Читать книгу The da Vinci Legacy - Jean-Pierre Isbouts - Страница 9

If there is one thing we know without question, it is that Leonardo always had a strong affection for the French, and they for him. We might think that’s no surprise, given the reputation of France as a mecca for art, architecture, music, and good food. Who would not want to spend his retirement in a beautiful home near the river Loire, an area known throughout the world for being home to some of the country’s most famous vineyards?

That may be true today, but it was not the case in the early 16th century. Through much of the Middle Ages, it was actually the court of Bourgogne (Burgundy) that had led French culture, in art as well as poetry and music. Here, for example, was the birthplace of a new form of music, a beautiful polyphonic style developed by renowned composers such as Gilles Binchois and Guillaume Dufay. But in the 14th century, France was devastated by the Black Death, which wiped out a third of the nation’s population. This was followed by the even more devastating Hundred Years’ War, pitting the English House of Plantagenet against the French House of Valois, in which Joan of Arc played such a prominent role.

As a result, by the dawn of the 16th century, France was a mere shadow of its former self. Many of its artists and architects still labored in the Gothic style, rather than embracing the exciting new impulses from Greco-Roman art that had produced the Italian Renaissance. France, in sum, was in danger of losing its place as one of the leading cultural centers of Europe.

The French king Louis XII, who came to power in 1498—just as Leonardo neared completion of the Last Supper in Milan—was very much aware of the problem. It was this king who fell under the spell of Leonardo’s art after his armies captured the duchy of Milan in 1499. The king used his emissaries to commission a Madonna painting from Leonardo in 1501 (possibly the Madonna of the Yarnwinder), and then ordered a full-size copy of the Last Supper, painted on canvas.2 So close was Leonardo’s relationship to the French court that the king began to refer to him as “nostre peintre et ingénieur ordinaire,” proclaiming Leonardo the court’s official artist and engineer.

But before the relationship between Leonardo and his French admirer could blossom, Louis XII died on January 1, 1515, succumbing to an aggravated case of gout, a form of inflammatory arthritis that was a very common cause of death in those days. Worse, the king had no male heir to succeed him. By papal consent he had annulled the marriage to his first wife, Joan, Duchesse de Berry, because of her reported sterility—a case that was later avidly studied by King Henry VIII of England, in his attempt to secure a papal annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Louis had then eagerly tied the knot with Anne of Brittany, the widow of his cousin Charles VIII, so as to bring Brittany under the sway of the French crown and produce a needed heir. Anne gave birth to two daughters, but was unable to present her husband with the desired crown prince. She then died in 1514, one year before Louis, who reportedly loved her to distraction.

The death of Louis XII left his son-in-law and cousin, François, as the only plausible successor. Indeed, at the tender age of four, François had already inherited the title of Duke of Valois. He had a strong claim to the throne if Louis XII’s marriage to Anne of Brittany remained without male issue, as indeed was the case. François’s own marriage to Anne’s daughter, Claude, could only solidify his claim.

Fortunately, the young king was the product of a new age in France. By the end of the 15th century, most French artists and architects were ready to admit that French culture had been overtaken by the avant-garde of the Italian Renaissance. This was the reason why Louis XII had decided to order a life-size copy of the Last Supper. In his mind, no other painting so captured the astonishing accomplishments of the Renaissance than this monumental work. King François, his successor, proceeded a step further by making the development of an authentic French Renaissance style a matter of state policy. As a young man, he had been indoctrinated in new humanist theories by his tutors, Christophe de Longueil, a humanist from Brabant, and François Desmoulins de Rochefort. As a result, the new king was determined to bring France into the fold of the Renaissance, but on a more systemic basis. He devised a comprehensive strategy to attract Italian artists, sculptors, and architects to France so they could inculcate the new Renaissance style into the fabric of French artistic life. It was during François’s reign, for example, that the French court began to amass the huge collection of Italian art that eventually filled the Louvre Museum.

It was therefore most fortuitous that in October 1515, Pope Leo X decided to invite François to a summit in Bologna. The purpose of this high-level meeting had very little to do with art. François had just ousted a short-lived restoration of the Sforza family’s rule in Milan and once again installed the French—much to the alarm of the Papal States and other Italian powers. In fact, the pope hoped to convince François to join a pan-European alliance of sorts that would bring peace to Europe, and allow all nations to focus their combined energies on the looming threat of the Turks. While Leo X failed in this endeavor, he did one important thing: he decided to bring Leonardo da Vinci along in his entourage.

Jean Clouet, Portrait of François I, ca. 1530

Thus, François was able to meet Leonardo face-to-face for the first time. What the king had been told about this éminence grise is unclear, but his lieutenants in Milan would undoubtedly have informed him about the paintings that Leonardo had produced for Georges d’Amboise, the head of the previous French government in the city. As subsequent events would show, the impression that Leonardo made on King François was most favorable. An envious Benvenuto Cellini later wrote that François was “totally besotted” with Leonardo. What exactly transpired between the two is unknown—no document or letter has survived about this episode—but it is possible that François chose this moment to offer Leonardo a pension, with the position of artist-in-residence, should he decide to settle in France.

The summit ended on December 17. The king and the pope returned to their respective domains, but not before François bestowed a French title on Leonardo’s patron, Giuliano de’ Medici, by naming him Duke of Nemours. Some historians have interpreted this elevation to mean that François and the pope were devising a plot to put Giuliano on the throne of Naples, which was traditionally located in the Spanish Hapsburg sphere of influence. If this had truly come to pass, it is possible that the last phase of Leonardo’s life would have unfolded in Naples, rather than France!

