Читать книгу Leonardo da Vinci - Vincenzo Delle Donne - Страница 5

His immeasurable ambition was sometimes so strong for Piero da Vinci that it led him to despair. He knew that he had to ponder every action wisely to get closer to his great goal. His father had become a notary in Vinci. However, the son turned his back on Vinci, as his ancestors had once done, because he wanted to make a career in Florence at all costs. The city on the Arno was at the time the undisputed world financial centre. Business was booming. He noticed conscientious people like him, who regulated these activities, were in great demand. But the transition from Vinci to Florence was not easy. To make his way into the city dominated by the powerful de' Medici family he had to work hard, but luckily he was soon welcomed into the corporation of judges and notaries. In March 1448 he signed his first contract. In 1459 Piero moved definitively to Florence. During this period he lived near the Badia Fiorentina, around the religious centre of the city where the Benedictine abbey was located. In a palace next door there was also the seat of the corporation of judges and notaries. Piero lived alone near Piazza San Florenz, before moving to Via Ghibellina. In the longest and most important street of his time, he also had his notarial office near the Palazzo del Podestà, where the municipal authority had its first seat. He then rented this building as his office from 1468 onwards, together with his partner Piero di Carlo del Viva. From 1477 onwards Piero da Vinci was the only owner of the notarial office.

Marrying a woman belonging to the same social rank was an iron rule at the time, whether it was belonging to the nobility, the rich bourgeoisie or one of the various guilds. The chosen one had to be young, rich and virgin: a good guarantee for the procreation in the family. The concept of beauty was just as strong. Dante and Petrarch had created through their works a new female ideal of beauty. The worshippers had to have white skin, golden reddish hair and had to bring substantial sums of money as a dowry. The marriage of love did not exist and would only make its way into the 20th century. Piero da Vinci was strongly determined to keep the family's property together and, at best, also to increase it, making it a good party, when it came to choosing the future wife. The bride's dowry was compulsory and was guaranteed in a contract before the day of the marriage itself. The greater the bride's dowry, the better the reputation of the family in question. Everything was then meticulously regulated in special marriage contracts. Piero da Vinci knew by profession the premises of a marriage. In the marriage contracts it was noted with great meticulousness, how much dowry the bride would receive from her father and what would happen to the dowry, for example, if the wife would die prematurely without having children. Piero da Vinci had drafted several of these contracts as a notary public. First, it was important that the marriage of convenience guaranteed the suitable offspring of the family. Only then could the family tradition and its wealth be preserved or increased. At a time when many women died at birth or of puerperal fever, having children was not taken for granted.

The ambitious father Piero da Vinci, who had recognized "Lionardo" as his illegitimate son, was however, struggling with a great private dilemma. He had made a huge leap in his career from Vinci to Florence, following in the footsteps of his father and working in Florence as a notary public, even around the all-powerful Medici family, which earned him, in addition to great esteem, many large commissions. Although he had made an outstanding career in Florence, the much desired legitimate male son, however, was still missing. But this couldn't have been Piero´s fault. After all, he already had an illegitimate male son named Leonardo and his young wives, whom he had married in rapid succession, actually had all the characteristics necessary to guarantee him a worthy heir. So Piero da Vinci left no stone unturned to have a legitimate son. Although Leonardo was not presentable because he was illegitimate, on the other hand, Piero never failed in his duties as a father, introducing his illegitimate son into Florentine society in the best possible way and also on the basis of his influence.

