprian Lucar, gent., imprinted at London for John Harrison, 1588, Appendix, p. 93.

  25 “If through the height of the banks”: Richter 2, n. 1340, p. 397.

  26 Leonardo gives serious thought: Manuscript B, Institut de France, 78 recto.

  27 Girolamo Ruscelli’s Precetti: Venice, 1572.

  28 He too adapted ideas: Robertus Valturius, De re militari, Verona, 1472.

  29 Isaac Newton would reach some: Paolo Rossi, The Birth of Modern Science, Oxford and Malden, MA, 2001, p. 74; A. R. Hall, Ballistics inthe Seventeenth Century: A Study in the Relations of Art and War with Reference Principally to England, Cambridge, 1952.

  30 surrounded by his sea horses, personifications of the waves: RL 12570, Royal Library, Windsor.

  31 “dreamt up an ingenious new way”: Guicciardini, 1561, p. 234: “si ignegnarono con nuovo modo d’offendere i Pisani, tentando di fare passare il fiume d’Arno, che corre per Pisa, dalle torre della Fagiana vicina a Pisa, a cinque miglia per nuovo letto nello stagno, che è tra Pisa, e Livorno …”

  32 “this work commenced with the greatest hope”: Ibid.: “Ma questa opera cominciata con grandissima speranza, e seguitata con ispesa molto maggiore riusci vana: perche, come il più delle volte accade, che simile cose, ben che con le misure habbino la dimonstratione quasi palpabile, si conoscano con l’esperientia fallaci (paragone certissimo, quanto sia disante il mettere in disegno al mettere in atto) …”

  33 Cardinal Francesco Soderini … wrote: Francesco Soderini to Niccolò Machiavelli, 26 October 1504, in James B. Atkinson and David Sices, eds, Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, DeKalb, IL, 1996, pp. 106–7.

  34 The true curse of Italy’s city-states: Machiavelli, Decennale, Florence, 1506.

  35 “because no one will be judged good”: Machiavelli, Libro della arte della guerra, Florence, 1521, 8 recto and verso.

  36 He had advocated it: Parole da dirle sopra la provisione del denaio, see James B. Atkinson and David Sices, eds., Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, DeKalb, IL, 1996, p. 81.

  TEN: THE RAID

  1 The poet Angelo Poliziano: Condivi, pp. 13–14.

  2 how a frenzied, savage battle broke out: Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. and ed. Charles Martin, New York and London, 2004, pp. 416–30.

  3 Michelangelo’s most moving preparatory work: 613 Er, Cabinet of Prints and Drawings, Uffizi, Florence.

  4 a work as sublime as The Marriage of the Virgin: In the Brera, Milan.

  5 Leda, in the alternate version: In the Royal Library, Windsor.

  6 Raphael saw the serious game: Raphael, Madonna del Cardellino (Madonna of the Goldfinch), c. 1506, Uffizi, Florence; Madonna of the Meadow, 1505–6, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Bridgewater Madonna, c. 1507, National Gallery of Scotland, on loan from the Duke of Sutherland.

  7 “Behold in painting Leonardo”: Translation by Thomas Hoby, London, 1588.

  8 His first fragments of poetry: Michelangelo’s earliest extant verses are those on the Cascina drawing discussed at the start of chap. 7. Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London, 1895-9-15-496. J. Wilde, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Michelangelo and His Studio, 2 vols., London, 1953, 3 recto and verso.

  9 he was still buying more cartoon paper: C. Bambach, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman, New York, 2003, p. 235.

  10 “The small hall above”: Richter 2, n. 1414, p. 427.

  11 “Pope Julius II proceeded impetuously”: Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, ed. Giorgio Inglese, new ed., Turin, 1995, chap. 25, pp. 166–7.

  ELEVEN: THE GREAT SWAN

  1 “The great bird will take its first flight”: Uccelli, cover.

  2 “From the mountain that takes its name”: Ibid., 18 verso.

  3 “Man and the animals”: Richter 2, n. 847, p. 131.

  4 He himself did not eat meat: Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, selected by Irma A. Richter, ed. Thereza Wells, Oxford, 2008, p. 354.

  5 “beans, white maize, red maize”: Richter 2, nn. 1521, 1519, p. 456.

  6 “The dark colours of the shadows”: Richter 1, n. 463, p. 233.

  7 “This writing clearly about the kite”: Richter 2, n. 1363, p. 414.

  8 For Freud, it is unlikely: James Strachey and Albert Dickson, eds., Sigmund Freud, vol. 14 Art and Literature, Harmondsworth, 1990, pp. 172–83.

  9 For Freud the penetration: Ibid., p. 176.

  10 “will hear animals of every species”: Both images are in Richter 2, n. 1293, “Of Dreaming,” p. 355.

  11 “I created thou a being”: Pico della Mirandola, “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” as quoted in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. (1878) S. G. C. Middlemore, Harmondsworth, 1990, p. 229.

  12 “The fear of you and the dread”: King James Bible, Genesis
9: 2–3. See also Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800, Harmondsworth, 1983.

  13 “Man. The description”: Richter 2, n. 816, p. 118.

  14 “Write the variety of the intestines”: Richter 2, n. 817, p. 118.

  15 he fuses human and cow: RL 19102 recto, Royal Library, Windsor.

  16 Drawings done by Leonardo in the 1470s: British Museum, London, 1857-1-10-1.

  17 “He would stop sometimes to contemplate”: Vasari, p. 567. Compare the method of Leonardo and Piero di Cosimo with the interpretation of paleolithic art advanced in David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave, London, 2002.

  18 A centaur is being born: RL 12337, Royal Library, Windsor.

  19 “Of the 4 reflex and falling motions of birds”: Uccelli, 6 recto.

  20 “Always the movement of the bird”: Ibid., 6 verso.

  21 he reiterates the need to imitate the membranous wings: Ibid., 15 recto.

  22 “The man in the flying machine has to stand free”: Ibid., 5 recto.

  23 “Maybe you will say that the nerves”: Ibid., 16 recto.

  24 The machine he plans in his 1505 notebook: Ibid., 16 verso and 17 recto; 7 recto; 6 verso.

  TWELVE: HELL’S MOUTH

  1 Thunderclouds hung above Piazza: As he records it in Madrid II, 1 recto.

  2 Leonardo made an emotionally devastating drawing: Szépmüvészeti Museum, Budapest, cat. no. 1775.

  3 A very large-scale copy in Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 20 (cat. no. from K. T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. 2, Italian Schools, Oxford, 1956).

  4 The nineteenth-century historian: Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore, Harmondsworth, 1990, p. 204.

  5 “There were at that time”: Historie fiorentine di Niccolò Machiavelli cittadino, et segretaio fiorentino, Florence, 1532, 117 verso.