Young Leonardo: The Evolution of a Revolutionary Artist 1472-1499

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Young Leonardo The Evolution of a Revolutionary Artist, 1472-1499 By Jean-Pierre Isbouts, Christopher Heath Brown St. Martin's PressCopyright © 2017 Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Heath Brown All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-12935-2 Contents Title Page, Copyright Notice, Introduction, PART I Toward The Adoration of The Magi: Leonardo's Early Oeuvre in Florence, Prologue, 1. Beginnings in Florence, 2. The Adoration of the Magi, PART II Toward The Last Supper: Leonardo's Oeuvre in Milan, 3. An Artist in Milan, 4. The Sforza Commissions, 5. The Pala Sforzesca, 6. The Santa Maria delle Grazie, 7. Montorfano's Crucifixion with Donors, 8. The Theme of The Last Supper, 9. Painting The Last Supper, 10. Seeing The Last Supper with New Eyes, Epilogue, Photographs, Acknowledgments, Notes, Select Bibliography, Index, About the Authors, Copyright, CHAPTER 1 BEGINNINGS IN FLORENCE You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself. — LEONARDO DA VINCI Ser Piero da Vinci recognized the talents of his young son, Leonardo, early on. That's why, in 1466, he arranged for the boy to be apprenticed at the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence when the boy was just fourteen years of age. According to the sixteenth-century author Giorgio Vasari, one of da Vinci's first biographers, Leonardo was soon recognized as a prodigy, which under normal circumstances would have meant that a bright future lay ahead of him. So, in the six years that he worked in Verrocchio's bottega, Leonardo learned to draw, to prep wet plaster and wooden panels, to stretch canvas, and to grind and mix pigments in order to create paint. (Ready-made paint tubes of the type we use today would not appear until the nineteenth century.) Eventually he was entrusted with more important tasks, such as transferring a cartoon (a drawing to scale) to a plaster or wooden surface, blending colors in water-based tempera or oils (still a relatively new invention then), and finally, painting lesser elements, such as a background landscape. Verrocchio's workshop was in high demand, which meant his pupils worked on a wide range of artistic endeavors, not only painting and sculpture (in plaster, wood, or bronze), but also a variety of furnishings, such as wooden chests, chairs, and coats of arms. The studio was also called upon whenever Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici ruler of the city, wished to produce any of the sumptuous masques and pageants for which his rule was famous. This invariably involved all sorts of intricate stage sets and machinery, as well as costumes, tapestries, and the construction of temporary structures such as Roman-style triumphal arches. Leonardo was at the studio when Verrocchio attained one of his greatest triumphs: the completion of a huge gilded ball that, in 1471, was hoisted to the top of the lantern of Brunelleschi's famous dome over the Florence Cathedral. In the process, Leonardo was thoroughly indoctrinated in Verrocchio's unique brand of art: the production of lovely though somewhat soulless and formulaic figures, whether sacred or secular, whose robust disegno betrayed the master's preference for sculpture over painting. Six years after his arrival in Verrocchio's studio, Leonardo was enrolled as a master in the guild of artists, which, as it happened, also included the trade of doctors and apothecaries (medici e speziali). This enabled him to accept commissions on his own, rather than through his tutor and master. Leonardo was not the only painter to be enrolled; Sandro Botticelli (a product of Fra Filippo Lippi's workshop) and Pietro Perugino (likewise a pupil of Verrocchio's) were also inducted that year. Leonardo was certainly ready to embark on a career as an artist in his own right, but initially that was not the case. As a graduate from this busy atelier, he became one of Verrocchio's associates — a common practice at the time, and one that Leonardo himsel