Florence was radiant at this time. In no other city, in Italy and in the world then known, the social upheaval was felt economically, socially and culturally as distinctively as in the city on the Arno. He had obtained his wealth in the gold, silk and wool trade in the fifteenth century. Florence was now a leader in the trade in precious damask and brocade silk fabrics. Fabrics with gold and silver threads were in demand and popular among rich patricians and princely houses throughout Europe as an indispensable accessory to the fashion of the time. Any price was paid for these precious accoutrements. In the meantime, the flourishing banking sector had also made Florence and the Medici family immensely rich. A revaluation of the so-called vulgar as the language of literature had already been anticipated by the poets Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca and Coluccio Salutati, inaugurating a new phase of Italian literature. Giovanni Boccaccio, who in his extraordinary novels, in addition to talking about Platonic love, also recounted the implications of carnal love with its sober, absurd and incomprehensible sides, combining comedy with tragedy, contributed from a literary point of view, further, to the birth of a new literary language in Florence. In fact, a spirit prevails in it that easily gets rid of the perceptions and limits of the dark Middle Ages. The attention in it was no longer turned to God, but to man with his joys, his vanities and his sufferings. In Florence, the legacy of Greek and Roman antiquity was suddenly rediscovered on a broad front and further developed with a decisive accent. For the first time, the philosophical exploration of the almost forgotten heritage of antiquity made its way, developing a new aesthetic based on overcoming it and rediscovering this heritage. A new conception of man, but also a revolutionary vision of the world, thus emerged. As a result, the individual was not only able to decide freely about his own life, but was also the creator of his own happiness and able to shape nature according to his conception of the world. The separation of body and mind was strictly rejected here. The exchange of knowledge, ideas and opinions thus received new impulses.

The new spirit has now spread mainly among the elite of Florentine society. Among those who held high public office. But these new humanist ideals also divided the bourgeoisie and the craftsmen of the city society, because both pragmatism and individualism proved to be the engine of economic and social success. For the inhabitants of Florence, competition between these two sets of ideals was seen as a blessing that legitimized the wealth acquired and active participation in socio-political life was a duty. The visual artists, who did not really mean themselves as artists, but rather as "craftsmen" shared this new vision of things. Their works portrayed these new ideas in a vivid and comprehensible way. When writers referred to new ideas in their literature, written mainly in Latin, they only reached a relatively small elite circle of recipients. The rapid spread of new ideas must therefore be attributed primarily to visual artists. The churches, however, which until then had been seen as the mystical and intellectual center of the whole city, were now also threatened architecturally by the new spirit. The rich patrician families built splendid, profane palaces in which artists and craftsmen paid homage to the new spirit, without the omnipresence of the concept of God. The man of that time was slowly, but continuously, freed from the chains of the medieval perspective, in which the real world had to reconcile itself with the official vision of the church. The city of Florence, which was considered the "new Rome" or the "new Athens", became therefore the brilliant metropolis where man was celebrated in an unbridled way his vices and his joys.

Leonardo immersed himself in this vicious and discarded atmosphere, in a sort of silent protest against his father, considering the city of Florence as a source of inspiration, but also Sodom and Gomorrah. The young Leonardo appeared to his contemporaries as a young ancient divinity: he was tall, athletic, attractive in his behaviour, and dressed in an egocentric way, with a marked preference for bright colours. He wore long hair down to his shoulders and a beard, his head covered by a black hat typical of the guild. While his contemporaries preferred a short jacket to the typical close-fitting leggings, Leonardo preferred a tunic similar to a skirt, for all his life, that went down to his knees, a garment worn mainly by young men or by artists such as the one who with his intuitions is considered the father of Renaissance painting.

However, moving from Vinci to Florence was a traumatic experience for Leonardo. Shifting an entire existence from a contemplative village to the most vicious and transgressive of Italian cities, as Florence at that time was defined by the prelates of the church of Rome, was for Leonardo like opening pages of life unknown to him. The new spirit dominated everywhere with great repercussions on all human spheres. This was also noted in the new relationship that people had with their sexual sphere. Therefore, even the sexual practices once forbidden by the Church, which now, in this new context, seemed "natural", quickly spread here. For example, sodomy, which meant homosexuality in Florence, was widely used among artists, although it was strictly pursued by the Catholic Church as a "deviant form of sexuality”. As a deterrent draconian punishment, emasculation was flaunted. However, we can affirm that most Florentines had an unorthodox relationship with the commandments, often repugnant to the prohibitions and norms of the Catholic Church. In Florence, at times, a free spirit had spread, which in ancient Greece had characterized the School of philosophers in Athens, in which Socrates proposed new gods that, according to his political opponents, inciting the youth to revolution.