But fate had something else in mind for the unfortunate Giuliano. The thirty-seven-year-old duke was suffering from tuberculosis, with his health in steady decline. In October, Leonardo had written his benefactor, saying that he was “so greatly rejoiced, most illustrious Lord, by the desired restoration of your health,” but that restoration proved illusory. In March 1516, Giuliano finally succumbed to his illness. From that point he might have faded from history, were it not that he was a Medici. When Michelangelo began building a Medici chapel at the New Sacristy of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, he designed the now-famous tomb with its sculptures of Day and Night. Here, Giuliano’s remains were laid to rest—thus bestowing immortality on this hapless member of the Medici family.

The duke’s untimely death left Leonardo without a patron, at a court that was now fully in the thrall of stars such as Raphael and Michelangelo. And yet Leonardo was not ready to give up, for his hope was now fastened on the new St. Peter’s Basilica. This massive project had stalled upon the deaths of its principal architect, Bramante, in 1514, and of his successor, Giuliano da Sangallo, in 1515.

While passing through Florence on his way to the summit in Bologna, Leonardo made a number of sketches and studies for the reconstruction of the Medici quarter in Florence, including a façade for San Lorenzo, the family church of the Medici dynasty. Perhaps he hoped that these designs would convince the pope of his qualities as an architect and engineer, and thus earn him the task of continuing the new basilica.

Unfortunately, Leo X was not persuaded. The pope may have been amused by some of Leonardo’s ingenious tricks—Vasari writes of a lizard that Leonardo dressed up as a dragon, complete with wings, and of a mechanical lion that delighted the summiteers in Bologna—but for important commissions, he preferred to rely on his celebrity painters, Raphael and Michelangelo. Both of these artists wound up working on the new St. Peter’s; Leonardo was left alone in his Belvedere apartment, quietly working on the Louvre Mona Lisa and the John the Baptist, while his assistants Francesco Melzi and Salaì tiptoed around him.

Left: The original plan of St. Peter’s Basilica as designed by Bramante in 1506. The central plan of a domed Greek cross was later changed to that of a Latin cross.

Right: Leonardo’s drawing of two domed churches, which appear to closely follow Bramante’s design of St. Peter’s Basilica.

As we have seen, in the summer of 1516 the old master finally acknowledged that his time in Rome, and indeed in Italy, had come to an end. He accepted François’s offer and moved to the village of Amboise. It was not a trivial decision; travel in Europe at that time, particularly across the Alps, was an arduous and dangerous undertaking, certainly for a man who was sixty-four years of age. Roads and bridges were often in disrepair, and even in the summer it was not unusual to see the principal passes—Mont Cenis, Great St. Bernard, St. Gotthard, or Septimer—covered in snow. Thieves and bandits preyed upon vulnerable travelers, including those who traveled with many possessions in their train, as Leonardo obviously did. He had refused to part with his three great masterpieces, the Saint Anne, the Mona Lisa, and the John the Baptist, regardless of the source of their patronage or ownership. Inns were often full, or in such a state that it would have pained a sophisticate like Leonardo to spend a night in them. But against all odds, he succeeded in crossing from the Aosta Valley into the rolling lowlands of the Rhône.

The Château de Chambord, begun in 1519 by King François I

At that time, the French kings did not reside in Paris, but at various châteaus sprawling along the Loire Valley. The most sumptuous of these was the Château d’Amboise, built on a spur above the Loire, which had served as the official royal residence since the mid-15th century. It was here, in 1498, that King Charles VIII hit his head against a door lintel, incurring such a massive hemorrhage that he died shortly thereafter. François had also begun a comprehensive renovation of the Château de Blois, a vast complex that had originally been built in the 13th century. There, Joan of Arc was blessed by the archbishop of Reims before she launched the attack that drove the English forces out of Orléans. In addition, King François had commissioned the design of an entirely new palace, the Château de Chambord, which eventually became the most magnificent of all his architectural conceits.

View of the old medieval center of Amboise

The purpose of these and other renovations was to bring France’s royal palaces, mostly built in the Gothic style, up to date in the vernacular of Italianate Renaissance architecture. The Loire Valley was therefore a hub of frenzied building that drew hundreds of Italian masons, sculptors, artists, glaziers, and weavers. Seen in this context, the invitation for Leonardo to come to Amboise was therefore less surprising than is sometimes thought. He was simply one in a stream of Italian artists and artisans who were flocking to France, the new hotbed of European patronage. It has even been suggested by hopeful French art historians that Leonardo may have been consulted on the design of Chambord, though there is no documentation to support this thesis. In fact, the “Italian” features of this castle are mostly limited to the articulation of the façade with classicizing details. In form and intent, the castle remains faithful to the paradigm of French medieval palaces, including mansard roofs with their garrets and dormers, and a profusion of towers and chimneys. One would be hard-pressed to see Leonardo’s hand in any of this.

A Leonardo drawing in the Windsor Castle collection is commonly believed to be the sketch from around 1518 for a royal palace to be built in Romorantin, close to Blois, for the queen mother. This suggests that Leonardo was indeed consulted on matters of architecture by his new royal patron, who had a great zest for new palaces.3 But this drawing reveals a design that hews very closely to Italian precedent: flat roofs and symmetrical facades, articulated as uniform bays.