Leonardo also wanted to immerse himself in these dark and bright sides of the city. Also from the sexual point of view? It is very likely that this was the case. And it is also very unlikely that Leonardo would have subdued his sexual desire, which would have pushed his artistic genius to a greater development, as Sigmund Freud hypothesized in his famous essay "A childhood memory of Leonardo da Vinci". In a letter to Carl Gustav Jung, the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis wrote of "one of the greatest men of the Italian Renaissance" on October 7, 1909, just returned from a trip to America: "Since I came back, I have a fixed idea. The mystery of the character of Leonardo da Vinci is now suddenly completely clear to me.“ Freud then explained that Leonardo's unstable nature, marked by eternal boredom, dissatisfaction and restlessness, must surely be of a sexual nature, "psychoanalyzing" Leonardo in a posthumous sense. In a passage from his Atlantic Codex on the Flight of Birds, in which Leonardo tells of a childhood dream of a buzzard resting in its cradle, Freud interprets this dream as a metaphor for a sexual abuse suffered by the child Leonardo. It is clear, so Freud deduced, that here Leonardo refers to a suffered oral sex, because the tail of the buzzard in Leonardo's child's mouth is nothing more than a paraphrase of the male member. This story appears in a sense as a cryptogram of Leonardo's subconscious. In addition to the domination of the mother figure and the absence of the father, Freud saw this experience as the main reason for Leonardo's homosexuality. By the way, this thesis of Freud was based mainly on the reading of "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci" by Dimitri Merezhkovskij that Maria Herzfeld translated into German, making a translation error perhaps not insignificant: he mistakenly translated the Florentine word "kite" as "vulture" instead of with the buzzard. Freud also concluded that the face of Leonardo Catherine's mother could be recognized in the ambivalent smile of the Mona Lisa. An amusing conglomerate of truth and poetry about Leonardo's sex life and its impact on his art and work. It is true that in Florence and Italy the male member is metaphorically paraphrased with the term "bird" and still is. In this regard, Freud's interpretation seems to have at least one starting point based on culture. But Leonardo himself has written in special registers in his diary that the "buzzard" for him clearly represented by his father Piero, who cannot bear the happiness and success of his illegitimate son and therefore, like a buzzard to his offspring, continues to deliberately cause pain and suffering.

But what kind of career should Leonardo have embarked on in Florence? From the beginning he didn't seem suitable for a career as a notary because he was unstable, lonely and rather undisciplined. It was due more to his artistic nature than to the difficulty of Latin. Because of his strong talent that was already emerging in painting, it was therefore almost obvious that he had to work in a workshop, in a workshop run by a great master in the city. Andrea del Verrocchio's Bottega, one of the most prestigious in Florence, seemed the most suitable. In addition to painting and sculpture, he trained his students as carpenters, mechanics, engineers and architects and was known for his great care and conscientious education. Here Leonardo soon put his talent as a painter to the test. Even his remarkable skills as a sculptor was soon praised by his teacher Andrea del Verrocchio. Mastery of the various disciplines of sculpture was also part of the compulsory training regime. However, surprisingly, hardly any work from the sculptor Leonardo are known.

In this workshop, Leonardo from the beginning was able to compete with other talented artists that Verrocchio had gathered around him with great care and diligence. These were excellent future artists such as Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi who later became the absolute protagonists of the history of Renaissance art. Especially with Pietro Perugino, in whose workshop Raphael would later work, Leonardo had an intimate and friendly relationship that went beyond the simple working relationship.

First of all, the training of Andrea del Verrocchio's shop involved drawing, which was practiced to such an extent that pupils would at one point reach a uniform formal language. This was the novelty of the training of Renaissance painters. It is precisely this strict principle of student training that Leonardo in turn had later rigorously insisted on even among his own students, which makes it so difficult for contemporary art historians to clearly attribute their respective works: recognize whether the works came from the hands of the master or talented pupil. This is probably the reason why painters of the time were not used to signing their works.

In the rival workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, who belonged to the guild of painters of San Luca already in 1472 and who also received his final touch in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, some years later Michelangelo Buonarroti spent several important years of apprenticeship. Ghirlandaio had probably been an apprentice in the workshop of Bartolomeo di Stefano, who was actually a goldsmith. It is believed that he studied with both Benozzo Gozzoli and Filippo Lippi. However, with Alessio Baldavinotti he learned the techniques of painting and mosaic art. From 1480 Ghirlandaio was considered the most famous portrait painter of Florentine high society. With him Michelangelo also learned the technique of fresco painting, since Maestro Domenico Ghirlandaio had set new artistic standards in this ancient technique. He painted important scenes of frescoes on the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV, a quarter of a century before Michelangelo began his grandiose cycle of frescoes. But Domenico Ghirlandaio also painted magnificent frescoes in the Cappella Sassetti and Cappella Tornabuoni in Florence.

Leonardo's training, however, was mainly carried out by Andrea del Verrocchio, who was actually called Andrea di Michele di Francesco di Cioni and was born in 1435 in Florence. He was a sculptor, a painter and also an excellent goldsmith. Under Piero de' Medici he became one of the great artists of the city, opening his own workshop. Under the aegis of Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, he brought together in his workshop the greatest artists of the city: the new stars of the artistic and artisan scene of the time. As a painter, Andrea del Verrocchio stood out for his markedly realistic style, taking up the pictorial styles of Flemish painting. In Verrocchio's workshop, Leonardo quickly distinguished himself through his various talents, working feverishly on many commissions: paintings, sculptures, goldsmith's works and decorations for the magnificent new palaces of the powerful patricians. Orders, which in many cases came from the most lavish Italian extravagant courts. Both wealthy noble families and patricians from all over Italy wanted to participate in the new Florentine trends in art and culture.

Verrocchio made people talk about himself above all as a sculptor. His tomb of Piero and Giovanni de' Medici and his extraordinary bronze sculpture of the David testify to his great perfection and impressive effect, creating a new style with a lively ideal of beauty. His works are realistic, harmonious in their proportions and imposing effects of light and shadow that permeate the figure in a given space. His sculptures have become the reference point for the new style of the Florentine Renaissance. By the way, for the bronze statue of David by Andrea del Verrocchio, completed by the Florentine master between 1472 and 1475 and now on display at the Bargello Museum in Florence, it is assumed that the young model to represent the David was an adolescent Leonardo. It would indeed be one of the few works in which the young Leonardo would have been represented. Strangely enough, there would be no self-portraits of the universally skilled master, who throughout his life painted and drew everything and everything in an obsessive and tireless way. There are few exceptions to the rule. The Portrait of a Musician exhibited today at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan should be also a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, according to art historians. He painted it around the year 1485, when he was already at the court of Ludovico Sforza. It is also presumed that he represented himself when he drew the Vitruvian Man with his ideal dimensions. All these portraits show, according to expert opinion, a surprising resemblance to the plaster drawing of 1515, considered the self-portrait of the 63-year-old Leonardo and now kept in the Royal Library of Turin.

Andrea del Verrocchio was a friend of Piero da Vinci. They knew each other well because they both worked around the environment of the Medici family. Needless to say, Piero da Vinci presented some drawings of his talented son to the famous master to hear his opinion. In the meantime, Leonardo had also convinced his father of his talent. Drawing with his left hand, Leonardo captured nature and the deep facets of reality with rapid brushstrokes in a rapid manner and with impressive precision. Master Verrocchio, on the other hand, was so dazzled by the drawings that he readily accepted Leonardo in his laboratory, which was regulated according to strict principles. The exercise of drawing had an absolute priority in the training of painters, sculptors and architects. In addition to being a daily subject for students, it was also a central element in the creative process. Drawing was, so to speak, the practical and spiritual basis of artistic activity. It allowed not only the sketch of the motif, but also the corrections in the general composition. On the other hand, this exhausting exercise was indispensable to achieve the uniform artistic signature of the entire workshop. Even his pupil Leonardo drew men, animals, landscapes and architectural details on countless sheets, interiorizing both the style and the repertoire of his master Andrea del Verrocchio. For Leonardo, drawing actually became the real engine of his art. Whether it was a painter, an inventor, a sculptor, an anatomist, an engineer or an architect: at the beginning of the creative process there was always drawing. It was the expression in which his brilliant spirit of invention and representation was manifested. With the pen, pen and brush, his creative mind took shape immediately.

However, the precise date on which Andrea del Verrocchio welcomed Leonardo into his workshop is now uncertain. Some art historians believe that it probably did not take place until 1468, when Leonardo was 16 years old. His real training took place in the period from 1469 to 1470, as other reliable sources show. After that Leonardo went his own way, professionally. In 1472 he was already known as a high-ranking painter and his services were requested in Florence. In 1472, in fact, Leonardo was explicitly mentioned in a document of the Compagnia di San Luca. Now this ascending painter is certainly part of the famous guild, which were joined by the most important painters of Florence. A note from this guild confirms the payments for June and November. Although Leonardo was still a member of the workshop of his master Andrea del Verrocchio, this note shows that he also accepted and carried out tasks independently.

The representation of pure and candid nature has always exerted a certain fascination on Leonardo throughout his life. In this field he quickly reached an inimitable style. This characteristic can be seen especially in his early works. On August 5, 1473, for example, he executed the drawing Landscape with River, in which he represented a view from the top of the Arno valley. In other works by Andrea del Verrocchio's workshop, such as the Archangel Raphael and Tobiolo, art historians also attribute the depictions of nature to Leonardo's contribution. His typical pictorial style was unmistakable and clearly noticeable. For example, a fish that twists in its movement of life and the bounce of a lively poodle, which not only stands out for its naturalness, but that is unique for the time, stands out. Another example is the Madonna and Child with Angels, whose representation of nature in the background clearly refers to Leonardo's legendary river landscape with its many aspects of meaning and interpretation.

However, despite his rapid affirmation as an artist, the recognition by his father Piero left something to be desired, which he himself often complains about in his diaries, while the extraordinary art of Leonardo in Florence was already on everyone's lips. Although his relationship with his former master Andrea del Verrocchio was now collegial, Leonardo's painting had already far surpassed that of the master. Art historians unanimously cite the following example: between 1475 and 1478, the master Andrea del Verrocchio and his pupil Leonardo painted the painting Baptism of Christ for the monastery of Vallombrasano di San Salvi, now on display at the Uffizi Gallery. The work commissioned was a mirror of the different pictorial talents that the workshop was able to produce. On the painting, the pictorial styles of Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo are under the eyes of all. The angel at the bottom left of the painting, whose long, naturally graceful curls immediately capture the attention that involuntarily moves from the centre of the painting, even though in the general composition it was more likely that it was considered as a marginal element. The landscape in the background also magically attracts the eye of the careful observer of the painting. Leonardo painted the subject with his soft and unmistakable brush stroke. The grace and softness of the depictions literally go beyond the frame compared to the other figures in this painting, with their natural plasticity. The way in which the plant world is represented in a natural way, the expressive power of the portrait, the ambivalent smile, as well as the filling of the room, the uniform atmosphere and the typical softness of the presentation are characteristic elements, which Leonardo later reproduced in perfect and inimitable form. At first Master Verrocchio wanted to do the painting alone, but the result was not very satisfactory for the artist, who saw himself mainly as a sculptor. The clients probably had reservations against the execution of Verrocchio. Soon, therefore, another rather mediocre painter from the workshop was involved in completing the work. But even the attempt of the fellow painter clearly did not have the desired effect. Also his style of painting was considered unsatisfactory, Leonardo was eventually commissioned to revise the painting so that it could be accepted by the client. The result was so virtuous that it caused general admiration and amazement among artists and clients in Florence. Even his master Andrea del Verrocchio could not hide his admiration for the work, but at the same time he had to admit that his student had become his true master in painting. Vasari noticed in his Vite, tending towards exaggeration, that Verrocchio was so fascinated by Leonardo's overworked painting that from now on he no longer wanted to pick up a brush. His docile pupil had artistically surpassed him by making him appear before the eyes of the city as a banal pupil in the field of painting.